8:45 pm
He had watched the cleanup crew with disdain. The fact there was a cleanup crew indicated that this entire day was meant to be nothing but a memory. He and Emily were sitting at the top of the stairs, mostly in silence. She radiated fear, for herself and for her daughter.
The three minute deadline had elapsed without a response, and the original half hour deadline had passed as well. As time wore on, her mood didn't improve much. She tried mumbling to him about her daughter, and what she was now doing. She even told him how Cassidy had appeared and enlisted her at gunpoint to lead a cleanup crew to his house.
"He told me I'd need a gun when I met with you. When I saw the damage in the hall and down there," she said, pointing at the base of the stairs, "I got really worried."
He didn't really want to talk with her. The feelings of fear in his heart had been intensifying in the last twenty minutes. Every few minutes he tried sending a telepathic message to Jessi, but without their full connection, he realized it was likely futile. "I defended myself."
She turned to him and scoffed. "By throwing them into walls. Nice, sweet, gentle Kyle."
"There were three ninjas. Full blown ninjas, like on TV."
"They were masked, but they weren't ninjas. Ninjas don't really exist," she said as though she were an authority on ninjas.
"Whatever." He couldn't care less about her. As time continued to tick, he became more and more restless. Every few minutes now he was feeling a spike of fear, and some disgust. It was slowly tipping him toward the edge. He squeezed his hands together, growling.
The edge of his nightmare self, well, maybe not that nightmare. It was the nightmare where he just went totally mad and killed every Latnok person he found, and didn't care whether civilians were involved. He knew he'd be a terrific assassin, one who could easily star in a cheesy one-man-versus-the-world action flick, regardless of its name.
A sudden gasp escaped his lips, making Emily turn quickly toward him. He'd just felt a stab of terror in his gut, and although it had quickly fallen back to just general fear, he worried what it meant.
"Try again." It wasn't a request. His head hurt, but strangely his few injuries didn't. His eyes burned, as though hot tears broiled just beneath the surface of his eyes. He wanted to do something already! His breathing quickened.
She appeared to observe the work that was hastily being completed. He hadn't been surprised when he found they actually had pictures and picture frames to replace the ones that he'd broken. He wondered if they perhaps watched the house with secret military-grade satellites? It would explain how they could see into the house, no?
He could think of a dozen devices he'd put in orbit if he wanted such 24 hour surveillance and no one would ever know. Only, now he suspected it, and if it were the case, there'd be nothing he could ever do about it.
Not completely, he surmised. He could create a cell phone that examined every copy of a call or text and if it found it was tampered with, it would give him the source of the tampering. He could do the same with an e-mail or a text…
"Stay here, even if they contact you." He got up and rushed to the bottom of the stairs. "And don't move – I'll be listening." He wasn't feeling charitable.
He ran to his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Without a moment to lose, he started to create an obscenely long and complex e-mail tracking program.
10:05 pm
He was perplexed when he started feeling joy and laughter, and even feelings of romance. Was Jessi attached to a machine already, forced to feel varying emotions, like a lab rat? He pushed the brunt of the emotions away, but kept track of what the feelings were and their intensity. He needed to know everything, log anything that might identify where she was.
First the fear and the eventual spikes of terror followed by general happiness and romance; it was no doubt a sign they were conducting some sort of experiments on her. Maybe they didn't realize he felt what she did? If that were the case, he'd certainly keep the secret. They already knew too much.
He sighed, satisfied that the elaborate program he'd created was complete. It was nonetheless a prototype program, with a few holes in its logic, but to plug all those holes would have required him and Jessi work in tandem for days. This should suffice.
He tested the program with an e-mail sent to Foss. He discovered almost immediately that the e-mail was redirected from its destination to a third party e-mail. His program computed the GPS coordinates of where the e-mail went and sent him a message. That message bounced and went to a separate address. Soon the program was overseeing thousands of e-mails and threatened to crash his computer. He terminated the execution of the program.
His jaw set when he realized that he couldn't send it from his standard e-mail account or from his IP address. It had to be totally anonymous. He set to work, having also overheard Emily receiving a call.
10:28 pm
She never came down, but she also never moved from the spot at the top of the stairs. He smiled because she was terrified of him. Looking back he also noticed that the cleanup crew was done and were waiting outside, waiting for her.
Stretching, he worked out his tense muscles. He had created a sub program that ensured total anonymity that also worked within the original program. Realizing its logic wasn't flawless either – he knew almost everything in the world of computing could be circumvented – he held his breath as he hit run and resent the e-mail to Foss, though this time he'd changed the subject line and the content just a little, in the event that the Latnok engineers were actively trying to counter his efforts.
The e-mail was immediately misdirected to a third party address, which caused his program to send an e-mail circuitously back to his IP which was secured by a complex mathematical algorithm encrypted by 1024 bit encoding. It worked his computer hard, and he could feel its eight processors start to warm up considerably. The number of redirected e-mails increased steadily, until it found a duplicate fake destination which the program then redirected to the intended destination. It had only taken 23,916 redirections to achieve it and a good thirteen minutes.
He smiled and awaited a reply e-mail. His program worked somewhat like a highly cloaked worm, but one that would delete all traces of itself once an e-mail was returned to him. He put up the sound of his speakers to low and walked out of his room. He needed to hear when the reply came to him after all.
Emily was shifting nervously from side to side on the top step when he walked to the bottom of the staircase. He put a finger to the new wall. It was extremely fine work; it was scary how close the materials felt and looked. He sniffed, not overly perceptibly, to prevent anyone from noticing or suspecting. The smells were vastly different however, you could tell where the new paint was simply by its different chemical composition. It was an extremely fast drying, non toxic paint not available in stores, he was sure. A stray thought supplied the anticipated setting time at a little over two minutes.
His mind had also started to analyze further modifications to its chemical composition to enhance it further but he ground the idea flat. "Emily, did you by any chance receive a call?"
Still moving side to side, she nodded.
He let out a quick derisive breath out his nose. "You know I probably wouldn't have killed you for going to the bathroom," he said.
Her eyes met his and she got up quickly.
"I did say probably, and now I think it might be too late." He jumped and landed directly behind her, and grabbed the back of her blouse. He knew it was wrong to scare the woman, but if this would be the only outlet to his frustrations after a terrible day, he'd accept it. "You could also have peed yourself. It's better than getting killed isn't it?" With the other hand he took her arm and turned her around.
Her heart was beating extremely fast, her breaths coming in quick and shallow too. "Please, think of my daughter."
He'd had enough. It just felt too wrong to torture this woman, even though she'd previously tortured the family, and especially Jessi. It hadn't been physical torture for sure, but emotional torture was often just as bad. He figured it was the main reason Jessi had been so aggressive and compulsive at first. "Go on," he said, releasing her, "and after you can bring me to your place. I'd like to chat with Cassidy."
Once behind the closed bathroom door, she said, "But he has a gun."
"That's ok, you'll be my shield." He smiled again. He heard the chime of a reply e-mail from Foss. He jumped down the stairs and raced to his room, while also listening to her, to make sure she didn't try to escape.
The e-mail he received from Foss appeared on the screen. He read it eagerly.
Kyle,
I admit my part in today's tests. One of Adam's old associates at Latnok, one of the more agreeable ones, somehow intercepted a plan initiated by Amanda to "corrupt you". They didn't want to risk anyone's life, and detailed to me an elaborate scheme to test you psychologically.
The test was scheduled to end once you somehow rescued any of your friends or family or contacted me. I see you contacted me first, because I've just been advised the test is complete.
Kyle, please know that everyone is safe. They were in no danger; I've personally been receiving reports on everyone. This was, like Amanda's kidnapping, another test of your skills and resolve.
I tell you this because I didn't want you to find it out on your own. The plan started two nights ago, but only today with our extended training session could the project go ahead.
I'm sorry if you feel betrayed. It appears as though they went a little further than we'd agreed, but I trust you're okay. Good night. I'll see you in the morning.
Tom
Kyle had read the entire note in one and a half seconds but his eyes focused purely on the word "corrupt". His energy seemed to drain from him and he vaguely heard the toilet flush upstairs and Emily running for all she was worth. He couldn't speak. He couldn't think.
Betrayed wasn't the right word at all. Did no one realize how easy it would be for him to become a monster? To shed his sheep's wool and become a devil on Earth? His nightmares were a way for his brain to allow the monster to be free, if only for a few hours, while in his waking hours it slept, totally oblivious that it wasn't experiencing reality.
He was so good to those around him because the monster was a separate entity within him. His sanity, his mind, he dare say his soul was what kept the demon at bay.
Despoil was a better word. More: defile, desecrate.
He knew now of course how Latnok had intercepted her plan, however misguided it had been. That didn't exonerate her! She was Catholic, taught from birth to obey Ten Commandments, and countless other unwritten rules. He'd read her Bible from cover to cover and he distinctly remembered no instruction within it that told her to do anything as heinous as had been done today.
He'd been nearly ready to snap some necks. He'd considered killing Cassidy with his own gun after using Emily as a meat shield. He realized deep inside he might not have gone through with the plans today, but after a week or a month of solitude, of desperation, could he say how he'd feel? Would he have stayed sane?
He heard the vehicles drive off one after the other. He slumped into his tub, sobbing.
12:05 am
He'd fallen asleep but woke when a sudden wave of emotion washed over him. Recognizing Jessi, having missed it so much, made him also realize that the other emotions he'd felt all day were separate from hers. Now he knew where the confusing feelings had come from: Amanda.
He screamed suddenly, like a terrible beast. Due to his ordeals, he wasn't stable. He had to be alone, because if he saw Amanda or Jessi right now, he'd probably just rip off their heads, and truly be on the road to ruin. He could almost see the monster savoring the blood.
With a single thought, he cut through both connections, to be restored when – or if – he wanted to. A single little bag in hand, he left his tub, his house, his life, behind.