PRESENT DAY

“You want a beer, Connie?” Sukuyaa and Connie were back at the cabin. They’d watched the rest of the meeting and known what the cover story was going to be. Connie was too stunned to make a choice but she was convinced they needed to know more, so they left without blowing up the room.

“I just found out my whole life is a lie. I need more than beer. Get a whole bottle of tequila.”

Sukuyaa got the bottle but she poured Connie a glass instead of giving her the whole thing. “Can’t have you drunk when you need clarity, Connie. I don’t know how long I have you for before your twin comes back.”

Connie snatched the bottle out of Sukuyaa’s hand and started drinking. “I could not care less about clarity right now.”

Sukuyaa sat down, knowing how heavy the moment was for the usually-composed Connie. “You know, if I’d known when you walked into my office for a therapy session that it would lead to all this, I might have referred you to someone else. Cos this right here’s hard to watch.”

Connie kept taking big swigs of the tequila while staring straight.

“Lucas’ murder turned you loose from your twin, and now we’ve spent the past four years chasing after your parents’ murderers only to learn that they never died?”

Connie took the last gulp of tequila left in the bottle, and then hurled it at the wall, narrowly missing the massive hanging TV.

“I heard the voice of Markham Greene in my house when he and those two dead men came and hurt my mother. I tried to crawl to them, but the sedative had me slow until all I could do was lie there. My mother yelled, blood-curdling yelled, as they tortured her. My father couldn’t move, but I could see the tears coming out of his eyes. I saw all this happen. Now, I am to believe that all of it was a lie? That all of it was staged? Had they no care for me at all? What the f*ck, Sukis!”

Sukuyaa went and picked up another bottle of tequila from the kitchen, opened it up, and sat next to Connie. She took one gulp, then passed it to Connie, who took a gulp, and they kept going back and forth as they talked.

“Connie, I had time to think while we were on our way here. You’re not going to like what I came up with.”

“That the only reason to stage a crime is to disappear?”

“Yes but there’s more. Connie, I think your father was part of the syndicate from the get go. We know your mother was the daughter of the founder, we know he died mysteriously right around when your parents were killed. At first we thought it was planned that way to erase the entire family, but what if it was planned that way so your mother and father could take over?”

“That would make sense, seeing as they appear to be at the helm.”

“We have Thomas, we can ask him.”

“No, he was just a hired hand who was told much more than he needed to know. This is well above his pay-grade.”

“Damn. Good point. Sometimes I wish I had the eye of a clairvoyant so I would know everything. This is a situation where that would be handy.”

“Clairvoyant, huh? You believe in those charlatans who never seem to be able to use their ability to enrich themselves or build any wealth? Come on, Sukis. You are a trained therapist. You know the science of convincing humans. How can you fall for them?”

They sat in silence and passed their drink back and forth.

Towards the end of the bottle, Sukuyaa quipped, “I wonder whether your godfather is real at all. He’d be great to ask.”

Connie rolled her eyes in response, but then she had a thought. “If the death of my parents was faked to that degree, they must have really done something to need to disappear. No one invests that much into a charade unless they need it to be real for someone.”

Sukuyaa tried to follow Connie’s train of thought. “Yeah, like the public.”

“Not the public. They could simply have left the country if they wanted to disappear from the public eye. They needed someone to believe that they were dead. Markham was part of the syndicate, so it could not have been the whole organization they needed to fool. What if they faked my life as well?”

Connie got up with renewed enthusiasm. “We need to go through everything about my life again.”

Sukuyaa held her hand. “I don’t think I need to remind you, Connie Bates, but the name on those documents will not be yours. I don’t want you to throw another fit about your name not being on anything, because then I may have to fight you if you get violent and I’m too drunk for that right now.”

Connie pulled her up. “Don’t worry, I know who my twin is, and I know she’s my public face. I won’t get angry. I’m talking as her right now, actually. Let’s go.”

****

Agent Bowser walked out of the basement library at the station with a look of disbelief on his face. The librarian saw him as he left and called out, “Find anything surprising?”

Bowser turned. “Not just surprising; completely astounding.”

The librarian smiled. “Well, that’s what usually happens when someone comes down here. The world’s gone on with all their computers and all their new tech bullsh*t, but down here, you learn that the world ain’t changed since the dawn of time.”

“No lie, Sylvia, no lie. I learned a lot today. Thank you.”

“You have a goodnight, kid.”

As Bowser walked out of the station later that night, heading towards his car, a black SUV pulled up at the curb in front of him. The driver’s window came down and a man in shades called to him. “Agent Chris Bower, your presence is required at the Summit of the Gods. Get into the van.”

Bowser coolly did as he was told and was driven away.

*****

“F*ck, Connie! I’ve seen a lot in my day, but goddamn your life is a sh*tshow! Your dead father’s not dead, your dead mother’s alive, and now we find out your godfather’s the guy you burned to a crisp? Does this name on your birth certificate even exist? Damson? Who the hell was that guy?”

Sukuyaa and Connie had driven to Connie’s storage locker to look for anything they could find that would tell them about Connie’s childhood. The locker had everything Connie and Mina had kept throughout the years. They had just found Mina’s birth certificate, which led Sukuyaa to realize just how much of a lie Connie’s life was.

“Keep looking. There are some stuff in there which I stole copies of from the police library in Hildenstad, the one that chief Barry was in charge of. I went in once looking for the case files on my parents, but I stumbled into the library and found details of my adoption and some other stuff. That sh*t should be in a box on that other wall.”

Sukuyaa went over to the box in question, which was in a big pile of boxes with random contents. As she searched, she said, “You know, at some point, you’re going to have to come face to face with these people.”

Connie sighed. “The thought has crossed my mind.”

Sukuyaa found an old teddy bear and played with it for a second. “Do you know how you’re going to handle it?”

Connie kept looking through the stuff she was in.” “No clue. Right now, my focus is on finding anything…which I may just have found. I didn’t even know there was a tape recorder in this stuff.”

Connie found the rewind button and wound the old cassette to the beginning. Then she hit play.

“Kenny, how do we explain this to Mina?”

“We don’t. She’s deadweight if we take her with us. Do you plan to have a literal walking target that can be used against you anytime? Its not just our adversaries, its our friends too. What if Barry one day decides he’s sick of our sh*t, and then these three now want us dead?”

“Hey, let’s not plant that hypothetical in Barry’s head. You know he gameplans this kind of sh*t.”

“F*ck you, Markham. I would never go against you, Kenny. Or you, Lilly. But, Kenny does make a good point. Maybe we need to adjust the plan so she doesn’t have trauma or something.”

Kenny scoffed at the suggestion. “Grow a pair, Barry. She’s barely even four. She’s not going to remember any of this. She can’t half remember what she had for f*cking breakfast.”

Les came in with a better idea. “Alright. How about we sedate her so she doesn’t see any of it? We deploy it remotely, it hits her neck, knocks her out, we carry out the plan and leave her?”

“My father would believe that we were killed but he will still want an investigation. We have to make it so he wants the evidence erased more than he wants the guilty found. Only disgrace can make that happen.”

Silence. Then, Markham spoke up. “You know, since we’re not actually hurting either of you, why don’t we make something out of it? There are these new things called sex dolls. They’re supposed to be realer than a woman but I’ve never tested the theory. How about we fool the camera into thinking one of them is you?”

Lily scoffed, “Oh you motherf*ckin pervert.” Then Kenny came in. “You’re a pig for that, but suppose we were to try that, Lily would have to be dead, which was the plan all along. Cos I don’t know a doll that can move or seem at all real.”

Barry then spoke up. “Well, I have no qualms f*cking a dead doll that looks like Lily. We do have a lot of work to do to make it look real though.”

“Leave that to me,” Markham said.

Les must’ve seen the recorder because he exclaimed, “Motherf*cker, are you recording us? What the f*ck is wrong with you!”

Barry then responded, “I’m not recording, fool. This is for my actual syndicate op. I’m supposed to be a goddamn news reporter.”

“Better make sure that thing is not on, with your clumsy self.”

“You know what, motherf*cker, I’ll give this to Kenny. He can check and see if I was recording later. If I was, do whatever you want to me.”

The last sound after that was a click, which was probably where Barry ended the recording to cover his tracks for the moment.

Before any of them could react, Sukuyaa’s phone rang. She picked it up and saw a text message.

‘Express Plaza. Conference Room 11F. 11 pm. Agent Bowser. Summit of the Gods.’

“Thomas just texted. It looks like your showdown’s going to be sooner than later. There’s a summit in the same room as the last time.”

Well, this story’s gonna end on a pretty explosive note! Mina/Connie dealing with her lying parents! This promises to be quite a showdown!!