I looked at the president and I tried to see the evil in him, however all I saw was a man – just like Aizel, just like the professor, just like my father. There was indeed little innocence to be seen in his features, I believed he was far too old for that, and yet I still saw something other than evil.
“I see a man who has power,” I told him.
He leaned towards me. “Ah, and what does that make me?”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know the answer. My father would have told me that power, of all things, was the heaviest burden that one could bear, and now that I alone possessed the code that controlled ATLAS, I was finally beginning to see the truth of his words.
“It is a foolish idea,” Lace explained, “that power corrupts, and it is that very ideology that sprung the resistance on my doorstep to begin with!”
“You mean your brother?” I asked, warily.
“Oh, so you do know about Arthur and I. I guess he told you everything about the spoilt big brother who didn’t know when to quit. It’s just like him to exaggerate the facts.”
I was unsure by this stage as to whether or not I was just being manipulated, or he was generally being honest with me. I guess I had to play both sides, for now. “Actually,” I said kindly, “I was never told as to why your brother hated you, only that he did.”
Lace poured me some more tea, and some for himself. “Well, let me enlighten you on that. You see, my brother was always jealous of me, and yet I cannot say that I was at fault. For that, I blame my father – he could have shown a little more affection. But alas, my younger brother bears no love for me anymore.”
I took note of the grim expression that swept across his face, however I couldn’t help but feel like he was spinning away from the answer I really wanted. I decided to ask a little more directly. “What happened to his family?” I demanded.
Lace’s lips broke out again into a sad smile and I’ll admit that it was something that moved me, but then again, Lace had a smile that always got what it wanted.
“My brother would have you believe that I had them murdered because he decided to act against my authority.”
I waited for him to continue, and his absence of words shot a full dose of fear back into my blood. “And?” I asked him desperately.
“Well, as sad as their deaths were I can tell you that I was not responsible.”
“And who was?”
“I can’t say, even right now I am dying to know who took their sweet lives, and I can’t help but wonder if they knew that all this would be the circumstance of their actions. Please, let me tell you, Jeannette; I have often gone to many, many great lengths to ensure the security of my city, but to murder an innocent wife and child, well, it’s beyond me. No matter how much power one may possess; we are all completely bound to our desire to be human, and I think you know full well that I am indeed human. I loved Arthur’s wife, Eleanor was her name, I used to think she had the most beautiful smile and yet when she died, Arthur seemed to forget about all of it. I used to believe that if I could prove my innocence to him then maybe I could be forgiven and this war would stop, however I fear that was only one of the many reason as to why this conflict exists, and I cannot resolve all of them. To be completely honest, I think we’ve gone too far for us to be able to go back – far too much blood has been spilt for us to simply call it a draw, and that’s why one of us has to win.”
Lace’s speech very soon sprang a new question into my mind. “I have to ask, if I were to give you the code and ATLAS were to be activated, would you use it to kill your brother?”
Lace paused for a moment and he seemed to be searching in his mind for the right words with which to explain himself. “Although I am indeed a brother,” he began, “I am also the president of Tartarus City, and much like yourself I am forced to decide upon which path is considered good and which is considered evil. There is no war that has ever existed without casualties, and if my brother must die for the greater good then as president of this city it is my duty to see it through, despite how much it might hurt me.”
He looked at me with tired, like an old man who had lived too long, seen too much.
“This city is suffering, Jeannette, and it has been so for long before you were born. As president it is my responsibility to look after it, and so I ask that you allow me the right to end the pain that has plagued us for all these years. Please, let me put an end to the war.”
I thought about it… I thought about it for a very long time. It was right there, the code, just sitting on the tip of my tongue, and all I had to do was speak… 6573-4532-7710-2169-3490.
It would take only a few seconds, twenty digits and no less, and then all of this would be over. I stared for very long time into the eyes of Archibald Lace, and as I did so, my mind, my instinct, my entire being screamed out at me. ‘Give him the code!’ it demanded. ‘End it all, right here and now.’
I, or rather my instincts, were right. I had the power within my mind to right now put an end to this entire war. Just say the words, right?
But just because I could put an end to it right here and right now, that didn’t mean that I would, or even that I should. I was still searching desperately in my mind for a third alternative, some way to simply dance around this pit of lose-lose situations. I wanted to win, and I was certainly not going to give up so easily, no matter what happened. I will save those people, I thought, even if it kills me.
So I guess for now my mind was made up – I had kept the president waiting long enough. Just say the words. I looked at him coldly this time. “No,” I said. “I will not give you the code.”
I noticed the slightest flame spark to life in Lace’s eyes, and it wasn’t like a flame of inspiration or anything, that was pure anger I saw.
“No?” He paused and didn’t say anything else.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I reassured him, but then I realised my words were folly – I guess it’s just something you usually say. “Actually, I don’t trust you at all,” I corrected myself. “But you see, I still believe there’s a way around this, a way where ATLAS isn’t the solution.”
Lace stood up and I watched in awe as his stance, his eyes, his smile, they were transformed before me. They were all a lie! The man who now stood before me, although still the same in size and shape, was not the man who Lace had fooled me into believing he was.
“You’re a fool, Mrs Abigail,” he told me, just at a peak below yelling. “You think I haven’t tried for a compromise? I’ve been trying for near on ten years, but it seems you’re just as stubborn as your father was, just as Benson was as stubborn as he. But no matter, I am going to defeat my brother, and ATLAS is the key, as well as that code inside your head.”
I felt the overpowering desire to just run as fast as I could out the door and then keep running, however I knew from the start that there was no running from this. I stepped back, clearly intimidated.
Lace reached out towards me. “Now Mrs Abigail, the code please, if you will?”
ns 172.70.178.218da2
and then Add to home screen.