Manipulator (34 page)

Sand.
He realised, feeling the grainy texture as he moved his fingers.
I'm on a… beach? Have I really washed up onto a beach?

It took all of his willpower to force himself to sit upright, but eventually he managed it. Owen faced outwards, looking out at the sea whilst subconsciously taking in his other surroundings. Endlessly, to both his left and his right, stretched a beautiful white sand beach. Yet here he was, all alone, the only one able to enjoy it.

The sun shone down from above, its rays bouncing off the incredibly calm ocean before him. Only minor waves were washing up against the shore, enhanced by a continuous gentle breeze that he felt through his hair.
Maybe this is heaven?
 
He wondered.
Maybe I really did die inside PRoGRaM?

At least here, wherever he was, nothing was trying to kill him.
At least… not yet.

With nothing driving him forward anymore, Owen decided that for a while, he could just sit here and enjoy the sights and sounds. All he wanted to do was rest, and right here, right now, was perfect.

“Owen?” a voice said behind him, startling him. His face quickly dropped in shock.
I know that voice all too well.

“Annie?” Owen asked weakly, his voice rough and worn, his words sounding like he had swallowed a truckload of dust and broken glass. Slowly, he turned his head to look over his shoulder. He couldn’t see anything in his immediate field of vision, but if anything, Annie's voice gave Owen a reason to get up and move.

He jumped up quickly, getting up onto his feet for the first time since washing up ashore. His legs were shaky and unstable beneath him. Carefully, he turned himself around, taking it just one step at a time until he found his footing. What he saw behind him astounded him right to his core. It wasn’t Annie, but it was something just as surprising.

The red door.

The red door from his dreams.

The only door that Owen could never open, stood there right in the middle of the beach. There was a frame and a door standing upright in the sand. No walls around it. No tricks. It was calling out to him.

“Owen?” Annie’s voice called out again, clearer this time around.
It's coming from behind the red door.
Owen realised. He began to walk uneasily towards the door.
She's there! I can see her again. I can finally find out what happens this time.

Owen walked up to the red door and grabbed the handle. He twisted it and felt the lock click. Without hesitating, he pushed the door open, almost expecting to wake up. Until this point, Owen had never made it this far into his dreams, and had no idea what to expect on the other side of the red door. Half of his mind told him that there would be nothing there, whilst the other half secretly wished that Annie was standing on the other side, ready to tell him that everything was going to be okay.

But Owen didn’t get Annie.

The door creaked open, and every part of Archer tensed up as he prepared himself for what lay on the other side. There was… nothing there. Nothing but darkness.
It doesn't want to show me. It just wants me to step through. It's like a shield, hiding what lies beyond. It's time to take a leap of faith…

Leaning forwards and keeping his right hand firmly gripped around the doorframe for safety, Owen stepped cautiously through the red door. In just one step, Owen left the sand of the beach behind and stepped forwards into the darkness and the unknown.

His foot gently touched the ground on the other side, immediately noticing the huge difference in texture compared to the sand that he had just gotten used to walking across.
Solid concrete. Where could I be now?
Plucking up the courage, Owen moved his entire body through the red door and through the momentary darkness.

As the darkness evaporated, the rain poured down on Owen immediately upon entering the other side, soaking him to the bone in seconds.
Why couldn't I hear the rain? Maybe it would have just put me off going through the red door in the first place?

New York City.

And not just any place in New York City, but the one place that Owen just didn't want to be.
The crossroads. The same crossroads where Annie died.

Redford Avenue.

Behind Owen, the red door slammed violently shut of its own accord. There was no beach anymore. There was no sand beneath his feet, and no sun in the sky. More importantly, there was no red door behind him. Instead, all that Owen got was darkness, rain, bad memories and an atmosphere of overwhelming tension.
No. I will get no answers here. I know one thing for sure. This is where it all ends.

It was his decision to make, and make it he had.
I'm going to meet Annie, one way or another. Time to get out of PRoGRaM, permanently. It might as well be on my terms, hadn't it?

Aside from the pouring rain bouncing of the floor, there was no noise in this world. There was nothing here. No cars on the road, no pedestrians on the sidewalk. Nothing. Nothing to stop Owen walking out into the middle of the crossroads. Nothing to stop the inevitable bad memory begin playing out.

“It should have been me,” Owen said quietly to himself as he walked forwards towards the centre of the crossroads, pushing his body against the heavy rain. “I should have been the one driving. I should have been the one that died, and you should be the one that's out here, alive," he continued to mutter. He simply didn’t care anymore. It was time to air it all out. To get it all off of his chest.
Who cares if people are listening in from the outside? I'm ready for the end. I'm stuck inside PRoGRaM anyway.

I'm dead already.

Owen stopped walking, cutting his thoughts short as he reached the centre of the crossroads. He stood perfectly still and let the rain cascade over him as he waited for it to begin. "Annie. I’m sorry," he said, talking louder now than before. "Since you’ve been gone, I’ve done everything that I could possibly do. But I couldn’t get it right. I couldn’t find out the truth about the people who did this to you. I couldn’t find out why…”

A few tears started to run down his face, blending in perfectly with the streaks of rain falling from above. Owen didn't try to blink them away. He just let them stream out. Here, stood a man on the edge… a man at his breaking point.

“I tried so, so hard," Owen continued, talking to nobody but himself. "I’ve let you down. And there’s nothing else that I can do anymore!”

He looked up and finally saw exactly what he was looking for.
It's about to begin.

In the distance, Owen spotted some headlights coming his way and immediately knew exactly who they belonged to.
The van that's going to slam straight into the side of Annie’s car.
It was the van that was going to kill her, and it was heading straight towards Owen who was stood powerfully still in the centre of the crossroads.
Right on time, and just where I want you to be.

Slowly, Owen turned his head to the left and saw the headlights of what was Annie's car in the distance, coming towards the crossroads from a different direction. But he didn't plan on being around long enough to watch those two vehicles meet.

Owen broke into a jog, setting off towards the van.
I refuse to watch the crash.
He told himself.
Even just one more time. I've seen it happen every single night since. But not this time. For just this once, I'm the one in control here, and I'm going to do things my way, because let's face it... I'm not getting out of PRoGRaM alive. Not this time. I've already lost Ethan. And I'm lost too.

If I'm going out, then I'm going out on my own terms. And this is what I choose. It's quite fitting really. To go out the same way that Annie did. For both of us to be killed by the same vehicle.

Just in two different worlds.

“COME ON THEN!” Owen shouted angrily as he and van edged ever closer to each other. Slowing his pace down, Owen went into a walk as he reached both of his arms out to his side, beckoning the van to come at him.

"HERE I AM!" he screamed out with his arms stretched wide as if taunting the vehicle and running a game with the highest stakes possible. Owen wouldn't break his stride, and he knew for a fact that the van wouldn't break from its path. There was always only going to be one winner in this, and it wasn't Owen.

It's time to go.
He thought as he stopped walking and fell down onto his knees, his arms flopping down to his sides in submission. He waited, watching the van head at a deadly speed towards him. Closer and closer, the van was mere meters from ending his existence forever. The brightness from the headlights forced him to close his eyes, and Owen pressed them shut as hard as he possibly could as he waited for the end.

“KILL ME!” Owen screamed out at the top of lungs.

Silence.

The end never came.

The rain stopped. The headlights vanished. Silence hung steadily in the air. Slowly opening his eyes, Owen watched as the world around him flickered out like a dying lightbulb trying to live out it’s final moments.

The world of PRoGRaM turned into an endless sea of whitespace.

Chapter Seventy One

Date: December 13th 2035

Location: Owen's Apartment, New York

“Tell me what happened,” Nick asked, finally satisfied that he had done everything that he had could do to help Owen survive inside PRoGRaM. Both Owen’s and Ethan's vital signs were looking normal considering that Nick had just completely rebooted the world, but at least now the worst part of it was over. Now, it was just a matter of waiting.

As he spoke, Nick rotated himself around in his office chair to find Eli sat on one of Owen’s single seater sofa’s nearby.

"Kate tried to kill me," Eli said, answering Nick’s question quickly and bluntly.

"Tried to?" he responded, attempting to ween a more solid answer out of the man.

"She shot me in the back. Three times,” Eli answered, holding up three fingers on his right hand as if to emphasise the point. “But I was wearing a bulletproof vest."

Nick, not quite sure how to respond, began to ask the first logical question that came into his head. “Why were you wea-"

"Well," Eli said, holding his hand up, causing Nick to stop mid-sentence. "I'm an outsider to your group, so I saw things a little more objectively than any one of you would have. It was clear, to me at least, from the get-go that one of you was a snitch. How else could an outsider possibly know where to find and kill Marcus at PRoGRaM HQ. And how else could someone know to tail our van during the Prison System break in?”

Nick nodded, seeing the logic in Eli’s theories.
Maybe I should have seen this myself?
He thought. A short silence hung between them before they once again locked eyes. “So you suspected Kate from the very start?" he asked, trying to take the conversation in a new direction.

"Well, it couldn't have been Owen. So that left you or Kate."

“You suspected me?” Nick asked, surprised that anybody would take him for one of the bad guys.

“Sorry,” Eli said without feeling. “It kinda comes with my territory. Something I’m used to in my day-to-day.”

“So how did you figure it out in the end?” Nick asked, curious as to where Kate had slipped up and what he had missed.

“I didn’t,” Eli answered, watching Nick’s facial expression change as he spoke. “She came to me. After the Prison break in and we spilt up in the van, I noticed that Kate was following me. I intentionally drew her down a dark alleyway. Once we were out of sight of everybody around, she shot me three times in the back with a silenced pistol. But, like I said, I had a bulletproof vest on. I’ve been wearing it for as long as I can remember. Glad that it finally came in handy."

“But that was days ago!” Nick replied. “Where have you been for the last 48 hours?”

"I was waiting for the opportune moment,” Eli responded keeping his answer, as always, vague.

"And how were you going to know when that was?” Nick shouted, suddenly feeling a burst of anger.
And Eli hadn’t even thought to try and contact me and warn me about who I was working with?!
“How could you possibly know what was happening? It’s not like you bugged Owen’s apartment, is it?"

There was no answer. Eli just gave a wide smile and squinted his eyes slightly, attempting, and failing miserably, to put on an innocent face.
 

"Well, I'll be damned," Nick replied with surprise, the anger in his tone instantly lost to this new emotion. "You heard what was happening in here all along.”

“Like I said, I was waiting for the opportune moment,” Eli said. The tension in the atmosphere had suddenly dissipated. “Although I had no idea how much trouble you were in. I left as soon as I heard that you had found Ethan."

"Why are you so interested in Ethan?" Nick asked. He was confused as to why of all the things to bring him back into play, it was Ethan that had done it.

"Kate made it personal. She isn’t the one giving the orders. Someone else out there told her to take me out of play, which is the only reason I came back. I think Ethan can lead me to whoever ordered that hit. So right now, I’m with you and Owen all the way to the end. And then I’m going to kill whoever is in charge.”

Nick had no words. He had no idea what to say back to Eli, so, he just kept quiet and waited for the man to take the next step in the conversation.