Andena the Rebel Ch. 10

There was a silence which he was desperate to fill, but he couldn't give her a satisfactory answer. She pressed him by asking him insistently, "How many Haruz?"

He had to admit that he had totally misjudged the severity of the problem, and he wondered why they had agreed on this plan with Tancred.

Meleda looked at him: her eyes full of fire, as she asked, "How on Earth did you come to agree to this? Were you out of your mind? What were you thinking?"

Why didn't he manage to see this himself? Why was it that this talk with his sister had opened his eyes, and revealed the full extent of the problem?

Meleda was pacing around the room, and she suddenly stopped. Turning to face him, she asked, "Have you ever had a meeting with Arnost or the board without Tancred?"

Haruz had to think hard and started to realise that the memories of those meetings were blurred. It dawned on him that he and Arnost had been manipulated by Tancred from day one.

"Good grief! No, he was always there!" he gasped.

"Right. That means Tancred is using something to manipulate your brains."

Haruz exclaimed, "I, I can't believe this! This is really insane! How the hell didn't I notice?"

"He is dangerous if he can manipulate us so easily without us noticing that anything is amiss."

"This has to stop. I need to get rid of him, but how?"

He was taken aback when Meleda put her hands on his face as she said, "Haruz, I want to investigate Tancred, and I want to have Carte Blanche."

He knew it was probably the best way to get a grip on the situation without raising Tancred's suspicions and he conceded, "I see where you're going with this. I'll take care of it tomorrow."

"No, I want you to organise it now Haruz, because I don't know if you will still agree to it tomorrow or whether you will have completely forgotten our conversation."

He thought about it for a moment, and because he had no way of understanding the full extent of the power that Tancred had over him, he had no choice but to agree with her.

At this moment, his mind was clear and he understood what was happening. As he took his memory stick out of his pocket, he said, "Okay my dear sister, let's go over it, right now."

There was a small smile on her face again which made him feel a lot better.

He now understood that Tancred was far more dangerous than he had realized and that preventing himself from being manipulated again, was going to be a challenge. There was only one solution: he needed to capture Tancred. Alive.