Realization; Goodbye to the Real World

The Leader had planned everything. When he fired Artur, he was sure that he would do something to Jake. The Leader couldn't send his men after Jake, so his only choice was to lure him out. The COUNCIL couldn't possibly extract the research papers from the NCPD's custody, so they had no choice but to force Jake into telling them what the research was about. They had expected that Jake must be well aware of what was in the research by now.
 When Jake and Nate confronted Artur, the Leader saw this as the perfect opportunity and sent some other members, including Danny, to Artur's location . 

Danny was hiding on the nearby building's roof all along, he just waited for the perfect opportunity to attack them. The Leader had told him not to interfere in Artur's fight with Jake. He was instructed to stop Artur right before killing Jake. 
The leader had expected some of Jake's guards to be there, but instead they found Nate with him. 

Jake opened his eyes, he was in a cellar. His hands were cuffed and his mouth had been taped. He tried applying force on the cuffs, but they didn't budge. He looked around, Nate wasn't with him. 
He tried to remember what had happened. His head was hurting like hell. The last thing he could remember was being put in his car by Nathan.

"What happened? Where am I?" He thought to himself. 

He stood up and knocked on the door. He couldn't scream. Suddenly the door opened, and a man came inside the room. It was the leader.
He pulled the tape off Jake's mouth. 

"So you're the one behind all this? Where the hell is Nate?"  Jake said while panting. He remembered seeing the Leader at their previous meeting.

"Jake Benjamin...Tell me, are you happy, now that you've compromised your friend's life along with yours?"

"What do you mean?"

"What did you expect? What did you think would happen? You really thought you and your friend could take on a whole organization by yourselves?"

"Shut up! I'll f*cking kill you! You ruined my life, you took away everything, you killed my friends, you hurt my wife and you killed my father, you bastard! You thought I was gonna back down, after everything that you did to me? You thought I'd just let you go so easily?" Jake shouted. 

"Look where your thirst for revenge got you...You lost, don't forget that. And you'll keep on losing against us. You simply cannot win." 

"Shut up! Just shut your mouth!"

"Having a hard time facing facts?"

Jake didn't know what to say, tears flowed down his eyes...

"You can't keep getting away with it! You can't!" He shouted while crying his eyes out.

"I understand your pain Jake...what happened to you was very heartbreaking. But it was a result of your own mistakes. If you would have simply given us what we wanted, none of this would have happened. You could have lived you life happily with your wife and your friend would still be alive."

"Huh? What do you mean my friend would be alive? What did you do to Nathan?'

"I'm sorry Jake, but your friend didn't make it."

"You killed him too!? I won't ever forgive you! I'll kill you all, every one of you!" 

They hadn't actually killed Nate, the leader was just saying all this to manipulate Jake.

"You don't seem to understand Jake. Your friend's death wasn't our fault, it was yours! You're the one responsible for his death. You're the one who dragged him into all this! You gave him false hope, you made fake promises. You were so blinded by your own selfishness that you didn't even realize your faults. Everything that has happened to you was the outcome of your mistakes! No one else is to blame here but yourself Jake."

"That's not true...That's not true!!!" Jake shouted. He was losing his mind. He was reacting exactly as the leader had expected him to. 

"Shouting won't help Jake. Nothing can help you. No one except me. I'll help you Jake, I'll give you your happy life back, you just have to help me in return."

"Forget it! I won't ever co-operate with you, you sick bastard! You don't care about anyone. You do whatever you want to, you kill as much people as you want to without even thinking once, you're a monster who has no value for human life. How can I ever trust you, huh? Just kill me! Because I won't ever give you what you need!"

"Death isn't so simple Jake. You might think that you're doing something very heroic for this world, but at the end of the day you're really just making a stupid choice. Tell me Jake, what are you so afraid of? Why are you afraid of living your life happily? Are you worried that you might let your father down, who chose to die instead of helping us? Why throw away your life like your father did? Your father left you and your mom when you needed him, why do the same? If you choose to die then you'll be leaving you wife and your mother behind. You'll be leaving the ones you truly love and care for. Or is it the people of the world that you love? Tell me, are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness for the people who don't even know you? For the people who don't matter? For the people who don't even deserve it? Those people don't need to be saved Jake, they are suffering anyways. You just have to make one choice Jake, one choice."

Jake's breath got heavy and he started sweating. He didn't know what to do. As much as he wanted to be a noble man like his father, he couldn't stop thinking about his mom and Emily. He wanted to live, he wanted to be happy. He realized that his ideals were all fake, he simply couldn't gather the courage to let his family go for the greater good of the world. 

"Don't be ashamed of choosing your own happiness Jake, anyone would do the same. Don't be so worried about the world, it will end up ruined no matter how hard you try. You kill me and thousands like me will be born again, the world will forever suffer, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to suffer with it. That's the reality of this world, the weak will always suffer no matter what, but why should we strong people throw our lives away for their sake? I assure you that the COUNCIL won't ever interfere in your life ever again, instead we'll do everything we can to make it easier. I'm a man of my word Jake. Just tell us about your father's research and you'll be happy. You won't have to suffer ever again." 

The leader had completely taken over Jake's mind. Jake couldn't think for himself, he was just simply agreeing with the leader's words. Everything the leader said seemed to make sense to Jake. 

"Make a choice Jake, don't be afraid." 

The leader's words started repeating over and over in his head. 

"Nathan has been killed, but there isn't anything I can do for him now. I'm sorry Nathan, I'm sorry dad,  what I'm about to do is going to disappoint you, but I don't have any choice. I'm  weak, I'm not as strong as you, I hope you will understand. Please forgive me..." Jake thought to himself. He was hit by the realisation that he wasn't as strong as he thought he was.

"Fine. I'll tell you everything." He said to the leader.

"Very well, you made a smart choice Jake." 

The leader gave a pen and paper to Jake and told him to write whatever he had read in those research papers. 
Jake wasn't having a good feeling but he wanted to live, so he just wrote everything by disregarding his feelings. 
He handed the paper over to the leader. The leader took some time to read what he had written.  

"I'm sorry for all the trouble you had to go through Jake. I'm sure you'll move on and live your life happily. You can go now." The leader said.

Some men came inside the room and took Jake with them . They gave him a change of clothes and aided all his injuries. Then they dropped him at his home in Nodax, not on the island. 

Some of the guards saw Jake...
"Boss, where have you been all day? And what's with those injuries? What happened?"
"I'm okay. What happened is none of your concern." Jake said in an arrogant tone and went inside his house. 

He went to his bedroom and lied down on the bed. He held his head.

He sighed and said to himself, "What have I done....?" 

He lied down for a while and then got back up. There was a safe in his room in which a gun was kept. He opened the safe and took the gun in his hand. 

"I can't live with what I've done." he said to himself while aiming the gun on his head. 

He closed his eyes and prepared to shoot himself.

"Nothing good will come out of killing yourself now." A voice in his head said. 

He opened his eyes.

The voice continued, "You already made your choice. You chose to live, why kill yourself now? Killing yourself won't undo what you've done."

"But I did something very wrong."

"You didn't, you just chose your own happiness over the happiness of others. People do that all the time, people act selfish all the time. Why would you kill yourself over that?"

The voice was his inner conscious, trying to somehow convince him to not to kill himself. 

"It's okay, you'll be fine. Your life will get better in no time."

Tears fell down Jake's eyes as he put down the gun. 

"But it's not fair."

The voice didn't say anything, it was gone. 

"I'm sorry Nate, I'm sorry dad. I'm sorry that I'm a coward!" 

Jake broke down crying. He couldn't kill himself. 

 ..............

The COUNCIL now knew the ways to manipulate the G.O.D's functioning. The leader could finally make his wish come true, he could finally achieve what he wanted to. After all these years, he had come so close to achieving his dream.
The leader hired the best scientists from all over the world to make the tools and machinery required to manipulate the Garden. But this was taking too much time, it was a very tough task, the scientists needed at least ten months to build something like the machines mentioned in the research papers.

"The Garden would appear in the next 24 hours sir." One of the scientists reported to the Leader.

"We can't do anything but wait for it to appear next year, can we?"

"Yes sir, unfortunately we can't. But what shall we do this time?"

"Do what we always do, send in a subject."

"Who should be the subject sir?"

"Use that kid...what was his name...uhh...Nathan."

"Why him boss?" asked Danny. He was standing in that room too.

"Well, we're gonna kill him anyways. It's better that we make a use out of him. And he could also help us in trying something new, all these years we sent subjects that were willing to go inside, let's try to send a subject against his will and see what happens. It would make a good experiment, won't it doctor?"

"Yes sir, it definitely will." replied the scientist.

"I guess you're right." said Danny.

 .............. 

"Open your eyes, Nathan Frost. Open your eyes!" A loud voice said.

Nate came back to his senses. He looked around him, he was in a white room with very bright lights. He was wearing a very odd suit and he was tied on a stretcher. There was a giant black floating ball in front of him.

"Where the hell am I? What are you doing to me?" Nate shouted while struggling to free himself. 
He looked at his arm, it was a different prosthetic arm, not his original one. 

"Where the hell is Jake? And what did you do to my arm?" He shouted again.

"Please remain calm, your friend is alive and well, you don't need to worry about him." 

"Why the hell should I believe you?"

The voice didn't reply anything. 

"Hey! Answer me! where am I?"

There was no reply this time either. 

A man entered the room wearing a suit just like him and a helmet on his face. 
He started pushing Nathan's stretcher towards the floating ball.

"Hey, stop it! What the hell are you doing!?"

The person didn't reply anything. He just kept on pushing. 

"What are you- 

Nate was pushed into the floating ball before he could finish his sentence. 

"Subject 17.0 has successfully entered the Garden of Dreams. But all the communications have gone offline. The radiations indicate that the exit point isn't earth, it's another world. Subject 17.0 has been lost too."

The scientist working for the COUNCIL had sent Nate inside the Garden Of Dreams as a subject. 

The Garden of Dreams created Nate's ideal world and sent him there. This world was very different than the real world, there was no crime, all the criminal organizations including the COUNCIL didn't exist, and most important of all, Nate's family and Tessa were alive....

TO BE CONTINUED IN "Done With the Past, Time to Deal With The Present"      STAY TUNED!!