Day 95 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 44 (2604 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 44

Jacob was back in the little hotel in Rome, he was unsure what to do next after the Darwin Town was so effectively reduced to a wall he could not get past. The fabric came through testing and yielded little information, though he had withheld one vital piece of the puzzle from the FBI. The one scrap that he had cut out of the corner of the material had a number on it, printed by hand with some kind of black marker.

He didn't know what the number meant, he assumed it was a phone number, but none of the permutations he tried with country and area codes did not result in any ringing phone lines. He called Blake on the secure satellite phone and gave him the format of the number, but not the actual digits to start tracking down. He assumed that while the secure line they got from the security team was highly effective, that for every measure for secrecy they took there was bound to be a countermeasure and with one episode to go, the race would be on to find, stop or arrest Darwin, or the people behind him.

In his mind Jacob thought it had to be a single person, who had control of a large amount of resources and had a loyal following helping him out, it had to be. It would have been impossible for one person to do all of this unaided, but a central vision and leader made a lot of sense. Someone that the workers, the bodies required in many countries could respect and trust when setting up this massive plan. He knew from his trip to Lucca and from the receipts that lead to Montana, that this endeavour had been planned for many years, not just the last six months that it would have taken to disappear these players. It was still possible that the final two players were still alive, but there was a niggling doubt that it all had been decided long ago.

The desire to see this come to an end was at a fever pitch with the media and with the viewing audience, which by now was almost everyone. There was a hunger to see how it all ended, would there be a winner, what would that mean? What did it mean to win at Darwin's Game? If it were John Vargas then he would have the deaths of Julio Suarez and Jackson Jones III to account for, even if the first were judged in self defence, the cutting of Julio's throat would not be. So to would Evan Simpson in the death of Thomas Somerset, the deliberate act of shooting Somerset would be hard to define as justifiable, even if it was a person no one minded was actually dead.

That was the core of Darwin's Game, it wasn't just the effect of murdering to stay alive, but the character of the players had so much to do with it. People had travelled a long way since that first episode when the now notorious and world famous paedophile had been dispatched so quickly and shockingly, or at least that first one was still a shock then. Now after nine episodes and some confrontation of how much detail people were willing to accept, it was clearer to all that there was still no sympathy for the players, their gruesome deaths aside. The rapists in particular were favourite targets for the victims of applied justice. Whether or not you agreed with the method, the judicious application of some kind of natural justice to them made a of of people satisfied in their end. They had lived by the taking of power and the violent imposition of someone else will to make you do something that violates your own choices. The irony of that concept, the powerlessness and the deliberate demise that they reached made more than enough people happy that they had seen it come to be.

Not everyone was that happy with it, the gladiatorial connotations had been there since the first day that it had aired and it was a fair if somewhat oversimplified comparison. While this was entertaining to some it was more than just giving people something to watch. Each person was judged and commented on by the watchers, there was no commentary from the Game episodes, short of a list of crimes or some vague notion that they were being forced to do something according to unheard instructions. This was beyond simple fighting for survival, or being handed weapons and set to kill others, each episode had a framework and a dilemma and pace of their own. They did not conform to one time frame for length or content, and one of the episodes was broken into two parts, either for length to to underline the causality of the deaths presented it was impossible to know without some context from it's creator.

Nobody was any closer to finding Darwin than Jacob was, but even that felt like it was part of the game. He was being led towards some kind of conclusion, he needed to and wanted to find out why this was happening, and why he and Blake had been at the centre of the episodes. By now it was obvious that there would be no censorship or delays to the instalments, so they could have been delivered to almost anyone anywhere and they would have gotten out just as quickly. The attention had certainly been good for business, and the money they were making was insane, outside of the mysterious extra money that came in to their accounts. That made no sense, they were better than they had ever been finance-wise and still this Darwin person funnelled resources to them, or so they had to assume.

Jacob just kept looking at the number and searching on as many variations and number sequences as he could to get to the secret it held. If he had not taken it, if he had sent the entire thing to the FBI, what would that have meant? He could not see how that would have fit in with Darwin's plan, whatever that was it had to be a number that only worked for himself or Blake, but nothing was obviously coming to mind and it fit with nothing they had to date. It had to lead to something, but what was it and how would he find it?

It was late in the week and late in the day as the sun was dipping behind the Roma Termini building from where Jacob sat sipping his coffee and watching the commuters of central Rome buzz around him and move onwards and upwards through their lives as if nothing important was happening. The sun dipped below the building and put him in it's shade, the temperature dropping as soon as the sun's rays were off of him. He finished his coffee and stood to leave when a body bumped into him, changing his centre of gravity just enough to have him teetering backwards and flailing about ready to fall on to his back. He never made it all the way down though, gravity and momentum thwarted by a couple of pairs of helping hands that caught him and righted him again.

There was a group of youths grinning at him, patting him down and depositing him back at his table, sitting him down despite his protests and then leaving, waving as rapidly as they had arrived. Jacob moved to stand up again when he noticed that someone had sat in the chair opposite him. The man was approximately his own age, wore dark sunglasses, even though it was now shady where they sat and was looking at him with a small smile on his face. The man waved and increased the width of that smile at the group of teenagers now moving away. Jacob instinctively reached into his pocket to find his wallet and keys, happy that both were still there and not the result of a distraction for a pick pocket.

“Scusi, mi … uhm.. Mi Dispiace...” Jacob started off apologising in halting Italian but the man held up a hand.

“I speak English thank you.”

“Oh, sorry... did you want this table, I was just leaving anyway.” Jacob said but he knew somehow that this was not a chance meeting, and something else as going on here, he was not sure what that was. He stood up to leave, even as he did so he knew that it was not going to be that simple.

“Please Mr Edgerton, I can call you Jacob can't I? I feel like I know you quite well, and Mr Edgerton sounds so formal. Please have a seat, it's you I want to talk to.” He indicated the chair as Jacob slowly sank into it.

“Are you him?” Jacob figured if it were not him, then it was one of his minions.

“Yes, yes I am.” the man, outing himself as Darwin tented his fingers together and put them on his pursed lips waiting for a reaction.

“Fuck me.” Jacob sat back.

“Profanity? Really? After how many weeks of hunting for me, after the long conversations we have had that's the level of discourse I can expect? I really thought better of you, this is more what I would expect of your somewhat blunter associate.” Darwin shook his head and pulled the glasses down the bridge of his nose, looking over the top edge of them in parental disapproval.

“Conversations?” This was confusing, what was he saying, when had they met or talked prior to this? Was this him even, what was going on?

Darwin was still looking at him intently but Jacob's head was spinning it was like he could not even see the man's face, obscured by the sudden revelation of the thing he had been chasing for a couple of months now. Darwin answered him finally. “Not conversing in the traditional sense, but there have been things that I have sent you, things where I have lead you to places, taken you in one case, sorry about that, it was a thing and I was annoyed at the time. You have seen one side of this conversation, a conversation I have been having with everyone who wants to watch.”

“Right. Ok. So you are him?”

“Yes, we have established that already, now do you still have that number?” Darwin pushed the glasses back up his nose and sat up a little straighter. “Your partner in America will be needing it fairly soon.”

“Oh, he has it already he's been helping me try to find out what it meant.” Jacob lied and waited to see what Darwin's reaction would be.

“No he doesn't. You should know by now I have a long reach, and I know you well enough to 'guess' at what you will do... and when. You are little paranoid, and with good reason, which is my fault.” He grinned a little at that, not maliciously.

Jacob moved his left hand slowly down his thigh, below the line of sight of the table from Darwin and felt in his jeans pocket for his smart phone, finding nothing but an empty pocket. He quickly switched hands and check the other side, already knowing he had been outmanoeuvred again.

Darwin smiled, “No, you'll get it back when you get to your room, it should be at the front desk waiting for you actually if the boys carry out their task as instructed. I certainly hope so, they have proven very effective when paid handsomely for their work. It is amazing how much people will do when the reward is right and the work is not that hard.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jacob threw up his hands and looked about the square, there were some CCTV camera on the piazza but not one of them was pointed at the table where they sat. He sighed and resigned himself to memorizing as much as he could about the nondescript man sitting across from him in the fading light wearing dark glasses and a coat that hide much of his shape. He could not even say how tall he really was until he stood up, if he got that chance to see that, there was no telling what would happen next.

“You know I am not sure anymore, that is an interesting question. I started this project a while ago...”

“Years ago by the building project in Lucca.” Jacob interjected.

“Yes, many years ago, and Lucca was not the first site I developed, but it was one of the few I have had purpose built for this project. Other sites have been multi functional or been put aside for a while.” Darwin sounded reflective and wistful but his body language was poised and prepared, he was not being as open as he sounded. “My intention when I started was full of ire and intent, and it was very, very purposeful, but now? Now I think that while the Game has not changed, it has always been what I intended to be, I'm not sure that I really knew what I wanted until I got it.”

Jacob had a million questions but none of them seemed like they would give him enough of what he wanted and they all competed in his head to be asked. Darwin looked at his watch as Jacob's head swum.

“I have to leave soon, and so do you. You have places to be.”

“What?” that sentence chilled Jacob, what did this man, who did not look like a psychopath, but had certainly the ability to act like one, want now?

“Oh I am sorry.” Darwin leaned forward and showed genuine concern for his companion. “I did not mean to imply that I was taking you anywhere against your will again, I am sorry about that too by the way. It wasn't strictly necessary I grant you but obviously I had a tendency to make grand gestures and this Game is far from subtle. I want people to get the message after all. I just meant that the last episode is ready and being delivered.... actually the penultimate episode, there will be an epilogue of sorts at the end of the … well you will find out soon enough. This is the last one for first set of players.” Darwin folded his hands in his lap and stared off into the crowd of people surrounding them. He then dusted his legs of crumbs that were not there and stood up.

Jacob held out a hand to stop him leaving and asked one last question.

“Why us?” Jacob pleaded.

Darwin laughed, a short bark that made Jacob think of Blake Harrison's derisive and humourless one. “Oh have you learned nothing from your work with the FBI? From all the experts on the television and the internet shows about me? They are all correct you know, I do want an audience. What good is starting a conversation if there is no one to talk to?”

He took off his glasses and this time Jacob took a long look at his face, as ordinary a face of a man in his possibly forties could be but with blue eyes tinted with a green haze that lit up when he smiled. It was not hypnotic and Jacob was not enthralled immediately, but he instantly understood how persuasive Darwin could be.