The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Eighteen

More surprises, as usual. Let me know what ya'll think, I love getting feedback on the new material.

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.”

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Twelve

Here is the next chapter of The SubVersion Complex. Hope you all enjoy! If you missed Chapter Eleven, click here.

This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ TWELVE ╚

DANIEL MARCUS

 

There had been no time to cry out in pain, no time to do anything other than simply collapse to her knees as her attacker held her securely from behind. The intruder's grunted warning into Anna's ear was entirely unnecessary; her brain was shocked and frozen in time and she felt she would have done anything he wanted had he merely expressed the desire.

The man behind her wasted no time. “Good. Get up.” He hauled her firmly to her feet, still pinning her twisted arm behind her back. She complied without a thought or a sound, and watched through a dazed semi-consciousness as he snatched her gun from the floor with his free hand. They both made their awkward way to her living room and the man pushed her to a sitting position on the sofa.

“You will sit quietly and listen, and I will talk,” he said as he flicked on the table lamp and began to strip her gun down to its component parts. She watched with growing concern as frame, slide, barrel, magazine, and spring came apart, and he pitched each piece unceremoniously to various corners of the room. The speed and efficiency of the act startled her, and she became even more alarmed when he did not pitch the barrel but instead kept it in his hand.

She had recovered enough to look at his face and was shocked to realize that it was the same man that had picked her up off the ground at the doctor's office. He stood even taller than she remembered, dressed entirely in black combat gear with his own firearm strapped firmly to his waist and various gear clipped to his belt. She had not seen his eyes at their first encounter due to his sunglasses, but now they were plainly visible: gray, piercing eyes glowing with a hunted fierceness, frightening in their intensity and danger.

Pain suddenly began to rage through her arm and her knees, and she moaned as they began to stab and ache. “You hurt me,” she mumbled almost incoherently.

The man didn't even glance up. “You'll live,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We have more important things to talk about. You are going to do something for me.” He pulled open a pocket on his harness and began to fish inside it for something. “You have top security access at Central Admin and you are going to use it.”

Anna's brain began roiling with obvious questions. “How did you get into my house?” she stammered, disregarding his request. “I set my alarm, I locked the door . . . “

The man did not respond until he had found what was in his pocket, a small scrap of paper with writing scrawled on one side. “I used an access card, same as you would have when you get home at night.”

“But- but I didn't give you my access card!” she blurted out stupidly. “And you didn't steal it, I still have it.”

“I stole it after a fashion,” the man replied. “One doesn't have to take an access card to make it work. I copied it.”

“When?” Anna asked, bewildered.

“At the doctor's office. I was close to you long enough to copy it wirelessly. You really ought to secure your house better against intrusion if you don't want things like your code slicer stolen.”

Panic quickly rose into Anna's throat and threatened to suffocate her. How in the world did her know about her code slicer? How in the world was he standing right here right now? How in the world . . . Then an insane thought took shape in her muddled head. “Who are you?” she whispered, although she was almost certain she already knew the answer. Her suspicions were confirmed when he looked her dead in the eyes and spoke again.

“I am Daniel Marcus, and I know you already know that name. I'm not sure what you've been told about me and who I am, but I am really not in the mood for correcting back story that they may have gotten wrong.” He grasped one of her wrists and planted the crumpled paper he held into her own palm. “I need you to research these for me.”

Anna blinked incredulously at him for several moments before her eyes fell to the paper in her hand. She unfolded it and stared, then held it closer and stared longer with growing confusion. Its only contents were two sets of letters and numbers: SVC1001-1FX and SVC5403-1F. She looked back up at Daniel. “I have no idea what this is.”

“Each one is a serial number in your database,” Daniel replied.

Anna shook her head. “That doesn't help me at all,” she faltered. “I don't even know which database to begin looking in. How am I supposed to look them up when I don't know that?”

Daniel smiled at her, a cold and precarious expression. “Do you think I'm that stupid? In your orientation did Central Admin not cover the “Search All” option from the main screen on your desk computer?”

Anna gritted her teeth, her consternation rapidly growing. “Uh, they did . . . “

“Then use the damn system to do what it was built to do.”

In desperation Anna tried again. “What are these numbers even for? What do they mean?”

Daniel leaned against the nearest wall whilst keeping his eyes firmly affixed to his victim. Anna could hear his breathing become more labored, with sadness or anger she couldn't tell but she guessed some great emotional storm raged inside the man. Finally he crossed his arms and drew breath.

“The SVC stands for 'SubVersion Complex,' the middle numerals are the lot number, and the F stands for Female.” Daniel struggled with the words. “The 1 before it signifies that the female in question has no twin.”

Anna could hardly believe what she was hearing. In fact, it sounded so silly, especially coming out of such a serious man's mouth that despite her discomfiture she could barely contain a hysterical laugh. “Subversion Complex? As in, the Subversion Complex of urban legend? You cannot be serious! You are either a conspiracy theorist of the highest order or you are insane!”

Daniel lunged away from the wall and dropped to his knees in front of her so quickly that she nearly shrieked. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa and shielded her face from his eyes, which now burned only inches from her own. He had his hands on both sides of her, balled into fists and grinding into the cushions while his face floated so close to her own that she could feel the heat of his quiet fury. “I am neither, Anna” he growled, his voice shaking. “Some have speculated about the SubVersion Complex, others have fought to find out if it exists. It does indeed exist, and I know because I have seen a part of it. So do not ever give me grief over conspiracy theories and urban legends ever again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Anna's hands and breathing shook as she nodded desperately. The immediacy of his tone had somehow managed to obliterate her doubt, at least for the moment. Daniel remained uncomfortably close to her, though, and appeared to have little intention of moving any time soon.

“You are looking for two females, and I need to know the status and location of both of them as soon as is practicable for you to get the info to me.”

“You keep saying females,” Anna asked, still cringing away from him. “Female what?”

“Female humans, Anna. Try to keep up.”

“Female humans? But what- what is the Subversion Complex?” Anna persisted. Her confusion grew ever stronger, and even her memories of the urban legends failed her in the details. The Subversion Complex had always appeared in the conspiracy theories as some horrific underground prison, or something of that sort, a subterranean labyrinth that housed some awful secret. However, there had never been any proof of it, and most of the public, including her, disbelieved and even laughed at the notion.

And now Daniel Marcus claimed he had been there.

Daniel tore himself away from the sofa and stood again, and Anna could immediately tell she was not going to get much more from him. His eyes still fixed on her face, he breathed unevenly and worked his jaw. “You will perform the “Search All” function, or whatever function you can find to do the trick, and you will find out the status of these two females for me. It would be an understatement to say that they are dear to me; they are my life. You will do this for me, and you will report back with your findings.”

One of Anna's conversations with Dr. Jarrod flashed back into her mind and she remembered he had said Daniel had gotten tangled up with some woman at Central Admin. Perhaps this was her. She looked up at Daniel and all of a sudden she realized she despised this man, as fearsome as he was. Central Admin and the Secretary carried enough weight between them to squash one man like Daniel. She couldn't recall what had made him seem attractive to her before.

She stared at him with all the defiance she could muster and crossed her arms across her chest. “And what happens if I refuse to do all of this? I could report you, show the Party Secretary the numbers on your list, have you hunted down like the criminal you are. What is to stop me? Are you going to kill me?”

For the second time a smile split Daniel's face. “No, I am not going to kill you. But I'll gladly let you hang yourself if that's your fancy.”

Anna's blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

“I have two ways of ensuring that you will get this done for me. The first is the highly incriminating data package that my compatriots have ready to drop on your comfortable little life if you choose to ignore me. It has just about every kind of damning evidence we could invent linking you with the Verité group, and believe you me, I am not afraid to use all of it against you if you betray me.”

Anna began to shake again. Along with the abject fear pulsing through her veins, her body had begun to crash after all that wine and she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate properly. “And the other way?” she croaked.

“The other way is this.” From the same pocket that the paper had emerged from now came another object, this one small and round and shiny. Daniel held it up so that she was sure to see. Anna realized with horror that it was her borrowed code slicer, the slicer that was supposed to be nestled comfortably inside her safe upstairs. Her stomach fell away completely.

“How did you get that?” she gasped.

Daniel looked askance at her. “You have a biometric lock on that safe, Anna, and your fingerprints are all over this house. Don't insult me.” He held it just out of her reach. “As I understand, this slicer needs to go back to HomoGen pretty soon. A couple weeks, perhaps? And then they will begin to demand it of you. I hope you are privy to the fact that this device is worth more than your entire property, and that you'd have to invent a fine excuse to explain its disappearance. So I will be taking this with me until I hear back from you.”

“Wait wait wait!” Anna stammered breathlessly. “Please don't, if I lose that I lose everything! And how am I supposed to get in touch with you anyways? I don't know how, you're liable to disappear and never come back!”

Daniel pulled a small commex handset from his belt and tossed it onto the sofa next to her. “You will use this,” he said. “I know you are a computer tech and that your first thought will be to hack this device and discover my location, but rest assured we've already taken that into consideration. If you take it apart it will signal me and then destroy itself. If you attempt to bring it into Central Admin the guards will scan your vehicle and yourself and they will find it. If you tamper with the code inside at all it will alert me. So don't try anything, it would only be a waste of both of our time.”

He looked at her one last time. “I don't want to do this, I wish there was another way, but there is no other way I know of. Play along and everything will be fine. Don't play along, and I and my allies will rain hellfire down on you.”

“Your allies?”

“Yes, if again you had not already guessed. They are Verité, and so am I.” He turned to leave, then paused briefly by the entrance to the kitchen. He held up his hand, and Anna saw the barrel of her gun shining between his fingers. “You know, it would take a professional only a couple seconds to reassemble this weapon under ideal circumstances. Your weapon is a bit more . . . scattered. I'll tell you what, since you fancy yourself handy with a gun, I will give you this-” he indicated the barrel “-and we will see how quickly you can reassemble and get off a shot at me. Farewell.”

With that, he tossed her the barrel and disappeared into the kitchen. Anna immediately dove for the floor and scrabbled for the remaining pieces of her firearm, snapping and clicking it all back together as quickly as her training allowed. When it was finally assembled again she raced through the kitchen to the back door, but she already knew it was a lost cause. Daniel Marcus was gone, and she was trapped.

She stumbled back into the living room overwhelmed with exhaustion and anger and fear. After stripping the magazine from her gun she threw them both onto the coffee table, then threw herself onto the sofa and began to cry. Her body trembled with wrenching violent sobs for a long time before she drifted fitfully off to sleep.