Chapter One Hundred and Twenty One - Know Thy Enemy

Their discussion continued long into the night, but fortunately Adam didn't have a shift that night and the following day was Saturday. If his aunt was startled about the fact that two young men had fallen asleep cuddling the other on the sofa, she did not say anything. But they did find that a large blanket had been neatly placed over them.

The bathtub was not really wide nor long enough for two men, but it did not stop them from trying. Owen squeezed in between Adam's legs and rested his back against Adam's chest, his head nestled into Adam's shoulder. They laughed and joked as there was not the space to wash themselves nor the other as they soaked. The mood was light when they finally went down for breakfast.

Adam introduced Owen to his aunt as his boyfriend. Aunt Emma was open minded, but had to question his sexuality, after all he had only dated girls before. Adam claimed that there was something about Owen that surpassed gender and he just couldn't let pointless obstacles like that keep them apart. His aunt smiled, she could see how much her nephew cared for this boy and how much he was loved in return. This made her happy, now if only she could find a good man...

The boys chose to take a stroll through a nearby park after breakfast.  The sky was currently cloudless and though there was a small chilling touch in the air due to a recent bout of rain, the sun was already cutting through it and spreading its warmth.  They held hands as they walked in a comfortable silence, sharing the sights of children playing football on the field, dogs bounding after sticks and other dogs and birds flocking around a fallen half burrito, probably dropped the night before.

Owen sighed and pressed his shorter body against Adam's, who simply smiled at him.  "I don't want to go back home and face that woman," Owen told him.  "I thought my stepmother was a bitch, but at least she left me alone so long as I didn't cross her path."

"Then don't go back," Adam suggested.  "Stay with me."

"Beyond tempting," Owen grinned.

"You never told me why she frightened you so much," Adam said to him.  "I mean, you went on a suicide mission before, knowing you were not going to come back alive and yet she has you trembling like a fawn."

Owen said nothing for a moment, just pulled him over to a nearby bench that happened to be free.  He sat down and waited for Adam to sit with him.  "The way... the way she talks, the way she manipulates... I thought I might be being paranoid, but..."

"Go on," Adam encouraged, enfolding Owen's hands into his own.

"When... when my soul was split," Owen began, "and I partially woke as Kyan, but was still Cornelius... there was this man. Cornelius thought he was his friend, but I knew differently. He was just using us. He claimed to be a messenger from the System as the System couldn't reach me and he was the one to give Kyan those tasks you prevented. At first, I did them without question, but when they turned darker, like adding drugs to drinks, trapping the children..." he stopped, closing his eyes against the horrible things he had done in that life, his stomach churning. Adam sensed his distress and gathered him closer.

"It's okay, it's okay," he reassured him. "The worst case scenarios were prevented."

"No, it's not," Owen replied. "It really isn't. I tried to say no to those tasks, after all, I knew better. The people in the worlds... I'd dismissed them before as mere programs, but I was just trying to protect myself. The tasks... if I thought about what I was doing, who I might have been hurting, I wouldn't have done those things at all. And so I resisted, finally, but... but that man used the same persuasive arguments, made what he said sound so reasonable, turned me back into the System's puppet and began to pull my strings."

"Do you think that this man was reincarnated as Charity?" Adam asked.

"No, not exactly," Owen replied. "I think it is far worse than that."

"How so?" Adam queried.

"I think that man, George and Charity in this world," Owen said, while wishing badly that it wasn't so, "I think that they are host bodies of the System, or rather that they are the System."

*****

Mummy once told her that princesses could not be spies. Francis had decided to prove her wrong and had begged daddy to get her a toy spy kit. Not that she cared whether what mummy said was true or not, she didn't really want to be a princess anyway.

The kit had come with an ink pad and bits of paper for fingerprints and a lie detector test, which didn't work all that well when she had tested it on Karl and a metal detector that mummy took the batteries out of after Francis had tested everything. There was also a cool pen that used invisible ink and you could only see the writing with the torch! And there was a small recording device that was about the size of a MP3 player.

Francis had set up camp in the corner behind their curved sofa with her devices, that way she could spy when the grownups talked about things that she was considered too short to hear (actually, they said too small, but it was effectively the same thing in Francis' mind).  That's how she had learnt about big brother Owen, who had been born not long after Mark, but had a different mummy.  She had also learnt about the secret that Mark was hiding from mummy!  And daddy's password on his phone!

Of course these days, they looked behind the sofa before they began to talk.  But they had forgotten just one thing; the special recording device from Francis' spy kit!  Only, it had become stuck under the sofa, just out of reach of her small fingers.  With much strain, her tiny tips felt the plastic as she tried to retrieve it.  Slowly, she managed to gain enough grip to drag it nearer, where she could grasp it firmly.  Just as she pulled it close, she heard someone approach and jumped as if caught red handed.

"What have you got there?" Charity asked as came into the living room.  Francis did not like Charity.  She thought Charity was bossy and mean, she was always telling Big brother Karl what to do and recently was telling Mark and mummy and daddy what to do as well!  And what was worse was the gold dress she was expected to wear at the wedding; there were really big flowers on it and it was too heavy.

The ugly woman was not by herself either, there was the other woman with her.  The other woman was also supposed to be a bridesmaid, but her gold dress was so tight, only flaring out at the bottom.  It was like trying to tell the mermaid Ariel to walk on land with her tail!  Very silly.

"Nothing," Francis lied without guilt.

"Is it some big secret?" Charity asked.  "Do share! I won't tell anyone!"

"There's no secret," Francis said, crossing her arms about her little chest.  "So there's no need to tell, is there!"

The other woman snickered slightly as Charity's face froze, but any anger she had was sent in glare at her rather than at Francis.  Francis smiled to herself, happy with her achievement of upsetting the ugly woman.  "I'm going to go play with Mark now!"

"Oh, your big brother Mark had to go get something for me," Charity told her.  "So he's not here at the moment."

Francis frowned.  "What about Karl?"  Charity shook her head with that annoying smile on her face.  "Mummy? Daddy?"

"All busy, pumpkin!" Charity seemed pleased by this, but Francis just frowned.  "You see, there is just so much to do before the wedding!  You understand, don't you?"

Francis nodded and padded quietly out of the room, dispirited for a while.  Then she happily recalled that she had one more big brother who could play with her and decided to phone him.

*****

"I don't want to, Charity."

Francis had phoned big brother Owen using the phone Mark kept in his bedroom. It was his secret phone and had the names of the people that he did not want mummy knowing about. Mummy had a habit of checking out his and daddy's phone when they weren't looking. Adam and Owen had driven over to collect her then like a good little spy, she had snuck out of the house to meet them.

"You agreed to do whatever I tell you."

"I know but..."

She had bounced happily in the back until they took her to a special cafe where she could paint a porcelain unicorn while they had coffee and everyone ate cake. Then she had showed them her special spy device.

"Then do not question me."

"I just... I just feel uncomfortable about this. Why am I pretending to be Mark's girlfriend?"

One of the voice's belonged to the ugly woman, Charity, Francis noticed, and the other one was that woman... Harmony. She frowned and stated; "But Mark's girlfriend is called Penny." Big brother Owen and Owen's boyfriend, Adam glanced at each other as they listened.

"It is temporary. They will suspect you less and who knows, perhaps he will feel some jealousy."

"... do you think? Will I really make him mine this time, Charity?"

"Most assuredly. Without the other, he will turn to you and that one is nearly in my grasp once more. So do not question me anymore."

"Yes, Charity."

*****

They dropped Francis back home a couple of hours later and Lala come and collected her so that they did not have to enter the property. The first half of their journey home was made in silence, both in deep thought about the women's conversation.

"If I am right," Owen stated eventually, "and Charity is the System, then that would make Harmony, Nellie."

"But her eyes," Adam frowned, signalling right as he approached the junction. "I definitely checked out her eyes." He had right? He's met her a few times at the club. He hadn't really been suspicious of her as she wasn't throwing herself at him as she had many times before, but he'd been checking for Nellie in the eyes of many of the female clubbers and even his co-workers. He recalled that small case. "Contact lenses..."

Owen's eyes widened. "That's right," he suddenly remembered. "She had the case for them with her and didn't some of the Zombie cos-players wear coloured or decorative lenses? Wouldn't something like that hide the condition of her eye?"

Adam thumped the wheel of the car, wondering why he hadn't realised sooner. But then the usual signs just were not there! She and the System had almost fooled them completely this time! "Now what do we do?"

"Now we need to plan how to separate them."