Chapter 2
Elapsed

"These shackles I've made in an attempt to be free
Be it for reason or be it for love
I won't take the easy road
I've woken up in a hotel room
My worries as big as the moon
Having no idea who or what or where I am."

- First Aid Kit, "My Silver Lining"

Jessie turned the bathroom faucet on high and splashed her face with icy water, ignoring the lingering chill that had settled in her bones after her trip through the storm. The harsh sting of the water shocked her consciousness enough that she almost felt normal for just a moment, and even though the feeling was brief and fleeting, she clung to it. She splashed herself with the water over and over until it had numbed her skin and she could no longer feel that, either.

Without opening her eyes, she grabbed instinctively for the towel that always hung to the left of the sink, but her hand found only the cool tile wall. Brushing some water out of her eyes, she squinted around herself and spotted it hanging from a newly installed towel bar on the opposite side of the mirror. Momentarily irritated, she grabbed it and wondered why no one had told her they were going to do work on the bathroom.

She caught herself at this thought. I guess a lot of towels can change places in three years.

Three years! Bracing herself against the counter, Jessie looked at her reflection in the mirror for the first time since coming into the bathroom. It still caught her off guard every time she did. She looked so much older . . . no, she was so much older. She was seventeen years old now, and not that far away from eighteen; she couldn't even process that. Her hair had been cut roughly at some point; it was uneven in many places, but it hung around her shoulders, several inches shorter than it had been last she remembered. She had hit a growth spurt at some point and now she stood closer to her mother's height, from what she could gauge by the clothes she wore. Most disconcerting of all was her face: no longer round and childish, it had narrowed and was now sculpted with signs of maturity. She could pass for an adult now. Every time she saw her new reflection, her breath caught in her throat and the anxiety of the unknown shook her to her very core. She wondered how long it was going to take her to get used to it.

She thought back to a few hours before, when she had first awoken to this new reality. She had regained consciousness in a hotel room in Augusta, alone and sporting the overlarge men's clothing she had arrived at the Quest compound still wearing. At the time, she had not known where she was; she had known absolutely nothing other than the room around her and her frightening lack of memory of any of the events leading up to her being there.

Something was very wrong.

As soon as she woke up, she could feel this thought weighing her down, a malignant force that left her feeling sick even though she had no idea why.

The last thing Jessie remembered was a night in Venezuela, walking along the beach with Jonny and bickering about whether or not they should "borrow" Dr. Quest's new hoverboard prototype for a test run. They had been in South America visiting her mother while she finished up an excavation. Everything before that night was clear in Jessie's mind, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't remember the outcome of their argument or anything that happened after.

She laid still for several moments, listening carefully and trying to pick out any noise that would indicate she was not alone in the room. There was a distant electrical hum and the soft ticking of a clock, but otherwise there was only silence. On some level, she knew she was alone.

Opening her eyes slowly, she examined the room around her and found it as empty as she had guessed it would be. It looked like every cheap motel room she had ever seen: generic framed prints on the walls, horribly patterned carpet and drapes, sickly yellow light casting shadows into corners. She lay on one of two beds, and although the curtains were drawn, she could see light coming in from outside.

Fighting down her rapidly growing fear, Jessie knew she had to make her move immediately. She hadn't gotten here on her own and it was too much to hope that she would be left alone for long, so she needed to get the hell out while she still could. Her head swam and blackness threatened her vision when she stood up quickly, but she waited a moment for it to subside and went quickly and quietly to the door, relieved to find it unlocked. She closed the door carefully behind her, leaving it almost flush with the doorframe, but not fully closed so she could get back in if she needed to.

As soon as she was outside, she started sprinting, trying to put as much distance between herself and the motel as possible. It was immediately clear that she was not in South America anymore; she was definitely back in the United States, and it was cold. She was only wearing a t-shirt and the frigid wind cut her like a knife.

It was only a few blocks before she couldn't run anymore. She was weak and lightheaded and the exertion made her feel like she might pass out. Glancing behind her, she saw the sidewalk was empty and it didn't look as though she had been followed. She paused to catch her breath and take in her surroundings and was shocked to recognize the diner across the street from where she stood: a large sign declared 'Augusta Roadhouse Cafe.' She, Jonny, and Hadji had eaten there on several occasions.

She was back in Augusta? How had she gotten from South America to Maine without any memory of it? Just how much of her memory was missing? She had assumed only a few hours had lapsed, maybe a day, but now she had no idea. The uncertainty terrified her. As she thought about what she did remember, she encountered shadows of memory: residual sensations and emotions tied to concrete things she didn't have access to. The more she chased them, the quicker they slipped away.

It was growing darker and it had begun to snow. She was painfully cold. The cafe across the street was closed, and every other building in the area was a factory or darkened office building. Even though it went against everything her father had ever taught her, she felt compelled to go back to the motel room. It was another memory shadow, nagging at the edges of her mind insistently. On some level, she knew that the room would still be empty, that no one was coming for her.

Deciding to trust this strange urge, she turned to head back toward the motel. As she did, she caught a glimpse of her reflection swimming in the diner window. The reflection was fuzzy and distorted from the curve of the glass, but she could tell that her hair was shorter and that she looked different somehow. Her breath caught in her throat. What had happened?

On the verge of actual panic, Jessie turned and ran back toward the motel from which she had just fled. Noting that the room was mercifully still empty, she headed directly to the mirror. The shock of what she saw would not be easily forgotten.

A new face stared back at her: the face of a young woman, not a young teenager. She put her hands to her face, touching her skin, trying to make sure the vision was real. How could this be?

She spun around and scanned the motel room. A newspaper lay folded on the table near the door, and she dashed over to it, searching desperately for the date. All she needed was the year . . . 1997, 1997, 1997, she prayed silently.

December 14th, 2000.

Jessie felt her knees give way beneath her and she fell into a stiff armchair, staring blindly at the numbers. Three years . . . over three years! And she didn't remember any of it.

The newspaper slipped from her grasp, fluttering to the floor. As it fell, she noticed an envelope slide from the inner part of the paper, landing at her feet. Numbly, she reached out and picked it up. It was a basic white envelope with her name printed simply across the front.

Fumbling to open it, she pulled out a short, typed letter written to her by someone named Thomas Sampson. She didn't think she had ever heard the name before, but just reading it left her with a horrible feeling she couldn't explain.

Sampson had written her a brief explanation of the last three years: that he had kidnapped her to get revenge against her father, and that after three years of exacting his vengeance, he felt satisfied. He wrote that her family believed she had been killed because she was never found, but instead of fulfilling that belief, he would be a "better person" and let her go. He explained that he had wiped her memories of the abduction to prevent her from leading anyone to him, but aside from losing three years of her life, she was free to go. His closing words echoed in her head, sickening her physically:

I will miss you, Jessie. Perhaps one day we will meet again.

In the back of her mind, she could almost hear a deep voice saying the words aloud, and she knew that it was Sampson's voice.

Along with the letter, three crumpled dollar bills had been tucked into the envelope - money to get home with, she assumed. How considerate, she thought to herself bitterly, despite the numbness of denial that had begun to set in. It was time to find her way to Rockport, to a home that apparently thought she was dead. She considered finding a phone and calling, but she couldn't find the words; what could she possibly say to her family after three years, when to her it felt like no more than a day? All of a sudden she couldn't decide whether she would rather have her parents hold her or go into hiding and avoid dealing with any of this at all.

She decided she would take the county bus, which would drop her about a mile from the compound. Feeling like a zombie, still clutching the letter in her fist, she wandered back out of the motel room and into the falling dusk, forgetting yet again about her lack of weather protection. This time she didn't notice the cold.

In the bathroom at the Quest house, Jessie shook her head to clear the memories. It did her no good; her issue wasn't with what she remembered . . . it was with what she could not. She rubbed her eyes, feeling a headache coming on, and as she did so, she noticed a set of half moon-shaped scars on her left forearm that hadn't been there last she knew. She ran her fingertips over the slightly raised scar tissue. There were four of them - fingernail markings.

A morbid curiosity took over and she began to inspect her body carefully. There was a matching set of fingernail marks on her right arm, a long scar on her right calf that must have been some kind of knife wound, and random scarred-over abrasions around both wrists that looked like they were left by handcuffs that had been bound too tightly and rubbed off skin. She shivered involuntarily.

Against her better judgment, against everything that was crying out for her to stop, she slowly unbuttoned her mother's shirt and pulled it away from her body to reveal her torso, which she had so carefully avoided inspecting earlier when she was changing. There were random markings here and there; some looked newer, a section near her shoulder still badly bruised in shades of purple and blue, while others had clearly been there for a while. One thing in particular caught her eye, and with trembling fingers, she reached up and pulled the cup of her bra down slightly, just enough to see the still-healing remnants of a bruise. The question had crossed her mind, but she had been holding it off, not ready to know the answer. This was very strong evidence that Sampson had done a lot more to her than she cared to consider right now.

Jessie's stomach rebelled and she leaned over the toilet, retching without result. She had no idea when she last ate. Even once the reflex wore off and she was able to lean back against the bathroom wall, shaking slightly, she still felt nauseated. She thought she might feel nauseated for the rest of her life.

Oh, God, what's happened to me?