by P A Vasey
I turned on the Mac and sat in front of it as it booted up. Stillman leaned over me and picked up the photograph. In it was a handsome couple, mid- to late-fifties, both with dark hair and healthy white smiles.
“These your parents?” Stillman asked without inflexion.
“That’s right,” I snapped defensively. “You know differently, I suppose?”
She gave a half smile but said nothing, putting the photograph back on the shelf. She passed over the USB that I plugged in. I double-clicked on the drive where a new icon had appeared. A separate window opened, containing six document files and a video file. I went to open one of the documents but she placed her hand over mine, stilling my finger on the mouse.
“Before we do this, I want you to know that I’m breaking a significant number of federal laws here. Even being in possession of this is a felony. However, I don’t really have a choice. I need your help.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know you, and I certainly don’t have any interest in national secrets or federal laws. I’m just a doctor.”
She took a deep breath. “I need you to watch this. I don’t know if it’ll bring your memories back, but there’s more to your amnesia. You’re part of something huge.”
“Right,” I said, unconvinced. I looked at the screen, my finger hovering over the mouse. “Which one?”
She pointed to a file named VHAB_INT.mov. “Open that one, and turn up the volume.”
I double-clicked the file and after a couple of seconds a screen opened with FBI TOP-SECRET EYES ONLY flashing in black and white with a go arrow at the bottom left.
“No secret password?” I said, mischievously.
She pulled a face. “Hit the button.”
The screen cut to a picture of what looked like a police interview room as seen from behind a one-way mirror. The colors were bleached out but the details were sharp. On the screen, frozen in time, staring into the camera across a wide desk covered in papers and photographs was a man dressed in a black suit and tie. He looked like a GQ model, mid-thirties, short black hair, high cheekbones. Even on a grainy still there were no lines on his face or asymmetry to his nose or eyes. Sitting with their backs to the camera were two guys I assumed were police officers. On the right a grey-haired white man, on the left an African American, both wearing shoulder holsters. Against the far wall were three uniformed police officers, all wearing SWAT body armor and carrying machine pistols.
Stillman reached out and clicked on the pause icon. She turned to me and pointed at the screen. “Do you recognize that man?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. Who is he?”
Stillman gave me a thoughtful look. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Read my lips – I don’t know him.”
Stillman leaned forward, focusing on the screen. “Play it.”
The grey-haired man leaned over and flicked a switch on some sort of recording device on the edge of the table. Red numbers started to tick over on the bottom right of the picture, counting time forward in seconds and minutes. The images were crystal clear, but there was no sound. I lowered the lights in the den and turned up the volume, pulling the chair close to the desk. Stillman remained standing behind me.
The playback started.
“The time is 1245 hours on Monday, November twenty-third. Conducting this interview are myself, FBI Deputy Director William Hubert, and FBI Special Agent Lawrence Mackie.”
No reaction could be seen from the man facing the camera, who seemed to be staring directly into the lens. Then a smile seemed to pull at the corner of his lip, followed by a solitary eyebrow raise.
“This is very formal. Am I to consider myself under arrest?” His voice was mellifluous and velvety, with a trace of amusement.
The man with the grey hair – Hubert – continued. “No, of course not. It’s … procedural. Just for the record. Can you tell us your name?”
The man’s head swiveled slowly to face him. “We are Vu-Hak.”
The other guy, Mackie, cleared his throat. “All of you? Or is there an individual here?”
The man folded his arms and looked bored. “One is here.”
Hubert looked sideways at Mackie, who sat back in his chair, folding his arms. “Do you have a name?”
The man brought both his hands onto the table and placed them side-by-side before looking back up at the camera. “We have no individual identities. But as I am here alone, I understand your need to address me as an individual. Therefore you can call me … Cain.” He gave a smirk and looked at both men. “Appropriate name, is it not?”
Hubert coughed into his hand and brought up a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. “As in Cain, son of Adam?”
“Do you know your bible, Director Hubert?”
Hubert leaned forward. “Cain was the firstborn son of Adam and murdered his brother Abel. God punished Cain to a life of wandering the Earth and set a mark on him so that no man would kill him.”
The man calling himself Cain nodded, smiling like a schoolteacher complimenting a child in class. “Genesis, chapter 4, verses 1 to 18. Although I like to think it should have read ‘so that no man could kill him’.”
I pressed the pause button. “What the fuck is this? They catch some religious whack-job? How is this relevant to me?”
Stillman held up a finger. “Just … keep watching.”
I took a breath and let it out, shrugged, and pressed play. Hubert was speaking again.
“So, what happened to Adam?”
“In your bible?”
“No. Adam Benedict. Our Adam.”
Cain brought up a finger and wagged it slowly. “Not so fast. I have a condition that you first need to agree to. Under no circumstances are you to seek out and contact Dr Kate Morgan. She is to play no part in any further proceedings.”
I reflexively clicked the mouse over the pause button and stared wide-eyed at Stillman, my heart suddenly trying to jump out of my chest. Cain was again staring straight at the camera, his face unreadable.
“There’s that name again,” I said. “I think I’m going to need another drink.”
“Get me one too,” replied Stillman, her face impassive.
Two minutes later, I returned with two glasses full of ice and Kraken.
“Alright then, on with the show …”
Cain’s soft voice came out of the speakers again. “… in addition, it is important that my presence is not made public until I deem it necessary. Will you agree to this as well, Director Hubert?”
Mackie could be seen to look anxiously at Hubert, who was shaking his head.
“I’m not sure I have the authority to make that call. That would need to come from the president. Your presence here is, to say the least, the most important event in the history of humankind.”
Agent Mackie ran his fingers through thinning hair. “Cain, you must realize there are geo-political ramifications of what occurred. Not only that, but the discovery of an alien race brings with it certain religious implications as well. I mean, you clearly realize this, with your choice of name.”
Cain’s head swiveled towards him. “Do you think religion will survive the discovery of the Vu-Hak, Agent Mackie?”
“That depends on how the information is presented. We need to have careful control over this knowledge –”
“You are getting ahead of yourselves,” interrupted Cain.
Hubert brought his hands up in a placatory gesture. He glanced sternly at Mackie before speaking. Hubert shuffled some of his papers around, nervously it seemed. Mackie leaned forward with an elbow on the table.
“Yes, of course. Can we talk about what happened back in Nevada? For instance, where is Adam Benedict?”
Cain sat back in the chair and again folded his arms. “Adam is dead.”
He stared into the camera lens, and I felt the blue eyes boring into mine. I froze the image. There was something about him. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Just under the surface. Ta
ntalizingly close yet separated by a seemingly impenetrable barrier. Stillman’s hand touched my shoulder and I reached for my glass. The ice tinkled as the rum swirled.
“This Cain. Do I know him?”
Stillman was leaning on the wall, staring at the screen. She snapped out of her reverie and shook her head. “Not Cain. But you do know Adam Benedict.”
“I don’t get it. None of this,” I flicked my chin at the screen, “makes sense. I’ve never heard of an Adam Benedict. Again, what has this got to do with me?”
Cain was still looking out from the screen at us both, like a portrait whose gaze follows you around the room. Stillman pulled the other chair close and grasped my forearm tightly, which made me want to pull away. “This has everything to do with you. You’re not who you think you are, and I don’t know why. But he,” she glanced back at the monitor, “he does.”
I shook my arm free and pushed away from the desk. “I think I’m going to ask you to leave.”
Stillman sat back and placed her palms on her knees. She closed her eyes for a second, and then looked back at me. “There are five minutes left on this recording. You need to see it through.”
We locked eyes for what seemed to me like a minute or more before I reluctantly nodded.
Hubert was speaking again. “How did Adam die?”
Cain smirked. “Saving humanity, obviously.”
Hubert and Mackie looked at each other, quite nervously. Hubert cocked his head to one side and rubbed a finger absently against his lip. “And yet, here you are. Why don’t we feel ‘saved’? The wormhole closed – we thought permanently – and yet you’re here.”
There was a flicker of some unrecognizable emotion on Cain’s face. “It was a simple matter to recreate the conditions leading to the opening of the wormhole, once we knew the requisite elements. Opening and closing the portal is now at our discretion.”
Mackie was shaking his head, looking at Hubert. “How can you control a wormhole? We thought the initial conditions which created the Trinity Deus project were unique.”
“They are not. We can control gravity.”
“But, according to our experts, a gravitational field strong enough to create a tunnel in deformed space would also destroy this space in a fraction of a second.”
“Correct. Unless there is an opposing force.”
“A force strong enough to control such energies?”
“Yes, what you call ‘dark matter’.”
The screen froze. Cain’s face was impassive, and his arms were folded. Stillman shrugged. “There’s a gap in the recording here of about three minutes. I don’t know if it’s been deliberately deleted or cut. Or by whom.”
“What’s dark matter?”
She nodded. “I had a conversation once with Mike Holland about this stuff. He said that without it – whatever it is – the galaxy would fall apart. Somehow this stuff is keeping it glued together.”
I was none the wiser. “Mike Holland?”
She looked at me strangely, eyebrows pulled down. “Used to work with me at the FBI. Scientific Director. Very smart guy.”
“Where is he now?” I said.
“Dead.”
“Not so smart then,” I wisecracked.
Stillman ignored me and restarted the video. Hubert scratched his head. Mackie was speaking.
“Help me out here then. Adam said you were coming to destroy our world. You say he ‘saved’ humanity, and yet you’re here. What’s changed?”
Cain sniffed, a very human-like gesture. “A great many things.”
Hubert and Mackie said nothing. The silence lasted a minute before Cain smiled and sat back in his chair. He looked around the cell, taking in the soldiers behind him and the green/grey concrete walls. He folded his arms and addressed the camera.
“Adam Benedict died trying to close the portal. He nearly succeeded. During the process we accessed his thoughts and neurological processes. What we discovered was … interesting. He had managed to resist us, resist assimilation and subjugation by the Vu-Hak that traveled with him. We also discovered that the Vu-Hak that co-inhabited his host machine had been irreparably damaged.”
Mackie carefully laid his pen down on the table, and frittered around with it, squaring everything off, papers and notebooks. Hubert could be seen to lean backward and put his hands on the armrests of his chair. His knuckles appeared white.
“Cain… are you here, alone?”
Cain shook his head slowly. “No, more Vu-Hak are already here.”
Mackie sat up sharply. “How many?”
“Many. In various locations around the planet. We are undetectable. But it is critical that humanity is kept in the dark, and that you do not spread panic throughout the world. That would have unfortunate consequences.”
“But,” said Hubert, “won’t they all look like you? The machine host was based on Adam Benedict.”
Cain blinked again, slowly. “How little you know of our capabilities, Director Hubert.”
With that his face suddenly blurred, as if depixelated on a computer. Like a melting candle, his features twisted and sagged and then took on a new shape. Blonde hair sprouted from the skull and the features started to soften, chiseled cheekbones becoming rounder, the nose becoming smaller and flatter. The lips fattened and shortened. The skin darkened and the figure sitting in the chair seemed to shrink and morph into a smaller female humanoid figure. Then the screen froze, with the female staring up into the camera with green phosphorescent eyes.
I sat back in the chair, heart pounding in my chest, leaping up into my throat and threatening to choke me. Stillman’s hand was on my shoulder, and I could just barely hear her saying, “It’s alright,” but the pulse in my ears was a jungle drumbeat and I could only focus on the person looking at me out of the screen.
Myself.
THREE
I took a long swallow of the Kraken with trembling hands and let the ice fragments rattle around inside my mouth for a few seconds before they slid down my tongue and back out into the empty glass. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen, where my doppelganger stared back at me. The likeness was uncanny, almost perfect, although there were no age lines or wrinkles to be seen, giving it a showroom dummy-like effect. Absently, I ran my finger down my own face, tracing the shallow groove I knew was present from the edge of my nose to the side of my mouth. I ran my tongue around my teeth, upper and lower, taking in the crevasses and sharp edges, the warmth of the gums. I swallowed again, just to feel it happen and nothing to do with the saliva that was building up and pooling in my pharynx.
“It has to be a fake, right?” I said. “I mean, images can be manipulated easily these days …”
Stillman shook her head. “I wish it was, believe me.”
“But how do you know?” I insisted, hearing the tremble in my voice. “The photos Navarro showed me, this recording … how do you know it’s all true?”
“Because I was there, Kate. When all this shit first hit the fan.”
I took a deep breath. “Is there more?”
“That’s all we have,” said Stillman, regarding me silently, concern showing in her gaze. “There were no recordings on the hard drives at the station house where this interview happened because Cain destroyed them. However, I’d already streamed them into the cloud, which he didn’t know about. Lucky for us.”
“What happened next?” I asked. “After he … became me.”
Stillman shook her head. “I truly don’t know. Hubert and Mackie were found unconscious, their memories wiped. The soldiers and other FBI agents were incapacitated. There was no sign of Cain.”
“So he could be out there, pretending to be me?” I was horrified. Then realization dawned abruptly, like a slap in the face. “Wait the fuck up … am I, me?”
Stillman reached out and touched my arm, gently this time. “You’re not Cain. But then, you’re not Sara Clarke either.”
My guts were contracting, my skin was clammy and I was starting to hype
rventilate. I leaned on the desk, looking at Stillman, searching her eyes. There was sympathy there, and she gave a lipless smile and a slow nod.
“Your name is Dr Kate Morgan. And you’re probably the most important person on the planet right now.”
“But why? What’s going on?”
A smile pulled at the corner of Stillman’s mouth. She stood up and stretched, her tight yellow dress pulling high up on her thighs. She cricked her neck sideways and walked out of the den, flicking a look back over her shoulder at me. “We need to make plans.”
My eyebrows furrowed and I stood to follow her. “Plans?”
There were rattles and squeaks as she searched noisily through my fridge and cutlery drawer in the kitchen. She pulled out a hunk of foil-wrapped cheese and a half-bottle of Chardonnay. She looked up before emptying a pile of crackers and potato chips onto the kitchen table. “Sorry … famished. Hope you don’t mind.”
“What sort of plans? What are we going to do?”
She cut a triangle of cheese and sandwiched it between two crackers. “Got any quince? I’m a sucker for that.”
I rubbed my knuckles into my eye sockets as Stillman uncorked the wine and poured a couple of large measures.
“Getting me shitfaced may not help your planning,” I said.
Stillman merely waggled the glass at me, and with only a slight reluctance, I took it and gestured over to the couch. I moved the throw cushions around so we could sit facing each other and Stillman sat sideways on, pulling the dress down as she did so and tucking her knees in. She grimaced at the maneuver, shuffling to get comfortable. “Got anything less ridiculous I can wear? This really ain’t my style.”
I gave her a watery smile. “You sure? I can see you rocking that look in the Hoover building.”
She gave a little snigger and raised her glass to me. I reluctantly clinked it and we drank in silence for a while. I looked around the room, taking in the furnishings, wallpaper, widescreen TV. Was this me? Nothing now seemed right. It seemed sterile, bereft of personality, no longer belonging to me, but to some stranger.
“I have amnesia, and a new identity,” I said, trying the sentence out to see how it felt. “Did he – Cain – do this to me?”
