Here is Chapter 18 of The SubVersion Complex. This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.
╗ EIGHTEEN ╚
FATHER
Daniel
glared at Mr. Vickers. “I only ever did to her what I told you,”
he snapped. The older man glared back.
“Which
was quite enough, if I recall. I never authorized you to blackmail
this woman or anyone else for that matter!”
Anna's
head spun as she tried to process what she was hearing, but in
another moment she knew her knees were going to give way from beneath
her and she fell into a nearby chair without being asked. Mr. Vickers
knelt beside her and pulled a quilt from the sofa. “Here, wrap up
in this, your teeth are hammering.” He tried to smile at her.
Daniel,
now agitated, knelt on her other side and looked her in the eye. “You
said you had some success with my numbers.” When Anna nodded he
continued with more passion, “Well? Did you find them? Both of
them?”
Anna
nodded but couldn't say anything. She opened her mouth to explain but
her voice died and she was left to move her jaw in vain. Daniel moved
closer to her; Anna could again feel that masculine warmth and
dangerous tension near her face and she retreated into the chair.
“What did you find, Anna?” he asked. “Tell me!” Mr. Vickers
attempted to pull Daniel away but the younger man shook him off
violently. “Let me do this, Father!” he growled.
“Father?”
Anna finally managed to blurt. Daniel ignored her and repeated his
question.
“Tell
me, did you find them?”
Anna
nodded.
Daniel's
voice rose. “The woman? You found the woman too?”
She
nodded again, wilting.
“Is
she alive? Dammit, tell me she's alive!”
Anna
began to tremble from head to toe. Her breathing quickened, her heart
pounded in her ears. “No,” she gasped out in a hoarse whisper.
A
fearful transformation overtook Daniel. It was as if a bright fire in
his eyes had been quashed and all that remained were the freakish
charred remnants. His breathing turned ragged, and she could see him
fighting back hot tears. “You're lying,” he whispered.
“I
watched her die,” Anna replied weakly, her eyes filling with her
own tears. “She was thrown into an incinerator and was burnt up.”
Her heart felt near to bursting with grief for the poor man. “She's
dead.”
Even
Mr. Vickers was taken aback. He and Daniel exchanged appalled looks,
then Daniel looked away, fighting a powerful maelstrom of emotion.
Finally the younger man stood and paced the room while Anna and Mr.
Vickers watched him warily, unsure of what to expect next.
“Are
you sure she's dead, I mean could there be some mistake?” Daniel
stammered brokenly. Anna shook her head.
“There
was no mistake. Neville found her and sent her to the incinerator,”
she whispered back. “He said she had been frozen one too many times
to be of any more use . . . “
Daniel
clawed at the air. “Neville, that sickening beast,” he exclaimed.
Then he turned on her with a fierceness that truly frightened her.
“And you did nothing to stop it? You were right there and you did
nothing?”
Mr.
Vickers turned to him. “You don't know that, Daniel.”
Daniel
waved him away. “Let the bitch speak for herself, Father.”
Mr.
Vickers stood, and his old frame shook with anger. “That's quite
enough, Daniel.”
“Like
hell it is,” Daniel replied. He pointed to Anna. “She's the
reason for all of this, don't you see? Her work is what
industrialized all of this horror, the Versions and the SubVersions
and all of it!” His demeanor turned suddenly calm, but Anna knew
better than to relax. She was proven correct when Daniel pulled his
own pistol from his belt and dispassionately held it against her
head. She stifled a scream and shied away.
“This
whole damnable business is her fault, it's on her head. Would it not
be just to take her head for it?” Daniel remarked coldly. “Eh,
Father? You're always spouting about justice and mercy, you tell me
what you think! Then perhaps I'll decide not to pull the trigger.
Anna
saw to her surprise that Mr. Vickers had slid between her and the
barrel of the gun. “Daniel, this woman is special to me. But even
if she wasn't I would still stand between you and the commission of a
grave crime against your own soul and this woman's body. She deserves
to be shot just as little as you do.”
Daniel
threw up his free hand in exasperation. “Is there no justice in
this world? What would be so wrong about blowing her away for her
crimes?” he cried. “She is HomoGen! She is the enemy!”
“Daniel.”
Mr. Vickers voice was soothing but firm. “You are grieving. But you
will not grieve with a
gun in your hand, nor will you threaten Annalise with any more
violence. You will not.”
Suddenly
Anna found herself exasperated with Daniel. She astonished even
herself by pushing Mr. Vickers aside, grabbing the gun and placing
the muzzle against her forehead. “No, it's all right Mr. Vickers.
Go ahead and kill me, Daniel. Go on, do it. Pull the trigger. Talk
about me like I'm not here and have no say, blow my brains out. I am
the cause of all your problems, I am sure. I'm not sure why I care to
live anyways, go ahead!”
Daniel
was taken aback even in his rage. “Why?” he asked.
“Because
I've seen enough today to make me doubt there is anything good left
here or in you or anywhere else. So pull the trigger!”
Anna's voice exuded desperation.
“That's
enough, both of you!” Mr. Vickers said, quietly but in a voice of
authority. He gently grasped the gun and pointed it away. To Anna's
dumbfounded surprise Daniel let the gun drop completely into the
older man's hand and then walked away towards the fireplace.
She
watched Daniel grasp the mantelpiece and put his forehead against the
wood. What was passing through his mind she couldn't know, but she
did see several tears land on the hearth below and her heart again
went out to him. Her anger had been brief, and all the feeling she
had left for him was sorrow. She then remembered Sonya and her pulse
intensified. All was not lost. She cleared her throat. “Daniel?”
He
turned slowly to glare at her. Nothing daunted, she continued. “Your
daughter, Sonya. She's alive. She's alive, and I spoke to her.”
A
change occurred immediately. Hope visibly returned to the
grief-stricken face and he approached her cautiously yet with
unmistakable excitement. “You spoke to her?”
Anna
nodded. “After a fashion.” She swallowed. “They -they're using
her for an experiment.”
Daniel
stood still, waiting. Whether it was patience or pent-up fury that
kept him rooted to the floor she couldn't tell, but he waited
nonetheless. Anna continued fearfully. “It's the project that they
originally hired you for, the reason they took your brain scans. They
built a system that used your scans to interface with other human
brains via a special computer. Except,” she swallowed again, “that
the heart of the transfer computer is a person.”
“Go
on.”
“Sonya.
She is the computer. And I spoke to her through the
interface.”
Behind
the mask of his face Anna detected a hint of dismay, and Daniel stood
for a full minute with his arms crossed, breathing slowly. He then
roused himself, rounded the bend to the hallway and shut himself in
the nearby bedroom with a slam.
Anna
shivered and sighed a long sigh of relief. He was gone, at least for
the moment, and now that she could relax a powerful exhaustion seeped
into her bones. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair,
pulling the quilt closer around her clammy body for warmth. The quilt
smelled good, a kind of delightfully shabby grandmother type smell,
and she buried her face in it and breathed slowly.
“That
was my wife's,” a voice said, and Anna felt a warm hand on the back
of her head. She tensed, then relaxed at Mr. Vicker's touch. Somehow
his was the first touch today that she trusted, and she let his hand
rest where it lay until she turned to look up at him.
“I'm
sorry she's gone,” she whispered.
“And
I as well,” Mr. Vickers replied, sitting down in the chair opposite
her. He looked even older than usual today. He folded his hands in
his lap and looked at them for a minute, then his eyes flicked back
up to her face. “I can only guess the kinds of questions you have
for me right now, and you deserve the answers to them.”
She
did have questions, and they threatened to jumble together as she
tried to decide which to ask him first. However, she decided to save
the most obvious one for second and ask him the more burning one
first: “How did you know?”
Mr,
Vickers' brow furrowed. “How did I know what?”
Anna's
pride suddenly threatened to choke off her explanation, but she
forged ahead despite her discomfort. “You said . . . you've warned
me for years that I would regret what I did one day.” She paused,
hesitant. “Because I- I do regret it.” She stared back at him,
straight into his soulful eyes. “How did you know? How did you know
that . . . that I was not happy?”
Mr.
Vickers looked back at her mildly, his only movement the rise and
fall of his chest. Anna almost thought she saw a smile brewing deep
inside him. He cocked his head at her and rubbed his forehead with
his fingers. “Annalise,” he began, the smile that she suspected
beginning to curl the edges of his mouth, “Annalise, I am old. I've
watched many people grow and change, I've grown and changed myself.
And if I've learned anything from my observations of people, young
and old, that would be that I know when they are unhappy. When
someone is unhappy it isn't usually difficult to find the cause, as
long as one takes the time and the care to get to know that person.”
Anna
frowned, unsure if he had answered the question. “But- but how did
you know? Specifically?”
The
full-blown smile appeared. “Because HomoGen's work, and Central
Admin's work, are fundamentally untrue. You cannot be happy
following that which is untrue.”
The
concept was so foreign to her that she sat silently, trying to let
the words penetrate. Untrue? Why was it untrue? Before she
would have laughed in his face at such a suggestion, but now
something in her soul resonated to the concept, though she didn't
know why.
Mr.
Vickers leaned forward towards her and he took her hands in his. “If
you really want to know how I know, all you have to do is look around
you, and think. You are unhappy because you know deep in your soul
that what you do and what you've seen are troubling things. They are
not good, they are untrue.” He released her hands. “There
is no love in what HomoGen does, and there never will be. And you
desire love. I see it with you and Jesse, I see it with your devotion
to your job, I see it in everything you do. You want to love and to
be loved.”
Anna's
breath caught in her throat. One part of her demanded she rebel
against his words, that she drive him away. She felt her desire for
her work, her memories of HomoGen being pulled away from her and her
body screamed that she resist. Then suddenly she heard the
Secretary's words again: There is no love in this entire process,
and it's about time the charade was dropped.
Adam
knew that what he was doing was untrue.
The
other part of her found itself listening to Mr. Vickers. “Jesse
doesn't love me,” she blurted out. “He never did.”
“Probably
not,” Mr. Vickers agreed.
“Did
you know the SubVersion complex existed?” she asked, trying to
change the subject.
“We
had a pretty good idea that the part you saw did indeed exist, and of
course Daniel is familiar with a certain portion of it. But we
weren't absolutely sure what was going on there until this afternoon.
You'll have to give us the rest of the details later of course,”
Mr. Vickers said, leaning back again in his chair. “Which leads to
your next question: why is Daniel in my house?”
Anna
nodded.
Mr.
Vickers shrugged. “He is Verité. So am I.”
Even
though she had already begun to guess, the revelation still shocked
her. “How could you be Verité?” she demanded.
“Because
Verité was my idea.”
Now
she truly gaped at him. “Your what?”
“Verité
is the brainchild of none other than myself, your father, and your
mother,” Mr. Vickers continued. “It exists now partly under my
supervision and guidance.”
Anna's
head spun. She struggled to hold her rising ire in check and she sat
up straight, the quilt falling away from her shoulders. “You run
Verité? And my parents used to as well? Then how in the world did
Verité justify killing my parents? What sort of rationalizing did
they have to do, did you have to do?”
Mr.
Vickers shifted in his seat, less with discomfort it seemed than a
kind of disappointment. “Annalise, why in the world would we have
killed your parents? They were our biggest allies.”
Confused
and faltering, Anna continued: “But- it was all over the news! It's
what I've been told for ages, the Secretary even corroborated it!”
“And
you believe everything the media and Central Admin put out?” Mr.
Vickers eyed her. “The Party Secretary, he is a trustworthy and
honest man? He has never lied to you before? Annalise, Central Admin
denies that the SubVersion complex even exists. Their mission from
the first day of Verité's existence has always been to discredit and
destroy us, by any means possible. Back in the day a warning came to
us, that someone from Central Admin knew that your parents were with
Verité and within that same week your parents were dead.”
He stared hard at Anna. “Killed with a weapon we didn't even
possess at the time. I assure you, we had nothing to do with it. It
wouldn't have made any sense.”
Anna
shook her head; all of this new information was almost too much to
bear. She felt a new anger now, the horrible thought that everything
she had ever known was a lie and that she would never know the truth.
Mr. Vickers' story rang true, but she felt afraid as her old opinions
crumbled to pieces around her. Suddenly her anger could center on no one
but herself.
Her
next question surfaced and she decided to change the subject again.
“Daniel called you 'Father.' Are you his father?”
Mr.
Vickers smiled. “In a way, yes. I am a Catholic priest.”
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