Chapter Ten: A Frenzy or Not?

Funny how he had been in this Chambers before – just like the Interrogation Room. The first time he was here, he had witnessed Daniella, Olalekan's mistress, have her knee cap removed by the same psycho that was grinning at him with bloodshot eyes that glinted behind lab goggles.

Now he was the one sitting on the chair, about to be questioned.

Wale wanted to laugh as he remembered a popular adage, life na turn by turn.

This was certainly his turn.

His bladder was full but fear had taken the pressure away.

On the wall was a one-way mirror. They were watching him from there. Seven was certainly watching, just as he had watched back then. This was Olalekan's way of telling anyone who dares to outsmart him to be very careful.

"Scorch," Wale said to the man on a lab coat. He was wearing gloves.

"Hey, Wallie. It's been a while!" Scorch's voice did not fit his 45-year-old six-foot-seven size and oval-shaped head. He talked in squeaks. Wale had always thought of Scorch as a more modern version of Chucky, with a more masculine, human body. However the knife and dried dark bloodstains smeared all over his face.

"Yeah, I've been, you know, busy. Running here and running there."

"I can see how much good fortune it's brought you."

Squeaky voice or not, Scorch was an asshole.

He sighed.

"Never thought I'd get to do this to a good guy like you. I guess no one is entirely good, are they?"

That was not a question but Wale replied, turning his face to find Scorch's eyes behind the protective face gear.

"Sometimes good people have to do things that ordinarily can be perceived as bad, to prevent an even greater evil."

Scorch gave him a quick nod. He understood. Perfectly.

But, like everyone else in the room, he had a job.

He picked the butcher's knife from the blood-stained work table.

And with one swift motion, Scorch's face that initially wore pity became expressionless. His hands went above his head. Letting it gather momentum. Then the hand came down, hard. Making an impact on Wale's thigh. It sank deep into his flesh.

Wale grunted in pain.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Seven recoiled and screamed.

Olalekan could not hide his pleasure as the First Wave began, giving Wale a little taste of what would follow after if he does not cooperate.

And now, time for the questions.

"Where is David?" Scorch flatly asked.

The impact of the sharp steel made his brain create toxins that sent the splitting pain from his thigh to his entire body. His heart rate increased. And for the first time in a long while…

He felt like crying.

"Answer me, son. If you don't tell me what I want to hear, this will continue until you do."

Scorch dropped the butcher's knife and picked up the bludgeon that had ball-like attachments around it.

"I swear on my life. I will tell you what I told Lekan, I don't know where the fuck he is. I swear."

Scorch swung the club with clinical accuracy. It smashed against Wale's face. He spat blood.

"That is not what I want to hear. You're smarter than this."

The impact left him unconscious for a second. For a moment all he could hear was his thoughts. He could not see anything.

Then a cold, wet, sensation brought him back.

They had drenched him in cold water. He almost choked. Some got into his nose.

"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty." The two assistants laughed.

Wale's eyes took some time to focus.

"At this rate, you won't be able to handle more of this. Why don't you tell us what we need so we'll let you go?"

Wale chuckled amidst the dampness, the blood, the throbbing on his face, and the inexplicable need to cry. He chuckled because of what he knew.

"I want to talk to Olalekan."

"No. You talk to me."

"Flamingoes have no business running with Ostriches," Wale growled.

Scorch clubbed him on the other side of his face. This time the dent on the man's skull was visible.

Blood leaked from Wale's mouth. His chest strangled him. He was losing consciousness but still, he wondered what Seven was feeling right now. Less than two days with the boy and he had felt the most intense emotions rupturing out of him. That young man was watching him get tortured, maybe terrified, maybe not. All he knew was that the boy was full of so many unknown things, and he sure knew how to keep his rage subdued.

Maybe he would try to fight Olalekan – he knew the Younger Wale would have. His nineteen-year-old self that carried flat-top fades and wrinkled clothes that only coded for fun. The one that had sleepless nights on Python, after which he would jerk himself to sleep. That version of him that believed so much in the good people could do. The same belief that brought the idea of David. Back then when there were no contracts, no fat bank accounts, groundbreaking business proposals, or obligations.

He was sure that version of him would see him being tortured and feel terrified and enraged and would act on impulse to beat that asshole Olalekan, till he bleeds. Then he would probably get smacked till he passes out.

He visualized his younger self in the body of Seven with a smile, walking home from school under the hot scorching sun with his neck bent over, fingers punching his Gameboy. He remembered it so vividly as if it happened hours ago, the way and manner at which he had lunged towards those two touts that were touching a female junior student inappropriately.

Although he was beaten-up pretty bad, he had groped the gang leader's member and squeezed it hard till he yelped in pain. To him, that was a win, he saved that defenseless girl from those boys even though he was beaten up, even though he was called a homosexual pervert till he graduated, and even though his parents saw him as a mentally unstable child, the world never looked brighter in his eyes. Whatever the situation, he always believed in the beauty and the potential tranquility the universe could possess.

His universe.

Away from his abusive father and his manipulative mother; away from friends that abused his kind gestures and took advantage of his humanity. And it didn't take long for him to achieve this with the help of information technology.

It all started when he had won a laptop in an online writing contest. The device arrived and his online friends had introduced him to programming. He started designing websites for fun, later on, he designed, managed, and maintained them for a fee. His parents were against his decision to not further his education. But they had no power over a young passionate young man who wanted to learn Data Science.

Nothing could stop him at that point. Not even the lack of financial or moral support from his parents or his dissociation from friends.

That even after five years of constant development, he had designed a reservoir of systems to help improve small scale and large scale enterprises. They paid him handsomely, these sums were what he used to design his supercomputer. A brainchild that drew the attention of many business tycoons who were interested in the system. Wale was not moved by the demand of his brainchild by many businessmen. He did not buy in their dreams, and so he refused every single offer.

Focusing all his time, money, and effort into improving this spectacular intelligence. Later realizing that his work went beyond the basic requirement and need, he decided to improve it further, to reach its full potential. And it did, staggering every probability calculated, breaking new heights, to the point that he did not have to monitor his computer's daily absorption of knowledge. So Wale created a protocol that gave the system that power. And it functioned beyond his human expectations.

The system was able to perform tasks all by itself and solve billions of operations in minutes, drawing data from the vast ocean of the internet. Collecting everything and anything, as long as it's meaningful, and adapting to the information extracted.

"I want to learn more." It said to Wale during a problem-oriented analysis.

And Wale was shocked out of his balls. Fear borne out of disbelief gripped him by the throat. He fended for this computer to the point that the computer started to fend for itself, going into the sea of webbed information and extracting anything it liked. It could gain access into databases nearly as strong as NASA's. Wale believed David was going to be able to break into any public or private web environment in the world, it was only a matter of time.

It was during that period of Wale's insurmountable breakthrough in Computing that his universe collided with that of the beast, Oladele Olalekan. The business tycoon who had shared insane interest in the work of David and he believed very deeply in the impact the supercomputer can have on a lot of business focus points.

Olalekan had come through the door of a friend, taking advantage of Wale social awkwardness, making him acquainted was the best way to win both the heart of the man and his computer. After a lot of intimate moments and shared secrets, and emotionally intoxicated Wale had bought Olalekan's ideology to use his computer to generate revenue in the online advertising market which was still very fresh at that time. Contracts were signed and a partnership was established. Everyone was happy.

For a little while.