Oversight (The Community Book 2)

by Santino Hassell

  “The robbery wasn’t a robbery,” Holden said. “You were looking for information about Meadow.”

  “You got it. I found information on her, among other things.” That humorless laugh sounded again, ominous and chilly in the silent kitchen. “Just because folks are big-time psychics, doesn’t mean they had smarts about computer security back in the late nineties. All the information was right there on your father’s computer. All it took was a few keystrokes to find files with Meadow’s name.”

  Holden stood and began to pace. He knew Six was watching him, but he couldn’t keep still any longer. This thing was building and building, and he had no idea where it was going anymore. He had already wrapped his mind around a psychic vampire who’d been twisted by the obscene hierarchy of the Community. But now . . .

  “At the time there was a directory of everyone in the Community. They categorized us by psychic power and then ranked us by utility. Those with the highest utility were vetted for the Farm, where they’d undergo evaluations and realignment, and be taught to become devoted staff of the Community.”

  “I don’t get that. Realignment is meant for people who’ve lost focus. Why would they realign people just because they’re extremely talented?”

  “Do you think everyone’s realignment looked like yours?”

  “I—” Did he think everyone got private tutors and gourmet meals? Absolutely not. “Even so . . . it doesn’t make sense. The purpose of realignment is like . . . it’s supposed to be so people can check themselves and relearn the principles of the Community. The goals and rules.”

  “Holden, you’re repeating this bullshit because you want to believe it. It doesn’t make it true.”

  “Fine. Then what’s the truth?”

  Six placed both of his hands on the table, palms down, with his fingertips pressing against the flimsy wood. “Your mother has experienced the real version of realignment.”

  “My mo—” Holden broke off as the sound of her shrill voice rang in his ears along with the robotic defenses of his father. He stopped pacing and put a palm against the wall, steadying himself. “It’s brainwashing.”

  “Correct. A more suitable term would be ‘reprogramming.’”

  “Jesus God.” Holden inhaled sharply but couldn’t seem to catch the breath he didn’t remember losing. He leaned heavily against the wall. “Is it reversible?”

  “I don’t know, but some people are resistant to it.”

  “Like you,” Holden said.

  “And your brother.”

  Holden slid down the wall until his ass met the floor. He’d known all along that Chase was at the Farm, but now . . . “Do you think they’re trying to reprogram him?”

  “Maybe. I saw when they brought him in, but he was kept isolated this time around.” Six got to his feet and took measured steps over to where Holden had slid to the floor. There was a moment where indecision appeared to consume him, evident in hands that rose before once again falling to his sides, and the way his mouth opened and closed before he spoke again. “Years ago when I first went to the Farm, your brother was still there. Jasper was continuously . . . working on him. Studying him. And then trying to program him to become a devoted Community member, but he was resistant. Even though he’d grown up in that place, his mind was open enough for him to see it all for what it was. They tried other means of controlling him, like leeching some of his abilities away. They thought that was what finally caused the reprogramming to take effect, but in reality—”

  “He was just faking it so they’d stop . . . torturing him.” Holden was nauseated. Psychic vampires or leeches or whatever they were called had never been a myth or a legend. The Community had known about them. The Community used them. Used them on Chase and who knew how many others. Maybe Lia had been right about the other disappearances. It was entirely possible Beck hadn’t been behind all of them. In fact, it was entirely possible that Beck hadn’t acted on her own. At this point, the unlikely and the awful were all possible. “My God.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Holden clenched his fingers in his hair, but it did nothing to stop his racing mind and pounding heart. “How could I have never known?”

  “Because you didn’t work on the Farm around people who were unable to psy fuck you into forgetting everything you’d seen.” Six crouched on the floor beside Holden. He put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I worked out pretty quickly that it was better to pretend their brainwashing had worked on me, so they trusted me to be a good little cyborg for them. And along the way, I met someone from Ex-Comm right before she was reprogrammed.”

  “Who?”

  Six’s gaze cut away. “I’d rather not say.”

  Holden searched his face intently. “Do Hale and Kyger know, or is this my father’s operation?”

  “In all my years of working at the Farm, I’ve never once seen the other founders there. It was only your father. He would talk about his vision for the Community—a place where powerful psy children were born, bred, and groomed to become influential members of society, whether that was as celebrities, musicians, socialites, or politicians. He saw the potential in psychic powers to shape things in a way that would make the Community, and him, a powerful force.”

  “My father actually made that statement?”

  Six nodded. “Not all in one go, but over time. He talked to me a lot even though I didn’t always talk back. He trusted me.”

  Holden shook his head in disbelief. “My father doesn’t trust anyone. Not even me.”

  “Because you ask too many questions,” Six repeated. “You’re too smart. Too thoughtful. And people like your father consider that threatening. They want you to accept his truth and not wonder what else is missing from the equation.”

  “And he thought you had done that. That you’d been one hundred percent reprogrammed over time?” Holden leaned forward, brow wrinkling. “But why would they think that when you’re completely shielded from psychic manipulation?”

  “Because you don’t need psychic powers to reprogram someone.” A shadow crossed Six’s face, and his gaze slanted away. “I do believe they have dreamwalkers and telepaths who might work on people who go in for realignment, and go for a subtle approach, but that’s not what happens to people like me. Or Chase. Or your mother. We’re too shielded from psychic invasions, so they try the old-fashioned approach.”

  Holden felt sick, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “Sensory deprivation, starvation, repeated questioning by different people or people in masks once you’re confused and delusional. Exploiting your weaknesses, finding your guilt, and then making you believe that they’ll help you get out of there if only you would stop being so difficult. And when they’ve defeated you, and have gotten you to say what they want you to say, they make you repeat it until it becomes real to you.”

  “My God . . .”

  Holden wanted to close his eyes or cover his ears, but he didn’t. He stared into the bottomless pools of Six’s eyes.

  “They also use drugs. Psy suppressants and sedatives to keep people calm and stop them from utilizing their own gifts.”

  “Do psy suppressants prevent a psychic from using his shield?”

  Six shook his head. “No. A mental shield isn’t an extrasensory gift. It’s just a way of protecting yourself and finding strength within yourself.”

  “Except for you,” Holden said. “That’s different.”

  “Right. I was born with some kind of psychic immunity.”

  It was all so wild. So fucking farfetched that Holden wanted to say it wasn’t true. That it couldn’t be true. That there was no way there was so much evil lurking in the heart of the Community that had been his home.

  “Who is the Ex-Comm person you met at the Comm?” he pressed again. “I want to know who else has known about my father.”

  “It’s irrelevant. My original point was that if I’d never met that person, I’d be in the dark just like you.”

  “Somehow I doubt i
t.” Holden braced his hands against his eyes, wincing, before dropping them again. “For a cyborg, you’re good at trying to comfort people.”

  “Heh. I do okay when I make an effort.”

  Holden shrugged off Six’s hand. “And why are you making an effort with me? Why did you even take this job, Sixtus? Something tells me my father didn’t handpick you from the Farm and put you here.”

  “You’re right about that. I was standing by during a board meeting, heard the discussion about the problem with Evolution, and volunteered. Said I wanted to get off the Farm for a change.”

  “Why?”

  Six hesitated, then he pressed his lips together and nodded, as if reassuring himself. “Because you were at the tribunal the day I was sent to the Farm. And when they were done discussing my fate, I heard you ask your father if I would be okay. Literally the only human in the room, maybe even in the whole goddamn city, who gave a shit about my state of mind.”

  Holden started, eyes opening wide. “You saw me?”

  “Yeah, I saw you. Even as a kid, I noticed those big hazel eyes with the golden flecks. And how sad they were for me.” Six’s mouth jerked to the side in a not-quite smile. It was so strained Holden wondered if Six was forcing it just to make the situation less tense and alarming. “I didn’t have a lot to hang on to in the next few years, but I always remembered that. I remembered you. Your pretty face and concerned psy-kid eyes. Your grief . . . for me. Even if you forgot about me later, which I figured you had, you’d cared in that moment.”

  “I cared,” Holden said softly. “I thought about you for weeks. And I still remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Why?” Six shook his head, but the guardedness was out of his eyes and he looked open again. “I always wondered why you’d said anything at all. I was nothing, and you were everything.”

  “You were a kid my age who was being tried like an adult,” Holden said sharply. “They talked about you like you were an asset, not a person. It was the first time the Community scared me. I never forgot that moment. Or you.”

  “And I never forgot you.” Six wet his lips, hands curling into loose fists. “And sometimes, when I was alone and waiting for the next person to question me for hours while I stood in the middle of a blank white room with my stomach trying to eat itself, your face and the worry in your voice were the only positive memory I could muster. Because you gave a fuck, and also because . . . it was the first time I’d felt connected to someone. I’d never even had that kind of connection with Meadow.”

  Holden’s heart throbbed before climbing to his throat. “When you say you felt connected . . .”

  “For the first time, I felt someone else.” Six reached up to brush his fingers along Holden’s cheek, then down to his jaw. “I felt your sadness. Your fear. Your concern. I have no idea why I felt it with you and not Meadow or anyone else in the world up until then—fuck, up until now—but the spark was there. And that spark got me through a lot.”

  Holden closed his eyes for a moment, taking deep breaths and trying to push down the building urge to pull Six close to him. To kiss him. Be one with him. Because there wasn’t time for that now. And he couldn’t believe everything Six said. Especially when he’d hidden all this since stepping foot inside of Evolution. And Holden still had no idea if this was all a game. Clever words used to convince a mark.

  “You’re why I took this assignment,” Six said roughly. “Something was cooking and your name was all over it.”

  “But it’s been years,” Holden said, voice pitched low. “You expect me to believe you held on to some speck of intrigue or gratitude for all this time?”

  “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true.” Six touched Holden’s shoulder again, gentler this time. “I always wondered if you’d grown up to be just another brain-dead Community drone, but from what I heard, you still had remnants of the kid who asked the wrong questions and noticed the things no one else gave a fuck about. So I took the job.”

  Holden laughed, but it was tinged with disbelief. “Are you sure it’s not because you want Richard Payne’s son to join Ex-Comm? I’d make a fabulous resource. Unfortunately, I’m not ready to indict my father before confronting him head-on.”

  Six’s entire demeanor closed off. His face shuttered, spine snapping straight as he got to his feet in one fluid motion and took a step back. Whatever he’d been trying to forge with Holden was over. All it had taken was a single sentence.

  “If you go to your father, you’ll regret it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he doesn’t give a fuck about you, Holden. You may be his son, but you’re just another empath in a big crowd of empaths. You don’t stand out. You’re not Chase.”

  If Six had shut down, Holden became a wall of ice.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Holden slept for only forty minutes because that was all his brain would allow.

  Between tossing and turning, he dreamed of his parents. In each dream, his mother had no mouth and his father had a gaping hole in his chest. It was fitting but terrifying, and he jerked awake, remembering things about his childhood that had apparently existed in a dark alcove of his brain for the past thirty years.

  Before they’d moved to the apartment in the CW building, they’d lived in an enormous mansion on the Upper East Side, complete with an elevator and servant’s quarters. His parents’ bedroom had been the size of Holden’s entire apartment, and they’d had separate closets. On Holden’s tenth birthday, he’d found his mother crying in hers. She’d been standing in front of a row of beautiful dresses while sobbing as if someone had completely broken her heart. He’d asked her what was wrong, and she’d lied through her tears.

  “I stubbed my toe,” she’d said. “Don’t worry, darling.”

  She’d been an accomplished psychic and had blocked any attempts of his to reach out with his gift, and he’d taken her at her word despite the bruises on her arms and her strained expression for the rest of the night. His father had acted like he’d noticed nothing amiss, but after that day, Holden hadn’t been able to stop noticing. Suddenly, he found his mother crying or staring blankly or clenching her hands into white-knuckled fists with a frequency that had sunk his stomach.

  When he was twelve, he’d snuck out of his bedroom after hearing a heated argument in their mammoth-sized one.

  “I don’t like this,” his mother had hissed. “This is not who we are. It’s not who you are.”

  His father had shouted back with frustration evident in every word. “This was always who I was. I’m doing what we need to do.”

  “You don’t need to do any of this, Richard. It’s sick. And if this was your plan all along for the Community, you’re sick too.”

  Even as a child, Holden had felt the imminent danger crackling in the air. It’d twisted his guts, sickening him so badly that he’d had to bite his lip to keep from crying out at the sharp pain ripping through him.

  The last memory had been after they’d moved to the CW. It had been the night before his mother had gone to the Farm. Richard Payne had looked at Holden, smiling coldly, and said, “Say good night to your mother, Holden.”

  Even without knowing what was coming, the ongoing cycle of his mother coming and going upstate before living there indefinitely, Holden had been unsettled by his tone. But he’d been more unsettled by the look on Chase’s face. Chase had stared at Richard Payne, arms crossed and lips twisted in a sneer. Whereas Holden had been confused and afraid, Chase had understood.

  There had never been a smoking gun buried in Holden’s mind, but there were enough repressed or . . . realigned fragments of moments to culminate into ugliness. A fuller picture of his parents’ relationship that went far beyond what he’d already known. Something dark and abusive and frightening that had resulted in his mother being sent away and turned into a mindless drone of the Community. Or more accurately: of Richard Payne and Jasper.

  Holden wondered if the other founders knew, or
if they, like so many others, were caught up in the constantly evolving lie where Richard was the hero of the Community and anyone who questioned him was a danger.

  Holden forced himself to get out of bed at ten o’clock. His eyes were so bloodshot he looked like he’d been hot boxing with a joint rather than tossing in his oversized bed. A shower didn’t help. Neither did coffee. There was nothing he could do to unwind and get the kinks out of his system when he was slowly coming to the realization that Lia, Elijah, and Six were right.

  His father was a monster.

  Holden’s initial plan had been to storm Richard’s office at the CW, confront him with evidence or at least his assumptions based on clues, and ask what the hell was going on. But the more his brain unlocked the pieces that had been carefully tucked away and hidden, the less that plan made sense. Because Six was right.

  If Richard would send away his beautiful and talented wife, and the son who had at least four known talents, why would he spare Holden? The mediocre gay one with the troublesome club. The one he was already trying to use as a scapegoat for the fact that some of his own shit was finally floating on the surface.

  Pulling out his phone, Holden stared at Nate’s number for a long moment before hitting Call. It went straight to voice mail.

  “Fuck.”

  Next up was Lia. Her phone rang several times before also going to voice mail.

  “Goddamn it.”

  Holden paced again, running a hand over his unruly hair. He’d been yanking his hands through it all night, and it was full of snarls. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Holden pulled at the tangles while staring at his phone. Six was the only other option, but would the man even talk to him again after the way their night, morning, whatever, had ended? With Holden icing him out due to an inability to digest the information Six had forced on him, and Six losing patience with Holden’s failure to get with the program and stop trying to talk reason with Big Daddy Payne.