Manipulator (25 page)

“I’m free?” Alex screamed out questioningly. They were the first two words that he had managed to string together in a coherent sentence since Owen had met him. “I’m free!” He shouted out again excitedly as he jumped up from the floor and started dancing around, eyes wide at his new surroundings.

“You’re not free yet,” Owen said to him coldly, stepping out in front of him to stop him from fidgeting around the huge room. Stopping him from moving did something inside his mind. Something inside Alex clicked as he noticed exactly where he currently was. His eyes moved fast, darting from corner to corner as he took it all in.

“You know this place?” Kate asked him sharply, noticing the change in behaviour. Her voice was muffled still as she spoke out from behind the gas mask she wore, protecting her identity from Alex. “You remember this place?”

“PRoGRaM. PRoGRaM. PRoGRaM…” he muttered quietly as he looked around, seemingly terrified.

“ALEX!" Owen shouted at him, snapping him out of his madness. “Annie Archer,” he said, repeating her name to him once again. Owen wasn’t willing to play games. He was here for answers, and he'd be damned if he was going to leave with nothing. Alex was a different kind of man to that which Marcus was. Alex was certifiably insane. There was no use trying to get a conversation out of him, or trying to talk to him reasonably like they had managed to do with Marcus.

With Alex, Owen had decided to just go straight for the answers.

If he wanted the second piece of the puzzle, he had to be quick about it. The people running the PRoGRaM Prison System could cut Alex’s connection at any point. They would kill him in the process of course, due to him being in a different PRoGRaM world, but Owen wasn’t sure if that would even mean anything to the people in control.

“Kate. Look-out please. Watch for trouble,” Owen said as he slowly guided Alex down into the chair in the centre of the common room. Owen had sat him in the exact same place that Marcus had been not two days before. Kate was watching the corridor this time. Keeping an eye out for anyone else that could possibly be there. Owen wasn’t looking for a repeat event of what had happened to Marcus. This time, the two of them were ready.

“You
have
been here before,” Owen said, looking right into Alex's eyes as he spoke. But he couldn't hold the mans gaze. His eyes flickered too fast, never looking in one direction for more than a second. “Somebody has altered your memories. They did it to Marcus Ortega,” he continued. Something clicked inside Alex upon hearing that name.
There’s something about names that triggers this guy.

“Marcus Ortega,” Owen said again, testing his theory that he had about the man. One of his eyes twitched slightly. It was time to push him harder.

“Marcus Ortega,” Owen started. “Alex Morgan. Ethan Darkes. Annie Archer." Alex was beginning to crack, but Owen was just getting warmed up. He raised his voice, speaking the same words, louder and louder.

"Marcus Ortega. Alex Morgan. Ethan Darkes. Annie Archer. Owen Archer."

And then Alex did something he hadn't done before. He stared right at Owen, holding his eyes still for the first time, finally matching Owen's gaze with his own.

"Now listen to me," Owen muttered, talking slowly and quietly whilst getting right into Alex's face. "I’m damn sure that someone, somewhere has messed with your head and your memories. But I’m also sure about another thing. There’s something still in there, some memories that haven’t been hit yet. There are answers still in your head, and I want them. Now think, Alex. Think hard.”

Alex leaned back and began to subtly shake in the chair. Silence hung in the atmosphere for an unknown amount of time. Owen panicked as he watched the man sit deadly still in front of him.
Have I pushed Alex too far too fast? The man is fragile as it is. Have I just broken him? Nothing's happening…

"Eli," Owen called out into the air. "I might need your help with this one. Alex is a little unstable. See if you can isolate the memory we're looking for and force it to project out." It wasn't uncommon for people to be unable to recall memories. If that was the case, they just needed a little push from the outside. Whoever was working externally had the ability to isolate timeframes inside a person's mind and almost force them into thinking about something from a specific date.

Alex’s voice burst out in the air.
Divine intervention from outside.
Another piece of the conversation. Yet… in the audio that Owen was hearing around him, he noticed that Alex's voice was different. It was relaxed. It was normal. And more importantly, it was coherent. A far cry from the Alex that he had in front of him now.
What happened to you recently? Who did this to you?

“And me,” the regular voice of Alex echoed throughout the common room. “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen this place. Doesn’t seem to have changed too much!"

Satisfied that he was about to get everything that he had come here for, Owen sat down on another nearby chair and let Alex project his audio memories out around the room.

". . . Impossible!"

". . . I’m sorry, I can’t turn this opportunity down.”

Silence fell over the room in between the very small pieces of dialogue that Alex was adding to the conversation. Once again, Owen was only getting one side of it.
Someone else has been here interfering.

“Is that it so far?” he asked Alex's silent, unmoving body. “You didn’t talk much back then did you?”

Alex didn’t respond. Owen counted himself lucky that he could even get any information out of him at all. They waited for some time for the memory projection to continue. Owen looked over his shoulder quickly at the door to the common room. Kate was still stood outside, looking nervous and feeling on edge.
Who can blame her? Neither of us want a repeat of what happened last time.

Finally, the voice of Alex came back once again and echoed out around Owen. He had one last thing to say. One last thing that would spark Owen without question.

“…Why Annie though? Why does it have to be her?”

The words turned Owen’s blood cold.
Why Annie though? Why does it have to be her?
He couldn’t stop himself after he heard it and the words instantly sank in. Owen bared his teeth and jumped up off the chair that he was sat on and bolted like lightning across to where Alex was sitting. Owen reached out and grabbed him tightly around the neck with one hand whilst he used his other to get a grip on Alex’s shoulder, pushing him down forcefully into the chair so that the man couldn’t escape from him.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ANNIE?” he screamed angrily at Alex, small pieces of saliva flying out as he shouted. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY WIFE?”

“OWEN!” Kate screamed at him from the doorway where she stood guard. She had turned to see what the commotion was about and he was doing. She ran into the room, pulling her gas-mask off from over her face as she ran as it was just hindering her vision. She jumped nimbly over the large leather sofa and grabbed Owen's arms in an attempt to pull him off Alex, but he was just too strong for her. “OWEN! STOP IT!” she shouted at him, refusing to let go.

Behind Alex, on the far wall of the room a portal manipulated in at Owen's command, leading right back to the prison system. Alex looked straight ahead and saw the portal, his eyes widened with fear.

“No. No. No. No…” Alex started muttering, struggling to talk properly, wheezing because of Owen’s hand wrapped around his throat.

“YOU KILLED HER!” Owen shouted as he tightened his grip around Alex's neck. Quickly and forcefully, Owen leaned backwards, pulling Alex up off the chair. He dragged the man towards the portal, his hand still clasped tightly, his face contorted with the anger which was flowing so freely through him.

With all of the strength that he could muster, Owen pushed Alex hard, almost throwing him through the portal as he released his hand from around the man's throat. Alex stumbled backwards, falling to the ground once again as the change of flooring caught him off guard. The look of shock on his face was the last thing that Owen and Kate saw of him.

In a millisecond, the portal closed up to its centre point.

Alex was gone, pushed back into his own prison world.

“We’re done here,” Owen said in a tone that didn’t warrant questioning.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Chapter Fifty Two

Date: December 11th 2035

Location: New York Streets

Being in a moving vehicle didn’t help with the heavy motion sickness that accompanied Owen and Kate as they left the world of PRoGRaM. They were used to being dizzy on exit, but the van moving around them added a whole new level of uncomfortableness to the experience.

Owen opened his eyes.
Heavier than last time. Harder than last time.
He was glad that he was strapped into the chair. If it wasn’t for that, he’d have probably been on the floor by now. As his head spun with dizziness, he looked over at Kate. She looked just as rough as Owen felt.

“Is everyone okay back there?” Nick shouted from the drivers seat once he noticed that Owen and Kate were awake and semi-conscious of their own actions.

“We’re good!” Eli shouted back to him, satisfied that both Owen and Kate had come out of PRoGRaM relatively unscathed. “Connection to the system is completely cut. We’re totally offline now. There's no way they can even trace us from this point on.”

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Kate asked Owen directly in a quiet tone as she tried to keep Eli and Nick out of the conversation.

“Yeah,” he replied, genuinely struggling to keep his head in the game and the contents of his stomach down. The dizziness was subsiding… slowly.

“What’s going on?” Eli asked, noticing their hushed tones, concern showing in his voice.
Probably more concerned for his own skin than anything.
Owen thought.

“PRoGRaM,” Owen said, deciding to bring Eli into their conversation. “More specifically… PRoGRaM’s entry and exit routine. We’ve been through it so many times in the last few days. It’s getting gradually more difficult to use the damn thing.”

“You need to stop using it,” Eli told him forcefully as if he had some prior knowledge on the subject. “Both of you, immediately. Who knows what you're doing to your own brains?”

“I can’t,” Owen replied, shaking his head slowly to emphasise his point, but not overdoing it due to the pain that was firing through his brain. “Not until I finish what I've started."

“We did it!” Nick shouted excitedly from the drivers seat, unaware of the serious conversation that he had just broken up in the back of the van.

“We should lie low for a few hours," Eli interjected, bringing the conversation back down to a more serious note. "Who knows if we got away untagged, nobody’s ever pulled off something like this before.”

“How do you want to play it?” Owen asked Eli, unsure of how they should proceed.

“We need to have Nick drop us off in random places around New York. We all need to be careful. Only go home when you’re sure there’s no-one following you. We have no idea if the Prison System has any kind of external guards or someone out there who's going to try and track us down.”

"Did you get that Nick?" Owen shouted through to the front of the van.

"Yeah. No problem," he called back.

“Tonight,” Owen said loudly, satisfied that everyone was listening. “Everyone be at my apartment at nine. We’ll all meet up, start sorting this all out and begin putting everything together.”

"I'm pulling over here," Nick shouted from up front. "A couple of you jump out now and go in different directions. I'll do another drop-off in half an hour for whichever one of you is left."

"What about the van? And you?" Owen asked.

“Don't worry about that. I’ll hide the van. I’ve got a few friends who owe me a favour or two." Nick replied with a sly smile.

"I'll jump out here." Eli said to everyone as he began to pack his laptop away into an over-the-shoulder carry case.

"Me too," Kate followed up with.

The van stopped. Kate slid the door to the van open and jumped out. She was followed seconds later by Eli, who began to walk away from the van without so much as a goodbye or a glance back. Kate turned to look at the van and called out to Nick and Owen inside. “Tonight at nine,” she confirmed, nodding her head.

Nick turned and nodded back to her before Owen slid the door to the van shut from the inside. Seconds later the vehicle was gone, merged seamlessly into the traffic of the busy New York City streets.

Eli walked one way.

Kate was supposed to walk another.

But there's something I need to do first.

Chapter Fifty Three

Date: December 11th 2035

Location: FBI's Special Projects Division Headquarters

"Sir?"

Richard Sterling raised his right hand and beckoned the young agent into his office without saying a single word or looking up from the mountain of paperwork that was spread out all over his desk. He was too busy looking through some of the recently closed PRoGRaM case reports from each of his seven teams. He was genuinely trying not to be disturbed so that he could work his way through them and maybe have the upcoming weekend off for a change. But things were never that simple.