Paul let out a little laugh. “Of course you wouldn’t remember. How many children have you prodded with needles and failed experiments? But that’s not why I’m here. What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Just. Inject. In. Her?” With each slowly spat word, Paul thrust Rocco’s arm further up into a distorted way. Rocco cringed in pain.
“Ow.” Rocco yelled. “It’s a psychotropic drug to help open her mind up to further testing.”
“You son of a bitch!” He tightened once again and Rocco squealed in pain.
“It’s f-for the best.” He was speaking raggedly. Jill noticed through the cloudiness of whatever she was feeling that Josef was slowly walking away.
“You’re fucking crazy. You started with a semblance of reality, but this has gotten out of hand. You think you’re God, but you’re not. You’re just a crazy lunatic who’s using his trusting daughter. How many times have you given her this shit?”
Jill was still immobilized and wasn’t able to do much. She tried to move, but her hands and legs were securely tied. With one hand firmly restraining Rocco, Paul moved towards Jillian and snapped open the restraint on her hand and tossed her his phone.
“You okay, baby?”
“I-I think so.” Then she remembered her vision. “Paul. Run. Go. You won’t make it out alive. I saw it. Please. Please run. Go.”
“Call the police.”
With trembling hands, she fumbled with the phone, but noticed a shadow move quickly behind Paul.
“Paul!” she screamed. Before he was able to reply, Josef had punctured him with some substance and dropped the syringe. Paul released Rocco and haphazardly reached in the waistband of his sweatpants. He took out a knife and swiftly turned and stabbed Rocco in the throat. Jill wasn’t sure if it was purposely or sheer luck, but the place were Paul stabbed Rocco was a death blow, and Rocco fell to his knees, blood gushing out, and then to his back.
“Paul!” Jill screamed again. He started swaying and dropped to his knees. Josef snatched the phone out of Jill’s hand and dumped it into a beaker full of liquid.
“If you doubt how serious I am, you can sit there and watch your boyfriend die. It should engrave it in your head. Rocco tried to do this nicely, Jillian. I told my brother that nicely was a waste of time. And now look; he’s bleeding to death on the floor. He tried to show you, but, no, you couldn’t just trust him. Now, we play my way.” Brusquely, he tied her arms back up and stomped out of the room, not bothering to glance back at his own brother whose shallow breaths sounded more like gargling blood.
Sobbing, Jill turned her head to look down, but she was so immobilized from both the drugs and from the actual restraints that it was hard to see. “Paul?”
She heard a cough and movement. His hand reached up to her thigh as he struggled to pull himself up from the floor.
With the tips of her fingers, she grabbed the tips of his. “Paul, please? Say something.”
He coughed again and made his way little higher so that she could see his face. “I texted Jacobs when I saw you. He knows where you are.” She bobbed her head, tears still streaming down. “I’m so sorry, Jill. I wish I could have saved you. I—”
“No, Paul. Please.” She struggled to try to release herself, but it was futile.
“He’s miserable.”
“What? Who are you talking about.”
“Alexander. I saw him. I told him everything just as you told me to. Trust him. He loves you. As much as I love you, he loves you.”
“Paul . . .” She sobbed, and then there was no more talking or movement. Both men lay dead on the floor.
She didn’t know how long she lay there, but like a snap of a rubber band, she suddenly remembered everything. The haziness was gone, and all the memories of the last seven months came flooding back. Paul had tried to save her life. Over and over he had tried to save her life, for years, in fact. He had stood back and protected her, and now he was dead. And so was her father.
Luckily, she had been drugged, and the pain of losing Paul was temporary forgotten when her eyes closed and she was gone into a sea of oblivion.
Chapter 13
Life is for most of us a continuous process of getting used to things we hadn't expected.
-Helen
Jill sucked in a breath, and that’s when she felt something in her mouth. A gag. Then she felt something tied around her head, holding the gag in place. She couldn’t see much through her swollen eye as she tried to take stock of the situation. Her lip throbbed from the cut, and her head pounded, but the worst of all was the pain around her wrists. Tied behind her back with some sort of twine, her wrists were chafed raw from, first, her hours of struggle to untie them and, second, from her basic moving around to get somewhat comfortable. Every time she moved, the rough twine rubbed. When dawn finally came and she thought of all that had transpired that morning, she realized she was still in shock. She couldn’t even comprehend the severity of all that had happened. One minute Paul was there, and the next he was dead. One minute her father was showing his true self, and the next minute he was dead too. Josef didn’t even flinch at his own brother’s demise, but the veil of amnesia had been lifted the moment Rocco died.
Paul had proven himself her guardian angel. For years upon years, he had looked over her, watched her from afar, protected her, even if she didn’t know he had stood in the wings. And, now, he had died doing so. She didn’t know who she was angrier with: Rocco, Josef, or Paul. Paul had died saving her. He shouldn’t have done that. It was a guilt she would have to live with for the rest of her life. He hadn’t done it only for her; he’d had a vendetta against Rocco. Rocco and Josef were seriously deranged. Paul’s sister, Paul himself, as well as countless other children would never be the same because of their sick experiments. Rocco and Josef had stolen, like common street thugs, millions upon millions by using their abilities. Well, one thing was learned: Jill would never succumb to such deceit. She was now more powerful than her father and uncle, but she’d never use it for wrongdoing. And she wouldn’t let Josef know exactly how much she’d learned from her father. If there was one thing she could credit Rocco with, it was that he taught her that her psychic ability was a blessing not a curse. As such, she would treat it accordingly.
Through the sliver of light that peeked out between the blinds on the small window behind her, she could see that she sat on the floor of a white room. The white room. The one that held the stairs that went up to the laboratory. She then realized her hands were tied against the steel rail of a spiral staircase. With the throbbing pain coming from nearly every place in her body, the white floor, white wall, and white ceiling were almost too bright to bear, especially since she could really only see through one eye. The room smelled of nothing in particular. It was as if it had been cleaned then sanitized and then done so again.
Jill went in and out of consciousness. Her eyes drifted shut, but the moment that her body slouched even slightly, it would cause her wrist to pull against the metal pole making the pain against her raw skin feel as though someone were scrubbing her raw skin with a sanding board after it had been burnt with hot coals. Dawn came and went; the hours ticked by. Time seemed to stop.
She heard a distant noise, and terror set in, but she was too physically pained to do anything more than flinch. Her head hung down, and through her good eye, she was able to see black patent leather shoes and the bottom of khaki pants walk towards her then disappear behind her. She felt her body convulse into full body tremors. Then a cold hand removed the thing holding the gag in her mouth, which she spit out as soon as she was able to. She took a deep breath, the first in what felt like days. Then, the person untied her wrists before moving away.
“Get up.”
She slowly tried to stand up. It took almost all the energy she had.
“Get up!”
She heard a low grunting noise and realized it had come from her as she made a drastic effort to get up. But it was more of a crawl forward than a standing-up motion.
“You brought this upon yourself, Jillian. All you had to do was play nicely. We wouldn’t have hurt you. Well, my brother wouldn’t have hurt you. But now, the game has changed. My brother held you captive here through his abilities. He altered your moods and made you forget. Seeing as I don’t have that gift, I have to physically restrain you. You’ll now remember it all: the bad and the even worse. Trust me. It’s better to forget. But he’s dead now, and I’m in charge, and I want to know what you know. So you are going to get up from the floor, use the bathroom, have some food and water, and then we are going to talk.”
Jill remained on the floor, slowly crawling towards the wall to use as leverage to get up. As soon as he said restroom, she realized she really needed to use the restroom. And her mouth? Her mouth was dry and parched, and as soon as she moved her mouth, even slightly, the crack on her lip open. She cringed at the pain and then tasted the blood that dripped into her bone-dry mouth. She needed water right away. She moved a little faster.
“You have thirty seconds to get up, or we’re going to talk right here, and I’ll bring you a bucket instead of letting you use the bathroom.”
An eternity later, but obviously less than thirty seconds, she was up and face to face with her mad uncle. He was both crazy and angry. He led her to a nearby bathroom she’d never seen before. She quickly used the facilities, washed her face with warm water, and used some paper towels to wipe away some of the dried blood around her eyes and lip. She looked at her hands, which were, as she suspected, pure raw skin. She winced when the water touched her wrist. A loud knock startled her. “Out of there now, Jillian.”
She tried to find her voice to tell him she was coming, but all that came out was an unintelligible croak.
She opened the door to find Josef standing, arms crossed, waiting. In the last five minutes, she had heard him say more words than in all the months combined. He led her to another room, again, a room she’d never seen, with a steel table in the middle and chairs on the opposite sides of the table. There was a plate of food and a pitcher of water. Josef pointed to a chair and nodded to the food. This was clearly her cue to sit and eat. She slowly and very painfully lifted her hand and began to eat, but after a few bites of the surprisingly tasty chicken, she stopped. With the cut on her lip, the throb of her head, and the pain of her wrist, not to mention the complete fear that shrouded every inch of her body, she just couldn’t eat. She reached for the glass and downed the entire glass of water. Josef took the pitcher and refilled her glass, and she drank some more. She realized that the more water she drank, the more likely she would need the bathroom, and since she wasn’t sure when she’d be allowed to use it, she decided to stop.
“Finished?” Josef asked. Jill nodded. He took her plate and moved it aside then finally sat down. “Okay, so this is how this is going to go. You are going to tell me everything you know. If you do that, I will allow you to live. If you don’t, I will tie you up again and will repeat this until you finally tell me. I have all the patience in the world, Jillian. I have been waiting for years and years, so a few more days will make no difference to me. But, just so you know, every day you don’t cooperate will be more painful. You will not be the first person I hurt. Do not underestimate me. Look behind you.” He pointed to a table behind her that had some sort of metal instruments. “You don’t want me use those instruments on you. I promise you it will not be pleasant, and I’m sure you don’t want me to hurt someone you love. So game over, niece. It’s time for you to talk. We get this unpleasant part out of the way, and then we start working on what I’m most excited about: your DNA.”
Jill’s eyes bulged; she was unable to blink, paralyzed with fear. She knew that this man was not lying. The evil in his eyes shook her to her core.
“Understand?”
She nodded.
“I need words. Do. You. Understand?”
A weird croak that she didn’t even recognize came out, “Y-Yes.” Then gathering up the very little courage she had, she asked, “If I answer all your questions, will I be able to leave?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate. Tears streamed out of her eyes faster. Harder. “But I will not kill your friends or hurt you. So if you care at all for those twins and that precious southern girl, you’ll cooperate. Look at what happened to your boyfriend back at the lab. You don’t want that for your friends, do you? He really loved you, and he’s dead because of you, because you didn’t help. Don’t test my resolve, Jill. I will start hunting them down one by one until you will not be able to tell one brother from the other. The police will not even be able to identify the bod—”
Feeling helpless, she said, “Stop!” She sobbed. “Stop. okay. I’ll help. Anything. Please. Just don’t hurt them.”
“What do you know about me and Rocco?”
She felt the tears stream down her face. “Y-you are b-both psychic. I’m psychic because it’s genetic. You both worked at s-some . . .” Her voice cracked. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, the cut on her lip stretched, causing more blood into her mouth and down her chin. The pain was too much, but she continued, “S-some government research agency, but it didn’t work. You weren’t able to discover anything. You didn’t make any headway with your research because you couldn’t. It’s just a genetic thing that can’t be recreated.” She looked at Josef, who sat a few feet away from her, arms crossed, listening intently. He gestured with a nod for her to continue. She used the back of her hand to wipe away the blood that dripped from her lip. “At some point, the program was cancelled, but you and Rocco wanted to continue the program, so on your own, you continued researching but with children instead. That’s where Paul comes in.”
“Who else knows this?” Josef asked.
“N-no one.”
“Jillian.” Her name on his lips were terse and impatient.
“I swear. I found out recently, while I was here with you and Rocco. Paul told me, and he doesn’t have any family,” she lied. She couldn’t allow Raquel to be hurt. “And I haven’t left. You haven’t let me leave. Who could I tell?”
Josef seemed to think about this for a moment and then told her to continue.
Her head was swirling. Her body ached so much she wasn’t sure how much longer she could talk. “Then my mother found out about the research more or less at the same time she found out she was pregnant. She was scared about you and Rocco using me as a guinea pig and ran away. Then the plane fell, and that’s it, well, until now. I met Rocco, and he convinced me he wanted nothing more than to get to know me, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“What do you know about how Rocco and I got our money?”
“I don’t know. I figured you were wealthy from being professors and doctors.”
Without hesitation, Josef leaned forward and backhanded Jill across the face so hard and so sudden that her chair flipped forward under her and she fell to the floor. With tears and quivering lips, she covered her cheek with her hand. “Wh-why? Wh-why would y-you d-do that? I told you the tr-uth. I swear. I don’t know anything else.” Jill retreated back, using her butt to scoot away from Josef. When her back was against the wall, she sat with her knees to her chin, trying to make herself as small as possible,
“I’m giving you one last chance. What else do you know?” Jill’s mind whirled. It was spinning out of control. She was Alice, stuck in Wonderland with no way out. Everything seemed surreal. Out of her control. Strange. Confusing. She had no idea what he was talking about, but the fact that he was so serious meant she could only imagine how big the secret must have been to compel her father and Josef to actually imprison her for months.
Still holding her hand over her inflamed cheek, she sobbed. “I swear. “I s-swear. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve told y-you everything I know.” Had Paul not been killed, most of what she said, she would have kept a secret for fear that Paul would be discovered. But it was too late for Paul now, and she had said all she knew. Paul must have left something out. Perhaps he didn’t know h
imself, but Josef was hiding something big, and she couldn’t for the life of her tell him because she didn’t know what it was.
Josef reached down and pulled her up by her hair. The hair pulling was nothing compared to the excruciating pain that scoured her body. Luckily, the aged man didn’t have enough strength to inflict any further pain than just tugging on her hair. Even though he was ten years younger than his now-deceased brother, Josef was still old and not strong enough that he could overpower a healthy Jill. Luckily for him, she was worn out, injured, and weak. Awkwardly, she stood. Josef grabbed her elbow and yanked her out the door and back to her room.
Even though he was older than she was, she was no match for him in her current state. Parts of her body felt sprained and battered, and she bled from different places and ached everywhere.
“W-wait. What are you doing? Please don’t hurt my friends. My family. I swear I told you everything I know. Please. Please!” Jill yelled as Josef lugged her forward into her room and shut the door from the outside. Jill banged on the door. “Please. Please. What do you want from me? What do you want me to tell you? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please!” She sobbed and slowly slid down, her forehead against the door as she continued to rasp against the door.
Not ten minutes had passed, and the nightmare continued. She first heard the rattle of keys on the outside of her bedroom door and then the fumbling of the lock. She slid back slightly so that whoever was about to open the door wouldn’t trample her. A man she vaguely remembered walked in. Mid-thirties. Strong. Body-builder strong. Ogre strong. She had to look up and up and continue up to see his face, which was at least six and a half feet away from where she sat on the floor. A strangely hideous-looking face with short hair that contained a scar on the left side, almost to his ear, stared back at her. He had a chain that hung from the loop of his belt into his pocket. His fingers were fat and his knuckles, hairy. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt with a familiar-looking logo of an old rock band. Immediately, the eighties party she had thrown for the twins came to the forefront of her mind. The memory was foggy and seemed as though it had happened too many moons ago to really recall the details of the evening. But the shirt caused her an immediate sense of recollection, and that recollection was like a knife sliding straight through her heart.
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