Tethered Twins

Jill Blackwood

Jill walked down the street in a police woman’s uniform. She looked up into the sky and saw the TethTech building on the horizon.

“Didn’t think I’d see this place again,” she said.

She turned around and walked towards the tower that houses Mr King’s empire. The media were gathered outside interviewing employees, none of whom had any good answers.

“Why did Mr King fund terrorists?” asked a journalist.

“Did he cause the 20 Day Siege?” asked another.

Jill walked up to one of the police officers trying to control the crowd. She showed the officer an assortment of paperwork and walked through the throngs of people.

“Why does she get answers?” asked a journalist whilst pointing to Jill.

Jill ignored him and walked inside the building. Results are better than answers, she said to herself.

--<><>--

Mr King

Mr King sat behind his desk his head in his hands. How did it come to this? he wondered.

A police officer sat in front of him. “Why did you do it?” she asked.

“I’ve told you,” he replied. “I funded the Separationists but I had no idea any of this would happen. Every experiment they did was approved by the Government. It all seemed safe.”

“Safe?” remarked the officer. “A billion people died because of your investment.”

Mr King stood up and slammed his hands on the table. “That wasn’t my bloody fault!”

The officer stood up and shouted back. “Do not raise your voice Mr King. You are already facing a significant amount of jail time. Do not make it worse for yourself.”

There is nothing worse than being a rich man in jail, he thought.

He heard a knock at the door and the officer walked outside.

He stood up and started walking towards the window, looking down at the street below. I should throw myself out right now, he thought to himself. You’d fucking like that wouldn’t you Tobias?

He heard the door shut which shocked him from his thoughts. “How long must we do this?” he asked. As he turned around he saw a different officer looking back at him.

“You have to do exactly as I say,” she stated.

Jill looked at Mr King as he thought about her statement.

“How dare you tell me what to do!” he replied. “How old are you? Eighteen? Twenty? Some pre-pubescent teen is not going to tell me what to do. I didn’t become a champion of industry by listening to little bitches.”

Jill ignored his ageism and sexism and placed a tablet computer onto the table. “Look,” she said.

The screen showed Tobias taking an elevator down to the server room. Mr King watched in shock as he saw the recording of Tobias planting an USB stick into the network and then leaving the room.

“When was this taken!” he demanded.

“Six months ago.”

“That’s impossible. I know that day. I watched every bit of footage from when he tainted this place. That never happened.”

“It happened. He switched the footage but this is the original recording that was wiped.”

“That’s crap,” he replied. “How would you have such a thing?”

“One, your security is terrible and two, nothing is ever really deleted. I found it in a sealed off hard drive partition and revived the data using…”

She was interrupted by Mr King. “What did he do?”

“So you will do what I said?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Anything to stop that orange wearing freak.”

“Then here’s what you need to do.”