Ora aqui está. Rumores sobre a entrada guns-blazing na clínica eram de facto exagerados. Time for a more rational approach...
"I must try to save him, Ian! I must try to do something!"
"Banging your head against a wall is doing something, Jacob. Just not really useful is it?"
"But he's my father... and... I can at least wreck a little bit of Sullivan's empire... and... maybe I can find any other clues to point us in the gangs' tracks."
Jacob started to wretch. He felt everything spinning around him. Out of instinct, he started towards the clinic.
"STOP!!" The voice, being in his head, could get unbelievably loud and commanding. He froze in his tracks.
"There is nothing to gain there and much to loose. Turn away NOW. No apologies. No rebuttals. No refusals."
Hesitantly at first, Jacob turned around towards the car. He took the passenger's seat without another word...
----------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Hart watched the Clover Insurance clinic fade away in the distance through the rain-speckled rear view mirror of Samuel's car. He had found the vampiric perception extremely curious in the first nights. That he could focus on minute details and realize things in a dreamlike, almost slow-motion fashion, was enough to keep him secretly in awe for more than a week.
Tonight, that same perception made his head swirl with nausea. The image in the rear-view mirror overlapped with the images in his mind. Images of his father. Images of his dreams. And half-formed blurry images of a university campus.
He felt powerless in the brutal hostile world he had come to know in the nights of London. He felt he had all the wrong instincts and abilities for it. He felt the lure of seclusion in the Ordos Dracul college, perhaps for a year, perhaps for a decade, perhaps...
"Wouldn't that be rather similar to being dead, Jacob?"
He had grown accustomed to the voice by now, and conversed with it in his thoughts as if it were real. He did not know its name, but he associated the voice with the Vampiric Blood in him. From a recent dream in his past, he called it The Wolf.
"What would you have me do, Wolf? I have destroyed the only lead we had on the gangs, and I have condemned my father were I wanted only to save him."
"Actually, you also revealed to Emma Sullivan that your true intentions are hostile, which will make it hard to approach her throat in the future. And you also allowed her to discover you were not, as it appeared, dead."
Jacob only sighed at this realization. His anger and frustration were too great for tears.
"As to your father, however, you need not fear for him. His value to Emma Sullivan or Frostbite stems from the information he has on the Invictus - not from his connection to you. You are only a pawn in the game, Jacob - it is he who is a more valuable piece. Frostbite needs him alive, but not because of you."
Jacob felt slightly more relieved at this reasoning. But how could the voice know for sure?
"The same way you can - through my rational, well-developed mind. Yours would lead you to the same conclusion, if you were not addled by your feelings. As I have told you before, you must strive to see everyone around you in a cold and rational manner. Rachel, Ian, your father, everyone. Be *heartless*, Jacob. Survival of the Fittest has no place for affection."
"You would turn me into an evil monster, then?"
"No. Heartless does not equal evil. Evil is taking the Bad path purely for the sake of Bad. Heartless is rather NOT taking the Good path just for the sake of Good. It is taking the best path for you regardless of your feelings. It may be destroying a family heritage, going against a friend, or putting a gun to your father's head. It is *why* you do all those things that separates a heart of evil from a heart of ice.
"If I shrink from the love of my father or from Ian's friendship, am I not forsaking what is left of my humanity?"
"And where has your humanity brought you this far?"
Jacob was silent.
"You are uncertain, Jacob."
"Wouldn't you be?"
"I have never known uncertainty. I can not imagine it."
"And fear?"
"Everyone knows fear. But not everyone learns to master it. Fear steming from threats to your physical integrity can be controlled by seeing your body merely as a vessel for your blood, as per what Cunningham told you already. Fear steming from threats to others can be controlled by keeping the all-critical hearless view that I mentioned. Even fear steming from pure instinct can be controlled, but that is harder to do. We shall leave that for later."
"And what would your unflinching certainty and totally controlled fear make of the current state of things?" Jacob's scorn was an academic's natural arrogant reaction to being taught like a child, but in fact he found it impossible not to see that everything the voice said was true.
The Wolf was silent for a while. Jacob could feel it thinking.
"You know that the Invictus are after you and your father, and that Tom Sheffield is perhaps more partial to your cause of saving him but not really accessible at the moment. You know you cannot rely on them or him.
With Sullivan, you wasted a good opportunity to find out more about her current situation and dealings with Frostbite. Maybe you can try to call her. Explain that Ian persuaded you to call, and that you now consider them even for what she did to the pharmacy and are willing to listen to her. If she doesn't agree, too bad, but it's worth trying.
With the Dracul, at least you avoided getting into another bloodbath. But you must trust them more as your teachers. You should have listened to Emma Sullivan first and called Ingmar Bloom second. Never the Invictus.
You can show your trust to the Dracul by hearing out this circus magician's ramblings about your old appartment and discussing that with them. Maybe you can even take up the place again."
"I would like to do something against Sullivan, but I still find the prospect of retiring to the Dracul more attractive. I am too certain that I will screw things up."
A brief pause, as if the Wolf was scanning Jacob's mind for the answer before actually asking the question...
"Why don't you let *me* handle your actions on the outside world, Jacob? While you are in the Ordos Dracul or any other trusted environment, you can be yourself. But when you move out into the open danger of the nights, let me be your guide and conscience. Let me handle what you cannot. And in that, learn from me."
In his mind, Jacob saw again the voice as a figure of hidden features. In his mind, he looked intently at it, trying to look beyond the disheveled hair that covered the figure's face. He caught a glimpse of an eye, the eye of predatory cunning, in the figure. And he could swear he saw it twist its mouth into a grin.
-------------------------------------------------------------
As Ian drove on towards their old home, Jacob now looked straight ahead, his eyes sharpened in concentration. Guilt, remorse, love and hate were put away in his cabin in St. James' College garden. There was only a chessboard now, the board for the deadly game he played in the nights of London. He had only to analyze the moves that had been made and plan his next.
For the first time in his life, Jacob felt truly free.
