Chapter 477
Catalina raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
The flatness of her voice and the confusion on her face made it obvious she hadn’t yet grasped the implications of his discovery. She hadn’t yet reached the same conclusion he had. Which was understandable. After all, while she already knew that Jake had met D, she didn’t know all the details yet.
“Yeah,” he replied and turned back to the Commander. “I know what you were trying to accomplish half an hour ago.”
“What the hell are you even talking about?” he asked in a husky voice.
“You have the means to see through D’s eyes, and that feed is clearly monitored around the clock,” Jake said. “So you know what’s been happening. And you were watching my very first encounter with D, weren’t you?”
The Commander said nothing. He tried to keep his face neutral, but by now his emotions were getting harder to conceal. The brief flicker in his eyes told Jake everything he needed to know. He was right. The Commander had most likely watched that first fight between Jake and his counterpart himself. Whoever had been monitoring the feed at the time had probably contacted him immediately, prompting him to rush to the tech lab because he was eager to learn how Jake measured up against D.
Back then, the two of them had been roughly evenly matched. D had the advantage in raw physical power, but they were at the same stage of evolution, which made them more or less equal in strength. And in the end, Jake had won, using a mutant’s energy cannon to blast D off the rooftop before his counterpart escaped.
“In our very first conversation, you asked me to defeat D,” Jake continued. “Later, you pretended to back off from that idea. Maybe you thought it would make you seem more trustworthy. Or more likely, you were worried that since I had no real reason to fight D, I might end up teaming up with him instead, and you wanted to prevent that from happening at all costs. You justified your sudden change by claiming that D had probably already reached the top stage of evolution, which meant I had no chance of beating him. But now we know that was a lie. You always knew exactly what stage of evolution D was at. Before pitting me against him, you needed two things: a good reason for me to want him dead and as little chance as possible that I’d side with him instead. And you also probably wanted to first know whether I could actually beat him in the first place. And then, at some point, you finally got your opportunity to watch us fight.”
Jake paused and studied the Commander. The leader of the Spartans remained silent. He didn’t have to say anything. While he was trying to keep his facial expression neutral, Jake could tell his reconstruction of events was dangerously close to the truth. The Commander was likely trying to come up with some believable explanation before Jake voiced the conclusion he was heading toward.
“After watching me fight D and ultimately make him run away, you must’ve come to the conclusion that I actually had a pretty good chance of killing D if needed. Only you knew that I wasn’t really interested in fighting him. He wasn’t my enemy, so I had no reason to go after him. That meant you needed to give me one. And before long, you found it.”
Jake paused again, giving the Commander a chance to respond. He didn’t.
“Earlier today, when I returned to your city, I briefly ran into D,” Jake continued. “I waved at him, and he waved back, then he ran off. I’m sure you were aware of that. You concluded I should head to your base, so you gathered Silvia and her team, and you did so on very short notice, as she told me. You knew you needed to act fast. You quickly sent Silvia’s team, Catalina included, to what looked like a random location on a routine recon mission. At least, that’s what Silvia believed. But there was nothing random about it. You sent them straight to the place where D was fighting ravagespawn. And naturally, you left that part out, deliberately concealing what they were really walking into.”
Silvia glanced at the Commander, confusion written across her face. Even now, he refused to look at her, despite the obvious question in her eyes: was there any truth to what Jake was saying, or was it all complete nonsense?
“You hoped Silvia would reach D before he left,” Jake continued. “And luck was on your side, as Silvia soon contacted you to say they had come across D. Of course, that wasn’t a surprise to you at all. You sent her team to that exact location for exactly that reason. You wanted them to run into D.”
“Sir, what is he talking about?” Silvia asked.
“Don’t listen to him, Silvia,” the Commander said without turning toward her.
“But did you know we were about to run into D?” she pressed. She still couldn’t accept that her leader might have deliberately sent her straight toward D. In her mind, she was probably trying to rationalize it: while they constantly monitored D’s movements, whoever was on watch duty wouldn’t be reporting his exact position to the Commander every minute. And that person would have no way of knowing that the Commander had recently sent a team to the very place where D happened to be.
When the Commander still said nothing, Jake went on. “So when Silvia spotted D, she contacted you and asked what they should do. She probably expected you to tell her team to withdraw. Instead, you ordered them to attack him for no apparent reason.”
Jake fell silent, giving the Commander a chance to explain himself. When no explanation came, he asked, “So tell me, why did you give that order?”
The Commander hesitated. For a moment, it looked as though he would stay silent forever. Then, just as Jake was about to speak again, he finally said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No,” Jake replied.
The Commander glanced at Silvia as if thinking she would come up with a plausible explanation on his behalf. But she was silent. She was confused, and it was obvious she also wanted to know why the Commander had ordered her team to attack D.
At last, the Commander said, “D is our enemy. That’s why.” He left it at that, as though the answer should have been enough on its own.
“And you really thought Silvia’s small team had a chance of defeating him?” Jake asked.
This time, the Commander didn’t reply. Jake gave him a few seconds, but the leader of the Spartans kept silent. When it became obvious he wouldn’t provide an answer, Jake demanded, “Answer the question.”
The Commander remained silent.
“What were you thinking when you gave that order?” Jake asked. “Unless you’re a complete idiot, there’s no way you believed Silvia’s team could take D down on their own.”
The Commander opened his mouth and… closed it again. He obviously couldn’t come up with any plausible explanation for his actions.
“You knew provoking D was the last thing you should do,” Jake said. “You knew that if he came after you, if he showed up at your base, you wouldn’t stand a chance. You knew the smart move was to avoid him, not antagonize him and give him a reason to come after the rest of your people. And yet, instead of ordering Silvia to return, you told her to attack.”
Jake paused, but this time he didn’t wait for the Commander to respond before continuing.
“The reason you ordered Silvia to attack D is that Catalina was with them. You had made sure to include her in Silvia’s team before dispatching them to that location.”
The Commander’s face scrunched up as if he had just bitten into a lemon. He didn’t ask what Jake meant. He already knew exactly where this was going. He knew what his plan had been, and he knew Jake had figured it out. Maybe he saw no point in denying it anymore. Or maybe he was simply scrambling for some lie that might make his actions sound defensible.
Silvia, however, still didn’t understand.
“Why did it matter that Catalina was on my team, sir?” she asked.
As expected, the Commander didn’t answer, so Jake did it for him, “Because he hoped D would kill her. That was the real purpose of sending your team there. He needed Catalina to be killed by D. Sure enough, you and the rest of your team would get killed too, but apparently that was a price he was willing to pay, because he thought the ends justified the means.”
“What?” both Catalina and Silvia asked in unison.
Silvia then turned to the Commander. “Is that true, sir?”
“Of course not. He’s talking out of his ass.”
“Why would he want me killed?” Catalina asked.
But as Jake started to answer, realization suddenly flashed across her face.
“As I said before,” Jake said, “he knew he had to make D my enemy somehow so I’d have a reason to go after him and kill him. So he was hoping that if D killed you, I’d have all the reason I needed.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” the Commander rasped.
“Is it, though?”
The Commander could no longer keep his face neutral. His face made it clear that Jake’s conclusion was correct. Silvia and Catalina both saw the truth written there.
As Jake transformed one hand into a chainsaw, he said, “I’m gonna slay every single one of your people right now. I’m gonna kill them one by one until you decide to stop lying and tell me everything instead.” Jake nodded toward Silvia. “And I’m starting with her. After all, you were planning to let D kill her anyway, right? So no great loss.”
He powered up his chainsaw, causing the large, jagged teeth to rotate violently. As he stepped toward Silvia, she recoiled, her eyes wide with horror. Before anyone could react, Jake lunged at the human, seized her by the shoulder, and raised his chainsaw.
He was about to plunge it into the human when the Commander shouted, “Alright! Alright! I’ll tell you everything! Just let her go!”