He rolled his eyes but had to laugh. “One fake marriage doesn’t mean you should just give up.”
“Anyway...,” she prodded.
“Right. Back on track.” Logan leaned his head back against the wall, trying to get more comfortable. “This is what I know - eight years ago, a Jane Doe was found on the side of the road, a victim of a hit-and-run. She had no identification on her and spent over a month in a coma. She was never identified.”
He glanced at Quincy, trying to gauge how she was taking the news but she wasn’t giving him much to go on. “A month after she woke up, she walked out of the hospital. Four years later, Dr. Garrison published his first paper on what he called Reflexive Neurological Bias. And four years after that, we believed we’d finally tracked Jane Doe to a college campus in Sheraton, Arkansas, living under the name Quincy O’Connell.”
“That’s basically the same story the Colonel gave me,” she said. “But why were you trying to track this Jane Doe down? What brought her to your attention?” Quincy asked. Her. Not me or I. She was distancing herself, not quite ready to buy in.
“In his research, Dr. Garrison collected medical records from around the country, attempting to identify patients he believed might be suffering from RNB. If I hadn’t read one of his papers on traumatic neurological pathology and contacted him first, he would have found Jones eventually on his own.”
“If he was looking for patients with RNB while he was still working for the company that sent the Colonel, that would explain how my name made their list. If Dr. Garrison believed I was one of these patients, he would have given my name, or at least my information, to this company.”
“No,” Logan disagreed. “Dr. Garrison wouldn’t do that. He was compiling data for his research but he would never have violated patient privacy by disclosing personal medical information. He was trying to help people, not make a buck. When he ran, he eliminated as much identifying information from the files as he could. And besides, you were just ‘Jane Doe’. It took us... and the company, apparently... four years to find you.”
“That’s not completely true,” she admitted. “I’ve seen the Colonel twice before. I recognized him from when I was Kara Scott and Grace Elliott. He found me both times. I was just lucky enough to see him before he saw me.”
“This has happened before?” Logan asked, incredulous. She had managed to go up against this guy three times now and escape? She really was special.
“That’s why I panicked that day at the cafe. I thought he had sent someone else this time.” She grinned wryly. “Turns out I was right after all, just not about you.”
Logan found the fact that she had considered him suspicious and dangerous, but not Brandon, slightly offensive but he decided to let it go for now.
She ran her hands through her hair and tugged on the ends absently. “I’d known for awhile that I’d stayed too long. I have a rule - nowhere longer than a couple of months. But I really liked Sheraton,” she said wistfully. “I like Mr. and Mrs. Boatright. I like Sit-A-Spell. I love the parks and the squares and the feeling that I almost fit in.” She was quiet for a minute. “Do you think they even notice that I’m gone?”
Logan could sympathize. “I could tell you that, yes, of course they notice. That they liked you as much as you liked them. But that’s not really going to make you feel any better, is it?”
Quincy looked away.
“It’s hard, being somewhere, making friends and living a life one minute, and then having to burn it, abruptly and with no notice, the next. Believe me, I know.” He ran a hand through his own hair, brushing out his tangle of curls. “And it never really gets any easier.”
Logan leaned forward and gripped Quincy’s knee, squeezing until she looked at him. “But you did what you had to do to survive. Mr. and Mrs. Boatright wouldn’t have wanted you to do any different.” He held her eyes until she nodded, resigned to what was, and then leaned back. “Besides, who knows? Once this is all cleared up, maybe we’ll go back to Sheraton. Let everyone know you’re okay.”
She looked at him, mildly amused. “We?”
He grinned. “You’re stuck with me now kid. Like it or not”.
They sat like that for a moment, grinning at each other and comfortable in the silence. Until Quincy broke it. “So, what superpowers does Dr. G think I have?”
Chapter 58
“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chose to bear.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
The burden is heavy. It weighs more with every revelation. Every discovery. How long can she stand to bear it? How long can she fight?
How long until she chooses?
* * *
Quincy
“So, what superpowers does Dr. G think I have?” Quincy laughed at the look on Logan’s face. She had clearly caught him off-guard with her spur-of-the-moment backhand.
“Why,” he finally asked, “do you think you have superpowers?”
“Because the Colonel said so.”
He seemed taken aback. “The Colonel said you have superpowers?”
“Well, he said something along those lines. I believe the term he used was weaponizable talent.”
Logan shook his head. “That’s a little different than superpowers.”
“Tomato, tomatoe,” Quincy said. “I want to know what they are.”
“Other than your super powered ability to annoy and frustrate?” He shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Seriously?” Now Quincy was annoyed. “You search high and low for years, trying to find me because I have some condition Dr. Garrison wants to study or document or whatever, but you don’t even know why?”
Logan rolled his eyes again. That seemed to be his preset response lately. She wondered if he did it to everyone or if she was just special. “Let’s dial your drama queen phasers down from kill to stun, shall we?” he said dryly.
Quincy pushed herself up from where she sat cross-legged on the bed and bounced herself over towards Logan, grabbing his feet and making him look, really look, at her. When he did, when she was sure she finally had his full attention, she asked what she really wanted to know. “Can he fix me?”
Logan cocked his head to the side, studying her suddenly serious eyes and tone. When he didn’t answer, she inched her way up his legs where they were sprawled across the bed until she was sitting on his lap, as close as she could possibly get, and gripped his shoulders. She needed him to get how important this was.
“Logan. Can Dr. Garrison fix me?”
Something in Logan’s eyes softened, saddening ever so slightly, and she had her answer.
“Quincy,” he said, reaching up to hold her face between his hands as she tried to pull away. “There’s nothing to fix.”
At that, Quincy tore away from him like she’d been slapped. “What do you mean, there’s nothing to fix?” she cried as she pushed away from him, retreating to the farthest corner of the bed.
“How can you say that? It never stops! I don’t sleep. I know how to perform field surgery but I don’t know my own birthday. The pain.” She paused for breath. Logan looked like he wanted to reach back out to her but was stopping himself through brute force.
“I just want to sleep,” she finally said quietly. Her voice sounded broken to her own ears. “I just want it to be quiet. I need it to be quiet. Is that so hard to understand?”
“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not hard to understand at all. And I don’t know. Maybe Dr. Garrison can figure out some way to help you cope. But you have to know that the condition is permanent. You were dying. Your brain couldn’t heal the trauma so it found a new way to function. This is your normal and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that.”
He looked so earnest. So raw.
“Jones didn’t want to accept it either. It hurts. I know it hurts. But it saved your life. The noise, the pain, the exhaustion? They may just be the price you have to pay to live.”
“Yeah, well, Jones did
n’t exactly buy your party line either, did he?” she spit out.
Now it was Logan who looked like he’d been slapped. She hadn’t realized it until she’d said it, but it made perfect sense. Jones hadn’t died from complications of his injury. He’d died because he couldn’t live with the results. How many times had she had those same thoughts? Those same doubts? Thoughts about just ending everything and hoping there was something better in death. Something quieter. Something…else. If she and Jones were the same, and she could see now that they were, then she could understand why he’d decided to end it himself.
Logan had gone pale. She watched as he opened his mouth, hesitated, and then closed it again. He shut his eyes, clearly trying to find words. Quincy wanted to feel sorry. That was a low blow and she knew it. But she just couldn’t. Not yet. She hadn’t realized she’d been slowly building up hope until it was yanked away. Finding out there really was something wrong with her, that there was a reason she was suffering, made her wonder if a future might exist where she didn’t have to live with the fear, anxiety, and pain anymore. Losing it, losing that small bit of hope she didn’t even know she had, broke down every wall she’d built up and in that moment, she understood Jones and the choice he had made perfectly. Because honestly, how could she keep living like this? How could anyone live like this?
“You’re right,” Logan finally said, voice raw with grief. “Jones didn’t buy it. Or wasn’t willing to. And so he didn’t. And I didn’t know how to help him. But I do now.”
Logan seemed to hear his own words and draw strength from them. “I didn’t know what to do before but I do now. And between me and Dr. Garrison, you don’t just have to learn to live with this, you can help others learn to live with it too.”
That caught Quincy’s attention.
“What do you mean?” she asked skeptically.
Logan pounced, looking like a dog who’d finally found someone to throw him a ball.
“There are others out there and we’re going to find them. We’re going to help them hide before the company can get to them and then we’re going to help them understand and deal with whatever symptoms of RNB they have.”
“So no one else has to become a Jones,” Quincy said quietly.
“So no one else has to become a Jones,” Logan echoed.
Chapter 59
Logan
Had she bought it? Logan wasn’t sure. Quincy had left the compartment hurriedly after stepping back into the small bathroom to toss her clothes on, saying she needed some fresh air. He hadn’t offered to go with her. He couldn’t. He’d been too stunned. She’d made that comment about Jones, and it had been mean and low and meant to hurt him, which it did. But it also told him in not so many words that at some point over the last eight years, she had considered that option, too. After they’d met, he’d never even considered it, but he should have. One of the statistics Dr. Garrison had cobbled together from his hodgepodge of notes and deceased patient files was the probability of a high suicide rate for patients with RNB. But Quincy had seemed so solid. So confident. Sure, she usually had circles under her eyes but so did he. He guessed the difference was, he didn’t sleep because he was usually on the move. She didn’t sleep because she honestly couldn’t. She’d never let on before. She’d mentioned the noise in her head, and he’d seen first-hand the headaches and their aftermath, but she hid her feelings so completely. Jones wore his despair and self-loathing like a banner, announcing to all who would hear the misery he felt. But Quincy wasn’t like Jones, not completely at least. She had survived for eight years, battling the condition and its painful side effects on her own, all the while dodging the company’s lead hunting dog and learning to disappear. She was stronger than Jones had ever been, which was difficult for Logan to concede. Jones had been his friend, his partner. They had fought together and laughed together and saved each other’s lives more times than he could count. He had thought the man was made of steel.
“Well?” Jones demanded angrily. “What did he have to say?”
Logan hadn’t felt this optimistic in a long time. “It’s good news. Dr. Garrison says you fit his theory. He thinks you have this Reflexive Neurological Bias he’s been studying.” Logan stumbled, the medical jargon twisting his tongue on the way out. No wonder Dr. Garrison had taken to saying ‘RNB’. The whole name was too big of a mouthful.
“What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?” Jones demanded. “Can he fix me?”
Logan paused, not sure how to answer. He had been thrilled that they finally had a workable diagnosis, even if modern medicine wasn’t entirely on-board. Logan didn’t much care what modern medicine thought anyhow, considering they had come up empty and then quit trying altogether.
He finally settled on, “He thinks he can help you.”
“Help me what?” Jones retorted. “Help me clean the blood out of my ears after an eardrum explodes? Help me walk without tipping over? Help me sleep? Help me over the side of a bridge? Tell me, Davies, what exactly is he going to help me with?”
Jones had bounced from confused to determined to depressed after his hearing had failed to go back to normal before finally settling on angry. And he had parked himself quite firmly in that position and determined not to move. Logan had made excuses at first. After all, whatever this was wasn’t just affecting Jones’s ears. His balance was off. His other senses were going haywire in response to too much sound. He struggled to eat, to follow a conversation. And all of these things made it impossible for Jones to resume full or even partial active duty. Logan considered how he would respond if he was told he was going to be discharged from service, whether he wanted to be or not. It felt a little premature to Logan, giving up on a man whose injury had happened in service to the very country who was dismissing him. But that wasn’t something they could change. Dr. Garrison thought there was a chance they could give Jones his life back, though, and he intended to throw his full weight behind the man.
Looking back, Logan knew there were plenty of signs he should have picked up on. He just never thought he’d actually… no. Logan cut that train of thought off. Jones was gone. Whatever he could or should have done, it was too late now to change anything. But Quincy was still here. She was still within his reach. And he’d rather die himself than let someone else he cared about go down that rabbit hole. He pushed himself up from the chair and rubbed his hands hard over his face in an effort to erase the emotion stamped all over it. Then he turned and headed out to find Quincy. He wasn’t willing to let that be the end of the conversation.
Chapter 60
Quincy
The air was cold as it whipped past Quincy but she didn’t mind. In fact, she leaned into it, letting the wind catch and throw her hair around her face. She had gotten out of the room as quickly as she could, honestly surprised when Logan didn’t even attempt to stop her. She had needed air, and she had needed it fast. She had wandered aimlessly through the different compartments, finding her way to the dining car and some kind of social club car, definitely not for her, before she’d come across the balcony car. She had been curious so she’d pushed open the door and found exactly what the name described – a car with a balcony wrapping around it. A part of her wondered if that was even legal and whether the railway company suffered through many lawsuits on its behalf, but then she decided she didn’t care. She didn’t even care that her hair was going to be a tangled mess when she went back inside. If she ever went back inside. Honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure there was much point anymore in soldiering on. Had there ever really been? All she had had in her life that she could remember was long, miserable nights and lonely, paranoid days, pain and exhaustion her only close companions.
Of course ending it had occurred to her before, mostly during severe migraines and those days when no amount of running could give her relief from the noise. That constant, relentless noise. A symptom, or so Logan and the Colonel seemed to think. Calling it a symptom made it seem so ambivalent, didn’t it? Like it wasn’t t
his living, breathing thing that crept through her mind, bedding down and waiting to attack when she was at her most vulnerable, keeping her from ever being fully at peace. She sighed, tipping her face up and letting the air rush across it. And now it was worse than she’d thought. It was one thing to spend your life on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of danger. It was another to realize the danger revolves around the fact you don’t know who you are. How on earth could she not know? Or not know that she didn’t know? How had she gone eight years, if not longer, without realizing she didn’t have any memories of her past? Was she moving around, creating aliases, not to keep herself safe and hidden, but because she didn’t know who she was in the first place? How messed up was that? Logan would have her believe that Dr. Garrison could help. Not heal her, of course. No, no. There was nothing to fix, after all. Quincy squeezed her eyes shut, seeing Logan look at her, hearing him tell her she wasn’t broken. Pretending that she was stronger than she really was. What was it he’d said? You don’t just have to learn to live with this, you can help others learn to live with it too. She supposed he had to believe that, knowing what she did about what happened with his partner. He was only here to finish a mission that had started with Jones and he would see her failure as his own.
What would it be like, she wondered, to die? She had almost died eight years ago, or so Logan believed. She didn’t remember anything from that time, but maybe there was nothing there to remember. Maybe sliding into death would be like sliding into a deep sleep. It sounded peaceful. It sounded quiet. It sounded like giving up. She didn’t like to think she was a quitter but sometimes she wondered if that would be such a bad thing.
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