The Devil's Crowning Glory - Part II

20th March

Malacca, Artemis, State of Luna

The war, if you could even call it war, was over already. Frank won. A couple of days later, Frank asked me to come see him at his apartment. I wasn't sure what the reason for this was, but I went to go see him. Because I need to blind him, and make sure this all successfully comes to an end. An ending where Frank dies, and the moon prospers.

"Yohn. I want to talk about Yohn, because I know more about the two of you than most people, not even mentioning Akira."

Akira. Hearing the name of that child and Yohn in the same breath, is almost more than I can bear. Especially coming from Frank. In the early days of Artemis, before this place was any more than the twenty of us alone and isolated in this lonely world, me and Yohn had something. I'm not sure what it was that drew me to him. Even back then he was a funny man, a strange man I could never quite understand. Maybe that's what it was. Because he was such an enigma, a mystery to me. But then, well, to put it briefly things happened. Life was incredibly stressful for us back then. As the city began to rise around us, and other colonists arrived from Earth, the two of us drifted apart. Though things are never that simple. We had a child. One of the first children born on the moon. But nothing was right. I was not ready to raise a child then, and Yohn was never cut out to be a parent. That was the last straw, really. When Frank offered to look after the child, I was honestly relieved. After that I left Artemis, wishfully believing I wouldn't have to see the three of them. Yohn, our child, or Frank. And now, six years later, I've ran into them all. Frank when he came to see me in Junction, Yohn in his grave, and now our child, already taller than me.

Frank bringing up all of this makes me angry. I tried to forget it all, I did my best to forget, but now Frank tricked me into coming here just so he could bring all this up again. If I had to guess, he probably arranged the child to answer the door when I arrived so that I'd run into him.

"I don't want to talk about it, Frank. It… it isn't something I want to remember."

"Weak."

"Sorry?"

"You're being weak," Frank repeats, "you can run away from things sure, everyone does that, but to try and forget something entirely… that's cowardly."

I stare holes through him, until he finally looks back at me. The look on his face is something like pity. Empathetic, ambivalent, and pitying. I don't want to see that look.

"I don't need to be here," I say, trying to stay as calm as possible. I turn away, to walk back through the apartment, but I can't. It would seem that while I was absorbed in conversation with Frank, Akira and the other Lunar-born child have moved out into the lounge area. Neither of them notice me, but seeing that face… even though they don't look much alike, even at that young age he has the same demeanour as Yohn. And that makes me stop. I stare at the two of them for a little while, then I close the sliding door.

Still looking into the lounge, I speak to Frank, "his name, Akira. What does it mean?"

"It has many meanings depending on how you write it," I hear Frank reply from behind me, "the kanji I like best for it is moon over sun. Literally the light from the sun, but could also mean bright, wisdom, or truth. It seemed fitting for a child of the moon."

"It's beautiful," I say.

"It is," Frank agrees.

The two of us stand in silence. I still have my hand on the sliding door handle. I'm not sure whether I want to leave now, or if Frank's right. If Frank's right that I should talk about it. Six years was long enough to run away for, wasn't it? But I'm still scared I don't know if I want to, or even can talk about it. Especially when that child, Akira, is right in front of me. He looks more like me than Yohn, I think, but his mannerisms seem more like how I remember Yohn. The way he stands, walks, and how he talks… in those ways he seems more like Yohn.

"I… I don't think I'm ready to talk about what happened back then. It's difficult, it's painful. Maybe your right. Maybe I'm being weak by not dealing with it, but I… I can't. Not yet."

I turn around, and see Frank glance away from me, looking back out over the city.

"Well, it's not like it really matters," Frank replies, "it's up to you, after all. You don't have to listen to what I have to say, it's just a word of advice from an old friend."

I'm not sure how to respond to that, so I just leave it. I don't know if I've ever considered Frank a friend, even back when I gave him Akira to take care of. Isn't that strange? The man who brought up my child is someone I wouldn't even consider a friend.

Frank turned to face me, "actually, there was another reason that I asked you to come here. I had something to discuss with you."

At first, I was a little confused. I had forgotten, just for a moment, everything that was going on at the moment, and everything that is on the line. The reason why I'm here. Once I remembered the situation, and my current position, I regained my composure and concentration instantaneously.

"What is it?"

"Zhen Su Tai, Rajesh Pendharkar, Randolph Lawrence, Rodrik Jansen, Sawano Nozomi, and Kyle Matthews… do you know what all of them have in common?"

"Not a clue," I say, after someone consideration. For starters, I don't even know who some of those people are.

"All of them were involved, to one extent or another, in a plot to assassinate me. Although I guess I should add one more name to the list, shouldn't I? Chee Soon Mei."

Hearing that sends me into something approaching paralysis. I can't move. I can't… understand. How? How can he possibly know? Didn't I do all this in the only way possible? Even if Frank saw through me, what lead him to the rest of us? I didn't know who else was involved except for Nozomi.

"How did you work it out?"

"I worked it out the day I declared the moon's independence. Until then, I'd assumed that you agreed to work with me, at least partly to be able to meet Yohn, and perhaps fix things between the two of you. I realised that I was wrong about that, because you haven't asked once about Yohn since you arrived in Artemis. In fact, this is the only time I've talked about him with you. So, that made me suspicious. It made me think you were hiding something. So, I had you followed, I had you watched, and I had your phone calls tapped.

And for a while, there was nothing. But then, you met Nozomi at Yohn's grave. Normally that wouldn't have set anything off for me, after all you were both members of the first twenty. If you just happened to run into each other at the graves of the first twenty, that wouldn't be that surprising. What made it strange to me, however, is that I'd seen Nozomi in the DELOS offices just a few hours earlier, and while she does work for Huesong, I knew she hadn't been assigned to working at the offices.

So, I had Nozomi followed after that, and before long it became clear what was going on. I had her communications tapped, and waited until now so that I could take in as many of those involved as possible. I've taken most of those mentioned above into custody."

As I listen to Frank, it feels as if my purpose is leaving me. What was the point of any of this if Frank knew the whole time? Why did we even try? It should've been obvious that Frank always knew what we were doing. This whole time that we were trying to win, Frank knew exactly what was going on. And he just let it happen, without showing it on his face at all. Why didn't I realise that he knew? Was all of this just meaningless?

"Not that any of this matters. What I needed to tell you, Mei…" Frank's mouth has slowly stretched wider and wider as he's been speaking. His wide grin seems unnatural and terrifying. He looks like a devil.

"…is that from now on, you, all of you, will do exactly as I say. If even one of you steps out of line, all of you will die. And though I wouldn't harm a hair on his head, I guess you could consider Akira a hostage as well."