Annoyed, I shut the television off with the remote and leaned back on the couch. The house was still in order. Nothing looked incredibly out of place, which meant there was no attempted attack overnight.
“Good,” I whispered.
The last thing we needed was another attack.
I could hear
Colton
starting to wake up, his bones cracking as he stretched his arms.
“Oh, crap! How long was I out?” He looked over at me, springing to his feet.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” I teased. His eyes searched the living room, looking for any sign of an attack but found none. “No one tried to attack us last night, don’t worry.”
“I shou
ldn’t have slept so long,
” he replied, almost ignoring what I had just said.
“
Colton
, you needed the rest.”
Deciding to avoid an argument, he nodded and took a seat beside me on the couch. I closed my eyes, listening as the sound of his beating heart filled the room like music. Before I could open them, before I could find my way back out, I was back on the cold medical table, my body still and pale. There was no heart-beat. There was nothing left but a shell.
“No, no, no,” I cried out, forcing myself to look away. I couldn’t watch this again. I couldn’t watch my lifeless body being used for one man’s personal gain. Everything he made me, everything I’d become, it was all for McVeigh’s sake. He didn’t give a damn about human life.
“Emile?”
Colton
’s hands pressed against my shoulders.
“I can’t do this, not again,” I whispered. I wanted to cry out in pain, but I couldn’t. I was the corpse I saw in my mind.
“What’s wrong?” He was pleading now. “I need you to tell me what’s wrong, what is it that you’re seeing?”
I wanted to tell him, but I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Thirteen was temporarily gone. We were not fusing together anymore, so shouldn’t these memories and flashbacks be stopping? Why were they still occurring?
I watched as everything around me began to fade.
Everything but me – my body never left, it stayed there taunting me.
Then there was a man.
He was standing over my corpse, a medical mask covering his face. He was holding onto my hand. The man stared into my eyes like a father staring into the face of his child, but he wasn’t my father. This man was a stranger, the same stranger who tried so desperately to save me.
But who was he? Why did he want to save me when he didn’t even know me? I thought about
Colton
, how I hadn’t known him long yet I felt protective of him. I saw life in him when he was ready to give up. What had this man seen in me?
“Emile.” His voice was full of worry. “Please, I need you to snap out of this.”
And then I did.
Colton
was standing over me, his hand wrapped firmly around my wrists. “What was going on? Your entire body was shaking.” His eyes were on the brink of tears as he tried to pry an answer from me.
He released his hold on my wrists. “
Colton
, I think you should sit down.” I gestured to the couch cushion beside me. He looked worried, and I couldn’t blame him, I’d be worried, too. My actions had been abnormal, to say the least, the way I zoned out – the images that flooded my mind – I knew he had every reason to be worried about me, though I wished he wasn’t.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,
Colton
,” I answered honestly, unsure of what was triggering these images. “I saw myself. I was lying on a surgical table, and McVeigh and one of his White Coats were standing over me.” I froze to take in his expression. “I watched as he slid a scalpel down my throat to my navel, as he cut open my flesh. The man that was with him wanted to save me. He even tried pleading with McVeigh, but it didn’t work. There’s no changing McVeigh’s mind once it’s been made up.”
Colton
sunk back into the couch, his face void of any emotion. It was like watching myself all over again, as if the life had been drained from inside of
Colton
.
After sitting in silence for what seemed
like
hours, though only minutes, he finally turned
to
me and let out a whopping breath. “You know,” he began. “I promised your brother I’d take care of you. That no matter what, I wouldn’t let a thing happen to you. But the zoning out and these visions? I can’t do a thing about them.”
The reality was neither of us could. These images, images from my past, were haunting me for a reason. I knew McVeigh was involved, and because of that, I knew it’d be nearly impossible to disrupt them. He knew Thirteen was gone. He had to know. These memories were purely mine. They weren’t splicing together our memories anymore. He knew and he was going to use it to his advantage.
But the man that I kept seeing, the man that continued to remain a mystery, why did he keep appearing? Everything that McVeigh had done had been for a reason. This man was involved somehow in what I had become. He tried to help me and failed. What happened to him after that? Did McVeigh turn him into a Program, too? Was that what he was trying to tell me? That no matter how hard I tried to protect everyone, I would never be able to. After all, this was his game. We were all just pieces in it. That couldn’t be it, though. He’d made that clear when they took Tommy. This man served some other purpose, one that I wasn’t yet aware of and that, quite frankly, scared me.
I needed to find out.
I needed to know who this man was.
I needed to go back in my mind to find answers.
“
Colton
.” I was gripping his hands in mine. “I’m going to go back in for a few minutes. If after ten minutes I don’t open my eyes, do whatever you need to do to wake me.”
He nodded, choosing not to argue with me.
As soon as I closed my eyes, I saw him. He was watching over the construction process, when my lifeless shell was made into a fully functioning human computer, or a Program as we were called at Vesta Corp. Standing behind him, of course, was McVeigh.
“I’m not sure what it is you saw in her that was worth saving,” he said as he puffed on a cigar. “She was a useless child, but now she has a purpose. If you ask me, that’s rather splendid.” He was smiling as he watched the White Coats put me together, piece by piece.
“You would think that,” the man hissed. “She was a child, Charles. Why don’t you understand that? Does human life mean a thing to you? You took away a child’s life for your own pleasure, for crying out loud!”
McVeigh laughed, choking on the smoke in the process. “I didn’t
take away
her life. I
gave
her life,” he whispered into the stranger’s ear, making his way into further inside of the surgical room. “There’s nothing you can do about it now, anyway. She’s not coming back.”
But I did.
Hayden brought me back, something McVeigh wasn’t pleased about. I wasn’t supposed to come back, ever, but I did, and I wasn’t going to let him take me away again. Not when I still had some fight left in me. Not when my loved ones lives were at stake. I had too much to lose if he won, so I had to see to it that he never would.
I wanted to run up to this stranger and say, “Thank you,” because even if he had failed, he had tried. But when I looked up, he was already gone. It was as if he had faded into thin air. I looked into the window, watching as they inserted part after part. .
McVeigh turned, looked at me, and smiled. “Nice of you to join us, my dear,” he said, pointing at the corpse lying on the table before him.
Just as I was about to run, I felt
Colton
shake me – his arms pressing against my shoulders. “Wake up,” I told myself, “Wake up!” But something was keeping me under.
The body on the table was no longer mine. It was Tommy’s. Unlike me, he was still moving. He was still fighting for what was left of his life. But I knew his fight was wasted. There was no way McVeigh would
let him leave this room alive.
That was why I was still here.
McVeigh knew that watching my own body fall limp under the scalpel was devastating, but it would be nothing compared to watching a loved one suffer the same fate. He now had the upper hand.
Tommy looked at me, tears fi
lling his eyes. “Emile, help me,
” he mouthed. “Please, I’m begging you. Please help me.” And I wanted to. But I couldn’t move, no matter how hard I’d tried.
And that wa
s when my eyes flew open.
Colton
’s worried eyes locked on mine, as if trying to convey a message. “
Someone
is
here,” he whispered, nudging his head towards the front door. “There have been footsteps circling the house for the past few minutes. They’re going to attack soon, Emile. What are we supposed to do?”
“Fight,” I said, my eyes still locked on his.
Colton
nodded, pulling me to my feet. “Then I guess it’s time to get ready.”
As if
on cue
, the front door came falling down the second
Colton
helped me to my feet. Two men, one wearing a White Coat and the other dressed in SWAT
gear, barged
into the house with their weapons drawn.
I looked up, preparing to attack, when I noticed him.
The man who tried to save me was now standing before me ready to deactivate me.
No.
25
THE TRAP
H
is eyes met mine, sparkling with satisfaction, as a smile eased its way upon his lips. I felt for this stranger; there was no way I would be able to fight him now. All he wanted was to save me. I couldn’t kill him. I wouldn’t allow myself to. I glanced at him briefly, taking in every inch of his face. I knew this man, although only slightly. I’d met him before I escaped from Vesta Corp. I met him as Thirteen - as the very thing he wanted to rid me of.
Why was he here now? What purpose did his presence serve?
Why was
Sterling
here?
He had refused to help Tina protect me.
But it was too late. By the time I realized he wasn’t here to help me, the man in the SWAT get up had pinned us down. I faced
Colton
, who was knocked unconscious, and struggled to keep him in my line of sight as my eyelids fell closed.
There was pressure on my wrists.
They must be applying restraints
, I thought. Surely McVeigh would’ve told them to do so; he always used them at Vesta Corp because it gave him a sense of power. Power, it was always about power.
I wanted to check on
Colton
, to make sure he was alright. But I couldn’t move, and my eyes wouldn’t open. “It’s alright,” he whispered, slowly walking towards me. “I’m alright, Emile.” I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t
Colton
. That it was one of McVeigh’s traps, but it didn’t work. I was running after him, trying to pull him back – fighting to save him.
As soon as I’d reached him, he was gone, replaced with Charles McVeigh and Douglas Todd.
“What should we do with this one, sir?” Todd asked, turning to meet McVeigh’s eyes. “She has been nothing but trouble. I think a deactivation is in order.”
“That would be the wise choice, my friend.” McVeigh smiled, running his finger across his throat. “But I have bigger plans for this one, plans which call for her and Thirteen.”
There was a surge of electricity running through my body, forcing my eyes to open. Slumped over in a chair beside me was
Colton
, his hands and ankles were tied to the chair. Blood ran down the side of his face.
“
Colton
,” I whispered as
Sterling
took a stance in front of me. He was nothing more than a trap. That was why he kept appearing in my mind, because McVeigh planned this. He planned every single detail, knowing that if I felt anything for the man I wouldn’t kill him. It was all a trap.
“You,” I grunted. “What did I ever do to you?”
“You existed,”
Sterling
replied bitterly.
“But you tried to save me. Why would you want me dead now?”
He looked at me and lowered his head. “You are no good to this world now. You’re one of his creations. I can’t let you live.”
One of his creations? I was far from one of McVeigh’s creations. My Program? It was all me, none of it was McVeigh’s. Everything he’d created was, for the most part, destroyed when I took control of my body. Thirteen still lingered on the back of my hard drive, and someday she’d find her way back through, but for now, it was me. I was not Program Thirteen. I was Emile Reed, and I was not going to let him take that away.
“You really don’t see it, do you?” he asked, his focus switching between
Colton
and me. “Charles McVeigh wants you dead. Do you understand me, Emile? He will stop at absolutely nothing to make sure that he succeeds in destroying you. Him-” He pointed towards
Colton
. “-He’s in danger now because of you, because
you
exist.”