Invictus

Chapter 42: Upgrade

"Ain't you supposed to be dead?" I said, stunned.

Joe smiled. "Supposed to be, yes."

"Then how are you alive?"

"A shapeshifter named Corwin. He became Kenneth Orion Harris and died in my place."

I shook my head, trying to chronologically arrange the story. "So a shapeshifter became you and that's why Helena thinks the real you is dead?"

"Something like that. Except it wasn't Helena who shot and killed Corwin, I did that. I couldn't bear the thought of him being tortured by her, so I helped him pull the trigger. In turn it made my 'death' look like a suicide, ultimately giving me an opportunity to escape." 

Joe could tell I was itching to interrupt by the angry look on my face, so he spoke up even louder. "Before you think me more evil know this, Corwin volunteered for the role. I never pressured him to do what he did. He laid his life down willingly."

Michael clasped Joe's shoulder as his eyes filled with tears again, remembering Corwin. "A veritable Jesus Christ of sorts. It was Corwin's sacrifice that helped shape who I am now." Joe said brushing aside another tear.

I scratched my head. The Corwin thing was weird, but it made sense.

"Helena seems to think she was the one who killed you."

Joe's expression became pained again. "I'm not surprised. She probably had dreams about murdering me after I erased all the genomic blueprints. Helena's mind easily confused things. What she saw in her dreams, whether awake or asleep, and what was reality often became one and the same. I remember there was a time an orderly was playing a game with Helena during one of her free sessions. They were laughing and smiling with each other, everything was fine. A week later the same orderly was on rotation to be with her again. I left to grab a cup of coffee and when I returned I found Helena standing over the orderly's body. She had made the woman kill herself with a rubix cube."

"Why?"

"We're not sure. We had a theory though." Joe sighed. "We used to make the kids journal to help get a better idea of what they were thinking. Helena's journal was disturbing to say the least. Many of the children had night terrors from undergoing the training they were subjected to, and this was especially true with Helena. A few days before she killed the orderly she had drawn a grotesque picture of the woman inside one of the pages of her journal. It was something out of a nightmare, missing heads, knives bursting out of people's bodies, mutilated faces that sort of thing. This was what Helena saw at times in people and it frightened her."

My stomach sunk. "So Helena thought the orderly was some kind of demon?"

"We believe so. After that we started paying closer attention to what she and the other subjects were journaling. We helped teach her to distinguish what was real and what wasn't, but I suspect it's something that even now she still struggles with. Not the demons, but confusing what she sees in her head and what's really there in front of her eyes."

"That might explain why she's so crazy." I said.

"It would. There is a price to be paid for tampering with someone's genetics. Causing a child to grow that fast can have terrible side effects. Why do you think she has such a childish vendetta against you?"

I shrugged.

"Because even though she's intellectually brilliant her emotions have been stunted. She still thinks and in many ways acts like a child." Joe said.

"I think she just mad because I beat her back at the lunchroom."

"Exactly. You successfully resisted her abilities and she's wanted to kill you ever since. You didn't harm her, you didn't insult her, but you did defeat her. All Helena has ever known her entire life is victory and you took that from her. It's child logic. She's a little girl trapped inside a woman's body." Joe's eyes closed again. "I created a monster and there's not a day that goes by where I regret what I did."