Page 103 of Mastermind

I imagine Hailey at her company, eating lunch and tossing insults back and forth with Mylo.

I travel back in time and sit in Amanda Paulson’s living room and watch a slideshow of some subterranean ecosystem that my mentor explored.

I follow Johnny as he rides his grandmother’s bicycle, making deliveries.

I follow Jessica on her run around the lake near her apartment complex.

Then I imagine him. Heywood. The Warlock. My enemy.

He’s sitting behind some computer at a secure facility, typing away, knowing he’s being watched but also knowing they’re too afraid to do anything to stop him if he veers off course.

I see that blank face and try to peer inside that brain, which is impossible . . . but I still try to understand him by attempting to make sense of the things he’s done.

I have no trouble accepting the idea that some kind of trauma or brain defect impaired his ability to feel compassion. It’s the only way I can conceive of a mind doing the evil things that he’s done.

We’re both men driven by curiosity, but mine has limits. I’ll kill to protect the innocent.

But I won’t kill the innocent to protect myself, except for in the most ridiculous hypothetical cause-and-effect scenarios.

If I found out that right now Jillian was in the arms of another man, I’d only want to know that he treated her well. In fact, the idea that someone else was looking after her would relieve me beyond words.

All this is why I can’t understand why Heywood fears me. If his neural network is bogus, artificial-intelligence researchers will figure that out. If his cures are snake oil, the doctors testing them will cry foul.

Moreover, if it’s a sham, why turn himself in? It doesn’t make any sense. The only conclusion I can come to is that it’s only part sham and Heywood is trying to buy time because he thinks he can make it work.

But that still doesn’t explain his hatred of me. Jealousy’s part of it, perhaps, but long before Jessica and I had our embrace in the elevator, Heywood still wanted me eliminated.

Why?

What does Heywood see in me that I don’t?

I ask that question over and over and can’t find a single answer. Maybe I’m asking it the wrong way . . .

I slip back into my mental model of the world and start watching someone I’ve never watched before.

Myself.

What do I see?

A man sitting in a prison cell that he accepted as his home because he thought he was doing the morally correct thing.

A man who breaks laws and lives by his own moral code.

An intelligent man who sometimes lets his arrogance lead him into trouble.

Perhaps the better question is, what do other people see?

To some I’m brilliant.

To others I’m dangerous.

This is how people see the Warlock as well. From a certain perspective, we have a lot in common.

If you were one of the child-torturing soldiers I killed back in Myanmar, you wouldn’t feel much different about me when I slit your throat in the latrine than Heywood’s victims felt about him when he killed them for his stunts.

Heywood is afraid of me because he fears I think like he does . . . that I understand him. He doesn’t realize that I can’t possibly fathom his twisted mind.

The difference between us is easy for me to see. Jessica sees it. Jillian saw it.