John was standing shirtless with electrodes taped to his chest, smiling that cocky grin of his. The chamber sealed itself leaving Jedikiah outside looking in. The serums wound through the medical tubing and into the teenage boy's arm. Machines suddenly started beeping like crazy. John was flat lining!
"Open it!" Jedikiah shouted. But no one seemed to hear him; they just stood there, watching with infuriating calm as John's body convulsed inside the chamber. Jedikiah ran to the nearest technician and tried to grab him, but his hands passed through the man's lab coat. He tried to release the chamber door himself, but his fingers sunk into the control panel, as though they we made of nothing but air. The continuous tone of the machine buzzed in his ears.
Suddenly the noise stopped and the door slid open. Jedikiah rushed into chamber. He tried to release the straps holding John in place, but once again he was unable to grab the solid object. It was no good. He was a ghost.
"Help me!" Jedikiah screamed at his colleagues, but they looked straight through him with indifference. Jedikiah turned back to face John's lifeless corpse. What had he done? Suddenly John's eyes popped open.
"Did I make you proud?" he rasped in a voice not his own.
Jedikiah shot up bolt upright in bed, his heart thundering in his chest. It took him a few deep breaths to remember where he was. The clock next to his bed read 1:38 am. Perfect. Jedikiah sighed and swung his legs off the side of the bed. Every night for the past week he'd had the same cold sweat nightmare and he knew there was no point in trying to get back to sleep right away.
He stood up and shuffled head to the kitchen for a glass of water. How long would this go on? It had been two weeks since John had successfully undergone the procedure. It had been a triumph for Jedikiah, who had masterminded the entire project. His standing at Ultra had never been higher. So why was he still having nightmares?
Who was he kidding? He knew exactly why he hadn't been sleeping. Those long moments before John's heart had restarted had been the most terrifying of Jedikiah's life. As John's vitals had plateaued, five words had burst into Jedikiah's mind: PLEASE GOD, NOT MY SON. The thought was particularly ironic, considering he was a committed atheist.
He didn't know why he'd gotten so attached to John. It certainly hadn't been intentional. Jedikiah had tracked and recruited over a hundred breakouts, yet for some reason he felt pulled to this one boy. Perhaps it was that John had been so young, just fourteen years old, when Jedkiah had pulled him out of his shitty foster home. Perhaps it had been the act of killing John's foster father before the cowardly drunk had the chance to beat the child to death that had bonded them. Or maybe it was simply the boy himself. He was strong, and yet emotionally vulnerable. Guarded, yet capable of absolute loyalty. A soldier who, in his heart, was still just a child looking for a family.
If Jedikiah were the sort to believe in a higher power, he might believe the situation he now found himself to be a judgment of some kind. He'd deliberately manipulated the emotions and trust of so many, it seemed like karmic inevitability that he suffered some kind of consequence.
Jedikiah stared at the glass in his hand. Water wasn't going to cut it tonight. He went to the living room where he kept his liquor cabinet. He'd just started pouring himself a scotch when he felt a tingle on the back of his neck. Someone was in his apartment.
"Hello Jed," said a voice from behind him. Jedikiah spun, scotch bottle in hand, ready to use it as a weapon. The voice belonged to a man with black hair and a beard sitting in Jedikiah's favorite armchair.
"A little risky coming here, don't you think?" The intruder rose from the chair and made his way across the room.
"What are you going to do, bludgeon me to death with your bottle of Macallan?" The two men stood nose to nose for three full seconds before Roger pulled his brother into a crushing bear hug, "It's good to see you Jed." Jed returned the embrace, feeling a rush of warmth surge through him. Reluctantly he let Roger go.
"Likewise. How did it go?" Roger had absconded with his wife and sons a month ago, when they'd both learned the Founder's true intentions regarding Ultra. Jedikiah had no idea where Roger had taken them, which was safest for all parties concerned. Roger looked away from his brother before answering.
"As well as can be expected." Jedikiah may not have been able to read his brother's thoughts, but he could read his face. Roger had done what he'd told Jedikiah he would the night he left; he had abandoned his family. It had to be done, they'd both known that. The Founder could track any mind with a 24 hour window, less if the signature was as unique as Roger's. The only hope Roger had of staying ahead of him was to keep teleporting, to never settle in one place.
"I'm sorry." He knew it was insufficient to console his brother for what he had just endured. Having just experienced a taste of what losing a child would feel like, he could empathize with the pain Roger must be feeling.
"I can't live like this Jed." Jedikiah did not like the sound of that. As much as he hated the thought of never seeing his brother again, it was better than the alternative.
"We've been over this Roger. There is no other way."
"We both know that's not quite true." Jedikiah rolled his eyes. Not this again.
"Limbo? Roger, how many times do we have to go over this: YOU CAN'T STOP TIME WHILE TELEPORTING!" Crick and Roger had spent years always obsessing over this mystical "limbo", but every one of their experiments had failed.
"We've never tried the alternative." The alternative? Roger couldn't mean what he thought he meant. Yet Roger's grim face suggested that he did.
"Absolutely not!" Jedikiah had dedicated his entire life to proving that, despite hearing voices in his head, his brother wasn't crazy. This conversion was giving him cause to doubt that theory.
"It is the only solution." Jed noted the bags under Roger's wide imploring eyes. He looked tired, like he hadn't slept in a week. That would certainly explain the craziness his brother was spouting.
"It is not a solution, it is suicide!"
"As long as my body is preserved, I should be able to return from Limbo." There was a big difference between "should" and "will".
"You don't even know that Limbo exists!"
"Dr. Crick thinks-" Jedikiah cut Roger off before he could finish.
"Oh Dr. Death thinks it will work, well why didn't you just say so. I feel much better about your plan now." How many times had Crick's theoretically perfect experiments ended in the death of his subject? As a scientist Jed recognized that Crick was brilliant and that a certain amount of failure was to be expected from any trial, but that didn't mean he wanted his brother to be test case #1.
"It's a leap of faith." At the Jedikiah actually laughed out loud. Faith? That was the best argument Roger could come up with?
"I'm a scientist, Roger. I don't believe in faith, I believe in facts!" To Jedikiah faith was just a nice sounding synonym for stupidity. It was a word someone came up with to sell stupid, irrational ideas to the masses.
"Facts? Here are the facts: He wants to rule the world, Jed and he wants to use us to help him do it." Roger's statement blew all the wind out of Jedikiah's sails. It sounded just as insane at it had a month ago when Roger had first came to him and told him he was disappearing. He'd known The Founder was a ruthless and driven man, but Jedikiah had never suspected his ultimate intentions.
Ultra was supposed exist to explore the full potential of the Tomorrow People, and to help maintain a balance between the two dominant species on the planet. The founder wanted something else entirely. He was building an army and destroying anyone who might oppose him in the days to come. Roger and his time-stopping ability factored heavily into this plan, although neither he nor his brother knew exactly how. What they did know was that for the good of both species, The Founder must never be allowed to get his hands on Roger.
"So we kill him. We get him alone, you immobilize him, and I shoot him. Problem solved." It wasn't as though Jedikiah hadn't killed before and he was more than willing to do so to protect his family and his species. Roger however shook his head.
"We wouldn't get close enough. You know he and I are linked. He'd sense my intention from ten miles away." The link did present a problem. One of the things Jedikiah had been studying at Ultra was the psychic link phenomena that occasionally sprung up between Tomorrow People. The connection between Roger and the Founder was the only reason Roger had discovered his plans, but it was a double-edge sword.
"Then I go in alone. I'm much better at hiding my thoughts than you." One of the advantages of growing up with a psychic was that it trained Jedikiah how to obscure what his was thinking. The trick was compartmentalization. The human mind was complicated. There were layers upon layers of thoughts coexisting simultaneously. Jedikiah had learned to hide the incriminating ideas beneath the innocuous ones. When Roger had fled Jedikiah's skill had been put to the test.
The Founder had summoned Jedikiah and interrogated him while probing his mind. Jedikiah had brought certain thoughts to the forefront: His believe in serving the greater good at any cost, his resentment of Roger's abilities, and his fears that emergence of the Tomorrow People signaled the end of the human race as surely as the arrival of Homo Sapiens had meant the end of the Neanderthals. These truths obscured the greater truths of how much Jed loved his brother and how much he hated the Founder.
"You still wouldn't stand a chance against him. It is too much of a risk." Again Jedikiah couldn't help but laugh.
"Says my baby brother who wants me to shoot him in the chest." It had just been a guess, but Roger's face confirmed he'd been right on the money. Roger didn't just want him to stand idly by while he attempted his deadly hail mary, he wanted his active participation.
"You are more important to the future of our two species than I am." That was an unexpected argument. Jedikiah had always taken it as an unspoken given that Roger was the more "special" of the two them. He was the chosen one, different even from the other members of his species.
"You really think playing on my ego is going to convince me to go along with this?" Roger had to be pretty desperate if trying to manipulate him like this. As the saying goes, 'You don't play a player'.
"It is the truth. He's too strong for me. If I go head to head with him, I'll lose. But you, Jedikiah, you are brilliant and you are cunning, and you have the strength to do what needs to be done. If you are patient one day he will make a mistake, and you will bring him down."
Jedikiah finally understood the full extent of what Roger wanted from him.
"You're asking me to be a sleeper agent inside Ultra." Roger wanted him to burrow deep into the heart of darkness and destroy the beast from inside. It wasn't a bad plan. It certainly made more sense than searching for a mystical place between life and death. "What about you?"
"I'll contact you when I return from Limbo."
"You mean 'if' you return." Roger reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed a gun. He placed it gently in his brother's hands.
"Please do this for both our species, Jed. Do it for your nephews. Do it for me." The gun felt unbelievably heavy in Jedikiah's hand. How far was he willing to go to protect the world? He raised the gun and pointed it at his brother's chest. All he needed to do was squeeze and he would prove himself loyal to the Founder. His nephews would be safe and one way or another Roger would be free. Roger closed his eyes waiting for Jedikiah to do what he'd always been able to do: whatever was necessary. Yet something was staying his trigger finger.
"No. Not me." He lowered the gun as Roger opened his eyes in confusion.
"Jed, it has to be you. It the best way to convince him you've committed to the cause." That may have been true, but like it or not something inside Jedikiah had changed. No matter what his rational mind told him, he couldn't take brother's life, at least not directly. His mind raced to find a rationalization that would satisfy Roger.
"No. He'll scrub my mind for confirmation and who knows what he'll find. I assign someone else, someone from Ultra. You should go." Jedikiah walked over to the security panel on his wall and deactivated the d-chip. He turned to face his brother, perhaps for the last time.
"Jed, in case this doesn't work out, and you see my sons again, look after them for me will you?" Stephen and Luca. He'd never spent much time with his nephews. His work always seemed to be so much more important. Now it was unlikely he'd ever find them again…unless they took after their father. It would be better for all parties if they didn't.
"Of course."
"I love you Jed."
"I love you too." Roger smiled and teleported out, leaving Jedikiah alone with his thoughts.
Why he hadn't he been able to pull the trigger? Jed loved his brother, and he always had, but that fact alone shouldn't have stopped him. Jed's actions had always been ruled by intellect, not emotion. What had changed?
Jedikiah turned to the drink he had poured himself, but had yet to consume. He thought back to his nightmare. John. That's what had changed. He had briefly experienced what it was like to lose someone he loved by his own hand, and it had weakened him. Jedikiah could not afford to be weak, not with what was coming next.
Ultra was heading down a dark path and if Jedikiah was going to remain within striking distance of The Founder, he would be called upon to do many unspeakable things. He wouldn't be the only one. Everyone who worked at Ultra would be tested and those that failed to conform would die. What would happen to John?
Jedikiah groaned and sipped his scotch. Was this what it was to be a father, to always be distracted by the never-ending concern for the well-being of your child? How did any of them manage to accomplish anything in the perpetual state of near panic? The more Jedikiah thought about it, the more he became certain of one thing: John had to leave Ultra.
John's remaining in Ultra would be dangerous for both of them. The boy was Jedikiah's weakness, and The Founder would exploit that in whatever way he could. The pain that squeezed Jed's heart when he imagined sending John away told him more than anything else that it was the right choice to make. The only question that remained was how he would manage it.
He could tell John the truth, but if he did John wouldn't go. John's loyalty, his stupid, blind loyalty, would make him insist on staying, and fighting the good fight. Except it wouldn't be a good fight, it would be a bloody, morally compromising war. Whatever dark stains currently existed on Jedikiah's soul, would only grow darker. Jedikiah did not want that for John. He needed to sever the bonds between them and push John away before it was too late.
The solution appeared in Jed's mind almost instantaneously. Roger. He would send John to kill Roger. Either John would fail and run of his own free will or he would succeed, and the guilt of killing his former mentor would turn him against Jedikiah. Either way John would not come back. It was for the best. Jedikiah downed the remainder of his drink, hoping it would numb the pain in chest as he imagined his future without the two people he loved most. This was only the first test of many and he could not falter. He had a world to save.