That is why Gabriel does not know, for which I walked to him and let him kill me, despite having received a visit from my brother telling me of my impending death at the hands of Gabriel.
Do you wonder why I acted like that? Or if there was no other way to do it?
No child, this was the only way to approach Gabriel and get his attention, I otherwise would not have succeeded, remember, baby, Gabriel is still a murderer....
Also, I had to, as the only way to find someone able to carry out my mission, kill our creator, before he gets to destroy us.
And he, yes, YOU, GABRIEL, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN SAVE US-.
I know the face you've put on when reaching these lines, Gabriel, however do not be surprised, I'm with you, beside you and I know that right now you're shaking, I cannot tell if of emotion, excitement ... fear. Although I did not think of fear, you care for nothing except ... well, let’s not get into that, you know as well as I, and what really matters now is what I will leave in your hands. Carry on reading and you will know what you're going to have to do, you and my dear daughter, Bezayda.
An hour later, I looked up and looked at Bezayda, who looked at me, barely breathing, she knew the contents of that letter and just waited [I supposed], for my reaction.
"How should I react? Should I join her or kill her right there? At the end of the day I was just a ruthless murderer, what else could you expect from me? I assumed that the thoughts of the redhead must have been a thousand miles per hour.
Mine were no less chaotic; what part did I play in all of this nonsense? Fuck, I just killed her! And now ... I had to take care of what...? Was I crazy?!
I looked at Bezayda carefully, she also stared at me. The truth is that she was an impressive woman. She wore tight blue turquoise pants and matching beige blouse, no, she wasn't dressed for a party. The blouse, though, was very thin and her breasts perfectly showed through, round and firm, neither too large nor too small, and her nipples were like ripe cherries, they fluttered in the center as if wanting to get some fresh air. The girl must be no more than twenty-three or twenty-four at the most, I did not understand how I could confuse her with Alicia, her mother, that face was of a little girl, her mother was a woman, not old but mature; although beautiful, yes.
The strange thing was that, despite her being young beautiful and sexy, I was not at all excited... on the contrary, my emotions betrayed me, I was feeling tenderness. Me tender? Something in me was failing... no, I could not believe it, I felt tenderness, for a stranger? It’s crazy yes!
- Don’t you get tired of being so obtuse?- She cut me off.- I need to be sure that you understand everything and that you'll be with me, my mother, as you have read in her letter, fully trusts you; she thinks you're the one to carry out her mission, which is now yours- Bezayda emphasized.
- No, I understand, I understood perfectly, what I can’t get in the story your telling me is, how did your mother come to that conclusion, without knowing me before, or did she ...?- I doubted.
- She told you to your face! Did not you read it? My uncle, which had traveled to the future, saw everything, including her death by your hands- She hit the couch with closed fists while some tears escaped from her eyes.
- All right, okay, okay, it seems clear.- I mumbled unable to do anything but divert my eyes, I didn't want her to see my embarrassment for causing her pain. Something strange is happening to me, this is not normal, not for a stranger?
- Well, then let's talk, I want to know who this man is, and the REAL reason why you want to erase him, also your plan to do so, if there is any? Speak!
And she spoke, and wow did she speak...
Once Alexia sat down and got comfortable, if she could be comfortable in that shitty chair, she began telling Mathias what had brought her here: avenging the death of her mother.
- Well miss, that is already clear, but have you really witnessed one of the killings of Gabriel?- Said Mathias, unconvinced, looking at alexia’s blue eyes. At the same moment, Mathias felt an itch in his eyes, that young woman seemed oddly familiar.- Excuse me, Alice?- Inquired the lieutenant.
- No, Alexia, Alicia was the name of my mother, I see that I did not explain myself well, sir, sorry.- She muttered in a whispering voice.
- Okay, do not worry, any coffee, soda, water? -The lieutenant offered kindly.
Cuestas, still pretty grumpy, silently followed the conversation, after shutting him up with his expression, the Lieutenant was using such kindness, it was not normal for him, Cuestas thought to himself.
- Thank you, yes, a glass of water please, I'm thirsty, this is new for me and I'm a little nervous-She manifested with a flirty gaze.
-You heard the lady, agent, a glass of water!
- But, sir...- Stammered Cuestas, embarrassed.
A new look and a new gesture from Mathias was enough to silence any protest the agent had left, but not before giving Alexia one last angry look.
After Cuestas left the office, Alexia looked at the lieutenant and before he asked again, she came to him and said;
-Take my hand, quick!
Mathias did not know if it was her urgency, clumsiness or having the opportunity to touch her skin, but he did not wait for her to repeat it and took her hand. In less than a second they both disappeared, like a flash.
Mathias was hallucinating, where were they? How was it possible, was he dreaming? His office was gone! And now they were in an abandoned ship, semi dark, with lots of stinking garbage and ...Who was that? He rubbed his eyes, as if he really thought he was dreaming...could it be?... it was Gabriel! Mathias looked at Alexia, he could not believe what he saw and hoped she would confirm that he was not asleep and dreaming.
- Wasn’t this what you wanted Lieutenant? To be a direct witness to a crime of your most hated man?-Strangely, Alexia spoke in a normal voice, not caring that Gabriel would listen. And she did not care, simply because Gabriel could not hear or see them...
- This can’t be happening! - shouted the Lieutenant, confused, as he launched himself forward without thinking, wishing in a murderous momentum, to end the life of that miserable man.
-You can’t do anything Lieutenant! - Shouted the girl, suddenly cutting his murderous instincts towards Gabriel.
-We are in the astral plane, you can see, hear, but not touch or change anything, this has already happened, you see that guy? The one who is being butchered and murdered without mercy, head down, dying, skinned and bloody? He is long dead. You know, you've seen him before, not long ago. Look there.- She pointed to his back, behind him, do you see that hidden man behind the rubble? He is so terrified that he will never say a word of what happened here, although he had a second of doubt and wanted to do it, but changed his mind. He knows that you, the police will not be able to protect him if the murderer becomes aware of who he is.
Mathias was barely listening, he just looked...in disgust and contempt and despair to his most hated enemy. He did not even have a hint of pity for the young victim, he just looked at Gabriel with killer cravings, which, minutes later, would give him much embarrassment.
He still had that same expression on his face when sergeant Cuestas entered the office with the glass of water on the left and an envelope on his right.
CHAPTER 15
The Tabernas desert
I looked at my beautiful wristwatch, forty past nine p.m., two and half hours since Alexia had left my rickety flat through the front door, I strongly asked her to do things my way - there would be time to use that thing later, now it was best not to draw too much attention. Suddenly I remembered, fuck! I have agent Cubero as close to me as my pants! -and he did not see her come-, what would he think when he saw her leave without first seeing her come in? - But nothing happened - agent Cubero was undaunted in place, on the same corner, with the same posture and the same pacifier look on his face. I must admit, that surprised me, come on, that made me suspect that there was more than met the eye. But I had things to do, so I took to the task. I smiled at t
he end of the day, I would have fun.
While I enjoyed myself thinking about my next mission about nine miles away, particularly in the Tabernas desert, a tourist location some thirty kilometers north of the capital, Almeria. Charles Henry Sturges the III, was about to receive an emergency call and a very, very dangerous visit.
But first let me tell you something else.
The desert of Tabernas is a protected park of about 280 km2. It is the only desert in the Iberian Peninsula.
Well, right there, in the cemetery of the Wild West in Yucca City (a town that was built in imitation of the American films of the far west, better known here in Spain as spaghetti westerns). Well, two hundred feet below the cemetery, excavated and built into the rock, there was a gigantic laboratory, with all its instruments. Inside, visiting, was Henry Charles Sturges the III, a German billionaire, of German descent, first generation, who, it was said made most of his fortune providing chemicals for the Nazi army camps of extermination, these were manufactured by the prisoners themselves, the product of the body’s own fat.
It was said that his grandfather, Henry Sturges Charles I, with the help of a German officer of the high command of the "SS", the Third Reich, who fled one April 25, 1945, when in a last batch of prisoners, received the news that Russians and Americans were already very close.
They say it was there when his faithful friend and sidekick, Charles Henry Sturges I would help him by making him pass as one of his workers on the ship heading for Spain.
The General Company Foundation Sturges founded with the help of his partner, some years later, had branches of business in technology, being his equity partner, and where finally, after Captain Aribert Bauman was processed for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trial, he was placed in search and seizure. Strangely, Henry's partner, disappeared days later, leaving no tracks and never being found.
It only became known that his employees called him, Mr. Alberto, though by disappearing so mysteriously it was suspected immediately that he was none other than Captain Aribert Bauman, a markedly rough, cold and ruthless man that came to be accused during the Nuremberg trials, of exploitation, torture and the subsequent death of over 25,000 Jews in the death camps of Mauthausen and Buchenwald. In full complicity with their immediate bosses, these were indeed arrested, tried and convicted for their crimes against humanity.
A few years later, Charles Henry Sturges founded what would become from that moment one of the largest companies in technology. The General Company Foundation Sturges, one of the leaders in its field throughout the West German companies, achieved partly thanks to the collaboration with the Americans and British allies, offering, yes, valuable information on research by Germans in concentration camps, where he himself had much to do, although their tentacles reached as far as they could they didn’t find anything against him, thanks of course to collaboration with senior American and British commanders.
Some doctors and scientists who served in Buchenwald and Mauthausen for the Nazi command, investigating and using Jewish prisoners as guinea pigs, including those which were not Jewish, but were sick or disabled and not fit to work in the armament factories; these were used for their evil and terrible experiments. These doctors and scientists were then his workers, who hid after the war and employed in their hidden laboratories for research in biogenetics, a subject that had always bothered him, for he was one who believed strongly one could live forever.
Currently, The General Company Foundation Sturges is one of the largest companies and one of the most profitable in the world. Thanks to the intelligence and effort of Henry Charles Sturges III, his grandson, and son, Henry Charles Sturges II, died while only forty-three of a pulmonary embolism, certified according to his then best friend and physician, Charles Dublin. Then leaving Henry, his grandson, commanding all his undertakings at the age of only twenty-three. Although he had already given clear examples he knew how to get away with the macro enterprise of his grandfather.
Of course, with his fortune and shares in all major businesses and industries in the world, most of them international, (read, for example: The Royal Dutch Shell (oil multinational Shell), the Wal-Nart chain (discount stores), Exxon Mobil [US oil], the energy distributor China State Grid, or consortium car manufacturers Toyota Motor (Japan ) and Volkswagen (Germany) to say the only the most significant.
How do I know so much? Damn, because I have traveled!
The phone rang in the office of Henry Sturges Charles III, quickly picking it up without letting it ring more than once. He was possibly waiting for the call.
- Sir, you have a call on the main line, Mr. Van Veeldvoorde Batholomeus, Royal Dutch Shell- His secretary was efficient.
- All right Sofie, don’t send me more calls please and do not bother me for the next hour.
-So be it sir, I'll take care of it – said Sofie very satisfied with her friendliness with the big boss. Sofie was a mature woman, who besides being the personal secretary for Henry, was also his right hand and who virtually led the research topic of this secret biogenetic research lab. She was fifty-one years old, her life had not been easy in her home country, Britain, enduring many hardships. It was her ex-husband's fault, a drunk who abused her and even botched her first pregnancy, precisely because of the beatings she received daily. He did not need to have a reason, he just wanted to break her ribs. Unfortunately for him, there was another pregnancy ... and another, until, in the fourth pregnancy, without the husband's knowledge, she got an operation to prevent another pregnancy. Then, wanting to escape the beatings, she found work at one of the offices of the General Company Foundation Sturges .Although it was not easy to convince her husband that was best for the family’s economy, as he had long been devoted only to get drunk and spend what little they had to eat. It was not until one night in which she had to stay late at the office, when her husband, totally drunk and not having her to vent his rage, took it on the three children, two boys and a girl, beating them. Sofie could not believe it, seeing their babies with blows marked all over their little bodies, all three in one room, hugging, scared to death and crying inconsolably. She could not take any more of it, led by the most tremendous anger and most murderous drive, she went to the kitchen, took a large butcher knife and with it in her hand and a determination that surprised even her, went into the master bedroom where her husband was snoring, sleeping belly up, completely still. She didn't even think about it, she had too much rage, anger, pain and... fear to stop and think about what he would do. She did not hesitate, and pounced on him and began to drive the big knife down, screaming in hatred and despair; first his stomach, then below the stomach, stomach again and finally, his chest, her husband never knew he was dying, he simply never woke up.
Then she went to the bathroom, took off all her clothes, she was drowned in blood, so she washed carefully in the bathroom sink and then she bathed.
She was lucky the children, perhaps due to fatigue from crying, or from the pain their poor aching bones felt, were asleep, all three together and embraced, which was why they never knew of what mom had done to dad.
The next day, Sofie cleaned up, cured and dressed the children and took them to her sister; she had no children and was delighted to keep them in her care, Sofie just told them she had left her husband. She knew they would find out when they read the news paper or saw the news on television, thought, Sofie.
Poor Sofie was determined to surrender to the police, but decided in the last moment, a trait of loyalty to her boss, and told him why she was going to be missing work for the first time.
Her surprise was great when, Henry, her boss, proposed her to go to the Desert of Tabernas, Almeria, and keep working for him; he was also going to make sure that neither her sons nor her sister would lack anything. All with the sole condition of her loyalty and silence.
And so she is, until today, a true and loyal employee, although it has been over ten years since she saw her children or could write a single letter to them...
O
nce Henry confirmed everything was as he had ordered his secretary, he took his jeweled hands to a key pad that was on the table, typing a password that only two people knew, he and his wife Lucille Klausen Schell, then opening a wall to his left, moving to a meuble bar, as his beautiful wife called it, who was very cultured and very "French".
Then Henry made sure that the office door was locked and he disappeared through the back door. It looked like a room but it was a huge lift over nine square meters and equipped with all comforts and luxuries, including a bar plus two luxurious leather sofas, a digital TV one hundred inches wide, and sophisticated ventilation equipment. Everything there worked by solar energy that came from the false mausoleum of that also fake cemetery.
Henry went to the bar and opened a bottle of Henri IV Dudognon Heritage, considered by experts as the best cognac in the world, and a good dose was poured into a beautiful glass of round mouth and fine detail,-Authentic Bohemia-crystal. After taking it to his pituitary, smelling it and slightly wetting his lips, he took a small digital tablet from one of the small drawers of the bar, and typed in something, then sat comfortably in an armchair, taking thereupon the pocket of his Armani jacket -an immaculate white, consistent with his trousers- a kind of golden key chain with precious stones, but had a detail that made it different to any jewelry seen before; in the middle of it was a little screen less than two inches in diameter.
What was it for? -A System that had a built atomic battery of less than one micron in size and that, through a system of binary codes, was able to travel into the future, past or present of the world in just a few tenths of a second. And all achieved in top secret by the most famous, lofty and intelligent scientists of the The General Company Foundation Sturges.
Henry looked at that key chain, deep in thoughts as he said through clenched teeth.
- Damn it, not being able to use you because of those damned bastards!.- He was referring to the "Aquenees" clones of humans, the best! Whom his grandfather had turned into soldiers and lead to a parallel planet Earth, but invisible to modern telescopes.
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