Apocalypse: The Savior with System

38 Know Thy Enemies

“Someone wants Paul dead.”

Paul watched the expression on Eric’s face turn from curious to alarmed.

“Is it the one when we were in the tank?” Paul asked Rahu, more as confirmation than an actual question. He’d replayed that day in his head over and over again, that niggling feeling of him being watched too closely tickling his subconscious.

Rahu nodded. In not so many words, Rahu told an abridged version of events from their flight from the Pearse-Sachly institute to that day when they—or he apparently—was shot at while getting out of a military tank. When Rahu paused in the telling, Paul knew the man was internally struggling to keep talking. There was more to say.

“I know your assassins. I’ve known them from the underground,” Rahu told him so matter-of-factly that it did not register to Paul immediately, the gravity of the situation. And when he finally realized it, it was Paul’s turn to look alarmed. He was not afraid of the assassins per se but why did they intend to kill him?

“Raul and Maya Valdez, also known as The Twins in the cabal,” said Rahu, beginning to reassemble the parts of his already-too-clean gun. “They’re assassins for an unknown benefactor. They were there at the Hands of Freedom thing and I managed to talk them out of their plan…temporarily. Raul was wounded.”

Paul suddenly recalled Rahu disappearing for a short while during the food distribution.

“So temporarily meant they won’t stop until Paul is dead,” Eric said in a deceptively calm voice. Paul had only seen Eric lose his temper once and that event was preceded by the Eric he was seeing now.

“Their benefactor wants Paul dead for reasons they did not tell me.” Rahu set aside the gun and pulled out a set of knives to start cleaning them, too. “The Twins work as a team, a set. Everything they do is a concerted effort. They’re good when they’re together that’s why they retreated when one of them was injured. They’re unlike me or Quinn Vega. It’s not to say that individually, Raul and Maya are useless. Alone, either of them can still get a job done but it will take longer. Together they are more efficient and faster.”

Rahu raised a serrated blade to the light, his eyes reflecting on the pristine steel surface. “To be targeted by The Twins is counted as lucky. They don’t play with or torture their targets. That’s more under Quinn’s belt.”

“If you thought that’s going to make me feel any better, no,” Paul finally spoke. “But I’ve always had that feeling, too, that I was being watched. Or that I’m expected to be in some place or be doing something. I really don’t know why but I’m beginning to think it has something to do with what happened in the past.”

He looked down at his hands and summoned the system. To Rahu and Eric’s eyes, Paul looked like he was playing air piano with one hand. But to Paul, a wide panel of buttons, keys, and options were laid out in front of him. The days without trouble he spent basking in the sun and collecting resources to upgrade the system. His levels were steadily rising. And he felt better these days. Yet somewhere deep inside his heart was a heaviness he could not explain.

Eric cleared his throat. “Judith never told me any of what you guys went through since she left the Pearse-Sachly Institute but she’s always concerned for you, Paul.” Paul looked at Eric, who shrugged. “She looked for the research data she wanted and gave me the keywords to search but there were a lot of data that we couldn’t access.”

Eric went over to a computer terminal, typed quickly on the keyboard, and images appeared on the monitor. “See those in gray and red? Those are red-tagged documents we found under the Pearse-related archives in the arsenal’s server lab. One of them I’m familiar with, only because I’ve searched for it, too, after we met outside the safe zone that first time, Paul.” He enlarged the image and it became clearer what it was. The letters in bold at the top revealed quite enough.

“That’s my record!” exclaimed Paul. It is his record, like all other records of every human being alive or dead on the planet, placed in a publicly-accessible worldwide database since the pandemic began.

“It is but it cannot be accessed,” Eric confirmed. “I’ve tried all the hacking techniques and methods I knew and I couldn’t get past the firewalls and other defenses they placed. It’s as if you’ve been wrapped in multiple chains by the government itself. And yours is the only record with such a designation. Why? I don’t know but I have a hunch Judith might. She was adamant in getting your record, which kind of bothered me a little. I mean, why would she need your record along with her vaccine research? If she needed a test subject or infected sample, why won’t she just content herself with Rahu?”

Sighing, Eric shook his head. “I haven’t gotten around to trying to break the seal, so to speak, what with the attack and Judith getting wounded. And it’s not easy; even I have to say this.” Eric gave Paul a look which made Paul feel like an interesting bug. “They—the government or whoever—didn’t want the world to know about you. I must also mention that I discovered traces of previous hacking attempts from this server lab on your records. Judith and I weren’t the only ones wanting that information on you, man.”

Someone else had wanted to know about me. Well, I want to know about me, too!

That got Paul thinking carefully, however.

Pearse and his joint institute with his wife held and archived scientific data on people all over the world, part of an agreement made when Pearse-Sachly began research on vaccine and treatment for the virus. They wouldn’t need to hack into anywhere to gain access. Simply put, Pearse-Sachly owned that information.

But the arsenal they were in now was under the implicit power of David Morgan, Pearse’s biggest political rival. And if that same record was unsuccessfully trying to be accessed from this server lab, then…

“It’s no surprise if Morgan already knew about you and was the one trying to open your record here,” said Rahu, sheathing his knives and starting a third cleaning operation on a pair of pistols. “He won’t let Pearse get the upper hand on anything. And if this record of yours has Pearse’s imprint all over it, you can bet your life that Morgan would be on it like a hound sniffing raw meat.”

Eric straightened his back. “And if this place was under Morgan’s influence, I think it’s probable that your shooter today—”

“That was Raul Valdez,” Rahu interjected.

“—is employed by Morgan himself. He could be the benefactor Rahu mentioned,” Eric continued in a bleak tone. “You’re obviously important to Pearse, important enough for you to be hidden this thoroughly. And that is cause enough for Morgan to act.”

Assassins…a mysterious enemy…a political rivalry…Paul felt a weight coming down on his shoulders.

So many seemingly unrelated things that somehow felt quite familiar to Paul, as if he had developed an affinity for them all. The possibility that he was at the center of a brewing storm was slowly becoming real. They—or Morgan—wanted him dead and seemed willing to expend anything to get it done. But at what cost?

The image of Judith’s pale face and all that blood on the floor, on her, and himself made Paul’s eyes water.

Paul groaned, covering his face with his hands.

“Eric?” he asked, his voice muffled.

“Yeah?”

“I think I really need a goddamn headache pill now.”