Death Angel

Chapter 24: Donovan Hunter

I had so many fond memories of my Dad. In fact, I could hardly ever recall any sad ones at all, other than the time when he passed away. The memory of seeing his casket, the dark wood that was polished to a gleaming sheen, an almost all-too fitting metaphor for my father’s passing.  It was too painful for me to have to look into it, and so I didn’t. I preferred to remember Dad as he was in life. That was probably one of the few I could recall, a lone memory; something that I had almost forgotten, that suddenly came bubbling to the surface.

I forced myself to recall the strange day my father took me out to sea again, remembering the lashing storm, my father’s recklessness, and all the while asking why he had chosen to take his daughter out to sea in the manner in which he had done. I was nine, and frightened of course, but what nine year old doesn’t trust their own father implicitly? I knew my dad would never let me come to harm.

“That day,” I continued as Robert Mayer’s eyes bored into mine. “Were you trying to get us both killed?” I asked, as I met his glare with one of my own. “Were you trying to draw out the Van Dyke secrets by killing your own daughter then and there?”

A smile broke from Robert Mayer’ face. His shoulders started shaking. I realized he was laughing hysterically.

“You are my daughter after all, Vanessa,” he began. “Tell, me how did you figure it out?”

“There were a number of things that bothered me about the whole thing. First, why call Death and tip him off about the board meeting? I mean, Robert Mayer wasn’t exactly fond of Richard Grim. And Richard wasn’t a big investor in Hunter Robotics, so there really was no reason for Death to be present at these proceedings. Only someone who knew more than an ordinary human would about Richard could possibly want anything to do with him.” I clenched my fists. I was angry just then. I wanted to make him tell me why it was that he did all the bad things that he did. More importantly, why he made my mother suffer so much.  I wanted an explanation for the mockery he made of the fond memories I had. “So tell me, Dad, what exactly did you want with Death?”

Donovan Hunter smiled at me. I should have seen it coming: everything about how he acted, the strength in which he exercised his power over the board, the way he leaned on the table in exactly the same way he did at every meeting I was present at. If I hadn’t seen him in the boardroom today, I might still be in the dark about my father’s whereabouts. “I’ll show you a little something Vanessa,” he said simply.

Robert’s Mayer’s face moved a little. It was hard to discern at first, it looked like a tiny portion of his chin was moving, then it was an odd movement on his forehead. I soon realized what was going on. 

“The nanomachines,”  I said, as my blood chilled. 

As if in response, I saw my father’s face move and contort. It looked like Robert Mayer’s face was overrun with a swarm of tiny black ants, except I knew these weren’t ants. They were literally thousands, perhaps millions of sub-microscopic nanomachines whose collective movements could be seen but that were individually impossible to discern with the naked eye. The machines moved strategically at great speed, in a highly synchronized manner. 

That the machines were highly intelligent was clear: such tactical coordination would not have been possible otherwise. 

My mother was right. 

My father’s science had progressed to a level beyond anything possible in the current time. Our fourteen-nanometer machines had barely begun to to walk, let alone coordinate with one another. All our machines could do was gather data at a blindingly fast rate and communicate that data across the world. Hunter Robotics’ cutting edge technology was an utter and complete dinosaur in comparison to the highly advanced, high functioning ants that crawled around my father’s face.