TW: Death of a pet, death of a character, hatecrime, grief
Frank watched as his prey scampered around in a series of images displayed on the phone's screen. The man's enthusiasm was growing.
Not only did the boy seem a little smarter than expected, but there was a girl in his group of useless friends who seemed to know something about computers.
Although he had watched Yutani from the beginning, he had always thought she was just a little girl who liked to pretend to be a great scientist by playing with things she did not understand and especially did not own, like the turbine.
However, connecting the computer malfunction with him had helped him reevaluate her a little. Having something that vaguely resembled a rival pleased him; it made the hunt much more interesting.
Because now he didn't just have one target, he had five. It made his work more difficult, but he didn't mind. He had far too much time before trying to reactivate the turbine anyway, and he preferred to spend it productively erasing any traces of his existence in this world. Especially if those traces were witnesses who could gather evidence about him and tell people that he actually existed.
He was not worried about the police, but about them. Surely they were looking for him after deleting his personal files and hijacking the mission.
His hours were probably numbered. For so many years he had managed to infiltrate their organisation as a special agent, with the sole purpose of gaining their trust and destroying them from within. But this was the ultimate mission. They had finally trusted him enough to allow him to go back in time far enough to operate in a time zone sensitive to them.
He knew he was being watched from the moment he got his hands on the turbine. He knew very well that those devices had a security system that transmitted to the government immediately the location and appearance of whoever was handling those turbines. He knew that this would cost him his life as soon as he would have been found. But he did not care as long as his real mission was completed.
The problem he now had was to go back to his present and deliver the information that would change the course of events before getting killed.
And because of Jake, an already extremely difficult mission had become almost impossible. Now that he was forced to be in the past for a longer time than expected after touching the turbine, the odds of getting caught were extremely high.
So in addition to eliminating Jake for making life difficult for him, he also had to eliminate Yutani and the other kids. Since they had come into contact with the turbine, they were targets as well.
If the blame for their deaths did not fall on a third party, such as the inspector, or on an accidental cause, he would become even more visible and in the organisation's crosshairs.
Was it wrong to kill children? To the ethical sense of most people it absolutely was. For him, it didn't matter much. He liked being in control of the situation, he loved that someone was afraid of him, and this situation of constant risk and challenge kept him reactive and energetic.
So when his target tried to escape his fate, the challenge became even more interesting; he felt like a hunter hiding in the woods, just waiting to bring down an elusive prey.
One big difference was that Frank still had a moral code, no matter how sick his beliefs were. A fundamental rule for him was not to harm animals. To him, animals were pure beings. Even though he was an atheist, animals came as close as he could get to a deity. He also did not eat meat or animal derivatives, because he did not feel worthy of introducing parts of pure beings into his body or causing them suffering in any direct or indirect way.
He especially adored his rabbit Donnie, whom he had always treated like a son.
But he had not any regards for people.
Because it was better to feel that perverse pleasure in killing someone than to feel absolutely nothing and live in apathy.
There was only one person with whom Frank could get out of that suffocating spiritual death.
Brody.
Brody was the exact opposite of him: athletic, outdoorsy and surfing-loving, confident and naive, smiling, positive, social, chaotic, driven only by his feelings and passionate.
The most stupid, clingy, emotional and dramatic man he had ever met. Always ready to complain, waste time and make bad jokes. Yet, for some reason, that seemingly insignificant man had lit a spark inside him.
Being in his presence always made him feel mixed emotions. He hated being touched and was annoyed when Brody wanted to cuddle him or hold him for a long time. He found it boring and annoying. However, if he himself decided to hug him, the contact with Brody's body made him feel both in control of the situation and imbued with a feeling of warmth and serenity.
Frank didn't understand the melancholy, overly romantic speeches, but he understood very well the things he was concretely willing to do to make Brody happy. He would have brought him the moon in a bouquet if only he had asked him.
He wasn't sure if that was really love or more of an addiction or a sense of possession. Brody made him feel alive, made him feel human. Even when he was getting on his nerves. Even when they were fighting. Even when they were making love and in the intimacy of the moment he felt fragile and vulnerable. Even when he had to learn to let his desire to always being in control go, to trust another person for the first time and to live with the terror of losing him, of being abandoned one day and being thrown away like an old shoe.
One day, his terror came true and he lost his ability to feel again.
One day, on his way home from a business trip, he could no longer find Brody.
Donnie was lifeless in his cage, probably dead of exhaustion since Brody could no longer care for him.
Brody was taken away by the 'values police' who had discovered his 'abnormal' nature. In a society where only things and people deemed useful exist to produce new individuals or bring profit to the state, there was no place for a man who loved another man just for the spirit of loving.
There was no room for emotion, laughter, tears, feelings. There was only room for utilitarianism. For conformity, for intolerance and forced homogeneity.
Frank's purpose in life was now to destroy that society from within, to take away from them what they had taken from him. His motto was that the end justified the means.
He did not give the responsibility for the murders he was guilty of to third parties; he was fully aware that the blood he had had on his hands for years now was only the result of his own decisions.
But he did not care.
Now prevarication over other people had become his only source of enegy, the thirst for revenge and hatred that poisoned his soul was what kept his inner fire burning.
Not believing in a higher form of justice, heaven or hell he did not care what Brody might think of him and how depraved his soul had become. Perhaps he had always been cruel and his inner monster was just waiting for the right opportunity to come out completely. It did not matter. For him, both Brody and Donnie no longer existed, so it was irrelevant how he spent his available time. He had not felt remorse or sadness for years now. He could hardly remember the last time he had cried.
The only important thing was to fulfill his true mission and eliminate anyone who got in the way.
The man was deep in these thoughts as he silently watched the kids run from one side of the city to the other. They probably thought they were safe without their phones, but they forgot that the city was full of cameras. It was almost impossible to go out in a public place without being spied on in some way: cameras in banks, stores, passersby's cell phones.
For someone like him, who could understand a computer as himself, it was child's play to convince devices to offer him all their secrets. Computers were predictable, worked with precise rules and codes, and were guided by algorithms and logic.
After watching them talking in an underpass, he saw them all heading toward a house together. The boy with the glasses and boombox opened the door; they had probably decided to hide in his house. Frank checked the devices in the home and noticed that it was less equipped than other homes anyway, with no voice assistants to turn on the lights or an Internet-connected television. Smart move.
But not smart enough.
This gave Frank a clear idea to finally get rid of the problem.
He put the phone away and quietly headed down a side street in town.
