John sat in his car, it rained, but now there were a few times in the day where it stopped raining and the clouds would just be there, floating around without making their presence known by releasing their contents on humanity. It was a breath of fresh air for any person, but rain really didn't bother him enough to form an opinion on it. After going home last night, after the debacle they called a crime scene and taking the note, he had Googled the name on it. Sophie Hosk. Seventeen-year-old girl, that had inherited money from her dead parents and had been under super vison of her guardian and uncle, Frank Hosk. Nothing weird in any way just a regular girl, well not totally regular, for one she didn't seem to have any social media accounts. In this day and age, it was highly unusual not to have any social media footprints on the internet, especially for a seventeen-year-old. She also didn't attend any school since she graduated elementary school at the age of eleven and seemed to be home schooled since then as she did have a high school degree. Why would a man like Southwell, who was writing on the dangers of VR, and lived on the other side of the UK, have the name and phone number of this slightly isolated but still very normal teenage girl in his hand when he was killed? Maybe it was unrelated? Maybe they knew each other privately, but how?
As he searched for a connection, he found the police rapport of the girl's parents, gunned down when they were playing tourist in London. Classified as a mugging gone wrong. But what mugger in their rights minds would gun two people down for their wallets, in broad daylight, in the middle of a very crowded street, to kill themselves after the fact, right next to his victims. Had they been blind to see it as a mugging gone wrong? Or was there something else going on? The woman, Marie Hosk, had been a very successful career woman in both the field of science and business. She had created one of the first AI to be used in VR and had been hired by a company named Nsquared to create a better AI for them. Apparently, she or her colleagues had succeeded right before she died, as this company soared to be one of the biggest in the game industry after the creation of their very advanced AI. The man, Adrian Hosk, had been a genius in engineering since a young age, with almost a hundred patents under his name, and many more already sold to the highest bidder. All the patents were made in the field of robotics where he single handedly let the industry progress in 5 years where it was expected they would be in twenty. He was the sole reason that the Hosk family was swimming in money and that their child was still very well off even with losing both her parents, making work optional for her for the rest of her life.
Nsquared. Was that the connection? Did Southwell want to find out what she knew about their parent’s business. Did he also see that it couldn't have possibly been a mugging gone wrong? But why were they both killed then? Maybe they had information that someone didn't want to know, or they had created something that someone wanted or didn't want to roam the earth. With his robotics mind and her AI mind they were the perfect couple to create the first droids, something that still happened but much later than it probably would have if the two of them were to be left alive. Something just didn't make sense. Why so public? Why not just kidnap them or kill them in an ally? Take them from their home, or shoot them there. It was quiet enough, their house on the Scottish Highlands was perfect for a covert clean up. As he was mulling through the information he had on the Hosk family had gotten an email, a Jason McKenzie, saying he was head of security for Nsquared and that there was information he liked to share with me on the Southwell case. How he had known he had anything to do with the Southwell case, how he had gotten a hold of his email, and how he known he was still investigating he didn't know. But the fact that someone from Nsquared was emailing him was confirmation enough that they were involved in all of this.
He was now sitting in his car just outside their European headquarters in London, an impressive skyscraper made of glass and steel that went up at least sixty stories. He looked up at the building that was reflecting the grey sky; he had a bad feeling about this invitation why not just sent him anything they got? Or why not just call him? There were plenty of ways to ask sure it was a secure line, they could even put it through the mail. The mail for one, was one of the more secure lines of communication in this day and age and it was the only reason it hadn't died out completely. Yet. He grabbed his cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit one up, without taking his eyes off the building. The smoke slowly filling the car, he snapped out if it and opened the window a little. He had to go in, even if it was only to satisfy his own curiosity.
He opened the door and climbed out of his car and into the busy sidewalk. Officially he had parked his car in a no parking zone, but when the money grabbers, otherwise known as traffic police, would check his plates they would see that it was Scotland Yards. That would keep the flies away long enough. He stepped onto the sidewalk, standing still for a moment to stretch his tired body. Inhaling a last breath of death-in-stick-form he threw it on the ground and stamped it out. He crossed the busy street carefully, but still a couple of drivers found it their place to honk at him, he gave them the only appropriate hand sign he knew and continued on his way. Arriving in front of the massive building he looked for an entrance, finding one in the form of a glass revolving door, he walked up to it and let himself be shepherd into the building by the door. Once in, he gaped a little at the extravagance of the lobby; the floor was made of marble, and so were the walls and the check in desk. The ceiling had paintings of, what he guessed to be, the games that Nsquared had created. The painter, or painters, had spared no cost and had filled the 900 square meters of ceiling with exhibitions of brave behavior and the slaughter of about any magical creature known to man. Very inviting. The enormous chandelier that sparkled and shone through the whole room made it seem just a little more over the top. As people started to walk past him slightly grumbling under their breath he snapped out of his stupor and went on in the direction of the marble check in desk. The perfect creature that was currently on the phone smiled at him with a radiant white smile. So sad it didn't make it to her eyes what a spectacular view would that have been, he thought. He smiled back and leaned on the desk, waiting.
As she was finally done on the phone, she turned her attention to him, and if he would have been thirty again he wouldn't have known his name anymore in that moment. Luckily his testosterone had gone down with his aging body and he could only appreciate the perfect face and slight cleavage that gave a teaser to the fantastic possibilities that were hidden underneath. Still smiling she asked him what she could do for him, laughing a little at a few possibilities that crossed his mind he answered that he had an appointment with Jason McKenzie. As he said the name her perfect face twitched a little and he could see that the name didn't have many good associations in her mind. Strengthened in his thoughts that he should be on guard she proceeded to make a phone call, and after saying yes sir three times she hang up, a little shaken she said he should go through the doors on her left and that somebody would be waiting for him there. He nodded and thanked her and proceeded to the door, opened it and walked through. He had walked into a hallway that let to multiple elevators and a man.
The man was around a meter and ninety in height and almost as wide, all muscle, he towered a little above John. His face was filled with sharp edges, and every bone seemed to be sticking out, his chin had a dimple, his lips were slightly redder than they should be normally and his nose was pointy. His sharp black eyes seemed to be looking through you and his eyebrows were well kept. On top of it all was a head full of jet black hair that slowed lightly down till his shoulders. If John had ever seen someone that looked more like a classic superhero villain, then he couldn't remember who. As he observed the man, so did the man observe him and after a couple of tense seconds he took a step forward and John had to keep himself perfectly still to resist the urge to take a step back. "Good morning John Cornwell, I hope you didn't have trouble finding the place?" The man said while he was making his way towards John. "Mr. McKenzie I presume?" John said, taking a step forward himself and stretching out his hand, the man grabbed it in a firm but not a crushing hold and shook it while nodding and saying "In the flesh". They released the handshake and Jayson McKenzie turned towards the elevators, "If you could follow me, please?" now it was time for John to nod "of course".
They stood and waited a little and then got into an elevator. As they got in, McKenzie took his keycard and swiped, before pressing a button that wasn't previously on the elevator, and they went down. Slightly starting to worry, John asked "What is going on Mr. McKenzie?”. The man turned and looked up towards the roof of the elevator and down again towards John "this is not a good time to start our conversation Mr. Cornwell. Please wait a little while longer." He said and turned around again. John looked up at the place where the man had looked and saw there was a camera placed. Strange, why would the head of security worry about people listening. Even though it was a little strange, he kept quiet and followed the man out of the elevator after a couple of seconds had passed. He looked at the wall and they were at B35. At least thirty-five levels underground, things just kept getting stranger. But he could imagine that a game company needed cooled places for their server rooms. But why in London? Where real estate was like gold, and more importantly; why was he being led here and not just an office space? As they kept walking, John could only see doors and concrete. It seemed that this whole basement level was one big corridor with branching rooms on both sides. As John was getting worried that soon they wouldn't be underneath the building anymore, the man turned around, opened a door and said "this way please".
John hesitated for a moment when he walked in, the room had no furniture, nor had anything else, it was just a concrete room that was about three meters high and twenty-five square meters of concrete floor. As John hesitated, the man behind him slipped passed him and motioned him to come in to, saying "Please, if I wanted to harm you I could have done so without inviting you to come here." He tried to smile, but the smile was every bit as villainous as the rest of his appearance and thus had not much of a comforting effect. Still, he made sense so John walked in further, and closed the door. "So you said you had information?" John asked, his eyes on the guy’s face, his head a little sideways as to try to look at him from a different angle. "Yes I do, it was me, I killed the Southwell family." There was a pause and John looked at him, trying to find out if he was telling the truth. He wasn't surprised, ever since he had been contacted by this man, this Jason McKenzie he had thought of this possibility but he couldn't figure out one important question. Mainly why he had invited him here. "Why have you invited me here Jason, you could have gone to the police, or MI6 or whoever is handling the case now? " He smiled again, this time it was a real smile, his eyes glistering and opening his mouth to speak "Because I had a feeling that you would come to the conclusion that Nsquared had something to do with it and I wanted to prevent a good man, and a great detective being found with a belt around his neck a dirty magazine on his desk and his pants around his ankles."
John stared at the man for a moment, completely sure he was telling the truth, something that disturbed him greatly. Had he dodged a bullet by grace of the villain that had killed the Southwell family? "If you are such a vigilante then why kill those children?" he looked the man straight in the jet-black eyes, and saw there something he had not expected, shame. The man kept looking at him though and then spoke again "Yes that was a great shame, and one I had rather avoided, but the one that ordered the hit, stated that there should not be any loose ends, so it had to be done. If I had been alone, I would have hidden them somewhere, but I wasn't. At least now they will still exist somewhere else. The reason I have brought you here, is so we can work together in preventing these things from happening again. Why here specifically, is because this room contains no bugs or camera's and no electrical equipment, or for example wire function in this room. The man I work for, has crossed my threshold for idly waiting for a chance to relieve this company of its existence. So, I have decided to actively work towards its destruction." As he finished his little speech he walked towards the wall and leaned against it with his shoulder, looking at John. John looked back, thinking. If this was a trap, then it was a trap that was way too complicated for its purpose. If they wanted him dead, they could easily kill him. If they wanted him as a scapegoat, then they could just simply do that, instead of making themselves known. He sighed, he was getting too old for this shit "Why shouldn't I just arrest you?" But at that the man only smiled and said "Sure, that would ruin me as I wouldn't survive the first night in custody, and they would then proceed to wipe out everyone that came in contact with you in the last week. But sure, you could arrest me."
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John frowned, He had expected such a response, but still hearing it was worse than suspecting it. "Please tell me everything you want to discuss and I will make a decision accordingly". And thus, came to be the longest time John spent between four concrete walls, listening to a story filled with horrors and monstrosities.
_________
Jason was walking back from his meeting with the detective. The man had some sharp eyes and an even sharper mind, which could be a very dangerous combination both for the detective as for those he chased. The Southwell's lay still fresh in his mind, they had been his latest targets. There was no assignment that had gone by where he did not mess up just enough for the right people to notice. His plan had worked perfectly this time. He had gone up to the house alone. None of his usual cronies that followed him around, day and night, had been given permission to join on this highly sensitive mission. Which suited his intentions perfectly. He had knocked on the door and waited. It rained that night and his hoody was up but the moment a little girl opened the door, barely old enough to open the door on rainy nights, he took his hoody off and let the rain splash his long black hair. He had crouched down to be face to face with the little girl who had stared at him with some curiosity mixed in with a slight fear. Everybody had the slight fear in their eyes the first time they met Jayson. Ever since he started school at the age of five, he had always scared his peers.
When he was little he would often ask his mom why the kids in school didn't want to play with him. She had explained "You should smile more Jason, people like it when you smile at them, maybe tell a joke." She had smiled at him with her characteristically beautiful smile that had filled him with warmth. Not that it worked, quite the opposite actually, every time he smiled the kids would run screaming and yelling for the teacher that he was bullying them. He had been confused until he had asked a kid that almost peed his pants the moment he had grabbed him. The kid had mumbled to him with a horror-struck face "E-e-every time I look at you, I feel a chill down my back, and my momma said we should better avoid you, as you... m-might hurt m-me". The child had started sobbing and Jason had let him go, sobbing himself. Was he some kind of monster or something? Much later he found out that he indeed was some kind of monster, but not in the literal sense of the word. The look in his eyes had struck fear in the many people he had met for the first time, and he had felt biter because of it. He grew up without friends, a pariah, an outcast and after school he had joined the military. There, at least, they made it a sport to look him in the eye when the fellow cadets tried to speak to him. The more time he spent there, the more he realized that he was a weapon, he needed to be used, to be honed. He was the main star of hazing the new cadets for five years in a row. The attention he got from his fellow cadets was addicting for a person who had been shunned his entire life. The bad and cruel things he did were reinforced by the attention, the rush of recognition.
After the sixth year, he left, he had been picked up by Nsquared who made him head of security, the company was small at the time (only twenty employees) and was on the rise. At first it was boring, he felt himself dull, but then came the gutter tactics and he thrived. His actions were perfect and untraceable, cruel and destructive, but still held flair. He had been proud. That was until he had met the only one who saw him as a person and not a monster, Sarah, who he would marry after only three months of knowing her. They were divorced now as she could no longer deal with his line of work. He had not done any good lately that was until yesterday. He had asked the little girl if she perhaps could get her daddy to the door, and she had nodded and sprinted away, leaving the door open. Naïve little girl. He had waited in the cold rain, his hair getting soaked, sticking to his face. It wasn't normal to faint weakness like this, he would never do it in normal situations, but now was not a normal situation. He needed to look weaker than the monster they all saw, the villain even the seasoned detective reflected back to him in his eyes.
The man had come to the door, wearing a red bathrobe, a white t-shirt underneath, finished by a striped pajama pants and some normal and uneventful looking brown slippers. This might have been the easiest job in his history with the company if not for the change in plans of his own. He coughed in his fist to let the smile leak off his face as he spoke to the guy that had brown hair, brown eyes and a very forgettable face which was perfect for his cause. "Excuse me for interrupting your evening Mr. Southwell but I'm afraid I come bearing some very disturbing news. Would you mind letting me in the house?" He looked up into the air and rain assaulted his face for some dramatic effect "I'm afraid it's quite the awful weather outside." The man stared at him for a couple of seconds, not saying a thing and not moving aside. Just as Jason was thinking that this man was maybe a bit better than his daughter he opened the door and made an inviting gesture with his hand before saying "Please, come in, mister?". The fool, the man's daughter was barely eight years old, what was his excuse? Ow well, Jason would need to fix a few things, but that was for later. He nodded his head in appreciation and stepped in while stating his full name.
As they were standing in the hall way the man looked at Jason with some worry before asking "What is this disturbing piece of news that you wanted to tell me Mr. McKenzie?". Jason had to give it to the man, he seemed quite calm, which could not have been said about all the victims that had let Jason into their house. He took his time to look around in the hall way. A couple of photo's catching his eyes, before he turned around to the man and stated "Mr. Southwell I was sent to your house to kill your family and let it look like an accident, then staging your suicide. Now before you think of doing anything stupid, like for instance, reaching for that umbrella to your side. I would like to state for the record that I'm going to do no such thing. You see Mr. Southwell, I think you are doing remarkably well with your news articles and I would like you to continue. Well with some inside information from me personally of course, but that is something we will discuss later. First, I would like to ask you Mr. Southwell. Do you think Nsquared capable of murder, just because you stumbled upon the truth without realizing it yet?" The man's face was a cascade of emotions, fear, anger, relief, confusion, dawning, and back to fear. In the end, he whispered "there aren't any accidents..." at this Jason nodded to the man, he had a quick mind, he had to give him that at least. "There are some genuine accidents, but most of the time they are intentional, but that does not answer my question to you Mr. Southwell. Do you believe Nsquared capable of killing for that information?" he stared at the man's eyes, as they came to the realization how close he had come to death. The man shook his head and fell to his knees before looking up at Jason and he croaked "Yes." Jason nodded and had crouched before the man, lowering his position so that the man would feel less threatened and intimidated closing up at this crucial point of his plan. He then spoke softly "I will take you and your two children to a safe house that only I know of, provide you with fake identification and income. The details of what I want you to do will come in the coming weeks but first focus on staying out of sight and alive. If you get caught still alive, then I will be caught keeping you alive. Please gather your belongings, only the essentials, and nothing else. Nothing that can be missed or seen to not be where it should be, like the photos. Do you understand Mr. Southwell? This is a onetime deal if you cannot keep it together I will have to return to the original plan."
The man had agreed and shakingly stood up and gone to do what he was told. He got them in his van and left them there while he had gone back with three fresh bodies he had picked up somewhere else. They had died of a poisoning in another part of the country and were still fresh, or at least fresh enough as nobody was going to look closely at the bodies, anyway. Placing the two children and the man where they should have been, he shot the man's head half off so his face wasn't visible anymore. Then went outside and called the cops and his contact at MI6. He knew the police would investigate but the disguise would hold up until his cleaner from MI6 got there. The least the guy could do was clean up a good situation for a change, instead of all those bad ones. Back at the van he had winked at one of the girls who was staring at him curiously and driven off to their safe house. He hadn't been proud of anything lately but he had been proud of the way he had dealt with the Southwell's. That and the man could become useful in his plans. Then there was the detective. He had placed the note in the man's hand so that he could monitor anyone who was to curious about his set up. He didn't need people looking further then the obvious because they would find inconsistencies that could get him killed. So he monitored for anyone searching for the name Sophie Hosk and consequently her family, the name had some meaning to him yet he did not know why he still used it.
Finding Detective John Cornwell on his way had been a bonus straight from the heavens. The man was smart, knew how the world worked and wasn't overly ambitious or moralistic. It was because of these impressions that Jason had decided to let the man leave. He might have joked around about the suffocation scenario but he could have easily killed the poor man fifty other ways. The talk had been good, and only now Jason felt how much he had been carrying around with him. It was good to share that with someone, even better if that person could function as Jason's moral compass, as his had been deluded a long time ago. What could and couldn't he do for his plans to succeed, it was good to have some feedback or he might destroy more than a few lives on the way. He hadn't told the detective about the Southwell's. Knowledge was power, and it was not detrimental for their relationship for the detective to see him as a villain which he still was. One swallow does not make a summer, and he was definitely no summer.
He strolled through the corridors, his mood a good better now that he had dealt in a productive way with the detective. That was before he started noticing that several people were running through the office. Jason hadn't seen anybody run through these halls in forever, and technicians only ran when their jobs were on the line. Something had happened. He changed course to the office of the cold-blooded lizard that dared to call itself the CEO of Nsquared. Passing more and more running people, some who normally would make large b-lines around him, now almost ran him down with fear in their eyes. He heard some people whispering about a missing asset within the game before he arrived at the door. The gateway to hell. He knocked and heard his boss yell before letting him in. His black box phone still on his ear, holding up a finger to Jason and ranting into the highly secure, untraceable and not destroyable phone. "You will solve this and find him or I will personally come down to the server room and I will make sure you never leave it again in your life, do I make myself clear Hanson?". A short pause before he continued "I do not care how you do it, find him." The lizard man proceeded by pressing disconnect button before smiling at Jason and exclaiming "Jason! I take it everything went agreeable yesterday?" The man had a smile on his disgusting face that said he didn't want to hear otherwise, but Jason just nodded and stated "Like always, Sir. Is there a problem? It seems the office is more lively than usual." The lizard man walked back to his desk and set down, slapping the dust off his Armani jacket like he had the urge to smite someone. Before smiling back at Jason again, assuring "Nothing that you have to be concerned about Jason. Just some hiccups in-game. So, now on to what I do like you to become involved in, and that is phase two of the plan." Jason paled a little but due to his already pale complexion it wasn't noticed by the lizard man. He coughed, clearing his throat "Already, Sir?" The lizard man looked at him and simply said "Yes, now leave, I have other problems to attend to." and Jason left, his plans needed to go faster or it would have no use to even attempt them.