Luca DR
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37 – Confrontation
🕑 Added 2023-05-24 13:50:08 +0000 UTC[Quest: Leviathan Unveiled complete.]
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“Delay that, please. I can’t think about it right now.”
[Understood.]
Huh? Did the system…
No. He could definitely not process it right now.
[New Quest: Leviathan Diversion I]
“Delay, pleeeease!”
Then his phone vibrated. Which was very strange, because there was not supposed to be any mobile network reception on another planet such as Erebus. On the top right corner of the screen he saw that the carrier was called HDF Emergency Band. But Albert did not have time to think about the strangeness, for what he saw in the text made his blood run cold.
It was that man. The guy from the Pylon at Tryte, the one who tried to kill him. He had taken a selfie, in a small and cramped room that was dark and empty, save for one thing. There was someone behind the man, and Albert recognized who it was immediately. The caption for the selfie read: “Remember me??”
“Motherfucker. He took Marc?”
He paced around, frantically, maniacally, with his mind raging and the gears turning and turning while the world spun. He circled around the small marble fountain in the middle of the square in the elven village, lit only by the light of the moon and the many stars that shone on this little corner of paradise. The air was still, and there were no sounds save for the call of faraway birds and animals, but the stillness that would have otherwise been peaceful and calm was eerie and unsettling.
By this time, someone had seen him and had called Eurus, but the older elf was keeping his distance, letting Albert deal with his emotional state without being disturbed.
The fact was that he could not go back for another hour. And he knew very well that his mother had seen him disappear. Her face, he could not forget it. It was imprinted in his mind like a photograph: frozen in shock and horror, anger and… disgust? He could not claim to understand how she must have felt when she saw him like that, surrounded by magic. And he could not even begin to guess how she was feeling now that he was gone.
If he could, he would have rewound. But he couldn’t. The Hazegem was on cooldown.
He might use his phone to contact her. But he chose not to. It’s better if I calm down first.
Eurus finally decided to approach him and talk, and Albert knew he could have asked about the HDF, or told the elf about the situation so he could feel better, get it off his chest, ask for advice or even chat. But he found himself unable to do any of these things, only sitting on the soft grass bathed in moonlight, the little blades of green shimmering with dew. In silence, rocking back and forth. Realizing that he had taken the gift of magic for granted, and treated it like it was his to own, without a care for the consequences.
His mind wound and wound, weaving through the many scenarios, jumping from one train of thought to the next. He thought about how it was utterly strange that the video survived the second rewind. He thought about the HDF network being on this planet. He thought about what the system even wanted from him and why it asked him to teleport here. Perhaps the system knew, and it was manipulating him?
He didn’t want to even find out. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he tried to speak to the system. Would it reply? Would it not? Which of the two options was the scarier?
How did his mother even get to his room when she wasn’t even home moments before?
Albert just sat in silence for a hour, and then got to work. He would need two minutes of perfect stillness and concentration to go back to Earth with his teleportation skill, and he knew for a fact that he was not going to achieve that in the first try.
***
Samantha Cromwell spoke no words. She called no one. All she did was take stock of the situation, search the room, and leave. She didn’t even move the six glass vials of potions she found there. Nor did she touch the stack of money she did not remember ever giving to her son.
Her mind was divided in many facets of emotion and rationale. She did not want to believe, yet she found that she had to. She thought the boy she saw in the room, sitting on the bed was not her real son, yet she also knew he was. She was proud, and mad. She was scared shitless, and relieved. She thought it was all a ploy by PsyOps, and she knew that it was her ticket to getting that bastard back behind bars.
As such, she did the only rational thing she could do.
She remembered her training.
She left. She did not go to the Quadrangle. She did not stay at home either.
She just vanished, disappearing in Temalas City like only she and a handful of other people could do. But she, unlike the other people, was truly invisible. Impossible to find. The only connection to the wider world was her phone, which she checked with clockwork precision every minute. Not every 61 seconds, not every 59. Every minute.
There were whispers in her mind.
“The fucker got to my son.”
“I will make him pay for this.”
“The boy I saw is not my son, is he?”
“But what if he really is my son?”
“I need to talk to my father.”
“I shouldn’t talk to my father.”
“I’ll give that boy a good spanking, that’s for sure.”
“Fuck, every minute I waste here…”
Then, after an hour, 13 minutes and 44 seconds, her phone rang. Slowly, she took it out of the back pocket of her jeans and adjusted her square glasses. She squinted, almost unsure that the words she was seeing on the screen were right. But, of course they were. And there were many reasons behind the fact that it was her son’s name that had appeared there, in the caller ID.
“Hello?” She said, monotone.
“Mom?” Her son’s voice came from the other end, shaky. He was crying.
She swallowed her motherly concern. “Who are you?”
Her voice was steel.
“I’m Albert? I know you saw me… I can explain.”
“Yes. You should explain.”
“Can we meet?”
Samantha Cromwell was not a stupid woman. And when the person on the other side of her phone asked her to meet, using her son’s voice, she knew immediately that something was wrong. Yet, her mother instincts also screamed at her not to hang up, that her rational mind was wrong in its assumptions. Conflicted, she did something she would never have done in any other circumstance. She exposed herself to the only weakness she was truly vulnerable to. Knowing full well that it was a mistake.
“Show me your face.” She demanded.
“What?”
“A video call. Show me that it’s you.”
The live video feed reached her as soon as the signal would let it.
“It’s me mom. You are scaring me. Where are you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Mom? What do you mean? It’s me, Albert! I know that you have seen something impossible earlier in my room, but I can explain! I swear I can explain.”
Samantha heaved, breathing hard. She did her best to conceal it.
“22a Buster Street. There’s a diner there, open the whole night. It will be empty. I will be sitting at the table by the counter, waiting. You will come alone, unarmed. I have means to make sure that you will not be able to harm me, by magic or otherwise. Understood?” She said.
“Mom? What do you mean?”
“These are the terms.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean you have the means… mom, is that really you? It’s not you, is it?”
What was he talking about?
Samantha breathed. This was all a trick to make her think that he was her real son. But he wasn’t, was he? He was being held somewhere, alone, perhaps in the CARF. In the same cell PsyOps was being held and tortured. She steeled herself.
“I could have this call traced, you know? Have that place you are calling from swarming with agents in less than a minute. Take the fact that it’s not as a gesture of goodwill. You know I cannot harm you, let’s meet at the diner in three hours.”
Albert’s voice on the other end of the call sighed, shaking. So real, it seemed. So genuine.
“Okay.” It said. “I will be there.”
Samantha was at the diner mere minutes later. She was already in the area, close to the safe zone. She sat at the table by herself, the rest of the place completely empty and the stale air still. Dust was suspended in the air, trailing up and down along convective currents she could not see, air heated by the old incandescent lamps. The night was black seen through the darkened windows. The diner was cold, almost as cold as the unnatural still frost of the outside.
The little bell at the door jingled. Her head shot sideways so that her gaze could take in the whole entrance. Her left hand tightened around the device she had brought as insurance.
The person who entered the diner was not who she expected.
Her heart jumped. Had they gotten to him as well?
She shot to her feet.
“Stop right there.” She commanded, taking the device out. “Let me.”
“Now, now.” The old man threw his hands in the air. “There is no need for this, is there?”
Sam’s sweat was ice on her back. They had gotten to him too, hadn’t they?
And for a moment, the cockiness she saw on her father’s face made her think that she had been played for good. That her silly trinket was useless, for some reason that she didn’t know. Perhaps PsyOps had played her all this time, and he had never been vulnerable to the specific frequency of magic her tool was supposed to use to dispel mind-control.
“You give PsyOps too much credit.” Lloyd said, laughing while she scanned him. “He’s a dumbass. I saw his handiwork. Sloppy at best, shitty otherwise.”
Samantha blinked, her eyelids heavy. When was the last time she slept?
“Why are you here? How do you know?”
Lloyd sat on the chair, motioning for her to get back to her seat. She complied without a word.
“Why am I here?” He chuckled. “I’m here ‘cause your son messed up big time. Biiiig time. But!” He held up a finger. “I do share my part of blame. I won’t throw him under the bus. He played what cards he could play smart, and called me before showing up here. He almost didn’t call me, you know? What would have happened then?”
“I would have probably shot him.”
“Ah yeah, you would have. Especially with how bad he is at talking.”
Lloyd laughed. Sam, despite her best efforts, smiled. “He is not bad. He’s just very blunt.”
“Okay Sam. Can I let him in? You’ll need to disable the device, you know?”
The device only allowed one person to approach without consequences. Samantha sighed audibly, making sure her ‘father’ heard her.
“You don’t trust me.” He said. He sounded proud. “Huh. Geez. Well, I never thought your training would come to bite me in the ass but, oh well. It looks like we are at a stalemate, then.”
