Armageddon 2309 (The W-files)

Chapter 24

Rio's expression remained impassive as he met Mr. Alkis's gaze squarely. "Mr. Kagiso told me himself."

Mr. Alkis took a while to recover from his initial shock of Mr. Kagiso sharing this information with an outsider, "then Mr. Kagiso must have trusted you a lot. This is a secret that he had been keeping to this family. A secret that Mrs. Kagiso could not bring to her graveyard."

"I doubt so," said Rio, his expression was cryptic.

"What do you mean?" asked the butler.

With a deep breath, Rio decided to tell everything he had seen in PharmaMedicor company to the butler, and he did so. The reason to reveal this was to exchange more information that the butler had observed in this mansion.

The butler's face contorted in a grotesque mask of terror and disbelief, his eyes wide and bulging, mouth agape in a silent scream. "Mrs. Kagiso had been getting medicine from her brother to give it to Batho?"

Rio nodded.

"Even knowing the potential risk to harm Batho?" The butler shook his head, finding it hard to digest this piece of information. "But that was unlike her. She would do everything to protect Batho."

Rio shrugged. "Maybe the current Batho is no longer the Batho that she gave birth to."

A confused expression clouded the butler's face. "I could sense the difference in Batho ever since he returned from the riverside. But I am not sure if I understand what you mean by 'not the same Batho.'"

"A dead body was found in the river and proven to be Batho," said Rio. "And this current Batho carries two sets of DNA, one of which belongs to someone who came from three hundred years ago."

The butler let out a disbelieving scoff. "Mr. Rio, what you just said sounds a little far-fetched. I..."

"What do you think Mr. Kagiso tasked me to do? Why do you think he trusts me with the information that he was sterile and Mrs. Kagiso should have been unable to conceive with Batho?"

The rhetorical questions kept Mr. Alkis's mouth shut for a moment.

Then, Mr. Alkis raised his eyebrows as the realization dawned on him.

"His behavior has been quite unusual," Mr. Alkis confided, glancing around as if to ensure no one else was listening in. "Batho has developed a keen interest in history. He spends hours watching documentaries on his AD about events that occurred centuries ago. It's as if he's trying to learn everything he can about the past."

Rio raised an eyebrow, intrigued by this revelation. "And how does he speak about these historical events? Does he seem to understand them beyond his years?"

Mr. Alkis nodded, a troubled expression crossing his face. "Yes, that's the puzzling part. Batho not only watches these documentaries but also discusses them with a depth of understanding that is far beyond what you would expect from a child his age. It's almost as if he has a sense of purpose or a mission he believes he must fulfill."

Rio's curiosity deepened. "A mission? What kind of mission does he talk about?"

"It's hard to say exactly," the butler replied, looking perplexed. "He speaks of it vaguely, as if he's on some sort of quest or has a role to play in something significant. I initially thought it was just his way of coping with the trauma of his near-death experience, but now I'm not so sure."

"So did Mrs. Kagiso notice about his unusual behavior?" asked Rio keenly as he realized the butler seemed to recall the unusual behavior.

The butler shut his eyes tightly as he was trying to recall everything, "I am not sure if I am biased, now that I know what happened to Batho. If I am not mistaken, whenever Batho exhibited this kind of behavior and strange obsession with the history, this was when Mrs. Kagiso would keep him in his room, and a couple times, I had witnessed she was giving injection to his thigh."