Chapter 1: Work of a Madman
Dante sat on top of the machine, fixing and replacing broken wires. He had been working for about a week now, constantly adjusting and readjusting things so that they would work as intended. The room was quiet, save for the soft hum of the computers patiently awaiting input. Various monitoring devices had been broken and were laying on the floor in pieces, many of which had been taken and put into the portal machine. Others were just broken because Dante didn’t like the feeling that Big Brother was always watching him (which he knew they were). He knew they wanted to watch his process and a recording of the portal’s repair, but they would have to settle for waiting for the final product. They would get no notes, no video recordings, nothing until he was finished. Not that he had notes or video recordings anyway.
He heard a loud banging on the door. It was the third time today, and he assumed it was one of the research heads who had formerly been assigned to this project. He climbed down and walked over to the computer giving him the video feed from the camera just outside the room. His belief confirmed, he input the password and the doors slid open. The research head stormed in, furious with Dante’s insolence.
“What the Hell is wrong with you?” He yelled, a vein throbbing in his forehead. “How did you even manage to override my entrance password? You don’t have access to that information!”
“I don’t, but you do.” Dante flashed the head’s ID card and grinned. “Y’know, I’m really glad y’all decided to install card readers onto all of the computers in here, it made taking care of things a lot easier.”
“Taking care of things? Like what?”
“First off, I didn’t really have to override anything; I just had to change everyone’s passwords.” He climbed back onto the machine. “Oh, and if you see Dr. Darien, please tell him that it is, in fact, illegal to do that to a sheep.”
“Change everyone’s passwor—you mean you’re the reason for the security breach this morning?”
“Is that what happened? I didn’t notice. I stopped caring about what happened over there once I fired everyone.” He was already back to work fixing the wires. “Y’know, y’all really should update your security systems. It’s really easy to get in there and mess with things.”
“That’s because we don’t expect—wait, you fired everyone?”
Dante stopped working and looked at the research head, baffled. “You have an issue with finishing your sentences, don’t you? You can get help for that y’know.” He shook his head and went back to work. “Also, speaking of getting help, Dr. Moroghs? They have medicine which can help with that schizophrenia problem he’s got. He really shouldn’t have ignored his psychiatrist’s advice on that one.”
“Dr. Moroghs? He isn’t schizophrenic!”
“Yes, he is. His journal entries say so. Just like Dr. Connells’ frequent thoughts of suicide. They have medicine for that too—be sure to tell him that.”
“Whose personal information didn’t you look at?”
“Well, if you’ve been paying attention to the names I’ve been spouting off—Darien, Moroghs, Connells—you may have noticed a little pattern between them. I’ll give you another minute to figure it out because I know these kinds of things make your head hurt, but you may find something interesting about them.” Dante went back to working diligently as the research head thought about all the names he had said. It quickly hit him:
“Those are all prominent scientists in the facility! You didn’t—”
Dante jumped down and walked slowly towards the research head. “Anyone who claims to be my superior will now have to answer to me unless they want their lives to be ruined if this information happens to get out to the public. Now, some of you were smart when it came to not making your work computers also be your personal computers, but I still managed to dig up a few things on everyone. I’m sure the junior researchers will love to hear about what the people whose asses they’re kissing have to say about them, or about what those research grants are really going towards.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would. Quite frankly, I am the only person in the world who knows how this machine works and how to fix it. If you give me what I want, none of the information I have will be leaked, and you will have a working portal to the other side. If not, I go public with everything, probably get shipped off to a maximum-security prison, fall under the radar after a daring escape, and then return here, kill all of you, finish the machine anyway, and leave never to be found again. It’s your choice really.”
The head stayed quiet for a moment but finally turned to leave. “Wait, so you really fired everyone?” He turned back to Dante, who was throwing his hands up in exasperation.
“We’re back to that? Really? Yes, I fired everyone! They are all fired and out of a job! How hard is that to understand?”
“Why would you fire everyone? Wouldn’t it make it easier to have the extra assistance in case you needed it?”
“I have all the assistance I need right there!” He motioned towards the computers. “That is all the help I need! Besides, the people you hired were stupid and ugly.”
“Okay, that ‘ugly’ bit was just unnecessary.”
“It’s not unnecessary if it’s true! Why can’t we be like the movies and hire hot chicks to work around here? Something I can at least stare at while I pretend to actually work?”
The head researcher pinched the bridge of his nose, “Because we don’t have the money to just hire random women to walk around here for you to leer at.”
“Well, now you do! Go hire some! I’ll be here when you get back!” Dante continued working on the machine. Frustrated with the entire conversation, the researcher simply walked out of the building. As he heard the doors close, Dante pulled the researcher’s ID card back out and stared at it. “I’m really surprised he didn’t ask for this back. Not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth though.” He put it back in his pocket and continued working diligently.
“Dante has gotten completely out of control.” A meeting had been called by all of the higher-ups in the facility between themselves and the government officials responsible for handling Dante. “He has single-handedly hacked into our network, changed all of our security passwords, and invaded our privacy to use the information as blackmail against us!”
The officials simply laughed. “We told you something like this would happen if you didn’t keep a close eye on him,” one of them said. “He’s a tricky bastard, especially if you stop looking at him.”
“There’s a reason we haven’t locked him up yet: We’d rather not lose track of our most valuable asset.” Another spoke up, “He’s been around for long enough to figure out how to escape from just about every situation we could put him in just short of actually trying to kill him. His mental stability is also something we need to closely monitor.”
“Well, we can’t monitor him now!” One of the researchers yelled, “He’s destroyed all of the surveillance equipment in the building!”
“Not in the building,” the researcher who had visited Dante earlier spoke up, “Just in the portal room. Or, at least I assume it’s only the portal room. The cameras on the outside of the building and in the room leading to the portal are still intact. Apparently only he’s allowed to be ‘Big Brother.’”
“Look, I’m sure he’ll be willing to cooperate if you just give him what he wants. If he wants vanilla ice cream, just give him vanilla ice cream. It isn’t that hard to do. What are his demands so far?”
“Women. He wants hot women that he can leer at while he works.”
The officials looked at each other and shrugged. “The man knows what he wants.” They looked back to the researchers. “What else?”
“That’s it. That’s all he’s told me."
“You didn’t ask him what else he wants?”
“I had enough just listening to him talk for ten minutes! Do you really think I thought to ask him what he wants? Are you really going to force me to negotiate with that terrorist? I say we get him out of there and take care of everything ourselves! Dante hasn’t actually done anything for us since we brought him into the program!”
“Fifteen trillion.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That is the approximate value of Dante’s accomplishments since the program was created to protect him.” The second official tossed an envelope into the middle of the table. The researchers took it and passed its contents around. “Every year, Congress conducts an official analysis of the project and discusses whether or not it’s worth keeping. Of course, some are given pause when they discuss the security risks—Dante is, after all, near impossible to control—but each and every member changes their tune as soon as they hear the financial benefits. With Dante’s assistance, Facility 74 generated an additional three point seven billion credits worth of research and information on alternative fuel sources. Similarly, they are receiving a four billion credit grant to continue that research because it generates half of that every year.
“In the Midwest, Facilities 151 and 195 are competing for a two-and-a-half billion credit grant to continue their defense research. It should come as no surprise that Dante worked in both of those facilities. Facility 151 fought very hard to bring him back after the incident, but we had to transfer him to your facility in the event that he would pull off another stunt like the one he had at Facility 99.
“Before that though, Dante basically put the eastern European system on the map. He advanced their biomedical research so quickly and proficiently that he basically founded those facilities we have over there. Hell, even with the incident, the Eurasian facilities still want him over there. Congress, however, believes that we’ll be safer if we can keep him stateside. Although it’s not like that matters; Dante does what he wants to really. We can tell you right now that he’s only willing to work with us at all because he sees something to gain in our agreement and we would prefer to keep it that way.”
Everyone sat silently for a moment, contemplating the proper course of action. Nobody was sure just how long Dante had actually been alive; some estimates had him aged at around a hundred years, others went as high as five. What they were sure of was how important he was as far as national security was concerned. Because of his apparent immortality, he was a valuable test subject for health-and-safety-related experiments. Prior to being discovered and caught, he had actually served quite some time in the military, utilizing his inability to die along with his oddly superhuman strength and intellect to successfully take down many high profile targets. It was actually because of how often he came back alone when the rest of his squads had been killed that he was caught.
The government had tried keeping Dante a state secret, known only by the highest of officials, transferring him from facility to facility. Unfortunately, Dante had an issue with staying out of the limelight and often found a way to bring media attention to himself. The biggest moments where he had all the attention he could want came from his discovery of alternative, non-Eurate based fuel sources (which he claimed to have discovered, among other things). He had also made several minor discoveries, which he was sure to send around the world to his many “colleagues” to discuss and review. His handlers often believed that he had hidden messages revealing his true identity within his papers, but they could never crack the codes if they were there. He often denied such allegations, stating that if he wanted to reveal his identity (even in secret) he would do something craftier than hiding it within one of his reports.
What Dante didn’t realize was how much work went into protecting him. There were at least twenty recorded instances where facilities were raided in an attempt to locate Dante, with only one of them being close to successful. His would-be captors had greatly underestimated his tenacity and strength, allowing him to incapacitate them and save the facility. However, the odds were only stacked so highly in his favor because his location was reported as transferred often and scattered between at least five different places globally. On top of that, he was unofficially given three different aliases to further confuse any potential captors of his location.
Not much was known about what he actually knew; he refused to divulge almost any information he knew and kept very little physical recordings of his thoughts which he guarded viciously. He had actually cut off one man’s fingers for doing so much as picking up his journal without permission. The man hadn’t even looked at it yet, but Dante was willing to protect his secrets to the death. It was believed that he took his secrets with him everywhere he went, even if he was only going just outside of the facility he was staying at. Even when he was on the other side of the building, his room was guarded with at least three different locks and codes, none of which anyone knew how to crack. Whenever he needed something from his room, only he would go and get it. However, it was because he was so secretive and hosted an unimaginable amount of knowledge that he was so sought after.
“Well, what do you suggest we do?”
“Knowing him as well as we do,” one of his handlers sat back and shrugged, “We go and see what it’ll take for him to continue working with you.”
“And if I connect this piece here, it should—” Sparks shot out of the panel as he connected the wires together. He took them apart and bit his lip. “Now that’s not right.” He looked back at one of his books which he had stuck to the wall. He was so engrossed with his work that he almost hadn’t heard the knocking at the door. “That’d better be the pizza guy.” He mumbled as he jumped off and looked at the surveillance camera. He saw the same head researcher there and activated the loudspeaker. “What do you want?”
“I thought you might like some company.”
Company? His interest was piqued and he suddenly felt excited for some reason. Did they actually bring me the women? That was a joke, but I mean—gift horses and mouths. Two of his handlers walked forward and he was disappointed. “Oh. It’s you guys.” He frowned. “I thought you were bringing me hot women. These two guys are not hot women. They’re not even women!”
“We heard you were being a bit difficult, Dante.” One of them spoke up. “The good people over here aren’t too happy with you.”
“I’m not concerned with their happiness.” He responded.
“Listen to me, you insane terrorist, I will not—” the research head started to yell, but Dante quickly cut him off.
“WOAH! Woah! Woah. Did I just hear the t-word get thrown out? We have discussed how I feel about that word in here, right?”
“Dante would prefer that you didn’t refer to him as a ‘terrorist’ and would rather you not use that word in his presence.” One of the handlers explained.
“It’s in my file.”
The handler nodded, “It is in his file.”
“But that’s what he is!”
“No, ‘terrorists’ are the bastards the military had me fighting out in northern Africa. Everything I have done has been in the best interest of my country.”
“Including blowing up a multibillion credit research facility?”
“All of the information that facility had inside of it was backed up and readily available on at least three different platforms.”
“Look, we’re just here to work something out. We want to negotiate a compromise so that everyone’s happy. If you’re really this unhappy with the conditions you have to work in, we can just take care of the transfer papers and get you somewhere else. Maybe we can get you somewhere tropical this time?”
“You don’t have any facilities in the tropics. I’ve already looked at the map. All my choices are crap. Can’t I go back to Europe? I liked it there. They let me drink on company hours.”
“Is that what this is about, Dante? Because you can’t drink?”
“No. Well, maybe a little. They took away my flask. It was the only time I had it when I was working. It didn’t have any alcohol in it anyway.”
“It had whiskey, Dante. I don’t even know where you got it from.”
“Okay, so maybe there was a little bit in there, but I wasn’t gonna hurt anyone.”
“Right, I hate to interrupt, but we have a job to do, Dante.” The other handler smiled a bit. “Just tell us what you want, and we’ll tell you what they want in return. We’ll try to fulfill all your demands to the best of our ability, and you just give us what the scientists want to the best of your ability. Understand?”
“I just want to be left alone,” Dante answered too quickly.
One of his handlers shook their head, “Is that really what you want, Dante?”
“No. I don’t know what I want. I never know what I want.”
“You said hot women earlier.”
“That was a joke. What am I supposed to do with hot women? You know how many women I’ve slept with? Two, and one of them was my wife. Besides, they won’t do anything but get in my way. If you want me to get this done, then I need to do this alone.”
“You don’t like being alone. We learned that the hard way at 195.”
Dante audibly sighed. “You’re right. I don’t. I suppose I could use a companion or two. Maybe three.”
“Don’t get greedy.”
“I’m not. Anyway, I’ll also need some food and drink. I’ll send a list of what I want once a week, probably on Saturday, and then just work with it from there.”
“Alright, alright. What else, Dante?”
“Man, I don’t-I don’t know. Can I have a dog? I love dogs.”
The handlers both looked at the researcher, who gave them a look that said “no” in ways words could never convey.
“You can not.”
“But I love them.” Dante sighed again, “No, that’s not fair to the dog. I have too much work to do. I can’t afford to take care of a dog. I think that’s it, then.”
“Well, we still have a few details to work out on your end before we do anything else. What kind of companion are you looking for?”
“Female? Mildly attractive? I’d need to do some interviews first, but there are a few things I don’t want. One: Nobody overly sexual. Most of my time will be spent working, and working hard. I don’t have time for many distractions, and—once again—I will have no idea what I’m supposed to do with them. I’d say make it clear this isn’t a sex thing, but doing anything like that just more heavily implies that it is, in fact, a sex thing. But we’ll start with nobody who is too into their appearance.
“Two: Nobody with kids. I do not need or want toddlers running around here, I am not here to raise children that some other coward abandoned, and whoever I choose is probably not leaving this location until I am finished. Even if she is older and has adult kids—I am not dealing with it. That is an automatic deal-breaker.
“Three, please no crazy people. A little baggage is fine, but if she is psychologically unbalanced, there’s going to be problems. I have my own demons to deal with, I don’t need to try to fix anyone else's. Or—worse—I don’t need anybody feeding mine.”
“Alright, well if that’s all for Dante, what do you want?” They turned to the researcher.
“First, I want all of our pay returned to us.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Dante.”
“I’ll give back a quarter.”
“Dante.”
“Fine, half.”
“Dante.”
“Alright, I’ll give three-quarters, but I go no higher.” They looked and the researcher agreed in exasperation.
“We also want you to replace all the surveillance equipment you destroyed.”
“That one I can’t do. There are a lot of outdated parts I can’t get anywhere else that happen to be part of the portal. I can cut a lot of time off the repair if I just use parts from the cameras.”
“How much time?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a few centuries since this thing has worked. Depending on what I need to fix, it could be anywhere from three to six months.”
The researcher sighed, “Fine, but in that case I want weekly visits to check on your progress.”
“I cannot allow that. What about once every three weeks?”
“Dante.”
“Every other week?”
One of Dante’s handlers leaned into the researcher’s ear, “He will work all the way down to eight days. I recommend taking this offer.”
The researcher grit his teeth and growled, “Fine, but I have one last demand.”
“I’ve been able to negotiate you into worse deals every time, so go ahead.”
“I want specific, recorded notes on how you’re repairing the portal, and I want to see a copy of those notes every time I come to visit!” The researcher yelled, turning slightly pink. Dante was silent for an unsettling amount of time.
“Fine. I can do that too. Anything else you want?” Dante waited, but nothing else came. “Okay then. Are we done here?”
“I believe we are.” One of the handlers was already escorting the researcher out of the building.
“Well, we’ll see what we can do for you. Until next time, Dante.”
He waited a moment and then went back to work, pulling the ID card back out once again, “I’m really surprised they haven’t asked for this back yet.”