by Thom Parsons
“We need to tell Nick and Eli about what happened.”
“What about it?” Kate asked, not seeing what the problem was.
“About how Alex saw our faces. About how he knows who we are. It’s only a matter of time until they analyse his memories and find us.”
“You think that will happen?"
"Yes!" Owen shouted at her non-threateningly. "Of course they're going to! Kate, I have no idea how many laws we broke in doing what we did. We can’t drag Nick or Eli down with us. You know this." She looked away from him, her eyes averted to the ground in shame as Owen continued to talk. "We need to at least give them the chance to distance themselves from us. To not get caught up in the consequences of what we did. And you. What you did in there was just plain stupid.”
“What?!” she replied, shocked by his accusations.
“Me taking my mask off and exposing myself to Alex was my own call. It had to be done so that he could see who I was and to get him to co-operate. There was nothing I could do about that," Owen said before his tone turned on her. "But you? Taking your own mask off? There was no excuse for that.”
“It was my decision to make," Kate spat back at him. "Besides, if they find you, they’re bound to find me anyway.”
Owen couldn’t argue back with that. The fact was, If anyone came looking for him, then they were going to find Nick and Eli too, regardless of whether or not they distanced themselves. It was just a matter of time, and Owen and Kate both knew it.
"I'm trying to protect you," Owen said quietly, more to himself than to Kate. A slight tension hung in the air between the two of them as they both stared at each other with neither one of them knowing what to say. Right on cue to break the tension, there was another knock at the door.
“Let me handle it. Please?” Owen said to Kate, trying to defuse the situation.
“Fine,” she said reluctantly in agreement.
Owen walked over to the door to see who it was. He opened it to find Nick standing there, looking slightly over-cumbered. He had a huge, heavy looking duffel bag in each hand, a laptop shoved under his left armpit, and a hefty looking backpack on.
“Hey. Give me a hand would you?” Nick asked Owen as he lifted up both of the duffel bags in an attempt to pawn them off onto his friend. Owen grabbed both of the bags off him and brought them into the apartment. He dropped them gently onto the floor at the opposite end of the room near the kitchen. Nick followed him over and put his laptop and backpack on top of the two bags.
“Hey Kate,” Nick shouted as he walked through and spotted her in the kitchen.
“Hey," she replied to him. "Do you want some coffee?”
“I’d love one thanks.”
No one broached the subject of Alex as the three of them all sat and drank their coffee whilst waiting for Eli. Half an hour passed with no sign of him turning up. An hour came and went just as fast with not so much as a word from the man.
“He’s still not answering,” Nick said as he hung up his phone for the fifth time. They’d all been trying to get in touch with him, but to no avail.
“We did cut him loose,” Kate said, sounding let down. “Maybe he’s gone on the run? He was in custody before because of us, right? Maybe he had a change of heart about all of this. Maybe he just lost all trust in us.”
Owen looked disappointed and let out a heartfelt sigh. He genuinely thought that Eli was willing to help him. He felt played. Eli made the exact right moves and disappeared at the first opportunity. He had left his PRoGRaM device behind
“We’ll start without him,” Owen said, his tone a little darker than usual. “We started this thing without him. And we’ll finish it without him.”
On that note, Owen glanced over at Nick. Without even speaking a word, the man knew exactly what Owen wanted. Nick grabbed his laptop and began to boot it up. “I’ve put Marcus’ and Alex’s memories of PRoGRaM headquarters in order," he said as he waited for his laptop to load. "I can play you what we have of their conversation so far,” he said as he pressed a few buttons on his keyboard. The voices of Marcus and Alex began to blast out of the mildly powered speakers on the laptop.
Marcus’ voice began, booming out as he seemed to be greeting someone. It was clearer now that he wasn’t talking to Alex at this point.
“…Ah ah ha! It’s been too long my old friend!"
"…How have you been?"
"…Of course, I never turn a drink down!”
“And me,” Alex’s voice chipped in, perfectly timed to match the conversation. “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen this place. Doesn’t seem to have changed too much!”
“So, lets get down to business," the voice of Marcus continued. "What’s going on Ethan?”
There was a gap of a few seconds. Nothing too long. Then the voices spoke out again. It was Alex. “Impossible,” he answered in a surprised tone.
“You can’t be serious!” Marcus said. He too, showed wonder in his voice. A few seconds passed before Marcus spoke again.
“…You continued your research?"
"…Amazing! Have you tested this as such yet?”
There was another gap in the conversation before one of the two people that they had already met took centre stage and began speaking.
“I’m sorry, I can’t turn this opportunity down,” Alex said sheepishly.
“Neither can I," Marcus spoke. "This was always going to be the next logical step. Imagine the possibilities!” he said excitedly. A huge silence followed.
Then, the entire tone of the conversation changed. It was easier to see it this time around.
“We need to call the boss,” Marcus said, followed once again by another long silence. Owen assumed that Ethan must have been on the phone to 'the boss' at this point. But not long later the voice of Marcus boomed back in, ending the silence. “Are we to implement phase two?"
". . . You heard the boss.”
Alex had the final chilling words to end the conversation. “Why Annie though? Why does it have to be her?”
And just as suddenly as it had started, it ended. Even with this new piece of the puzzle, there still seems to be a hell of a lot missing here. Owen thought. “It still doesn’t make sense," he said to both Kate and Nick. "We still seem to be missing a lot, even though we’re still missing Ethan’s side of the conversation.”
“And what is phase two?” Nick asked. “I remember hearing it when we were listening to only Marcus’ side of the conversation. But for some reason, it stands out more this time around.”
Blank looks covered all of their faces. Nick shook his head as he had absolutely no answer to his own question. Owen just shrugged his shoulders. That's a problem for later. He thought. Right now, he was only interested in finding out about Annie, and getting that final, third piece of the conversation so that he could connect the dots and get the answers he so desperately wanted.
“Owen. I spent the last few hours trying to fill in the gaps in this conversation,” Nick said, trying to take charge of the situation.
“And?” Owen asked, unsure of where Nick was headed with this statement.
“And it doesn’t make sense.”
“What do you mean?” Kate chipped in before Owen could respond. She couldn’t quite grasp what Nick was getting at.
“Well, we’re all assuming that we’re only listening to a conversation here between three people. Marcus, Alex and Ethan. But it doesn’t add up.”
Kate stared at him, amazed by what he had said. Owen, on the other hand, didn’t change his gaze at all. There seemed to be a glimmer of truth in the words that Nick spoke.
“Okay… look,” Nick said, adjusting himself in his chair before he began to explain himself. “I know that it’s a long shot, but I think we’re missing more than one persons dialogue here.” He sighed as he broke the bad news. “I think there’s a fourth person involved…”
Deep down, Owen knew that Nick was onto something important. His theory about there being a fourth person
was probably right. If there really was another piece of the puzzle to find, then the rabbit hole went deeper than he first imagined.
It was just a matter of proving it.
And just how are we going to prove it? We have zero tangible leads on who the fourth person could be. Everything from this point on, all comes down to one person.
Ethan Darkes.
“Nicks right, Kate. There are too many gaps in the conversation to assume that there’s only three people involved. It kind of makes sense.”
“So Ethan Darkes is number three,” Owen said, nodding his head gently as he spoke. “But who the hell is number four?”
“Owen,” Nick said gently, in a tone that told Owen to brace himself for what he was about to say. “What if it’s Annie?”
Chapter Fifty Six
Date: December 13th 2035
Location: Unknown
A few days without complications was good news. It had been days since Owen and his team had started to crack open what was going on, and luckily they had finally hit a brick wall. For the last two days, Ethan knew for a fact that Archer was at a complete loss. He had hoped that his warnings to Owen and his team had backed them off their personal mission, because that was exactly what he had been trying to achieve.
Ethan sat in his large apartment, not unlike that which Owen lived in. It was dark inside, but that was because all of the blinds were closed. He didn’t want any peeping eyes looking in on him. He sat at his desk with his laptop open, connected into a secure video conference with his boss. Because of the current situation, the two of them spoke daily. I’ll need to meet them someday. He thought as the video call connected. To see just who it is that I work for.
As always, the boss never showed their face. All that Ethan could see on the screen were audio waves which moved every time that his bosses voice came through his speakers. There was no doubt in his mind that the boss could see him though. Their robotic, modulated voice seeped through his speakers.
“It’s time to put an end to this,” the voice of the boss said to him bluntly in a dark, serious tone. You didn’t argue back to a tone like that. “This experiment’s over.”
Ethan nodded, knowing exactly what this meant. He sat thinking of a reply for a few seconds before he spoke. “Would you call phase two a success?” he asked, eager to find out his bosses opinions and validate his existence, mainly due to the fact that phase two was something he had looked after and been in control of for a long time.
“Mostly. There have been a few… complications. But everything went well. Just as planned," the modulated voice on the monitor said.
“It’s a shame about Marcus,” Ethan spoke genuinely. He and Marcus had been good friends to each other over the last few years. “He was a good man. A good programmer. A good friend.”
“He died for a cause Ethan,” the emotionless, robotic voice of the boss chipped in. “He died for the future.”
“What happens now?” Ethan asked.
“Experiments over. You know what you have to do.”
And on that note, Ethan’s boss cut the connection.
Chapter Fifty Seven
Date: December 13th 2035
Location: Patterson’s Bar, New York
It’s been days. Days since we’ve heard anything from the FBI. Have they forgotten about us? Owen wondered as he took a huge swig from the beer that was on the table. “How do we know this is even him?” he asked as he looked at an obscure photo that he held up to look at with his other hand.
“Well… we don’t,” Nick admitted, taking a small gulp of his own beer whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on their surroundings. The two of them were sat in a bar in downtown New York called Paterson’s. It wasn't a complete dive, but it was still a far cry from some of the more popular establishments that scattered New York. It was cheap and local, a place that they could wind down and talk. And that was all that really mattered to all of them.
“You called me out of the blue, down to a bar in the middle of nowhere to look at a picture of someone that just might be the man we’re looking for?” Owen asked, his voice a mix of sarcasm and mild annoyance, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he immediately regretted talking that way to Nick. He dropped the tone immediately, mouthing the word 'sorry' to Nick, who seemed to forgive him instantly.
There was no point in creating tension between their team. That was the last thing that they needed. After all, Nick was really putting a hell of a lot of effort into Owen's personal mission, and was going seriously out of his way to find the final piece of the puzzle. At this point, any lead at all was still a lead. It was worth looking into anything that might point them in the right direction, no matter how flimsily it tied into the case. Any information at all was better than what they had managed to dig up over the last few days. Absolutely nothing.
“Any excuse for a drink right?” Nick said as he raised his glass in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. Owen laughed properly for the first time in a long time. “It’s the closest thing to a picture of the man that I could dig up from the FBI servers without being detected,” Nick continued. “Ethan Darkes just doesn’t want to be found.”
Owen held the photo up in front of him again, studying it intently. It was a grainy image of a man with a hood up, covering his head. The photo was clearly taken from a bad angle as the man's hood obscured the entire top half of his face. Even though he looked at it as closely as possible, Owen just couldn't see the mans hair or eyes. A few facial features on the lower half of his face were noticeable, but unfortunately there was nothing unique. The only thing that they could possibly work off was a tattoo on the lower half of the man's right arm. It seemed to be some sort of tribal patterned ink.
But even so, all of this just wasn’t much to go off. Searching for this one man in a world containing billions of people was an almost impossible task, especially given the fact that Ethan didn't want to be found in the first place.
“Hey guys,” Kate said as she walked up to the table where the two of them were sitting with what looked like just a fizzy drink, but as it neared Owen he could smell the strong stench of some sort of spirit mixed in. Kate took a seat at the table between him and Nick, eager to see what they were talking about. The two of them both greeted her before Nick moved straight in and showed her the photo that he had found of the man that they suspected was the Ethan Darkes.
“This isn’t exactly much to go off,” she said uncertainly after looking at the photo for a few seconds.
“I know,” Owen answered, sounding disappointed. “But at least now we know what our next step is."
Kate was caught off guard. “And that is?”
“Well, we’ve been talking about it, and remember that theory that Eli came up with?" Owen asked. "About how Alex Morgan could have potentially been at the scene of the crash, alongside Marcus?”
“Yeah, and then you found him on the streets, watching sneakily for the crash to happen.”
“Well, me and Nick have been talking about it. And if this is Ethan in the photograph, then it stands a chance that he too was at the scene of the crash, right?”
“That… That actually makes sense,” Kate agreed.
“Good. We’re glad you agree, because we’ve been waiting for you to arrive. We’ll finish our drinks now and then go check out this theory. Eli could have been onto something before. And we still have his PRoGRaM machine back in my apartment. What’s the worst that can happen, right?"
“We’re leaving already?” Kate asked, genuinely surprised. We can't leave now. We need to stay here…
“Soon,” Owen said as he nodded his head, followed by him taking another gulp of his drink. “Speaking of Eli. Has anybody heard anything from him lately?”
He looked at Nick and Kate in succession as the two of them shook their heads in disagreement. “Nothing,” Nick answered.
“Same here,” Kate agreed. If only they knew.
They spent the next five minutes attempting to talk abou
t non-work related things, but the conversation kept coming full circle back to the only topic that the three of them really wanted to talk about.
Who is Ethan Darkes?
After hastily finishing their drinks, they all walked outside together and jumped into the nearest taxi. it was only a short drive back to Owen's place, and not ten minutes after leaving the bar the three of them were in the elevator at Owen's building, heading up to the floor on which his apartment was.
Owen immediately felt something in the air the moment that he walked out of the elevator and out into the corridor that led down to his apartment. Something’s amiss. Something doesn't feel right here.
Leading the way, Owen walked down the corridor towards his place, albeit at a slower pace than usual, keeping his footing lighter on the carpeted floor beneath him. He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he was damn sure going to find out.
Owen walked along a little further with Nick and Kate behind. A little way down the corridor and to the right, he spotted exactly what was wrong.
The door to his apartment was slightly ajar.
Owen turned to Nick and Kate and brought a single finger up to his lips, pouting his mouth outwards and telling the two of them to stay quiet. He pulled out his gun from the back of his waistband, glad that the FBI hadn’t confiscated everything from him.
Owen made a gesture with his hand that told Nick and Kate to stay back. Neither of them disagreed with him. He was the only one that was armed and even mildly prepared for what could be waiting for them on the other side of that door.
Pointing his gun forwards and towards the ground, Owen slowly and silently made his way down the remaining length of the corridor. As he came up to where the front door to his apartment lay, he pressed himself up against the wall. With his gun in his right hand, now held high and pointed forwards, Owen slowly pushed the door open, trying to see who it was that was inside. And more importantly… what they were doing.