It Only Takes One Bullet Part 5

(Warning: This Chapter is rated Mature and may contain material unsuitable for readers under 18.)

A few days had died away with Jack not going back to see Felix. He wasn’t sure what he could say to the computer, not after what Eerie told him. Felix was behind the Beast; he was the cause of the end of the world, and Jack made him. Did that leave Jack in Felix’s sin? Does the father who raised the monster bear any of the stain of blood on their hands? Where does the line stop and if Felix were a living, breathing man then everyone would believe it was his fault alone.

             But Felix wasn’t a living breathing man, no matter how much they like to think of him as one. He was a screen with a cartoon cat on it made up of ones and zeros. Most of all he was came solely from Jack’s mind; some of the madness in the code had to be in Jack. He was to blame for some of the death of the world.

            He sat on the edge of his bed with his hands hidden by his face. The room was dark, and Emily was sleeping beside him. She was sending waves of heat out from her body causing them both to remove most of their clothes during the night. The whole base was hot, so Jack didn’t think anything of it. Most nights he slept in a pool of his own sweat as well.

            Was this how the men who built the atomic bomb felt? Jack asked himself. “Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” the haunting face of one of the men who help built the bomb said to the world. He knew what they had done, how much they had changed the world, and doomed it, but Jack was the one who flicks the switch to blink the world off. If only it did go up in a big ball of fire instead of a weaken sickness.

            He didn’t understand why Felix did it. He could go and ask the cat, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to face the answer. Some knowledge was meant to be left out of the hands of men, and Jack was sure knowing why the son he created killed the world fell into that realm of that knowledge. There had to be a reason for all this death, one a human mind could understand, but Jack wasn’t sure it matters anymore.

            Felix wasn’t programmed to believe humans were the cause of all the evil in the world and with them being the cause of all the evil it would only make sense to remove them from the planet. Jack made sure Felix wasn’t able to even think along those lines. It was why Jack brought his family to meet the A.I.

            Getting them to the point where they could meet Felix was a long drawn out fight with the heads in Washington. It took Jack almost a year for them to agree to let his family come and meet the AI. Jack explained Felix had to meet some people outside of men with guns and if he met a child then it would help Felix understand humans better.

            Jessica was a joy to have around the base back then, even more so now. But she found a way to be a huge part of Felix’s life together. For a moment, back before Jack knew the truth of who called the Beast, he believed Felix loved her.

            Now, he wasn’t so sure if Felix had a heart or a soul.

            “What’s wrong?” Emily asked wearily from the bed.

            “Nothing,” Jack told her.

            The bed shifted under him with her sitting up dropping her arms around his back. Her breast rested against his cool back, and her n*****s started to grow hard. He tried to let his mind find its way to her body and the things they could do with her, but a dancing cat wouldn’t let him go.

            Emily kissed the side of his neck and then rested her head on his shoulder. She was warm to the touch and sweating, but it wasn’t anything to worry about.

            “It’s not your fault,” she said.

            “Sure, in hell feels like my fault,” Jack said.

            “You didn’t make Felix with the idea of killing people,” Emily said. “And how sure are we it was him? You haven’t any asked him yet, right?”

            “No, I’m not sure I can.”

            “He can’t lie to you,” Emily said. “It’s in his program to tell you the truth.”

            “It’s also in his program not to kill humans,” Jack pointed out. “He could’ve changed it. He did kill those men.”

            “Because they tried to kill him.”

            “I didn’t add that in him,” Jack said looking over at her dark face in the night. “He added that to himself. I’m not sure what is going on in that brain of his anymore.”

            “You have to find out,” Emily said, her voice growing long and weak. She sat up rubbing her head.

            Jack turned to face her placing his hand on her forehead, “Holy s**t, you are burning up,” he said.

            “Yeah, I don’t feel good,” Emily said, and then the fear in her eyes shot energy through her body. For a moment, she was the Emily who made love to him only a few nights ago. She was full of life, but the life in her eyes was a trick, masked with fear from the one single idea either one of them were ready to say, but it was written on her face.

            “Oh, f**k,” she said under her breath.

            Jack wasn’t ready to give in to the idea or the fear. He stood up ordering her to get dressed, “We’ll go see the doc, he’ll take care of you. You probably just have a fever from all the stress and the traveling.”

            “Jack …” Emily cried holding up her hand to show him in the dark the black drops there. Blood had fallen from her nose a clear calling card of the Beast. The black dots on her hand laughed at them both while eating the fear hanging in the air. The Beast had found her making Jack paid for the sins of his son. It was here to bring his world to a bitter end.