by Aman Gupta
The tombstone had already been laid.
Vik wrote on the tombstone, with Olivia’s blood on his hands.
‘To the extraordinary woman who lies here,
I wish I could’ve taken your pain.
While the world may forget you soon,
Know that you didn’t die in vain.
RIP. Sorry’
He hallucinated burying the microchip next to Olivia. He later found the chip in his pocket as he was walking back. He wanted to destroy it, but knew that it would be foolish to do so. He stumbled back to his car and drove to his home few miles away.
He took out the key from a hollow space on the porch, where he had kept it the last time he was there with Kate and Sam. Trudging through the room, he went upstairs to his bedroom.
He opened the wardrobe and took out a steel box from the safe after scanning his thumb to open it. The box was unlocked from the last time he saw it. He opened the box, and emptied its contents on the bed.
He touched a locket he had locked away, after his family had died. He saw his old phone. After replacing the battery with a spare one, he turned on the device. After looking at the pictures, he saw a bunch of messages and voicemails, some he had saved, some he had never bothered to reply to, and some he didn’t know about at all. He opened one to listen to it, but then kept it away. At that moment, memories would hurt more than a red hot knife.
He saw an old flash drive. He got up and plugged it to his TV. An old video of Sarah and Katie started playing, back when they had participated together in a Christmas recital.
‘They looked so happy. Good thing I was behind the camera not in front of it,’ Vik thought.
He touched their faces with his red hands, leaving behind a red spot or two on the screen.
The volume of the video phased out the sound of the messages being auto-read in a robotic voice by an old school voice assistant in his phone.
He went to the bathroom, and opened the tap to wash his hands in the bathtub. With his body crumbling from within, he laid down in the bath tub, with the water level rising incessantly, as the tub was beginning to fill up.
By the time the video ended, the tub was overflowing with water. One of the messages on the phone spoken aloud said, ‘Eric Daymond DC left a message ten months ago – Jay..Vik, your other number isn’t reachable. Call me when you get this.’
As the message ended, Vik had already closed his eyes. He submerged himself in the tub, with a strange calm on his face, almost as if he was ready to pass on, having avenged his family. He hoped that his vengeance washed away his sins, though he knew such a thought was a fool’s paradise.
Hundreds of things were going on in his head as he went into the water. After a minute, there were barely five at a time. He hoped to see his family again, even if it was a short detour, he thought he would say to God. He tried to focus on the voice of Sarah and Katie. But his mind wouldn’t stop playing tricks. His world had always been arcane, rather than in its current austere form. He remembered the last thing Sarah told him, when he left the house in anger. He remembered the disdain in her voice. He could hear Katie’s voice who was screaming while being taken away in the hospital. He heard Kate’s voice while she was vividly describing how they died. Then his mind deviated to think about his last conversation with Olivia. He remembered the day he met Katie and Sarah, and how beautiful theirs eyes looked in the morning. The last thought that came to his mind as the clock passed two and a half minutes, was how perfect Sarah and Katie looked when they were lowered into the ground.
The imaginary clock struck three minutes. Vik had sunk to the bottom of the tub, lying lifelessly.
Few seconds later, the most recent message played.
‘Voice Message from unknown number three months ago – Please help me. I’m scared, daddy! They’re keeping me in a strange hospital, asking me things. Find me, daddy. I love you. No, no… DADDY!’
The phone kept bleeping to mark the end. It was a somber presage.
◆◆◆
Emma and Joey headed back to Morrow, hoping to find Emily who might know a way to contact Vik. Emma wanted to go to Atlantis, but Joey convinced her to go to Morrow first. Emma was smiling, so was Joey. They were just thinking about Vik’s reaction when he would see the picture and the locket they were bringing with them.
Kate was dropped at a local cemetery in TS – 19. She was told to head up straight till she found an alive soul.
She walked through the graves, reading tombstones, looking around in the darkness, hoping to find a way. Children, parents, brothers, sisters. One could find any relative in this cemetery.
Due to a minor snow blizzard, Kate couldn’t see much further ahead. After walking for a few minutes, she saw a person standing in a brown overcoat, and a huge hat. She walked up to them from behind. They were standing next to a lone grave on a hill top.
She stopped a few yards away.
“Over these years, I always wondered how I would react if I met the person who was behind the death of my husband and son. Here I am, standing before them, and I can’t feel anything. Whatever I do, I can’t get them back, but I’m willing to make a deal. I’ll leave you in peace, if you leave me and my friends. For now. One day, you’ll pay for what you did. But not today,” said Kate.
“Lovely dedication on this grave. Here lies the woman who chose the lives of thousands over hers. Yet they couldn’t give her a name. No one knows if she was a good daughter, or a good mother. I loved mine before. After reading this, I hate mine,” said the woman, and turned around.
“Sarah…” gasped Kate in shock.
“Hi, Jenna,” said Sarah.
“This can’t be. You’re dead. I..I..I..” said Kate.
“Killed me? Not me really, but could’ve fooled everyone. Did fool everyone,” smirked Sarah.
“All this time. It’s been you, behind everything,” said Kate.
“Yeah, in a way,” smiled Sarah.
“Why? How could you do this to me, to Eric, to Jay?” said Kate.
“Consider it payback for what you all did to me. My friends betrayed my trust and I lost everything. I, and my daughter, were served up as baits in a war we didn’t choose to be a part of. Sarah did die that day. I’m not Sarah, anymore,” said Sarah.
Kate stepped forward, forcing Sarah to pull out a gun.
“Stay back, dear. But I’m willing to start afresh, for old time sakes. Forget about me. About what you saw today. If you tell anyone, I’ll destroy everything you love,” said Sarah, with a hint of anger on her face.
“Did you kill my family?” asked Kate.
“No, unlike you, obviously,” said Sarah.
Couple of men came from the shadows. Sarah asked them to take Kate away.
“We’ll leave you on the bridge, after a slight medication to help you forget. This would feel like a weird dream. My advice – Leave New Frontier. Go bury your head in the sand somewhere,” said Sarah. She turned around and walked away.
Kate called out Sarah’s name. Just Once.
The men blindfolded her, and took her towards a parked car.
Sarah entered a limousine.
The man sitting across her, said, “Why meet when you knew she didn’t have anything to offer?”
“I wanted to see the look on her face,” said Sarah. “She betrayed me too.”
The man shook his head in disappointment.
“Just because you were a disappointing child to your father, doesn’t mean you get to treat me like one,” said Sarah.
“I wasn’t a disappointing child. My father was a substandard parent,” said Victor Daulton.
“Tell that to Uncle Vincent, who was chased out of our lives, to keep you happy. Anyways, did you get the chip?” asked Sarah.
“Yes. Just in time, in fact. Someone blew up the entire town. Looks like it was Jay,” said Victor. “Didn’t expect that. That’s what happens when you play with a worthy adversary.”
“Just blow up a town? He’s gotten soft,”
said Sarah.
Victor smirked.
“What?” asked Sarah.
“Nothing. Never seen this side of yours. Also, to be honest, I didn’t believe you had it in you. Yet you stayed loyal to our cause,” said Victor.
“Perhaps you never trusted me enough. If only you had shown me the same affection you showed Jay,” said Sarah.
“He’s never been hungry for affection. That’s why we got along. I used to look around and see people gawking at me, hoping for approval, affection, even acceptance. For the first time in over a decade, I saw this kid who couldn’t care less about my affection or what anyone thought about him. My secretary once asked why I chose Jay as my prodigy. I didn’t say anything to her at the time, as it was a completely false narrative. The truth was I never chose him. When various moments of reckoning came, he was the one who chose people. He even chose me. He and I might not see eye to eye on various issues and ideologies, but I never disrespected the man, unlike you. You know, I asked him once. About what attracted him about you. You know what he said?” asked Victor.
“I don’t care,” said Sarah.
“I think you do. But okay if you believe so,” said Victor.
“Where’s he?” asked Sarah.
“We tracked a car from Atlantis to West Gate, but not ahead. For all we know, he’s either dead or most likely switched vehicles,” said Victor.
“Doesn’t that ruin your plan? Him being dead? Or all you needed was the chip?” said Sarah.
“My plan needs Jay Miller. Not Vikram, or Vik, as he calls himself these days. I’m not really sure that Jay Miller survived 1/1. If he didn’t, Vik’s just a poor liability. Though, I hoped Jay would survive,” said Victor.
“I never asked, but was Jay responsible for 1/1?” asked Sarah.
“I’ve spent the last three years moving from one place to another, you know, laying the groundwork. Every once in a while, I would hear someone talking about the poor state of the world post the..um..let’s say…incident. But the more I listened, the more it became clear to me. People seem to have the wrong idea about what really happened on 1/1 and why it happened. Including you, since you are asking the wrong question. I could tell you about it, like I tried to tell a few others before, but in hindsight, that’d be waste of my time,” said Victor.
“But was he?” asked Sarah.
“You think that if I say yes, it would help you justify the hate you feel towards him. A million things had to transpire at specific intervals in a precise order for 1/1 to occur. And yet it did. 1/1 was an involute incident, not a lucid story as believed by the public. So you ask, who was responsible for it? I’d say God, speaking through some very powerful creations,” said Victor.
His demeanor told Sarah that he wasn’t particularly interested in talking about it, but wasn’t denying his and Jay’s involvement.
“If you do see him, what will you do?” asked Victor.
“For what he did to my daughter. For what he did to me. I’ll look him in the eyes, then put a bullet in him,” said Sarah, with a straight face, looking out the window.
“But I’m surprised about one thing, though,” said Sarah. “I only knew him outside work, yet I could feel he changed in a period of months. But you knew about his mind, his work. And from what I’ve heard about him from you, he should’ve seen all of this coming. He’s very cogitative, you told me once. Yet he went after Olivia and Anthony, without recognizing that someone else was really pulling the strings.”
“He’s still an enigma. Even to me. I didn’t like him not because he reminded me of myself. But because, he was better at being me than me. He had this latent talent. He was the best of both worlds, yours and mine. In the end, it split him into two,” said Victor.
He continued, “People like Jay don’t really value their lives, even outlive obloquy. Simply because they know that, to the right person, they’re more valuable alive than dead, no matter which side they’re on. When you faked your death, I believe for the first time in his life, he snapped and started valuing his life, though for the wrong reasons in hindsight. Your death gave him a meaning far more essential than your life ever did, though I think that wasn’t what you intended when you came to me.”
“He’s the reason Katie is dead. The reason why Anthony went rogue and recruited Jenna to kill me and my daughter. I couldn’t care less about him. Everything he touches, dies. I warned him, you know. To stay away from you. But he chose you over us. He chose Olivia over us. He chose Josh over us. I only helped you because believe it or not, you’re the only family I’ve had in a long time. I don’t feel anything in my heart now. And that’s all his fault. If I see him, I’ll kill him,” said Sarah.
“Jay and Vik cannot co-exist. For Jay to come alive, Vik needs to die. And if he does, you’ll do no such thing,” said Victor, with a hint of ferocity on his face. “I asked you to join the party so that you could live a new life with your new husband. Your role is over.”
“Thanks for reminding me why I hated you all the years I could remember,” said Sarah.
“Good! Keep that in mind. I do hope you love your new husband,” said Victor.
“I do,” said Sarah, entering into a staring contest with her father.
“Let’s hope third time is the charm. There’s a war coming. Believe it or not, the world needs Jay in their corner. He’s the centerpiece to the art that’s about to be unleashed onto the world. If one’s not hiding under a rock, they would’ve seen that a pattern was starting to emerge, least of all him. I just hope he realizes it in time,” said Victor. “I can’t afford to lose this war.”
“Sounds like a miserable life,” said Sarah.
“Misery is worthless. Fear of misery, on the other hand, is the world’s greatest weapon. It makes you do things that can’t be anticipated,” said Victor.
“Why rebuild Verati?” asked Sarah.
“I’m not. Verati was a means to an end. We’re in the endgame now,” said Victor.
A guy knocked on the window partition separating the driver and the passengers. Victor pressed a button to roll down the window. The guy gave him a tablet device. Sarah tried seeing what was being displayed on the screen, but couldn’t get a decent look. She saw a look of concern on Victor’s face.
“Anything wrong?” asked Sarah.
“That’d be all,” said Victor.
“You’re welcome by the way. Bye, dad,” said Sarah, in anger.
Sarah opened the door. Before leaving, she asked, “What did he say?”
“Who?” asked Victor.
“Jay. About me,” said Sarah.
“He said he saw that you needed love, as you had given all of yours to your daughter. He wanted to see the real Sarah Daulton, when she wasn’t empty from the inside. I guess he saw her,” said Victor.
Sarah got out and slammed the door shut. Victor made a call.
“What went wrong?” asked Victor.
“I don’t know. She had the chip, and we got it,” said Anton.
“It’s fake. I underestimated him. Again. Get me the real chip. Or when I am done with you, what happened to Natalie would feel like a massage,” said Victor.
“He played us,” said Anton.
“Then you shouldn’t have let him escape from Atlantis, twice or is that thrice. I know you never got a formal education, so let me break it down for you. I have one, he has one and now probably knows where the third one is. I need all three. You see my problem? Send a team to West Gate and extract his chip,” yelled Victor.
“What if he doesn’t have it on him, and refuses to play ball? Are we authorized to kill him?” asked Anton.
“I don’t gamble but only a fool would bet on you when you’re up against Jay,” said Victor.
“There’s one other situation,” said Anton.
“What now?” asked Victor.
“The girl. She escaped,” said Anton.
“What do you mean, escaped? How hard is it to look after an eleven year old? First, she managed to leav
e a message for someone, now she escapes. What kind of a ship are you running?” replied Victor.
“We moved her to TS – 17, just like you asked. But she escaped through a window. We’re searching for her, but TS – 17 has around 100,000 people,” said Anton, with fear in his voice.
“I don’t care if you’ve to kill every last one of them. Find her. We moved her because you idiots lost Locus, exposing my plan to chaos. Only the devil knows where all the Alphas and the Apollos are wreaking havoc, and that’s not a battle I wish to fight at this moment. Like I told you before, I believe the girl is the key to finding Josh. Dispose of your current crew, and gather new men. Make sure they don’t develop a conscience or art of deception like Jacob. No one tells my daughter about hers,” said Victor in a cold, calm tone.
“I’ll find her soon,” said Anton.
“You have 48 hours,” said Victor, and disconnected the call.
He threw away the tablet, in a fit of rage.
He dialed a number, and left a message.
‘Atlantis is done for good. Get Sierra to complete the job.’
◆◆◆
A hundred miles outside New Frontier County, a man standing on top of a hill glanced at a town underneath, hosting a celebration. After observing it for a few seconds, he snapped his fingers. A minute later, a horde of individuals prowled towards the gates of a small settlement colony where the residents were celebrating a marriage. The town was bright and sparkly with beautiful lamps shining like a rainbow. Five minutes later, the celebrations had stopped, and the cries had begun.
The man saw the lights go out and the region surrendered to silence. He smiled with the darkness around him and turned around, walking away, and whistling into the abyss he had brought with him. His horde scaled up the steep hill.