by Thom Parsons
The door slowly opened without a creak. Owen stepped inside, keeping close to the walls at all times. He was glad that his place was modern. The floor beneath him didn't make a sound, or give away the element of surprise that he had over whoever it was that was somewhere inside his apartment.
Moving forward slowly with his gun held high and his finger constantly ready on the trigger, Owen checked every nook and cranny where an intruder could be hiding. He reached the end of the entrance hall's corridor, and carefully peaked his head around a corner nearby that led out into the main room.
There was somebody inside his apartment. Somebody wearing a dark hood.
Luckily for Owen, whoever it was wasn’t looking in his direction. The hooded figure was too busy looking over the PRoGRaM machine that Owen had stored on the one side of the main room. What the hell is this guy doing?
Slowly, and being careful not to make any noise, Owen edged forward towards the intruder, his gun constantly pointed at the back of the hooded mans head, ready for any sort of retaliation should he be spotted. But the hood was obscuring the intruders vision, making it easier for Owen to sneak in silently.
Getting ever closer, Owen made it to roughly a meter behind the man and silently stopped moving. Owen took his finger off the trigger of the gun and held the weapon by the barrel like a club. Without even thinking about it, he quickly smashed the intruder over the back of the head with the butt of the weapon, before Owen rapidly turned it back into a firing position.
Owen's finger landed safely on the trigger as he pointed the weapon at the man slumped on the floor directly in front of him. With his finger sat on the trigger, Owen waited, anticipating a counter-attack.
But one never came.
The man had hit the floor face first, knocked immediately unconscious from the blow to the back of the head. With his gun trained on his slumped over body on the floor, Owen moved quickly and concisely, checking every other room in the apartment, looking for any other intruders. But none were found. Satisfied that there was just the one man, and that he was clearly out cold, Owen shouted back to Kate and Nick who were still stood out in the hallway. “It’s clear!”
The two of them came running anxiously into the main room, cautiously eager to see what had happened. They both stopped, stared at Owen, and then looked down at the unconscious attacker lying face down on the floor.
“My God,” Nick gasped. “What was he doing?”
“I don't know,” Owen replied. The adrenaline pumping through him was causing him to shake slightly. “I think he might have been trying to steal the PRoGRaM device.”
Without hesitation, Owen put his right foot underneath his intruders body and quickly lifted it up. The man rolled over heavily from his face down position. His body slumped to the ground face upwards, the man's closed eyes pointing towards the ceiling. Owen felt a chill run through him the second that he looked at the mans face, but it raised more questions than answers.
This man… I know this man! Owen realised. Right then, his head began to overload as he flickered back through the memories of his past.
"Mr Archer, can you hear me? You’ve been in a car collision and have been slipping in and out of consciousness. You’re in an ambulance on route to hospital."
The crash! This man! He was in the ambulance, asking me all those questions. But he was somewhere else as well. He's somewhere else in my memories… I know he is…
“Mr Archer… Your wife… I don’t know how to tell you this sir. She didn’t make it.”
This man. He was also the Doctor who treated me in the hospital! Why hadn't I noticed this until now? Why hadn't I noticed that they were the same person? This can't be right, can it? Why is he in my apartment?
“Holy. Shit,” Owen said slowly, drawing the words out for emphasis. That was when Owen, Nick and Kate all noticed the tattoo on the lower arm of the intruder.
Tribal patterns.
It doesn't make any sense. Owen thought as all of the information ran wildly through his head. What the fuck is going on? The man who treated me in the ambulance. The man who treated me in the hospital. They were the same person. And he's right here. The very person that we've been looking for.
Ethan Darkes.
PART FIVE: ETHAN DARKES
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy.”
Nelson Mandela
Chapter Fifty Eight
Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)
Location: Unknown
“They were the same person?!" Victoria asked in shock. She stopped writing inside her notebook in order to give Owen her full attention.
"They were," Owen replied solemnly as he nodded his head in answer to her question. "All along, they were always the same person. I just didn't see it. I didn't see how everything was connected."
"I don't understand," Victoria responded. There was obviously more to Owen's answer than met the eye. He was still holding things back.
"I'll admit. Neither did I at the time," Owen answered, once again half dodging the question. "Seeing this man inside my apartment raised more questions than it did answers. Who was he? Why was he treating me in the hospital? Why was he in my apartment? Was this really Ethan Darkes?"
"Ethan Darkes," Victoria said, repeating the name back to him slowly. "The final man on the list from your mysterious video."
"Exactly!" Owen said excitedly. "But, just as I said before. More questions than answers."
"And the most important question. What was he doing to your PRoGRaM device?" Victoria chipped in.
"Well, at the time, I genuinely believed that he was there to steal the PRoGRaM device."
"Hmm," Victoria answered. "You didn't even consider the possibility that Ethan was there to just tamper with your PRoGRaM System?"
"Not at all."
"Why not?"
"More than anything? Anger," Owen spoke honestly. "I'd just found the final man that was responsible for Annie's death. All that I was thinking about at the time was getting answers. He was the final piece of the puzzle. The final piece of the conversation that I needed."
"And this blinded you to what was happening in your apartment?"
"Yeah…" Owen admitted. "looking back on it now, I just wish that I had been thinking straight. It might have avoided a lot of problems."
"You went straight into PRoGRaM, didn't you?" Victoria asked, already knowing the answer before Owen spoke.
"Unfortunately. Yes."
Chapter Fifty Nine
Date: December 13th 2035
Location: Owen's Apartment, New York
“Nick, help me put him in the chair,” Owen called out as he quickly grabbed Ethan’s lifeless arms. We need to act now, this will be easier whilst he's unconscious.
Nick ran over from the doorway to the apartment in which he stood and helped Owen by grabbing Ethan's legs. Together, the two of them lifted the dead-weight of a man up, and moved him over to a nearby sofa before dropping him onto it.
“PRoGRaM. Now,” Owen said to Nick demandingly. He sounded slightly out of breath from carrying Ethan across the room.
“Are you feeling up to it?!” Nick asked purely out of concern as he rushed himself around to set up the equipment that he was going to need to send Owen and Ethan into the digital world. He beckoned Kate over to help him. Two pairs of hands were better than one.
“I’ll be fine,” Owen said, shrugging the question off quickly. Although, he was unsure in himself as to whether or not he’d actually be fine on this one. “Kate. This one's personal. It's just going to be me and Ethan in there. I need you out here with Nick. I'm sorry. I hope you'll understand.”
“It's okay,” Kate replied. “I don’t think I can handle PRoGRaM at the minute anyway.”
“Thank you,” Owen said, suddenly feeling a little worried. I'd almost forgotten about entry intro PRoGRaM. Surely it will be okay now? It's been a few days since the last time I entered that world. We'll soon find out…
“System’s looking good,” Nick shouted out as he and Kate finished putting the equipment together. He sat reading the diagnostics on the computer screen in front of him, making sure that everything was up to speed before he sent Owen and Ethan inside.
“I’m ready when you are,” Owen said, determined to get inside PRoGRaM and find the potential last piece of the puzzle. Nick nodded at Owen's readiness as he did some final checks on the PRoGRaM device. Satisfied that everything was up to standards, Nick grabbed his nearby metallic briefcase and quickly walked over to where Owen and Ethan sat. He crouched himself down next to Owen and placed the briefcase on the floor before snapping it open.
Carefully, Nick took out an injection gun and a small vial of red liquid from inside. "Only a few more shots left in this," he commented as he examined the contents of the vial closely. Within seconds, Nick had loaded the glass vial of red liquid into his injection gun and had fired it professionally into Owen's leg.
The effects of the liquid hitting Owen's bloodstream were instantaneous. Light-headedness overcame him, forcing him to lay back into the sofa and close his eyes. Quickly, Nick swapped the needle in his gun and did exactly the same to Ethan. He put the injection gun back into the briefcase and slid it out of the way. Happy with how things were looking, he moved back over to the place where he had all of his equipment set up.
“Booting up… now,” Owen heard Nick say through the darkness as his body began to drift off into a deep sleep. Nick hit the Enter key on his keyboard, which fired Owen's mind out of this world and into the digital one. He closed his eyes as he drifted into unconsciousness and was instantaneously transported into The White Room.
But whilst his mind entered one world, his body stayed in this one. And even though Owen’s mind was ready for the trip, his body wasn’t. As soon as Nick hit the Enter key and Owen drifted off, the man's body started shaking and convulsing on the chair in which he sat. Kate screamed in shock at she watched Owen’s body throw itself into a minor seizure.
“Pull him out!” Kate screamed at Nick, hoping that he would do something to help Owen other than freezing and crashing under pressure. Need to make it seem real, even now.
“I cant!” Nick shouted back at her angrily. “It might kill him!”
But Owen’s violent seizure only lasted a matter of seconds, and it was over before Nick had finished talking. Archer's body suddenly froze up and stopped moving, slumping lifelessly out of the sofa and face down onto the floor with a loud thud.
Together, Kate and Nick both rocketed over to help him. It's lucky that the PRoGRaM's Manipulator Headset he's wearing hasn't fallen off after that fit. Nick thought. I have no intention of ever finding out what would happen if a headset did in fact come loose during PRoGRaM. He dreaded to think about it even now.
Reaching his arms gently around Owen, Nick turned the man over to see a trail of thick red blood running quickly out from the man's nose and down onto the floor. Kate grabbed a clean tissue out of her pocket as Nick lifted Owen upright with all of his strength. He managed to sit Archer upright on the chair where he was before his seizure had began. Kate reached out and ran the tissue gently over Owen's nose in an attempt to clean him up.
“Is he okay?!” she asked in a bit of a panic. The blood just wouldn’t stop.
“Life signs seem okay,” Nick said with a sigh of relief as he looked over his shoulder towards some of his monitors by his temporary workstation. “Everything relating to Owen now looks normal. Wait. Hold on…”
"What?" Kate asked as she used her tissue to wipe underneath Owen's nose, in an attempt to try to stop the think blood running into his mouth.
"Oh my God," Nick muttered under his breath as he ran across the room to his workstation.
"What?!" Kate asked, sensing the distress in his voice.
"Something's wrong," he said in horror. He shook his head from side to side in disbelief. "Something's horribly wrong with PRoGRaM."
Chapter Sixty
Date: December 13th 2035
Location: PRoGRaM
Owen opened his eyes. But not in the physical world.
The White Room. He thought. Was everything okay? Had he passed out? This wasn’t normal. Why am I arriving unconscious into PRoGRaM? Maybe something went wrong on entry. I knew I shouldn’t have forced myself into this so soon. PRoGRaM is going to kill me…
He looked around and tried to take in his surroundings. Across the room from him lying face down, was Ethan. He was unconscious, but that was only because Owen had thrown him into PRoGRaM in that state to begin with.
Owen struggled to pull himself up at first, but slowly and surely he almost got himself to his feet. His body couldn’t handle standing upright, not right now, so he edged himself over to the nearest wall and leant up against it. He took in some deep breaths and waited for his body to recover from whatever shock it had just been through. Another one like that will kill me… But on the bright side, at least there's no head pain this time around.
“No…” Owen heard a voice say weakly. It was Ethan, who was beginning to stir on the floor, stretching his body out. "No… No…" Owen heard him muttering to himself, repeating that one word over and over. I hope we haven't got another Alex Morgan on our hands here…
But the more that Ethan muttered, the louder he got, and the more Owen could hear something in his voice. There was a slow shock of realisation, gradually building up with every no. Without warning, Ethan stood up quickly and looked around The White Room. He spotted Owen and began to move towards him with his hands raised as if he was pleading for something. Owen saw the immediate danger and quickly pulled his gun out of the inside of his jacket as a warning to the man. Nothing in the world said stay back like a firearm and a stern look.
“I can’t be in here,” Ethan said, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of the gun. The man seemed genuinely scared, but not of the weapon that was pointed in his direction. Then what the hell is he afraid of? What the hell is going on?
“Goddammit I shouldn’t be in here!" Ethan yelled at Owen in a manner that wasn't exactly threatening. It sounded more… fearful. "You were never supposed to have one of these machines outside of the New York Analytic Base. Have you ever considered that we blew that place up as a warning? To try and keep you away from all of this?"
"That was you?!" Owen shouted back at him, gripping the weapon at his side tighter. "That was just a warning?! You could have gotten people killed there!"
"It doesn't matter anymore," Ethan replied calmly. "By bringing me inside here, you’ve just killed me. And you've just killed yourself… but believe me, you were going to end up dead anyway.”
“Your next sentence better explain what’s going on,” Owen said as he glanced down to the gun at his side and started to slowly rattle it, before raising his eyes back up to meet Ethan’s. “Or you’re going to meet a bullet.”
“You fool,” Ethan spat at him. “Didn’t you wonder what I was doing in your apartment? Didn’t you think to check over your equipment before throwing yourself back into the PRoGRaM system?"
Oh shit. I hadn't even thought about that…
"Right now, your systems are infected, the world out there.…” Ethan pointed to the only door nearby. “… is out of control! A virus, slowly taking over the entire digital world.”
Owen suddenly started to worry. Was that why Ethan was in my apartment? He hadn’t even given it a second thought before throwing the two of them into PRoGRaM. He hadn’t even thought about the possibility that Ethan was there to purposely sabotage their equipment. How could I have been so stupid?
“Now, PRoGRaM is going kill us,” Ethan said, sounding unexpectedly calm considering their situation.
“Your boss will be willing to let you die in here?” Owen asked. He was getting a pretty vivid picture of the person that Marcus, Alex and Ethan all worked for, and it wasn’t a good
one.
“The person I work for, they don’t give a shit about me. No way. But you… you they care very deeply about. You went and pissed them off so much that now they’re trying to correct their mistakes. You should have left well enough alone Owen. You shouldn’t have started digging into all this. You dug, and dug, and dug, and went and signed your own death warrant!”
As if right on cue, the room changed for the worse. The White Room code is collapsing.
The walls began to bleed red. A dark, violent, blood coloured red.
Slowly but determinedly, the dark red colour bled across the entire room, taking over everything in its path. It blocked out all of the white light and stopped for absolutely nothing until finally, all around Owen and Ethan the entire White Room had succumbed to its maroon shade of darkness.
The White Room was no more. In its place was a room with dark red walls, ceiling and floors. Nothing but a dark red light bathed the two of them, a far cry from the environment that had surrounded them only seconds before.
“The virus is coming for us Owen," Ethan said as the two of them finished watching the blood red colour take over. "And killing us is exactly what it’s designed to do.”
Out of nowhere, a horrible noise gradually began to fill the room. A noise I know all too well. Owen realised. It was the sound of metal on metal. It was quiet at first, distant and far away, but gradually it was getting closer… getting louder. It was a dangerously penetrative screeching echo that pierced the ear drums. Both Owen and Ethan clasped their hands up over their ears as the noise began to reach an unbearable volume. Something bad was coming, that much was clear. And it was slowly getting closer.