Manipulator (10 page)

“What are we looking for?” Kate asked loudly, raising her voice to talk to him over the sound of the heavy rain smashing into the ground.

“I’m not exactly sure,” Owen answered sheepishly. Right here and now was the first time he’d ever come back to this place in both PRoGRaM and in reality. He tried to stay away from Redford Avenue as much as he possibly could. It only brought bad memories and pain back to him. “Just anything out of the ordinary I suppose,” Owen continued. “It was a strange event, the crash I mean. Some odd things were happening.”

“Why haven’t you ever come back here?" Kate asked seriously, almost ignoring his ramblings. "Why haven't you used PRoGRaM to do this before? To see if you could find out who was driving that van?"

“I try not to think about it,” Owen said. “Until today I believed that the crash was just an accident, I had no reason to come back here. This place only causes me pain,” he admitted, looking to the ground as he felt a wash of emotions run over him, unsure of whether or not he should be showing his real side to Kate. “I’d have no control over myself if I ever did find out who was driving that van. I’m afraid of what I might end up doing to them.”

“Even though whoever was driving the van didn’t stop to help? And that he just drove away? Don’t you think he deserves it?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Owen answered.
That’s because I’ve thought about it every day since.
“Yes he deserves it. But I’m not going to actively seek out whoever it was. The entire crash was an accident. I’ve accepted that. Annie wouldn’t have wanted me to go seeking revenge. She thought better of me than that. I refuse to do wrong by her, even if she’s not here anymore.”

“I understand, Owen,” Kate replied sympathetically.

“Okay, lets carry on playing it out,” Owen spoke reluctantly. He would rather play out the memory in front of him that have to answer more of Kate’s difficult questions.

The two of them stood on the sidelines and continued to watch as his memory played out in front of them. Owen watched on, remembering in exact detail everything that was about to happen. After all, everything that he was seeing was coming from inside his head, similar to the events of the night before with Eli Roth's memories.

“Kate, pause it,” Owen said out loud, getting her to stop the transfer of information. She quickly clenched her fist tightly and willed the memory to stop. The entire scene around them froze, but the rain kept hammering on down. Owen and Kate both stood and observed everything that was happening. Owen’s car, with Annie in the driver's seat was seconds away from being smashed into and flipped over. The van was now in sight, coming in from the other direction of the crossroads at Redford Avenue.

“Oh my God!” Kate gasped as she saw what was happening at the side of the road. She had seen what Owen had seen on the night of the accident.

The man with the gun.

There he was, standing on the pavement of Redford Avenue, just across the road from where Owen and Kate now stood. There was a man next to him, down on his knee’s with a black bag over his head and his hands bound behind his back. The man on the side of the road held a gun to the back of the bound man’s head, ready to execute him in cold blood on the street. And no-one was around to see it.

“It may not be real,” Owen replied to her with a sigh. He knew that his head was messed up, but having to admit it to other people when it was all out on display was difficult
and
embarrassing. “The doctors told me that the crash could have severely messed with some of my memories. Even though I believe that this is what happened, it may not be an accurate account of events. For all I know, it was something I was thinking about at the time and it just worked its way into my version of events.”

“Okay…” Kate said slowly, unsure of what to make of it.

“I think we should look around whilst the memory is frozen,” Owen said. “To see if anything stands out.”

“You don’t sound like you want to,” Kate replied.

“You know, I was almost over all this,” Owen said with a hint of anger showing in his tone of voice. “I was so close to just putting it behind me and moving on. Then out of nowhere, all this shit just gets opened up again. So yeah, I’ll admit it, I don't want to be here,” he finished, getting right up close to Kate’s face as he spoke.

“Owen, I don’t know what to…”

“It’s okay,” he said back to her as he backed off a little, his tone settling down. “It’s not your fault. it’s no-ones fault.”

A few moments of silence passed between them as they looked at each other.

“Hey, look at that,” Kate said as her facial expression changed to sudden surprise. She pointed to something that was happening behind Owen.

Nick was communicating with the two of them from the real world, from the outside of PRoGRaM. This was extremely rare. It would’ve had to have been something really important in order for Nick to interrupt a live memory. The wall behind where Owen was standing began to transform as he turned to look at it.

The entire wall of the huge building before him slowly morphed from its natural red and orange brickwork into a solid, pure, white wall. It looked completely unreal and out of place compared to the rest of the world around them.

Nick was altering the properties of the PRoGRaM world. None of his changes would be permanent, or would stick to this world forever. The world of PRoGRaM was like a protected, read-only file. Any changes you did make could never be saved.

Black letters began to appear on the huge white wall that had materialised only moments before. A message from Nick began to appear as he was typing it out on his computer in the real world. It was the easiest way to convey information from the outside of PRoGRaM, to the people on the inside.

Quick information drop. Not sure if this event is relevant but it seems suspicious. A man named Marcus Ortega has minutes ago been involved in a car accident, strangely similar to your wife’s hit and run. He's being taken to a local hospital. Incoming picture of the man now. Stand by…

A few seconds passed by with Owen and Kate staring up at the message that Nick had just left for them. The message began to dissolve away, random letters disappearing in no sequence, leaving the canvas white once more. Slowly loading, from top to bottom, an image of a mans face digitally began to manifest itself on the huge white wall in front of them. Neither Owen nor Kate said anything, They both just stood there, staring at the picture.
This mans face…
Owen thought to himself.

“Owen?” Kate said as he stood there dumbfounded, looking up at the picture.

“That’s the guy,” Owen responded confidently. “That’s the Marcus we’re looking for.” Kate could hear undertones of anger seeping through Owen’s tone of voice.

“How can you possibly know that? This man has…”

“Look,” Owen replied, cutting Kate off as he motioned with his hand, over to something in the distance. “This
has
to be the man we’re looking for,” he said as he pointed over to the man frozen in time, ready to execute somebody right by the side of the road. “Because he was there the night Annie died.”

And sure as hell, there he was.

Holding the gun to the back of another mans head.

Marcus Ortega.

PART THREE: MARCUS ORTEGA

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”

Karl Marx

Chapter Nineteen

Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)

Location: Unknown

“So,” Victoria started. “Seeing this man, Marcus Ortega inside your own, personal memories… Was this what convinced you that your wife’s death was no accident?”

Owen sat and thought about it whilst he repositioned himself in the chair that he was sat in, trying to make himself comfortable. “Absolutely," he answered. "Nothing about her death added up to it being anything other than an accident. I was naturally sceptical up until this point. Wouldn’t you be?”

“I can’t answer that,” she responded emotionlessly.

“Good point,” Owen replied, shrugging his shoulders.

“So, you’ve just found one of the three men on your list. What was your next move?” Victoria asked.

“I had to go and speak to him, to find out if he really did have any kind of connection to Annie.”

“Did you not consider this a bad move considering the intimately personal connection to the case?”

“Absolutely not,” Owen replied confidently. "If anything, that was what pushed me to go." He firmly believed that despite his emotional and personal connection to the case at hand, he was still in complete control of the investigation, and that throughout the entire ordeal, he didn’t let his personal feelings cloud his judgement.
At least at this point in my story.

“We played the entire situation out by the book,” Owen continued to explain to Victoria whilst she looked back at him with her judging eyes. “I’ve told you. We had complete jurisdiction on the case.”
 

“Jurisdiction given to you by the local FBI team?” she spat back at him quickly, catching him slightly off guard. He wasn’t expecting such an emotion filled response. “Surely you must have considered going to your superiors with this?”
 

“Not really. I had it under control,” Owen said, lying through his teeth.

“But obviously not for long. The fact Mr Ortega died whilst in your care shows your complete lack of control of the situation.”

Owen felt a lump in his chest as he thought about what happened to Marcus. He swallowed and cleared his throat before continuing. “Aren’t we getting ahead of things?” he asked.

“Yes, you’re right. I apologise,” Victoria said as she flicked back through the notes that she had been taking so far until she found just what it was that she was looking for. “You’ve mentioned several times so far, that at the scene of Annie’s crash, you saw Mr. Ortega about to execute somebody on the street. Did you ever find out who this person was?”

“Yes. But we’ll get to that. I don’t want to spoil things for you now, do I?”

Chapter Twenty

Date: December 9th 2035

Location: New York

Nick put his foot down as he fired the three of them towards Wilson Place Hospital on the other side of New York City. Owen and Kate, who were sat in the back of their PRoGRaM Team’s Jeep, felt the G-Force push them back into their seats as Nick hit the gas, finally finding a clear stretch of road. Trying to get across the city on its own was a challenge, but the midday lunch rush was really slowing them down, even with their sirens blazing.

Before they left their PRoGRaM Analytic Base, the latest information that Nick had received had put Marcus right in the middle of a hit and run. Whoever had hit him had left the man for dead. His car was totalled, and with the crash happening in a relatively quiet part of town, there were hardly any witnesses. Those people who
did
see the crash, didn’t actually have any valid information as to whether or not it really was an accident, or something a little more sinister.

“Owen, are you okay?” Kate asked, her voice piercing the silence next to him. He blinked and recognised the question unconsciously, but the conscious side of his mind wasn’t quite ready to respond to her yet. Mentally, he had to ask himself the question.
Am I okay?
But thinking about it for even a short period of time brought him straight to the only logical conclusion.

He wasn’t okay.

In fact, he hadn’t been with it since he had first seen Marcus Ortega inside his own memory just an hour before. Kate cautiously reached out her hand over to Owen and placed it on the top of his shoulder, repeating his name in an attempt to get him to answer.

“Owen?”

Owen raised his eyebrows, blinking several times in succession as he did so, snapping himself out of the daydream from which he had been completely enthralled in for the last few minutes.

“I’m… okay,” he answered, nodding his head slowly. He lied. Owen had completely lost his baseline as to whether or not he was actually okay. In the past hour, he’d managed to go over so many different events and scenarios in his head regarding Annie that he was finding it difficult to snap out of his continuous state of shock and pull himself back into reality.

Owen felt himself suddenly lurch back into his seat as Nick once again stamped his foot down on the accelerator. He knew that by now, Wilson Place Hospital couldn't be too far away from their current location. Owen just hoped that they hadn’t wasted too much time in getting to Marcus. Their last intelligence report made out that the man was in pretty bad shape.

“Let me know if you need to talk about anything okay?” Kate said, unsure as to whether Owen was even listening to her. He turned and smiled, yet didn't give her any form of direct answer, because in all honesty he didn’t really know what to say. He knew that she was just being supportive for him because of everything that was going on, but because he didn’t know her too well and because of the fact that she was a new member of the team, it all felt a bit odd to him. He didn’t feel like he knew her well enough to open up to her. Not yet.

Owen turned away and looked back out of the window, continuing to watch the people on the other side of the glass living their lives, oblivious to the pain and confusion that was coursing through him. In the distance he heard a siren, gradually getting closer to their Jeep. An ambulance flew past at breakneck speed, going in the opposite direction to which they were travelling.