Manipulator (22 page)

In their own time, Owen and Kate both nodded back to Eli, who then picked up an injection gun that had been sat on his lap for the duration of the journey so far. Steadying his hands over the rocking motion of the van, he took the small plastic lid off the gun, exposing the tip of the needle hidden inside.

Reaching over gently, Eli pushed the needle into Owen’s leg and fired a small shot of red liquid into his bloodstream. Within seconds, the world around Owen started to fade away to darkness.

Here we go.

Alex Morgan.

Chapter Forty Three

Date: December 11th 2035

Location: New York Streets

Little did they know, their team was being watched. Waiting directly opposite where Nick had pulled up his van was a small car which had been inconspicuously parked for hours. Inside, a dark figure of a man was sat there, silently watching out for signs of activity. Finally, after many painstakingly boring hours, it seemed like something was about to happen. He couldn't help but pull out his phone and update his boss on the change in activity, just like they'd told him to.

“What’s happening?” the distorted voice said down the phone to Ethan. It was barely understandable, and answered without even the slightest sign of a greeting. Although, Ethan was used to their straight-to-the-point attitude now. Just as he had grown accustomed to the robotic voice that his boss used to mask their own voice.

“Nothing,” Ethan said, updating them of the situation. “They’re just sitting there in a van. I don’t know what they’re doing.”

The voice on the other end of the phone line said nothing in return. Ethan sat, waiting patiently for further instruction, but nothing came. In the end, he gave in and made the first move. “Maybe it’s time we should stop?” he asked.

“No,” the voice replied to him suddenly. “It is interesting to see the commitment that Owen is putting into this. Let’s play the game a little more, shall we?”

“What do you want me to do?” Ethan enquired, curious of what his next order was. He watched as the van in front of Owen’s building pulled out and merged into what little traffic there was on the city streets.

“Scare them a little,” the voice replied.

“What’s that going to do?” Ethan asked in a questioning tone, feeling that the task he was being given was pointless. He was sick of taking half-measures with Owen and his team. It always seemed to be a warning and never a punishment. Ethan was more of a full measures kind of man. He didn’t mess around, and was always one for taking the more direct course of action, regardless of what the consequences were. He started up his car’s engine, preparing to take pursuit of Owen.

“Remind them that they are not in control,” the robotic voice said to him.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
He heard as the boss on the other end of the phone line hung up.

Ethan sighed, put his foot on the accelerator and pulled his car out into the traffic in order to follow Owen's van.

The game was on.

Chapter Forty Four

Date: December 11th 2035

Location: PRoGRaM

Disorientation.

Heavier.

Difficult.

Painful.

Owen clutched onto his head with both of his hands and dropped quickly down to his knees. He screamed out in agony from the pain pulsing through his mind.

What's happening to me?

The agony was too intense, and Owen's knees just couldn’t hold him anymore, causing them to buckle out weakly from beneath him. He fell to his side, hitting the floor hard, but never once released his hands from grasping the sides of his head, as if it was doing something to stop the pain.

Archer curled his body up, quickly assuming the foetal position on the floor.

OWEN!

Through the agony, Owen heard someone screaming his name. A female voice. Muffled, but distinguishable. It was as If his head was being held underwater. But he could tell that muffled voice anywhere. It was Kate. She was calling out to him as he held his eyes tightly shut and stayed as still as he possibly could on the floor, wishing that the pain would just go away.

He felt hands gently shaking him, trying to snap him out of what must have looked like some sort of seizure. But the pain had hit him too much, too fast. He wasn’t going to live the agony of this one down for hours. Slowly, Owen opened his eyes to see Kate in front of him. She was crouched down over his body, wishing him back from the border of death. His vision was blurry, but he could make out her lips moving, her muffled voice shouting his name out repeatedly.

He blinked a few times. He tried to blink the pain away, but he wasn’t that fortunate. He needed to just lie there until it passed.
Assuming that it will pass.
Archer thought. Minutes felt like hours, the pressure that was bearing down on his head must have been killing him slowly.

“Eli!” Kate called out emotionally. It was the first word that he could hear properly. The first word that Owen could hear which wasn't distorted whilst coming out of her mouth. She continued speaking, a dreaded look of concern on her face. “There’s something wrong with Owen… he’s having a really bad reaction to this PRoGRaM entry.”

“No,” Owen managed to say, cutting her off before she did something stupid. He needed to stop her. She was trying to get Eli to pull them out of PRoGRaM, but he couldn’t afford that. He
needed
to do this.

“No,” he said again, more demanding this time. His tone managed to grab Kate's full attention. “Don’t stop this... Give me time.”

“Owen, PRoGRaM is killing you," she said back to him quietly, understanding the pain that he was in and not wanting to irritate it further. "We need to stop.”
 

“No,” he responded desperately, shaking his head at her, regardless of the pain that was coursing through it with every movement he made. “It’s going now. Slowly. Give me a minute. Please.”

He was grateful that Kate listened to him. She was willing to give him time on his own to recover instead of pressing him on the subject further. He managed to roll himself out of the foetal position and onto his back, letting himself stare up at the White Room’s ceiling. A few minutes passed before he felt like he was capable of getting himself upright. But that didn't mean that the pain had passed. It hadn't. Not fully anyway, but it was endurable enough for him to get up and do his job. He managed to pull himself to hit feet, with a little help from Kate.

“What happened?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know,” Owen said, slowly and gently shaking his head, trying not to aggravate his headache into coming back on a full blown rampage. “PRoGRaM entry I think,” he guessed, entirely unsure of just what it was that was causing him the pain.
Although I have a pretty good idea…

“We’re using it too much aren't we?” Kate asked rhetorically. “You said it yourself before. No-one's tested out PRoGRaM to this extent. Ever. We need to stop after this. We need to have a break. It’s killing you Owen.”

He knew that Kate was right, even if he wasn’t willing to admit it to her. He needed to stop using PRoGRaM after today, at least for a little while anyway.

Only then did he began to worry about the time that we be upon him soon in which he would have to exit this digital world. Then, the pain would start all over again. He shuddered in anticipation.
We need to finish this. I can’t take much more.

“Let’s get this over with. We can worry about me later,” Owen said. “We’ll portal out from here into the Prison System.”

“We can open a portal in here?” Kate asked. “I was expecting us to use The White Room to get in.”

"Well, that
was
the plan," Owen said. "But then we figured out that the portal's would work. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. We can create the portal from here without issue.”

Owen felt something heavy materialise onto him. He looked over his shoulder and suddenly found that he was wearing a backpack.
It's the one Eli mentioned before me and Kate entered PRoGRaM.
Up until this point he had been so pre-occupied with controlling his pain that he hadn’t even remembered that it would appear.

He took it off his back and swung it round so that he held it in his hands in front of him. Opening it up, Owen found two masks inside. They were just what they were going to need to make sure that they weren’t discovered. “We’re going to need to put these on,” he said to Kate as he handed one of the masks from out of the bag over to her.

Even on Owen's first glance, the masks looked absolutely terrifying.
What was Eli thinking?

She took it from him and began to put it on, pulling it over her head and then tightening it at the back to make sure that it wasn’t going to fall off. Owen held the second mask for himself in one hand and dropped his now empty backpack to the floor. Looking up at Kate, he saw that she had just about managed to put her mask on by herself.

She looked like something straight out of a horror movie.

Surrounding the entirety of Kate’s face was a gas mask.

The design that she wore was extremely similar to those that ground soldiers used during World War I and II. It was the type with the long snout to stop whoever it was that was wearing it from inhaling any dangerous gasses. Owen tried hard to see through the dark glass visor around her eyes, but he couldn’t see anything at all through it. This was good news. At least there was no way that anybody was going to recognise them on the other side of the portal once it opened.

Owen followed suit and began to put his own mask on. He slid it over his head and positioned it properly so that he could see through the visor around his eyes. Once he was happy, he tightened it up at the back and then shook his head a little to make sure that it wasn’t going to fall off. He instantly regretted the action. Shaking his head knocked him about a bit, bringing back the pain that hit him hard when he entered this world. He made a mental note to take it easy and to
definitely
not do that again.

“Looks really creepy,” Kate said to Owen once his mask was fitted around his head properly. Her voice was muffled to him under her mask, sounding strangely similar to the way that Owen heard her voice earlier, back when he was suffering hard with the pressure in his head.

They were ready. It was time to get going.

In front of the two of them, on one of the walls of the White Room, a huge portal opened up. Unlike when Owen and Eli had run the trail on portals back in London, this time around, nothing could be seen through the portal but a consuming darkness. It was a stark contrast to the brightness of The White Room surrounding them.
Maybe because it’s in a completely different dimension of PRoGRaM?
Owen guessed, but he really had no idea. Either way, the two of them were about to take a leap of faith.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” Kate asked Owen.

“I don't know. But we’ll find out soon enough.”

Together, Owen and Kate both walked through the portal and stepped into the unknown.

Chapter Forty Five

Date: December 1st 2035 (One Week Earlier)

Location: Unknown

Oh my God.
Owen thought to himself as he opened his eyes. It was early morning, and even though the sun was barely even out, his head throbbed massively from what he could only guess had been an absolutely intense night of drinking.

Where the fuck am I?
He said to himself as his surroundings became clear.
Why the fuck am I waking up in an alleyway? Did I really drink that much last night?

And then he remembered exactly why he had been drinking in the first place.
Annie. Annie's gone, Owen. Look at what your doing to yourself. Waking up in an alleyway like this? Shame on you. Annie would never have wanted you to degrade yourself to this.

After a stern talking to himself in his own head using the voice of his dead wife, Owen forced himself to travel home. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't glamorous, but he eventually made it back to a hauntingly empty apartment.

And what the fuck did I do here?
He said to himself angrily as he walked in. It was almost as if someone had broken in, but deep down, he knew that he was the one responsible for what he was seeing in front of him.

His apartment was half smashed up. Broken glass and splintered wood lined the floors as he looked over how he had seemingly smashed every single photo frame in his front room. All of the photo's were gone.
Where the hell have I put them? Or what did I do to them?
People deal with grief in different ways. I guess that this is my drunk self's way of dealing with things. Just to break and destroy everything. Sorry, Annie, but I'll fix later
. He said to himself as he just walked straight past the mess of a living room and towards his bedroom.

He hit the pillow and fell asleep almost instantly. But what followed wasn't a peaceful sleep as Owen slipped into some form of crazy nightmare. It was clear.

Owen was driving himself crazy.

After four days of recurring nightmares, mixed in with alcohol, he knew exactly what he needed to do. He needed to take his mind off things. He needed to call Richard Sterling.