Darkroom Saga Omnibus 2

by Poppet

  Algol, it’s arabic. It means devil’s head.

  Was I the firstborn? Was I really? Or did I have a brother who died for my father’s nefarious peculiarities?

  I nod to Jude.

  I nod like a dimwit.

  I nod because my strength has abandoned me.

  I am the son of the most evil man to walk this planet.

  I’m not the devil, he is.

  ~ Chapter 24 ~

  So we boiled my son, and ate him.

  And I said to her on the next day:

  Give thy son that we may eat him.

  And she hath hid her son.

  ~ 2 Kings 6:29

  Victor:

  I WEND MY way back to Polina’s wing. I need to see her. I need to gaze on her innocence to fortify myself, to cleanse me of the spiritual violation that torments me, to wallow in her serenity.

  They say knowledge is power, yet the more I know of my father the more weak I become. The knowledge of what he’s done has stripped me of my vitality. She’s asleep again, which is for the best. I need to go. I want to pretend this is my life, full of beauty and tranquility, enriched with hope and healing. I want to leave and I want to stay. She beckons me to abandon my father to live in a bubble of denial until he slays us all, while we pretend that this world is not beleaguered with hedonistic men, sybaritic men.

  I move closer, holding her hand, so soft and warm, so comforting. I’ve never had a child, but I experience a fierce need to protect this woman as if she was my own flesh. She soothes the burns in my memories, when she’s near she manages to calm the turmoil broiling in my blood.

  I was so true to Shauna and was accused of guilt regardless. Perhaps I did cheat, in my thoughts. I met Polina and her sweetness broke through the fissures in my resilience. She acted so tough, pretending she could fend for herself, and it was endearing. I knew I could break her over and over, and yet I let her believe she was strong. I let her have the little victories, to help her stand up to Mikah, to break the mental chains of her own slavery.

  I’m not considerate or thoughtful, yet she makes me thus.

  Realisation dawns.

  Polina makes me weak. Like Shauna.

  She’s just one more tool for him to use against me.

  Has experience taught me nought?

  It makes me angry at myself that I could be so pathetically foolish. The epiphany is enough to snap my self preservation back into place, the wall within, the fortress.

  Turning on my heel I storm out of the medical wing, sprinting to the stairwell, needing the physical exorcism of my weakness, my deficiency, to the basement parking.

  I’m going. I’m going right fucking now to evaluate my enemy.

  I don’t care about speed limits, I don’t give a damn about consequences, I take to the road at full tilt on my Ducati, identity hidden beneath the full helmet; the route long committed to memory.

  The distance is ephemeral, dissipating in divine evanescence, insubstantial when my focus is honed on the target.

  I have a purpose. I have a mission. I cannot afford to fail.

  I abandon the bike in the neighbour’s woods, so vast are these estates. It’s so easy to go undetected when the wealthy create wildlife sanctuaries in their backyards so they can hunt for amusement.

  I survey my father’s palace, for that is what it is. The Ridley residence is the size of a Caribbean island. Unashamedly opulent, built stone for stone on decadence and sin.

  I had the presence of mind to bring my sights and I clock nine men on perimeter patrol just on this side, the roof is armed for aerial warfare, the fence singing with voltage, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are IEDs and landmines under the pristine lawn along the boundary.

  My father, the lord of destruction and carnage. Molech, my father is Molech. Now when I think of him I feel queasy, all allegiance severed. In its entirety. He may have been the reason I was born but I harbour no allegiance to him, everything I felt is gone. It’s nullified, vanquished, somehow knowledge has freed me of his insidious influence in the caverns of my feeble mind.

  Cerberus has us scrambling to secure our resources. It’s a distraction while they ready for the brimstone attack. I know my dad, I know this is just a ploy to take my eye off the ball.

  Inspecting my father’s other world, the one I never knew about, the one I was denied, rage billows into my being. There’s no way we can take this facility without the military becoming an active part of his defence. Even if we tried he’s got every angle covered, and that’s just the external measures, never mind the interior security.

  The chance we had to corner him happened once, in the Sinnergog. That window of opportunity is long gone. He’s so well fortified he’s elusively untouchable.

  Always escaping the noose. Always.

  It seems he has robbed me of my big moment. The only way to take him down now is to release the Interpol documents, to get the law on our side instead of his.

  Despondent I trudge back to my wheels, back to my miserable life on the run from a father who needs me dead.

  But why? Why does he need me off the radar? What threat do I pose to him other than retribution?

  He took me out long before I had an axe to grind against his agenda. There has to be a tangible reason for this.

  I never stopped to ask, why?

  Why dad? Why do you need me in a coffin? Why won’t you mourn me? Why do you give me the pauper’s portion when you have so much?

  I’ll never get these answers.

  Never.

  Because god works in mysterious ways. Right?

  Best damn fob off in the history of mankind.

  I need answers. But how the fuck do I get them?

  •

  Jude:

  I intercept Victor the second he enters the stronghold. “Victor, urgent meeting bud.”

  “Not now,” he shakes his head, looking so dead inside that I should be alarmed. I would if I could but my plate of shit is so high right now that there’s no fork big enough to shovel it down.

  “Yes now!” I demand, trying to halt him, but he shoves me aside, his invincibility back, and I’m amazed that he’s so formidable and strong. He’s not that much taller than me and he just moved me like I was a bloody molecule of nothing.

  He keeps striding down the passage towards his quarters. I hop to it, alongside him, laying it down. “Dude, we’ve managed to eradicate the Cerberus worm.”

  “Great,” he says, like it doesn’t mean shit.

  “And I know why we were attacked,” I say, excited.

  “Super duper, great job. Well done,” he says, like he’s not even listening.

  This is beginning to piss me off. I grip his arm to halt him. “Victor, I need your focus buddy.”

  He rounds on me, snaring my throat in a death grip and forcibly shunting me into the opposite wall, crushing my windpipe when he thrusts his body weight into the choke, “Not now!”

  Fuck this.

  I unleash my own fucking suppressed issues, lifting him up with my forearm between his legs, shunting the jewels up and body slamming him to the ground, where I punch him four times, kicking his knees out when he tries to buck me, elbowing into his Adam’s apple. “LISTEN TO ME!”

  He breathes with effort, laboured, and gives me a curt nod. I ease off my hold, ready to lay him down again if he retaliates. “I was running a DNA scan on the Darknet. I was trying to hunt for something I had a feeling was there, but buried so deep because he didn’t want us to find it. I heard him say it from recordings in the Satanarium; he told John. I didn’t think about it then, but I know it for sure now. I knew there was buried treasure, for months I’ve had our computers running through the footage, trying to find the holy grail.”

  He nods again, fury festering in his eyes. My lifespan is growing significantly shorter by attacking him and holding him down. “I asked Evan, because Evan was there when Alpha said it.”

  “Spit it out, Jude. What did my great father say now? How
many ways can he cut me off at the knees? How many ways can he hurt me? Go on, add to my misery, you know you fucking want to.”

  “Jesus, Vic. What the hell got into you?”

  He bellows like a caveman, ejecting me with every limb and muscle, from a lying position with all my weight on top of him he manages to forcefully repel me off him so I’m airborne and crashing into the marble tiles of the wall.

  I’m winded.

  Wheezing, I read from the note still in my pocket. “Do you remember when he had Shauna and Seth? Do you remember the ritual in the barn? Alpha said to Seth: Your half-brother Victor had a twin brother, but to create an everlasting covenant I had to send one back to my heavenly realm, so he could be reborn to redeem all of you. He was the first sacrifice. Prove you are my son, in your mind and heart, cut open your wife and offer me your firstborn son the way I did my own.”

  Victor’s eyes widen. Comprehension dawns. This is why he had to die.

  “Then he said to John: Anyhow, Seth was Adam’s firstborn son, that’s why Seth has to die. When I impregnated her she bore twin sons. Seth is substandard compared to my children, which is why there is still conflict. They recall they are the firstborn sons of god. Seth was the first of the generation of chaos–” I give him a stern stare, “To which John replied: Victor has a twin? Evan witnessed this exchange, he was there!”

  Victor loses the fight, his pallor ashen. Crap, the dude is going to pass out.

  “I did some digging Vic, I got the intel you need. I know who he is, I know where he is, and now we know why Alpha needed you dead. He might’ve protected Cain – which is you, but the other son knew him but never knew him. Your twin brother knows of you, you don’t know of him. He was raised by Steve and Marie Rizzo until he was old enough to move to England and adopt the Ridley empire. Your father had a son working in both arms of his legacy. You are both in charge of everything, born minutes apart. He’s the saint and you’re the martyr. He’s the reason you’re expendable.”

  Alpha hid Victor’s brother to keep him safe. Alpha had a back up plan, he always does. That’s why Seth and Victor were meaningless to him, he ordered them both to death, because when they die he will have just one son.

  A righteous son.

  Niel Adam Ward.

  ~ Chapter 25 ~

  Time after time you insult me and show no shame for the way you abuse me. Can’t you see this is God who has done this? He has set a trap to catch me. I protest against his violence, but no one is listening; no one hears my cry for justice.

  ~ Job 19:3

  Alpha:

  WHEN EVELYN GAVE birth to twins I knew without a doubt that I was god incarnate.

  The book Jerry gave me when I was seventeen was a turning point in my life. That book is my blueprint. I came into this world unaware of my divinity, but the Holy Spirit stepped onto my path and delivered me my memories. My people had written them down in case I ever got lost in the darkness of this world.

  And I was lost back then, so very lost.

  Then I discovered the spirit speaks to me, I met my own Eve, my father’s name is Adam, and Eve(lyn) gave birth to twins. It was biblical, all of it, even my name, CHRISTopher.

  My blueprint mentions twins many times, but I needed more. I read the original records for myself and discovered so many more. Cain was a twin, Abel a twin, Jacob and Esau, Perez and Zerah, Simeon and Levi, Isaac and Judah, Ephraim and Manasseh, James and Judas, to name but a few.

  I know in my heart that my children incarnated with me, they are Kain and Abel, also known as Eloim and Yave (from the Apocryphon of John), and now finally they are not born apart but together. I adhere to the old, knowing there is no letter C in the Hebrew alphabet. His name cannot be Cain, it is Kain. Victor I named thus because he is my Kain, which is why I was so hard on him. He needed an iron fist to guide him from the get go, the eldest is always the rebel. The firstborn, if he knew he had a brother, a twin identical to him, he would have murdered him before they became men at age thirteen.

  Niel I named thus because he is the humble boy, the good son, the one who kneels and obeys his father without question. This world spells his name wrong repeatedly, but I spelled it correctly. Ni-el. God is in his title, the Hebrew word for his father, me, El, because he will inherit my kingdom and all the pleasures in it.

  Raised by Steve to be a champion boxer, he knows how to fight, he’s quick, powerful, and Victor’s equal. We gave him ballistics training, because after all he grew up in Idaho in his formative years, with a decent mother figure I knew wouldn’t let me or him down; Marie Rizzo.

  She was there for me, to nurture my fractured spirit, a holy woman named after the holiest virgin. I cannot consider these things coincidental, they are proof.

  Niel is a sure shot, a target hitter every time, and stealthy. Steve raised him just right.

  A hand of destiny has directed my life for decades and I do not believe that any of it is by chance. We told my young son, Niel, that I was away on business to excuse my absences. He didn’t know about my other life, that I lived with his mother in Utah until I had to remove her from our lives because she was raising them as heathens, encouraging Victor’s inherent deficiency.

  Niel is my hidden asset, the one Victor is ignorant about. He is the final card in the Cerberus protocol. With Victor I have always needed the element of surprise to gain the upper hand, to quash the resistance always lurking beneath the surface of his consciousness. As a boy I had to beat him until he bled before he would obey. He made parenting so hard compared to his brother.

  Victor is older by six minutes, Niel the younger, but in every feature the boys are identical. When Victor finally faces his brother his guard will drop, he will be vulnerable, and in this incarnation Kain does not get to murder Abel.

  Niel has grown into an admiral man, overseeing my real estate empire, and now I must induct him into the cult. He loathes Victor because since they were young I told him about his brother, I warned him about his evil, I told him his brother murders, sells drugs, and debases the family name.

  He is fully aware that his twin brother is a criminal with no conscience, no sense of moral compass, and so he was ‘sent away, raised in a boy’s home for degenerates’. I call that poetic license. I warned him that one day Victor will come to murder me to inherit his fortune, he’s prepared to defend me. I raised him to defend me.

  It’s time for Niel to know everything about his brother, that he is nearby and preparing for the grande finale, and Niel must go forth and eradicate Victor from this world.

  Victor has rebuked me, he has turned his back on god, and for that I will never have mercy.

  Ringing the bell, I watch the foyer to my suite, smiling when my manservant, Jerrod, comes to do my beckoning.

  “My lord?” He bows respectfully.

  I have always preferred living here to the United States. Here I am treated the way I was born to be, with the utmost deference.

  “Fetch Niel. I need him.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Jerrod goes to find the fruit of my loins and I take the Alpha ring off my finger, readying to pass it to my son.

  He will right the wrongs against me. He will slay the abomination I brought into this world.

  •

  Victor:

  Jude shows me the photo that his latest scanning uncovered. Niel Ward, the boxing champion, just like his dad.

  I feel like I’m losing my grip, like I’m having an out of body experience, staring at a man who could be me. He’s a fucking champion so many times over, photo after photo exhibiting the pride on Steve’s face, instrumental in creating my nemesis.

  We should’ve capped that old man.

  Niel’s photos span a decade, and every one of them could’ve been me. I don’t have childhood photos. Not one. I wasn’t significant enough to create memories with, treasures to display at drunken christmas dinners. Victor Ward didn’t have christmas dinners, or presents, he had a mission, to become the world’s nastiest
killer and its best cosmetic surgeon. The only gifts I was set to receive were awaiting me in the afterlife, supposedly.

  I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. Psalm 139:22. I’m a grown man, I shouldn’t care about any of this, but I have the overwhelming urge to lock myself away and cry. I don’t cry, it’s not permitted, and yet now I need to. I need to grieve for the life I never had, a normal life, a good life, the one that my doppelgänger had. He had grandparents in the form of Steve and Marie, he had folks to congratulate him, to soothe him, to hold him, he inherited the easy life and I had the trial by fire and error.

  My heart is broken.

  I get up abruptly from my desk, turning my back on Jude. I’m struggling to maintain composure.

  “He’s at Ridley Manor,” says Jude to my silence.

  “So he’s Cerberus? Dad’s big surprise?” I say to the painting above the bookcase. A masterpiece of the virgin and her child. Dad always did like art where virgins have their tits out.

  “It’s a good one, you have to admit. It’s an ace up his sleeve you would never anticipate. It would break you coming face to face with your clone. You wouldn’t shoot yourself, he’d be counting on that. It’s a moment where you’d doubt your sanity, question your eyes, and that’s all the time Cerberus needs to drop you once and for all.”

  “I need air, Jude. I need to clear my head. This is too much to process,” I say, turning back to face him.

  He nods. “Don’t be a hero, Vic. Some of us actually need you alive, and not in a coma for months either.”

  I’m suddenly depleted, slopping into my chair. “I … he …”

  I shut my mouth. I can’t verbalise this. It’s too much. He’s shattered everything. I have no foundation. Who am I when I’m not his son? I know. I’m the son born to die. He planned this when we were born. He orchestrated this. I was always going to die for him.