Yet Another T Word Chapter 1, an one life to live fanfic

DISCLAIMER: One Life to Live and its characters are the property of ABC; no copyright infringement is intended.

Note: This fic - like the one to which it's a sequel - was, of course, intended all along to be an AU. I think I began writing it Jan. 10. I'm thrilled that we now know Victor was intended to be alive, sad that we may never learn how Head Writer Ron Carlivati meant to explain it. He would have come up with something far better than any fan efforts!

Dirk Westcott strode into the room. Skipping his usual knock on the door that was always ajar.

Victor flinched, and let out a gasp.

Then he clenched his fists till his nails dug painfully into his palms. He hated himself for showing that sign of other-than-physical weakness.

Hated Westcott for causing it.

He strove, constantly, to present a brave front. But in truth, he was frightened by any deviation from routine, however slight. It might mean Westcott and his people had decided to begin doing things to him, without his consent.

If they weren't doing those things already. How could he be sure? What was in those IVs the nurses stuck in him, the mush they insisted he eat? They swallowed some of it too, to reassure him. But perhaps the amount consumed was significant...

Westcott looked contrite. "Sorry I startled you, Mr. Manning." They'd let him decide what he wanted to be called, and that had been his choice. "But I'm glad to see you're well enough to be sitting up in a chair. I'd like to have a serious talk with you today, if you're feeling up to it. Okay?"

Victor said sullenly, "I want to go home."

He'd been saying that for months. For all the good it did him.

He remembered being shot. And after that, being on the floor, with Tea...Tea begging him to keep his eyes open, to focus on her, stay with her! He'd tried, so very hard...

He'd tried to tell her who shot him. He knew he hadn't succeeded. But he thought he had managed to say, "I love you."

Trying so hard to cling to consciousness...but he'd failed, and slipped away from her, into a world where there was only pain and darkness.

After that, so much was a blur... Intervals of consciousness, when the pain was so excruciating that he couldn't think of anything else. Hazy memories of struggling against people he thought wanted to do things to him. Scared faces. Voices saying, "Please, stop thrashing around! We don't want to hurt you. We're trying to help, and you're making things worse!"

Finally, drifting back to some kind of reality. Here, in this room.

Often - too often - with Dirk Westcott.

Doctors and nurses, or people who said they were doctors and nurses, came and went. But Westcott was the one constant, daily presence in Victor's new, warped and stunted, life. A steely-eyed thirtysomething whose neat business attire couldn't conceal a physique worthy of an NFL linebacker, Westcott was the principal spokesman for the people who said they were "trying to help." As he claimed, the CIA.

Westcott had never physically touched Victor. He'd assured him that only medical professionals were being allowed to touch him. They were paid by the CIA, yes. But they were bound by codes of professional ethics that they took very seriously.

No, they weren't putting any drugs in his system that weren't medically necessary! He'd had to undergo three major operations. So some drugs were necessary, as was intravenous feeding.

Westcott had explained that the startling reappearance of the "real Todd Manning" - son of rogue operative Irene Manning - had alerted the CIA to a potentially dangerous situation in Llanview. They'd had operatives on the scene by the time Victor was shot. While he was in a coma, they'd realized he and his family might still be in grave danger.

So - with the consent of Victor's wife - they'd spirited him out of the Llanview hospital and brought him to this secure, private medical facility, which Westcott told him was in rural Virginia. All the people closest to him - his wife, all four of the children he thought of as his, his sister Viki, even his ex-wife Blair - knew where he was, and knew he was receiving the best possible care. But for now, everyone else had been tricked into believing he was dead. And because there was still so much danger, he couldn't have any form of contact with anyone.

That was what Westcott claimed.

Victor didn't believe a word of it.

"We want that too," Westcott said, with every appearance of sincerity. "We want to get you home to your family. But it's still too dangerous. You have to be completely well.

"At some point, you'll have to work at getting completely well. That's why we gave you the photos. To, ah, motivate you. I know you want to see them again..." He gestured toward the array of photos on the bedside table.

Tea. All four children. Viki. Blair. Separately and in groups. And Victor with all of them.

Victor said stiffly, "Of course." But he didn't let his gaze shift toward the photos.

He never let himself show any reaction to those photos. But they were in fact his lifeline. He lived in fear that Westcott would use them against him - threaten to take them away if he didn't cooperate.

Or worse: that he might threaten to harm the actual people in the photos.

Westcott sighed. "Like I said, I want to have a serious talk with you today. Don't worry - I won't be trying to 'interrogate' you! I'll be telling you things. Some of those things will be unpleasant. If you want me to stop at any point, I will. You can rest, and we'll continue it another day.

"One way or another, I'll finish up today by telling you something I think you'll be very happy to hear. So you have that to look forward to.

"Got to get some stuff out of my briefcase. Just papers!"

Victor realized the man was saying that so he wouldn't be alarmed when he saw him move to open the briefcase. Wouldn't imagine, even for a moment, that Westcott was about to hurt him.

He was embarrassed at Westcott's knowing how skittish he was. But without the warning, he probably would have started violently. And that would have sent his already aching body into a paroxysm of pain.

Westcott pulled out a stack of the aforementioned "papers," and a manila envelope that might or might not hold more. He laid them on the bed; evidently, Victor would have to wait a while to learn what they dealt with.

He drew up a chair and dropped into it, facing Victor. Uncomfortably close. Then he looked at him and said levelly, "There's been a major development, Mr. Manning, that changes a lot of things.

"We now know you've been lying to us."

Victor didn't let himself change expression.

But he knew he'd lied about only one thing.

And he'd agonized over whether it was the right decision.

If the people holding him really were the CIA - the "good guys" - would they let him go if he told them the truth on that point? Would they accept his word that it was a problem he could deal with, quietly and without publicity, and they should just keep their mouths shut? Or would they go public with it, and hurt someone he loved?

Had they gone public with it?

Westcott may be bluffing.

He said coolly, "I don't lie. That's your specialty."

Westcott gave a rueful smile. "I admit I haven't told you the whole truth either. I'm prepared to do it today.

"But I really do know your secret. You lied when you told us you'd been shot by a man you'd never seen before. The real shooter was your sister, Victoria Lord."

Victor started to say, "It was actually -"

Westcott was nodding. "I know. One of her alters."

Victor closed his eyes. So it's really out in the open...

His eyes smarted.

But Westcott was saying gently, "We understand why you lied, Mr. Manning. I don't suppose it matters to you, but no one in the Agency is critical of you." Then he gave a wry smile. "Even if it did cause us to waste a lot of time searching for a nonexistent assassin!"

"How did you find out?" Victor demanded. "Have you told everyone? Gotten Viki arrested? You had no right! The core personality doesn't know what alters do, and I didn't want her to know!

"I would have consulted specialists. Found out whether I could prevent its happening again without telling her anything. Or if not, what specialists would advise me to do -"

"Calm down," Westcott told him. "No one turned your sister in. She remembered it on her own - well, 'remembered' may not be the right word. I don't understand this 'DID' condition very well. Something, or some combination of things, made her realize she was the person who'd done it. And she immediately told the police. That's the only reason the Agency knows."

Victor moaned.

"I know this is hard on you," Westcott continued. "On her, on everyone. But she hasn't been arrested, and won't be. Hasn't been institutionalized either. She's under a psychiatrist's care - under close observation. She has a loving family to help her through this."

The man sounded so understanding, so sympathetic, that Victor found himself opening up to him. "I was surprised when I realized you didn't already know who'd shot me! I guess I'd assumed Viki would be found wandering around with the gun in her hand.

"I knew I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen the shooter. The way I fell would have proved I'd been standing, with the shooter directly in front of me. And I couldn't accuse someone I knew hadn't done it. It was either name Viki, or tell the lie I did.

"I sort of wish it had been either my brother or my brother-in-law. I would've gladly thrown either of them under the bus!"

They both laughed.

But Victor sobered quickly. "You admitted you've lied to me. About that business of faking my death, right?"

"Uh, sort of. What made you sure I was lying?"

"Three things." Victor was watching the other man's face closely. "First, you've said all four of my children were in on the secret. But Sam's only seven years old! No one would ask a seven-year-old to keep a secret like that. If you suggested it, Tea and Blair would have told you it wouldn't work. He could never keep that kind of secret from Todd. However I may feel about it, Sam likes Todd. The first time they met, Todd saved his life!

"Then there's the matter of people's accepting that they weren't being allowed to see my dead body. Sure, Tea could have made an excuse that would satisfy acquaintances. But not Todd or Tomas. They'd demand to see it.

"But most important...Tea might have agreed to your bringing me to a place like this, and her not coming. But she wouldn't have agreed to my not being permitted to talk to her on the phone. Never! No way!

"So what's really going on? Above all...are Tea and my kids all right?"

"Oh, God, yes!" Westcott looked surprised - and chastened. "I never thought you might imagine they weren't.

"But...this is one of the things I warned you might be hard to take. The truth is that not even Tea was 'in on the secret.' Everyone believes you're dead!"

For a few seconds, Victor just stared at him, in stunned silence.

Then he began to scream.

A half-dozen nurses came on the run. They spent the next ten minutes trying unsuccessfully to calm Victor, trying even less successfully to get him into bed, and berating Westcott for whatever it was he'd done.

But Victor finally recovered enough to shoo them, and the two men were alone again.

He was still shaking like a leaf, short of breath, and feeling a stab of pain with every one of those breaths. But he managed to say, "You told Tea I was dead? Maybe you should kill me right now. Because if you give me time to get my strength back, I'll kill you!"

"I'm sorry!" Westcott was saying that for about the tenth time. "But will you please calm down and listen to me?"

Victor was still rambling. "My God - Viki! Not only does she know she shot me, she thinks she killed me!"

Westcott nodded. "Yes. I admit that's terrible. But we really are trying to get you well, and back to your family. The more you fuss and fret and hurt yourself, the longer it's going to take.

"Now will you please listen to me? What we - the CIA - did isn't as bad as you think."

Victor was too exhausted to do much more talking, anyway. He sighed, shrugged, and said, "Okay. Explain. If you can."

"To begin with," Westcott told him, "you really were clinically 'dead' on your living room floor, by the time paramedics got there! You'd died in your wife's arms. Attempts to resuscitate you failed. And that was understandable, because you'd lost so much blood before your wife found you. Quite aside from the wound itself - which was devastating - no one would have been expected to survive that massive a blood loss.

"You were dead. Everyone was told you were dead.

"So all your loved ones had experienced that shock, that loss, before the medical examiner prepared to start an autopsy - and detected a flicker of life. Evidently, all the moving of the body had somehow revived you.

"By then, like I said, the CIA was on the scene. We got involved right away, before the few medical people who knew what had happened could call anyone like the local police.

"You were taking shallow breaths on your own, but to assure your getting enough oxygen, you'd have to be put on a respirator. There was brain activity, but very little. The doctors said that if you survived long-term, you'd probably be in a vegetative state. So if they told your family you weren't dead, it wouldn't really be good news. More likely, heartbreaking news, worse than what they'd already accepted.

"That was the situation in which we decided to keep you officially 'dead,' bring you here, and care for you. We thought that if whoever had tried to kill you realized they hadn't succeeded, they'd keep trying, and your whole family would be in danger.

"Emergency surgery had been performed in Llanview, of course - though we knew more would be required. We were prepared to accept the worst-case scenario. We would have tried to make you comfortable, for as long as you survived. But I won't deny we were hoping for more. Hoping you'd be able to tell us, at the very least, who shot you.

"No one expected you'd make the recovery you have. But believe me, we really want to be able to send you back to your family."

Victor mulled that over for a few seconds.

He could have asked, "Well, why can't you send me back now?"

But he didn't.

On some level, he knew what the answer would be. And he wasn't prepared - yet - to deal with it.

But he had another question. Said, "I have a question..."

Westcott nodded. "I'm sure you do," he said quickly. "Probably more than one. But before we get into that, I should tell you about another, ah, newsworthy event that took place recently in Llanview.

"I'm not sure how you'll feel about this." Watching him closely. "Your mother, Irene Manning, is dead."

Victor sat up straighter. "Really? You're not 'testing' me, somehow? The bitch is really dead?"

"Yep, really."

"Damn it - I would have liked to kill her myself. Who did? Can't believe she died a natural death."

Westcott was grinning now. "Todd killed her."

"Ye gods. So I have to wind up admiring my crappy brother? He's trying to take everything else away from me, and he gets the honor of offing Irene, too?" Then Victor had another sudden thought. "Wait. Is he being charged with murder?"

"No. There were extenuating circumstances. The situation got complicated, but here it is in a nutshell.

"First, I want to assure you nothing bad happened to your loved ones! But Irene had planted a time bomb near your house, powerful enough to kill everyone inside. At the time, that could have included even relatives of yours who don't live there.

"At a distance from the house, she shot Todd. Non-fatally, but only because she meant to keep him alive long enough to torture him by telling him about the explosion. Letting him hear it. Actually, someone found the bomb in time - couldn't defuse it, but got the family safely away. The bomb went off...Irene heard the explosion and gloated to Todd that she'd just killed all your, and his, loved ones...and despite being wounded, he was so furious that he wrested the gun away from her and killed her."

After a long silence, Victor had to say, "Shit. I really do admire the guy!"

Then he said, "But...back to the question I wanted to ask. I still don't understand how you could have faked my death! Tea's not knowing about it makes it seem even more impossible.

"Deaths can be faked if bodies are never recovered, or a person was supposedly burned beyond recognition - something like that. But how could you have talked my family out of wanting to look at my body?"

"Actually," Westcott said quietly, "we couldn't have.

"We didn't dissuade them. You did!"

While Victor was struggling to process what he'd just heard (could it possibly be what he thought he'd heard?), a doctor stormed into the room. Summoned, it seemed, by those aggrieved nurses.

He looked balefully at Westcott. "Get out of here! The patient needs to rest."

Victor was about to protest. But Westcott looked at him, was apparently concerned by what he saw, and said, "All right, Doctor. Do you think it'll be okay for me to come back and continue our conversation in an hour or so?"

"Mr. Manning? You need rest now. But are you willing to have Mr. Westcott come back in an hour? If he's been upsetting you, tell me! Your health comes first."

"He isn't upsetting me. Yes...I want him to come back." Am I actually saying that? The first choice I've ever been given, and I'm not asking to be rid of him. Unbelievable.

Doctor and agent exchanged curt nods, and Westcott left, leaving his belongings behind.

The doctor did a quick check of Victor's vitals - Victor involuntarily recoiling at every touch. Damn, why can't I control this? I feel as if everyone who comes near me is trying to violate me, somehow.

Well, maybe they are...

Or maybe I'm just confusing them with the people who've violated me before.

Apparently satisfied that not much was wrong, the doctor said grumpily, "Okay. Now to get this stuff off the bed, and you in it."

"No! I want to stay here."

He'd spent too much time in beds this past year. Hospital beds. Only six months before Viki shot him, he'd been shot and critically wounded by someone else. Never had learned who that was.

So of course it made sense that he was developing an aversion to beds.

I remember another bed...

No! He simply disliked hospital beds!

The doctor sighed. "Have it your way. But only because the chair's a recliner."

He reclined it. Said, "Now lean back. Close your eyes. Relax."

Victor only succeeded in doing two of those things. But the doctor was satisfied. His footsteps receded. And finally, mercifully, Victor was alone.

He did need rest.

But his mind kept playing and replaying those cryptic words of Westcott's.

"We didn't dissuade them. You did!"

In how many ways had he been violated? Was he a person...or a puppet?

Perhaps he didn't really want to be alone. Alone with his fears, and his terrible knowledge.

I remember saying, "I wish I was Todd Manning."

I've gotten past that. I don't wish I was Todd Manning.

I just wish I was...someone.

But I'm not.

An hour later, Westcott was back, and the two men were once again sitting face to face.

Victor hadn't gotten any sleep. Or any real rest.

"Are you sure you want me to go on?" Westcott asked. "You still look tired. I've been hitting you with a lot today. Maybe it's too soon..."

Victor shook his head. "No. You said I somehow kept my family from demanding to see my dead body." His voice quavered, and he hated that, but he couldn't help it. "Tell me what the hell you meant!"

Westcott reached over to the bed, and picked up the topmost of that small stack of papers. Glanced at it, then gathered up three more.

He handed one to Victor. "Read this."

Victor's hands were shaking so he could barely hold it. His vision blurred. But he blinked, and forced himself to focus on the page.

A lengthy note of some kind. Handwritten, in his handwriting...

But then, "his" handwriting was exactly like Todd's...

He shuddered at that thought. Did he have a glimmer of memory, of being forced to struggle with a pen for hours on end till he could duplicate that handwriting, make it "his"? Or was he merely imagining what must have happened?

The note... It was dated. And the date seemed to prove he'd written it. Years ago, within weeks of his family in Llanview's having accepted him as Todd Manning.

A note addressed to his personal physician. Telling him that after the ordeal he'd experienced at the hands of Mitch Laurence, he'd begun thinking seriously about his own mortality. And he'd decided that when he someday died, he didn't want anyone other than medical personnel and a mortician to be allowed to see his dead body. No one else, not even his closest kin!

The note continued with a rambling explanation. His enemies would come to a public "viewing" and feign respect, while they were really gloating. But beyond that...at the time of his death, he might have young children or, hopefully, grandchildren. The sight of his dead body might be traumatic for them; but if other family members were looking at it, it would be hard to refuse them. Above all, he thought of a dead body as merely an "empty shell," and he didn't want his loved ones to have that as their last memory of him.

The note was, of course, signed. With the full name he thought he bore at that time, Thomas Todd Manning.

"Look closely at the actual paper," Westcott said quietly. "You can see the impressions made by the pen. See it's the original, not a copy. The date hasn't been altered - though of course, it would require far more than tampering with a date to change this."

Victor was bewildered. "I...I never wrote it!"

But even as he spoke, he was realizing how hard it would be for someone to forge handwriting throughout a note of this length.

Westcott shook his head. "Your doctor claims you did. He found the request so unusual that he insisted you give it to him in writing. In longhand."

He handed over the three other sheets. Notes saying essentially the same thing - addressed to Victor's lawyer, his minister, and the mortician who handled family funerals. "They all wanted it in writing."

While Victor sat staring blankly at the papers, Westcott droned on. "I interviewed all these men. A CIA identification badge, and the words 'national security,' open a lot of doors. I have the interviews on a flash drive - you can see them if you like. They all said you'd told them repeatedly, throughout the years, that your wishes hadn't changed.

"That made it relatively easy for us. Your wife was surprised, but wouldn't dream of going against what you'd wanted. She even managed to convince herself it was in character for you! And people like Todd and Tomas could hardly be suspicious, when your wishes had been on record for years."

"I...I don't understand!"

But Westcott, eyes locked on his, said, "Don't you?"

The agent reached for more papers. "Do you remember what was in your will, Mr. Manning?"

Victor gulped. "Of - of course I do. It was supposedly the will of Thomas Todd Manning. That's who I thought I was. I left virtually everything to Tea and my children..."

Then he said weakly, "Didn't I?"

"Afraid not. Read this."

When Victor realized what he was seeing, he almost screamed again.

"This will left everything to Irene Manning? My God - it's a fake! Aside from the fact I wouldn't have left her one red cent, I didn't know she was alive!"

Grasping at straws, he said, "The damn will isn't in longhand. All someone would have had to forge here is my signature."

Westcott was shaking his head. "Look at these other wills. You supposedly changed your will several times during your years in Llanview, as your family changed. But all the wills are actually the same - leaving everything to Irene.

"I have recorded interviews with lawyers about that, too. They say you drove them nuts. You'd come in to 'change your will,' jabber about it for an hour or so as you considered one change after another, and always wind up not having changed it at all."

Victor buried his face in his hands.

Then he was struck by a horrible realization. "Oh my God. Everyone thinks I'm dead...so this travesty of a will has actually been probated?"

"Yes. Irene inherited everything, even the Sun. But don't forget, she's dead now! Her will left all of it to her daughter Tina. But" - in response to Victor's strangled gasp - "Tina realized most of that fortune had been built up, at different times, by Todd and by you. She was decent enough to give it all to Todd. He loves the children as much as you do. And if Tea were ever in need - which she isn't - he'd look out for her."

Warming to his subject, Westcott continued, "Todd had intended to challenge that will of yours. He might have had a case, arguing that you weren't the real Todd Manning. That's probably why Irene decided to kill him, and blow up all other potential heirs.

"What's most important now, though, is that you realize you were doing things, all those years, that you wouldn't have chosen to do...and forgot after you'd done them."

When Victor didn't respond, he said, "Do you see what Irene's plan was, from the time she sent you there? To make herself heir to that fortune. And she thought she might decide, at some point, that she needed it in a hurry. So she'd set up a way to lift you out of Llanview, fake your death, and inherit!"

"Yes, yes." Victor still felt shell-shocked. "I'm not surprised at her being cold-hearted enough to want that. But I...can hardly believe...what she did to me. That she was...able to...use me in that way..."

Westcott said, "There's evidence you've done quite a few illegal things over the years, to benefit Irene and her cronies. I suspect that if I showed you the evidence, you wouldn't remember having done any of that, either."

Victor closed his eyes, and a long shudder ran through him. He whispered, "Tomas."

"What?"

"Tomas Delgado. My brother-in-law. After he found out who I am...what I am...he kept insisting I posed a danger to Tea. Said I'd been brainwashed. 'Programmed,' maybe, to do God knows what, and I could never be trusted.

"I refused to listen to him.

"But he was right all along."

"Yes," Westcott said softly. "I'm afraid he was."

"So I can never go home. Unless I let you...do things to me. Drug me, hypnotize me, whatever."

"Yes. I hope we can help you. Find out whether you've been programmed with more...post-hypnotic suggestions that could cause you to do certain things in certain situations, and then forget them. When our experts know exactly what's been done to you, they may be able to undo it."

Victor managed a weak smile. "I notice you're saying 'hope' and 'may.' No guarantees. You make it sound like defusing a bomb."

Westcott didn't say anything to contradict that interpretation.

Victor wished he had.

After a strained silence, Victor said, " 'Undoing what's been done to me' - does that include my having been given Todd's memories?"

Westcott shifted uncomfortably. "I can't be sure. No one has experience with a case like this. You will have to...recover your real self. You might still have access to Todd's memories, without the feeling that they're yours. Or they might be gone."

But what if I don't have a "real self"?

Victor tried another tack. Seeking a way out. "At the end...back in Llanview...I'd broken whatever hold Irene may have had on me! When she was being held at the police station, she called and asked me to come and help her. I went...let her think I'd softened, wanted to hug her and be hugged by her...and then I tried to strangle her. That's the thing I'm proudest of, in my whole life..."

He saw the look on Westcott's face.

And felt as if something inside him had shriveled and died.

"You were in the police station," Westcott said gently. "There was no chance you'd be able to harm her.

"And thus, no proof you weren't doing exactly what she wanted. She may have had some reason for wanting the police - and you yourself - to believe you couldn't possibly be on her side. Who knows what you might have done later, if you hadn't been 'killed'?"

"Damn!"

Another long silence.

Then Victor said, as steadily as he could, "I don't think you understand...I don't think anyone can understand...the position I'm in.

"Try to imagine...a 40-story building. It's a wobbly, unstable building. Then someone decides to just yank out the foundation and the lowest thirty floors. Whoop! They're gone! Just gone, disintegrated! So the ten floors on top are hanging there in the air, with no support. They fall, right? They fall, and they shatter into millions of pieces that can never be put together again."

"Uh, yes..."

"That's what may happen to me, if you yank out the first three-quarters of my life.

"I have all Todd's memories, first-person memories, of that much of my - my, his, whatever - life. No memories of anything else in that time period."

I remember another bed...

No memories, no memories!

"It's a problem for me now. Sometimes I remember things, and I have to ask myself, was that me, or Todd? I have to wrack my brain till I can figure out exactly when the thing happened. Because that's the only way I can tell the difference. It could drive me crazy if I let it. It wasn't so bad back in Llanview, because there was always so much going on that I didn't have time to dwell on it. But now..."

He shook his head. Took a deep breath.

"Now I realize that I'm...at best...a semi-real person."

Westcott's face had gone white. "That's ridiculous. Of course you're a real person!"

"No, I'm not! Oh, the forty-year-old human body is real enough. But what's in it is just a hodgepodge of Todd Manning's memories, grafted onto...not much. Everything I've done in recent years, every choice I've made, has been influenced by things I thought I'd experienced in the past, behaviors I thought I'd learned and exhibited in the past. And it was all a lie.

"I seem to be an intelligent man. A competent man. I've been running the Sun for years, better than Todd ever did.

"But when Irene was brought to Llanview, she...told me things. Things that almost had to be true, because my life couldn't have played out the way it did if they weren't.

"I got the impression that originally, I was...I was...I guess what we're supposed to call it now is 'developmentally disabled.' Severely 'developmentally disabled.' "

I remember another bed...

"I had no real 'life,' none, for over thirty years! I was just...maybe, a man-sized baby. Or maybe, no better than Irene's lapdog."

I remember another bed...

"With me being no more than a 'blank slate,' she was able to copy...everything that was Todd...into me. Using drugs and hypnosis.

"If you take that out, I might be...okay, damn it, I'll use the word! I might be what that retarded son of hers would have been at forty, if the copying had never taken place. And without a 'mommy' to take care of me.

"But I might be in worse condition than that, because the copying had been done and removed!

"I might wind up in that 'vegetative state' you mentioned before. Or I might be conscious and suffering - in a living hell, with what's left of my mind so jumbled that I wouldn't be able to function even as well as I did originally."

Minutes passed before Westcott found words to reply.

"I...I'd never considered that. None of us had. It's such a totally new situation...

"Aside from making you less of a threat to others, we've hoped you'd be able to give us some info about Irene's operation. Whether we still need to be concerned about it, with her gone. But that isn't worth the risks you described.

"As far as we know, Irene was just a criminal - not an enemy of the United States, for ideological reasons. It's highly unlikely you've been 'programmed' to assassinate a public figure, or carry out any sort of terrorist activity.

"So maybe, if we were to - somehow - supervise you closely, we could let you go back to your wife and family without 'tampering' with you in any way..."

Victor sighed. "No. By now I've thought about it too much. Now I couldn't accept my posing even a slight risk to them.

"And...I've been forced to think about it so much that if I went home now, and there was never an indication I'd been 'programmed' to do anything dangerous, I still wouldn't be able to lead a normal life.

"I'm too aware of what I am.

"And what I'm not."

Westcott said, "I'm truly sorry." He seemed to know the words were inadequate. "Everyone here will be, when they learn about your concerns.

"But does this mean you will let us perform the procedures we were considering? Not right now, but after you've had more time to heal physically? Think about it - you don't have to give me an answer now.

"Remember, while I can't guarantee a good outcome, it's not impossible!"

Victor was nodding. "I know that. And I don't need more time to think about it. The answer is yes...on one condition.

"You have to promise that if I come out of it badly impaired, you won't send me home to Tea. Take care of me or euthanize me - your choice! But leave my loved ones believing what they do now."

Westcott choked out the words, "I promise."

Tentatively, he held out his hand. Victor took it, and they exchanged a somber handshake.

The first physical contact they'd had.

But then Westcott said, in a shaky voice, "Oh! I almost forgot that good thing I meant to tell you."

Victor had to do a quick mental "rewind" of everything they'd said. "The thing I'd be happy to hear? I thought it was the news Irene is dead."

"No." Westcott was finally smiling. "I wasn't sure how you'd react to that! Glad you enjoyed it.

"The other thing... Well, you've never seemed to care much about those family photos..."

"That was an act," Victor said quickly. "Believe me, I do care. Very much."

"That's great, then!" Westcott reached for the manila envelope he'd brought, and put it in Victor's hands. "This is a new one. Take a look."

Victor fumbled the envelope open.

A photograph, but a strange one, not what he'd been expecting...

And then he realized what it was.

"My God. Is this...a sonogram?"

Westcott was beaming, but there were tears in the big man's eyes. "Yep. Your and Tea's child, due in May! Too soon to know the sex. But we've learned Tea's thrilled to be carrying it..."

If he said any more, Victor didn't hear. He was too caught up in trying, through his own tears, to make out details of the photo.

Due in May? I don't even know what month this is. But he said this is a new photo, and it's too soon to know the sex...

Maybe I really am - or can be - "someone." Someone Tea needs, someone this baby needs.

Don't be in too much of a hurry, little one. Wait for Daddy to get home!