Alyssa nodded. She couldn’t argue the point.
“And we were falling in love,” continued Craft. “Imagine if I let our relationship go forward as it was. Imagine that you loved me. And then I arranged to have you taken by him. If you knew the quantum mirror device was a bluff, he would find this out, and all would be lost. If you knew about the device, but thought it was real, you would know why he wanted you to temporarily disable his ability. So he could kill me and get out from under the device.
“In this scenario, you would never do this for him. He would torture you. Torture and kill your family one by one in front of you. And you would still refuse to remove his powers. Because you would think this would end in my death. Killing the man you loved, and more importantly, leaving Al Yad free to kill millions.” He paused. “Think about it.”
Alyssa imagined being in this position and shuddered. “You’re right,” she said.
Al Yad would have done exactly as Bren had indicated. And she would have never given in, even so. Not if she truly believed millions of lives were at stake. Which she would have.
“So for this to work,” said Craft, “Al Yad had to believe you knew nothing about the quantum mirror. He had to think I was manipulating you to temporarily free me from the field, by lying and telling you that I desperately needed to get some sleep. So he could pretend he wanted you to do the same for him. He had to believe you were a clueless rube.”
“And for that to happen, I had to be a clueless rube.”
“There was no other way. I needed you to help him. Help him destroy himself. Unless you were clueless this would never happen. If anything, this was the straightforward part of my plan. The complicated part was that I also needed him to have the activation code for this fictional quantum mirror device. Without knowing I was giving it to him.”
“Why?”
“Imagine how the plan would go if I didn’t arrange for this. You willingly implant a suggestion that lets Al Yad sever his tie with the zero point field whenever he wants. You do this because you have no idea he believes this will allow him to kill me. And you think it might actually restore his sanity. But then what?”
He paused for a moment and then answered his own question. “Well, then he would have to get me to activate the fictional quantum mirror device. So I would be killed while he was immune. And what’s the best way for him to get me to activate it? The only way?”
Alyssa’s eyes widened. “Cross your line in the sand,” she said. “Goad you into it. Destroy a city or two. Then trigger his immunity and wait for you to carry out your threat.”
Craft nodded. “He would reason that if he engaged in mass destruction, no matter how much I wanted to live, I would activate the device to stop further slaughter.” He paused. “Then he would be safe, and I would be gone.”
Alyssa was in awe of Brennan Craft once again. Not of his near omnipotence, but of his genius. His reasoning had been impeccable.
“So, again, finding a credible way to feed him the activation code to my fake device was vital. So he wouldn’t think he had to engage in wholesale murder to make this happen. But it was one of the thorniest problems I’ve ever faced. The solution seems obvious in hindsight, but believe me, I pulled out my hair trying to figure it out.
“First, you had to believe I was becoming as big a threat to the world as Al Yad. To believe I could kill my good friend Eben Martin. To believe that severing my connection to the zero point field might restore my sanity—so Al Yad would come to know you believed this. And the timing had to be perfect. As you’ve guessed by now, I decided I had to risk telling Eben that the quantum mirror was a bluff, after all. Because I needed him on board to pull this off.”
Alyssa shook her head, feeling foolish. Of course Eben was involved. She should have realized this earlier.
“I had to make you think I had turned into a monster. The text Eben sent you, finally explaining about the quantum mirror and providing the activation code, had to seem absolutely legitimate. Like a desperation move. Al Yad had to have unimpeachable confirmation from you that I had become a monster. A danger to everyone. So much so that I would kill my closest friend. And that it would make perfect sense that Eben would send you the activation code and instruct you to kill us both.”
This explained one of Al Yad’s lines of questioning during her interrogation. He had read Eben’s message and wanted to confirm things had gotten bad enough that she and Eben would consider killing Bren. Al Yad was as careful and thorough as Bren had expected him to be. For Eben’s message to be credible, Al Yad had to believe Bren had gone insane and had turned on his friends. Which meant she had to believe it.
“So when you lashed out at me,” said Alyssa. “When you went into a rage. This was all acting?”
Craft lowered his eyes. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” He looked as though he might vomit or burst into tears at any moment as he remembered the role he had felt forced to play.
There was a long pause as Craft regained his composure. “Alyssa Aronson,” he said finally. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the early days in Costa Rica. I wanted to shout this from the rafters. But I couldn’t. It almost killed me to hold it in, but this would have only made things harder. For both of us. Because even then, I knew that I’d soon have to make you fear me. To curse at you and berate you. To make you think I had become deranged.”
Alyssa wasn’t sure what to say, so she said nothing.
Craft glanced at the time on his phone and sighed. “I’m long overdue calling Eben to tell him how it went. I promised him. He’s extremely worried about you. So let’s take a short break.”
“How much time do we have in this room before someone realizes what happened?”
“Quite a while. I sent a concussive wave through the entire complex. We’re the only ones conscious. So we won’t be interrupted. And even when they awaken, if I know Omar Haddad, he made sure no one would come near this place during the eight hours he was disabled.”
A minute later Eben was on the phone. “We got him!” said Craft. “It worked.”
“And Alyssa?” said Martin immediately.
“She’s fine. At least physically. I’ve started explaining to her what happened.”
“Can I talk to her?” said Martin.
Craft handed Alyssa the phone and backed a polite distance away.
“How are you faring?” asked Martin.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “You and Bren have given me a lot to digest. So much of what I thought I knew is wrong. The last month has been a nightmare. And just when I was so deep in despair I almost lost touch with reality, Bren shows up here and throws everything I knew, and felt, and thought, into a blender.”
Alyssa shook her head, her expression tortured. “Al Yad had me read your text. In the end, I was sure you and Bren were both dead,” she whispered, a catch in her throat.
“I am so sorry, Alyssa. My text message may have been meant to be intercepted, but I meant what I wrote. I think the world of you. You are an extraordinary woman. Doing this to you was despicable, and I hated every second of it. But there are a few things you should know.
“First, Bren risked his life so that he didn’t have to risk yours. He tried to kill Al Yad himself before he would consider implementing the plan that involved you. I told him it was too dangerous, too big of a risk. But he wouldn’t listen. He was willing to try anything and everything to avoid doing this to you. To avoid treating you like dirt so you would hate him. And especially to avoid putting you in Al Yad’s hands. This was the absolute last resort for him.”
Alyssa nodded. She had wondered why Craft was so determined to risk everything to face Al Yad. Now she knew.
“And you should also know,” continued Martin, “that as brutal as it was for me to mislead you, it was an order of magnitude harder for Bren. You weren’t the only one calling me in tears. After he would pretend to fly off the handle, berating and terrorizing you, he would call me, and I’d h
ave to talk him down off a metaphorical ledge. He’d tell me he couldn’t do it anymore. That we had to scrap the plan. That he refused to put you in jeopardy. Refused to be an asshole to you one more time. I had to push him to remember the big picture. It took all of my persuasive abilities to keep him on track.
“He was so in love with you, Alyssa. Treating you like this was tearing him up inside. Afterwards he would leave you, not to go off and practice his skills, but because he couldn’t let you see the agony this was causing him. Really.”
Just when Alyssa had thought she was emotionally spent—that her soul had been so torn by thinking she saw the world unraveling, her friends killed, and Al Yad prevail, that she had nothing left—Martin’s words brought yet another tear to her eye.
“I know Bren doesn’t expect forgiveness,” said Martin. “He’s well aware that you were the victim here. But I wanted you to at least be aware of the heavy toll this took on him, as well.”
“Thanks, Eben,” said Alyssa softly. “But I should go. Bren needs to finish filling me in, and we need to get out of here. But we’ll talk soon.”
“I look forward to that,” said Martin. “And you may not have known you were playing such an important role, but you did make it possible to end the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. So thank you.”
When the connection had ended, Alyssa turned to Craft. “Did you hear that?”
“Not Eben’s end of the conversation.” He was about to continue when he noticed Alyssa’s eyes had moistened. “Are you okay?” he asked worriedly as she wiped a tear from her eye with the back of one hand.
Alyssa nodded, blinking away a few additional tears. “Go on,” she said softly. “Tell me the rest.”
Craft still looked concerned about her emotional state, but respected the fact that she didn’t want to talk about it, and decided not to press her further.
While Craft paused to choose the best point to resume his narrative, Alyssa realized something else she had missed. “So Adam Turco was in on this, as well,” she said. “Wasn’t he?”
Craft nodded slowly. “Yes. Before Adam neutralized the man watching your lab in Bloomington, I told him to get Tariq Bahar’s contact information from him. I didn’t tell him why at the time, only that this might be useful later. Adam is a good man. He’s a mercenary, not a saint, but he does have a code. Eben and I couldn’t tell him the exact nature of the plan, but we assured him that although it was complicated, we knew what we were doing. And, most importantly, that you wouldn’t be hurt.”
“And that was enough?”
“Not by a long shot. It would have taken a lot of convincing to get him to throw any innocent party to the wolves, and this was especially true in your case. There is something about you, Alyssa. Your upbeat attitude. Your sense of humor. I don’t know. But Adam likes you, and feels protective toward you.”
Craft sighed. “He finally agreed because he knew how much I loved you. Not because I told him, but because he said it was painfully obvious. So the fact that I believed this was necessary, and that no harm would befall you, was convincing to him. Not that he didn’t feel horrible about it, like the rest of us, and worry about how you would fare.”
Alyssa thought back to the hotel room in Lawrence. Despite his apparent betrayal, Turco’s face had reflected a deep concern for her welfare at the end. She hadn’t known what to make of it at the time. Now she did.
“Adam played a critical role,” continued Craft. “We convinced him that we were trying to accomplish something important, and honorable. He would have done it without a further incentive, but we insisted that he keep whatever money he could get from Al Yad.”
“So you sent me running off to Lawrence, just when I was most desperate to get away from you.”
A tortured expression came over Craft’s face. “Yes. Knowing I was really delivering you to a crazed murderer with unlimited power.” He shook his head in disgust. “For what it’s worth,” he said softly, “it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Craft took a deep breath and then continued. “Eben and I had orchestrated events to ensure the timing was perfect. It had to be, on any number of levels. Especially for some of the key texts between you and Eben. Everything had to seem absolutely plausible.”
“Did Eben even come to Costa Rica?”
“No. But we pretended you were crossing in the air, and that he was coming to confront me. For Al Yad’s benefit and to set the timing. We had Adam deliver you to Tariq Bahar with assurances he would convince me you were killed, so I wouldn’t come after you. Adam also gave them the key to decrypt your phone.”
“Brilliant,” said Alyssa. “So Al Yad could pat himself on the back that he was able to read the encrypted messages Eben sent to me. The same ones you so desperately needed him to read.”
“Pretty clever, if I do say so myself,” said Craft. “Eben’s last message was key, of course. It made it clear you were never told about the quantum mirror, and reinforced that my friends feared me enough to try to kill me, so it would make sense that Eben was sending you the activation code. And because Adam was in on this, we knew exactly when they would confiscate your phone. So we could time the text so it would be intercepted, and Al Yad would be certain that you hadn’t read it.” A wry smile crossed his face. “Like I said, sometimes I make flawless moves, and sometimes I make mistakes that are stunning in their stupidity.”
Alyssa thought he was being too hard on himself. Yes, he had screwed up by putting himself on a dating site, and by not anticipating Al Yad’s gambit to capture her in Indiana, but that was all. For the rest he had played a perfect game of five dimensional chess.
“And the footage of you blowing up in San Diego?” said Alyssa. “Obviously you weren’t in San Diego a minute before you arrived here.”
“Eben had high-priced special effects people whip this up when Al Yad asked Adam to capture my demise on video. This request actually helped us, because it allowed me to time my appearance here. Adam texted me when Al Yad told him my death was minutes away, so I knew that he had invoked your hypnotic trigger and made himself vulnerable.”
Craft sighed. “I would have liked to tell Al Yad how I had bested him. Rub his nose in it. He did murder eighteen of my friends. I would have liked to see the look on his face when I told him the quantum mirror had been a bluff, and that I had manipulated him into making himself vulnerable.”
“Why didn’t you? Once he triggered the nocebo effect, there was no turning back. Not for eight hours. No matter how much he might have wanted to.”
Craft shook his head. “Probably. But I knew this would be my one and only opportunity to kill him. So I decided not to take any chances. To end him the first instant I could. Destroy the quantum lens between his ears. Just in case he had some quirk that would let him get out from under the block that you helped him impose on himself.”
Alyssa nodded. It was sound thinking. And Bren’s plan had been genius. A masterpiece.
And yet, he had put her through torture. He had been a terror, and had treated her like garbage.
But did he have any other choice? If the quantum mirror device had been real, he would have had the option of sacrificing himself to kill Al Yad. But it wasn’t. Instead, after travelling to Syria and risking his own life, he had risked sending the woman he loved into the hands of a man he despised. A man who had murdered his friends and had tried to kill him.
Craft did this knowing that Alyssa might die hating him. Die thinking he had betrayed her and had never loved her. This had been agony for him. But he had decided no sacrifice was too great to stop Al Yad.
And if there had been some magical way for Bren to tell her his plan, and then erase her memory so she could still carry it out as the unknowing dupe she needed to be, would she have agreed to it?
She didn’t even have to consider it. Of course she would have. Al Yad was an omnipotent madman. How could she have refused to do whatever it took to bring him down.
And if thei
r roles were reversed, would she have done this to Bren? The answer was yes. She wouldn’t have had any other choice.
And neither had he.
So while she wasn’t prepared to forgive him this second, she knew that she would. Even in the brief time since he had arrived in Syria, she found herself drawn to him again. The magic was returning. His behavior had terrified and traumatized her far too much for her to fall back in love with him already, even knowing he had been only playing a twisted, but necessary, role. But she had little doubt that this would happen, and fairly soon.
“I have one last question for you, Bren,” she said.
“Anything,” said Craft.
“What in the world are you doing dressed in that uniform?”
62
Brennan Craft laughed out loud. “So you’re not ready to believe that I’ve secretly been with the military all along? That I’m a colonel in the Air Force?”
“I don’t think so,” said Alyssa, breaking into a smile herself. “Yes, you’ve managed to screw with my mind beyond belief. But the military thing is where I draw the line.”
“You are very wise, Alyssa Aronson,” said Craft. “The truth is, I have never been in the military. But I’m wearing this uniform to help my country. There was one other thing happening behind the scenes when we were in Costa Rica. You know I continued to watch your Major Elovic. After you disappeared, he was more determined to find me than ever. So I thought it wise to keep tabs on him.”
“Uh-huh,” said Alyssa, having no idea where this was going.
“While I was doing this, I learned that Syria’s President, Khalil Najjar, had all but begged the US to kill Al Yad for him. Al Yad had acquired such a following, and such a well-deserved reputation for omnipotence—not to mention that Najjar could no longer trust his own military—that he knew he couldn’t survive a showdown. The US was able to wrangle a number of strategic concessions from Najjar on the promise they would take care of his Al Yad problem.”
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