At the Twilight of Mankind

Part 37 - Chapter 8: Intelligence (1/4)

THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN'S STRATEGY

When Stephan and Jeremy arrive at Nina's home, she is standing in the kitchen, empty pans spread out on the counter. 

"Oh! You're back," she exclaims as she sees the two young men standing in front of her. "Where's Sarah?" she immediately asks, her voice filled with concern.

"Mum, you should sit down," Stephan replies as he sits down at the kitchen table. 

Jeremy does the same, followed by Nina who remains with her mouth hanging open, her gaze anxious and hazy.

"Sarah is probably still alive, but we're not sure," Stephan begins calmly, taking his mother's hand on the table as if to give her the strength to keep listening.

"It's a long story, should we shorten it or do you want all the details?"

"The whole story in detail," she replies immediately, her throat tight.

So, Jeremy begins to speak while Nina listens to him intently, occasionally interrupting him to ask for clarification.

"Can you write down your mother's full name and the date of the accident, please?" she asks Jeremy, holding out her tablet on the counter, looking sad and serious.

"Do you have a recent photo of her?"

"What's the name of this professor, did you say?"

"And you say that his wife is the daughter of the president of Togo?"

"Did they ever tell you at any point what your device could do?"

"Do you think you can do again what you did to escape?"

"Do you want to keep this device and this job?"

"All I care about is saving Sarah," Jeremy replies to that last question.

He is surprised by Nina's composure; the woman seems to be analysing each of his words, each of his answers as if to put together a big puzzle. He can feel her sadness and anger, just like Stephan's next to him, but she has the calculating confidence of a she-wolf who saves her strength and agility for when the time comes to jump at her prey's throat. This is an excellent question that Nina has just asked him. Does he want to keep his device and his job? Come to think of it, the answer is definitely no, but does someone like him really have a choice? How will he pay back the costs of the operation and fulfil the commitment he has made? And after that, how will he go back to university without the grant he has lost? He has no idea how to use his device other than to see through matter; until recently, it has always been the device that has been using him. He wasn't even aware of all he could do with it. If his device can help them get Sarah out of the assembly safely like it did for him, he is definitely prepared to do whatever it takes to rescue her.

"How about you, Stephan, do you want to keep this job?" Nina asks, staring at her son.

"I don't care," he replies to his mother without hesitation with the certainty of those who are spoiled for choice.

"Give me a moment," Nina says, getting up from her seat. "I have to make a few calls before I go talk to Mr. Vaughen."

Then, she walks towards her office; her steps look surprisingly both agile and heavy. She gently pushes the door behind her.

"Does your mother always react so calmly to bad news?" Jeremy asks Stephan, staring at Nina's closed office door.

"No, only when she knows someone's life is in danger," Stephan replies anxiously.

Four hours later, Nina comes out of her office, her face tired, but her gaze determined. The two young men didn't move from the kitchen counter.

"Go to bed boys," Nina orders gently, heading for the stairs without glancing at them. "Borys and the President of Togo are coming first thing in the morning to go with us to Libra Justice. "

"Who's Borys?" Jeremy asks Stephan, intrigued.

"Borys Leszczyński, our godfather. He's also an MP at the World Parliamentary Assembly," Stephan explains with a sigh of relief.

Jeremy was unaware of the family pedigree of his teammates. Even more surprising news today, and again, just for him. Mr. Vaughen's words are still echoing in his head: "Did you really believe that an insignificant like you would land in our organisation by sheer coincidence and merit? You were obviously our perfect guinea pig." He was quite right. Compared to his colleagues, it seems to Jeremy that he is quite insignificant, indeed. For the first time in a very long time, Jeremy feels the fear of not being recognised, too small, inadequate in a world full of adults bigger than him. Caught up in the void of nothingness, he is doomed to be immediately forgotten by all those who have met him; a living death that has terrorised the human species for generations. Stephan stares at Jeremy in thought and notices the doubt in his teammate's expression.

"You can sleep here with us. It'll be easier for tomorrow. It's already very late," Stephan says getting up. "Follow me, I'll show you; you'll be comfortable here," he continues, heading for the stairs that Nina climbed a few minutes ago.

***

Sitting in the dark in his bedroom, Stephan is contemplating for the first time in his young life the unbearable thought of never seeing Sarah again. Since they were little, the twin siblings have never liked to be separated. Hidden in the dark from anyone's judgement, the young man's heart is aching with deep feelings of grief, guilt, and shame as teardrops start running down his face. He is gasping as though he was about to scream, but no sound comes out; dead silence continues to fill his bedroom. Stephan cannot believe that he has lied to his mother about his sister the last few days because of a job he doesn't even care about; more than the salary, it is the thrill of the chase, the advanced weapons and technology that has attracted him to Libra Justice. However tonight, he feels completely incompatible with this organisation, like oil and water. He seems strangely caught forever in between his mother's values ​and those of society, continuously pulled towards one side or the other.

Sitting alone and still in the dark, Stephan remembers how he has developed from an early age a haughty and disrespectful attitude towards those, who are called with the respect that nobody ever shows them today, the ancestor peoples. They have had several names before this one until political correctness decided that "ancestor people" was more appropriate. It all started at school when he began to make other friends his age. Sarah never seemed to get alone with them, nor did she ever comply to their games, preferring to go and play on her own instead. Their parents would never accept those attitudes at home either, their past and those people's present being too much alike. His father, in particular, used to share countless stories from his own time and his grandparents' as Chinese immigrants in North America. His parents' anecdotes gave a broader and more contrasting image of the ancestral peoples than the image presented by the texts he would read at school and in the media. Yet, neither the boy he was then, nor the young man today, has ever felt moved by those anecdotes. It was as though suffering and pain didn't matter the same when inflicted to those people. For Stephan, as for many men and women like him in the world today, the possibility that anyone could ever imagine or even desire the world more attractive, more beautiful, and more intelligent otherwise, was simply inconceivable.