“You two … know each other?” I asked, even though it was very obvious.
“Rose, how—” Dr. Bright started, before sighing and closing her eyes.
“Of course,” she murmured to herself. “Damien is the mystery patient at the AM. And that’s why you weren’t aware of his power. Because he doesn’t have it anymore. Isn’t that right?”
She aimed that final question toward Damien, but it didn’t sound like she was actually asking him. It sounded like she was rubbing it in his face.
“Wait, how did you know he doesn’t have his power?” I asked.
Neither of them said anything. They just stood there, staring at each other, until Damien broke the silence.
“I should go,” he said, starting to step back.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Dr. Bright said, not taking her eyes off of him.
“Wait, what?” I said, confused. “Damien, don’t—”
“Thanks for trying, Rose.” He sighed, looking at me sadly. “I hope you have a nice life.”
“Damien—” I called after him, thrown by how quickly he had turned cold but he just … left. Turned his back on us and walked away.
“Dr. Bright—” I started but she jumped in before I could even form a question.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” she said, “but I think you should go home.”
“What?”
“I never should have—I need to—” I’d never seen Dr. Bright stumble over her words like this. I had absolutely no idea what to do or say so I just stood there, waiting for her to explain it all to me.
“Damien was a patient of mine,” she said finally.
“Oh.”
“And he…” She swallowed and took a step toward me, lowering her voice. “What exactly did he tell you?”
I scanned over her face, trying to figure out why she was asking, what answer she was looking for. Eventually, I decided that the fastest way to get the truth from her was to give her the truth myself.
“He said that the AM kidnaps and experiments on Atypicals,” I said for a start.
She just nodded at that, not looking in the least bit surprised. That made me SO mad. Had Dr. Bright known that the whole time? That the AM was doing horrible, illegal stuff? When she’d been reluctant to talk about it with me and wasn’t super enthusiastic about me going back, it seemed like maybe she just had a difference in philosophy. Or, honestly, since finding out about her and Owen, I thought maybe her distaste was just because she’d had a messy breakup or something.
But here she was, not even batting an eye at the information that the place I’d spent four whole weeks at was experimenting on innocent people. Suddenly, I didn’t want to tell her a single thing more about what Damien and I had talked about.
“I’m sorry that you were dragged into this, Rose,” Dr. Bright said.
“Dragged into what?”
“Damien is…” She sighed. “He’s a troubled person. And I certainly was not expecting to see him today.”
“So you’re not going to listen to him?” I asked. “Help him?”
“Damien doesn’t want my help,” she said cryptically. “But I hope you won’t hold this strange encounter against me. I’d still like to see you for your session next week.”
“I…” I was surprised by that, that she just wanted to move forward like everything was totally normal, but continuing therapy with her might be the only way to dig into all of this more, so I just nodded and agreed.
Is Dr. Bright involved with all of this somehow? Was Damien lying to me? How, exactly, do they know each other? I had started today thinking that Dr. Bright and Damien might be able to put their information together and yield some answers but all I have are more questions.
FEBRUARY 3RD, 2017
Well, I have some answers now.
I’m still trying to piece everything together—both how I got to here and what I’ve been told. Because it doesn’t feel …
I don’t know. I get that the past six months have been … a lot and maybe I don’t have the best judgment in the world at the moment, or ever, but what they told me about Damien doesn’t feel real. God, I hope it’s not real.
It all started this morning when I got a phone call from an unlisted number.
“Um … hello?” I answered.
“Is this Rose Atkinson?” a woman’s voice said on the other end of the phone.
“Yes…?”
“My name is Sam Barnes,” she said, “and I heard that you had a run-in with Damien yesterday.”
“Oh, um…” This had not been what I was expecting. “I’m sorry, who is this?”
“I’m like you,” she said. “And Dr. Bright is a friend. I know that she told you Damien was troubled but I think—I think you deserve to know the whole truth. She made it sound like the two of you were friends.”
“We are,” I said, feeling weirdly defensive of a man I’d only known for a few weeks. But who the hell was this woman? Why did she think she could just call me up and act like we were already in the middle of a conversation?
“Then I think you need to know who he really is. What are you doing today?”
And that was how I ended up at a house somewhere on the outskirts of the city, talking to a whole bunch of strangers. Sam gave me an address and I got right on a bus.
Remember what I said about not having great judgment?
It all ended up being fine—Sam wasn’t exactly the confident master spy that she seemed on the phone. Instead, she was anxious and awkward, looking away if I made eye contact with her for too long. But she seemed to be more comfortable around her friends, a group of Atypicals and Dr. Bright, who came with their own surprises.
That’s right—Dr. Bright was there too. But that wasn’t the most unexpected part.
Sam was happy to see me, nervously shaking my hand and offering to take my coat, which I declined, wanting the option to peace out of there if things got too weird or intense, and then I walked into the living room to see Dr. Bright sitting with a familiar man on Sam’s couch.
“You know Dr. Bright, of course,” Sam said, leading me into the living room. “And this is my boyfriend, Mark.”
The man on the couch got up to shake my hand and I completely froze.
“Oh my god,” I breathed, taking his hand automatically. “It’s you.”
“Uh, yeah.” He laughed awkwardly and then his face lit up. “Oh, right, we bumped into each other that one time! In Joan’s office—”
“Yes, this is my patient, Rose,” Dr. Bright said, coming to stand next to Mark.
“I’m her little brother,” Mark said, jerking his head toward Dr. Bright. “I don’t make a habit of barging in on her sessions, don’t worry.”
So I was right. The man who had interrupted the end of my session was Dr. Bright’s brother.
But that’s not why I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.
The man from Damien’s nightmares. The one who had been trapped in the basement, who had been lying, dead, in Damien’s arms, was standing in front of me. His hair was cropped short, his face more filled in. He had been sickly and long-haired and supernaturally beautiful in Damien’s dreams, so I hadn’t put two and two together.
Damien had rescued Dr. Bright’s brother from the AM.
Dr. Bright used to work at the AM.
Damien had nightmares about Mark dying.
Mark wasn’t dead, Mark was safe and standing in front of me with his girlfriend.
What the hell had happened between these people?
Maybe I should have left right then. Part of me wishes I didn’t know what I know now.
While I was busy having a total mental breakdown, the front door opened again and two teenage boys piled in. Everything turned even more chaotic as Dr. Bright chastised Sam for pulling this meeting together, when none of us knew what we were even doing here.
“Can someone please tell us what the hell is going on?” the taller of the two boys, Caleb, asked, interrupting the various arguin
g and introductions that were taking place.
“Damien is back,” Mark said, speaking up for the first time in a few minutes. After our awkward handshake, he’d taken to pacing the room, a dark look on his face.
“But I mean, he’s been back for, like, a few weeks though hasn’t he?” the other boy, Adam, said. “I mean, he’s been out?”
“But now he’s back in our lives,” Mark said, sounding bitter.
“No, he isn’t,” Sam said, brushing a hand down Mark’s arm in a soothing gesture. “He’s in Rose’s life.”
“I barely know the guy,” I said, not sure where I was supposed to stand with these people or with Damien.
“Okay, seriously,” Caleb interrupted, “just someone start from the beginning and explain why you all feel so worried.”
“Caleb’s an empath,” Sam said, turning to me to explain. I nodded like I was keeping up. I barely know what that means—he can feel feelings, I guess? That must SUCK.
“Gee, thanks, Sam.” Caleb rolled his eyes.
“It’s okay, she’s one of us,” Sam said.
“Right, because we can always trust other Atypicals,” Adam mumbled, and I had a LOT more questions about that comment but Dr. Bright spoke up before I could ask.
“Rose is a patient of mine,” Dr. Bright explained calmly. “She met Damien and thought I might be able to help him. As you can imagine, the reunion did not go well.”
“How do you even know Damien in the first place?” Caleb asked me.
I went for a simple “we met at the AM” hoping that would lead to the least number of awkward questions, but Adam immediately jumped in, asking me if I worked there. When I told him I was a patient, he and Caleb both looked confused.
“Why?” Caleb asked.
“Because I needed help…?” I said, wondering why that was such a weird idea.
“The AM isn’t all bad,” Dr. Bright said to the boys.
“Oh, good, we’re doing this again,” Mark said, starting to pace again.
“She’s right,” I said, nodding toward Dr. Bright. “I was having a hard time balancing my ability and they helped. I dreamdive and—”
“What does that mean?” Adam asked.
“I can go into people’s dreams,” I explained, wondering how the term “dreamdive” wasn’t clear enough. Both Caleb’s and Adam’s eyes grew wide at that.
“What?” Adam asked, smiling.
“That’s a thing?” Caleb asked.
“Yes, it’s a thing, and I was at the AM for it and I traveled into Damien’s dream and saw a lot of weird and creepy stuff—”
“Well, it was the inside of Damien’s head—” Sam scoffed.
“This was creepy stuff about the AM,” I said and Sam looked embarrassed. “They did stuff to him. That’s why I brought him to Dr. Bright. I found him as we were being discharged and I got the whole story about what happened to him and I thought it was important that she know. He never told me anything about how he used to be your patient or about any of you.”
That wasn’t a lie, was it? I mean, Damien didn’t tell me about Mark, not really, even if I feel like I already knew a lot about the guy from a few dreams. But something in Mark’s tightly wound posture told me he probably wasn’t in a place to hear about Damien dreaming about his death.
“What did he tell you?” Mark demanded.
“He said he was brought to the AM because another Atypical attacked him—”
“Bullshit!” Adam cried. “He wasn’t attacked, it was self-defense!”
The whole room went silent as every single person in it exchanged a series of significant looks. My head was spinning.
“I’m guessing you guys know something about this?” I asked eventually, stating the obvious.
“It was me,” Caleb said quietly. “I’m the one who hurt him.”
I took a long look at Caleb, trying to imagine it. He was young, yes, but broad-shouldered and bulky, someone who looks like he definitely plays sports and maybe also beats up nerds and stuffs them into lockers. But the way that he said it … it didn’t seem like he was happy about the fact that he’d hurt someone.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because he threatened to kidnap me?” Adam said.
“What?”
“Why don’t we all sit down,” Dr. Bright said, putting on her best therapist voice.
So we did, and Dr. Bright explained the whole thing. Well, actually, Mark explained a lot of it.
“I’m a mimic,” Mark started off.
“Okay…” I said, because it felt like he wanted a response.
“Have you ever met a mimic before?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not even sure what that is, if I’m honest.”
“I’m not surprised,” he snorted. “The rarity of the thing is kind of the whole problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can share people’s powers,” he explained. “That’s my Atypical ability.”
“Whoa.” I breathed.
“Yeah.”
“That’s … cool,” I tried, though I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around the logistics of it. “But what does that have to do with…”
“The AM likes rare abilities,” he said, unknowingly echoing what Damien had told me.
Turns out, Mark had been kidnapped by the AM a few years back—that much was true, that the AM kidnaps Atypicals and experiments on them. He glossed over that whole part, his hand reaching to hold onto Sam’s as he casually talked about years of experimentation before falling into a coma.
“And the coma is when the real trouble began.” He chuckled darkly and I saw Dr. Bright wince. That was when Dr. Bright—who had been working at the AM—found out that it was holding her brother captive. She worked for years to try to get him out but couldn’t find a way in.
“I recruited Damien to help,” Dr. Bright explained. “With his ability … do you know what his ability is?”
“Um … yeah,” I said, unsure if everyone knew that he didn’t have it anymore.
“And you still hung out with him?” Adam asked, incredulous. “Even though you knew that he must have been manipulating you?”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t—” I rushed to explain.
“He can’t do it anymore,” Mark interrupted. “His power is gone.”
“How do you know?” Sam asked, her eyes narrowing.
“He called me,” Mark said.
“What?” Dr. Bright asked. “When?”
“Yesterday.” He sighed. “He was wasted. Going on and on about he’d never gotten drunk before but now it didn’t matter because his ability is gone.”
“That explains the late afternoon hangover…” I muttered, my suspicions confirmed. Mark was the reason that Damien had been drunk yesterday. But I still couldn’t get a grip on what had happened between them.
“So, wait, Damien rescued you,” I said, trying to get us back on track. “Why would he then try to kidnap Adam?”
“Damien is obsessed with—” Mark sighed again, gritted his teeth. “He wants to be immune to Atypicals. Immune to me.”
“And you could help him with that?” I asked Adam. “Is that what your power does?’
“Oh, I’m not—” Adam started. “I’m not special like all you guys.”
“Adam is like me,” Dr. Bright said. “An average human with a lot of Atypical friends.”
“But you and Caleb…” I trailed off, unsure how to phrase the question.
“Yeah?” Adam asked.
“You guys are together.”
“Yeah, we are. Is that a problem?” I recognized that defensive tone immediately and realized that Adam thought I was asking a very different question than the one I was asking.
“Hey, chill, I’m gay too,” I explained and he noticeably relaxed. “But … you’re cool with it? Having an Atypical boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” Adam said, seeming baffled by the question. “Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I
don’t know.” I shrugged. “That’s good to know though. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome?”
“I’ve been thinking about telling my girlfriend,” I explained, “but I’m not sure how she’s going to react.”
“Gotcha.” Adam nodded.
“Wait—” I shook my head to clear it, trying to stay focused. “Damien wanted to be immune to you because…”
“He didn’t want to share his power with me,” Mark said. I initially found that hard to believe—Damien let me use my power on him only a few weeks after meeting him. “Last time we tried to use our powers together, I kind of … broke him.”
“Oh,” I said, wanting to ask if that was why things shattered between them but not wanting to reveal that I knew more about Mark than I should. “That was after he rescued you from the AM?”
“Rescued,” Sam muttered. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“He kind of … kidnapped me,” Mark said.
“Oh.”
“Yeah…” he continued, “he was supposed to bring me to my sister and to Sam, but he kind of … went rogue. Before … everything happened, he actually wanted to share his ability with me. He’s never found anyone like him before and I guess … I guess he thought I was the next best thing.”
I wanted to jump in, to explain that I don’t think it was just about that, that Damien dreamt every night about losing Mark, that Mark had broken more than his ability. But hearing Mark talk about the road trip Damien had dragged him on, like he was bitter as hell, but also like he missed it, I decided it wasn’t my place.
“So it wasn’t Wadsworth’s serum that took his power away,” I said, trying to sift through everything Damien had told me and find the lies. “It was you.”
Every face turned toward me in surprise. I guess I knew more than I was supposed to.
“He told you about Wadsworth?” Mark asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “About how she handcuffed him to the bed, experimented on him, how she’s immune to Atypicals … but he also told me that she was the one who took away his ability. Not that he wanted to be immune.”
“That’s why he tried to kidnap me,” Adam piped up. “Wadsworth is my aunt.”
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