Chapter 20
The whole time James spoke, Rue and Steve remained silent. They sat in an office-sized room that Steve had summoned them to. Its walls were dark, featureless, and the only furniture was a handful of chairs and couches set up in a circle around a table. It was clear he’d thrown it together quickly, to serve as a meeting area.
Steve sat in a leather armchair, while James and Rue sat on a dark, cloth-covered couch. Technically James had been standing the whole time he’d been speaking, but now that he’d finally finished, he collapsed onto the couch. Rue’s hand rested on his leg, as he leaned back onto the couch, fighting back tears. Tears of frustration, tears of fear, tears of anger. It was all so unfair.
“You don’t seem too surprised,” Rue said to Steve. The old man was looking at them, and the man did seem rather unaffected by everything. Or at least, he was reacting with a lot less emotion than James had expected.
“When you’ve seen all I’ve seen,” Steve began slowly, rubbing his temples with his hands as he spoke, “it’s really not a question of how terrible man can be, but more, when will the greatest catastrophe come to pass.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping, “I’d really hoped we had more time.”
“So, you knew this was going to happen?” James leaned towards Steve. “You knew the government would do this?”
“This exact scenario?” Steve shook his head, “hardly. But it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility. With every technological step forward, I ran countless doomsday scenarios through my mind. Being a developer, it’s my job to brainstorm, to think, to imagine what CAN be. And that particular trait of my mind likes to do the same with everything in the world. The moment the governments of the world came together into a singular entity, well,” he shrugged, “it was only a matter of time.”
“If you’ve brainstormed the possibility,” Rue said as James processed what Steve was saying, “then you should have solutions? Contingencies yourself? Can you shut DCO down? Wouldn’t that ensure this plan can’t work?”
Steve laughed, and it was a dark laugh. “It’s not that simple,” he shook his head, “Hades told James the truth about everything. Hell, he told James things I didn’t know, things I hadn’t even speculated. And yet, I can assure you, everything he said, as far as I know, is the absolute truth. And that includes the fact that short of tampering with the physical servers in the old mountain, there’s shit all we can really do from our end.”
“You’re one of the lead developers,” Rue pressed, “you wrote backdoors into the game for yourself, and yet you can’t bring the server down from the inside?”
Steve shrugged, “I wish I could.”
Rue paused for a moment, and glanced from James, to Steve, her lips pursed. “What about Xander?” She asked. “If you can’t do it, surely he could.”
A pained expression crossed Steve’s face. James hadn’t mentioned what Hades had said about Xander. It had actually slipped from his mind. But Rue’s statement had pulled it right back to the front.
“Hades said Xander can’t help anyone, at all.” James looked accusingly at Steve, “he said you know why. That you were there?”
“Of course he did,” Steve muttered. He sighed and stood, and turned his back to James and Rue before he continued speaking. “Xander is no more.” He said, his voice devoid of all emotion.
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“What do you mean, he is no more?” James asked hesitantly. The way Steve was acting was so unlike the developer. He was being evasive, cryptic.
“It means exactly what it sounds like. Xander doesn’t exist anymore. He’s gone,” Steve’s voice dropped to a whisper, and there was a crack of emotion to it, “forever.”
“The government killed him?” Rue asked hesitantly. “They killed Xander?”
“I thought he was supposed to be confined to a cell.” James added, “solitary confinement or whatnot. You told us something along those lines.”
“It was a lie,” Steve’s voice cracked again, “what happened to him, is crueler than death.”
“What do you…” James trailed off as his mind worked to figure it out. “Truth Serum.” The terrifying liquid that forever stole someone’s free will. They’d become a puppet, a shade of their former self. Numb, incapable of free will, incapable of free thought. Simple living, breathing, recording of everything they had been, that could answer questions and give information to whoever had access to them. And it was permanent.
Steve’s body flinched at the words, his shoulders stiffening. He turned around then, and his tears were falling freely. He looked broken. Like he was reliving a nightmare.
“They made me do it.” He said softly, “they made me inject him. It was the only way they’d let me see him. I needed to see him, one last time.” He collapsed back into his chair. “He was my best friend once; did you know that.” More sobbing, as he put his face in his hands. “I’m Rachel and Matthew’s Godfather.”
“And yet you did it.” Rue said with venom. “You claim he was your best friend. And yet you injected him with the very thing that would imprison him, forever, in his own mind. A liquid lobotomy from which there is no escape.” She started to rise, her anger nearly visible. James reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her back down. Steve was broken before him. And he couldn’t afford that right now. He knew that. He also knew, in his heart, that if Steve had done it, he’d done it for a good reason. There had to be a reason. Steve was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a monster.
“It was to ensure Rachel and Matthew were safe,” Steve said, not looking at Rue as he spoke. “In his final moments, he confirmed in his own words that killing him would leak the information he had. Something we knew. But he also proved, in that moment, to the government more than anything, that he’d been acting alone. That no one else could be held accountable for his actions, his crimes. I was there on not only my best friend’s behalf, but to ensure I could protect the people he cared about the most. So yes, I stole his very being from him, by injecting him with the truth serum, but I also, saved the ones he cherished the most, in the process.” He laughed, a bitter, dry laugh. “It also needed to happen, to clear my name as well.”
“Even though he’d fired you?” James asked, “they still believed you’d been a part of his plan with Cyb3ru5?”
“The government doesn’t like to leave any stone unturned. You don’t become as powerful as they are, without being thorough, and paranoid. By injecting him with the Truth Serum, I cleared my name. And they were able to question him, and confirm additionally, that Rachel and Matthew weren’t at fault.”
“Surely if you hadn’t agreed, they still could have learned that by questioning him.” Rue muttered. “You didn’t have to do that, to your so called best friend.”
“If he’d asked me to, if he’d made it seem either of them was in danger in that moment,” Steve responded bitterly, “I intended to kill him when I injected the Truth Serum. It would have forfeited my life, sure, but his secrets would have died with him, and the government would have been too busy dealing with his leaked secrets, to pursue Rachel and Matthew without any evidence.”
Steve took a deep breath, and wiped his eyes. He looked at Rue and James, the most raw, vulnerable form of the developer that either had ever seen. He took another breath, and then another, each one stuttering a little less. Once he’d calmed himself, once he’d prepared himself, he spoke again.
“Hades plan is a solid one,” he said slowly, “and if we’re going to make it work, we need to begin right away. Which means,” he waved his hand, his eyes shifting to the side at some screen as he worked quickly with his virtual keyboard. “We need to get the others in here, now, so that we can begin our efforts.” He paused typing at his keyboard, to stare at James and Rue. “One mistake, one misstep, from here on out, could spell the end of everything. You know that, right?”
“I do,” James said, and his hand, which still held Rue’s, threaded their fingers, “we do.” he said again, firmly.
“Well then,” Steve offered them a smile, though it was a shadow of his normal shit eating grin, “let’s gather the rest of our little chaos party, shall we?”