"My father is dead."
Nicolas's gaze was unwavering as he studied the features of her face and there was almost a hint of adoration in the way he did it.
"I can assure you I am very much alive."
She looked away, swallowing hard.
"You are to me." She whispered. "You died the moment you chose the Mark over us."
"Chose the Mark over you?" He searched her face, trying to make eye contact. "Is that what Ruth told you?" Out of her periphery, she saw him shake his head.
"She lied, Rachel. Your mother lied to you. She left me. She took you away from me, took your brother away too before I even had the chance to meet him."
"I'm sure she had her reasons."
"You defend her because you do not know who she is."
"I know who she is and I know who you are. You've turned an entire nation into puppets and you think wanting to protect your children somehow absolves you of your mistakes. But it doesn't. That doesn't justify enslaving thousands of people. It just doesn't work that way."
"I am not the monster you make me out to be. Let me prove it to you." He gestured towards the doorway. Nothing could be seen beyond the stainless steel doors but she could hear a whirring and clicking sound. Soon the door flung open, revealing Nicholas standing within a narrow cylindrical space, one hand tentatively stretched out in front of him. She glanced beside her, where the hologram still stood. He waivered for a moment before disappearing completely.
Her head was spinning a little—she had to grab the edge of the bed to steady herself but the way it hovered above the ground made her lose her balance and slump down onto the mattress instead. Nicolas rushed to help her but she swatted his hands away.
"Don't touch me."
"Let me show you the truth. Please, Rachel. At the very least can you give me the benefit of the doubt?"
She stood, ignoring his still outstretched hand and squared her shoulders. Maybe this was her only chance to try to break out. If she led Nicolas to believe she was on his side, maybe he'd trust her enough to let his guard down. He'd come in person, that was already a sign of his weakness.
"Let's go then."
"This way." He led her out of the room and onto a rectangular platform waiting right outside the doorstep.
"Hold still." He said. A floating camera rushed towards them, making Rachel duck with fear of having it strike her in the face.
The little camera came to a halt. A beam of red light erupted from it as it scanned Nicolas's eye.
"Nicolas Wilson. Access granted." A female voice announced. Next it whizzed to Rachel, the red light penetrating her vision.
"Rachel Nicole Wilson. Access denied. Unmarked."
"Grant access. Administrator override." Nicolas ordered.
"Password please." The little floating gadget announced.
Nicolas glanced at her, shot her a small smile that almost looked embarrassed. "Rachel," He said. She tried to ignore the fact that his password was her name, that her name was important enough for him to use it in his day to day life.
"Access granted for Rachel Nicole Wilson. Administrator override."
The platform they stood on plummeted to the ground, eliciting an embarrassing scream from Rachel. Nicolas reached out a hand to steady her and she didn't stop him. She held on to him for dear life, for the first time in her life discovering what it was like to have a father to lean on.
It was only once the ground became steady once more that she pushed away from him and swallowed down big mouthfuls of air.
"It might have been smart to warn you." Nicolas observed.
"You think?" She shot him a nasty glare as she straightened up. Two doors stood before them in the tight, cylindrical enclosure. The flying camera from before whizzed after them and hovered near Nicholas like an obedient pet awaiting instructions.
"Let us through, Corina."
"Yes, Mr. Wilson. Access granted."
"What is that thing?" Rachel asked.
"It's an artificial intelligence device. It's programed to recognize me and follow my instructions and mine alone." He said the last part in a particular tone that clearly said she shouldn't be getting any ideas of using it against him. She scrunched up her nose with distaste. "It helps me keep some order around here."
"Is she—it that thing what controls the people?"
"Something like that. Allow me to show you." He motioned for her to go first out into a long, brightly lit corridor. She took a tentative step off the platform and upon seeing that the ground was steady, she strode forward with more confidence.
"Give us a view to the lab." Nicolas said. "Please."
A pair of chairs erupted from the floor. Nicolas motioned for her to sit and she didn't object in order to give her body and mind a much needed rest.
The entirety of the wall before them peeled away slowly, revealing a surgical room of sorts beyond. People were lying on hospital beds, their eyes closed, steady heartbeats and breathing monitored on screens next to them.
People in lab coats moved around the room quietly. Some held sharp objects in their blue-gloved hands, others scribbled notes furiously onto clipboards that floated in the air.
"What is this? What are they doing to those people?"
"They are looking for a cure."
"A cure?" she asked. She shifted in her seat to look at Nicolas. He stared wistfully into the room, his eyes crinkled at the sides. She wondered what it was about him that gave off the illusion of goodness, even though all his actions thus far had been anything but.
"I thought you said you already had a cure for E-91. Isn't that why I'm still here?"
"Not for E-91, Rachel. For the Mark."
"I'm sorry, did you say for the Mark?"
"Yes, that is exactly what I said." She sank back into her chair, trying desperately to make sense of everything. A throbbing sensation began to build behind her eyes and at the base of her nose. Why would Nicolas want a cure for the Mark? Did he plan on freeing the people?
"Let me explain what I mean." He stood and pointed at one of the patients lying still on a cot.
"He recently received the Mark, the real Mark, the original design. The way it works," He motioned to the floating gadget named Corina. It whizzed down to him and he pressed a few buttons onto it so that the adjacent wall revealed another type of room.
Inside this room, a young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, was lying in a white chair, his forehead and neck strapped down with black belts. A doctor worked meticulously over his forehead, a red little laser ingraining a barcode onto his forehead.
Next, she took a vial of something, a greyish-blue liquid that shone almost metallic in the fluorescent lighting. She took her syringe and propped the young man's eye open with her thumb and forefinger.
As the needle drew closer, the boy's breathing hitched higher and higher. Finally, it penetrated his eye, the needle sliding through with ease.
Rachel cringed, pressed her hands tightly against her face.
The Doctor deposited the contents of the syringe into the young man, removed the needle. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.
"What did she just do?"
"That liquid holds the properties needed for the Mark to work. The optic nerve delivers the serum, which holds microscopic chips, to the rest of the brain. This allows the brain to connect with the home computer, Corina. Corina then uploads combat strategies, survival skills, everything that our soldiers need to know in order to survive in a war."
Something occurred to Rachel. "If Corina is in control of their minds then what's stopping her from taking over? I mean what's stopping her from being in charge?"
"Corina is not in control, nor can she ever be. She is simply the medium which we use to deliver our messages. Corina is a contained computer program, with no access to the web. Corina knows nothing except what we have programed and expressly given her. She is isolated within a software that is specifically designed to destroy her should she ever overstep her boundaries."
She mulled this over but nothing he said made sense. She was no computer whiz, had no idea how to even work a computer at that.
"So what's going on over here then?"
She went back towards the first wall, feeling a little sick.
"Here we are trying to find a way to deliver the Mark without the unwanted side effects."
"I see," She murmured. "You're trying to cure the parts that make them violent, not remove the Mark entirely. For a second there I thought you might actually prove me wrong. I thought, he can't be a bad guy if he's trying to find a cure, a way to reverse the Mark. But that's not what you're doing."
"Rachel," He sighed. He touched her gently on the arm but she jerked away. "I want nothing more than for things to go back to the way they used to be, before E-91, before the war, before we were forced to find alternative methods of survival. But that's not realistic, not in the world we live in now."
"Please believe me when I tell you that I've had our doctors work on countless of ways to remove the Mark but all attempts have failed. All attempts have led to the death of the test subject."
"Test subject." She whispered. "People. You mean people."
A scream erupted from a woman in the other room. Rachel could see her mouth hanging open, her lungs inflated with a silent scream that she couldn't hear through the glass wall, but could plainly see on her features. Pain twisted her once lovely heart-shaped face, made her look like a writhing monster instead of a human.
"What's happening?" Rachel slammed her hand against the glass, helplessness biting into every inch of her body.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you. When we try to alter the Mark serum, it drives them mad with rage. It's a never ending cycle. Something in the serum makes them violent. These scientists work day and night to find an alternative, to find something that won't cause this sort of reaction but everything we've tried so far only angers them more. We wanted soldiers, with morals and a drive to fight for a good cause, not killing machines with no remorse. Unfortunately, we got the latter and I have no idea how to stop it."
"So in the meantime you will continue to Mark people even though you know what happens to them when you do. You'll hold their minds hostage, have them do your biding and then what? Have you ever wondered what will happen once this so-called war is over? Don't you fear the day will come when you can no longer control them? When their evil is too great and the world ends up being worse than if we'd been slaughtered?"
"I have thought of that. Every night, actually. But I have no way of removing the Mark. We've tried everything in our power and the best thing we can do is try to remove the parts of it that turns people violent. That's the best I can hope for without having the person who created the serum here to help."
"Well why aren't they here to help? Are they dead?"
"I don't know. That's where I was hoping you could help me."
"Me?" She turned to look at him. "How can I possibly help you? I don't know anything about science or medicine."
He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. "You can help me by telling me where your mother is."
"My mother? What does she have to do with any of this?"
"Rachel," He sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Your mother isn't who she says she is. She was the one who developed the technology we use to Mark people. After she saw how horribly wrong it had gone, and how she couldn't reverse it, I don't know, maybe she couldn't live with what she'd done? So she fled and left me alone to deal with the aftermath. Your mother created this."
Rachel felt like she'd been punched in the gut. "Th-that can't be possible," she stammered. "My mother is ordinary, plain...she couldn't have...you have to be lying."
"What reason would I have to lie? Your mother was a genius scientist, one of the many reasons why I fell in love with her, actually. She was a master scientist, so intelligent." He sighed morosely.
"Too intelligent I think, that she often let her mind take over and never let emotions cloud her judgement. That's how she was able to create the Mark."
A laugh bubbled up and escaped through her lips. She wondered if she'd finally gone crazy, if all these truths, half-truths, all these discoveries had finally pushed her over the edge.
Seriously. What the hell kind of world had she had the misfortune of being born into?