Supernormal

by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

  Craig checked Cam’s restraints, then nodded to Proom, who smiled down at Cam. “Comfy? Good.” He peeled a syringe out from its plastic, then selected one of the bottles. He turned it upside down to insert the needle and drew back the plunger. “First, a little something to help you relax. You do like to get worked up, don’t you?” There was a slight pinch as Proom slipped the needle into the vein at Cam’s elbow.

  Whatever that was, it worked fast. Cam felt his muscles slacken and grow heavy, even as he tried to make them pull and yank. “Please don’t do this.” His tongue felt too thick to move, and it slurred his speech. Proom unwrapped another syringe and selected another bottle. “Please…don’t do this…” Cam was begging, but begging didn’t do anything.

  The world tunneled up in front of him, the surgical lights overhead growing so bright it hurt to look. The gurney along his back was supporting now, the restraints holding him together. He was sinking, fast, far too fast, like a rock through deep, dark water, until it closed in overhead, and there was nothing.

  They had followed the director’s black car to an airfield, the fence around the perimeter wreathed in barbed wire and strung with large RESTRICTED signs proclaiming that trespassers would be shot. There were two armed soldiers manning the fence. Cole’s driver’s side window slid down, and one of the soldiers stepped forward to peer at the badge he held out. There was a brief conversation, and then the gate rolled back.

  They let Meg in through the gate, but not much farther. Not far off was a tarmac, smelling of rain in the cool, damp air, where a plane was waiting, its engines already thrumming.

  Director Cole cast a deliberate look at Meg and gave her a professional smile. “Very nice to meet you, Ms. Gowan,” he said, pitching his voice over the thrum of the plane’s engines. “I hope we meet again under more pleasant circumstances.” Holding his smile, Director Cole turned to Brody. “Five minutes.” He headed towards the plane.

  Meg wrapped her arms around Ashley, and for a brief moment Ashley let herself hug back. “Do you want to take my sledgehammer?” Meg asked. “You can if you’d like. Might make me feel better if you pounded that man’s fat head in with something of mine. Like I was contributing.”

  “I’m better with my hands,” Ashley said. Then she pushed back. What she said had to be said face-to-face. “I’ll bring him back. I promise.”

  Meg blinked rapidly, then shook her head and tugged Ashley’s hair. “I love you, Ashley Garrett.”

  “Meg.” It was strange how some words could just reach out and cut you off at the knees. Ashley had wondered before how it would feel to hear those words. She didn’t know. She’d had no idea. She couldn’t breathe.

  “No, don’t cry,” Meg said, and managed a ghost of a smile. “Not in front of S.H.I.E.L.D.” She rubbed up and down Ashley’s arms. “You go on, get my boy. I’ll—wait here.”

  “Meg—” Brody began.

  She cut him off, arms still wrapped around Ashley, her eyes hard, the bright wisps of hair that had pulled free of her messy bun whipping in the wind. “Back with your shield or on it.”

  Brody looked at her for a moment, then headed toward the plane. Ashley pulled herself away from Meg and headed after him. Agent Phillips smiled at them awkwardly and gestured for the two of them to head into the plane ahead of him.

  The plane ride was very long. Or it wasn’t, and only felt very long. It was hard to tell because by this point every second was a century. Ashley buckled herself into a seat by the window, with Brody next to her and Agent Phillips across from them. It was a nice plane, the sort with clusters of wide leather seats facing each other and a table stretched between them so that the passengers could do business. The young man smiled at them awkwardly, several times opening his mouth to speak, but then there was always a moment when he appeared to think about it and chose not to say anything. It probably didn’t help that Brody was staring at him.

  Finally Brody said, “Agent Phillips, is it?”

  “Yes. Yes,” he repeated, giving Brody a nervous smile. “It’s Bennet, actually. Or Ben. Or Agent Phillips. Whichever you’d prefer.”

  Brody didn’t smile back. “And you’ve been with this agency for…”

  “Fourteen months. I joined last May, after graduation—just-just before Miss Garrett…” Phillips hesitated, his eyes shifting to Ashley. To her surprise, he finished. “Killed Mr. Spencer.”

  There was a little hollow of silence, and Ashley heard herself say, “Jase Spencer.” She saw Phillips’s eyes shift to her and asked, “That was his last name?”

  “Yes,” Agent Phillips said. “They…they didn’t tell you?”

  Ashley shook her head. “He just told us to call him Jase. The doctors didn’t use names.”

  Brody cut into the awkward pause that followed. “You’ve been out in the field—how many times now?”

  “I…um, that is—”

  “Rough estimate. More than five. Less than ten?”

  “If we did not have every confidence in Agent Phillips’s abilities, we would not have assigned him to this operation.” Director Cole had come out from the cockpit and made his way down the aisle to take a seat beside Phillips. “You understand that we cannot discuss specifics of his record, but rest assured that he is not without experience.”

  Whereas Phillips was tall and gangly, and had a fresh-out-of-the-box feeling, Cole was a smaller man. Precisely, almost fastidiously, groomed, with a stillness that bespoke a certain amount of control. Of himself and of others. He had a tricky face, with blandly pleasant features that gave the impression of youth without actually being young, and an expression that seemed to always be just on the edge of smiling. It was a face you wanted to trust, until you saw his eyes. His eyes were cool, and shrewd, and assessing. They made the rest of his face seem like a mask. “My apologies for the interruption, but we had to discuss a slight course correction.”

  “You know, someone might think since you’re actually taking us to this top secret Mr. Potato Head factory, the need for secrecy has passed,” Brody remarked.

  “Is that so?” Cole’s voice was like his face, pleasant without actually being warm. “All doing well, I hope? Miss Garrett? Not uncomfortable, are we?”

  Ashley shook her head. No matter how long they flew, no one in this plane could be uncomfortable. She tucked her legs up under her, the upholstery on the chair soft as silk against her skin. She’d wanted this once; she’d been so unused to softness once, and luxury, that she’d jumped at the chance when it’d been offered. After the foster homes that had never worked out and the group homes she’d always run from, and always, always being hungry, letting a few doctors poke her with a few needles for a bed of her own, a room of her own, and whatever she asked for. And there had been luxuries in the program, at first, and at first she’d thought it worth it.

  Ashley ran her hands over the arms of her seat. She’d stopped caring about softness. Now she just wanted to sleep at night, and not dream. She wanted to wake up in the morning and know that Cam was there.

  “Good. Do let me know if there’s anything you need.”

  “Christ, Cole,” Brody muttered.

  “Just taking the opportunity to have a conversation,” the director said.

  “While you’re at it, maybe we could give each other manicures and braid each other’s hair?”

  “I simply want to take the opportunity to assess for myself how Miss Garrett is doing.” The director crossed his legs and folded his hands on his lap. “I haven’t had the chance to speak with you since you were initially placed with the Lieutenant,” Director Cole continued, turning that slightly smiling mask back to her. “I only have Brody and Dr. MacNamara’s reports to assure me that your situation was improving.”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Ashley said. “I’m better.” She thought she was better. It had been easier lately, with Cam. With Cam everything was easier. She looked down at her lap, where her hands had clenched themselves into fists, so tight her nails were cutting into
the palms. She got them to open. The red half-crescents faded away, and she wiped the blood off on her shorts.

  “I’m very glad to hear it,” Cole said.

  “Bullshit,” Brody put in.

  “I was disappointed to hear that you had chosen not to return to our program. Naturally,” the director went on. “Knowing what I do, however, I cannot say that I am greatly surprised. Not that we expected you back any time soon. In fact, before Mr. Brody informed us that you had decided to continue residing in Sugar Beach permanently, we were seriously debating the merits of Dr. MacNamara’s latest recommendation.”

  Ashley felt herself frown. She glanced at Brody. “Recommendation?”

  “She thought it’d be better if you stuck around for a bit,” Brody said.

  “Her last report was quite insistent, as a matter of fact, that if we decided to continue with the project, we should extend your stay for ‘at least’ another eighteen months,” Cole said.

  Ashley had to work past her tight throat. “Dr. Mac…wanted me to stay?”

  “Yes. She was very vocal on the subject. Dr. Proom objected, of course. He thought her recommendation excessive. We had words over it. Quite a number of them.”

  “But…” Something uncurled in Ashley’s chest. Something tight and tense and a little sad. “She works with you. For you. She’s supposed to patch me up so I could go back.” And, god, she hated how her voice broke on the last word.

  “Her object was only ever to help you, Ashley,” Director Cole said. “To deal with some of what was done to you.” He met her eyes and didn’t blink. “What we did to you.”

  Ashley squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head against this, against the pressure building in her chest. She latched onto the one thing she could process safely. “‘If.’ You said ‘if’ you decided to continue the project.”

  “There had been some discussion about the viability of the program, even before Mr. Brody informed us you would not be returning. There was concern that the cost was too high.”

  “You lost a lot of money on us,” Ashley agreed.

  Agent Phillips spoke. “Fourteen children died.”

  “Because of what we did to them,” Director Cole said. “It was not the result we were looking for. Nor was it one we were comfortable with.”

  “Fifteen,” Ashley said. “If you had to kill me, too.”

  Agent Phillips’s mouth twisted, but Cole said, “Yes.”

  “But that’s not going to happen,” Brody said.

  “It does not appear to be necessary,” Cole concurred. “At this time. Besides,” he remarked as the plane begin to dip, “we have more pressing concerns to address.”

  He glanced out the window. The sky was gray and clouded, but far below she could see the ground stretch out, bleak and white. “Not long now,” the director said.

  Good, Ashley thought. Her friends were waiting.

  Ch. 25

  Cam remembered.

  When he was eight. On vacation in St. Bart’s. His mother had smiled then. Naomi was six. Five. Six. Cam had begged for a wind-surfing lesson, begged and begged, and for once his father had given in. His mother and Naomi played in the bright sand while Cam and his father waded out into the water where the instructor showed them, mostly, how to fall off the board. The water wasn’t that deep. His father had held his arm, and Cam hadn’t thought they were that deep.

  And then Cam had scrambled up on the board when his father was distracted, put a foot wrong—his vision had been bothering him even then, but it would be two years until he understood why—and the waves slammed into him and he fell. The waves pushed him under the water, and he hadn’t been able to get up.

  Cam remembered.

  Fiercely, vividly, even now, he remembered fighting to claw his way to the surface, kicking out for a sandy bottom that wasn’t there, lungs screaming as his head broke through the waves, gasping for a relief that never came because the moment he pushed through one wave, there was another, forcing him back down, forcing his head under the water, until he choked on it. He remembered, even now, the sheer, bewildering panic. The feeling of being overwhelmed, of being completely, staggeringly helpless. He remembered the elastic endlessness of that moment, stretching on forever.

  Cam had been living that moment for…ever now. The panic, the desperation. The sense of reason, sanity, just outside his grasp—there, and waiting, but his head was forced under over and over again before he could reach. It was a struggle to hold onto anything, one thing, when the tidal wave of everything was crashing down on him. Every person, every possibility, every moment that could or might. The levee had been broken, and the current was strong.

  He thought he’d stopped screaming. His throat was raw, but that could be because he’d thrown up twice.

  Cam lived in the memory, and for it. For the brief moments when his brain snapped into focus and honed in on the past with a wonderful, wonderfully quiet kind of tunnel vision.

  Except that day had ended with a hand on his arm and his dad had lifted him bodily out of the water, and slapped Cam on the back as he’d coughed up the water out of his lungs, and then his dad—who didn’t touch anyone if he could help it, who barely spoke to Cam then, who didn’t speak to him at all now—his dad had hauled Cam in for a hug, so hard, so tight that Cam, still trembling inside with the aftershocks of terror, had known he was safe. Cam hadn’t cried, because even then he’d known that Scotts didn’t cry. But he’d held on.

  Cam tried to hold on now as the next wave of vision threatened to drown him. It was the last time he could remember his father hugging him. There had to be other times, he felt this, because he hadn’t realized what was going on with his head until a couple of years later. Though once he had, he’d more or less told his parents right away, probably because some stupid, childish part of him remembered that hug.

  He shouldn’t have. He should have remembered being alone, and choking for air. He should have remembered the water.

  After the plane, there was a helipad, and a helicopter. Ashley paused as she stepped out of the plane, as the cold hit her, and the wind that was more ice than air sliced into her, and the scent of the evergreens. Close now. Ashley could smell it. The smell of the ground, and the trees, and the sharp, cold air. It wasn’t the same, but it was close. It was so close.

  “He’ll hear us coming in on a helicopter,” Brody said to Cole.

  The director nodded. “And he’ll see you driving in, in a car. He has cameras on the outside of the building, and there’s a half-mile of open space between the building and the tree line. I supposed you could always stroll on over and hope Dr. Proom takes you for a simple mountain man out for his morning constitutional.”

  Brody’s mouth pressed together in a thin, tight line. Then he let out a hard breath and rolled his eyes. Director Cole seemed to take this as a sign to continue. “A helicopter is fast, and our goal here is speed, not subtlety. We are not interested in keeping Dr. Proom in happy ignorance. In fact, I would consider it a personal favor if you let Zachary know I am considerably displeased with his behavior.”

  “I’ll make sure to give him a time-out.” Brody cocked an eyebrow. “Thought you liked to express your displeasure yourself.”

  “I do. But I thought you might enjoy warming up the crowd, as it were. Just this once,” Cole added, shifting his smile to Ashley.

  Brody eyed the director, then, setting his shoulders, waved Ashley over to where someone had neatly stacked supplies. She jogged over, the ground hard and brittle underfoot, and was surprised when he dug up a Kevlar vest. “I don’t need that.”

  Brody yanked it over her head. “I say you do. Hold still.” He circled, tugging at the straps until it was plastered against her like a second skin. “Proom’s men will have guns. And they won’t be fucking around.”

  There was the tear of Velcro. A little ways away, Agent Phillips was carefully adjusting his own vest. He had taken off his jacket, in spite of the cold, but had left his tie. He very pointedl
y did not look over at them.

  Ashley turned her attention back to Brody. “Neither will I. I don’t need it.”

  “Yeah, well, this isn’t about what you need, Ash. It’s about what I need, and what I don’t need is to see you in the hospital—again—with more holes in you.” Brody gave it one last tug into place and stepped back. “How does it feel?”

  Ashley shifted, twisted, stretched out her arms. “I can’t move in this thing.”

  “Too damn bad.”

  “I need to be able to move.”

  “You’re wearing the fucking vest, Ashley, or else you’re not coming along, and that’s a damn order.”

  Ashley bit back the automatic I don’t take orders from you, because that wasn’t her thinking, that was her just reacting. And she could think. She would take orders from Brody, because she trusted him.

  So she said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t suppose you want a weapon.”

  She shook her head. “I can smell them.”

  Brody raised an eyebrow, and she nodded northeast. He turned to stare in that direction. “How far?”

  “Not that far.”

  “Okay, then.” He turned back to her. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

  The helicopter ride was short. It was a large helicopter, with open sides, and the wind had turned bitter as they cut through the arctic blue of the sky. Ashley could see the tall, dark evergreens stretched out below her and, farther in the distance, mountains.

  She could see the facility.

  It looked a little odd, with its long, clean lines, but only because of where it was, set in the hollow of a small clearing. It could have been any other building in any other place. But it was hers. It was cut out of the frozen ground like a dagger, sleek and silver against the icy sky.

  Ashley heard the shout over the headphones. Snow was on the horizon. A lot of it. The helicopter would have to drop low enough so that they could rappel onto the roof, and then they’d be on their own.