Of Journals & Journeys (AU M/L, YTEEN) Ch. 62 Pg 22 - 12 / 29 [COMPLETE]

[dreamon]

Are you coming back?

[begonia9508]

Are you coming back?

Good that Dreamon asked, because last week, I thought about this story and your promise to come back soon... Or is it still too soon????

Anyway, looking impatiently for more! EVE

[Misha]

It's CampNano this month, so I'll have at least 10K words for you by the time the month ends. That's about eight chapters

Meanwhile, here's a little something from an upcoming chapter:

It's hard to bring bad news. It's harder when you are the bad news.

Who says that's Max talking? Who says that's Liz?

[begonia9508]

Who says that's Max talking? Who says that's Liz?

What? Is it a quiz game or have I missed something along the way?.... Anyway looking if I find the answer in your next part!

EVE

[dreamon]

Looking forward to the new parts! And what a teaser.

[keepsmiling7]

Good luck with Camp NANO!

[Misha]

Okay guys, I'm debating if waiting to have at least seven chapters so I can post for a week, or if I should start posting as I and my lovely beta polish the chapters... What do you think? Can you wait two-three weeks more?

[keepsmiling7]

You do what ever is best for you.
I will be here when you do post,
Carolyn

[Misha]

Thank you, girl!

Now, I don't bring daily chapters, but at least I have the next six all lined up



August 16th, 2011 – Day 1768 and counting


Hope is a treacherous thing. It crawls into your heart, it storms in your stomach, it keeps you awake through long nights. It makes your hands sweat, your attention evaporate, your hunger fade.

Hope can keep a man going—or it can destroy him.

Every time I look at Maggs in the hall, all I want is for her to tell me, one way or another, if I'm going to be a free man or an eternal prisoner of this place.

I need to know if I should keep going—or just give up.



Chapter Forty-One
John

"I have the results," Maggs said as Max sat beside her on a bench outside the main building. He'd been running around the base, and had casually met Maggs as she was leaving. Just two friends catching up, away from prying cameras and unwanted ears.

"Okay, hit me."

"It's working."

Max's heart skipped a beat. His entire body froze. How could two words mean the world to him?

"The dose is off, and some other adjustments will be needed, of course. It's not a first trial for anything—"

"But it's working," Max whispered, looking straight at the road that led to the main entrance. Maggs nodded beside him.

"We'll have to readjust as we go, but yes."

He didn't know what to do. He wanted to shout out at the universe, he wanted to jump over the bench, to laugh hysterically until someone slapped him.

He wanted to go to Parker's lab and kiss her.

"It's working," he repeated, his eyes filling with tears for a moment, until he blinked them away.

"I might get the formula for your drug tomorrow, maybe the day after. You'll need both of them for a few months until your body is free of this thing. Lowering the dose might still give you a few side-effects, or even withdrawal symptoms."

"I don't care. Maggs, don't you see? I've been going step by agonizing step piecing together what I need to do to get free, and this is it. This is the final piece."

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"What?"

"Frank asked one or two questions today."

"Oh, that. Yeah, he asked me, too."

"It's only natural. If anyone in this base knows you, it's us. John never knew Frank before as a friend, so he avoided him like the plague this time around. Maybe that tipped him off."

"He asked me about why all of the sudden I'm having this burst of energy on Summers's tests. I had to lie to him, but it wasn't easy."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Really?"

"Not how to lie," he amended, "but, you know, actually lying to him with an alibi that made sense. I don't like keeping things from him, I guess."

"Hmm…" Maggs looked at the building, her thoughts hidden away from Max's anxious mind. He wondered if he could get a flash from her—of if he wanted to.

"If Frank noticed the changes," she said, turning to look at him, "there's a good chance Summers will, too. He's too happy with you to have thought about it, but give him enough time…"

Max nodded. His days were numbered, one way or another. Either I'm gone, or they'll lock me up so deep I won't even remember what the sky looks like.

"I just wish John hadn't been so eager to please Summers," Max whispered, angry at the position his clone had left him in.

Maggs chuckled darkly at that. "He did it to hurry you up. He's a big believer in motivations—thanks to Summers, I'm afraid. The more you have to lose—"

"—the more you fight for it. I guess it's working, then."

"John did have a perverse sense about 'the means to an end'. It was funny when he was a kid. Not so much when he grew up."

Max turned to look at her, for the first time realizing he didn't know a thing about John. Not really. "He wasn't all sunshine and smiles all the time?"

She thought about it for a moment, narrowing her eyes at memories lost in time. "John always knew there was something off about his life. Always asking questions to catch his doctors in a lie. And he was so darn charming about it, they played along until he got them in a corner and they had to usher him to his room. Cunning, that's what Frank called him from afar, laughing at how an eight-year-old could outsmart a bunch of PhDs in less than twenty minutes."

"So you knew John when he was a kid?"

"We knew of him, saw him on occasion from an observation deck. We still had you to worry about, and that was our main concern. We also needed to gain valuable insights on how to raise you, what to expect."

"What not to tell me," he said, looking at the sky. How much different would I have turned out if they had told me the truth? If I had known I wasn't their creation but somebody else's?

She nodded unapologetically. "And I don't regret it one bit. Telling John the truth only brought him… unhappiness, I guess. When he started developing all his skills, he also started to ask more pointed questions about why we didn't anticipate all his changes. He was a very frustrated twelve-year old, that's for sure. That's why Summers pushed to give John access to the ship and gave him access to all the information we had. It only backfired."

Whitman had showed him the videos about the ship, but Max had never really thought about seeing it. Was it here? Beneath his feet?

"Because he didn't find anything?"

Maggs laughed humorlessly. "On the contrary, he found too much. John became obsessed with the ship for two years. Wanting to know, wanting to find the link between them and us. He was thirteen and already drinking five cups of coffee so he could read a bit more, stay awake one more hour inside it. We had to limit his hours, get him to do something else. It was just unhealthy. He pieced together a lot of the schematics, mind you, and we had to practically drag him away from it—against the will of the entire Intelligence Department, even if by that point he hadn't found anything new for months."

"That's when you met him?"

"Yeah… We thought maybe new people in his life, new challenges would redirect his energy toward more practical uses. He still chose to spend a lot of his free time on the ship, but he knew his time was limited. Then he turned seventeen, and all of a sudden, he stopped caring about it."

"Just like that?"

Maggs smiled sadly, shaking her head. "He got something bigger to worry about. That was the year he was given his first shot."

"Motivations," Max said, sobering up. What better way to get John to focus on what they wanted than to dangle his weekly dose in front of him.

"We thought he'd become depressed. He had mood swings that you wouldn't believe. The day he left, I was convinced he was dead. A tiny part of me even wondered if maybe he had killed himself."

That bad? Max asked with his eyes. This time, her smile was genuine. "John was that good at convincing us he was depressed enough to consider it. He told me all about it when he was here, how it was all part of his plan to leave. At the time, before John escaped, Summers even thought John was jealous of you. John—he's very good at making you believe one thing, when in reality he's doing another. A good magician, I guess."

"So you raised me differently so I wouldn't, what? Feel suicidal?"

Maggs looked straight at him, her hands on her lap. "We raised you so you wouldn't be curious about yourself. Special, yes, but ours. From our perspective, knowing his origins had led to John's disappearance and maybe death. It was devastating. I'm glad you know the truth now, at least as much as we know about it, but I don't regret withholding it from you all this time."

Because I'm manageable this way?

She placed her hand on his, cold and heavy. "You could have ended in the wrong hands, Max. You could have ended with having a half-life, locked away in a cell, that precious mind of yours never knowing anything but four walls. I'm so glad you grew up with us."

She doesn't see it, Max thought, as Maggs's words trailed and became a comfortable silence. She truly thinks I'm lucky to be raised here.

He kept the thought to himself. He couldn't blame her, he'd believed the exact same thing for most of his life. The true irony was that she didn't even realize how wrong her hands had been all along.

[keepsmiling7]

Max was lucky to be raised here.