Chapter 10: Willson
October 21, 2023. Four days since the truth had spilled across every screen in Anthroportica. Four days since Samuel's carefully constructed facade had crumbled into ash.
The meeting room was windowless, cold, deliberately anonymous. Fatah sat at the head of the table, his weathered face betraying nothing. Around him gathered the senior members who had not been compromised—Lehros, Vineese, a handful of department heads who still believed in something beyond Samuel's manipulation.
Willson sat at the opposite end. He had not spoken since the meeting began.
"The November seventeenth operation is our only chance," Fatah said, his voice flat, clinical. "A coordinated strike. We hit their cave, their communication network, their leadership. End it before it spreads further."
Lehros leaned forward. "And Samuel? What do we tell him?"
"Nothing." Fatah's eyes swept the room. "He believes he is still in control. We let him believe that. We smile. We nod. And when the time comes, we move without him."
A murmur passed through the room. Vineese caught Lehros's eye, something unspoken passing between them.
Fatah turned to Willson. "You saw him first. You named him when the rest of us were blind. The leadership of this operation is yours."
Willson did not react. His face was a mask. Inside, something cold and bitter stirred. He had been right. He had always been right. And being right had cost him everything—his credibility, his reputation, his place in this company. Now they came to him because they needed someone to lead them through the fire.
He nodded once. "I accept."
---
The corridor outside was empty when Fatah found Samuel.
"So," Samuel said, leaning against the wall, his voice light, almost playful. "Tell me about the meeting."
Fatah kept his expression carefully neutral. "We discussed the November operation. The plan is solid. If everything aligns, we end them in one night."
"And who leads this operation of yours?"
A pause. Fatah met Samuel's eyes. "Willson."
Samuel laughed—a genuine, surprised laugh that echoed off the sterile walls. "Willson? That man would sell his own mother for a promotion. And now he leads?"
"He was the one who identified you," Fatah said quietly. "The others trust his judgment."
Samuel's laughter faded. His eyes grew cold, calculating. "Then we remove him. Quietly. Permanently."
"How?"
"I'll handle it." Samuel pushed off the wall, already walking away. "Just keep playing your part."
Behind him, Fatah watched, his face unreadable. He had played his part perfectly. Actually, Fatah was another villain working under Samuel
---
Backstory: The Making of Willson
Willson was born in a small town outside Minneapolis, the kind of place where winter settled into bones and never fully left. His father, a man whose hands were always stained with something—grease, blood, whiskey—ruled the house with the quiet brutality of those who had nothing else to hold onto.
The beatings came without pattern. Sometimes for silence. Sometimes for noise. Sometimes for no reason at all. His mother bore the worst of it, her face a landscape of healing bruises that never fully healed. Willson learned to be small. To be invisible. To anticipate the swing before it came.
At eleven, he stood on the edge of their third-floor balcony, looking down at the frozen ground. Three stories. Enough, he had calculated. Enough to stop the noise, the fear, the waiting for the next blow. He had one foot over the edge when the shouting started inside. His father, collapsing. His mother, screaming.
The autopsy concluded hypothermia. Three months frozen, the report said, though no one could explain how a man could be frozen for three months while walking, talking, terrorizing his family. Willson never spoke of it. He never spoke of the balcony, either.
His mother sent him to her brother's house after the funeral. An uncle who was kind in the way of strangers, offering food and a room but never asking questions. Willson left for Washington D.C. at eighteen, chasing scholarships and silence, burying Minnesota so deep that eventually he forgot it existed.
He built himself anew in the capital. A degree. A career. A reputation. He was good at what he did—sharp, analytical, seeing patterns others missed. He joined a company during its early expansion, climbing the ranks through sheer competence.
Then came the accident. A car slammed into his driver's side on a rain-slicked highway. The impact fractured his skull in three places. When he woke in the hospital, the doctors told him about the brain damage. About the memory loss. About the parts of himself that had been erased.
He remembered Washington. He remembered his company. He remembered nothing before.
A year later, the murder accusation came. A family member of a deceased executive had pointed a finger at Willson, claiming negligence, malice, something that sounded like revenge. Willson had no lawyer, no money for one, no memory of the event they accused him of.
Samuel found him then. A man in a sharp suit, offering a legal team, a job, a lifeline. Willson took it without hesitation. He had learned to take lifelines when they appeared.
He worked. He rose. He never questioned Samuel's motives, never looked too closely at the strings attached. Until the glasses. Until the meeting. Until he saw the truth and spoke it aloud—and learned that truth, spoken by a man with a past, meant nothing at all.
---
Present
The video appeared on company servers at 3:00 AM.
Willson, grainy but unmistakable, handing an envelope to a man in a darkened parking garage. The envelope exchanged for cash. The forensic analysis confirmed what everyone already suspected: drugs. The AI detection tools flagged no manipulation, no deepfake signatures, no anomalies.
By 9:00 AM, the entire company had seen it.
"I didn't do this," Willson said, standing before the gathered staff. His voice was steady, but something in his eyes had begun to crack. "This is fabricated. Someone is setting me up."
No one met his gaze.
Samuel entered then, moving through the crowd like a blade through silk. He watched the video once, twice, his expression shifting from confusion to disappointment to something that looked almost like regret.
"The evidence is clear," Samuel said, his voice carrying the weight of finality. "Effective immediately, Willson is terminated."
Willson opened his mouth to speak. But there were no words left. He looked at the faces around him—people he had worked beside for years—and saw nothing. No belief. No doubt. No memory of the truth he had spoken, the warnings he had given.
He walked out without another word.
---
The footpath was cold. Willson had been sitting there for hours, his back against a wall, his few possessions scattered around him. The dopamine luxuries he had bought in better days were gone—sold, traded, spent. All that remained was the hollow certainty that he had been right, and that being right had saved no one.
He thought of Minnesota. Of the balcony. Of the frozen ground three stories below. He had stepped back then. There was nowhere left to step back to now.
His phone buzzed. He did not look at it.
Three blocks away, on the roof of a derelict building, a figure lay prone behind a sniper scope. The crosshair settled on Willson's chest. Steady. Calm.
The phone on the rooftop buzzed once. A single word appeared on the screen: Shoot.
The crack of the rifle echoed through the empty streets.
Willson slumped against the wall. His eyes stayed open, fixed on the gray sky above. There were no final thoughts. No revelations. No god descending to intervene. Just the cold seeping into his bones, the way it had in Minnesota, the way it always had.
He had been right about Samuel. He had been right from the beginning. And it had saved no one—not the company, not his colleagues, not himself.
---
Samuel stood in his office, looking out at the city lights. His phone buzzed.
"He's gone," the voice said.
"Good." Samuel ended the call.
Behind him, Fatah entered quietly. "It's done?"
"It's done." Samuel turned. "The position is yours. Lead them where they need to go."
Fatah nodded. "And after November seventeenth?"
Samuel smiled—a thin, cold expression that did not reach his eyes. "After November seventeenth, there is no after."
He walked past Fatah, leaving the older man standing alone in the empty office, staring at the lights, wondering which of them had just played the other.
A man lay dead on a footpath three blocks away. No clothes. No money. No family. A man who had climbed from the frozen wreckage of Minnesota to the heights of Anthroportica, only to be discarded on a sidewalk like refuse.
He had been right about everything. And in the end, being right had not mattered at all.
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Chapter 10 End
To Be Continued