AN: Hello and heads up, there is some (comparatively) light gore in this chapter. Also FYI, Mondays chapter will be the 'finale' and Wednesday will be the epilogue. And if anyone remembers the very last scene of Whistleblower you might recognize it. Ok, enough of my blathering on thanks for reading (extra thanks for reviewing) and please enjoy the chapter.
***Waylon***
He lead us to a run down motel. The dead eyed clerk at the counter didn't so much as blink as the three of us walked in. Micky made a quick job of his checking in, getting his key with less than two sentences and a wad of cash. As we walked Chealsy's lack of chatter seemed to unnerve me more than the achingly familiar grimy run down hallways. Micky stopped at some door, A-25, unceremoniously unlocked it and walked in without a second thought.
I followed behind Chealsy without much enthusiasm. The room was dark and empty besides a rickety desk and dingy bed. Micky set his lone duffle bag on the bed and quickly unpacked an unmarked Laptop.
"Before we get started do you have any questions?" he asked me while booting up his computer
"Not now Micky, we need to get this show on the road" Chealsy butt in before I had a chance to comment.
Micky gave her a level stair.
He set his computer onto the desk, quickly typing in the address to Viraleaks.
Wait what? Why hadn't we just uploaded the stupid footedge in the first place? Why the hell did we have to wait until two weeks later?! Why did Lisa and Connor and Garrett have to die just for us to be able to upload the damn footage onto some website when we'd been bumming around on the internet for the last four days!
"Actually" I couldn't stop myself from commenting "why didn't we just do this at the very beginning?" I pushed down my rising realization.
Micky took notice "Vira Leaks is extremely... particular about the information it takes, especially after an incident they had a few years back" he collected the camera from a begrudged Chealsy and began to load the footage onto the computer
That wasn't a satisfying answer.
"As such only a few people have the know-how on how to upload. I understand that you were at Donalds in Colorado?"
"Yes." this still wasn't a good enough answer.
"Donald knows a lot of things about a lot of people, but he doesn't have very many friends. You see, the internet is like a hallway full of doors, if you open the right door you can convince anyone anywhere to do or think anything. But to open the doors you need the right key. You get the right keys from the right people. Donald didn't have that many. Luckily for you I have a skeleton key."
Donald didn't have enough friends to be useful and my family had to die because of it. Of course, of course something so inconsequential as how many people who would be willing to have a beer with crazy conspiracy theorist Donald would determine who lived and who died. Of course it would.
"Now that we have that sorted, you need to be sure about this" He set the camera next to the computer on the table. All that was left now was to upload the footage to the internet.
"You press that button, there's no going back," he continued "there's enough hard evidence in that video file to make a world of shit for our friends at Murkoff"
He stopped for a fraction of a moment, as if to let the decision I'd already made weigh heavily on me "You got out of Mount Massive alive, and we've done everything in our power to cover your tracks but our enemies are twitchy and malicious corporate paranoiacs with resources you're too moral to imagine."
I knew what they would do, I'd seen the worst they had, probably seen past what even Murkoff themselves thought they were capable of.
"You won't be the only target, anyone you care about, your wife, your child, they'll be nothing to Murkoff but ways to hurt you"
I stopped for a second, just staring at the screen in front of me.
He didn't know. He heard Chealsy say that I had kids, but he didn't know. He didn't know they were already dead, already been targeted. Already died, just to hurt me.
"I need you to understand the bridge you're crossing here. You will do irrevocable damage to the company, you might even get close to something like justice. But. Once you click upload, your life is over. Everyone you love is fucked."
They already were.
"But its the right thing to do. Is hurting Murkoff worth that much to you?"
There was the poignant little end to his speech. The final line meant to rally some righteousness against the corporation. There was no righteous fury against Murkoff, no urge to protect my already dead family. No reason to click upload other than to finish the empty quest I'd started on nearly a month ago when I first emailed Miles.
Nothing to do now but end it.
I clicked upload.
I shut the laptop.
Let the consequences be damned.
***Miles***
It had to be a day later and nobody had so much as thought about what to do with me here in this room. So far only one of the men had died, one of the biohazard suits. The doctor was currently in a puddle of his own piss and curled into the fetal position in a corner, he was getting off easy considering that he could only stay on the verge of death for so long while I had the pleasure being there for a straight week. The other biohazard suited man had become something of a practice dummy.
It was surprising really, how powerful the Walrider could be when I wasn't busy ringing it in. Even when the machine part of it was out of order. Which reminds me...
So, how do you feel about telling me what exactly you are
...But we were having so much fun.
Maybe. But you know how I just love story time.
I could just teach you how to exploit people's deepest seeded fears, that sounds like a good way to spend time.
Which is why we've already done that. Now if you don't mind. What. Are. You.
…
The stained and faded whiteness of the interrogation room swelled and warped until it distorted itself into an indistinguishable blob.
"Great, more messing with my vision bullshit"
"Relax, you're the one who wanted to know"
The gray sludge that was my field of view congealed into greens and black until a hazed over forest surrounded me. Laser strait pines stretched past the edge of my sight, each with coal black bark and deep green leaves. The forest floor was a deep mat of shed needle-like leaves. I'd only seen this place in old pictures and movies, but that combined with what I suspected about the Walriders past made me more then sure of where I was.
"The Black Forest, southwestern Germany"
"I wouldn't call it my homeland, but it's close enough"
While taking a few steps through the illusion it didn't seem like walking through Waylons dreams, or like getting information straight from the Walrider. No, this was just strange, like walking through a fun-house but instead of their being mirrors there were screens filled with clips of moments you'd half forgotten about. A year's worth of walking later and I found that I was at the edge of a little old timey German village, complete with a cart full of hay and cobblestone streets.
"Any reasons you're taking me for a ride on It's a Small World After All?"
"Just watch, if you pay close enough attention you'll know everything you want to"
After quieting back down it became clear that the sun was setting. A few lanterns hung above the doors of the shops and houses. Jeez, I know this is a rural European village, but they have electricity. Their foreign, not cave men.
"Just keep watching"
The narrow cobble street held a few people, most carrying water or lugging bundles of produce or firewood.
"We're not in Kansas, and it's not the twenty first century here. Is it"
"No, now stop talking and start watching"
Someones in a mood. The pathways cleared as the sun went down. The place was soon bathed in a combination of moon and lantern light, there were no living souls in sight. It all seemed quiet.
Until the scream.
A single high pitched wail of terror sliced the silence. Without having the time to flinch in reaction I found myself in a bedroom. On the only bed in sight was a young woman thrashing against the covers in a struggle to get up. Outside the growing noise of a mob rose up, more firelight then before streamed through the windows. Somehow the interior of the room managed to grow darker in spite of it. The woman screamed ever louder, only to have one desperate gasp abruptly cut off as the door to the room crashed to the ground. Anger and fear rolled off in waves from the people storming the room, as more entered a physically oppressive noise grew. It wasn't unlike the buzzing and screeching that had become so common place in my life, but this seemed deeper, more earthy and less refined.
A final few men ran in, all of them stopping at the sight of the woman on the bed. Moving my view from them to the woman I saw that the bed had been soaked in blood, all of which seeped from the raw exposed muscle tissue that had been the ladies chest. The final man to walk in was one dressed in simple priests garb. The unseen presence in the room that I had my suspicions about grew heavier until there was a literal fog in the air.
The father began speaking. I have no idea what he said, I don't speak german, but whatever it was it shook me to the core, and did the same to the proto-walrider. A shadowed figure elbow deep in the women's lungs began to look more and more solid until it broke away from the now dead girl and lost its solidity. The result looked something between a pale shadow and a heat wave. While the father was still in the heart of what I assumed to be a prayer the past-walrider congealed over a single man and began to fold itself into him.
The men near by were thrown into a panic, while it seemed like they knew what they were walking into, none of them had expected this. The priest yelled more and more frantically, trying desperately to finish what he had started before it was too late. Seeing the uncomfortably familiar process of having the Walrider decide that your skull looks like a nice place to vacation fold out in front of me set my stomach on edge.
The man possessed crumbled to the ground before the father finished shouting whatever he had started doing. All the onlookers began sheepishly holding the hunting rifles and clubs that they had brought in anticipation for what ever battle they thought they would be fighting. Who ever it was that played host to the Walrider took an hour long minuet to stand back up. He had his back to me, though based off the horrified faces of the men that had been next to him, something told me that there was something very wrong with him.
As much as I would have loved to stick around to see how this ended, my vision began to wobble just as the possessed man made a lunge for his former comrades, and cut out entirely at the onset of a larger fight. In the little pit of a panic I felt at the end, the last thing for me to see was the hollowed torso of the woman on the bed.
When that fiasco faded from my sight I still wasn't in the interrogation room. Instead a dismal gray landscape folded out before me. The sky was gray with dust and smoke, the ground was littered with gray powdered concrete, the few living plants in the area were covered in fall out. Any building in sight was literally half of what it used to be. For all I could tell it seemed pretty clear that I was standing in the bombed out remains of a little town. It could have been the same one from before, only fast forwarded a couple hundred years.
"Ok, I get the last part, but why show me-"
"SSShhhhhh. This is important!"
"Whoa okay then, never mind"
The village loomed as a forgotten shell of what it once was, completely devoid of life. Until a little military vehicle came pulling up. Moving literally right through me, it pulled to a stop over the last even patch of cobblestone as far as the eye could see. Out stepped three young men, telling by the obvious context clues this could be none other than World War Two. The man walking with the most urgency looked achingly familiar.
Upon reaching the smoking remains of a house the man in front said something. Even through the filter of another language and a gap of about seven and a half decades I knew that that voice belonged to Warnike, there was no doubt in my mind that that twenty something man was the living fossil that caused everything at Mount Massive.
Warnike and the other two rummaged around the debris for a while until one of them shouted something that caused the other two to come scurrying over like a couple of excited school children on christmas morning. The one that was there first stood in a crumbling skeleton of a building that looked like it used to be a church tower. He quickly revealed a heavy trap door latched shut that had been hidden under a now partially burnt away persian rug. The three of them had it opened in a short moment.
It took not long before it became clear that I was watching them descended into the room I was standing in, instead of climbing down and out of the same. Apparently the Walrider was into making jump cuts for dramatic effect.
The three young men climbed into the dingy little cellar, only to light a couple of lanterns they'd brought with them. Young Warnike made to inspect some shelving, while the other two did the same. After searching and researching each shelf Warnicke stopped cold in his tracks. On the shelf in front of him, behind a cluttering of books and knick-knacks, was a hip flask sized corked glass bottle. Warnike made a grab for it eagerly. It seemed empty inside, except that when viewed from just the right angle there appeared to be a slight sheen and a flickering dark patch. Warnike slid the bottle into the waistband of his pants and without a word drew a small service pistol.
It was over quickly for the two other men. Warnike couldn't have been a good shot when I'd seen him, but here he was young and they were in close quarters. He hadn't missed.
The darkened cavern drifted back into stained white as I saw the last of Warnike climbing the ladder to the outside. While I'd checked out no one had moved. Unsurprisingly.
There, that was the short version
Of what? That before the nano bots you were a drag me to hell style demon?
No, I'm not so lowly.
I don't know, that business in the village looked like it was straight from the set of The Exorcist.
…
And, what the hell was that all about?! Carving the heart out of a girl and repainting the sheets with her lungs! Damn.
I had my reasons
Like what? You were board?
Just how we both have our reasons for wanting to crush Murkoff.
Um, no. I have very good reasons for stopping Murkoff, namely because their a psychotic, cartoonishly evil mega corporation that likes making money off of human suffering.
You don't know who she was, I had a very good reason that's not very far off from your justification for going against Murkoff.
Yep. Murder the twenty something kid that lives all alone, she's definitely up to something.
That's hypocritical coming from you.
Excuse me?
You were being morally righteous, and refusing to kill any of these Murkoff bastards unless I literally held your hand before. But now that you've been reminded how bad they are you're all for it.
That's not the situation you were in at all.
That doesn't make my point any less true. You're only willing to go through with all of your threats because Murkoff made it personal.
This coming from a monster that considers turning peoples kidneys into a smoothie as fun isn't that hurtful.
Don't pretend you don't enjoy it too. When you feel like it you're more creative than me. I would have ended the doctor with the first punch but you insist on keeping him alive to suffer.
Only because he did the same thing to me ten fold.
That's what I mean right there, you only care when things involve you personally. You're not some altruistic reporter out for the greater good.
I tell the people what they need to know, we can't let people get away with doing shit things to good people to make a buck. I'm just not willing to murder people left and right for it.
How the mighty have fallen then. This experience with Murkoff must be an eye opener then.
That's enough of this. You got what you wanted, we're going for blood on Murkoff, now just drop it.
Only after you admit that you wanted to slaughter them all from the very start, but were only afraid to because you knew that you were too weak.
Fuck off.
You know it's true.
The Walrider was gone back into the recesses of my mind after that. Looking down at the crumbled doctor I noticed that the bad taste left in my mouth by the afternoon nearly became too much to bear.
I kicked the shaking doctor "evil bastards" I kicked him again.
The man began sobbing to himself. He deserved worse, but petty wailing on him made me feel better in the meantime.