Heritage (Under Revision)

Chapter 56: Dante

“So, you’re sure it has everything?”

“I’m positive girly. Is this a secure terminal?”

“Should be. I wrote up my own set of firewalls and separated it from their servers,”

I sit down at Elena’s private terminal and set the storage device on a small pad next to it. This one is thinner and flusher against the desk than the one I downloaded the data from. The rim of it starts pulsing yellow as an icon pops up on the desktop to access the drive.

I tap on the icon. A slew of information pops up on the screen.

Thankfully, it’s everything that I had seen on the terminal that I took it from.

“Looks like it’s all here,” I say as Elena bends down, looking over my shoulder.

Elena gives off a smile.

“This is all the information we need to put them in a grave,”

Elena stands upright and begins to walk out of the room.

“Hey. Where you goin’?” I ask.

Elena stops and looks at me over her shoulder.

“I need to take a leave of absence,” She says, pressing a button on a wall panel, the door gliding open.

I remove the drive from the pad and the window closes. Before leaving, I pull a TAPs device from my pocket and open the display. I sift through a few menus before clicking on a name.

A call begins.

“Hello? Oh, Dante, I wasn’t expecting a call from you, how it going, dear?”

“Well, looks like things are going to get a whole lot heavier around here. Elena has something big on her mind and you know she gets once she’s set on a decision,”

“She gets exactly like her husband. Whatever she does next is understandable given everything that’s happened, Dante. You do what you need to help her. I have to tell you, watching everything I have about Ethan’s case; it’s going to take a miracle to get him off clean. But then again, there is...” Anika trails off.

“What? There’s what, Anika?”

“Well...I didn’t want to say anything, but I figured you’d find out soon anyway. It’s Peter, he’s the one representing Ethan,” She explains.

I furrow my brow, wondering why Ethan would ever allow my brother to represent him in anything, let alone a murder case that points at him being the guilty party.

I sigh at Anika “If Ethan is using Pete, then he must have a good reason why. We don’t have the whole story on this one Anika. All I have is my role to play, and I plan to do just that. I want you to do something for me though, okay?”

“What’s that, dear?”

“I want you to relocate. Get out of that house. Go to your parents or the vacation house. I just want you out of there in case they decide to come for you,”

Anika smiles at me.

“I appreciate your concern, Dante. I really do. But I don’t need it. I may have been MIA for a while, albeit, right under their noses, but I’m still an officer in the military. An officer of the same rank as Elena and one that is much less of a wave maker right now than her. My peers think I’m just an upstanding individual. So, there’s nothing to worry about, really,”

I give Anika an unsure look, and then nod in acceptance.

“Alright babe, I have to go now, errands and all that. I’ll touch base later. I love you,”

“Love you too,” The call ends and I exit Elena’s office just as she’s returning.

“So?” I ask.

“I’ll be taking as much time as needed so we can prepare for this,”

“Prepare for what...exactly?”

“We’re going to organize all of the most relevant pieces of evidence and then present to the Federation. I’ll be setting an appointment today,”

“Elena...I love you guys and all but...,”

“I know, Dante. You have Anika to think about. And it wasn’t that long ago that you returned back form the dead,” Elena says, placing a hand on my arm and smiling.

“I’m glad you understand, Elena. I’ll still help you get everything together. Here,”

I wave the drive over Elena’s pocket and there’s a muffled beep.

“Everything is copied over to your TAPs. I’ll be back soon. I figured I’d head to one of the visiting centers and call Ethan. See how he’s holding up,”

“That’s good. He’ll be happy to see you, Dante. I can only imagine how he’s feeling in there,” Elena says staring at the ground, concern on her face.

I place a hand on Elena’s shoulder. “Don’t worry girly, I remember a story about a guy who landed himself in some hot water a while back that got sent to a space station way out in BFE. It’s funny, I think that guy is a General now,” I say giving Elena a wide grin.

She can’t help but smile back at me. “We’ll catch up later, Dante,” She says plainly.

I nod in agreement and take my leave.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Dante? What’re you doing visiting me?”

“I don’t know if you can really call this a visit, I mean, it’s basically just a high security video call. But anyway, I wanted to come see how you were doing,”

“Well, my cell is small, the food sucks, and I’m locked down twenty hours a day. But wait...,” Ethan says going off screen for a moment.

He brings a television in to view and sets it on his lap “At least I have a seven-inch t.v. with basic channels on it. So, I’m set,”

I chuckle at his remark. “At least you get to have junk food for two times what it’s worth in a store,”

“You know, that is true. I never thought I could be so lucky. Thank you for reminding me that I have it so well here, Dante,”

Ethan and I share a good laugh for a few minutes.

It then fades away to silence and we sit there for a moment.

“You’re going to get out of this Ethan, don’t worry,” I say breaking the quiet.

Ethan expression turns more serious as he stares at me though the plasma glow of the monitor.

“I know,” He responds without elaboration.

I see Ethan turn his head towards something unknown. He gives a quick nod and looks back to me.

“Looks like my time is up, I have to get going,”

Without being able to say goodbye, the call cuts short and the screen goes black. I sigh deep as I stare at the blank picture in front of me. An idea comes to mind and I quickly get up and leave the visitation facility. I get into my vehicle and tap a few numbers into a screen that’s built into the dashboard, my TAPs device automatically connects to it.

There are a few rings and then a woman picks up. Her face is half shrouded in shadow and a background of dark surrounds her.

“How many times have I told you to encrypt your call when you contact me, Dante,”

“Sorry Katsumi, I’ve been out of the game for a while. I knew you’d do it for me anyway though,” I say with a smirk.

I see a smile in return form at the corner of her mouth.

“I didn’t have a chance to say, welcome back to the land of the living. I assume you need something?” She says getting to the point.

“Yeah, actually, it’s pretty simple too. I need you to find Pete. I know he’s somewhere in the area around my location. I just need you to pinpoint him,”

I hear a few clicks start as she continues speaking to me “I thought you too weren’t talking anymore,”

“We aren’t. I just need to have a little chat with him,”

“Does this chat involve Ethan Blake?” Katsumi asks, knowing the answer.

“Ya know, if you didn’t have so much fun being a black hat, you’d be a phenomenal white one,”

“Those titles are rather ironic given the fact that it’s the government that mainly uses them. And the only things that classify a hacker as a white hat is one that hacks in the interest of the UEDF only and nothing else,”

I give a shrug “Fair enough,” I say, letting her finish her work.

“I have him,” Katsumi says after a few moments.

“He’s three blocks away from your location in an apartment. He paid six months’ rent in advance. Not home currently, but he should be soon if I remember his daily routine correctly, and I do,”

“Thanks, Katsumi. I appreciate it, really. One of these days, we’re going to have to meet up in person and get dinner or something. I’ll let you meet my wife,”

Katsumi smiles wide “Don’t bet on it. Oh, and don’t kill each other,” She says before abruptly ending the call.

An address with a GPS route pops up on my screen. I press the blue ‘START’ button and it begins the route. I start my vehicle and follow it. I find myself at the door of a man I haven’t seen in twenty years. It’s the door of a man, who before I was frozen in time, turned out to be a traitor and is responsible for killing numerous human soldiers.

The most frustrating part about it was the fact that he’s always precise and behind the scenes that nothing was ever able to be proven against him. That fact stayed true even into recent years and he’s still able to plod along in the daylight.

I use one of my left-over decryption devices to unlock the door and step inside. I sweep my eyes across the room. It’s as pristine as I always remember Pete being about things. I step further inside and begin molesting things throughout the room.

I thumb over some magazines, pull some books out and look at them before placing them back on their shelf. I kneel down at the traditional fireplace and pick through some of the ashes.

“What’re you doing here Dante,”

A voice startles me from behind. I turn my head towards Peter and stand, making my body mirror the motion. Peter stands there, wearing the same prim and proper clothing that I’ve always known him for. Two sacks of groceries are in his arms. We stare at each other for moment before he grows tired of the situation and walks over to the kitchen counter and puts the sacks down, still facing me.

I notice a very different visual of his arms as the groceries unveil them to me.

I point at them “Your arms...,”

“Pretty aren’t they?” Peter says as he takes an out of one of the bags and starts cutting it.

“What happened?” I ask.

Pete stares at me through the top of his glasses. “Do you really even care?”

“You’re still my brother, Pete,” I respond simply.

Peter angrily and effortlessly slams the point of his knife into his cutting board as he stares at me with hurt and rage in his eyes.

“Is that so?” He asks leaning his hands on the table.

“You have no right to be angry with Pete. You betrayed everything that we stood for. And you stood there with a smile on your face all the while,” I say pointing a finger at him.

Peter shakes his head in response.

“Same old Dante...Always looking at everything at face value, instead of looking at the substance underneath. Did you know that you never even asked me my side of the story?”

“Why should I have? The last I witnessed from you, was you killing a squad of soldiers in cold blood,”

“Yeah, a squad of soldiers who just happened to have raped and pillaged a small village of indigenous people on the planet. Unlike you, I saw the hypocrisy of the UEDF and I decided that I couldn’t be part of it anymore,”

“And to make a point you had to go and join the damn lizards. That’s just like you. Because of you I got sent to that hunk of junk in the middle of nowhere as a damn security detail for false reporting of an officer,”

“Do you think I wanted to do that? You’re the one who had to keep digging and digging until you got me caught. You left me no choice. Unless you wanted me to kill you instead and leave Captain Connor alive and get him shipped out to some Podunk location. Besides, what does it matter now, Dante? Turns out I was right all along and so were the Sekrid,”

“That’s not the point, Pete! You should have come to me first. We could have talked about it and figured something out,”

“I already know how that conversation would’ve went, Dante, and that’s nowhere. You were such a little patriot back then that you didn’t see anything beyond the flag that you saluted,”

“The flag isn’t what I cared about Pete. What I cared about was being in that plane every day and flying. You took that away from me. You clipped my God damn wings, Pete. Because of that, I can’t ever be in one of those jets again. Flying was the one thing I had in our family. The one thing I was really good at,”

“Blow it out your ass, Dante. Don’t give me some sob story,”

“Of course, you would say that Pete. Mom and Dad showered all of their praise on you. You were going to be a surgeon. And I was the son who just wanted to fly planes and be in the military cause, you know, that’s an easy thing to do. And then after that, you had to top it all off by becoming an officer right behind me,”

“Do you think I wanted to be mom and dad’s favorite? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. They put all of their hopes and dreams on me. I didn’t have a life because of them. All I knew that I had was you. I didn’t join the military to undermine you. I went into the military to be close to you...and to get away from them. Why do you think I fought to get transferred to your unit?”

I sigh heavily, frustrated at the argument that’s going in circles. I sit down on the apartment’s fancy couch, placing my elbows on my knees, and stare at the floor.

“Why didn’t you come to me then...?” I ask quietly.

Pete stay quiet for a long time. He answers just before the silence becomes too heavy to bear.

“If I’m being honest, it’s because I didn’t want you wrapped up in it. After doing what I did, I wanted to make sure you were above reproach. I just never expected you to respond how you did. So...it ended up backfiring on me anyway and...I hope you can forgive me for that one day,”

I look up from the floor at Peter’s face and I notice that his eyes are welled with tears. I stand and walk over to the counter.

“You’re going to get Ethan out of this, right?” I ask rigidly.

“That’s the plan,” He answers.

“That’ll be a good start,” I turn and head for the door.

I hear Peter return to his cutting of an onion as I open and close it behind me.