Manipulator (29 page)

Together, Kate and Nick both rocketed over to help him.
It's lucky that the PRoGRaM's Manipulator Headset he's wearing hasn't fallen off after that fit.
Nick thought.
I have no intention of ever finding out what would happen if a headset did in fact come loose during PRoGRaM.
He dreaded to think about it even now.

Reaching his arms gently around Owen, Nick turned the man over to see a trail of thick red blood running quickly out from the man's nose and down onto the floor. Kate grabbed a clean tissue out of her pocket as Nick lifted Owen upright with all of his strength. He managed to sit Archer upright on the chair where he was before his seizure had began. Kate reached out and ran the tissue gently over Owen's nose in an attempt to clean him up.

“Is he okay?!” she asked in a bit of a panic. The blood just wouldn’t stop.

“Life signs seem okay,” Nick said with a sigh of relief as he looked over his shoulder towards some of his monitors by his temporary workstation. “Everything relating to Owen now looks normal. Wait. Hold on…”

"What?" Kate asked as she used her tissue to wipe underneath Owen's nose, in an attempt to try to stop the think blood running into his mouth.

"Oh my God," Nick muttered under his breath as he ran across the room to his workstation.

"What?!" Kate asked, sensing the distress in his voice.

"Something's wrong," he said in horror. He shook his head from side to side in disbelief. "Something's horribly wrong with PRoGRaM."

Chapter Sixty

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: PRoGRaM

Owen opened his eyes. But not in the physical world.

The White Room.
He thought. Was everything okay? Had he passed out? This wasn’t normal.
Why am I arriving unconscious into PRoGRaM?
Maybe something went wrong on entry. I knew I shouldn’t have forced myself into this so soon. PRoGRaM is going to kill me…

He looked around and tried to take in his surroundings. Across the room from him lying face down, was Ethan. He was unconscious, but that was only because Owen had thrown him into PRoGRaM in that state to begin with.

Owen struggled to pull himself up at first, but slowly and surely he almost got himself to his feet. His body couldn’t handle standing upright, not right now, so he edged himself over to the nearest wall and leant up against it. He took in some deep breaths and waited for his body to recover from whatever shock it had just been through.
Another one like that will kill me… But on the bright side, at least there's no head pain this time around.

“No…” Owen heard a voice say weakly. It was Ethan, who was beginning to stir on the floor, stretching his body out. "No… No…" Owen heard him muttering to himself, repeating that one word over and over.
I hope we haven't got another Alex Morgan on our hands here…

But the more that Ethan muttered, the louder he got, and the more Owen could hear
something
in his voice. There was a slow shock of realisation, gradually building up with every
no
. Without warning, Ethan stood up quickly and looked around The White Room. He spotted Owen and began to move towards him with his hands raised as if he was pleading for something. Owen saw the immediate danger and quickly pulled his gun out of the inside of his jacket as a warning to the man. Nothing in the world said
stay back
like a firearm and a stern look.
 

“I can’t be in here,” Ethan said, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of the gun. The man seemed genuinely scared, but not of the weapon that was pointed in his direction.
Then what the hell is he afraid of? What the hell is going on?

“Goddammit I shouldn’t be in here!" Ethan yelled at Owen in a manner that wasn't exactly threatening. It sounded more… fearful. "You were never supposed to have one of these machines outside of the New York Analytic Base. Have you ever considered that we blew that place up as a warning? To try and keep you away from all of this?"

"That was you?!" Owen shouted back at him, gripping the weapon at his side tighter. "That was just a warning?! You could have gotten people killed there!"

"It doesn't matter anymore," Ethan replied calmly. "By bringing me inside here, you’ve just killed me. And you've just killed yourself… but believe me, you were going to end up dead anyway.”

“Your next sentence better explain what’s going on,” Owen said as he glanced down to the gun at his side and started to slowly rattle it, before raising his eyes back up to meet Ethan’s. “Or you’re going to meet a bullet.”

“You fool,” Ethan spat at him. “Didn’t you wonder what I was doing in your apartment? Didn’t you think to check over your equipment before throwing yourself back into the PRoGRaM system?"

Oh shit. I hadn't even thought about that…

"Right now, your systems are infected, the world out there.…” Ethan pointed to the only door nearby. “… is out of control! A virus, slowly taking over the entire digital world.”

Owen suddenly started to worry.
Was that why Ethan was in my apartment?
He hadn’t even given it a second thought before throwing the two of them into PRoGRaM. He hadn’t even thought about the possibility that Ethan was there to purposely sabotage their equipment.
How could I have been so stupid?

“Now, PRoGRaM is going kill us,” Ethan said, sounding unexpectedly calm considering their situation.

“Your boss will be willing to let you die in here?” Owen asked. He was getting a pretty vivid picture of the person that Marcus, Alex and Ethan all worked for, and it wasn’t a good one.

“The person I work for, they don’t give a shit about me. No way. But you… you they care very deeply about. You went and pissed them off so much that now they’re trying to correct their mistakes. You should have left well enough alone Owen. You shouldn’t have started digging into all this. You dug, and dug, and dug, and went and signed your own death warrant!”

As if right on cue, the room changed for the worse.
The White Room code is collapsing.

The walls began to bleed red. A dark, violent, blood coloured red.

Slowly but determinedly, the dark red colour bled across the entire room, taking over everything in its path. It blocked out all of the white light and stopped for absolutely nothing until finally, all around Owen and Ethan the entire White Room had succumbed to its maroon shade of darkness.

The White Room was no more. In its place was a room with dark red walls, ceiling and floors. Nothing but a dark red light bathed the two of them, a far cry from the environment that had surrounded them only seconds before.

“The virus is coming for us Owen," Ethan said as the two of them finished watching the blood red colour take over. "And killing us is
exactly
what it’s designed to do.”

Out of nowhere, a horrible noise gradually began to fill the room.
A noise I know all too well.
Owen realised. It was the sound of metal on metal. It was quiet at first, distant and far away, but gradually it was getting closer… getting louder. It was a dangerously penetrative screeching echo that pierced the ear drums. Both Owen and Ethan clasped their hands up over their ears as the noise began to reach an unbearable volume. Something bad was coming, that much was clear. And it was slowly getting closer.

Something beyond the walls of The White Room was heading straight for them, and Owen didn’t intend to hang around and see just what it was. With his hands still clasped tightly over his ears, he started backing away from the noise and towards the only door that led out of The White Room. Ethan immediately noticed what Owen was doing and then he too made a move, following Archer's lead towards the exit.

Out of nowhere, the noise stopped. Silence filled the void that the screeching noise of metal upon metal left behind. Owen was honestly terrified. This was it. This was the calm before the storm. And the calm only lasted a matter of seconds.

The red walls surrounding Owen and Ethan began to crack. Pieces of the wall fell forwards onto the red floor, allowing the two of them to see into the digital void beyond The White Room.

Through the cracks, came freezing cold, heavy bursts of wind which hit Owen hard, throwing his rough and matted hair backwards and forced his eyes to squint.
 
On top of all that, there was the sound. The loud noise of metal upon metal had returned, albeit louder than before, forcing Owen to once again cover his ears in an attempt to shield them from the penetrating sound.

PRoGRaM was trying to overload his senses. He desperately needed to escape. He couldn't stay here, especially when The White Room was just seconds away from collapsing. Huge chunks of the walls were missing now, causing the wind to become impossibly strong. The entire room shook violently, throwing Owen off balance and dropping him down to the floor. The wind was knocked right out of him as he hit the ground. He watched as an entire portion of The White Room wall collapsed.
There's no escaping this. Any second now the roof will cave in and kill me. I wonder if I’ll ever wake up from this one.

Unexpectedly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Owen quickly turned his head and looked up, finding that Ethan was stood right there behind him with a hard determined look on his face. He reached out his hand, offering Owen a way up.

“We need to get out now!” Ethan shouted loudly at him, speaking up over the strong forces of wind. Owen quickly reached out and gripped Ethan’s hand tightly. Within seconds he was up on his feet and being pulled towards the exit of The White Room.
As to where it leads? Anywhere but here and I'll be happier.

"Get out of here!" Ethan screamed as he pulled Owen forwards. Together, the two of them crossed the threshold out of The White Room. Owen couldn't help but look behind, and found himself staring at nothing but destruction. The White Room had finally collapsed in on itself. There was no going back now.

To Owen, it was clear… The only way that he and Ethan were going to get out of this alive was if the two of them worked together. The entire digital landscape of PRoGRaM had changed for the worse, and right now there was only one task on Owen’s mind.

Survive.

Chapter Sixty One

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Owen’s Apartment, New York

“What the hell is going on Nick?” Kate asked with urgency. The three monitors that Nick had set up in front of him looked scrambled and unintelligible, even to someone as skilled as Nick.

“There’s something wrong with PRoGRaM,” he said as he stopped typing and turned to look directly at her. “I think it’s some kind of virus.”

“A virus?” Kate asked, unsure of the implications.

“Shit. Shit! Why didn't I see this coming before I put them in there?" he asked himself rhetorically. "I think Ethan did something to our PRoGRaM device. Something’s happening in there. Something’s going horribly wrong,” he continued as he turned back to the screens and typed away, trying desperately to get his system into the base code of the PRoGRaM devices.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m saving Owen,” he said confidently. “I’m saving both of them. I think I can re-write the code… Maybe.”

Kate turned away slowly, not wanting to disturb him, understanding completely that there was absolutely nothing she could do to help the situation. But on the inside, Kate was conflicting.
What am I supposed to do now? Who's side am I supposed to be on here? Nobody will tell me what's happening anymore. Not since Eli…

A sudden thought crossed her mind.

A dangerous thought.
But if Nick was to catch me…
 

Kate slowly and unsuspiciously walked away from Nick and headed towards the other side of the room, trying not to do anything suspicious that could draw attention to herself. Not that it was too difficult to pull off. Nick was drawn completely into his work. She walked across the main room of Owen's apartment and into the kitchen which still left her in full view of Nick, yet just out of earshot.

She kept her eyes on him as she pulled her phone out of her pocket and punched a number in that was committed to memory, before hitting the dial key. She brought the phone up to her ear and waited anxiously for it to begin ringing. It didn't help her impatience with the fact that she was calling a secured number. It took considerably longer to connect their phones together.

The phone stopped ringing as Kate heard a faint
click
noise. The boss had picked up on the other end of the line… but they didn’t say hello. They didn’t say anything. They were just listening, waiting for Kate to make the first move.

She held her breath nervously before plucking up the courage to speak. There was no point beating around the bush with this one. This wasn't Ethan she was talking to like usual. This was the guy in charge of everything.

“What have you done?” she asked quietly down the phone, talking just above a whisper so that Nick couldn’t hear her. She kept her eyes trained on him, watching what he was doing at all times. A modulated, unidentifiable voice spoke back down the phone, answering Kate.

“What needed to be done,” it said emotionlessly.

Kate wasn’t sure how to respond. She took a few seconds to think about her next question before putting it to her boss. “What do I do?”