Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  I was in his thoughts in seconds, and out in a few more. I took everything from the past few days – every disgusting brain wave that had flashed through his head, every wretched impulse, every daydream, all the filthy, nasty plans he'd made for what he was going to do to me now that he'd gotten his execrable hands on me.

  When I had it all, I ripped my hand from his flesh and the burning feeling in my palm tingled on. I looked up at his face, but it was blank. Persephone had squeezed the consciousness out of him, and now the sleeping Wolfe looked surprisingly relaxed. Not quite dead, but not quite living, either.

  “I'll hold him 'til we're out of here,” Persephone said, beckoning to me. I took a wobbly couple of steps back to her and she reached up and patted my cheek. “You goin' to be all right?”

  I spared a last look at Wolfe. Nope, I didn't miss him, at least not for what he was. “I'm going to be just fine,” I said, and I knew it was true. Persephone snapped her fingers and the trees came to life, lifting me up along with her, and passing us like the wind was guiding them, carrying me away from the beast that had once been my greatest nightmare.

  46.

  “You look like hell got his teeth into you,” Lethe said as the trees set us down at the edge of the parking lot. She was standing next to the shredded trailer, giving me a once-over as I landed a little unsteadily. Persephone caught my arm, and I smiled as I got my balance. She let me go.

  “He damned sure tried,” I said, once I was steady.

  Lethe nodded. “But it's done now?”

  “It's done,” I said. “Where's mom and...?”

  “In the trailer,” Lethe said, lowering her voice. “The little one is, uh...” She shook her head. “Well, it's not good.”

  I glanced around, standing in the shadow of the trees, then looked to Persephone. “Where's your ride?”

  “I told him to head on home,” she said with a shake of the head. “Ain't nothing here we girls couldn't handle on our own, right?” Her green eyes twinkled.

  “Maybe,” I said, eyeing the trailer.

  “Can we get out of here now?” Lethe asked, folding her arms in front of her. “Or do we need to hang around a while longer? Because as much as I love a good truck stop greasy spoon, remaining near where we took out an Omega ambush? Is just asking for more trouble.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “But there's a problem.” They both looked at me. “Where do we go?”

  Persephone cleared her throat. “Well...I've been here in this country for a mighty long while, long enough to develop a little bit of a network 'round here. And while I don't have anything available in Iowa, if we could hit the road and head up north to Minneapolis...I got an old safe house there that ain't in use. We could hunker there for a spell if need be.”

  “Where is it?” I asked. “In the city, I mean. What part?”

  She thought about it for a second. “South of Minneapolis somewheres.” She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I wrote down the address in case I needed it.”

  I looked at the scrawl on the paper.

  832 Hamilton Ave, Minneapolis, MN.

  Cold chills ran down my arm as I took it out of her hand. “That's the house I grew up in.”

  Persephone just stared at the paper, then back up at me, those green eyes bright as summer fields. “Well...” She smiled, wide. “I guess we were fated to meet this way, then, huh?”

  “Maybe more than you know,” I said, all the pieces falling into place now. I made my way past Lethe, around the back of the trailer, which still hung open.

  I could see my mom, just inside, cradling little me in her lap. Someone – presumably Lethe – had removed the guard's dead body, and my mother sat on the side of the trailer, rocking little Sienna back and forth. “Shhhhhh,” she was saying, but little me wasn't making a sound. Her eyes were wide, and she was just...

  Shaking.

  “Do you think they did anything to her?” I asked.

  “You don't remember?” Persephone asked.

  “None of this, no,” I said. “But apparently it happened in my past.” I brandished the scrap of paper. “This proves it to me, anyway.”

  “She's probably just scared witless,” Lethe said, looking into the back of the trailer with me and her mother. “There's not a mark on her but imagine it from her perspective. She watched her mom get imprisoned, got taken by some of the scariest people in the world – it leaves a mark.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking past my mother and the little girl that was me, at the piece of the puzzle I'd done my best to ignore up to now. I shook my head and turned to my grandmother and great-grandmother. “One of you needs to go buy a pickup truck. One with a big bed and a king cab. Pay cash out of our casino robbery money.”

  Lethe exchanged a look with Persephone. “Why a truck?” she asked. “If we're going to Minneapolis, can't we just get in the car and go?”

  I shook my head. “No.” I pointed into the back of the trailer, at the shadowy rectangle lingering in the darkness. “We need to bring that, too.”

  They both looked at it; my mom, too, looked up from her soothing of little me. “You want to bring that...thing...they imprisoned me in?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

  “Yes,” I said, staring at it. Its steely edges were visible from the gouges in the side of the trailer up at the front. “We need it.”

  “For what?” Persephone asked. “I mean...it ain't nothing but a slab of metal made to hold a person in, sweetheart. What could you possibly need that thing for?”

  “I don't,” I said, cool prickling running over my skin.

  This really was fate.

  And I was walking right into it with every choice I was making right now.

  “But she does,” and I pointed at my mother.

  And myself. My littler self.

  “What the hell for?” Lethe asked.

  “Because...” I said, climbing up into the back of the trailer and slowly sauntering my way over to it. It was only a little taller than me now, and cool to the touch as I ran my hand over its metal, unyielding surface.

  If my mother had been unbound, no way would it have held her. She'd have smashed her way out in no time at all.

  Just the way I had...the way I would...when I got my powers.

  “Because this is the way it was when I grew up,” I said. I looked back in the darkness. My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all there, shadows and light, with the little me held tight against my mom's chest, barely breathing. They all listened in silence. “This...this is it.” And I ran my hand over the side, like I was saying hello to an old friend I knew well...

  And really, I was.

  “...This is the box.”

  47.

  The house looked better than I remembered it. Of course, it was over a decade newer than when last I'd seen it, and before fire had claimed it, leaving it – in the present – a scorched shell of its former self. A week ago – that felt like a month, or years - I had sat in the back yard with Angel, thinking wistfully about how far I'd come since I'd started my journey on a fateful day in January by stepping out my door for the first time in a decade.

  Now here I was, standing on Hamilton Ave in Minneapolis, putting things in place to seal myself inside for over ten years.

  “You sure about this?” Lethe asked as Persephone unlocked the front door for us. When she opened it, a wave of stale air came out, a smell like the place hadn't been used in a long while.

  I looked at my grandmother, whose eyes were rimmed with concern. We'd argued, a lot, on the drive up from Iowa. I'll spare you and say that it boiled down to two camps – me versus everyone else. Their point: “You don't have to do this.”

  My point: “This is the way it was done. Mess with it, and you erase my history – and thus me, and possibly the world.”

  I won.

  But it went on a long, long time, and I could tell I hadn't really convinced anyone on the merits of my case. Which was understandable, because
essentially I was arguing for child imprisonment, and that my grandmother and great-grandmother had to get the hell out of our lives and let us – and me – struggle and suffer for the next twenty years.

  “This is not a sacrifice you should have to make,” she whispered. I could feel Persephone nodding her head over my shoulder, standing. “What you're going to go through in the next however many years-”

  “Is hell,” I said, nodding along. “I know. I lived it.”

  There looked to be a big lump in her throat. “But you shouldn't have had to. The things you're talking about...the things your mom did...there was no call for all that.” She shot a look over her shoulder to where my mom still held little me. Little Sienna had fallen asleep somewhere south of the Iowa state line, and except for the occasional twitch or moan, slept peacefully.

  Good for her. I couldn't imagine processing that much trauma was easy. I had a feeling I'd be having Wolfe nightmares next time I slept, and I was twenty years removed from her and had been through so much shit since then it would have made that little girl die of fright.

  But that was the point of my upbringing. Every step I took, every trauma my mother inflicted, every punishment, every day spent training...

  All of them had combined to form me.

  It was like a Jenga tower. Pull one little brick from the wrong spot...

  Sienna falls down. And maybe she doesn't get up again. Which, self-servingly, would be bad for me.

  But – and I say this without ego, or at least try – it'd be a hell of a lot worse for the world.

  “Without me being who I am,” I said, driving home the point again, “without me doing what I learned to do in these next ten plus years...the world dies at the hands of men who can't be stopped by anyone else.” I looked past Persephone into the dark of the living room.

  Shit. Even the furniture was the stuff I grew up with.

  “I have to do this,” I said, and walked past her to go inside.

  It all looked so familiar. It lacked so many of the homey touches mom had probably added later, but it was...

  Home.

  I put my face in my hands because I didn't want my grandmother and great grandmother to see my eyes getting wet. A rush of feelings hit me – uncertainty, fear, stark terror, mingled with the hints of nostalgia that a moment like this couldn't help but produce.

  “It's...not bad,” my mom said, stepping inside behind me, little Sienna huddled over her shoulder, sleeping.

  “It's yours if you want it,” Persephone said, a little uneasily.

  “We need it,” I said, and she held out the keys. I took them, let them dangle in my hand for a moment as my mother came alongside me, then pushed them into her hand.

  The look in her eyes...it was like she died a little.

  “I need to go put her down,” my mother said, looking around. “Which room-”

  “Right there,” I said, pointing at my old room. I could see a bed in there. Looked like mine.

  She went inside, and I saw her stoop to put down little me. She stayed down for a second, then turned her head. “Debra?”

  It took me a second to remember that was me. “Yeah?”

  “She's asking for you,” my mother said, rising to her feet. I could see little eyes peering past her.

  My grandmother caught my arm, and I looked Lethe right in the eye. “I already said my goodbye to her.”

  “So did I,” Persephone said, and I saw in her bright green eyes the same look her daughter was giving me.

  They knew.

  I nodded as my grandmother let loose of my arm. Without another word, I slipped quietly into my old room, passing my mother in the door frame. She didn't say anything either, just gently closed the door to a thin slit behind her, leaving me alone with my childhood self.

  48.

  “How are you doing, kiddo?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed. It was a little dusty in here, obvious to my meta senses but hopefully not to hers. It wasn't like she'd be able to develop asthma, given her destiny of meta powers.

  “The bad men scared me,” she said, looking down at the bed. “I didn't like them.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” I said, running a hand through her hair. “I made the bad men go away, though.”

  She looked up at me, and I saw a reticence in her eyes. “Will they come back?”

  I felt a lump in my throat and found I couldn't lie to a five-year-old, even when that five-year-old was me.

  “Yes,” I said, around that lump in my throat. “But it'll be when you're big enough to...to kick their butts yourself, okay?” I squeezed her hand, real quick, just a few seconds of skin-to-skin contact, then went back to safely stroking her hair. “You're going to grow up so big and so strong...those guys won't be ready for you.”

  Her eyes stayed on mine, so blue, but then wavered. “I don't think I can do that.” She bowed her little head in shame. “I'm not big and strong like you.”

  “Not yet,” I said, voice getting a little husky. “But someday...you will be. It's going to be...so tough...getting to that point.” My voice was cracking. “But you...” And I looked her in the eyes. “You're going to be tougher.”

  “You think so?” So innocent. For how much longer?

  “I know so,” I said, brushing her hair back from her eyes again. “Now...you go to sleep, okay?”

  She nodded and put her head on the pillow. “Will you stay with me? While I'm sleeping?”

  “Kiddo...I'll be with you always,” I said, dabbing at my eye with my shirt sleeve.

  I waited there until she fell asleep, brushing her hair every now and again.

  And as soon as she was out, that little face relaxed...

  I moved my hand to her cheek. In a few seconds, I felt my powers start to work.

  And as quickly as I could, I took all the memories of my childhood that I could part with and leave her a whole person.

  Everything about Wolfe and Henderschott.

  Everything about Des Moines, about Lethe and Persephone, about Debra.

  I took the memories of the sky, and outdoors, and playgrounds and sunny days.

  And I left her sleeping, peacefully, in the dark.

  49.

  “I don't want to do this,” my mother said as I shut the door to my room. Her eyes were already red, and she shook her head at me. “The things you described on the way here...” She just kept shaking her head. “I don't want to do this. I don't want to be this kind of parent.” She sniffed. “It's not worth it.”

  “Sierra,” Lethe said quietly, drawing an ireful look from her daughter. “If you don't do this...imagine having Wolfe after you all the time.”

  “There's other ways,” Persephone said, looking at each of us in turn. “I got a nice setup in West Texas. A whole town of metas. Push comes to shove – we can hide y'all real well down there.”

  “Hell, dad would happily take us over in Revelen,” Lethe said, “if you're really just looking to dodge Omega. But that's not what this is about.” She looked at me. “Is it?”

  I shook my head. “No. Omega's bush league compared to the shit that follows. They're petty criminals. Hell, Gerasimos bit the big one before I even had a chance to kick his door down. The people I have dealt with – they're of the world-ending variety.” I looked straight at my mom. “And I can't deal with them unless I'm trained. Unless I'm ready.” I shifted uncomfortably as I walked over to join them in the living room. “Unless I go down the path I know, the world ends.”

  My mother's shoulders shook violently as she put her head down. “Sienna...what you are asking me to do is...” Her shoulders shook repeatedly, like she was spasming. “It's inhuman.”

  “Well, I'm beyond human,” I said coolly, because the last thing we needed was me falling to pieces with her. “So I can take inhuman. Think of it this way – what you'll be doing to me is a pittance compared to the hell I go through later. It's all preparation, done for love and not out of malice.”

  My mother went qu
iet, but she didn't stop shaking her head.

  “I don't like that you're going through hell,” Persephone said, looking me right in the eye. “I don't like that you're telling me to stay out of it, either. I've got half a mind to-”

  “Come on,” I said. “You know nature, right?”

  My great-grandmother was apparently taken aback by this change in conversational topic. “I reckon I know a thing or two about the workings of nature, yes. Why?”

  “A butterfly in a chrysalis,” I said. “You ever hear what happens if you try and 'help' it out before it can get out on its own?”

  She relaxed everything but her frown. “It dies, because it never builds the muscle to-”

  “Solve its own problems,” I said, staring her down. “Same thing with a baby bird that gets taken out of its nest. Oh, you can fly it around with your bare hands, but sooner or later it has to learn on its own.”

  “This is your life we're talking about, girl,” Persephone said, taking a step closer to me, absolutely serious. “Your grandma and I are here, now, and you're telling us to butt out until – when, exactly?”

  “You'll know when,” I said to her.

  She didn't look convinced. “I don't like one bit of this. And a whole lot of baby birds end up smeared on the ground, you know, trying to learn to fly.”

  “Well...I'm still alive,” I said. “So you don't need to fear that. At least in this case.”

  “I-” my mother started to say something but stopped because something dramatic changed in the room.

  Someone...dramatic...appeared in the room.

  “Apologies,” Shin'ichi Akiyama said, looking even more worn than when last I'd seen him. “Our time here is growing very short.” He looked right at me. “We need to...wrap this up. Swiftly, if possible.”

  “My ride's here,” I said, looking at the three women now arranged in a rough circle with me. “And as much as I'd like to argue this – or drink a toast of...well, water is about all I can manage these days, honestly – I can't stay.”