Manipulator (47 page)

“Mr Archer, how are you feeling?” a deep voice nearby asked him.

Owen opened his mouth and tried to talk, but his entire body ached, right down to his vocal chords. He lay there with his eyes closed in a room filled with silence. Gradually, he summoned the strength from deep within him to say just one word.

He moved his head to face the direction that the deep voice had spoken to him from. “Annie,” he whispered back, hurting all over as he said this one word. The vibration from his vocal chord sent a shockwave of pain which rippled through his body, forcing him to open his eyes.

“Mr Archer? What do you remember?” the deep voice asked him. This time, Owen could see the man who was speaking to him. He was a forty year old man with a solid jawline and short cropped black hair. The eyes that were hidden behind the man’s thin glasses were terrifying, and were studying Owen intently from the foot of the bed. He wore a long white doctors coat and around his neck hung a stethoscope. He looked nothing like a Doctor, but Owen didn’t judge on appearances. Regardless of how this man looked, this was the guy that was trying to save his life.

Mentally, he tried to will together his most recent memories, but even this caused him agony. “In the car,” Archer started to say, speaking in slow, short sentences, feeling pain every time he opened his mouth. “Annie was driving. There was a man. At the side of the road. He had a gun. A hostage. An Execution. I saw him. He had a black mask or bag over his head, and there was a man behind him, but he had his hood up… holding a gun…”

Consciousness left him. He was pushing himself too far, too fast.

Darkness surrounded Owen.
How much time has passed now?
His eyes flickered. Archer could feel himself slipping to and fro, in and out of consciousness, hearing voices talking around him echo in his head. He felt like he was floating, stuck inside a void in his own mind. He finally managed to open his eyes once again, only to see the same doctor that had been treating him earlier looking over some charts from the bottom of his hospital bed.

“Mr Archer?” the doctor asked, assessing whether or not he was conscious. As Owen locked looked up, he locked his eyes with the doctor’s, giving the man the answer that he was looking for. He walked around the bed to Owen and then sat himself down at the side of him. Suddenly, Owen was aware for the first time that he was completely and fully conscious. His eyes were open, ears were wide, and brain was sharp. Owen was feeling a lot better than he could remember ever having felt whilst being stuck in this room, aside from the minor headache that was pulsing through the back of his brain.

“I believe you have suffered some kind of…
psychotic break
from your accident,” the doctor explained to him slowly. “The police interviewed several people from the scene of the crash and not one of them report seeing a man with any sort of weapon. Do you understand me Mr Archer?”

This time, Owen didn’t try and reply with words. Instead, he just nodded his head, attempting to save his own strength.

“Now. I'm going to run some tests on you, to make sure that the crash didn’t cause any permanent brain damage. You’re going to be here for a while, Mr Archer, so get comfortable. We have a lot of questions we need to ask you.”

Owen understood everything that he was hearing, but at the moment, all he could think about was Annie.
Why haven't they told me how she's doing? Why are we not sharing a private room together?

“Annie,” Owen managed to say, speaking just that one word, letting the doctor know that he desperate for an answer.

“Mr Archer… Your wife…” the doctor said slowly, as he sat still at the side of Owen's bed. “I don’t know how to tell you this sir.” He started to shake his head from side to side slowly, before looking Owen dead in the eye. “She didn’t make it.”

Somewhere deep down, Owen already knew the answer. It took just somebody else to tell him for him to realise the truth.

Annie was dead. Gone. The victim.

Did they get the guy driving the van?
Owen questioned himself.
I hope so, because otherwise that fucker won’t know what hit him when I get a hold of him.

As he stared outwards into oblivion, Owen felt a single tear run down the side of his face. He hadn’t cried in a long time… Longer than he could remember.

The doctor took this as a sign and decided it was time to leave, knowing that Owen really needed to be alone. Gently, he stood up from the mans bedside and walked towards the exit with the clipboard in his hand. But as he opened the private room's door and prepared to leave, he first turned back to speak to Owen.

“I’ll be back shortly to check up on you,” he said softly yet clearly from the doorway. “But for now… I think you need some time to yourself.” On that note, he finally turned away and headed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Then, Ethan Darkes walked down the unfamiliar corridors of this PRoGRaM world's hospital, and into an adjacent room to meet his colleagues.

“So?” Marcus Ortega asked, standing up anxiously to meet Ethan as he entered the room. “Did it work?”

“He didn’t even recognise me,” Ethan said proudly as a malicious smile creeped across his face. “Gentlemen. Phase Two is a success. The memories that we implanted are a success. He doesn’t remember a thing."

Marcus and Alex both beamed in response to Ethan's announcement. Collectively, the three of them began to shake each others hands and exchange congratulations. This was an achievement to be proud of. This was the start of something new. This was Phase Two.

"What do we do now?" Alex asked Ethan as the excitement began to die down.

"Now?" Ethan answered, pondering his response. "Now it’s time to force a few more fake memories in there.”

Marcus nodded.
It's a shame that this had to happen to Owen… But memory creation! This is what it's all about. This is what we've been working towards from the very beginning. Complete control of the mind.

"What other memories do you propose?" Marcus asked.

"Well," Ethan said, sitting down in a nearby chair whilst he thought about the question. "We've already put the fatal car crash in. I suppose we can throw a few more memories in there before we throw him out onto the street."

"Why not put a funeral for Annie in there?" Alex suggested quickly off the top of his head. "Also, why not change some of Owen's history around? Try and implant a memory that's not as exciting as a car crash. See how that works out?"

"Yes," Ethan said slowly, the cogs in his head obviously spinning. "A part of Owen's history... Like how he became a member of the New York PRoGRaM Analytic Team."

"Nothing too exciting or outlandish though," Marcus clarified for everyone. "We need it to be realistic. But anyway, enough of that for now. Tell me Ethan. Has everything so far
really
stuck in Owen's mind? There are really no gaps in his memory?"

"No gaps at all," Ethan said proudly. "Now it's just a matter of seeing how far we can push him."

"How are we even going to know if any of these new memories we're about to put in stick there?" Alex asked. "It’s not like we can plant them in now, and keep him in the hospital, is it? The timeline of events just won't add up! Owen will spot it straight away."

"We just send him home," Ethan answered with a shrug of his shoulders.

"But Annie will be there," Alex stated, pointing out the flaw in Ethan's statement.

"About that…" Ethan answered slowly, dragging out his words. He was thinking about the phone call that he just had with his boss, minutes before entering this digital PRoGRaM world. He was thinking about what he had been told. Something that he hadn't felt the need to share with Marcus and Alex until now.

Nobody knows where Annie is.

Chapter Ninety Five

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Staten Island, New York

“We never physically did anything to your wife you know," Ethan called out, speaking up from the chair that he was tied down to. Nobody had noticed him wake up from his unconscious slumber. "You were the target all along, Owen.”

“Why are you telling me this now?" Owen asked. "Why not before?”

Ethan shrugged his shoulders before speaking. “The experiment's over now. You were an outstanding success. An amazing trial run. If it wasn't for your own… interference, then you would have never known any different. You’d have always believed that Annie was dead.”

“Then where is she?” Owen grunted slowly and angrily at Ethan. “What did you do with her? I killed you once Ethan, but that was in the PRoGRaM world. Don't make me kill you in this one as well.”

“Now you see, that’s the thing,” Ethan replied slowly and cautiously, frowning to himself as he did so.

“What is?” Owen replied, taken aback by Ethan’s odd response. Nick and Eli stood quietly nearby, happy to let Owen lead in this conversation. This fight was personal, and it wouldn't be right to get involved. It was between Owen and Ethan alone.

“We didn’t do anything with Annie.”

Owen didn't expect the answer that came out of Ethan's mouth. He struggled to find a question, and so stuck to a simple response. “What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said Owen," he replied, speaking honestly as Archer stared him down, looking closely for any signs of deception. "We didn’t do anything to Annie. None of us even went near her. Our instructions from Veridian were simple. We were ordered by the boss to execute a memory implant on you. We were instructed to create a scenario in which you and Annie were in a car crash, and that there was an accident in which she died. The whole point of this was simple. We needed to see if you would believe the fake memory.”

Why Annie though? Why does it have to be her?
Owen heard the voice of Alex Morgan say.

It's not as malicious as it sounds after all.
Archer thought.
Marcus, Alex and Ethan… They were never physically going after Annie, were they? It was always about me. Although, how could I have ever known that?!

It was all starting to make sense.

“But what about when I left the hospital?” Owen countered.

“What hospital?” Ethan laughed back at him manically. “There was never any hospital, Owen. You were inside PRoGRaM all along, and you didn’t even know it.”

“Surely you must have known that once your experiment was over, I was going to go home and that Annie was going to be there?” Owen asked. He almost understood everything, he had almost pieced it all together…

“Of course, but that wasn't a part of the experiment. We were simply asked to implant a memory in that head of yours and see if it would hold. That’s why you were kept in what you
believed
was a private hospital room. That’s why you were asked so many questions about what had happened."

"You were testing my memory…" Owen realised, speaking up over Ethan.

"Exactly," Ethan continued. "It was to see if there were any gaps in your
fake
memories. And there were
none
. It was perfect. As far as we were concerned, the experiment was an outstanding success, and so we set out to seamlessly integrate you back into the real world. Just so you know Owen, your real memories don't begin until the 1st December, a few days after the fake funeral memory that we put in there."

"When I woke up in that alleyway after a night of drinking?" Owen asked, suddenly realising why that date was so relevant. It was that morning that he had woken up in the gutter, seemingly passed out from a huge night of drinking to forget. Ethan had used his own tactic against him, playing him perfectly.

"So, imagine our surprise when the boss informed us that Annie was in fact… gone, and that nobody knew where she was. Yet, there you were, back in your own home, still believing the lies we put in your head.”

“But if you didn’t do anything to her…” Owen said slowly, his brain registering everything that was happening. "Then she never really died, and then, that means…”

Archer's voice trailed off without even finishing his sentence. He stared out the window nearby as something that he'd said one month ago struck him right between the eyes, planting itself right in the middle of his trail of thought.

Annie, remember what we talked about? This is that time. Get out now, don’t contact me after this, it’s not safe anymore. I’ll come to you as soon as I can. One month. I love you.

“She’s not dead,” Owen said to himself as he realised the truth. “She’s not dead.”

Chapter Ninety Six

Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)

Location: Unknown

“Memory creation,” Owen stated, almost bringing his interview with Victoria to a close.

“That was phase two?" she asked. "Memory creation?”

“That’s what it was about
all along
,” Owen said.

“That explain those dreams you have,” Victoria replied with a little bit of excitement showing in her voice.

“Exactly. That’s because those memories didn’t belong in my head. Because they weren’t real. My brain didn’t know how to process them and didn’t know how to store them. That’s why I saw the crash night after night.”

“It also explains who Marcus Ortega was about to execute on the side of the road,” she stated, putting the final pieces of the puzzle together. Her eyes were wide as she saw the connection between everything all at once.