Strikeforce (Book 4): Day's End

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  She sliced out at me again.

  “I know you’re in there. I know you know me.”

  “I don’t know you,” she said, and it hurt worse than any other cut she could have given me.

  “You know me,” I said, just barely jumping back from her blades as she slashed at me. “You’re the love of my life. You’re my best friend. You saved my life. You sat by my bedside. You read to me and talked to me.”

  Every other word, it seemed, I was ducking or jumping away from her. Blood bloomed on my arms, my shoulders, from when I’d been too slow. I barely noticed it.

  “You turned me on to historical romance,” I said, desperate for anything, every memory killing me just a little bit more. “You like it when I kiss that sensitive spot, right under your ear.”

  I almost stumbled, ready to jump, when she stopped moving. One of her hands went to the spot I’d just mentioned, that part of her jawline that met her earlobe. I could hear her breath hitch, her heartbeat go nuts.

  “Jolene, end this fucker now. Don’t listen to his lies,” Killjoy said. “I love you,” he added and I saw her entire body tense. She gave a tiny shake of her head, but other than that, she didn’t move.

  “Might have to fight your own fights there, chief,” I said.

  “I love you now kill him,” Killjoy said. He sounded crazy, like a man who’d lost control a long time ago. All I knew was that Jolene was staring at me. I looked back at her.

  She dropped her knives.

  “Kill him,” Killjoy shrieked. I could feel the rest of StrikeForce and the remainders of the other hero teams pressing toward us, still fighting Mayhem, but coming closer. We knew we were better together, strength in numbers all that.

  And they knew I needed all the strength I could get right now.

  “I don’t know you,” Jolene repeated, and I knew she was talking to me. “But I wish I did.”

  It was then that Killjoy became visible. He’d been standing to Jolene’s right the entire time.

  He had his sword in his hand, and he swung it at me with a wild, chilling shriek.

  It was so fast, so sudden, he would have had my head off. I was too distracted, too messed up from seeing her. I should have taken myself off of this mission, and I knew it.

  I was as good as dead, and then an invisible force seemed to knock Killjoy away, the blade flying out of his hand right before it made contact with my neck. I glanced at Jolene to see her holding her hands up. Killjoy lunged at her. I charged for him.

  In the next instant, all of the Mayhem members were gone, and all I had left of Jolene were the blades she’d dropped. I let my head fall forward. The prison was still echoing with the sounds of battle, guards against inmates. I closed my eyes, took a breath, then opened them again and did what I was supposed to do.

  My mind was a million miles away, my heart was shredded. All I could do was what my body knew to do. Fight. So, I did.

  She was gone again. That was ultimately all that mattered now. I’d had her in my grasp, and I’d let her slip away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jolene

  Sleeping was useless.

  I tossed off my blankets and got out of bed again. It was two days after our confrontation with StrikeForce at the prison, and Connor seemed to be avoiding me again, which was more than fine, as far as I was concerned.

  He’d yelled and screamed and then, stupidly, dared to raise a hand to me when we’d gotten back. He’d earned himself a gushing nose in return, and I wondered if he was crazy or just stupid. Or did he maybe like it when I beat the shit out of him, even though he was the one who was supposed to be in control? I mean, really. He could have used his stupid control phrase on me just to make sure I wouldn’t hurt him back.

  As long as I had just had an injection, I was numb enough that I really didn’t care about trying to figure out Connor or his motivations or anything else. The thing was, they just seemed less effective now. Sure, they’d make me feel numb and cold for a while, but it wore off much faster, and the numbness wasn’t as strong as it had been. The first night, I’d gone to Lorne and pretty much begged him for another injection. He’d studied me closely, then shook his head.

  “Not a good idea. Go back to your room.”

  I’d nearly taken his head off, desperate for a hit, desperate for just a little more numbness. Anything to forget those brown eyes, that voice, the stupid, never-ending ache inside me that had started with that first glance and just refused to go away. Just something to make me forget, make me stop feeling at odds with myself. Anything.

  “Come on, Lorne… ”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m about to lose my mind. I can’t do this anymore,” I muttered, putting my head in my hands. I heard Lorne sigh.

  “Look, kid—”

  “I’m twenty-five years old, Lorne.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve got almost twenty years on you, so you’re a kid as far as I’m concerned. Look. I’m in the same boat you are. I do what he says. I don’t make a move without him telling me to. It’s just the way things have to be. So if you want an increased dose, you need to take it up with him. If he tells me to give you more, I’ll give you more.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, I kinda figured. I’m sorry.”

  I looked up at him. “What do you mean you’re in the same boat I’m in? You’re part of his crew, right?”

  Lorne laughed, a bitter, dry sound. Then he stopped, glancing around.

  “He’s not here. He left like an hour ago,” I said.

  Lorne nodded. “I told you this already. Do you really not remember?”

  I shook my head, and he stayed silent for several moments. “I’m really sorry, Jolene. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. “It comes and goes. Every once in a while, I’ll remember stuff. And then other things, I don’t forget. Like, I swear I can remember hearing you say that you guys erased my mind and reprogrammed me. And he wanted to do it again, but you said it would break me, basically.”

  Lorne nodded. “That’s true.”

  “You erased my mind?”

  He nodded again. “The first time, I did selective erasure. We agreed that it would be better to keep as much of you, you, as possible. He told me what he wanted removed. So I kind of painstakingly went in and cut things out of your memories, replaced them with other things.”

  I scrunched up my face. “Okay. But then you did it again?”

  He nodded. “The results of the first round didn’t please him. You were… not exactly compliant, even if you didn’t know why. Still too much of yourself left.”

  I thought about that for a bit. “So he had you erase everything?”

  “No. We can’t erase everything,” he said, sitting down. I stayed standing, arms crossed over my body. I was freezing all of a sudden, and I wasn’t sure if it was this stupid building, my addiction sending my system out of whack, or the things Lorne was telling me. “If we erase everything, then it really is everything. You wouldn’t know how to walk. How to feed yourself. How to talk, read, understand language. Okay? So I erased a lot, but those kind of core abilities, that core of things you know, I had to leave that alone. It was as close as we could get to a blank slate before I started adding things back. It’s why, for example, even though I didn’t even try giving you back any memories of your mother, you still remember her. Stuff that’s so ingrained in you, it’s much harder to get at without a complete wipe. But he needed you to be able to fight, as soon as possible, so we just got rid of everything but your core memories.”

  I didn’t really know what to say to that. I wanted to hate him. I more than wanted to kill him.

  “Was I a killer, Lorne?” I asked quietly. “Was I a villain?”

  He didn’t answer, and when I looked up at him, I saw that he was looking down, as if he was unable to look at me. It was pretty much all the answer I needed. And I also understood why he couldn’t say it.

  “What does he hav
e on you? Why are you here?”

  He kept looking down. “He has my family. My wife. My three daughters. He knows I don’t mean a damn. He could kill me, and I’d greet it, rather than do this crap. But he took my family, and he has his goons guarding them, and all it takes is one wrong move and he’ll hurt them. I shouldn’t even be telling you this,” he whispered, his voice panicked.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone. I’ll probably forget everything you said. Just give it five minutes or so,” I joked, and he shook his head.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Your situation is not. I agree. Mine, though? Mine is a freaking hoot.”

  He gave me a wary look, and I laughed and shook my head. “I have no idea who I am. You all could tell me I’m the fucking queen of England and I’d start looking around for my crown. I can’t remember shit two minutes after someone tells me, and I have entire conversations with the voices in my head.”

  “The… voices?”

  I shrugged. “At least one. Maybe two. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

  Lorne stared at me, then blew out a long, drawn-out breath that ended on a hissed “shit.”

  “I might have been batshit before you got to me.”

  “Maybe. I kind of doubt that, though. We never heard anything about you being nuts. Just kind of rash and vulgar.”

  “Well, I’m still those things too. When I’m not all numbed out, anyway. Can I have an injection now?”

  “What? No!”

  “Why not?

  “I— did you… did you already forget the answer to this question?”

  I shrugged.

  “No. I can’t give you another injection.”

  “Okay. Where’s he holding your family?”

  “You can remember that but not what I said about your injections?”

  “My shitty memory is selective and random. So. Where is he holding them?”

  Lorne shook his head. “In Detroit.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Probably because that was where we were when he nabbed us and he had people there he could trust to watch them for him.”

  “How’d he get you? Why’d he get you?”

  He gave me a look.

  “Okay. He got you because he planned this for me. Obviously.”

  “Uh huh. You’re the centerpiece of his plans,” he said, sounding more than a little miserable.

  “Did he just grab you, then?”

  “Pretty much. I was at a conference in Detroit. I was giving the keynote, as the premier neuroscientist in the world specializing in memory and knowledge design.”

  “Which is just a nice way to say advanced brainwashing.”

  He paused. “Yes. Brainwashing.”

  “Okay. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  “Believe me, if I’d known it would lead to this mess, I would have gone into proctology the way my father wanted me to.”

  I snorted, and even Lorne smiled a little. “But it’s not just school learning, right? There’s a little extra there,” I said.

  He studied me. “How’d you guess?”

  I shrugged. “You’re really good at what you do. A lot of that is science, but it seems a little far-fetched that science has figured out how to sift through a person’s memories and pick and choose which ones to remove.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He doesn’t know that, though,” I said, not sure how I knew it, but pretty sure I did, somehow.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Lorne said quietly. We went silent for a few moments, and my growing anxiety started to get on my nerves.

  “Can I have another injection?”

  “I can’t even tell if you’re just messing with me now or not,” Lorne said.

  “About what?”

  He sighed. “never mind. No, you can’t have another injection. If you want one and it isn’t on the schedule, you have to ask Connor.”

  “I don’t want to talk to Connor.”

  “I know.”

  I glanced around, looking over the items on Lorne’s cluttered desk in the corner of his room/lab. “Can I have a pen and some paper?”

  He gave me a dubious look. “I don’t know if I’m —”

  “Come on. I just want to be able to draw or something. I’m bored.”

  He shook his head a little and walked over to the desk. A moment later, he came back with a few pieces of plain white paper and a black pen. “Just let’s keep this between us, okay?”

  “Keep what between us?”

  “Now I know you’re messing with me, kid.”

  I laughed and accepted the paper and pen, folding the paper until it fit in the pocket of my jeans. “Thanks, Lorne.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’ll get your family back,” I told him quietly. “Let’s just keep that between us though, okay?”

  “If you even remember this,” he said, shaking his head.

  I shrugged, shoved the pen in my pocket, then left the lab and headed back to my room.

  The second I got there, I pulled the paper and pen out of my pocket and wrote down every single thing I could remember from our conversation, as well as anything else I knew that I didn’t want to forget. By the time I was finished, my hand was cramping and I had three pages, front and back, of tightly-scrawled notes. My brain might not remember a damn thing, but at least now I had a way to stop starting from scratch every time I came out of one of my injection-induced hazes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jolene

  I read through my notes several times every day. I made sure to do it when Connor was out. I had no idea where he went, but I was starting to suspect it had something to do with Eve, maybe. He’d pissed her off, and she hadn’t shown up at his base for a while, but she was important, it seemed.

  My suspicions were deepened when I heard Connor talking one night, long after I was usually asleep. I didn’t know who he was talking to. All I knew was that he’d clearly been hitting the bottle again, and he was mad at me. He sounded crazy whenever he started talking about me, and eventually he changed the subject after calling me a worthless whore.

  I had written down that he called me that a lot, so it didn’t even phase me anymore. After his tirade about me, he’d started going on and on about the ice queen, who, I realized after a while, was Eve.

  “Bitch thinks I don’t know what she’s up to. I know what she’s doing. Playing her own goddamn game, thinks she’s so smart. Building her little army. Kids,” he muttered, and I tried to force my pulse to stay normal. “I know her game. She’ll play along now, but when she feels ready, she thinks she’s gonna come after me. It’ll be fun to make Jolene kill her. Hot. Fuck, maybe I’ll get video of it,” he said with a filthy sounding laugh. My stomach turned.

  I quietly dug my paper and pen out from under my mattress and wrote: Eve is building an army. Kids? Will eventually use against Connor, and he knows all about it. She doesn’t know he knows.

  Also wants me to kill her, I added after a second.

  I put the paper in my pajama pants pocket. One day, I’d forgotten about the notes completely and left them under my mattress and had forgotten everything. I only remembered that because I’d written it down in my notes after I’d found them again. My notes were starting to become my own little personal lifeline to sanity, of a sort. I felt like a crazed bird or something, collecting any shiny piece of information I could find, collecting them, hoarding them. Maybe someday, they’d actually mean something, but for now, they made me feel less adrift. I wasn’t re-learning things I thought I knew all the time. Well, I was, I guess. But I was learning them from myself, not waiting for Connor to give me his version of what I needed to know, or for Lorne to let something slip. These were mine, and I was taking control in the only way it felt like I could in my muddled, numb state.

  This, too, felt familiar somehow, and I wished I understood why that was. In the end, all I could do was keep collecting the little tidbits of information, writing them down and re-readin
g them, hoping that someday, at least some of it would make sense.

  They were little things, but I had a feeling they mattered. And, either way, I didn’t want to lose them. It felt like I had so little that actually belonged to me. I just didn’t want to lose anything else, even if they were just random bits and pieces of thoughts and memories.

  When Connor wasn’t around, I wandered around his compound. Any piece of paper, any computer screen, I made sure to save or write about. Mostly, I had no idea what I was looking at, but I wrote it down anyway. If I was in an injection fog, none of it meant anything. But when I was coming out of one, things made sense, at least for a little while.

  That was how I realized, a couple days after I’d come across it, that I’d found where he was hiding Lorne’s family. They were in Detroit, which Lorne had told me, apparently. But now I knew where. A house on Detroit’s East Side. Abandoned, boarded up, from photos and other notes I’d found in Connor’s room. Three guards, for three teenage girls and a forty-something woman. A powered woman. Codename: Jarvis.

  I swore I knew that name, somehow.

  I had no idea what I’d do with the information, just that I had it. Acting on Lorne’s family situation would mean getting free of Connor, which would require both not feeling completely numb and remembering that I needed to get away. Those things rarely happened, and hardly ever at the same time. It was easier to forget about him when he wasn’t there, and he seemed to be avoiding me, mostly, and when he did see me, it was like he tried to stay as far away from me as possible.

  Either he really hated me, or he was afraid. I’d take it, either way.

  So I was surprised when he finally came for me, and told me to suit up in my StrikeForce uniform.

  I did, thinking of warm brown eyes the entire time. Was he taking me to Caine again? Was he hoping I’d kill him this time?

  I remembered almost nothing about Caine, other than the way I’d felt seeing him. That feeling, that warmth, that heart-pounding, stomach-fluttering feeling, just seemed to stay with me, one of the very few things that did. All of this ran through my head as I suited up, then pulled my mask on.