Chapter 2 Up Against the Glass
US-40 Utah
Sam braced a hand against the roof of the truck's cabin as it bounced over the lumps and cracks in the road, wondering if his spine would ever decompress. Beside him, Dean's gaze was fixed to the grey concrete strip illuminated by the heavy-duty headlights, and he seemed to move with the truck, no doubt helped by the light grip on the wheel. To Sam's right, Rufus was leaning back into the corner between the seat back and the passenger door, head bouncing against the window glass as he slept.
"So, you didn't see her?" Sam asked, his tongue narrowly missing being bitten as a large bump snapped his teeth together.
"No."
"You got right up to the door, but you didn't knock."
Dean flicked a sideways glance at him. "You need me to draw you a map, Sam? Yeah, I chickened out at the last minute. You satisfied?"
"No, uh, sorry," Sam back-pedalled, shaking his head. "I just – uh, just have trouble imagining that."
He saw the scowl tighten his brother's face and looked through the windshield. "Are you, um, okay?"
Dean exhaled loudly, deliberately loosening his grip on the wheel. He counted to ten. Then twenty. Then looked at his brother.
"You mean, you want to know about my feelings?"
On the other side of the truck, Rufus lurched into consciousness, roused by the tone in the older Winchester's voice as much as the words.
"Hell no, he doesn't want to know about your feelings," he grated, straightening up against the back of seat. "Where the hell are we?"
"On the 40 about twenty-five miles from whatever's left of Heber," Dean said shortly.
Sam looked at Rufus. "He can talk about his feelings if he needs to."
Rufus snorted. "Sam, trust me, can of worms you don't want to open, not now."
"I think I know my own brother well enough to –"
"Shut it, the both of you," Dean said. "Sam, how far along the 40 do we need to go before we turn off?"
"What's wrong?" Rufus asked, peering out into the darkness beyond the reach of the headlights.
"Not sure," Dean answered, changing up as the incline flattened out a little again. "Bad feeling."
"It's another two miles, we got a gravel road heading west. Vince said look out six miles past the reservoir which was four miles ago," Sam said, peering at the angled map in the dash lights.
A blast of wind rocked the truck and Dean glanced to the right, looking at the rising ground.
"Might get a bit rough over the next bit," he warned the two men beside him.
Canyon Road, Strawberry Peak, Utah
Two miles after the turnoff the road began to switchback up and down the mountain and the wind hit them every time they shifted to a north-facing slope, the canvas canopy thundering behind them, and icy pellets of granular snow peppering the roof and windshield and doors.
The gravel road was a mass of washouts and corrugations, and Dean gentled them along the stretches that were mostly gone, clinging onto the steep slope as the snow got thicker.
"How much further to the base?" he asked his brother, raising his voice over the moaning wind and labouring engine as they crested another hill. The truck slid across the half-rock, half-sticky clay soil before he caught the edge and eased them back onto what he thought was the road.
"Half a mile," Sam said, looking through the thick snow that was lit up by the headlights, whiting out most of the landscape. "How can you see in this?"
Dean grinned humourlessly, the smile disappearing as he saw the shapes of buildings briefly between the flurries below them. "That's it."
The truck started to slide sideways again, and he changed down, the engine roaring as the tyres shifted across the slick surface and found a pothole that gave some grip as the weight of the truck fell into it. None of them had anything to say until the headlights showed the long, low building in front of them, stone walls and razor-wire glinting wetly in the lights as Dean pulled along in front of it.
"Looks welcoming," Rufus remarked as the engine died.
"Better than sitting in here for the night," Dean said, shrugging. He opened the door and an icy wind whistled into the cabin. Dropping to the wet ground, he pulled his coat collar up and walked down to the back of the truck, unzipping the back flap and feeling around for the gear bags.
Balthazar'd said that they'd searched the building and the sheds for any other prisoners and had found nothing. Didn't mean that something couldn't've moved back in once all the noise and people had gone, he thought, dragging out the big black bag that held his weapons and the slightly smaller green canvas duffel that carried sleeping bags, food, water and hopefully dry clothing. Slinging the green bag over his shoulder, he turned for the low porch and the elaborately carved dark wood front door.
Sam and Rufus followed him inside, Rufus heaving against the door and the wind behind it, forcing it closed and locking it. Inside, the noise of the storm was muted, and their flashlights picked out big rooms, still filled with furniture, dust coating everything.
"Where do you want to set up?" Rufus glanced across at Dean as they crossed the hall and entered a huge living area. In the hearth, the ashes swirled a little in the downdraught from the chimney, but logs were piled high on either side of the fireplace and a big box of smaller pieces stood on the raised brick hearth.
"Here'll do," Dean said, nodding as he looked at the fireplace and the overstuffed, capacious sofas that fronted it. "Get a fire going and we'll check out the rest of the rooms," he added, dropping the green duffel to the floor and taking a pump from the black bag.
Sam put his bags down and retrieved an automatic rifle, pushing several clips into the pockets of his jacket. He followed Dean out as Rufus laid a new fire and lit it.
The rest of the house was more or less intact. Two of the bedrooms had broken windows, and were piled with debris from the outside, leaves and dirt and twigs mostly. They closed those doors. The bathrooms still had running water, cold and either gravity-fed from a higher tank or artesian from a spring below the house, Sam guessed. It was slightly hard with a high mineral content, but fresh and clean.
Dean shone the flashlight around the kitchen, checking the cupboards. The food had spoiled, but he found a couple of hurricane lanterns, still filled with kerosene and carried them back to the living room. The basements, cellars and whatever else the house held could wait for morning. They'd locked every door that possessed the means and they could take watches, two on, one off, till dawn.
"Anything?" Rufus looked up as they came back in, the fire already adding a little warmth to the room.
"No," Dean said, lighting one lantern and setting it on a table behind the sofas. The light was a bright gold, gilding his skin and catching glints from the tips of his hair. The pressurised lantern hissed softly. "Doesn't look like anything's been in here at all."
"From what the Qaddiysh and Jane said, most of the space is under this level," Sam added, setting his gun on the sofa and picking up a canister of salt from the black bag, opening it and trailing a line along the thresholds and windowsills. Walking behind him, Dean shook a jar of thick red liquid, using a narrow brush to paint sigils and wards over the window glass and doors. Hell was closed, but he didn't want anyone else eavesdropping on what they were doing here.
"You two want to take first watch, I'll take last," he said, screwing the cap back on the wide-mouthed jar when he'd finished and returning it to the bag.
Rufus nodded and got up, picking up the shotgun and moving to the interior wall door. Sam picked up his gun and walked over to the windows, standing to one side of the almost-closed curtains and peering through the gap. He had a long, oblique view of the outside, without being visible.
Dean dragged out the sleeping bag and stretched out on the sofa in front of the fire, rolling onto one shoulder and closing his eyes. He wouldn't have even felt a drive like today's back in the old days, he thought tiredly. A few hundred miles over the smooth and maintained roads would've flown by, handled automatically. None of the roads were smooth anymore, of course. The weather hadn't helped. Not having the car hadn't helped either. He was bone-tired.
Under the crackle of the fire and the steady hiss of the lantern, he couldn't hear anything else. His thoughts vanished as sleep overtook them.
Dean took point as they walked through the first level below the house, the flashlight lined up with the barrel. Behind him, Sam and Rufus each held one of the lanterns, throwing a much bigger pool of light around them. They'd gone through the room that had been covered in spell circles, the lines of them broken, the candles and torches that had lit them burned down to puddles of wax and ash on the floor. Beyond that had been a long, wide room with a line of cells down one side. The stone pillar, a pile of silver chains around its base and a shrunken, mummified skeleton resting on a platform behind it had given him the creeps. There might be a record of the binding spell the fallen had used in their attempts to hold the vamp, he supposed, somewhere deeper.
He walked through the door at the end of the room and stopped a few feet beyond it. The flashlight illuminated the cave walls, glistening here and there with dripping moisture. As Sam and Rufus came in, the lanterns lit up the whole area. To the left, hewn stone steps descended and to the right a number of tunnels led out of the cave, deeper maybe into the mountain.
Dean looked at the tunnels, his face stony. The Grigori had bled the pregnant women every day to feed the vamp, he knew. When Usiku had left, he'd offered to take them with him and Jane had said some had gone along willingly, preferring the prospect of escape, even with a monster that might kill them or turn them, to the chance that they might be recaptured by the fallen. Those who'd chosen to stay hadn't been harmed by the vamp, Jane'd said. But they'd nearly starved to death, trying to stay hidden, trying not to get lost in the caves that riddled the stone depths. He turned away abruptly and walked to the stairs.
Within a few yards, the staircase became much narrower and steeper, the centre of the steps hollowed out and a trickle of water spilling down the centre making the footing trickier. Slowing down, he saw the flashlight's beam pick out a curving corner, and become swallowed in the vast darkness that lay beyond it.
"Yahtzee," Sam said softly as he stopped beside his brother on the flat, smoothed ground.
The lanterns couldn't light up the entire space, which stretched out in every direction from the entrance they'd come through. Close to them, the walls had been smoothed and shelving covered them, filled with books and manuscripts, objects both recognisable and out of their collective experience. Rufus walked out into the space, his lantern lifted high above his head as he looked around. A grouping of tables took up the other side, opposite the makeshift library, and behind the tables, workbenches lined the walls, covered in apparatus ranging from beakers and test tubes to oscilloscopes and microscopes and spectrometers.
"What the hell did they need a lab for?" Sam asked no one in particular, walking across the width of the cavern.
"That, maybe," Dean said, the flashlight beam playing over the huge cylindrical machine bolted to the rock floor and surrounded by more benches, these covered in computer monitors and boxes, tubing and wiring leading in and out of the polished metal sides.
"That's what the French found, in Switzerland, wasn't it?" Rufus followed Dean toward it, setting the lantern down on the end of the bench and picking up a file from a pile beside one of the computers.
"Looks like it," Sam agreed, lifting his lantern as he walked down the opposite side. He looked at the floor. "Not just mechanical. Look at the circle."
Dean swung the flashlight around, seeing the spell circle that enclosed the machine and its accessories, marked out along the edges with symbols and characters he didn't recognise.
"Can't read this," Rufus remarked, closing the file and picking up another. "It's Cyrillic."
Dean glanced back over his shoulder at him, one brow lifted. "Russian?"
Rufus nodded. "Some German here too, but a bit beyond my skills. We need to take this back with us, you know," he said, gesturing to the shelving and the lab. "All of it, or at least as much as'll fit on the truck."
"Yeah," Dean said, looking around. "I know."
"Dean, Rufus, look at this," Sam called from the other side of the machine.
The hunters walked around, looking at the low, rectangular box that sat under a chute from the side of the machine. Sam held the lantern over the contents and Dean frowned as he looked at the slimy, glistening piles of gelatinous flesh that was heaped in the bottom.
"Looks like a shifter's cast offs," he said, leaning closer and holding his breath against the stench of decomposition that rose from the container. He turned and looked at the chute speculatively. "Think it makes a new person from the old one like a shifter does?"
"Shifter doesn't alter the original but they get the memories and –" Rufus stopped abruptly, looking up at the machine as well.
Dean turned away from the chute, his flashlight beam playing over all the shelving that lined the walls, swinging around to look over the benches on the other side. "You see any tools here?"
"There were some boxes on the benches near the lab setup," Sam said, looking back over his shoulder.
"Get started on loading this documentation, and grab the camera from the gear bag on your way back down," Dean said abruptly, walking around his brother to the workbenches. "I wanna take a look inside this thing."
Sam's gaze flicked over the long counter of computer equipment. "Must have had power here, I'll see if I can find the generators, get them running. Give you more light and maybe we can see what they were doing on those."
Rufus looked from one to the other of the brother's backs, both heading in different directions. "That's okay, I'll just start loading all these damned books and files on my own then," he muttered to himself.
A low throb came through the rock floor and the soles of his feet and Dean looked up as bank after bank of overhead lights flickered and strobed for several minutes, tubes warming up as the juice hit them.
He turned off the flashlight and looked back down at the panel he'd removed as Sam came back into the room and walked to the computer bank.
"Automatic cut-off," he said, glancing at his brother. "Find anything?"
"Plenty," Dean said sourly. "Take a look."
Climbing up and over the bench, Sam peered down into the cavity revealed by the missing panel. The interior was much smaller than the dimensions suggested on the outside. Dean gestured impatiently at the sides, and Sam looked more closely, seeing a number of fine holes, a double line that ran along both sides of the smooth, ceramic interior.
"The needles?" he asked, turning and looking at his brother's frozen expression.
"Guess so," Dean said tersely, tossing the panel onto the floor, the harsh clanging of the metal hitting the rock making Sam flinch a little. "Fire those things up, see what you can find out about what exactly they were doing with this thing."
Sam clambered back down and walked along the countertop, hitting the power buttons for each machine, slowing to check that each powered up and moving to the next.
Had they figured out a way to replicate a shifter's process, he wondered uneasily? A mixture of technology and magic, or were the circles for some other reason, protection perhaps for the victim and clone. Theoretically, precise replication was feasible. On a practical level, it wasn't as easy as it seemed. Why had they bothered with Alex? Baeder had only seemed interested in inflicting the maximum amount of pain he could on Dean, in revenge for the attack on them, or insurance maybe against Dean trying to stop them. Neither reason suggested a reasonable motive for not only cloning her once, but twice. And the first clone must have been done in the time period when Ellen said Alex had been out of the truck. Ten hours, he remembered. The second clone could only have been made here.
He looked at the screens and sighed as he saw the login and password screen. He'd need some help with this.
"Talk to me," Dean said as he looked up at him.
"Secured system, I'll need Mitch and Deirdre to break into it."
"Fuck it," Dean said, looking at the interior panel and spinning the socket wrench in his hand indecisively. "Alright, forget it. Can you get those loaded first? We'll fit the rest around them."
Sam nodded. "I'll take samples of the chemicals they were using as well. Merrin told me they'd found trace amounts of unknown compounds in Alex's hair and skin samples."
"How's it look outside?" Dean asked. "Can we get through?"
"It wasn't a heavy fall; we should be able to make it if it stays clear."
"Can you get through to Kansas or are we too blocked?"
"I might be able to," Sam said, frowning. "From the top of the peak."
"See if you can get a weather forecast for us, I want get this stuff back to the order as fast as we can." He ducked back inside the tube, picking up a screwdriver with a fine-edged blade and levering off the internal panels.
Lourdes, France
The castle had stood on the knoll above the river since the Roman invasion. It had been rebuilt several times over its long history and had served as strategic guardian to the valleys behind it, as a residence to the nobility, a prison and finally, it had been a museum and tourist attraction when the world had fallen apart.
"A lot of psychic pain in these stones," Elena said, looking at the foundations beneath her feet. "That will help with protection."
Peter nodded absently, looking out over the parapet of the keep's roof at the remains of the town that lay spread out below them. Most of the buildings had been destroyed, burned and looted and robbed of their walls and foundations to make other homes, likewise destroyed by monsters and weather and earth movements. The castle had remained and the curtain walls encircled a much larger area now, built up from the sides of the hill and doubled, the cavity between the inner and outer walls filled with salt and iron and silver and powdered crystals.
"This is as strong as we can make it," he agreed after a moment. "And big enough for the growing population."
It was in both their minds that the castle wasn't nearly as strong or well-hidden as the chapter safehold. It might become so, in time, if they could find the secrets of the order's building. The Americans had sent what they'd found and the heavy iron gates that barricaded the gate tunnel at both ends were based on those designs. The illusions had been more challenging to replicate, since the citizenry they were protecting were as susceptible to the fear spells as the bandits and monsters they were trying to discourage.
"Is Marc ready to go?" he asked her, turning back to her.
"In the morning," Elena said. "Adrian and Christophe will be going with him, they have had more experience than the others."
Peter frowned. "I thought he would be taking Luc as well?"
"Luc will not leave to hunt for awhile now," she said, smiling at him. "He is taking his responsibilities very seriously."
"Is he remaining at the order with Antoinette?"
"Oui, for the moment." She slipped her arm through his as they walked back to the roof door. "You have been buried too deeply in the Vatican documents, Peter."
He snorted. "Too deeply in the foundation stones of this place as well."
"With Francois, you and I, and the juvenile hunters, we will be able to keep this keep safe and begin to search for more people," she told him certainly. "For the first time, we have been able to grow enough to store food for the winter months, and we have enough room to keep it. We have the underground cable to the order, so communications will be possible no matter what else is going on."
It had been a busy summer, he thought, closing the thick door behind them and following her down the stairs. Since he'd returned, the hunters here had found many survivors, and with the help of the angels, had been able to finally provide a safe place for them. If the search for the tablet of the offspring of Nintu succeeded, he might even look forward to a world where humanity could begin again.
Marc looked over the gear set out across the tables carefully. The arctic survival gear had come from the order, and was intact. The rest was a selection of weapons he thought would cover almost everything they might be likely to encounter on the two thousand mile trek north and east. The roads were questionable, and the weather would be the deciding factor on route and timing.
Behind him, Adrian was studying the maps diligently. The twenty-four year old had been a soldier and been protecting a group of survivors in the ruins on the outskirts of Toulouse when they'd found them. He'd been adaptable enough to recognise that the creatures that had been hunting them were not figments of anyone's imagination, and had eventually discovered on his own that taking the head meant they did not get up again.
On the other side of the room, Christophe, the other hunter-in-training, was reloading magazines with silver and engraved hollow-point ammunition. He was twenty, and had led his family and the surviving few people of his town to a defensible ruined castle in Spain when the virus had killed all those around them. They'd lived off the land, moving around and ending up in Andalusia by the time Luc and Francois had found them. His sister was at the order, studying to become a legacy.
"This will take months," Adrian said, rolling the maps up and packing them away.
"Yes, most likely," Marc agreed, packing the gear tightly into the three black leather bags. "Christophe, ammunition goes in with the guns, we don't waste time searching separately."
The young man nodded, carrying the loads over and packing the outer pockets.
"If the only one who can read it is in America, why are we going along?" he asked Marc diffidently.
"Because we are brothers-in-arms, and they can't spare enough people to ensure it's found from their camps." Marc looked at him. "Get the latest forecast from Michel."
He nodded and got up, walking out of the wide, square and heading for the stairs that led up to the library.
"You don't think this will change much for us, in the populations we have seen rising?" Christophe asked the older hunter quietly.
Marc glanced at him. "It will stop new lines from forming, and from being so powerful," he said. "And eventually, without a creator, the creatures who have existed here for millennium will probably die out, weaker and weaker with each new generation. But not in our lifetimes."
Christophe looked down at the bag in front of him. "Then we will have our jobs and something useful to do, yes?"
Laughing, Marc nodded. "Yes, we will not be useless in this world."
I-70 E, Colorado
You weren't around.
The pointed words of the ex-cop rolled through his head again, and Dean acknowledged the bulls-eye, again. He hadn't been.
What you're doing is gutless.
Whether Sam had meant it as a truth or as a goad, that was right as well. He'd taken the easy way out before, he'd probably do it again, if the circumstances arranged themselves right in the future. Gutless.
Rufus had told him that he'd seen Drew with Alex before, and while he was trying to believe what the man had said, it hadn't needed the old hunter spelling it out for him just what that would mean, if he kept doing what he was doing.
The thought, as intangible and fleeting as he could keep it, nevertheless filled him with an ice-cold dread.
Someone else with her. Someone else raising his kids. Someone else, maybe not even a hunter, maybe a civilian who wouldn't know how to protect them, how to teach them to protect themselves. Someone else she would look at and touch and comfort.
The chill became a shiver and his fingers tightened around the wheel, muscle leaping at the point of his jaw as his teeth clamped together.
His mind leap-frogged effortlessly down a path of worst-case scenarios and he felt a rill of sweat trickle down the back of his neck, shaking his head to get those images out.
Always wanting to go back, never forward. The self-knowledge beat at him. Going back had never been a possibility, not once in his life. Not with his father and brother, no matter that he'd almost begged Sam to stay with them, make it like it had been. Not with his choices and his deal, even when he'd seen what had happened to Sam because of it. Not with the men and women who'd come to be under his protection, under his widely-spreading blanket of responsibility. And not now, not with Alex, because she couldn't go back. Couldn't see back. Didn't know what they'd had or remember how it'd felt.
He'd played hardball with Death over her life, had risked his life against the entity's anger. Had tapped into something he hadn't even believed in, back then. Had let her into the places that he'd shown no one else. Was he going to make all that meaningless now? A waste because he couldn't face up to the future and all the risks that were undoubtedly hiding in it?
They had to be safe, that was the main thing, he thought, forcing down the rest. Had to be safe and know that he wanted to be there. He'd deal with everything else, same as he'd been doing his whole life. So long as they were safe and they knew him.
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
The truck shuddered to a halt and Sam got out, going to the oak and unlocking the door as the illusions that surrounded them dissolved in the crisp, morning sunshine.
Dean turned and backed the truck up to the edge of the concrete steps leading down the entrance, getting the rear as close as possible. He nodded at Sam's thumbs-up in the side-mirror and turned off the engine, leaving it in gear as he opened his door and walked around to the back.
From the safehold's interior, Oliver and Jasper peered out curiously, brows rising as the hunter yanked out the first box of files and books and carried them down the steps toward them.
"Grab a box," Dean grunted as he walked past them and down the iron stairs to the situation room.
Mitch and Chuck and Deirdre joined the line, unloading the computers along the empty tables in the library, stacking the books and files and boxes of artefacts against the walls and shelves.
"They left everything?" Jerome asked Dean as he dumped another box of books near the scholar.
"Figured they'd be going back, I guess," Dean agreed, turning back to the stairs. "You got anyone here who speaks or reads Russian and German?"
Jerome nodded. Both he and Felix did, and probably Katherine as well. Jasper certainly spoke Russian. Anything tricky could go to the French.
It took almost two hours to unload the entire contents and the rooms looked distinctly crowded when they'd finished. Mitch and Deirdre had plugged in the computers and powered them up, both retrieving software to bypass the security systems of the Grigori and access the files on the hard drives.
Dean rubbed a hand over his face as he followed Chuck back to the office. He wanted to get to the keep, but not until he got some information about the machine that had been in the Utah base.
"Any more visions?" he asked the prophet as Chuck dropped into the chair behind the desk.
Chuck shook his head. "No, we've just been going through the tablet and collating all the information on it," he said, gesturing to the oily-looking engraved stone that sat next to the laptop.
"That's good, I guess," Dean said, leaning on the edge of the desk and looking around at the room that was packed with books and computers, every available surface piled with reams of paper, typed and handwritten, from the translations so far. "You getting an idea of the big picture of that thing yet?"
"It's definitely a power sink," Chuck said, leaning back in the chair. "Aside from the information it provides, I mean. There's a way to get to that power, somehow, but I don't think it's for the prophet."
Dean frowned as he looked over his shoulder at him. "You're the only one who can read it."
"Yeah, but the impression I'm getting is that it's not exactly with what's written there, that's actually more of a diversion than anything else."
"What else is there to access?"
"I don't know," Chuck said with a tired shrug. "I might get a better idea of it when we get another one of the tablets."
Snorting softly, Dean shook his head. "Don't hold your breath for that, it'll be months."
"Well, not like I'm sitting around doin' nuthin' in the meantime," Chuck said, gesturing vaguely around the room. "That stuff you brought, the computers and the files – is that what they used on Alex?"
Dean stiffened slightly against the edge of the desk. "Yeah, looks like."
"Do you think she'll get her memories back if you can figure out what they did?"
"I don't know." Dean straightened up and turned for the door. "Keep us posted on your progress with the rock, Chuck."
"Yeah, I will."
He watched Dean walk out, wondering uneasily at the tension that seemed to get stronger and stronger in the man. He'd been overjoyed to hear that Alex had not been killed. They'd been friends for a long time, first at Chitaqua then here, but seeing her now, no recognition of him at all in her face and all the history they'd had gone, he couldn't imagine how Dean was dealing with that.
He looked down at the table, thumb sliding the catch on the lid of the laptop automatically and stopped, a frown drawing his brows together.
The tablet had been lying on the blotter next to the computer when he'd sat down. He'd seen it there, had looked at it when Dean had asked about the power it held. Now, it was on the other side of the desk's top, near the edge.
He might've pushed it, when Dean had left, he thought uncertainly. A little anyway. But all the way to where the man had been leaning against that side?
Reaching over, he felt the stone's tingling warmth in his fingers as he picked it up and moved it back to the blotter, looking distractedly at the screen as the laptop loaded.
West Keep, Kansas
"It'll take them a few days to go through that stuff, you know," Rufus said as he walked beside Dean from the keep's hall to the medical offices.
"Yeah, I know," Dean muttered. He had a box of the chemical samples and the first rough translations of the files that had seemed to be related to them in his arms and he could hear the slight wheeze at the end of Rufus' indrawn breaths as the older man exerted himself to keep up.
"Doesn't really further our jobs either," Rufus pointed out unwillingly, stopping beside the younger man and opening the door to Merrin and Bob's warren of offices and examination rooms and surgery.
"If we know what they're doing and find out why, we'll know more about the rest," Dean countered, walking past him and looking around. "There're still the ones on the other side of the world the angels are worried about."
Merrin came out of one of the doors, brows shooting up as she looked at the two men.
"What's wrong?"
"Found the Utah base," Dean said shortly, setting the box down on the examination table. "They had a machine, we think they used it to clone Alex."
He tapped the lid of the box. "The order's looking through the files now, but these were the chemicals they probably used."
Looking down at the box, Merrin called over her shoulder, "Bob! Got some something here."
She looked back at Dean. "Do you know what it did? How it worked?"
He shook his head, looking away. "All in German or Russian, they're working on the translations."
"That's good, this will help, I'm sure of it," Merrin said, her voice gentle.
"Yeah."
Rufus followed him as he turned and walked back out. "When do you want to head south, look for the boss vamp?"
Dean slowed, looking up the hall toward the stairs. "Uh, that's gonna – uh, depend …"
Rufus looked at him closely. "You alright?"
"Yeah, got something I need to do," Dean said, flicking a glance at the hunter and back to the stairs. "I'll catch you later."
He walked away, heading for the stairs and Rufus watched him, his confusion dissolving as he realised where Dean was heading.
"'Bout time," he muttered, turning away and walking back down the hall toward the main stairs and the offices.
Palms sweating, and his pulse booming erratically against his ears, Dean stared at the open door blankly, taking in the empty room beyond it, the bed stripped and the curtains draw back and the surfaces clean and devoid of anything at all.
He turned at the squeak of soft-soled shoes coming along the hall toward him, seeing one of Merrin's nurses-in-training coming out of one of the other wards.
"Hey," he forced the word out through the dryness of his throat. "What happened to Alex?"
She stopped and glanced into the empty room, shrugging slightly as she looked back at him. "She left early this morning, Dr Forsythe took her back to Michigan."
"What?" Dean stared at her. "Why?"
"You'd probably have to ask Dr Malley about it," she said, shaking her head. "I thought it was something to do with getting her memories back, but I'm not sure about that."
"Do you know when she'll be back?" he asked, wondering why no one had thought to tell him about it.
"No. Sorry," the young woman said, walking past him and continuing down the hall.
"Thanks," he muttered to her retreating footsteps, rubbing both hands over his face in frustration.
No one had told him because they'd thought he didn't want to know. Wouldn't care where she was or what she was doing, he realised.
The low-grade hum of anxiety that had filled him since crossing the state line back into Kansas notched a little higher and he shook his head. She was gone and maybe back at the camps she would remember something. He turned away from the door and started to walk slowly down the hall. He had one other thing he could get on with, he thought. Needed to get on with. He could take Lee and Elias, neither were tapped for training right now and it would be a quick trip, they could check out the towns along the way for anything useful at the same time.
Porcupine River, Yukon
Ujarak climbed through the deadfall that littered the steep sloping side of the cliffs lining the river, stopping as he reached the crest and crouching below the low spreading branches of one of the black spruces that bristled over the hill. Below him, the yellowish-grey soft soils of the steep incline led down to the river, it's current visible along the edges as it flowed around or over the gravel banks.
For weeks, the summer temperatures had persisted, right up to the coast and the caribou had lingered in the unseasonal warmth, continuing to build up their reserves of necessary fat for the fast-approaching winter months. For weeks, the days had been hotter than he recalled in his relatively few summers, and even the elders had commented that they'd never seen such a run of long, warm days. The insects had plagued every living thing, driving the animals to the gravel plains and banks and into the forests and the villagers to keeping smoky fires going constantly around their homes.
Two days ago that had changed, fall finally coming to the north with a storm that lashed the land with sleet and hail and rain. And, more surprisingly, the caribou had gone, together and in a single night.
Ujarak had followed the trail, a mile wide and as obvious as if heavy vehicles had crashed through the bush and over the broken ground. He'd seen the wolf packs pacing him through the nights, heard their music lifting over the hills as each pack called to the next, the urgency in the high notes as plain as a shout to him. Food! Food!
And here at the bend in the river, already swollen with snow and rain from further up the mountains, he saw the host break through the thin forest of aspen and poplar, and bound down the short banks into the water. A sea of heaving brown backs and massive antlers, branched and curving, the animals not swimming in orderly small groups as they usually did but in a seething crowd, bellowing and crying, the calves pressed between the adults, in danger of being crushed and trampled as they came into the shallower water. Along the higher ground on both sides of the turgid, flowing river, the outlines of the wolves were barely visible in between the thin trunks of the trees.
What would possess them to run like this, he wondered in astonishment? As if the devils of hell were chasing them?
The leaders reached the high, steep cliffs of the opposing bank, hindlegs thrusting at the slope, heads lowered, already knowing that they would have to fight their way through the predators, he thought, watching them.
A gust of wind blew down between the ramparts, touching the skin of his face with a breath of ice and he pulled the furred hood of his coat further forward. No predator or even large pack of predators would have created this mass panic in herds of this size, he realised. To the north, the sky was darkening, cloud boiling along the edges of the horizon and he got to his feet, his rifle cocked and ready as he walked back down the slope to the valley.
West Keep, Kansas
Ben walked along the tunnel between the northern bailey and the eastern one, head bowed in thought. Dean had taken off again, this time without even making an effort to say goodbye or where he was going and he wondered if he'd even remembered that he'd promised to take him along, the next non-lethal trip. He didn't think so.
Nothing was working out the way he'd thought it would, when the army had arrived back, exhausted and victorious and with hundreds of new people, survivors of the demon army and the battle on the plains. Sean and Vince had told him about most of it, and he'd gotten some of what had happened in the foothills of the mountains from Rufus, the bit about Dean going after the running Grigori and taking them down. Rufus hadn't given him much detail on what else had happened there, but he'd heard about that from the soldiers, third or fourth hand.
When the word had spread that one of the angels had brought Alex back, he'd thought things would go back to how they'd been. Had thought Dean would go back to how he'd been, before the first attack. But if anything, the hunter had become more withdrawn, going out with Elias, with Rufus and Sam, with Kelly or Vince, forgetting his promise, run after run.
Alex was different, he knew. Frighteningly different. She didn't remember anything or anyone, not even Dean, not even him. She'd smiled at him when he gone to see her, but he could see that she didn't know who he was, didn't know what he'd been talking about when he tried to remind her of things back in Tawas, or the nativity scene last Christmas or even Father Michael. He'd seen she didn't remember Dean either, or Rufus or Ellen or Bobby. The same strained look had been on her face as they'd all crowded around her.
"Hey, watch where you're going!"
The strident tone snapped him out of his thoughts and he stopped dead, looking up into the rounded face of the girl standing in front of him.
"Sorry," he offered, taking in the unmollified dark brown eyes, heavily fringed by long dark lashes, and the no-nonsense pulled-back dark brown ponytail. His age, he thought, and nearly as tall.
"You Ben Braedon?" she asked him abruptly and his eyes widened in surprise.
"Yeah. Where you looking for me?"
"Not by choice," she told him bluntly. "Rufus said I need to start training with your group."
Ben looked at her, his expression doubtful. "We're, um, kind of the top level for our age group …" he started to say, the words trailing away as he watched her eyes narrow suspiciously at him. "That's, uh –"
"I'm Krissy Chambers," she cut him off. "I'm already a hunter, so presumably that's why I'm supposed to be training with you."
"Oh." He couldn't think of anything to say to that. He'd met a Lee Chambers, a week ago when there'd been a meeting over in the main keep offices. "You're dad's name Lee?"
"That's right." She looked impatiently at her watch. "Aren't you supposed to be training now?"
"Yeah," Ben said, gesturing vaguely toward the end of the tunnel. "This way."
He started forward and stepped away a little as she turned on her heel and fell into step with him. "Were you at the battle in Colorado?"
"Possessed," she said, the single word proclaiming that was all she was going to say about it.
"You must be pretty good to have survived," Ben said, his admiration leaking out without thought. For a moment she didn't say anything and he wondered if that'd been the wrong thing to say.
"I didn't have much to do with that," she allowed finally, keeping her gaze on the brightening end of the tunnel ahead of them.
"How'd it get you?"
She sighed deeply, then shook her head. "My dad and me, we had protective charms, but they were on chains." Pushing back her sleeves, she tilted her arm toward him, the black tattoo easily visibly against the smooth, white skin under the inside of her elbow. "Now we have permanent protection that no one can just pull off."
Ben nodded. It wasn't necessary anymore, now that the gates had been closed, but all the hunters, from fourteen years and up had the same tattoo, inked into their skin.
"Is this going to be like a kiddie class?" Krissy turned and asked him, her eyes rolling a little.
Ben looked back at her, trying to determine how much of the attitude the girl was throwing out was a put-on and how much was real.
"Not a kiddie class," he said, thinking of Kelly's punishing flips onto the hardwood floors of the training room. "Wait and see."
Camp Tawas, Michigan
Leaning over the cot, Alex tucked the soft, light, down-filled quilt around the babies lying in it, smiling as James' small brows drew together briefly in a fleeting frown, his mouth opening and closing without a sound. She was learning their expressions now, seeing the differences in the two children instead of the similarities. Evelyn was the louder but not nearly as determined as her brother, who would persist in going after whatever it was he wanted until he got it. Neither child was fractious, she'd been a little surprised to realise, they seemed to her to be more aware of their surroundings, of the people who came and went in their small world than the other babies she'd seen, but she admitted readily to herself, that could have had something to do with her personal bias in the matter.
Straightening, she walked to the window on the other side of the bed. Beneath the walls that surrounded the camp, the slope dropped sharply to the lake. At the moment it was still, reflecting the forests on the opposite shore, tinted with the colours of the sunset. Did she remember this, she wondered? There'd been small moments, knowing which way to turn when she'd climbed the stairs, an involuntary flinch at the sound of a car coming up the gravelled drive from the gates, nothing that she could call discrete or very positive at all.
Renee, the tall, slender blonde wife of the camp's leader, hadn't returned any memories at all. She'd said they'd been friends, good friends, for the years since the virus and had told her of coming to the camp, not this one, but another one that had been destroyed since, coming in with Dean Winchester and Rufus Turner, and others, and moving in with her there. It'd been an interesting story, but she'd had no resonating moments within it, no tugs of familiarity. Even the photos Renee had produced, rare moments that someone had thought to capture on film and keep, hadn't stirred her memories or emotions, although they had piqued her curiosity. In one, Dean had been standing with a group of others, his arm casually slung around the shoulders of a dark-haired woman, both smiling into the camera, a young boy standing in front of them. She hadn't asked about the woman or the boy, or their relationship to the man.
There had been one that had caught her, almost on the edge of the frame, as if she'd been trying to get out of the picture. Her hair had been shorter, a tangled mess of maple-coloured curls and she'd looked slightly uneasy, standing between a tall man with a wide grin and wheaten blond hair, and Rufus, both crowded close to her. Friends, perhaps, from when she'd lived there. She'd seen the disappointment in Turner's eyes when he'd realised she didn't remember him at all.
Stepping back from the window and sitting on the edge of the comfortable bed, she wondered how long she would have to stay here, at Meredith's whim of trying to get her memories back. Not that it mattered all that much, she had no real life in Kansas and no real life here either. A perpetual visitor, she thought a little acerbically, with no place to go.
There was a soft tap at the door and it opened, Renee's head appearing around the edge. "Are you ready to try the hypnosis, Alex?"
Sure, she thought, getting up. Why not?
"Alice and Andrea will stay here and watch the babies," Renee added, pushing the door wider as a self-possessed nine-year old and eleven-year old walked in. Alex smiled automatically at the girls, who'd brought colouring books and several bags of toys with them. "You two be very quiet and Alice, come straight away if they wake up, alright? We'll be in the office."
"Yes, Mama," Alice said confidently, pushing long blonde curls back over her shoulders. "Don't worry."
Renee's mouth quirked into small, one-sided smile as she closed the door behind Alex, gesturing to the right and the staircase at the end of the hall.
"Are they both yours?" Alex asked, falling into step with the taller woman.
"No, just Alice," Renee said. "She was five when the virus hit our town. She has a younger brother, Cory, he'll be seven in December, and of course the twins."
"And the births here, and in Kansas, nearly all multiple, that was a – a goddess, that was released?"
Hearing the uncertainty in her tone, Renee smiled and shrugged. "Yeah, apparently two were let out at the same time. One of them just increased the populations of people and animals and plants. The other one," she hesitated a moment, then continued, "the other one increased a different set of populations."
Alex looked at her. "The monsters."
"Yeah." Renee stopped at the top of the stairs. "I know this all seems, well insane, for lack of a better word, and you're probably feeling like you fell into the rabbit hole, but it all happened. You were right in the middle of it for a long time."
"What do you mean?" Alex followed her slowly down the stairs. A frisson of unease sent a flush of heat through her at the words, as if they'd meant much more than Renee had intended.
"When Lucifer was on this plane, and demons were everywhere, you were the only one who could see him, the only one who could communicate with Dean's brother, Sam."
Alex frowned. She'd met Sam, in the keep. He'd been kind to her, trying to help her to remember. He'd tried to explain his brother's absence as well. She couldn't think how communicating with Sam had anything to do with a fallen angel and demons.
Renee saw the frown and shook her head. "It's a very long story," she said quickly, forestalling the questions she could see in the woman's face. "I'm not sure I can even tell it well enough to make a lot of sense to you."
There wasn't much that was making sense, Alex acknowledged silently. A pandemic that had decimated the world's population, not that she remembered the world prior to the pandemic any more than she did this one. Angels and demons and vampires and ghouls and werewolves and a battle with the devil in the city of Atlanta. It did sound insane. She wondered if that was a part of the reason Dean Winchester had kept his distance from her.
"Come on, Meredith and Ray are waiting for us."
Alex lay on the long sofa, her eyes closed, listening to the soft burr of the doctor's voice. She didn't feel as if anything was happening.
"Can you hear me?" Meredith asked quietly.
"Yes," she said, opening her eyes and looking at her. "I don't think this is going to work."
Both of the doctors sighed in unison, glancing at each other. "Alex, would you consent to being assisted to a hypnotic state by the use a short-term drug?"
She looked at Ray uneasily. "What kind of drug?"
"We can give you a few milligrams of a drug known as sodium thiopental," Meredith said calmly. "It's used to assist in the assimilation of anaesthetics among other uses, and will simply put you into a state of near-unconsciousness, so that the hypnotic state can be induced."
"Will it affect my milk?" Alex looked at her carefully.
"No, not at all," Meredith said. "It's often used prior to an epidural in labour. Most of it will be expired through your lungs over the five minutes following the injection, the rest before you get back upstairs."
"Alex, it's not dangerous to you or your children," Ray added. "It just gives us a chance to get past the strong mental walls you have in place."
"They might be there for a good reason," she countered, looking from him to Meredith. "I know you're trying to help, but I'm wondering if this is a good idea."
Meredith's mouth compressed a little as she looked back at her. "You said it yourself, Alex," she said tightly. "At the moment, you have nothing, no past, no life. You might be able to keep going this way, just starting from scratch, but your mind might also throw everything that happened back at you, somewhere down the line." She paused, lifting her hands in a careless gesture. "Do you think that will be any easier to handle? If it all comes back after you've chosen a new life?"
Good points, Alex thought sourly, closing her eyes again. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
"Alright."
Meredith looked at Ray and nodded and the doctor left the room to get the IV set up.
"Meredith?"
The doctor looked at her. "Yes?"
"If this doesn't work, or if it doesn't do what you expect it to," Alex said slowly. "Does that make it more likely that it won't come back at all?"
She heard the gusting exhale of the woman beside her.
"I don't know," Meredith admitted reluctantly. "I guess it increases the odds."
Ray returned and slid the needle into the vein on the inside of Alex's elbow, attaching the cannula and the tube from the small bag. "This'll take less than a minute."
Consciousness vanished and then returned, Alex hearing Meredith's voice close beside her ear. She couldn't open her eyes.
"Alex, can you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"Good. You are relaxed and comfortable and I'm going to ask you some questions," Meredith said slowly and clearly. "They won't make you uncomfortable, they are just questions and you can answer them without any feelings about them at all."
"Alright."
"Do you know what day and month it is?"
"October thirteenth," Alex said without hesitation.
"Do you know your name? Where you were born?"
"Alexandra Charlotte Tennyson," Alex said. "I was born in Grand Rapids."
"That's very good. Do you remember your childhood?"
"My mother died, when I was a baby," she said, a slight frown marring her forehead. "My father and I looked after each other until I was sixteen. Then he died. Of cancer."
"Good. What happened after that?"
"I don't know." The frown deepened slightly. "There's nothing there."
"Do you remember buying Camp Chitaqua, Alex?"
A flash of dilapidated buildings filled her mind and she flinched back from the image involuntarily. The lake was bright and sparkling beyond the weathered cabins. She was kneeling in front of a large machine, pieces around her, trying to get a bolt through a hole that didn't line up quite correctly.
"I think so," she answered uncertainly. "There was a big house and a lot of cabins. I was going to … going to …"
The house was clean. She lifted the broom to catch the cobwebs that were thick under the small overhang of the cabin roof. A crack of thunder rolled over the lake and she turned away, pulling her coat tightly around her as she ran through the sudden downpour back to the house.
"It was going to be a camp for kids who couldn't get out of the cities," she said.
"Do you remember when the cars arrived, with Dean and Renee and Lisa?"
A tall man, dark-haired and grimy, holding a bottle toward her, his mouth lifted in a one-sided smile.
"He wanted me to drink the water."
Meredith looked over at Renee, who nodded vehemently. Pulling out a small notepad, she started to write, questions, events that she knew Alex should remember.
"Yes, what else do you remember then?"
"Nothing," Alex said, looking around at the blackness. It was just him, standing there, holding out the bottle, smiling challengingly at her. "Just the water."
"Two years have passed since then, Alex," Meredith said, shaking her head at the notepad held out to her. "You were dreaming about Sam Winchester, in Atlanta."
"No."
Meredith's brows shot up. "What do you mean?"
"I dreamed of Dean first, not Sam," Alex corrected her. "Sam was killing him."
"Do you remember when the army left Chitaqua to go to Atlanta?"
"No."
"Do you remember moving from the camps at Michigan to the stone and concrete keep in Kansas?"
"No."
That wasn't entirely true, she thought in confusion. She remembered a room, crowded with mismatched furniture, her books filling the shelves, the smell of venison stew from the kitchen and the front door opening. But that was all.
"I want you to remember March, this year, now, Alex," Meredith said. "March fifteen. Can you remember that day?"
"Yes," Alex said, without surprise. It'd been the day that the demon army had come to Lebanon. She remembered Rudy lying on the cot in the stone hall, his shoulder and chest soaked in blood.
"Do you remember what happened that day?"
"The demon army attacked the keeps."
"And what happened next?" Meredith said, her gaze flicking to Ray.
"There was a little boy in the keep," Alex said. "He said his sister was hurt. He touched us and we were outside, in the night."
"What happened then?"
"They chained us together," Alex said. "Ellen and Kim and I. We were in a truck."
"What happened after that, Alex? Do you remember?"
"No."
"What do you see when you try to remember?" Meredith tried again.
"There's a bright light, and white walls. Very close to me," Alex said, turning her head. "That's all. That's all I can see."
Ray gestured to her and Meredith saw Alex's pulse, hammering fast at the base of her throat.
"Alright, we're going to look back again, Alex, back to the second year at Camp Chitaqua. Do you remember Father Michael?"
The memory was little more than a flash in her mind, holding an old man, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth, seeing seeds turn into seedlings, push up through the damp soil and grow in front of her eyes.
"I don't think so."
"Do you remember anything else?"
Another flash, this one brighter, more vivid. She was in a building, backing away from Dean. He was holding a gun and it was pointed at her. He followed her into an old-fashioned office, the walls covered in maps and shelving, filled with books. He told her to lie on the sofa in front of the fireplace and go to sleep, sitting down in the leather-upholstered chair across from her, the gun's round black end aimed at her. Behind the gun's barrel, his face was hard and expressionless, his eyes cold and dark as he stared at her.
"Dean had a gun pointed at me," she said slowly. "He told me to go to sleep."
"What else, Alex, what else do you remember?"
"Nothing. The rest is dark." She turned her head restlessly from side to side. "It's all just dark."
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The truck's engine died and the silence filled the cab completely. Elias looked from the unremarkable dead-end in front of him to the thunderstruck expression on the face of the man beside him.
"Is this it?"
Dean couldn't respond. The road, the hill, the valleys – the car – the goddamned CAR! – were all gone.
"Dean?"
"What!?" He wrenched open the door of the truck and got out, walking to the crumbling edge of the shallow depression that marked where all those things had been the last time he'd been here. "Where's my fucking car!?"
