“Emile,”
Colton
called me. There was another gunshot, bringing the last man to his knees. “Maybe I should take care of that. You can take care of them?”
“No, I think I need to do this one.” I smiled. “But thanks,
Colton
.” I knew he meant well, but I needed to see Tommy like this. I needed to see him for what he was turned into because I needed to let myself know that Tommy’s death wasn’t my fault. This body that lay before me? It wasn’t Tommy. It was an extension of Charles McVeigh. My Tommy was murdered by McVeigh and turned into a shell, a host. My Tommy was long gone.
I sat down beside his lifeless body, the shell that hosted McVeigh’s vision.
Colton
kept a close eye on me as he dragged the other bodies into a backroom. McVeigh had bigger plans for me, plans that involved both Thirteen and myself, but what were they? What could he possibly want with us both?
As I looked over his men, the idea frightened me a bit. He had used them as bait, he treated them like trash, yet he valued them. What the hell did he have in store for me, then? Why was I considered to be so remarkable?
There was the sound of a phone ringing, a cell phone. It was coming from the backroom where
Colton
had disposed of the men. “I’ll get it.” I struggled to get to my feet, my balance was starting to falter, I was in need of my Pod, of a charge. “Do you think you could set up the NetBooks?” I asked
Colton
as I walked to the backroom.
The cell phone was inside one of the guys’ cell phone pockets.
Unlisted
. My guess was McVeigh. I hit accept call, not bothering to say a word. “Ah, Emile,” he said with joy in his voice, as if he was happy to see I’d defeated his men. “I see you survived, again.”
“What do you want, Charles?” I was becoming frustrated.
“You know what I want, dear. I want you.” He was laughing now. “Why don’t you just come back to Vesta Corp? We can end all of this now. What do you say?”
“Except we all know it isn’t that easy, now is it?” I replied bitterly.
“You do say.” He was trying to act surprised. “And why is that?”
“Whether I come back or not, it won’t change anything.”
“I suppose you’re right.” And then the other end went silent. He was gone.
He was up to something, something bigger than we could imagine.
My body was starting to feel weak, the power slowly draining from within. I needed to hook up to the NetBook, but I didn’t have enough strength to make it back into the living
room
. “
Colton
,” I w
hispered knowing it was useless. T
here was no way he’d hear me.
I could feel myself falling,
my body slamming against a concrete floor. Standing above me were Charles McVeigh and Douglas Todd. They were discussing their father’s will after his death. He’d left them the company, but nothing else. Something McVeigh wasn’t thrilled about.
“How dare that bastard?” H
e threw a metal can against the wall, the lid breaking
off. Ashes fell to the ground -
the urn containing his father’s
remains
. “He left us a dying company, that’s it?”
Todd stood by quietly, watching as McVeigh started to break.
“He’ll pay for this. They’ll all pay for this.”
33
HOSTAGES
W
hen
Colton
returned to the room with Nadine’s body dragging behind him, he seemed surprised to find me lying on the floor. “It was as though someone had shut your program down,” he explained. “How are we supposed to run if your system can’t last nearly as long as it needs to?"
I moved onto the bed, listening to every word he spoke, unable to respond. But he was right, I was slowing us down. I was becoming a handicap for him. Those might not have been his words, but it was the truth.
Colton
didn’t need to be plugged into a machine daily, I did. Why should he be responsible for me when it was my fault he was in this mess to begin with? Why did I have to drag him into this?
“I’m sorry.” He took a seat beside me on the bed and held his face in his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, how am I supposed to keep us safe? I’m not as strong as you, Emile. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
I wanted to scream at him, don’t let McVeigh break you. But the words wouldn’t find their way out.
Colton
was strong, much stronger than any human I’d ever known – even Hayden. I couldn’t stand to see him give up now, not when we had come this far.
His voice faded until it became inaudible.
I wanted to wake up, knowing very well that I couldn’t, because I knew what would happen next. The images began to fill my mind, but they weren’t of me. This time they were of
Colton
. It was the night I’d almost hit him with my car, the night he had stood there in the middle of the street waiting for an oncoming car to strike him. But this wasn’t my car. It was a black sedan with tinted windows, ones too dark for any person to see through.
It was Charles McVeigh and Douglas Todd.
The car sped up as
Colton
came into view. They were going to give him what he wanted: death. I tried to run in front, hoping to knock him out of the way, but I was unable to move. No matter how much I tried, pulling every inch of energy from the inside of my body, I couldn’t find enough strength to fight back. I was forced to watch as they killed him and stuffed his lifeless body into the trunk of their car.
“What’s so special about this one?” Todd asked his brother. “Why would you want this child?” He sounded disgusted, turning to light a cigarette.
“He wanted to die, and I needed another teenage Program. Why wouldn’t I pick this one? It worked out for the both of us.” He smirked, adjusting his tie before slamming the trunk shut.
Even if I didn’t save
Colton
that day, he still would have become a part of this. They’d been watching him long before I found him. There was nothing I could’ve done to protect him. He was never safe.
There was the sound of a cell phone ringing. The noise flooded through the house from the living room. “I’ll be right back.”
Colton
ran to locate the phone. It was one of the phones that Hayden had left with us, but it wasn’t Hayden calling. An Unknown caller. No, not again.
“Hello?” he asked, talking as he walked down the hall and back to the room. I could hear
Colton
gasp as he realized who it was. “What the hell do you want?” His voice swelled with anger. “Well, too bad, you’re not getting her.” He threw the phone against a wall with such force he shattered into pieces.
McVeigh had called us on one of the cells Hayden left for us. The cell phones that only Hayden knew about. The cell phones that only Hayden had the numbers to. When the realization hit me, I wanted to s
cream: H
e had Hayden. Somehow I managed to pu
ll myself out of standby mode,
even with the wires still connected. I’d mustered up enough rage to fight against my body’s computer.
“Emile?”
Colton
ran over to me and started to disconnect the wires. “How the hell?”
I looked him in the eye, my hands grabbing his wrists. “He has Hayden.”
But there was no shock, McVeigh had told him already. “I know.” He fell to the bed and covered his face with his hands. “He has them all,” he mumbled, as if he was trying to avoid telling me the truth.
He has
them
all.
Them. Who? No. No. He couldn’t have. He’d taken my entire family!
“What am I supposed to do?” Everything around me was beginning to crumble. It was as if everything that I touched was breaking into a million little pieces, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My family was trying to protect me and look where that got them. If only Hayden had left me as Thirteen. “I have to go back,” I whispered.
Colton
shot up and looked at me like I was nuts.
“We can’t go back there, Emile.”
“I didn’t say
we
.” I looked at
Colton
and lowered my head. “I meant me.”
“You’ve lost it!” He was screaming now. “There is no way I’m going to let you waltz into Vesta Corp alone. What good could possibly come of that?”
The truth was that I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I had to try. If there was a chance that I could stop this, I needed to at least put forth some sort of effort. I couldn’t stand by and watch as everyone around me crumbled. “How am I any better than McVeigh if I don’t try to do something,
Colton
?”
“Did you honestly just compare yourself to that monster?” He was upset with me, and he had every reason to be. But at the same time, I wished that he would at least try to see things my way.
“McVeigh is killing innocent people for no real reason. How am I any different than him,
Colton
? My friends and family are dying because I won’t turn myself in. There’s no reason I should be alive. I’m dead. I died, remember? People are not supposed to have a second chance at life, especially not like this.”
He was shaking his head. Tears were beginning to fill his eyes.
“I can’t let you go on a suicide mission, Emile. Not alone.”
Colton
shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at me. “I’m going with you. I need to go with you.”
There was no use in arguing. Neither of us was going to give up anytime soon. I decided to head back into the living room to grab the other NetBook. I needed to see their files on my family. I needed to make sure they were still alive.
Please be alive
, I thought.
Once the system was up and running I was surprised to find a message pop up on the screen. New mission, it read. But it wasn’t a new mission. It was a message to me stating that they would find me.
I have your family, Emile. If you want to see them again, you’ll come back home.
See you soon,
Charles McVeigh
Home. Vesta Corp wasn’t home. It was hell. It was the root of all evil, the reason for all of my problems. There was no safety at Vesta Corp. I would no longer exist upon my return. I’d be giving him everything he wanted, while giving up everything I was.
“There has to be a reason he wants you back, Emile.”
Colton
came creeping out of the hallway. “You may be an important Program, but I don’t think it’s because you were their first teen conversion. There’s something bigger at play here. There’s something you have that he needs.”
“I know.” But what was it? There was nothing remarkable about me.
Thirteen was starting to force herself back in. I could hear her voice echoing in my mind.
He wants me. You have to let me go
. I was trying my best to push her out, but she was overpowering me. No matter how hard I tried, she pushed back harder.
“Emile!”
Colton
was pulling on my wrists. “You have to fight back. You can beat her. You’re much stronger.” And I was. It took everything in me, but I managed to keep Thirteen from taking control of my body. I could feel myself falling, but
Colton
managed to catch me before I hit the floor, propping my body up against the wall.
“She kept repeating ‘he wants me’ but why?” I was struggling to speak.
“That’s what we need to find out. I’m going to go set up the NetBook for you and then I’m going to go through Program Thirteen’s files. Just stay here, okay?”
I nodded, lowering my head to the floor. He picked up the NetBook and brought it to the back bedroom to set it up near the bed.
My family was being held hostage, Thirteen was trying to reclaim my body, and yet here I was laying on the floor – useless. How the hell was I supposed to help them now when I couldn’t even help myself?
“Come on.”
Colton
stood over me with his hands pulling on my wrists. He lifted me gently and then helped me walk to the back bedroom where he set me down on the bed. “I think we need to keep you on here for a while. You haven’t been completing your daily sessions.” He was fiddling with the wires. “If anything happens, I’ll wake you of course. Otherwise, I’ll see you in eight hours.” And there was a click as my hard drive snapped into place.
He walked to the living room to fetch the other NetBook, I assumed. McVeigh knew we had access to Vesta Corp’s system, but he hadn’t bothered to block it. Why was that? There was something he wanted us to find, something we hadn’t yet thought of. It was the missing piece of this puzzle, the meaning behind everything. It was staring us in the face; we just didn’t realize what it was yet.
When he walked back into the room,
Colton
plopped onto the bed beside me, the NetBook sitting in his lap. “Is it just me or is it a bit strange that every file except for Thirteen’s is displayed?” He looked over at me and laughed. “Her file has to be a hidden file.”