“Don’t let him.”
“What? Why?”
They pulled me up and we started walking into the building. Four guards had Lorne, now dampened and cuffed, as they walked into the building in front of us. “Put me in the max security room. Is that still empty?”
“It will be. We have Raider in there now, but I think you’re probably more of a concern than she is,” Portia said.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll have people work with you, okay? We’ll figure out what he did to you. You’re not going to have to worry about this forever. You broke his control.”
“You’re probably free of him now, as it is,” Jenson added.
“I don’t want to risk it,” I said. “I’m dampened and contained until we know for sure. I’m not risking anyone else. Lorne was the one who brainwashed me. Work with him. He can be trusted. But keep an eye on him,” I added. “I have his family. If he pisses me off, I’m not going to let him see them. He needs to fucking fix me.”
“Okay,” I heard Jenson say. I didn’t relax at all until they had me stashed in a prison cell, shackled in, dampened, and alone. It wasn’t until Jenson, Portia, and the prison guards left, leaving me shackled to the chair, surrounded by the smooth, cold metal walls of my cell, that I let myself relax at all.
I couldn’t hurt anyone here. Now, it felt like I could breathe again.
Chapter Fourteen
I could smell him long before I ever saw him. Same cologne, same clean, soapy scent. I could hear his heart beating a heavy staccato, slightly faster than the footsteps that brought him closer to my cell.
I turned my head toward the wall. Sam and the rest of the guards knew my wishes on this. I couldn’t face him in with me, not yet. I heard him talking to Sam, his voice getting louder, angrier. I could hear the sadness in it, the frustration, and it tore at me. For her part, Sam stayed strong.
“She’s been through a nightmare, Caine,” she finally said in exasperation. “Okay? She turned herself in. She’s afraid of herself. She isn’t up to seeing you yet.”
“Why not?” he asked, and he sounded defeated.
“Think about it, man. You two obviously care about one another. If you did something you were ashamed of, who would you feel most afraid of facing? Someone who hates you, or someone who loves you? Who would you be more worried about letting down?” Sam explained softly, gently, and I felt tears come to my eyes and spill down the side of my face.
“Can I just stay out here? I just need… ” he trailed off.
“Out here,” she said. “The door has been reset. You can’t get in, even if you tried.”
There was silence, and then I heard soft footsteps as Sam stepped a few feet away, I guess giving Ryan some privacy.
I kept looking at the wall.
“My grandparents called,” I heard him say in a low, hoarse voice. “They told me what you did, Jolene. You saved their lives. He tried to make you kill them, and you fought through whatever he did to you, and you didn’t do it. And then you protected them from him. You’re the strongest, most amazing woman I’ve ever known. Thank you for doing that.”
I was crying outright now, my lips pressed together tightly, tears streaming freely down my face. Sweet words, but wrong in nearly every way.
“I know it wasn’t you. We all know. You get that, right? There’s nothing you’ve done that will make me think less of you.”
I bit back a sob, and I heard his head thump against the door.
“I’m not trying to make this worse or harder for you. I get it. You’re going through shit. I wanted you to know.”
He was silent for a while. He was still there. I could hear his breath, his heart beating.
“I murdered people. Too many,” I finally whispered.
“Under his control, Jolene. He murdered people. You were just the weapon.”
“I hate myself so much right now,” I said. “Whatever he did, it kind of muddied the memories of me killing them. And when I got control back, at your grandparents’ house, it all came back. I was ruthless and cold. I didn’t care who I was killing or why. I just took him at his word and did what he said to do.”
“Jolene—”
“I should have fought it harder. Forty-two people. And they’re dead because of me.”
“They’re dead because of him, Jolene,” he groaned.
“He wouldn’t have killed them if he hadn’t been able to use me. His powers are all fucked up, at least a good part of the time. So many times, he wanted to hurt me, he wanted… ” I shook my head. “And he couldn’t. He tried, but he couldn’t. He needed me to do it.”
“He seemed plenty strong from what my grandma said.”
“His powers come and go. Sometimes, he’s ridiculously powerful, and often, he’s weak as a baby. There’s no telling how he’ll be at any given moment. So, yeah, some of those people, at least, would still be alive if it hadn’t been for me.”
“He would have used somebody else.”
“Somebody else with a freakish, dangerous amount of power?” I let out a bitter laugh. “Somebody so mentally weak that him and his freak squad got control with hardly having to work at all?”
I turned toward the door to see him looking in at me. His eyes widened, and a look of absolute rage crossed his face.
“What the fuck? Did he do that?”
It took me a second, and then I remembered Killjoy hitting me.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The fuck it doesn’t.” He started walking away and I called him back. A second later, he was there.
“It’s not worth it. They won’t let you in to kick his ass anyway.”
“Why didn’t you kill him, Jolene?” he asked, uncertainty in his voice.
“I wanted to,” I said softly. “I thought I had, at first. I hit him so hard. I almost did just go ahead and finish him, when I realized he wasn’t actually dead. One more death at this point, and his, especially, doesn’t make a whole lot of a difference. But I need my mind back to being my own, and I don’t know exactly what he did to me. I know there were injections, and I think that was part of what maybe kept my memories suppressed. But there was brainwashing in there, too, and I think they implanted something. But I don’t know if I’m imagining that or not. Dr. Ali is going to run some tests. I figured if we had him, along with Lorne, we could find out exactly what was done to me. I can’t go out there not knowing. I’d rather be locked up here forever than risk losing control someday. Because if I do, who the hell is going to stop me?”
He rested his forehead against the glass pane in my cell door.
“That makes sense. All I can think of is how badly I want to hurt him,” he said, eyes glued to me.
“Part of me is worried I didn’t kill him because he still has control, at least a little bit,” I said quietly. “There were times… there were times I knew I hated him, and I wanted to kill him, but I just… couldn’t. I can’t explain it. Like my body wouldn’t cooperate with my mind, and the second I had the thought most of the time, it just kind of drifted away.”
He didn’t answer, and we each stayed as we were, in silence, for a long time.
“I missed you.”
I blinked back tears. “I think I missed you. Your name brought me back,” I whispered.
I chanced a glance at him. He was watching me. “My grandma said she thought it seemed like that.”
“She said your name, and it was like the floodgates opened. I… “ I trailed off, unable to say the words. One more reason to hate Killjoy a little more. Those three little words, words I’d wanted to say to him so badly once upon a time, were poison now. “You are everything to me. You have to know that. That hasn’t changed. But I can’t… ”
“You can’t do this with me now, because you have to get yourself back before you can even think about being anything to anyone else,” he finished.
I gave him a weak smile. “You know me too well.”
He took a deep breath. “Tell me so
mething I can do for you, Jolene. Something in addition to giving you time and space, because I’ll do that. I’ll do what you need me to do. What else do you need?”
“Tell your grandparents I’m sorry about their house. I’ll pay for the damages.”
“StrikeForce already is. Well, you are, kind of, via the money you stole from Alpha.”
“Good.”
I glanced up and he was looking at me. “Christ, I want to kill him. I’ve never wanted to kill anybody in my life, but fuck, do I want him dead,” he muttered. “He hurt you.”
I swallowed and glanced away.
“I wish I could have done more,” he said quietly.
“Did you believe in me? Did you ever doubt me, wonder if maybe I was who I seemed to be?”
“Never,” he said loudly, his eyes flashing. “Never. The first time he brought you out in public, I knew better. Everyone did.”
“Thank you. You had more faith in me than I did.”
“You’re the one thing I believe in. I told you that already.”
“It goes both ways. I’m so glad she said your name. I was trying to figure out why that worked when just hearing your code name just kind of made me feel unsure at most. His brainwash people messed with my memories. Rearranged shit. Erased just about everything else. He told me that StrikeForce killed Mama. That StrikeForce was crooked, evil. He had newspaper articles, real ones, you know? Because the media loves us so much,” I said with a small laugh. “It all seemed to make sense. He told me that I’d been undercover with SF and you guys had done things to my head. The injections and his ‘therapy’ were supposed to help me get my mind back. And it all made sense! I knew I was a thief before. I remembered being in jail here. But everything after that got kind of fuzzy. He said Mayhem broke me out and I joined him. And I wondered why, because I felt sick a lot of the time, just being near him, but I couldn’t concentrate on much of anything for long. I hated that.” I paused. “But then your grandma said your name, and things came back. I wish I knew why.”
“It must have been part of your core memories,” a voice said, and I looked to the side to see Lorne heading toward my cell. I immediately looked at his hand, hoping to see a syringe there. I nearly cried in disappointment when I realized that his hand was empty.
“Do you remember what I told you about how erasure works?”
I shook my head.
“Damn it. I was hoping that breaking the conditioning had brought your short-term memory back.”
“I’m already forgetting things that happened since I got back here,” I told him.
He shook his head. “You saved my wife. My girls. Thank you for that.”
“I did?”
Ryan sighed and thumped his head against the door again.
“Yeah, kid. You did,” Lorne said.
“Okay. So what about the erasure thing?”
“When he had me erase your memories, we had to keep your kind of core, basic memories intact, otherwise we would have had to, for example, teach you how to walk and use a toilet and things like that all over again. So we erased everything but the core.” He paused. “My theory is that whatever Caine’s grandmother said to you, whatever words she used, they were part of your core, part of the things that were so deep, erasing them would mean erasing some of your basic functioning. I don’t know if you remember, but the first time Killjoy tried to touch you, you vomited on him.”
Ryan laughed a little, and I loved the sound of it.
“Really?”
“Yeah. So your distaste or hatred or whatever you had of Killjoy never left you. And certain details about Caine apparently never left you. They’re the type of soul-deep or bone-deep or whatever you want to say, things that you just can’t get rid of. That’s my best guess, anyway.”
We were all silent.
“Can you get her back to where she should be? Her memories and that?” Ryan asked him. His voice was cool, hard. It was clear that he didn’t have a whole lot of love for Lorne, and I could completely relate.
Lorne shook her head. “Likely not. We can work on trying to improve your short term memory, but the things he had me do… there’s just too much trauma. Too much erasure. I’m sorry.”
I nodded.
“Did you implant something in me?”
Now it was his turn to nod. “It was what made the control phrase work. We can surgically remove that. It will take some time for the effects to wear off, but we’ll get rid of that, at least.”
“Control phrase?” Ryan asked.
I closed my eyes, thinking that I never wanted to hear that particular phrase again.
“You can tell him,” I said to Lorne. “Just not here. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay,” Lorne said, and he and Ryan exchanged a look. After a few moments, Lorne said goodbye and walked away, promising to check on me again. Ryan stood there, and we were silent for a long time.
“He fucked with your powers,” he said after a while.
“Yeah. He left my strength and flight the way it was, except that he augmented the strength a little, I guess. I’m even more clumsy on my feet than I was before. I think that was for him, so he had a chance against me.”
Ryan snarled, ran his hands over his face.
“But he added augmented senses, like yours, and invisibility. Teleportation. It was how I was able to get in and kill people so easily.”
“Jolene—”
“Don’t try to make me feel less guilty. I need to be better. I need to be smarter. I need to know that my mind’s my own. And then I need to figure out what’s next for me.”
“Me. I’m next for you,” he said with a small smile, and I let out a small laugh.
“Other than you. Because of course, the second I feel okay with being out among normal people, I’m going to trap you in my room with me for a few weeks, at least.”
“Promises, promises,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth still lifted slightly, his gaze locked onto mine through the window.
“Someday, I’ll make good on them,” I said.
“I’ll be here.”
I smiled. “Get some sleep.”
He nodded. He gave me one more lingering glance, and then he walked away, and I took a deep breath.
God, I would give just about anything for an injection. All of this feeling, all of these emotions, had me feeling raw and at odds with myself.
One more thing to work through, apparently. I felt impatient. There were things I still needed to do, but hell if I could remember what they were.
The next day was a day of people coming in to visit me, and then me forgetting most of what we’d talked about. But the sense that I was among people who cared stayed with me and helped counter some of the withdrawals I was feeling for the lovely numbness that Lorne had once delivered via his needles. Other than the trembling and nausea, sometimes I felt downright normal. Ryan had come to see me first thing in the morning, and I’d told Sam to let him into the cell. He sat in a chair nearby while people came to see me. Jenson had been a weepy mess, and it made me cry, too.
“I don’t think Jenson was whole the entire time you were gone,” Ryan said. “Jensons were running all over the damn place, looking for you or for leads on you.”
She laughed a little, and a flash of something, of me cutting down a woman in black and gray, and then another, flashed before my eyes.
I looked at her closely.
“Oh, god,” I gasped, nearly unable to breathe through the guilt. “Jenson. Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Jenson. I killed two of your multiples.” She’d told me before what it was like to lose one of her copies, that she felt their deaths, that there was an emptiness there, a void that just stayed with her.
And I’d killed two of them.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, and she shook her head.
“It’s not your fault,” she said forcefully. “None of the things you did while you were under his control were your fault. None of the deaths, none of the damage, none of
the thefts. Getting taken by him wasn’t your fault. You trusted a teammate, and she had every single one of us duped.”
“Chance.”
“Chance,” Jenson spat.
“Can you hand me those pieces of paper?” I asked her. She picked up my notes with my scrawled handwriting on them. “I’m trying to remember. There’s something about Chance on those.”
Jenson held the paper up as I read through them. “What’s the deal with this?” she asked quietly.
“I got tired of having to relearn everything. So every time I was told something that might have been important, I wrote it down.”
“But you remembered you had the notes?” she asked.
“Not usually,” I said. “I slept with them under my pillow or in my pockets. It would be like a little surprise every time I found them. I remember that much,” I said, and she shook her head.
I scanned one more piece of paper and found what I was looking for. “Oh, there it is. Chance is Dr. Death’s daughter.”
“What?” Jenson and Ryan said in unison. I shrugged.
“She must have still been under the impression that you killed Dr. Death,” Ryan said quietly.
“Did I?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“No, that was Killjoy.”
“Hm.”
“She’s still out there somewhere,” Jenson said quietly.
“We’ll find her.”
“And Eve,” I said. “She was there a lot. At first, anyway,” I said as I read through more of my notes.
“Yeah, she’s gone into hiding since one of the security cameras at those banks you robbed picked her up. We’re working nonstop to find her.”
I kept looking through my notes. “There were heroes with other uniforms here that day he brought me here,” I said, reading what I remembered from that day.
“Yeah. You probably don’t remember, but before you went missing, Mayhem was already hitting the hero teams pretty hard. And you suggested maybe calling in whoever was left from those teams, to get them to all start working with us and forming a more central, more united team,” Jenson said. “After he used you to demolish so many of the remaining teams, we realized we didn’t have much of a choice. We have members now from all over the country and around the world. They wear their team uniforms, mostly out of respect for those who have fallen. But they’re with us.”
Strikeforce (Book 4): Day's End Page 17