Update coming right away!
For anyone who has just realized I'm posting again, I've been posting new chapters since page 11
Countless days...
It's strange how things turn out sometimes. How a bunch of strangers that had nothing in common end up being friends. How my need to get out of the drug and out of the base put Parker and Whitman on a direct collision with my life, not to mention John and his wife.
I don't know how any of this will end, I just hope is not with someone dying.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Breakable
Breathing hurt. Moving hurt more.
Thinking about moving was the worst. In the dark corners of his mind, memory eluded him. All he got back was bits and pieces of a motel room, rain, and something about a spaceship.
I’m drugged, he concluded, his training kicking in as he assumed he'd been captured by the enemy.
The thought compelled him to open his eyes, no matter how much his body protested. He found darkness, but while his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he realized he wasn’t confined. In fact, it looked like he was on a coach, a pillow under his head. By the narrow windows on the walls, he guessed he was on a basement. The light coming in had to be from a nearby street lamp, so it was night, but he had no idea what time exactly.
He tried to sit up and the world moved in dangerous ways. He was too weak to do much of anything, so he laid back again. Vaguely, he realized that his shirt was soaked, his body felt hot, and he was thirsty. He was on someone’s house, but if he had broken in or if someone had guided him here, was anyone’s guess.
He took a deep breath and willed his fuzzy mind to focus. On the ceiling, a curious crack ran in three different directions, and he wondered what could have caused that.
Where am I? he wondered again as his eyes finally adjusted, revealing lab equipment and counters, with glass shattered everywhere. It looked as if someone had been on a fight down here. At the back of his mind, something told him to stop looking for answers he was not going to like.
Voices reached him then, faint and unintelligible, but it was a warning that he wouldn’t be alone for long. With a renew sense of purpose, Max managed to sit up and leaned against the wall, a far better position to defend himself rather than laying on his back.
“No. He hasn’t moved since I came,” a man said, in a familiar voice Max couldn’t place.
“I’m far more concerned about him bringing my entire house down, to tell you the truth,” a woman answered, but this voice was a complete blank in his memory.
A door opened somewhere nearby, and lights were turned on, showing the scale of the destruction that had taken place. He ignored it. Max steadied his breathing as he raised his hand. He was not going to be able to do much, so he had to make it count.
“Oh! You’re finally awake!” Whitman’s enthusiastic smile was a relief, and Max dropped his arm. Even doing that little had cost him too much energy.
Behind Whitman’s tall frame, a blond woman walked in, a clinical look on her face. He’d seen her before, somewhere, maybe on a file on a computer screen—
—or in John’s memories.
“You’re John’s wife,” he whispered, his voice strangely low.
“Anne, yes,” she said, extending a tentative hand in front of her, as if he expected to find something invisible there. “You had a telekinetic wall surrounding you. It was impossible to reach you when you started trashing my lab. I bet you’re sore all over.”
“What?” she was talking too fast and telling him way too many things.
She realized this, and sighed in resignation.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked instead, opening a drawer and getting a flashlight out.
“I—” a kaleidoscope of memories rushed into his mind, none of them making sense. Frank warning him to get out. Maggs telling him to wait for her. John walking into a spaceship. And above it all, Parker’s terrified eyes as he closed the door to a motel room. He was going to get his fix, no matter what.
“Take your time,” Anne was saying, flashing a light on his eyes, startling him out of his mind. He moved back, out of her reach, following the elusive memory.
“Where’s Parker?” he blurted out, as Anne tried again with the flashlight.
“Sleeping,” Whitman answered. “John told her to bring you here, and I told her where here actually is. I flew on the first flight I could find, but by that time, she’d already been watching you for—”
“Slow down,” Anne said, willing Max to follow the light for the third time. “He’s barely awake, and not all here, are you?”
“Is she okay?” Max asked, the only answer that mattered—the only answer he needed.
“Yes,” both said at the same time.
“Now, let’s try this again,” Anne said, placing a hand on his wrist while looking at her watch, effectively taking his pulse. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
He thought about it. “Summer wanted to see me in his office. He—he wants to be the one to give me my shot. I don’t think… I don’t think he gave it to me?”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“I’m running. In the woods. I’m escaping… I’m escaping Summers? That can’t be right.” It hurt to remember.
“Alex, could you bring Max a glass of water? He’s still running a fever.”
“On it.”
Whitman left, and Anne’s serious eyes met his. “You left the base under the influence of some drug, so someone wasn’t playing nice with you.”
“They did?” The fog surrounding reality became thinner, letting him remember with more clarity. He was in a motel room, rain was falling hard. “It was Summers…” he whispered with certainty.
“I don’t know,” Anne said, “But somewhere down the line you met with Liz, and then John. At some point, my demented husband took your place and went back to that damn base.”
“He went to the spaceship,” Max said, the memory hitting him as if Anne had slapped him. It looked like she wanted to slap someone, anyway.
“He found it?” she asked, bewildered. “After all this time, I thought he’d let it go. I thought—” she stopped in midsentence, and looked at Max with a frown. “How do you know he found it?”
“I think I dreamwalk him or something.”
“So you know he’s alive?”
Max thought about it for a second. “He was. I saw him getting in. He knew exactly where to go and what to do.”
She sighed, defeated. “If they don’t kill you, I will,” she muttered. She closed her eyes for a moment, and nodded once to herself.
“He said he wanted to destroy it,” Max pressed, memories and questions becoming clearer by the minute. “He said something about—”
“Antar, I bet,” she said, dismissive.
“What is it? What does it mean?”
Whitman came down with a tall glass of water right then. Max reached for it, but his hands trembled so badly, Anne took it instead.
“A story for later. Let’s concentrate on what we can control right now, shall we? You’re still going through withdrawals,” she told him.
He didn’t remember coming here, not really, but he did remember the motel room, and how his treacherous self had planned a way to get his fix—Parker and freedom be damned. His plan had failed, obviously, but at last this room made sense: he’d been lying here thinking he was going to die. He’d been lying here without his fix. He’d been lying here without that cursed drug running through his veins. And he was here now, still breathing.
“I’m still alive,” he whispered with awe, looking at her, and then at Whitman.
I didn’t die. John was right, they didn’t want us dead. The drug was never going to kill me.
“So far so good,” Anne nodded, pressing the glass to his lips. He swallowed slowly. He had no energy for anything else.
“The thing is,” she said, “you’re not out of the woods yet. Your body is pretty messed up. It’s not like you to take so long to heal.”
He frowned. “How long have I been out?”
“About two days,” Whitman said.
“Two days since John went into that base. What else do you remember?” Anne asked, all businesslike, “Did he destroy the ship?”
“I don’t know. He pushed me out once he reached the main controls.”
“I can try to hack into the security footage,” Whitman offered. “See where he is, or if we can find a way to get him out.”
Anne looked at Max. “Or you can dreamwalk him again.”
He nodded, still feeling uneasy, but more than willing to know what had happened to his older “brother”.
He closed his eyes. His head felt heavy, as if he could fall to the floor by its weight alone. He leaned back on the couch, and steadied his breathing. Darkness greeted him, and nothing else.
His body ached everywhere. The room was too hot—or maybe he was too hot?—and although he hadn’t eaten in two days, his stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a rock. He lost focus again and again. Something wasn’t right. It almost felt as if something inside him was broken.
“I can’t do it,” he said, opening his eyes to the disappointed look in Anne’s face.
“We’ll try it later,” she said, standing up, “once you’ve rested and—”
“No,” Max said, realizing he had a deeper problem, “it’s not tiredness. I think—I think my powers are gone.”