Romeo's Point of ViewI couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. This female in the doorway was my mother. My mother and she was expected to be dead. My dead mom who had defended me at the age of three. My dead mom who had died twenty-five years before."You're alive," I said. The words were tiny and fragmented falling out of my lips.I have been alive all this time, Diana Black thought. She even held the gun at my grandfather. Your grandfather got me away. He gave me money and new name and never to come back. He said to me that, had I loved you, I should have forgotten about me. He informed me that it was preferable to have a dead mother than a living one that would threaten you.My grandfather was having difficulties breathing. He still had his hand on mine, but his grip was becoming weaker. "She's lying," he said. "She's a criminal, Romeo. She's a killer. Never trust her a word of mouth.I am not a criminal as I would like to be, Diana said. She could speak coldly, not cruelly. That was

Romeo's Point of ViewIt was a twenty-minute walk back to the compound. The mountain was burning. Smoke was up in the sky like a funeral pyre. I heard explosions at a distance, and this showed me how much there was foul play in lies and deceit.On arriving at the entry of the head office edifice, Victoria was waiting. She was present in the main lobby and had armed soldiers behind her. The explosions had given her a burn on the face. Her garments were rags and greasy. Her eyes, however, were cold and calculating."Romeo," she said with a smile. "I knew you would come back. You are too much like your grand-father. Too worried about the lives of other people. Too willing to do away with yourself over strangers."Where are the hostages?" I asked.Safe at present, I suppose, Victoria said. In the vault on the bottom floor they are chained up. You can save them should you be able to pass me and my troops. But I do not think you can do it.She waved her hand, and her men lifted their arms.

Romeo's Point of ViewI ran to the mountain compound where my grandfather was dying. I was with Emma right beside and she was clutching papers she had discovered of Victoria. The publications justified all that the young woman had told. They produced birth and death certificates and hospital records which narrated a second Edward Martinez.The latter Edward was said to have died thirty years ago. But yet were all the signs that he was still alive. The evidence all testified that the man whom I believed to be my grandfather had murdered the first Edward, and assumed his name. On a great, great, great lie everything I knew was founded and the entire empire was a house of cards."How can this be?" I kept asking. How do you expect my grandfather to do this? "Maybe he had to," Emma said. We were on our way when she was going through the documents. Perhaps his brother was a lunatic. Perhaps his brother had some dreadful plan. Perhaps that was all that your grandfather could do in order to s

Romeo's Point of ViewThe world exploded.An hour or so after the uploading of the AI, all news sources began to cover the story. Each government was seeking to be answered. All individuals who had access to a phone were seeing how the secrets of Phoenix Empire were spread throughout the internet like wildfire. Business deals. Briberies. Corrupted elections. Profitable wars that were initiated. Everything was exposed.I was sitting in a safe house and I just saw it on TV. Emma stood beside me and was holding my hand. Martin was talking to the phone, trying to organize lawyers and federal agents. The whole power structure that my grandfather had created was falling down even as we spoke.We are receiving calls, I was told by an official, all over the world. "They want to meet with you. They want to negotiate. They would like to know whether you will carry the operations of your grandfather or you will close them.Destroy them, I said immediately. "I want everything shut down. I wish th

Romeo's Point of ViewThe gun was rising. Emma widened her eyes with fear. I had seconds to react. I had a few seconds to save her life or see her die in the hands of a form of me who I never requested to be created.I moved toward the clone. I have never been faster in my entire life. The training of my grandfather came into force and I bridged the gap between us in a moment. I seized one arm of the clone and withdrew the gun out of Emma.The clone was fighting against the programming. He had pain and frustration in his eyes. His body was convulsing against him. He was behaving like a puppet to his programming."Fight it," I said to him. "Fight the programming.""I can't," the clone gasped. He made me powerless to struggle with it. He intended to make me his slave to the end.The pistol dropped out of the hand of the clone. But then something bad still occurred. The body of the clone began a convulsion. His eyes rolled back. His mouth slackened with a dumb scream."What's happening?"