Episode 49, “The Best Father”

By Phil Elmore

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Peyton spat one of his own teeth onto the tiled floor.  He reached up with one aching hand and probed the wound in his cheek.  The hole in his face would close.  The tooth would grow back, although very slowly. He had learned that lesson in prison.

He tried to get up. He couldn’t.  He simply didn’t have anything more to give.  VanClef came to stand over him.

“You poor, deluded bag of meat,” said VenClef.  He held his pistol loosely in his hand, as if he had forgotten it.  “Did you really believe you could do it?  Fight your way past everything I could throw at you, kill me, take your daughter back?  I think you did.  I don’t remember you being so deluded, Peyton.  But then, it has been a long time.”

“I don’t know you,” said Peyton from the floor.  His arms were so heavy. So very heavy.

“No,” said VanClef. “I forget that I observed you from behind one-way glass.  Believe me, Peyton, I regret not simply ending your life, or placing you immediately in cold storage, once you delivered your sample. But your prison sentence made that quite impossible.  As much power as Intelligence has, its power is nothing compared to the almighty bureaucracy. It was easier to let you rot in that place, even after you put yourself on death row.  Why couldn’t you have just done us all a favor and gone through with it?”

“My daughter,” said Peyton.  “She wasn’t supposed to exist. I wouldn’t know. But there was an error.”

“You… you still haven’t figured it out, have you?” VanClef said.  “I had to make quite a show of my ignorance for the others on my staff. If any of them had suspected just how brilliant your daughter and her cousins are, there might have been a panic. Even your daughter thinks I’m a moron.  I’ve known all along just how brilliant the children are.  If I didn’t, I would hardly be fit to run Project Violet.”

“Figured it out…?” Peyton asked. His voice was a whisper.

“The computer ‘error,’ Peyton,” said VanClef.  “She programmed it.  She made it happen.  She and the others were digging around our computer system for weeks before we discovered them and tried to shut them out. By then it was too late.  Some of them escaped.  The others locked themselves in and reprogrammed the defenses.  It was all we could do to keep them contained while I kept my staff believing it was a series of malfunctions.”

“She’s… smarter than you,” said Peyton.

“Of course she’s smarter than me,” said VanClef.  “She’s smarter than everyone, you fool.  I had hoped that through brain analysis, we could learn how their minds work.  Selective breeding and the cultivation of a perfect genetic sample through endocrine rebalance will only take us so far.  I have to unlock the mystery of why their minds operate as they do. For that I need at least one subject.  Your daughter will do for a start. If I can show Intelligence real results, they will reinstate Violet and I can stop looking over my shoulder.”

“Annika… Annika… wanted me… to find her.”

“You don’t look well, Peyton,” said VanClef.  “But yes.  That’s what I said.  Peyton, you don’t realize this, but she’s been using you from the start.  You think targeting child molesters was your idea? You think any of the steps you’ve taken to this point were done on your initiative? Think about that, Peyton.  Try very hard.  When have you ever in your life shown initiative? You’re a concrete thinker, Peyton. You aren’t creative. You don’t imagine.  It’s why you turned to violence as a profession, and why you ended up in prison in the first place.”

“No–”

“Yes,” said VanClef.  “At every turn, she told you what you needed to hear, led you in the directions she needed you to go, in order to accomplish her aims. You completed the plan to free the girls from my ‘school.’  You targeted a class of criminals that she and her counterparts find particularly upsetting — and specifically a threat to them. You think you’re protecting her? You’ve been taking your cues from her for weeks.  That’s what she does, Peyton.  That’s how she’s designed. Hers is the kind of mind that will run this world one day. She’s the future.”

“She’s my… daughter,” said Peyton.

“She doesn’t need you anymore, Peyton,” said VanClef. “You’re nothing but muscle. Or you were.  Now what are you? Just so much broken meat.”

Peyton managed to look up at VanClef with his good eye.  What he saw made him smile.  He started to laugh.  Each time he laughed it made his ribs grind together.  The pain was extraordinary.

“Good-bye, Peyton,” said VanClef.  He extended his pistol.  “I may have to shoot you in the head a few times to kill you. But I think we’ll figure it out eventually.”  When Peyton continued to laugh, VanClef scowled.  “What? What is it?”

“She’s a genius,” said Peyton.

“Yes? And?”

“A genius… who knows how… to use a watch fob… to pick a handcuff lock,” he gasped.

Annika, holding the military Og’s broken combat knife, slashed VanClef across the backs of his ankles.  The Intelligence agent screamed and toppled, his hamstrings cut, his legs useless.  The chromed pistol flew from his fingers and landed on the floor out of reach.

“Annika,” whispered Peyton.

She came to kneel by his side.  He felt her blonde hair brush his face.

“What is it, Daddy?”  She was crying.  Tears fell from her eyes and splashed his cheeks.

“Was… Was I a good father?”

“You were the best father, Daddy,” she said.  “You always will be.”

“I… love you,” he said.  He closed his eye.  He couldn’t keep it open anymore. He became very still.

“I love you too, Daddy,” she said.  She kissed his forehead, stood, and walked to where VanClef’s pistol had fallen.  Picking this up, she studied it for a moment, made sure the safety was off, and stood before VanClef.  The government man was inching across the floor, trying to drag himself, leaving a pair of blood trials from his severed hamstrings.

“You killed him,” she said.

VanClef’s tried to look over his own shoulder as he crawled. “Annika, no,” he said.  “No! Don’t do this.  We need each other.  We can help each other. You can be so much more! Do so much more! You just need the right guide.”

She aimed the pistol at his forehead, holding it with both hands.  “You’re mean,” she said.  “You’re the meanest man in the whole world. I hate you. It’s wrong to hate. But you killed my Daddy and I hate you. And I’m going to fix you.”

“Annika!” he said.  “Please–”

“You don’t have a kind heart,” she said.  “But I’m going to give you one.”

VanClef’s eyes grew wide.  “No–” he began.

Annika pulled the trigger.  She pulled it again.  She pulled it a third time.

She kept pulling it until the pistol was empty.

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