by Aman Gupta
“Yes, she’s fine. I just talked to her. She’s on her way,” lied Jay.
“Did you change your hair color?” smiled Jay.
“Yeah, mommy was planning to change hers, but then she left in a hurry. I think she wanted us to disappear. When she left, I tried it,” smiled Katie. “Does it look cool?”
“Very cool. But I’m having a hard time imagining a brunette mommy,” laughed Jay. Katie grinned.
The nurse came and told Jay that there was some problem in the paperwork. To avoid making a scene, he left with the nurse. He promised Katie that he’ll be back soon.
The nurse took him to the reception. He was made to wait for ten minutes by the receptionist who gave lame excuses, before the nurse came and informed him that everything was fine.
Suspicious, Jay hurtled to Katie’s room, but she wasn’t there anymore.
“Katie..Katie,” shouted Jay, as he ran out and looked inside every room.
He was walking down the corridor when a man appeared in front of him, holding Katie hostage.
“Let her go,” said Jay, closing his fist.
“Now, no need for that,” said Victor Daulton, who stepped out from the side hallway.
“What’re you doing here?” asked Jay.
“You broke the rules, Jay,” said Victor.
“What rules? And do you realize you’re hurting your own granddaughter?” asked Jay.
“I’m not hurting anyone. You’re too stupid to see it. You’re the one who put her in this position,” said Victor.
“What do you want?” asked Jay.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” said Katie.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll never let him hurt you,” said Jay.
“Yes, Katie. Your father is an honorable fool. He’ll do the right thing even if it costs him his family,” said Victor.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. You saw what was happening,” said Jay.
“Who do you think planned it? I can’t let you destroy everything that I have worked for, in the past decade,” said Victor. “Anthony thinks I’ve hired an idiot to run the operation. Good thing he doesn’t know about you.”
“What do you want?” asked Jay.
“You. For them,” said Victor. “I don’t trust Anthony anymore.”
“Why me? Anyone can do it now,” said Jay.
“No, and you know that. Besides, you’re one-third partner in this project. You’re the red to my green and Anthony’s blue,” said Victor.
“Fine, let her go. I’ll do what you want,” said Jay.
The guy let Katie go, and she ran and hugged Jay.
“Let’s go, Katie,” said Jay.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where do you think you’re going?” said Victor.
“This honorable fool agreed to work with you, no questions asked. What more do you want?” asked Jay.
“Insurance. Believe it or not, you’ve put a target on the backs of Sarah and Katie. Everyone knows as long as they are around, your loyalty can be bought. So, I thought why not kill two birds with one stone?” said Victor.
“What do you mean?” asked Jay.
A guy came from behind and injected a liquid solution into Jay’s neck.
Jay went down on his knees a second later.
“Say what you want about Anthony, but the guy is a genius when it comes to human anatomy. Suffice to say, you’ll forget everything that happened in the last twenty four hours including this, when you wake up few hours from now. I’m sure these past 24 hours have been extremely traumatic for you,” smiled Victor.
The other guy pulled Katie away from Jay. Jay didn’t have the strength to hold Katie’s hand as it slipped through his fingers.
Victor began leaving, but then turned around.
“Oh, here. I took the liberty of bringing your phone,” said Victor.
He threw Jay’s phone near him, as Jay passed out.
“Daddy..Daddy,” said Katie, crying.
“Don’t worry, Katie. Grandpa will take care of you now. Let’s get you to your mommy,” said Victor.
◆◆◆
Vik went to an abandoned house in the North near the new Locus, where Eric and he had planned to meet. Eric was already there waiting nearby.
They ate the leftovers in the house. Last meal, Vik called it.
After a rest of couple of hours, Vik asked Eric to get outside the house. When he did so, Vik burned down the house. As expected by Vik, a fire truck showed up. They took over the fire truck after a brief hand-to-hand combat with the firemen. Vik broke his second and last bottle of Liquid Death against the inside of the water tank, and closed the lid.
He told Eric to spray every gallon of water in the tank, on Anton and his men, creating a distraction.
“What then?” asked Eric.
“Get out of Atlantis,” said Vik.
“I’m not leaving you,” said Eric.
“This was always the plan. The world doesn’t need you to die today,” said Vik.
“What will you do?” asked Eric.
“There’s something I need to take care of,” said Vik.
They drove the fire truck to Locus. Vik got out and hid behind the truck. Eric got out and pulled out the water hose from the back of the truck.
“Remember, get out before sunset,” said Vik. “The temperature’s going to rise soon.”
Eric first squeezed Vik’s hand and then hugged him firmly. Vik felt every unit of the pressure and the painful pinches that the hug brought him. He didn’t think much of it and hugged him back.
Vik got ready to run with Smoke Marbles in his hands. He saw the route he needed to take to enter Locus. Eric started spraying the water from behind the trees, up in the air. The range was good enough to hit the security guards and their tents outside Locus. Vik hoped that Liquid Death would still work, even after a massive dilution. But nothing happened during the first minute. The guards started shooting through the trees.
Eric dropped the hose initially but got down to pick it up.
“Run now,” said Eric.
“Not yet,” said Vik.
Vik threw smoke marbles to deter the guards, and stop their assembly. After two minutes, the liquid caught fire. Vik ran through the flames, throwing marbles everywhere. He ran into couple of guards, forcing him to throw marbles on their eyes and faces. Pretty soon, he was out of marbles. He grabbed a gun from the men burning around him. The ground was too hot, and he could feel his feet burning. He hopped and jumped and ran over bodies for over a hundred meters, eventually made it to Locus. He entered the building and shot the guards with his machine gun.
A guard was limping from the bullet wound in his leg. Vik knocked him down and asked where Olivia was hiding. After applying a lot of pressure on the neck and the leg wound, the guard eventually gave up Olivia’s floor.
He picked up couple of dead guards and threw them in the elevator, and pressed the button for the 40th floor. The elevator stopped at the 40th floor, and the guards manned outside saw no one standing inside the elevator. Vik was lying on the floor, pretending to be dead. He shot both the guards, got up and entered the only room on the floor.
Olivia was sitting in the chair, behind her desk, smiling.
“Well done, you made it,” said Olivia.
Vik looked through the doors on the side. Olivia claimed no one else was there. He looked anyhow. He barricaded the door with furniture, and sat across Olivia.
She pulled a gun on him, as he sat down. After a stand-off lasting thirty seconds, Olivia put down her gun, calling it boring.
Vik lowered his weapon too.
Olivia took a sip from the whiskey glass in front of her.
“Pour me one as well,” said Vik.
“Since when do you drink?” said Olivia.
“I doubt I’m getting out of here alive, so might as well,” said Vik.
Olivia smiled, and got up to get a glass and a bottle behind her. Vik took out a vial from his pocket and poured its contents in her glass when she was
n’t looking.
Olivia poured him a drink. Vik was already breathing unusually heavy and sweating which Olivia noticed. He took a sip. She sat down and drank from her glass too.
She looked at her wrist watch and spoke after a minute.
“That should do it,” said Olivia.
“Do what?” asked Vik.
“I poured a little something in your drink. It’s got a technical name. But you can refer to it as the truth serum,” said Olivia.
She continued, “I can’t trust you, since the last time I did, you blew up Locus.”
Vik laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” asked Olivia.
“Feel that?” said Vik, pointing to Olivia’s quivering hands.
Olivia felt her heart racing, and her mind going soft.
“You drugged me?” said Olivia.
“With truth serum, out of Anthony’s stash,” said Vik.
He laughed. She couldn’t control her laugh either.
“So, here we are, two people who can’t lie for the next few minutes, before our immune system kills it,” said Olivia.
“Quite important next few minutes, then,” said Vik.
“What do you want to know?” asked Olivia. “You gave me the serum, so you must want to know something. Go ahead. Ask me.”
“Did you really make the call that night?” asked Vik.
“Yes, I did,” said Olivia. “Like I told you earlier. And speaking of earlier, what did you think about my work?”
“I’ll say to you what I told someone many years ago, since it fits here too - Your work has always been inspiring, perhaps recently got to the acme of its potential, even though it has never exactly been focused on ameliorating the conditions of the unfortunate,” said Vik.
“Said to whom?” asked Olivia.
“Clifford,” said Vik.
He continued, “Now, this is me for you. Your allegiance, however, has always been amorphous. I had hoped to entice you in bringing down Anthony’s empire, but I saw something in your eyes that I saw in mine few years ago. It was addiction.”
“Thanks for the loaded statement. What are you planning to do now?” asked Olivia
“I’ll spare you the lurid details. Where’s Ally?” asked Vik.
“A..A..A.. Wow, the throat just chokes up when you want to lie. She’s somewhere in the building,” said Olivia. “How did you know?”
“Wasn’t much difficult to spot your work, with the defects and the tantrums,” said Vik.
“Yes, it’s the eyes, isn’t it? Betas are that way. Shame you couldn’t wait a few days to face an Alpha, even hers. Or an Apollo. They’re just a masterpiece, though I can’t take all the credit for R&D,” said Olivia. “Thanks to you, most of them are untraceable.”
“How?” asked Vik.
“You blew up our monitoring systems. We have no way to track them anymore. Just envision this, hundreds of thousands of emulations running around, unsupervised, uncontrolled. Their only remaining link is with the people who they are paired with, how they think, how they love, how they hate. Their emotions. Their anger. Their love. Their intelligence. Their fears. Their ugly desires. Amplified,” said Olivia.
“Why did you create them?” asked Vik. “Can you create more?”
“Not anymore. Our project died when Locus got destroyed, with all of Anthony’s research. He never backed up the real research to our remote servers. Insurance, he called it. Regarding why, who knows. It was Anthony’s plan. He talked about creating a new world order, wanting to create a world worth ruling,” said Olivia. “He said he didn’t want to leave any stone unturned.”
Vik smiled for a second.
“What?” said Olivia.
“Interesting phrase that one. Wonder if he knew the secret behind it,” said Vik.
“What secret?” asked Olivia.
“I care too much about you, to speak a word about it,” said Vik.
“Do you know where he disappeared? He never reached out,” said Olivia.
“Buried ten feet below the ground, in Morrow’s cemetery,” said Vik.
Olivia looked surprised.
“So, you weren’t lying, back at Stanton,” said Olivia.
“No. He deserved it for what he did to my family,” said Vik.
“I don’t understand. He had planned his disappearance. How did it happen?” asked Olivia.
“My guess would be that Anthony tried to double cross whoever he was working with, for reasons that elude my brain. No way had Anthony pulled this off alone. The same ambitious partner you work with, I think. But they saw through it. In hindsight, I feel Anthony never made it past his real birthday. Also, I had intercepted Anthony’s plan of leaving Morrow and disappearing, many weeks prior to his birthday. Stupid of him to contact Morgan, of all people. He gave a fake DNA too, to keep us guessing. With his prop burnt to a crisp, there wouldn’t have been any way of knowing that the real Anthony had faked his death. But someone else knew about it too,” said Vik.
“You mean Jacob killed the real Anthony?” asked Olivia.
“Yes. I’m not sure Jacob was working exclusively for Anthony. There must’ve been someone else too since Jenna got involved as well,” said Vik.
“I saw him. Couple of weeks later,” said Olivia.
“Congratulations, you’re right. They’re a masterpiece. I didn’t see it as well, not before I did the autopsy. Good thing that it rained that night. Saved the prop and it led me here, to you,” said Vik. “So, what was he? Apollo or Alpha?”
“Apollo, I think. Anthony didn’t let me complete before he deployed it,” said Olivia. “He kept changing plans.”
“Yeah, he shouldn’t have done that. It made my work a lot easier. Gave me enough time to create an override signal for the keychain,” said Vik.
“But then why wait for two weeks, if they knew that the real Anthony was dead?” questioned Olivia.
“I don’t think they knew. Maybe Jacob started playing both sides, or he killed the real one by mistake and hid that fact. Hard to know where Jacob’s loyalty lied. I never met the man,” said Vik.
“It was a stupid plan, anyways. Faking your death? I told him, why do that when you’re planning to become the face of the planet. He said that it was necessary to buy us time till we create perfect Apollos and Alphas,” said Olivia.
“What’s the difference between them?” asked Vik.
“Apollos are highly intelligent, and can adapt to the surroundings, without the parent connection if need be. Alphas can’t,” said Olivia.
“How many Atlantis are out there?” asked Vik.
“Currently, none in operation that I know of. Although many were in the planning phase, before Anthony disappeared,” said Olivia.
“So, who’s behind all this? Where’s the money coming from?” asked Vik.
“I don’t know. I tried to find out, you know, go up the ladder but couldn’t do much,” said Olivia. “Can you imagine me, of all people, unable to pierce the glass ceiling?”
Vik smiled.
“Anthony had two other partners. One of them, Anton, provided arsenal, the other, a woman, bankrolled the entire operation. Pretty shady partners if you ask me. Made him nervous. I never saw the woman’s face but I don’t know, it felt like a blast from the past sometimes. Really traumatic for me, let alone others,” said Olivia.
She wanted to say something else too, but stopped herself which Vik noticed.
Few seconds later, she said, “My turn.”
“Okay,” said Vik. “Ask away.”
“Had you and Sarah split leading up to her murder?” asked Olivia.
“You sound like the cop who investigated me,” said Vik.
“That doesn’t answer the question,” said Olivia.
“I decided that it was best to keep distance, to protect them from..from, you know what. But I didn’t move out. I just didn’t go home for entire weeks at a stretch,” said Vik.
“I find it hard to believe that you didn’t see your wife
and daughter for such a long time,” said Olivia.
“I didn’t say I never saw them. I said I never went inside,” said Vik.
“She must’ve been pissed, you know. When I had called,” said Olivia.
“They died thinking that I didn’t care about them. How does one recover from that?” lamented Vik.
“I read the police report. Your phone betrayed you. They traced your location near your home that night. Yet after few hours, you were at a hospital 50 miles away. After that, nothing. You told them you were visiting a friend at the hospital. People, like you and me, we don’t have many friends. Why did you lie?” asked Olivia.
“Because I couldn’t explain the truth,” said Vik.
“What’s the truth?” asked Olivia.
“I didn’t carry my phone,” said Vik. “Last thing I would want was to hand over the coordinates of my family’s home by allowing them to simply tracking my phone.”
“Really? No kidding,” said Olivia. “So, someone did set you up.”
“Honestly, that night is a huge blur. I only remember bits and pieces. I remember following a van and driving towards TS - 78. I remember seeing Katie, but not Sarah. I remember feeling helpless when someone was pulling her away from me,” said Vik. “It’s the most important night of my life, and I can’t, for the life in me, seem to remember it. That’s how I knew someone betrayed me.”
“I never met her, but I saw the look on your face whenever you talked about her. No way, you killed your daughter, but the cops didn’t bother, I guess. Wait, so Katie was with you the night before?” said Olivia.
“Less than four hours ago. No idea how she got back home. Try explaining that to the cops,” said Vik.
Olivia shrugged.
“Still better than Victor Daulton. He booked Verati’s private plane in the middle of the night. Extremely suspicious yet they never looked into him, though Anthony always said Victor loved his family,” recalled Olivia.
“How do you know about the plane?” asked Vik.
“Because I had booked it for myself, to get out of there. But then they told me that Victor cancelled my booking for himself, and shut down the rest of the fleet. When he came back, they were dead,” said Olivia.
Vik looked confused, staring at the desk.
“How is that possible? He was at the hospital that night,” murmured Vik, but Olivia couldn’t hear it clearly.