Before he can bring the system down.
He stalked out of the house and returned to his office.
CHAPTER 7
"You must look at this!" Nadine snapped before he even had the chance to tell her about the encounter with the second in command.
"What?" He growled, anger billowing through his veins. A thought popped into his head like a stray unwelcomed dog, What could this stupid bitch want now? Maybe a good slap! "What? No!" He blurted out. "I apologize for being cross, Nadine. I'm just having the craziest thoughts since the C-5810 was injected into me."
"I understand, Ryan. However, I think you should take a look at this." Nadine pointed to the screen with the surveillance. Nathan was visiting his father again at the prison.
"I've been having headaches again," Nathan said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Ah, that's not good, Nathan. Have you been taking medication for it?" David asked, brows knitting together in concern.
Nathan paused for a moment while staring blankly into the unknown.
"You know what happened the last time I took pills for this."
David sighed, reaching out and touching his son's hand. "I suppose one near-death experience is enough for a father to have to go through. But we both know it changed you for the better."
Nathan snapped out of his daze "I can't say I've heard of anyone who has experienced that much brain trauma doing as well as I am mentally and physically."
"Almost like you've stolen a new life," David said with a sly smile and a curious wink as he and his son shared a laugh.
"Oh my god," The Agent said, his voice breathless. "Incredible." "What is it?"
His mind was ablaze with thoughts. "It could be him," he said. "The trauma from what-ever injury must have messed with the programming somehow."
"Maybe his head injury rewired the parts of his brain that the scientists altered. The injury put him back to his original state," Nadine said. Her voice was shrill with excitement. "The neuroscientists might not even be aware of this since he could be an isolated case."
"If this is true, I will need to speak with Mr. Yost again," he said. "But first, I will go speak to Doctor Dharma."
▼▼▼
"You're speaking about metaphysics, which is a ridiculous concept," Doctor Dharma said after The Agent explained his new theory, picking at a loose thread on his coat. "Once the chemical and its receptors have been removed, head trauma cannot rebuild what is gone. If anything, it would make it worse."
The Agent leaned against the office window. "As far back as human his- tory goes, we have lived under restricting beliefs that stunted our growth and progress for millennia," he said. "First, it was religion. While many things from different religions were right, much was found to be wrong. Then science and physics disproved the existence of one divine being living in the sky who created our world that we must answer to when we die. Maybe it's time that meta-science and metaphysics disprove restricting beliefs created by science and physics. We shouldn't just stop there because they proved God wrong. "
Doctor Dharma narrowed those sharp, glinting eyes. "Are you suggesting we treat metaphysics as real as proven sciences?"
"What I am suggesting is that we start taking it seriously. It's time we united religion, science, and the mystical. The metaphysical is real."
The Agent straightened from leaning against the wall, examining Doctor Dharma's face, which conveyed little emotion now like he was trying to hide any inkling of thought. Finally, Doctor Dharma stood and offered his hand.
"You certainly have an interesting mind, my friend," Doctor Dharma said.
The Agent understood this as his queue to leave and scurried to the
door. "We will speak again soon."
▼▼▼
The Agent heaved a sigh as the AI car pulled up to the corrections center. A dry, sultry wind swirled around The Agent as he rushed down the dust covered path and into the building, following the guards to the room where he met prisoner David Yost.
The Agent swallowed back a sting of fury as David smirked at him.
"What brings you here?" David asked, drumming his fingers on the table.
The Agent leaned forward, clearing his throat. "I am under the impression that your son has been through quite an ordeal in his time. He had a near-death experience, is that correct?"
A muscle feathered in David's face, but he remained impassive. "Yes. He did. Last year, he experienced a nasty head injury that left him with physical and psychological trauma. He almost… died." His voice wavered, and his eyes flashed with the memory. "I almost lost my only child."
"I'm sorry," The Agent said. "Can you tell me what happened?"
David clicked his tongue. "He was in a motorcycle accident, and the AI- controlled vehicle in front of him glitched. He had no choice but to swerve into the construction site on the shoulder. The poor boy was in a coma for three days."
The Agent rubbed his chin, nodding. "Did he experience any behavioral changes along with the trauma?" Anger throbbed in his temples, plagued with intrusive thoughts since his C-5810 injection; he resisted the urge to reach across the table and throttle the man.
"Nightmares. Headaches," David said with a shrug.
"Anything else?" The Agent probed, his voice dripping with venom.
"Does he, for example, have a short temper, or is he easily irritated?"
The prisoner shrugged, licking his cracked lips. "He has been feeling a little more like his old self."
"Old self?" The Agent parroted, arching a brow.
"He tells me he feels more connected to his youth," David said. Frustration and anger festered in The Agent like an infected wound, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, realizing that this conversation wasn't going anywhere if the man could still lie as an individual who hadn't gone through the programming.
He stood, his chair scraping against the floor. "Thanks for your time. If you can think of anything else about your son, let me know."
"I will," David said, and the sound of him muttering something indecipherable under his breath reverberated around the room, following The Agent out the door.
CHAPTER 8
Nathan's shoulders slumped forward, and his eye twitched as he flopped into the chair across from his father. Something strange glinted in his eyes, and The Agent wondered if he were staring in a mirror, rather than the surveillance footage. He sipped his coffee and watched.
"Did you end up booking that hotel, son?" David asked, clasping his hands before him on the table.
"Hotel?" Nathan tilted his head like a curious animal, brows furrowing.
"Yes. Remember? You wanted to book that vacation to help give your head a break," David said through gritted teeth. "You should book it, son. Your… mother wants you to go. She thinks it will be good for you."
This caught The Agent's attention. He listened carefully.
"Right," Nathan said soberly. "Are you serious? Did my mother… did she recommend a good time of year I should go?"
David released a bitter sigh. "You were always more of the Joker in the family." He inclined his head to the Batman t-shirt Nathan wore. Such an ancient character that had been restored in recent years after the Final War when a child found a tattered, yellowed copy of the comic in some rubble of a former residential area. The world believed we had lost such things as physical books.
Nathan clenched his jaw, seeming to understand the coded message. "I will make my reservations."
"Take plenty of pictures," David said with a tight smile.
"You know me, I only take the best pictures," Nathan replied with a crooked smile.
The Agent guzzled the rest of his coffee, shaking his head. "Did you hear that, Nadine?" He asked his assistant, who examined her nails.
"It sounded like David knows you're onto his son," she said, striding to the desk and staring at the screens over his shoulder. "You should interrogate him again."
"It must be the son," The Agent said with a cracking voice.
But after yet another fruitless discussion with Mr. Yost, The Agent trudged into his office as his AI pinged, a trilling sound that bore into his ears. Nadine burst into the office.
"Sir," she and the AI said at the same time,
"What is it?" He noticed the panic in her tone.
Her cheeks with splotchy from dashing down the hall so quickly. "The Son… he's missing."
"Missing?"
"Yes. Missing. As in, gone. We've lost his location from the database," she said. "As if he just re-moved his Tempo chip and disappeared. He could be on a plane to Japan or anywhere as we speak."
The Agent wanted to freeze, wanted to scream, or set fire to the building. "He must be the killer," he said. "That's what his father meant when he said he's reverted to his old self. His old self… the one who committed crimes."
He wrenched himself into action, typing on his keyboard like a madman. "I have an idea," he said as one of Nathan's known associates popped up on the translucent screen. "Bingo. I will find this guy. We will put him be- hind bars. Before I lose my sanity."
Within minutes, he arrived at the house's front porch, and his Tempo chip alerted the occupant of his presence.
"Hello, sir," the young man said, who had ashy hair and a face covered in acne.
The Agent grimaced, wondering why the kid hadn't received the acne cure most did in their teen-age years. Then he thought, maybe you should shoot him in the face…it would be an improvement. "Can I come in and speak to you? I'm with the BMI."
The friend nodded with manic energy and stepped aside, letting The Agent stride inside, closing the door. "So, you are a holographic dream and memory dealer?" The Agent said with a drawl, pretending to look around the cramped living room.
"Yes," the friend said with a stammer. "I can program a dream or memory, anything you like. Then you can download it into your Tempo chip."
As the friend spoke, the darkness crept into The Agent's mind and into his bones, frigid like the peak of a mountain, driving him, despite the screams of protest from his moral conscience, which fought feebly for dominance. He grabbed a decorative vase and cracked it on the man's head. The friend let out a strangled gurgle and fell to the floor, blood oozing from the back of his head as The Agent pried the Tempo chip from the man as he
writhed. As he opened his mouth to scream, The Agent snatched a cushion from the couch and stuffed the corner into the friend's gaping throat.
The Agent clipped the friend's Tempo chip to his own, transferring the data, flipping through an array of memories until he found the one call he was hoping to find; 'If you need me, I'll be with all the other animals,' Nathans words echoed. The Agent's lips curled into a sneer. "Found you," he said.
Then he ripped the second Tempo chip from his own and stomped on it with his heavy boot, crushing the tiny device next to the bleeding, gagging man.
He wiped the blood from his hands onto his dark-washed pants, muttering a string of curses. Nadine called through his chip. "Did you find where he is?" She asked.
"Sure did. I'm going there now," he said.
"I'll get on the Holo-conduit and meet you there. Where is the location?" She asked.
"No need," he said. "I will grab him—nothing like a simple arrest. The man needs to be put behind bars. Thank you for your help, Nadine."
"Are you sure? He could be dangerous." "I will call for backup if I need it."
"Good luck."
▼▼▼
The Agent's arrival over the holo-conduit took less than 5 minutes; it wouldn't have been that long if there weren't so many tourists hogging the bandwidth. As he stepped off the platform of the Tele-port, He sighed in relief as he read the large holographic billboard, Welcome to the Sri Lanka Wells Animal Sanctuary.
The Agent had an AI-rental vehicle waiting for him outside of the Tele- port. He entered his coordinates and tried relaxing as much as possible de- spite the overwhelming adrenaline pumping through his veins.
After four long hours of pothole-covered roads bordered by tall, tropical trees, his AI-driven car stopped. "You have reached your destination. We hope you enjoy your stay in Sri Lanka," the female AI voice chimed. There was no more road to drive, just a trail leading up to a small cabin that looked plucked from the historical archives, clad with brick and mortar, and a chimney billowing sooty smoke from an actual fireplace. The Agent grumbled to himself, shaking his head. "Enjoy it while you can, you lowlife." He felt more comfortable speaking out loud as opposed to letting his words get swept away in the violent sea of noise in his head. Every so often he would gain a moment of quiet and use those opportunities to reflect on his recent and previously inconceivable actions.
"But really, how much better am I?" The guilt ate away at his bones and flesh like acid. The crack of the vase against the man's skull rattled around in his head. Then he thought about the cold-blooded murder he couldn't stop himself from committing. Nausea churned in his gut. He had to be better. He had to pull it together. The Agent was better than that. But the sound of the man choking on the cushion taunted him. The screams of his first victim and the maddening cacophony of terrible, immoral, and violent thoughts that plagued him ever since his C-5810 injection. After this is finished, he would answer for his crimes, but until then, he has a job to do, and unfortunately, what they say is true; It takes one to know one.
Darkness clung to him like a twilight shadow. He let out a grunt, hitting the side of his head with his palm over and over. "Do better. I'm better. Do better," he hissed, spit flying, tears dribbling.
He closed the car door, and the gravel crunched beneath his boots as he pulled out the handcuffs, one of the few tools that hadn't gone out of practical use. A gasp escaped from his mouth. Someone darted from a back door in the house, sprinting across the patchy grass to-wards the gloomy, mossy forest behind the property.
"NATHAN! Stop right there!" The Agent bellowed. "You are under arrest!"
But The son didn't stop. His shirt flapped around him like wings as he raced into the trees, jumping over thick roots. The Agent growled in frustration and tore after him.
"Stop!" He shouted. "Just stop!"
The forest's shadows wrapped around him as he leaped over plants and shoved ferns aside. He cried out as he caught up to Nathan, who'd paused against a tree.
A glint of malice formed in The Son's eyes as he rolled his shoulders back. "You should have let me go, Agent," he said, voice low and grating.
"I know your near-death experience from your accident allowed you to break through the system, didn't it?" The Agent said, narrowing his eyes.
Nathan let out a chuckle. "A genuine miracle. I'm freed from the shack- les of that heinous procedure. My near-death experience was a blessing, a second chance at life. But you got it all wrong. The NDE wasn't from that accident. It was from my accidental overdose of the prescription narcotics they gave me for the headaches afterward."
"Well, at least I was in the ballpark," The Agent said. "You have no idea what I went through, the terrible and illegal things I have done to find you, but it is all worth it now."
"I didn't mean to kill that man. It was self-defense," Nathan said with a blank stare. "My only intentions were to steal the money I needed to form my new syndicate—the Ars Notoria. I was going to travel the world searching for more lost artifacts from before the Final War, leading an archeology team to recover and sell them on the black market. I have already found something truly remarkable."
"And someone had to die for that to happen" The Agent's face twisted into disgust. He stepped closer, jangling the handcuffs. "I know what it's like to kill a man. I had to do it to get to you."
"Then you're no better than me now," Nathan said with a smile.
As he spoke, the darkness swallowed The Agent's psyche like a creature from another universe, taking control of his emotions and body. Kill him! The darkness screamed. He let it in.
"You're right about that. But there is one difference between us, Nathan…
I'll be alive to get away with it!"
In one breath, The Agent pulled a knife from his belt that he had brought with him and hurled it.
It spun, sailing through the air until it slammed into Nathan's chest. Then The Agent pounced forward, pinning the twitching young man to the forest floor. He pressed the chain of the handcuffs into the wounded man's throat, cutting off the air and quickly finishing him off, then ripping off his Tempo chip.
He did what had to be done. If Nathan's story had reached the public, it would have taken down the entire system that kept the world at peace. The Agent accepted that the dark-ness had found a home within him.
Numbness, as if he'd downed a bottle of liquor, spread through his body. A tiny, squeaking voice in his mind yelled at him to turn himself in. Murderer! Monster! The voice shouted.
He cast a final glance at Nathan's body and prowled back to the cabin through the creaking back door of the small home.
The place brimmed with dozens of art pieces in old-fashioned frames— a myriad of colors and crime.
While investigating the cabin, he found an old-fashioned safe in the bedroom. He attached the dead man's Tempo chip to his own and quickly found the 6-digit code for the digital keypad, a combination of Nathan's birthdate and his near-death experience, according to how it was filed in his memories; 927415.
His eyes widened as he opened the safe and found what appeared to be a weathered leather-bound book with a bluish-purple stone on the cover. "An actual book?" He muttered in astonishment, "This must be the re- markable discovery he was talking about." Being mindful of what he was now holding so delicately when it was moments ago, his hands extinguished a life.
The agent carefully opened the relic; something caught his eye amongst the antiquated pages and faded writing. After a moment of awe, he realized what he was holding in his hands.
"I don't believe this, I wrote my first essay in elementary school on this very subject," The Agent paused for a moment allowing himself to feel the wonder he once did when he was a young boy eager to learn about how the world works, " I never thought I would be holding… the actual journal of the man who first discovered how to harness free energy!"
He took a seat in a chair that was placed in front of a large viewing window which had a perfect view of the last surviving picturesque beauty his world had to offer. He didn't allow himself to be burdened with the chaos of the last few months or even the terrible things he convinced himself he had done. All that mattered was this moment. "This must be what serenity feels like," he took a deep breath and allowed himself to relax with an airy smile. The Agent took in the experience before him, his mind now quiet with a sense of calm that had been long desired throughout his journey.
Tenderly, he placed the book on his lap and eased it open with a steadiness of hand that seemed almost foreign considering the uncontrollable tremble that plagued him since he first felt C-5810 enter his mind.
He turned page after page, each one was an exhibit with hand-drawn schematics of the original prototype for the gravity-inspired crystal capacitor which gave the world he knows clean, free energy. Eliminating the worlds need to rely on the primitive methods of power that were previously controlled by governments and corporations, and subsequently sparked the global fire that is now known as The Final War of Man.
Reminiscent of how interesting this subject was to him in his youth, he realized that everything he had ever seen or read about this was from a recreation of what historians believed to be contained in it, which was decided by a committee and largely based off the factual knowledge we currently have