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I jumped to my feet. “What in goddamned hell do you think you’re doing?!”
She slapped me again and added to my extensive list of injuries.
Damn it.
My face burned and I opened my mouth to speak.
“Don’t you dare say anything to me.” Her voice was quiet yet commanding, calm yet angry. There was fury behind her eyes. Controlled. Tempered. “You were supposed to protect him, and you didn’t.” Another slap met my cheeks. “You let him die.”
“I... I...”
Dionne Bex slapped me yet again. “Go on,” she said. “Do it! Tell me you’re sorry.”
“No.” I could see Suede and Johnson exchange sideways glances at each other. “I’m not sorry. I’m sorry he’s dead, yes, but I’m not sorry for your loss.” I jabbed a finger in her direction. “You manipulated your own son into that situation. You used him. And now, he’s dead goddammit.”
Another slap. I didn’t object. I took it. I deserved it. She was right about it being my fault, at least partially. I should’ve protected him. And now, I was being cruel by blaming her. No. Regan was dead, and it was no-one’s fault but Augustus Smith’s.
She raised her hand to hit me again.
“Ms Bex,” interrupted Johnson. “Please...”
“Remember who controls your funding,” said the CEO without looking back. She was glaring at me, demonstrating her power. “You only have jobs at my discretion.” She turned her head, redirected her glare to the two cops. “You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” said the pair almost in unison.
“Leave us.” She waved her hand to dismiss the pair. “Go on.”
They didn’t move, not until I nodded to Suede that it would be fine.
“We’ll be outside if you need us,” said Suede as he shut me and Bex inside the room.
I sat at the table and so did Bex.
“You know I didn’t kill Regan,” I said.
Her expression was stoic and controlled. “No, I know you didn’t.” Her eyes didn’t leave mine; she’d done her best to hide it, but I could tell she’d been crying. “But it makes me feel better to blame you.”
“If it helps.” I realised I’d dropped my cigarette in all the commotion; I lit another. I offered one to the woman opposite and she took it without question. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen her smoke before. “You’ve been paying Greene to keep quiet,” I said. “You needed me to stop him, so you didn’t out yourself and your connection to him. You wouldn’t tell us everything. What exactly did you leave out?”
“First, tell me what happened at the warehouse,” she said. ”I think I know, but I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Please, Mr Gemini, tell me how my son died.”
I told her. Everything and in detail. I was sick of repeating it over and over, out loud and in my own head; I was sick of reliving it. Every telling made Regan’s death more real. Damn it. I told her how we’d broken in, how we’d got caught, how Greene had revealed his real identity. I told her what happened in the basement, how we’d freed ourselves... how brave Regan had been. How he’d died.
I felt tears on my face when I’d finished telling her, and she, even the cold businesswoman, had glassy eyes and tears streaked on her cheeks.
I didn’t tell her his last words; they’d only been for me.
“Thank you, Mr Gemini.” She dabbed her face with a handkerchief. I’d rarely seen her express so much emotion; the anger when she’d come into the room and the small display of sadness were almost all I’d seen from her. She was usually professional to the point of being hard. Cold. Regan had mentioned that they weren’t close, but this at least proved that Ms Bex at least had some feelings toward her estranged son. I just wished he‘d been here to see it. She cleared her throat and slid the handkerchief into her pocket. “I suppose we better get down to business.”
“Yes.” We’d both finished our smokes and I lit another; the woman opposite declined the offer of a second. “Let me tell you what I think.” I took a drag. “You bent the truth a little by telling me that the church was keeping Augustus Smith safe.”
“And were they not?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that Greene was really Smith? You must’ve known.” I sat back in the chair. “You knew who he was from the start; you paid for his face change to hide his identity. I don’t know why. Not yet. But what I do know is that he started blackmailing you, and when you tried to fix it yourself, he attacked you and put you in a coma. Because of the connections between your company and the church, you couldn’t take him down directly; you needed someone to do it for you. Me.”
“You’re only half right, Mr Gemini.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I knew who he was,” she said with a slight grin. She sighed with what seemed to be regret. “In some ways, you’re the reason he’s here.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s the Smith from your universe, not ours.”
“How is that possible?”
“He’s the only person, aside from yourself, that’s survived being pulled across dimensions. Everyone else dies. The scientists think it might be something to do with his proximity to your accident all those years ago, but they couldn’t tell me how.”
“When? When did he come across?”
“About eleven months ago. Not too long after your encounter with the other Jack Gemini.”
“A product of your experiments, yes?”
She nodded. “And before you ask, I don’t know why or how he was the person we happened to pick. Maybe it was fate, I don’t know. There was certainly no intent.”
“And when you said: ‘everyone else dies,’ just how many people did you try to bring through to this universe?” I suddenly realised I hadn’t taken any drags on my cigarette in a while; a pillar of ash was balancing precariously on the tip, and I flicked it away before taking another puff. “How many people were murdered by you and your company’s experiments?”
“It wasn’t...” She saw the look on my face and didn’t continue with that sentence. Ms Bex sighed. “It’s not something I actively kept track of. It’s not important.”
“It’s not important? Not important?! What’s in goddamned hell is that supposed to mean?”
“What I mean it that we’re getting off track; the important thing, right now, is that Greene is your Augustus Smith.”
“What about this Smith from yours? This universe?”
The woman shrugged. “Who knows.”
“Then why the face change?”
“To avoid unnecessary complications. Last thing we wanted was to have him out in the streets bumping into the real Augustus Smith, the Smith from this universe. And it was his idea.”
“And the blackmail?” I stubbed out the cigarette.
“Wasn’t blackmail,” said Ms Bex. “Not really. There was an agreement to give him ID, keep him hidden, and to fund his church provided he came in once a month for tests. It was the only way to keep him cooperative. The scientists wanted to find out what made him so special, wanted to replicate it so that they could bring someone through alive.”
“Keep the organs fresher for longer, eh?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s morally repellent.”
The CEO glared at me. “That kind of attitude isn’t going to get us anywhere, is it?”
“I don’t know, it made me feel a little better.” I took another cigarette from the pack and lit it. So much for quitting. “Let me guess what happened next; he kept asking for more and more money. Too much. Threatened to out your little experiments if you didn’t give him what you wanted. You had an argument with Smith... Greene... and he almost killed you.”
Ms Bex seemed to shrink; she was afraid. “Yes,” she whispered. She shook herself, sitting upright, a stern expression returning. “This whole thing is all your fault, in a way.”
“There you go again, blaming me.”
“I know you wouldn’t have agreed to being experimented on. Given our history. You gave me no choice but to use Smith.”
“That’s utter bullshit and you know it!” I snorted a laugh and threw my hands up. “You didn’t have to do any experiments; you could’ve just stopped!”
“Now, now, Mr Gemini, you know that wouldn’t ever happen,” she said with a sly grin. “Tribeca needs to make money; progress isn’t cheap.”
“Ha! Big businesses are all the same! Literally built with the blood of innocent people!”
“No-one is innocent.” An eyebrow arched. “No-one.”
“And what about the copycat killer? It’s Greene, right? Smith is up to his old tricks.”
She shrugged. “We had to make it look like there was a copycat to keep him hidden, keep the police off the scent. An investigation started, one too big for me to shut down. I just manipulated it by setting up a task force. One I could control.”
“You don’t care that he’s killing again.”
“No, but if you’d done as I’d wanted, Greene... Smith... that cult would be out of the picture. And maybe, just maybe, my son would still be alive.”
“You brought this on yourself, Ms Bex,” I said. “You’ve could’ve asked me directly, hired me directly. Instead of all this damned manipulation.”
“You wouldn’t have agreed.”
“You’ll never know; you gave me no choice.”
Ms Bex pushed her chair back and stood. “I think we’re done here.”
“No,” I said. “You can stop this now. Come clean about Smith and Greene; the police can arrest him and shut down the Church of the Third Encounter. Smith can pay for what happened to Regan.”
She shook her head. “I’ll find another way; I need to protect my legacy and protect Tribeca.”
“Oh, come on, Ms Bex, you’re being stupid.”
The CEO scowled at me, the anger had returned, and she charged out of the small room, slamming the door behind her.
Goddammit.