Entrances

[Enzo Dolan]

Enzo was drawn to the image of a woman in uniform. The setting of the photo and the set of her face both harkened to that of a standard website image like one that might appear in a list of hundreds of others. Her demeanor was cool and her gaze was distant, but there was nothing to suggest she was anything but a doctor.

Then the Regus explained, but Enzo was not following along. "Authenticate my genetic heritage, Regus?"
Enzo asked. He felt his own brows draw furrows of thought across his forehead. He shook his head and looked away. What could he mean?

An army physician that could manipulate genetic information would be an intimidating woman to meet. Even if she worked at the Kremlin, what could such an arrangement gain someone like Enzo? He was nobody of importance, nor could he imitate anyone of importance. He was merely a man sent adrift in the wake of his family's slaughter. The last of his blood to remain was his mother, a woman in retirement on the Riviera. And he had no father.

'You look just like him...'

'She met him on a train, or so the story goes.'


It clicked. The geneticist, the authentication, access to the Ascendancy. It all clicked in one, gut-wrenching, inane brick-house of lies.

Enzo all but jumped from his seat and backed away like a monster was unleashed in the room.

"C’est n’importe quoi! Regus, you cannot mean it. Even if it were true, I cannot go through with it."


As he looked upon his beloved, but demanding Regus, Enzo realized there was a monster in the room.

He pinched his eyes together with his finger, gathered his things and left in the heat of emotion.

[Armande]

Finally! Understanding brightened the vacancy from Vincenzo's dim face. The reaction itself was less than satisfactory, but no more than what Armande anticipated. The boy - a full grown man he was, perhaps, but in most ways he was an ignorant child - fled like the very child he was. In Vincenzo's absence, Armande returned to his seat calmly. He folded his hands in his lap and watched the boy's flight from the eyes of Atharim security cameras. If it had not been for the prediction, Vincenzo's defiant reaction would have elicited a far more volatile response. After all, Armande claimed the life of defiant Atharim in the past, in this very office. The stark difference in this case was that Vincenzo, while defiant, was very useful to him. Very useful indeed.