“GOOD MORNING HOWARD.” THE ELECRONICALLY DISTORTED voice rang out from the darkness above me as I lay still on the cold stone floor of my cell. There must be an intercom in the ceiling, I thought, as I pulled myself into the back corner of the tiny cell. I hadn’t eaten in a little over a day so I was far too exhausted to attempt to stand.
“It’s afternoon; not morning,” I finally replied as I rested my head against the wall. Minutes went by with no response. For a moment, I thought that I had possibly imagined the voice.
“Impressive internal clock, Howard,” the mysterious person finally replied over the intercom. After a moment, I realized that this was more than likely The Suspect.
“Did you think I would lose track of time?” I asked, forcing myself to laugh. “Perhaps you were hoping I would become more desperate when you inevitably lied and told me how long I had been imprisoned here?” I asked.
“You look plenty desperate to me.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“It’s been five days, Howard. You know they’re not coming for you.”
“It’s been four days. And yes, they are,” I snapped. The room fell silent. His sporadic silence bothered me, but I refused to let him know his psychological game was working.
“You might as well get it over with because you won’t get a word out of me. I know you’re only keeping me alive because you want to know why we came after you,” I said.
A few more minutes of silence passed before he responded.
“I have kept you alive simply because I haven’t determined the most satisfying way to kill you. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you are of any importance to me.”
“You know I’ve always wanted to try the firing squad. How’s that sound?” I chuckled.
“I was thinking more along the lines of starvation,” he hissed. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve systematically decreased the frequency in which we bring you food and water. The slice of bread you ate yesterday will likely be the last thing you’ll ever eat.”
I didn’t reply. My stomach growled as if signifying the gravity of his diabolical words.
“After you burn through your remaining body fat, your body will start to break down your muscles and use them for energy to keep your heart and nervous system functioning for a few more days. Good luck with the severe case of diarrhea that follows. You can’t exactly crack a window in that cell.”
He was a mad man. An absolutely, certifiable, mad man. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, I thought. I was supposed to be out there making a difference, saving the world alongside Jason and Adam, not wasting away in a matchbox of a cell waiting for my body to eat itself.
“In the end, you are left with two choices, Howard. You can resist and die face down in a pile of your own feces, or you tell me what I want to know and be granted a swift end.”
“What do you want from me?” I grumbled.
“Why did you attack my facility?”
“It wasn’t an attack. It was a rescue mission. We came for the girl but we didn’t know that she had joined The Strangers. The media gave the impression that she was kidnapped.”
“Of course, they did. They can’t have the world knowing that the daughter of a prominent Senator joined what they believe to be a terrorist organization.”
“We don’t simply believe that you’re terrorists. You are terrorists!”
“Then what of the people’s say? To them, we’re heroes. To them, our work is righteous.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re no hero. You’re just a puppet and there’s no difference between you and any other megalomaniacal failure from the past. I’ve watched you sow your insidious seeds of deceit while claiming to serve a righteous cause since the first day you logged on to that chat room three years ago. You may have fooled the public, but you’ll never fool me. I know a terrorist when I see one.”
“Then what does that make you, Howard Vargas? It’s your program that we used to disable the cellular grid during the Fox Valley State operation. In fact, your program is the very reason we were able to move forward with my plans to go militant. In short, you are just as responsible for the lives that we have taken as I am.”
“I didn’t know that people would die! You never said anything about that!” I yelled.
“Spare me the worthless, plausible deniability defense, will you? You had to have known! That’s why you left us, remember? You went from being a full time contributor to contracting once I began my movement because you weren’t willing to sully your pretty little hands. But that didn’t stop you from taking the contract to create that program, did it?”
“I needed the money! My family needed the money!” I shouted.
“Was that money so much more important to you than the lives of the people you knew we would kill? And you call me the bad guy? I do what I do out of a sense of purpose and servitude. I kill in order to set the example for those who dare to repeat the mistakes of the ones that we chose to sacrifice. You kill in order to score a cheap buck!”
“It’s not true! I am not the same as you,” I sobbed. But it was true. I had taken a contract from one of my former Stranger contacts about a year before the first attack. He wanted me to create a program that could temporarily disable cell phone towers and land lines within a fifty-mile radius. At the time, I truly didn’t consider what they could have been planning to use it for, but now I knew that there was no way they could have executed their attacks without my program. The Suspect was right. I was responsible for every life that they had taken, even Adam’s older brother, PJ. I was far too dehydrated to produce tears as I continued to sob, but my despair was no less potent.
“Who is The Reaper?” The Suspect demanded.
“He’s your worst nightmare,” I growled. I was light-headed and my body felt like it was about to shut down again, but I fought hard to stay conscious.
“If you don’t tell me what I want to know your, home and your school will be the next places that we attack. I invite you to consider the hundreds of lives you will be sacrificing in order to protect one man.”
“You should prepare yourself. I don’t know if he’s coming for me or not, but I know for a fact that he’s coming for you,” I said as I collapsed to the cold concrete floor and slipped out of consciousness.
“Let him come,” The Suspect replied, just before my world faded to black.