Chapter Fourteen

“James…” Matt begged. James turned to him, taking his eyes off Stacey for the first time since her stunt. She took this opportunity to try to undo the lockdown, hoping to God that Matt would give her some kind of warning if James began to turn back. “Why are you doing this?”

James snorted, “You Humans really don’t have a clue… You heard us talking, and you still haven’t worked it out.” He leaned closer, “I’m in Phogolini. I’m one of the ones who’re trying to kill you. I’m going to kill you. The James Bourne you know doesn’t exist. And even if he did, he’s dead anyway. We killed him ages ago, before you met ‘him’. We set up the meeting. Everything since then that you thought you knew about him has been a lie.”

Matt stared at him as realization hit. He decided to play it calm, “So you feel so little about me that you could just shoot me? After everything, you could put a bullet in me and walk off like it was nothing? Like I was nothing?” James looked shocked at that. Matt went with it, “You made a mistake in being with me for this long. We developed a connection whether you like it or not. You can’t help it. And you can’t kill me because I’m not a target to you. I’m a person.”

“You cheesy bastard,” Stacey commented, turning back into the conversation with a look that said ‘there’s nothing I can do in five minutes’, but Matt could hear the admiration in her voice. This was a tactic she could never have taken.

James wasn’t paying attention to her, despite the fact he still had a gun pointed in her direction. “How do you know I couldn’t?”

“Because despite what you said about me not knowing the real James, that might be true. But you couldn’t play him for that long without a little bit of you going into his character. I know you better than you might think. And I know you couldn’t kill me.”

“I could right now… I always cringe at these moments in films…” Stacey yelped as the gun connected with her head before pointing at her, obviously telling her to shut up. She turned back to the computer for another attempt, obviously convinced Matt had James’ attention enough to give her a chance.

“There is nothing of me in that guy! Nothing!”

“How d’you know? You never properly talked the guy before you murdered him, did you? Never found out what he liked. I bet all someone did was question him about his life so you could take his place. You never found out his interests. If you replaced him early enough, you could pull that off, because teenager’s likes and dislikes change a lot. But for all you know, he could like Back To The Future; have a fetish about Jaffa Cakes; hate Shetland ponies. But you don’t know that, so you can’t say that you’re nothing like him!”

“I could still shoot you! Quick! Painless!”

“I’d still die!”

“Your goddamn Detirioqa grandfather killed Georgio’s dad!”

“One of you’s called Georgio?!” Stacey asked in disgust, spinning back for a moment. “He’s a typical Nierriao, by the way. So he’s a racist. Bear that in mind.” She turned back, but James didn’t notice.

“And suddenly I’m like my grandfather?! Blood means hardly anything when it comes to stuff like this. If your brother was gay, would that make you gay? If your sister committed suicide, does that mean you will? And he probably had reason for killing him if this guy’s dad was a killer himself. It would’ve been the right thing to do. But what right does that give you to come here and kill me? You think it’ll change anything. Bring the guy back? No. It would just be another dead body.”

“That’s why the death penalty’s wrong.”

Matt nodded in agreement with her, “Exactly. You kill me to get revenge, my family could easily come along later and kill one of your family for revenge, and this would just go round and round in a big circle. Never ending and half of our families in the future would hate us for starting this and wonder why it happened. Wonder what they did to deserve it. An eye for an eye isn’t fair. On us or on anyone else.”

“Yeah,” Stacey rejoined the conversation properly again, having decided there was no way in hell she was going to be able to reboot the system without James noticing. “And besides, Klein, how d’you know it was his grandfather that shot Pantalino? There were twenty people in that warehouse. Anyone could have fired the bullet. You could have the wrong guy!” She held up a finger, “Which is another reason I’m anti-Capital Punishment. You heard of Derek Bentley, Klein?”

“No…”

“Never mind then, it’s long and complicated.” She slumped back in her chair.

“Thanks for that,” Matt told her. She shrugged as if to say ‘gave us more time, didn’t it?’. Matt turned his attention back to James, who was shaking again. “She’s right though. You can’t even be sure it was my grandfather that killed him. And how would it feel if you found out in two years time that you killed one of your best friends because he killed another friend’s dad, and he wasn’t even the right guy…”

That hit the core. “SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!! I’LL KILL YOU, I WILL. YOU’RE JUST TRYING TO CONFUSE ME…” He muttered to himself for a moment. “I HAVE TO KILL YOU, THOSE WERE MY ORDERS!!”