David's office was quieter than Paul expected when he stepped inside. De Nemo was already seated across from David's desk, hands folded, posture composed in that same unbothered way Paul remembered from years ago except now it looked worn at the edges, like a coat kept long past its season, still holding its shape out of habit rather than purpose.
David didn't look pleased. He gestured toward the chair without standing.
-He wants to see Corlowall.
Paul looked at Nemo.
-Why?
Nemo met his eyes, calm, unreadable.
-Does it need a reason?
-After four years, yes.
Nemo allowed a faint, tired smile, the kind that didn't quite reach the rest of his face.
-We were colleagues once. Before all of this. Before OPESTM was even the organisation it is now. I would like to see him. That's all it is.
David leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.
-I already told him this isn't a visiting facility. It's a secured detention site. People aren't supposed to simply walk in and ask.
-And I already told you I'm not asking as a stranger, Nemo said, his voice never rising, never sharpening. I built half of what that facility protects.
The room held that tension for a long moment. David studied him, then looked at Paul.
-I don't like this. But I'm not going to stop him either not after everything he's done for this organisation in the past. So you're going with him. Nicaragua. Today.
Paul frowned.
-Why me?
-Because if something happens down there, I want someone I trust in this room. And because you've earned the right to see it too, whatever it is.
Nemo said nothing to that. He simply stood, buttoned his coat with slow, deliberate movements, and waited by the door, watching the two of them with the patience of a man who had already waited four years and could wait a few minutes more.
The transport ride was long and mostly silent. Paul spent most of it watching Nemo, trying to read something in his expression and finding nothing but stillness. It unsettled him more than any answer would have.
The facility sat beneath a stretch of jungle so dense the transport had to descend through a narrow clearing cut specifically for it, the canopy closing overhead like a lid. Underground, the corridors grew colder with every level, the walls damp with condensation, the lighting dimmer than it should have been for a facility this important. By the time they reached the lowest floor, the air smelled of steel and standing water, and every footstep echoed longer than it had any right to.
A guard escorted them the final stretch in silence, his eyes fixed forward, offering no explanation for anything they were about to see.
Corlowall's cell was at the very end a reinforced steel fence, not bars, floor to ceiling, humming faintly with a containment charge that made the air itself feel charged. A single light hung above it, flickering with a rhythm just slightly too irregular to ignore, casting the whole space in a strobing half-dark.
Paul saw him before he understood what he was looking at.
Corlowall was seated on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, rocking slightly, side to side, in a rhythm that matched nothing in the room. His hair had grown out, unkempt and streaked through with grey that hadn't been there four years ago. His eyes moved constantly not searching, not focused, just moving, tracking something that wasn't there.
Nemo stepped closer to the fence, and for the first time since Paul had met him again, something in his composure cracked.
-Corlowall.
No response.
-Corlowall. It's me.
Corlowall's head snapped up, too fast, too sharp. For a moment, something like recognition crossed his face a flicker of the man he used to be. Then it dissolved into a broken, uneven smile, and the flicker was gone.
-Nemo. Nemo, Nemo, Nemo. You came. Nobody comes. Nobody ever comes down here.
-Y-Yeah! I came.
Corlowall crawled closer to the fence, still on the floor, his fingers curling just short of the charge, close enough that the hair on his knuckles stood on end.
-Trust me, Nemo. I never wanted to reject it. I never would have. That's what I determined. That's what I decided, in my own mind, with my own will. I swear it to you.
His voice cracked, rising and falling unevenly, like a man arguing a case no one was prosecuting.
-But to the end moment, my mind started to shout at me. Shout at me. Said don't accept it. Don't accept it. I couldn't fight my own thought. And eventually, eventually my thought, my mind, took over me. Like I was its slave.
He pressed his palms against the sides of his head, hard enough that his knuckles whitened.
-Constantly. Constantly, inside me. Just don't accept the offer. Don't accept it. And then I rejected. I rejected and I didn't even choose to. It chose for me.
Nemo's expression didn't move, but something behind his eyes had gone very still, very careful, the way a man's face goes still when he's forcing it to.
-And ever since then, my mind doesn't stop speaking. Screaming. Tormenting me. Like it's like it's someone else. Like it's its own person, living inside my skull, wearing my thoughts like a coat.
His voice dropped to something smaller, almost pleading, almost a child's voice buried inside an old man's throat.
-I can't bear this, Nemo. It is making me insane. Every hour. Every single hour.
Paul stepped forward, unable to stop himself, his own voice quieter than he intended.
-What does it say to you?
Corlowall turned his head slowly toward Paul, as if noticing him for the first time, his eyes fixing there, unblinking. When he spoke, his voice had lost all its earlier panic. It was calm now. Hollow. Certain in a way that was far more disturbing than the screaming had been.
-It says: "Blood will shed as painful tear to the one who seeks for revenge."
Nobody spoke. The hum of the containment charge filled the silence where words should have been.
Corlowall's smile returned, thin and wrong, stretched too far across a face that no longer looked like it belonged to the Director of anything.
-Over and over. It never says anything else. Just that. Just that, forever.
Paul felt something cold settle in his chest. He had known Corlowall for years before all this, a hard man, an exacting man, but never a broken one. Never someone who could be reduced to this, rocking on a concrete floor behind a fence, reciting a sentence like a prayer he couldn't stop praying.
The silence in the corridor afterward felt heavier than the walls around them. Nemo stood at the fence a moment longer, one hand pressed flat against the humming steel, close enough that the charge must have stung him. Then he turned without a word and walked back toward the elevator. Paul followed, glancing back once at the flickering light and the shape still rocking beneath it.
Neither of them spoke until they reached the surface, the jungle air thick and warm after the cold of the facility.
-That wasn't him, Paul said finally.
Nemo didn't look at him.
-No. It wasn't.
-He was the Director of OPESTM. He didn't break. Not like that. Not ever. I served under him for years and I never once saw him waver.
Nemo's jaw tightened, and for a moment Paul thought he might actually say something real, something honest. Instead, he only exhaled slowly.
-I know.
They didn't speak again for the rest of the flight home. Paul sat with his eyes on the window, watching the jungle give way to ocean, unable to shake the sound of that sentence, or the hollow certainty in the voice that had spoken it.
To be continued…..