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Sebastian Duke · (11-05-2020)

Illuminatus Compound || Old Saybrook, Connecticut

Thad won’t let me help him. I get it. He’s his own man and he does lead the regime and he doesn’t need my presence undermining him. It doesn’t, but to him, I think my presence in his meeting rooms does give him a certain lack of confidence. Much like he wears his heart on his sleeve, if I have something to say I just say it. When it comes to the Ares Project, he wants me nowhere around those meetings.

Again, I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. What he fails to realize and I’ve tried to explain to him, is that my company thrives in that kind of environment. His back is against the wall, it has been from the start of that mess because he’s not able to use his air force against the Ares Project. They’re on American soil. If he did, it’d be an act of war upon the United States and that’s one military Thaddeus can’t beat. He just doesn’t have the numbers.

So while he’s in his meetings, I decide to take a walk around the sprawling property. I say that, but I’m immediately drawn to the three room farmhouse that was one time occupied by my father. It may sound strange but these days, it almost feels like he never existed. Gone now almost five years and not once did I shed a tear for him. Thad shed enough for both of us. They had each other on such a pedestal. He knows what my dad was, but he somehow overlooks his flaws and focuses on the close personal relationship they had.

It’s an odd battle in my head at times. Part of me gets jealous. Why didn’t my dad love me the way he loved Thad? But then, there’s another part of me that’s wonders why I didn’t love Thaddeus the way my dad loved him. I mean, I did, but I never could show him the love he needed as he was growing up. Add to that, he bears a resemblance to his mother and when I look at him, I still see her.

I regret that. I regret that I wasn’t anything more than the towering, brooding figure that lurked around the corners from him. We didn’t go to ball games, I didn’t teach him to ride a bike and we never went fishing or hunting. The way he loves animals though, maybe its best we never did the latter. He wouldn’t have the stomach for it.

When I reach the old farmhouse, its padlocked shut. I guess Thad didn’t like to come here and feel its cold, dark emptiness. One hard kick though and the door jam splinters and the door slams open against the interior wall. Stepping inside, I smell nothing but dust. It’s sat untouched since we left the Compound for Europe all those years ago.

Looking around, it all looks the same, but different. Our most private of meetings took place here. It’s where Griffin MacAlister assumed the name of Silas as he sought my help in protecting him from outside powers that wanted him. It’s where our most secretive plans for the Church were made, especially in our earlier days. Momentarily I search in vain for my father sitting in his arm chair, relaxing by the fire. He’s been dead so long now.

I recall the horror show in the basement. Father Asmodeus’s secret laboratory where he conducted experiments on animals and eventually, cut open my wife to bring Thaddeus to the world on Christmas. Near the center of the dust covered floor of the sitting room, I slide the throw rug away, revealing the hidden door leading to the secret lab.

Once I’m down the steps, I flick on the lights revealing the heavy steel bunker door cracked slightly open. Inside, I remember with horror and pain as my best friend set me up. I knew what Asmodeus was going to do to Caitlyn and I loved her. I was going to stop him, but dad was a step ahead of me, he always was. Jake cuffed me to a railing and I tried to stop him and get to her but couldn’t. He sliced her open and removed my infant son from her belly.

”Dad?” Thad calls out from behind me as I lean with my palms down against the dusty surgical table. I turn my head to look over my shoulder. ”Jim said he saw you come over here.”

”Uhhhh, yeah I was just reminiscing a little is all.”

”I didn’t lock it up to keep you out,” he says a little embarrassed.

”No, I know that.”

”I just didn’t want it to become a break room for the guards or something. Grandfather would roll over in his grave.”

”You were born right here, you know?” I say, returning my attention to the slab. She didn’t die here but could have. I killed her myself several months later after finding out she’d been selling our secrets to the Church. Despite my cold exterior, I did love her and I still do.

”I know Dad,” he says as he limps his way to my side. ”Wanna go upstairs and chat? Just us.”

I only nod in response. It takes a few minutes to get back upstairs with the gimp kid and all, but I’m kind of looking forward to it. We don’t get much time just he and I. Once upstairs, I sit in the chair my father once occupied. Across from me, he sits the chair I used to sit.

”What’s with the knee brace?” I ask of him, cutting through the silence.

”Just added protection. I have my mind set on four weeks, so… no slip ups.”

”If I’d thought of additional protection, you wouldn’t be here.” FINALLY! I finally zinged the little shit!

”Thank god you’re an idiot, because what a tragedy that would be for the world if I didn’t exist,” he says with a smirk.

God dammit. I finally zing the shithead and he comes back with something better.

”I hate you.”

Thad scoffs.

”You look like her, you know?”

”Thank god man. Look at you.” This mother fucker.

”Same cheek bones. Same smile. Same nose. You got my ears though, sorry bout that.”

”Win some, lose some I guess. Besides the face kinda makes up for it.”

”I look at you Thad, and its impossible not to also see her,” I tell him, my voice cracking a little.

”Is that why you hated me when I was younger?”

”I never hated you. I sucked being your dad, but I never hated you.”

”You still love her?” he questions as if he already knows the answer.

I can’t bring myself to answer him right away.

”I never didn’t,” I manage to spit out.

”Then why kill her?” he poses. ”Why not excommunicate her and go on with your lives?”

”Son… you know the answer to that as well as I do,” I answer back. ”Traitors pay the price for treason. Just how it works.”

”You ever regret it?”

”Every day of my life.”

”What was she like?” he asks and I’m suddenly unable to speak. For the first time it occurs to me that I took my sons mother away from him. Maybe it sounds strange but I’ve always been able to disconnect reality from duty. It was my duty as leader of the Illuminatus to deal with treason and treachery. In reality… it was Thad’s mom. Somehow I never reconciled those two things until this moment.

”A lot like you,” I answer him. To which he gives a big smile. All these years later, this is the very first time we’ve ever talked about his mother. ”Stubborn and bullheaded mostly.”

”God damn you.”

”She was strong. She loved fiercely. You especially. You were her little knight in shining armor, showering you with nothing but love. She was real protective. She’d have killed to protect you and there wasn’t a mean bone in her body.”

”Is it bothering you to talk about her?”

”Ummmm,” I ponder his question. ”No, I just wish things could have been different. I’m sorry y’know?”

Thad looks at me and try as I might, I can’t hold back the tear that’s been welling up and threatening to fall.

”For what?”

”For being a shitty father. For taking your mother from you. For forcing you to choose between preserving your grandfathers vision and me.

“All of it.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed me to be.”

”Dad, I...”

”I look at the man you are now, I look at the man you are yet to be and Thad… I couldn’t be more proud to call you my son. You’re kind and loving. Loyal. Caring and compassionate. You took that boy in when he lost his own mother…

“You’re everything I never was.

“You are your mother’s son through and through. That’s a good thing. This world can use more of you and less of me.”

”You left out ruggedly handsome and funny,” he jokes because of course he fuckin’ jokes.

This fuckin’ kid, I swear.

”I’m good, Dad. You did what you had to do,” he says in seriousness.

”I don’t know sometimes.”

”Whatever else he was, Grandfather was a master manipulator,” he says with conviction. ”I learned a thing or two. I’m not all good. Sometimes I use emotional blackmail to get what I want.

“Dad?”

I look in his direction.

”Do you ever think maybe Grandfather pulled his strings to make you think she was a traitor?”

Fair question, but I doubt that very seriously.

”Everything I knew about mom and what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like treachery to the point of treason was in her nature.”

”Your Grandfather would definitely do that, but Jake wouldn’t,” I answer him emphatically. Jake is Jacob Anderson. He was my best friend since the seventh grade and my right hand man. The man took bullets for me twice. The second time would be has last sacrifice for me. Jake is the one that showed me the evidence outing Caitlyn. My dad might have pulled some strings, but there’s no fucking way he could have got Jake to go along with it. Jake was a loyal friend. The best I ever had and I still miss him.

Did you think I was gonna put some trash talk here? lolnope

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