by Lisa Beeson
“How can I fight… something like that?”
“I’ll teach you.”
“What makes’ya think…I can?”
“I know you can, and so do they. That’s why they’re trying so hard to break you down. They’re hoping that the fear of pain and isolation will make you more susceptible. But you’re giving them a run for their money.” The blonde gave Val a look of respect and admiration.
“How do they know…I can?”
“Because you left Scion’s Keep...and you ran off from the café multiple times. You shouldn’t have wanted to do that.”
“Why…?”
“…Because that’s what Gordon and his sons do. The longer someone is under the influence of their electrostatic fields, the stronger the feelings of safety and contentment are induced. The fields don’t only keep your energy fields invisible to the outside world, they make you dependent on them to feel secure. That’s why when you left, yet again, they decided to bring you here to The Facility. For some reason the fields aren’t effecting the people at Scion’s Keep the way they used to. You were the first to leave, so they want to find out how you were able to overcome the compulsion to stay – the impulse to be afraid of the outside world without them.”
Despite the pain it caused, Val shook her head in denial. That’s crazy! The Reinholds weren’t working with Anaximander. The Reinholds are the ones trying to keep everybody safe from them. What the blonde was saying didn’t make sense. At least, Val didn’t want it to. For better or for worse Scion’s Keep and the people in it had become the closest thing to a home she’d ever had.
“No… the Reinholds…aren’t with Anaximander.”
“Anaximander isn’t real, it’s just a bogey man Markus Reinhold created to scare people into following them when their other methods didn’t work. Living through World War II taught him that nothing brings people together faster than fear and hatred of a common enemy. They are so convinced that they are right that they’ve blinded themselves to the evil they do – to the true cost of doing anything to accomplish their goals.
“Everything they,” she said, pointing to the camera in the middle of the ceiling, “have done to you since you were little was meant to make you weak and desperate for the acceptance and security of tribe and family. They wanted to see if that would make you loyal and easy to manipulate into helping them when the time came. But they miscalculated; the only thing they accomplished was to make you independent and more defiant.”
“What’d you know about… what I’ve been through?”
“I know that you and your half-sister Claudia inherited your abilities from your father, Henry Marlowe. You and Claudia have been an experiment to them your entire lives.” She paused to let that sink in, then pity filled her eyes. “And I know that your mother didn’t intend to abandon you.”
“No. She did…” Val grumbled, fighting back the rage boiling in her veins. “She went back to Mexico…because she was … scared of me.”
“Yes, she left you all alone in that apartment and that was a horrible thing to do. But even though she was scared and high out of her mind, she had every intention of coming back for you.” The blonde pointed towards the camera again. “But they didn’t want her to. It was the first time that you had manifested your abilities, and they were impressed. They knew then, what a weapon you could become. They also knew that your mother would have gotten in their way or gotten you both killed because of her addiction. So, they…took care of her. Permanently.”
They killed my mother? She didn’t abandon me?
“They convinced themselves that it was done in your best interest.”
It took every ounce of control Val had to keep her rage in check so the chip wouldn’t shock her. She couldn’t listen to this woman’s lies. It was too easy to want to believe – to fall into the bottomless pit of false hope that her mother had actually cared. “What about the letter… she wrote…to Henry?”
“They wrote that letter and paid Rosa off to take you to him. Henry had been getting pretty vocal about his own ideas for the direction of the Cause. Taking your mother out of the picture and throwing you in his face was their way of reminding him who was in charge. That his status and everything he owned was only his by their mercy, and they could take it all away at any moment.”
Val thought back to the extra cash Rosa had reluctantly given to the gardener who had driven her onto the Marlowe’s property. Unless some big spender decided to slum it at the crappy diner Rosa waitressed at, she wouldn’t have had that kind of cash to just give away.
Henry Marlowe had been working with these monsters the entire time? He gave Claudia and me over to Them …his own daughters. It was all too horrible to even think about, but something wasn’t sitting right. “How d’you know…all this stuff?”
“Because I… I used to be one of them,” the blonde admitted, looking down in shame. “One of my duties was to remotely monitor you when they told me to. Silently watching you suffer was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do…” She continued to look down at the floor, unable to meet Val’s eyes. “But, it was all for the family’s great Cause,” she said with a self-deprecating scoff. “At least that’s what they had drilled into me since I was little.”
This woman has been spying on me my whole life?
“Why should I believe you?” Val wheezed. “You could just be Them … messing with my mind… tryin’ta manipulate me…”
“I’m not messing with you, Val. I swear it on the lives of my children,” she said, crossing her heart. “I’m the only one that will tell you the truth – the only one that can.”
“Why are’ya…not with Them… anymore?”
“They started off with noble ideals, but they crossed the line of morality a long time ago and haven’t looked back,” she said. “And when I finally realized that I was nothing more to Them than a pawn in their sick game, I had to make a choice. I could either go against everything I have ever known and choose the man I loved, or deny my love while my soul died more and more each day. I couldn’t go along with them anymore, so I chose Trent and we escaped.
“We tried to stay hidden, going off the grid, but eventually they found us. And they destroyed the life we tried to make for our little family.” A shadow of anger and regret passed behind her eyes, before she focused back on Val. “To punish me for going against the Cause and being ungrateful enough to choose Trent over them, they took our kids away and… and they… killed Trent.” She closed her eyes as tears slid down her face. “They promised that they would leave my kids alone, though, as long as I complied with their demands to stay peacefully at the compound, and promised not to impede the efforts of the Cause. They were hoping that with enough time, I would get over the death of my unworthy husband, and then willingly come back into the fold. Because what they did was done in the name of ‘tough love’, you see.” She let out a huff of bitter laughter. “I was devastated and broken, so, I agreed to their terms. I had fought and I had lost. At the time, as long as they left my kids alone, that was all that mattered to me.
“Though it killed me to sit idly by while they committed atrocity after atrocity, I still complied. I didn’t help them, but I didn’t act against them either. I watched, and I listened; complicit in their crimes by inactivity.” She took a deep breath, then her eyes went from self-reproach to defiance, her voice becoming hard. “And then those bastards broke their promise. So I broke mine.” She glowered up at the ceiling with pure loathing, then calmed her features and looked back down at Val. “But it was too little, too late… and now I’m here. Shipped off to my own little oubliette at The Facility with the rest of the troublemakers that tried to help me. I can’t let them suffer because of me, Val. I can’t.”
A million questions tumbled around in Val’s head. What and where was The Facility? She defied them multiple times… if they killed Trent for defying them, why didn’t they kill her? Why is she so special? …And why does the name ‘Trent’ seem familiar?
>
“Who are you?” Val finally asked.
“My name is Diana.”
The name came with a flash of recognition and the pieces began to fit together. Val knew why the woman’s features seemed so familiar now. “As in Mara’s daughter…” Val asked incredulously, “…As in …the twins’ mom?”
Diana nodded.
How could Val trust this woman? What she had just told her contradicted everything Val had heard around Scion’s Keep about the twins’ parents. According to them, this woman and her dead-beat husband used their kids’ abilities to steal from rich people. Then, after they’d been caught, she crawled back to Mara, making a deal to leave her husband and let him rot in jail. Then she gave the twins up to Gordon without a fight. However, could Val really trust anything she had heard at Scion’s Keep either?
Diana must have seen the internal struggle on Val’s face. “Whatever you think you know about me is a lie.”
Were all the adults at Scion’s Keep with Them? How could she trust anything anymore? You can’t. You can only trust in yourself.
“They said that… Trent is in jail…”
“He was.” Diana paused as her bottom lip quivered. “…Until they paid some inmates off to murder him.”
“How do you…”
“Because they made me watch the damn security footage,” she said, cutting Val off. A pained expression distorted Diana’s face for a moment, before she regained control and the clarity of her features came back into focus once more. “It was a live feed… They took their time. They made it as painful as they possibly could.”
Val conceded that the woman’s pain seemed genuine.
“They also said you …resented your kids…forced them to steal...then gave them up…”
“All lies.” Diana brought her knees up and hugged them close. “I was eighteen when Trent and I ran away from the compound – nineteen when we had the twins. We had no idea what we were doing, but we loved our children with all our hearts. They were ours. They were wanted. We weren’t perfect parents, but who is?
“Trent was a skilled craftsman. His grandfather had taught him how to make pieces of furniture that were works of art. We sold Trent’s pieces at flea markets and craft fairs for good money. We were doing fine. We never made our kids steal. They were practically babies for chrissake. We only had them use their abilities when we thought that They were onto us and we had to get away or hide. I swear it to you.”
It sounded like the truth, but it didn’t make sense. “Then why do the twins… have memories of you …making them steal?”
“I told you, They can mess with your mind and change your memories,” she said bitterly. “One time when their goons were on our tail we snuck into a gated community to hide in a model home. Maybe that’s the memory they corrupted. Soren and Skylar were so young…it probably wasn’t even that hard to convince them it was the truth.”
Val could tell that it truly hurt Diana to know that her children thought that she was a bad person who didn’t want them. It terrified Val to think that They were actually able to change people’s memories like that.
Diana’s astral projection began to flicker in and out. “Please Val. I can’t do this on my own. I need your help to save my friends… To save my babies…”
Before Val could give an answer, the astral projection gave one last flicker and disappeared.
Chapter 2
Skylar absently stroked the silky black fur of the purring, notched-eared cat, lying contentedly in her lap. She was only half listening to Old Enzo playing on his strange little guitar he called a “mandolin.”
He was sitting on the steps of his porch, while she sat on the soft grass in front of her tent. The mural of the circus animals on the side of his weird little house captivated her. The longer she stared at them by the light of the dancing flames in the fire pit, the more it seemed they were actually moving along with the music.
She looked up through the triangular glass panels of the upside down fishbowl – which everyone insisted on calling a dome – to the brilliant splash of stars in the indigo sky above. She tried to pick out the very brightest one to wish upon. Even though she knew the Blue Fairy only existed in the make-believe-Pinocchio-world, it didn’t hurt to try… just in case. Please help Soren and Ari come back to me, she wished over and over in hopes that the insistence of her wish would make it come true.
Old Enzo’s song ended and he started playing a tune Skylar only half-remembered maybe hearing before. The melody stirred up strange feelings of homesickness for something mysteriously absent from her mind.
Glancing over at the old man, she thought about how she had always been scared of him before. But now that she knew him better, he was one of her favorite adults. He was one of the only people who looked her right in the eyes instead of always glancing at the big red birthmark on the right side of her face.
They actually had a lot in common. Since his eyes were two different colors, he knew what it was like to have people stare. He wore whatever he felt like wearing, whether it matched or not – just like she did. And he loved animals, just like she did. They both knew that animals did not care what you looked like, as long as you loved them.
She also appreciated Enzo’s quiet, steady presence. He left her alone when she needed it, and he didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do. He let her sleep whenever she wanted to, with Nero always curled up faithfully by her side, and there was always food available when she was hungry. He played songs for her, and sometimes at night, he’d smoke his stinky pipe and tell her stories about the circus – that was always her favorite distraction. Despite his aversion to people, he was a great storyteller, and nighttime was always the hardest for her without Soren. They had never been apart for so long in their entire lives.
Everything felt wrong without her twin brother. It was as if she had stepped out of her real life into a strange one where nothing made sense. Kind of like how Alice felt in Wonderland. It felt as if half of her was missing. She had always been part of a pair, and without Soren, she didn’t know who she was anymore.
Nero’s head popped up from her lap and his ears began to twitch, searching. He uncurled himself from the nest of her crossed legs and stalked off to hide under Enzo’s house. It was then that she noticed the music had stopped – replaced by the sounds of whispering voices calling her name, like an eerie wind blowing through the trees.
With her heart thumping in her chest, Skylar turned to Enzo for assurance, but he had completely disappeared, mandolin and all.
Skylar frantically scanned the empty dome. Where did he go…?
“Skylar help us,” her mommy’s voice called out to her.
“Please baby, we need you,” her daddy’s voice begged.
Skylar felt like a knot of snakes was writhing in her belly. What were her parents doing here? Everyone said that her parents were bad people who did bad things. But they were still her parents, who she hadn’t seen in a very long time, and curiosity got the better of her. Maybe Grandma Mara let them come because they made amends for the bad stuff they did…
Skylar cautiously tiptoed over to the pond. Instead of seeing the brightly colored fish that were usually swimming in there, she saw her parents’ heads break through the surface as they began to tread through the water.
“Jump in, baby, and we’ll go get Soren,” her daddy said as he beckoned her with his outstretched hand.
“Then we can be a family again,” her mommy said, smiling.
The smile reminded Skylar of the random memory flashes she would sometimes get of her parents happy and laughing with her and Soren. When she had told Soren about the flashes, he said that he got them too, but Gordon and Grandma Mara said that it was just because they wanted it to be true. But the memories felt too real to just be make-believe...
Skylar wanted her parents to be happy, so she tentatively reached out towards her daddy’s large, strong hand. Just as her fingers were about to touch his, his hand shot out and pai
nfully clutched onto her wrist as he pulled her into the water.
As soon as she broke through the surface, both of her parents morphed into hideous sea monsters. The small pond had become an immense dark ocean that was swallowing her up as the monsters dragged her down into its inky depths.
Skylar began flailing and kicking at them with all her might – fighting harder than she ever had before. They wanted her to stay forever in the dark where it was cold and scary. Miraculously, she managed to free herself from the monsters’ slimy grasp and immediately began pumping her arms and kicking her legs. She swam just as Wyatt had taught her to, and bit by bit she made it up towards the sparkling light of the surface. Just as she was about to break through, her hands and head hit a solid barrier, as if there was a thick sheet of ice on top.
Panic seized her lungs. I’m trapped! She knew the monsters were right below her ready to drag her back down into the darkness again at any moment.
As Skylar desperately pounded against the barrier, her lungs began to burn and ache. She knew that she had to breathe or she would die. Her fear and dread made her arms and legs feel heavy. She let out the last breath in her lungs in a bubbly scream for help; losing hope that anyone would hear her. Just then, a shadow blocked out the moonlight and two hands crashed through the hard surface and held onto hers, lifting her easily up through the hole in the barrier.
When Skylar’s head broke free of the water she gasped in a lung full of air. Before she knew what was happening, strong arms brought her into a warm embrace.