Chapter Text
August 2010
Nathan Ingram stared at the laptop on his coffee table. The light for the webcam wasn’t on but he knew he was being watched.
“I don’t know how to keep doing this,” he said, and waited although he knew he wasn’t going to get a reply. There was only the sound of the melting ice cracking in his drink keeping him company and he slumped back in his chair and felt like a beaten man. Not literally beaten this time - this time he’d been lucky enough to miss the violence but that hadn’t been much of a comfort when he’d found the body of his number he was supposed to help in the park. Being ‘lucky’ hardly felt appropriate then and he’d had to just leave her there and scurry away before anyone saw him. Across town, he’d dropped a dime to alert the cops but that had been the least he could do for the family, and it still made him feel like a coward.
Nathan was not a man who knew how to quit but he hated failing and the last three numbers had all ended badly. After the first initial successes, he’d grown confident he could juggle being CEO of his IT company and clandestinely helping people, but the numbers never stopped coming, and sometimes they were heartbreaking.
“I know you’re watching. I know he didn’t kill you, not really… I just wish I knew what to do better.”
A sharp knock at the door of his apartment startled him. It was eleven o-clock at night and nobody just ‘dropped by’ at that or any other hour. Nathan had seen to that.
People did not just knock on his door; people were not supposed to be able to get to his floor without his knowledge. For one thing there was supposed to be a doorman downstairs checking all visitors, and for another, Nathan had deterred all social calls since he’d taken up the Numbers. He’d told his own son it was a bachelor apartment and that he’d need to call ahead which had deterred and disgusted the boy in equal measure. Will had been very quiet but then he was still confused about the divorce. Nathan comforted himself that he’d told barefaced lies about always having company, to his son to protect him. The kid didn’t need to find him alone, crying in a whisky glass and mopping blood out of his clothing.
He had company now though. Maybe someone had followed him or recognized him? Maybe it was the cops who’d somehow traced his call about the body? He looked around wildly and realized how untidy the place was. He hadn’t cooked anything for himself in weeks and he didn’t like to have a cleaner poking about his stuff. Normally he was fastidious about cleanliness, but the past week he’d let things slide. There wasn’t enough space in the trash for the accumulated takeout cartons of food, so he threw them in the dishwasher. After a quick look around for anything incriminating, Nathan stuffed his revolver down the side of his armchair, swallowed the rest of his drink in one and answered the door.
“Harold?”
Harold was the last person he expected at his door and yet, just in that moment, the most welcome. After what he’d seen of the victim in the park, Nathan needed a friend that night and he wondered if The Machine had somehow arranged it? Because despite everything, Harold was still the only person he’d ever really felt close to. Sure, it had been a year since they’d handed over The Machine to the Government. A year in which Harold had been conspicuous by his absence, leaving Nathan the herculean task of rebuilding IFT. Still, there was evidence that he’d worked on some of the new releases of their platforms because Nathan could recognize his beautifully elegant code anywhere. It was just, as far as he knew, he hadn’t set foot in the building.
Nathan had often wished he’d share some of the corporate work sometimes but maybe this was a better opportunity? Maybe Harold could help him figure out how to help the numbers? They had shared big secrets in the past, and maybe this could be one more thing? He’d have to broach it very carefully. Harold had considered the non-relevant numbers a bug caused by his killing The Machine and deleting its memories. He had been hostile to the suggestion that they were anything other than an anomaly.
“Everything alright, Nathan?”
He must have seen the slight limp as they’d taken the steps down into the living area.
“Too much squash,” Nathan said brightly. The habit of lying came surprisingly easily. “Doctor says I should take up some low-impact activity, like drinking.” He produced another glass for his friend and filled both with a flourish.
“I tried to reach you at work, but your assistant said you were out.”
“Yeah, I've been busy putting our company back together... making up excuses for what the hell we were doing the last seven years.” More lies on top of lies. Sometimes he felt he’d lose sight of himself in the sea of lies around IFT. And on top of that he had his double life trying to help the numbers. Trying, and failing, he remembered grimly, the face of that poor girl he’d been too late to save. “You're welcome to pitch in if you're tired of hiding in the IT Department of your own company.”
“Actually, about that... I've been thinking about making a change.”
That sounded promising. Nathan had had a dreadful evening and he very much wanted Harold’s help. If only to hold him and tell him they’d find a way forward together.
“Oh? What next? You want to be the copy repair guy, office gofer?”
“No, I meant personally. I met somebody. Her name is Grace. I picked out a present for her. I wanted to get a second opinion.”
It was a copy of Sense and Sensibility. Nathan smoothed back his hair and turned to the inscription. A hole had been cut in the middle of the pages to display a diamond engagement ring. This then, was why Harold hadn’t been around the past year. This was the reason he’d dropped Nathan and left him with all the work of the restructure.
“It’s lovely,” he managed to say, somehow not choking on the words, and trying to hide his feelings of betrayal and rejection.
Harold beamed. “I plan to ask her tomorrow, and I don't want to complicate that. But... if I'm going to marry… At some point I'm going to have to tell her the truth… about who I am.”
“That's a complicated proposition,” Nathan said cautiously as the alarm bells rang in his brain. Inwardly, he didn’t think Harold even remembered the truth anymore. “As I recall, there are some legal implications. Youthful transgressions. What were the charges again? Sedition? Mayhem? Treason?”
“We must have made a fair amount of money by now. We could surely afford some good lawyers.”
Wow. Did he honestly think that expensive lawyers could prevent the whole thing blowing up in their faces? Nathan downed the scotch in his glass and poured another. It was bad to mix them with the antibiotics and painkillers he’d gotten after last week’s failure, but he didn’t care.
“How much have you told her?”
“Grace?” Harold shifted a little guiltily. “She knows I’m a freelance software engineer. She’s an artist,” he said enthusiastically. “Magazine covers and features sometimes. You’d like her.”
That all sounded delightful he was sure, but Nathan doubted he was ever going to get to meet her. Harold had his head either in the clouds or up his ass and Nathan felt the need to be blunt.
“And won’t you being in prison come as a shock to her?” he said.
Because this felt like another of Harold’s grand ideas that would leave Nathan to carry the burden. Having a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment was all very well but going to the Federal Government was another matter entirely. Harold’s association with IFT would destroy the company, and Nathan could easily see himself charged as an accessory. And what would happen to the numbers then? A magazine artist? He’d have given up everything for Harold in the right way, but not like this, not because Harold thought he was in love with someone else.
“You haven’t been running from a few parking tickets. And then there's the other matter,” Nathan continued, “Our little project. I don't know how our friends in the government are going to like finding out that I had a silent partner this whole time.”
The clandestine part of the Federal Government that dealt with the relevant numbers frightened the hell out of Nathan, and he doubted they would permit this indulgence.
“No, all that business is behind us,” Harold said. “We did our part, and now we've moved on, haven't we?” He looked infuriatingly puzzled and Nathan suppressed an urge to physically pick him up and shake sense into him.
“Are you really this naïve or has love made you stupid?”
Harold put down his untouched scotch and rose to his feet.
“I only came here to ask for your advice,” he said, taking in the untidiness of the room in judgment and fixing on the tablets and whisky bottle that hadn’t left Nathan’s hand. “I see it’s a bad time.”
Nathan was not in the mood for that level of primness and stood also.
“You never want my advice,” he shot back. “And when you do, you never listen to my opinion anyway. Not when you deleted The Machine’s memories and not when you started classifying people as irrelevant.”
“Is this about The Machine again?”
“No, Harold, be thrilled, it is actually all about you for once. I don’t think you’re going to ever tell this Grace of yours the truth about yourself. Because you don’t care enough to trust anyone. Not me. Not even The Machine we built.”
“That I built,” Harold stressed icily.
“Whatever. When it comes to relationships, you’re not fit for purpose. You are incapable of working in any sort of team. Of helping anyone else, of even listening to anyone else.”
“You’ve had too much to drink. As usual.”
Nathan blatantly poured more scotch, ignoring how much hit the carpet. He’d been stupid to think Harold was ever going to help him. The whole mess he was in with the numbers was Harold’s fault in the first place. They’d spent eight years side by side, building The Machine and he’d been so happy, and for what? Nathan had been forced into so many lies about what he was doing it had led to the collapse of his marriage. Olivia had assumed it was about other women, the irony was it was all about Harold and their beautiful, impossible creation. And then he’d been so holier-than-thou about the non-relevant numbers and left him to deal with the consequences on his own. And all this, so he could pursue romance and damn the rest of the world? Harold had already ruined his life once and now he was about to blithely blow everything up further? Nathan didn’t think so. Nathan knew him better than he thought.
“And you’re a coward,” Nathan shot back. “You’ve never taken responsibility for any of the consequences of what you’ve done. And you’re not about to start now. This is all bullshit.”
“Says the drunk! You’re the one with a problem, Nathan. And you’re right, I can’t listen to you when you’re like this. You need to sort yourself out or step down from IFT.”
That sounded like a threat and Nathan did not like to be threatened.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t make me. Get some professional help because we’re through.”
Harold slammed the door behind him, and Nathan felt like throwing his glass at it. Reason told him it wasn’t worth it and without a cleaner, he’d only have to clean the mess up himself.
He wanted so much to shake him, to wake him up to the reality of lives they could be helping, to make him see the face of that 12-year-old girl. The face with the eyes filled with pain and reproach. The face that was going to haunt his waking moments and live in his dreams. He was drowning in his failure and Harold had not pulled him from despair. He’d only managed to make things worse.
Threatening to get him removed from IFT? Damn him! Get professional help indeed? Damn him! Coming down from on high to offer his wisdom about things he didn’t understand. Nathan raked his hand through his head and calmed his breathing because, as he thought it through, getting the right sort of professional help might be quite a good idea.
Huh.
Damn him.