(Later that day)
    Why do I bother? Why am I still here, struggling to play out a part I don't understand in a game I don't know the rules of, for people whose motives are suspect at best? Every new thing I learn only serves to complicate the parts of the pattern I can see. I'm not even upset, really, although I feel as if I ought to be. I feel sort of numb right now. I suppose that's normal, I've been through a lot in the past twelve hours, both physically and mentally.
    I guess it would help to start at the beginning. Like I said, I slept late and the morning was quiet. Today was the day to go see Felix, a task which did not thrill me in the least. Lucky looked conflicted when I mentioned it. "There's a few things I want to do," she apologized.
    "Well, you can go if you want," I told her. "I mean, it probably doesn't need all of us," at which she looked faintly relieved and headed out to pursue whatever she felt needed to be done.
    "I don't want anyone to go there alone," Scott said seriously—as if I would do anything of the sort. "I've got some questions as to how much of the staff is who they're supposed to be. It would be really bad if we opened the door and there were a whole bunch of people with their faces trying to look like Javelin. There are an amazing number of pointy things in hospitals," he added thoughtfully.
     "Well, yes, going alone would be bad," I agreed, thinking over what I had learned from the SysGen file. "Thank you, Scott, for the information, by the way."
    "You're welcome."
    The two of us were alone in the conference room now. "So... talking to Felix. Want to come along?"
    "Sure."
    Having no expression, he's pretty damn hard to read sometimes, and his vocal cues aren't always readily interpreted. I hesitated, frowning to myself, and looked over at him. "Does talking to Felix seem like a good idea?" I asked abruptly. "I've lately come to the conclusion that I may be completely bent where this whole situation is concerned."
    "I don't know what we'd be looking for from him," Scott admitted. "Either he knows what's going on and he'll lie to us, or he doesn't know what's going on, and he won't be able to tell us. On the other hand, as much as you're going to yell at me for saying this again...."
    I sighed. "I'm not going to yell at you."
    "...We really should tell her. She can't make informed decisions if we don't keep her informed."
    Another deeply frustrated breath. I didn't know what to think. "I don't know. I don't know."
    "We told Reilly."
    "Reilly was there when I found out, so there wasn't much of a choice about telling him."
    "OK, you've got me on that one. However, that doesn't change the base premise."
    I paced and tried hard to think. "I've been operating under the assumption that the fewer people who know, the better. I don't know if that's correct or not. I don't know anything," I admitted wearily.
    "This is a stupid question I'm going to ask, but why?"
    "For one thing, I don't actually know what my own legal status is at this point."
    "I'm guessing that it couldn't be any more questionable than mine."
    "At least you're not part of a plot by the World Crime League."
    "No, I'm part of a plot by TECH. Your point?"
    I still think the situations are different. "Yeah, but.... I don't know, I just don't like talking about it, it probably is at base." I can talk to Scott about it, I've just now realized, where I can't talk to Lucky. Probably because Scott doesn't keep asking how I feel about things, when the truth is I don't want to feel anything at all; his questions force me to think about the situation with an approximation of objectivity.
    "We could ask her to come out here, then we won't be being spied on by anyone."
    Mrrow? I leaned down and picked up Newton, scratched behind his ears for a moment. "I'm not being completely irrational," I stated firmly after a moment of consideration. "Reilly knows, he got taken hostage. People I know of who were part of the plot have gotten killed."
    "Well, tell everybody. They can't kill everyone or take everybody hostage."
    "Sometimes I wonder," I muttered. "I know, I know. I know." I've considered calling a press conference and announcing the whole plot to the world. But most people don't even believe the World Crime League exists. And there's still that nagging fear that it wouldn't stop them. That nothing will. And what if they decided to just pull the plug on the whole project and disappear? And what about me? I can't prove anything about who I am, that I really don't know what's going on. I was created to be their tool, how do I prove that I'm not when I have no idea if and how they might still be manipulating me? I sure as hell wouldn't trust me.
    Especially after what happened today.
    "What it comes down to at the very bottom point is that if we don't tell her and he dies it's our fault," Scott pointed out with gently faultless logic. "If we tell her and we fail, we did what we could."
    "But what would we tell her? That somebody's going to come after him and shoot him." That much, they already knew.
    "Yes, but if we're right about how he's going to do it, there are files on him. They know how he thinks. They caught him once, they can catch him again. If they know what they're planning for, they know how to deal with it."
    Silence.
    "And if we're wrong, I'll look like an idiot," he offered as consolation.
    "OK," I gave in at last. "You're making sense. You want to give her a call?"
    He got Winters to come out to the base, picked her up on the dock.
    "So what's up?" she asked, settling herself at the conference table.
    Scott looked at me. I looked at him; this was his idea and his show, as far as I was concerned. He opened up the SysGen file on the table.
    "Just previous to his moving to Boston, Mr. Javelin worked for a company named SysGen out in California," he began.
    "Yeah, I saw it in his file, but it didn't mean anything. The guy was a biochemist anyway."
    "See, it depends if you know what SysGen does, or did."
    "What did SysGen do?"
    "SysGen was supposed to be able to build injectable memories."
    Winters blinked a few times, looked at the file and slapped it closed. "All right, fill me in."
    "This company was working on a project which involved—" I started reluctantly.
    "—Synthetic memory," she finished, her eyes widening. "That's what the toxicology report showed. Stupid, stupid!" she muttered to herself. "So this guy is injecting—"
    "Or maybe people he worked with," Scott interpolated conscientiously.
    "But they're feeding fake memories which are taking over the people—and it's mixed into the outpatient chemicals, the drugs for the people from the—that's pretty damn clever," she said grudgingly.
    "And then they go and kill people and forget about it, because it wasn't actually them," I finished.
    "They might be actually using him," Scott pointed out, meaning Javelin, I guess.
    "Because then he would go and shoot the people who are responsible for putting him in jail," Winters went on. "Son of a bitch."
    Yeah. In a word.

| Top |