For obvious reasons, Jonathan did not feel comfortable referring to the phase as the Dutch-McAllister outside of the war council.
Regardless, during this phase, agents of The Cell, along with The Never Army, would be implementing a laundry list of instructions—for example, the rigging of large buildings for controlled demolition. Thanks to Mr. Clean, such items didn’t require the same timelines of human planning to implement. Based on data brought back by Jonathan’s reconnaissance teams over the last few weeks, the AI had been running the necessary simulations and planned the necessary charge placements for explosives. The Cell and The Never Army only needed to work together to get the charges set.
That much could begin before the evacuation efforts wound down. Only after they were deemed as complete, could Mr. Clean and The Never Army take over the city in total. This was when the less, strictly human, modifications to the city could begin.
A phase aptly named Mr. Clean.
In short, when Jonathan ended that call, he knew that no manner of planning was going to change the fact that he’d just thrown a stadium-sized turd at a fan the size of... well . . . Seattle.
Which was why he found it very odd that as he ended the call, the weight of all that he had just put in motion wasn’t what he felt on his shoulders. He should have felt anxious—plagued by self-doubt—terrified of just how many huge details could not be controlled.
Yet, he felt—good. He felt positive. He felt, somewhat euphoric.
This remained strange, until the sensations became increasingly familiar to his subconscious.
“Mr. Clean, what’s the current status of the female half of the bonded pair?”
“The implant was installed in Ms. Delacy a few minutes ago. She is currently in recovery.”
Then Jonathan felt a twitch in his chest.
“Mr. Clean did you—”
“Heyer left very specific instructions as to what should happen in the event that the bonded pair could be reestablished.”
His legs began to give, and he fell to a knee. “Turn it off . . .”
“I do apologize, but I’ve been forbidden to obey that request.”
“Son of a . . .”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
A MOMENT AGO, Leah would have sworn she was dreaming. She’d been standing in the garage, watching Rylee punch her in the face.
She remembered thinking, Finally gonna punch her right in her big stupid face.
Right before that fist connected, she’d thought, What a strange thing to think about one’s self.
Immediately after Rylee’s fist connected, she woke up alone, lying on this rooftop in the middle of the night. She sat up and the air felt warm as a soft wind blew through her hair. She stood and turned, the nearby buildings and the Space Needle giving her an idea of where she was, but no clue how she’d come to be there.
Then the sounds began to press in on her. As though her hearing had been on mute and was slowly returning to normal. What she heard demanded her attention. This was not the ambiance of a city winding down for the evening. There were sirens—far too many—their whines bombarding her from all directions.
The city was in crisis.
She ran to the lip of the rooftop and peered down at the streets. The flashing lights of emergency vehicles were scattered down the roadway, but the streets themselves were littered with wreckage. Cars were overturned, crushed, some looking as though they had been trampled in a stampede—others flattened, smashed such that Leah wondered if something had thrown them through the sky.
There were holes—gaping car-sized wounds—in the sides of buildings. They hadn’t been there long either; as she watched, a piece of concrete came lose and plummeted to the street.
The people either ran hurriedly or hid. With a shiver, Leah started to realize just how many weren’t moving at all. They lay in the middle of the road, perfectly still but in disturbingly unnatural positions. Then her eyes followed a trail that ended in a mound.
She retracted, pushed away from the roof’s edge until her back hit a ventilation box. Suddenly, survival overtook her horror. She realized she was out in the open. Whatever had caused all this could still be going on. She slid down until she hugged her knees—shivering as she tried to think.
This wasn’t a natural disaster. Not . . . with how those bodies had been arranged.
“Ferox,” Leah whispered. The word felt foreign and familiar at the same time. She—she hadn’t known that word when this had happened.
Had happened?
She knew, suddenly, that this wasn’t the present. How wasn’t clear; the knowledge came to her the same way one realizes when they’re dreaming. This—all of this—it was from a time before the word Ferox meant anything to her.
Groans interrupted her thinking, and she froze.
The sound was human and close, it had come from this rooftop. Male—familiar. Someone in pain. Another voice, less familiar. A woman—also in pain.
She kept low, peeking around the ventilation box, but there was too much in the way. More boxes, pipes, air ducts, and maintenance-related access points, all obstructing her vision of where the sound was coming from.
She crept closer. Until she stood crouched on one side of a retaining wall and heard the voices again. It was only in the split second before she looked that she understood what—under any other circumstances—would have been apparent right away.
No one was in any pain on the other side of the wall.
What she saw came as her eyes followed a swath of torn clothes to two bare bodies moving together. She thought to look away, but there was a light between them. A light that identified the two without any need for Leah to see their faces. Her breath caught as she slid down the side of the retaining wall. Blushing, she closed her eyes tightly, grimacing at the thought she would forever have that imagine in her memory.
She was covering her ears to block out the mounting groans and heavy breathing when she heard a voice from right beside her. “I always meant to tell Jonathan that he got all the PG-13 memories.”
Leah opened her eyes and found Rylee crouched there beside her. She was fully clothed, sitting in almost the same position as Leah herself, but rather unperturbed by what was happening on the other side of the wall.
As Leah stared at the woman, it was clear that she was somehow in two places at once. This made where she was and what was happening suddenly very obvious to her. It all came back. She’d been put under. Paige and Anthony had been beside her as she faded from consciousness.
The implant, it must be inside of her. This wasn’t her memory or even her dream. This was something of Rylee’s mind. The woman had brought her here to see this—on purpose.
“So, you got it all figured out yet, Red?” Rylee asked.
Leah stared wordlessly as she tried to think. Admittedly, not so easy with the sounds emitting from behind her . . . them.
“I . . . I expected you’d be owed some sort of revenge. Imagined it would be more like you punching me.”
“Didn’t we cover that in real life?” Rylee asked.
Suddenly, another Rylee and another Leah stood in front of them on the rooftop. More specifically, past Rylee taking a swing at past Leah, her fist connecting and sending her staggering. A moment later they dissolved like sand in a breeze.
Strange, Leah thought, normally when she remembered something, she saw it in her mind’s eye. This—this place—it was her mind’s eye. Memories just appeared as part of the landscape.
“Ah, that’s the stuff,” Rylee said. “Not gonna improve on that moment. Plus, I don’t think . . .”
Rylee paused to consider before reaching over to flick Leah hard on the earlobe. Surprised, Leah rubbed her ear curiously, but she’d felt no pain.
Rylee shrugged. “Ya, can’t hurt you in your own head. Physically at least.”
Leah studied her. Rylee did not seem particularly disappointed that violence was off the table. Then the groans started up again, and Rylee turned to look
over the wall as though she might as well get an eyeful.
“This is a little petty, Rylee,” Leah said
Rylee nodded, the observation not seeming to make her any less pleased with the situation.
“How could you two . . . do . . . that,” Leah said. “With everything going on down there.”
“Please,” Rylee scoffed. “Jonathan and I saw that every day.”
“There are literally people torn apart in the streets, and you—”
“I understand,” Rylee interrupted. “The bond doesn’t have you yet, Leah. Maybe keep your judgments to yourself until you know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Leah quieted at that; after all, Rylee would know far better than her. She wasn’t even conscious—had no idea how the bond might affect her in the waking world.
“You sure you don’t want to watch this?” Rylee said. “It’s really like a force of nature with super human strength and all that primal instinct set to full . . .”
Rylee took one look at Leah’s expression and trailed off. “Suit yourself.”
“You said Jonathan got the lame memories,” Leah said. “What did that mean?”
Rylee’s face saddened. “He doesn’t remember this. Makes a lot more sense to me now than it did at the time. Your memories filled in most of the gaps in mine.”
“My memories?” Leah asked. “So, you know . . . that you’re . . . well—”
“Dead. Yeah, I kind of remember it. Let’s not dwell on the negative.”
Leah frowned, none of this was what she’d expected. What Jonathan had said of encountering his father had been nothing like this.
“I thought it would be so much harder to reach you,” Leah said.
“Yeah, well, that’s Jonathan’s own—”
Rylee stopped, seeming to change her mind in the moment. “Okay, to be fair, it’s more Heyer’s fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone’s mind has shields. Yours are down. You knew I would be here and you wanted to reach me,” Rylee said. “In other words, your mind doesn’t see me as a threat. Jonathan’s didn’t know what was happening when his father reached out. His mind just felt an alien influence trying to reach his consciousness. His mental guard was always on high alert. It’s no surprise that, when whatever happened to him happened, it was in a moment that his mind had nowhere else to turn.”
Leah blinked a few times, shocked at Rylee’s grasp of it all. “How . . . how is it you’re suddenly an expert?”
“Your memories, my memories, but that isn’t all,” Rylee said.
They looked at one another, but what might have been a tense moment of staring was turned into a far different affair with the sound of the two lovers in the background. Leah had found for a time that it helped to pretend they were strangers, but now sounds were getting more . . . vigorous . . . as though drawing to a close.
“Could we maybe go somewhere . . . quieter?”
Rylee considered, held up a finger, waited until things had reached their zenith. Leah rolled her eyes, as she let out a long breath.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here, place is dead anyway,” Rylee said.
Suddenly, Leah found herself in far more familiar surroundings. Her garage. At least, her garage before The Cell took them all into custody. The metal statue she had sculpted, The Blind Blacksmith, still there at the far back.
“I’ll say this much,” Rylee said, taking the steel sculpture in. “Maybe you’re more like Bob Ross than my Dad thought.”
Leah smiled, this was the place she had wanted to be. “Did you read my mind or did I bring us here?”
“You, I’d never even seen this place when I was alive.”
“So, I could have done that at any time?” Leah asked.
Rylee smirked at her knowingly. “You’re wondering why you didn’t sooner? My guess would be that despite your pretenses, a part of you—”
Leah interrupted, “Let’s just move on.”
“Whatever you say, pervert,” Rylee said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Leah said. “If I, subconsciously, let you keep us there it’s your fault. Your damn journals never made any sense. You wrote about Jonathan like you had been with him, but I could tell he wasn’t lying when he said he hadn’t. It was a paradox that was . . . quite grating.”
Rylee studied her with a knowing smirk. “You should know you can’t lie to me, Leah. But I’ll concede that excuse was half true.”
Leah glared.
“Fine,” Rylee said. “Sixty/forty make you happy?”
Leah, cleared her throat. “You said you understood what’s going on because of something more than our combined memories.”
“It’s the bond,” Rylee said. “You feelin’ the warm and fuzzies yet?”
Leah considered, but all she could do was shrug. “I . . . I really don’t know.”
Rylee waived the question away. “Doesn’t matter yet, it’s the bridge that changes everything—that’s when you’ll get a look.”
“A look?”
“Inside his head.”
“You saw inside Jonathan’s head?”
Leah tried to ask the question with a degree of disinterest, but Rylee’s smirk quickly reminded her that there really wasn’t any hiding her envy in here.
“I get it. You’ve wanted inside his head for months and I stumble in without even trying. I’d be jealous too . . .”
Leah took a long breath and repeated the question. “What did you see?”
“A glimpse,” Rylee said. “But it’s not what you see. That’s all vague and symbolic and—uggg—just, be warned. Jonathan’s head makes some weird associations . . . never ending brick walls . . . mirrors that don’t reflect what they should . . . and creepy little zombie children crawling after him in the dark.”
Rylee shivered at the last bit, as though it still made her skin crawl. Meanwhile, Leah was left staring at her with one profoundly raised eyebrow.
“I digress, it’s hard to make a lot of sense out of what you see—not impossible—but tricky. That said, you’ll feel what he feels in that moment.”
“But you did see something?” Leah asked.
“Yeah, it only makes any sense to me now. The Jonathan I was bonded to—he’d split himself in half—sort of. There was a massive brick wall keeping one Jonathan safe from the other. There was the nice Jonathan, which is what you were used to seeing most of time. But the other one—well, I only saw that side of him when he fought.”
“The look he gets?” Leah asked.
Rylee nodded.
“But, how did that help you understand all this?” Leah asked.
“Chill out, I was getting to it,” Rylee said, then sighed before going on. “There was something else. Something behind a shadowed curtain. It was like his own mind was trying to hide it from him. Couldn’t get rid of it, so it tried to keep it locked out—separate from the rest. At the time, that all made as much sense to me as you’d expect. But, knowing what—I—you?—know now, I’m pretty sure it was his father trying to reach him.”
Rylee said all this as though she were Sherlock Holmes finishing the sort of speech that begins with: elementary my dear Watson. Meanwhile, Leah felt like she was trying to absorb an astrophysics degree. This wasn’t because she had any trouble following what Rylee was telling her, it was trying to understand the speed with which the other woman had puzzled it all together.
“I’ve only been here for ten minutes,” Leah said. “How’d you think this all through so quickly. Do you just know everything I know?”
Rylee grimaced. “Time for me isn’t what it is for you. Not really the factor it once was. As far as knowing what you know . . .”
Rylee’s expression soured—more an act than honest bitterness. “All those hours you spent with my father—you know—hard at work invading my privacy. Well, it worked. The associations between our lives were all laid out in a map for me. I found everything I was looking for in your head pretty easily. I can�
��t explain that any better than you could tell me how it is you remember what color your birthday cake was when you were four. You ask yourself the question—and if it can—your mind delivers the answer.”
“Everything in my head, it’s just unlocked to you?”
“You should be happy. It’s why I know how much guilt you live with for what you’ve had to do. For what it’s worth, I—begrudgingly—respect that.”
Leah folded her arms across her chest. “So, you saw everything then? The things your father wanted to say . . .”
Rylee’s smugness faded. “Thank you, for making that possible. I . . . I saw how much he needed to know I heard him.”
Emotion hit Leah like a wave. She couldn’t wait to tell Joao. It had felt like so long since anything she’d done had made a difference that was—just good. She’d had no way of knowing if she’d given a grieving father a false hope that would leave him worse off than before she had approached him.
Leah grew quiet for a long while. There was something she needed to ask… something neither Joao, or Heyer, or Jonathan knew.
“If you saw that. What about . . .” Leah had to take a deep breath. “The memory I made for you.”
Rylee held up a hand to stall her. “I saw.”
Her body language was suddenly noticeably uncomfortable. More so than when they had been discussing her father. Leah swallowed, but tried to get Rylee to look at her while the woman was suddenly so reluctant to do so.
“I meant it,” Leah said.
“Well I know that, now, don’t I?” Rylee’s said, her voice openly irritable.
With Leah trying not to let her look away she closed her eyes.
“The whole thing makes me . . .” Rylee shivered like she had spiders crawling up her skin, “. . . itch.”
The woman still refused to look her in the eye, but she found herself reliving the moment, the very memory they needed to discuss. The garage began to change. A smaller room, one that had only ever existed for a few moments in reality—took shape around them inside the garage. A door formed, a countertop below a mirror. The very room she’d asked Mr. Clean to manifest for this purpose.
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