Many thanks to the following people: AlienGhostWizard14, LabGirl2001, Lady Cougar-Trombone, Jillie chan, AllAmericanSlurp, daphrose, xxWasabiWarriorAlertxx, and Mickey12Boo! I appreciated the continuous support, guys. :)
One of my favorite chapters in this story. It's definitely in the top three.
Ten.
Chase woke up to the sound of a soft snap. When he opened his eyes, he saw his father finishing up his rewiring work on what appeared to be an upgraded simulator visor. Bree stood beside him, quietly reading out commands from the tablet in her hands. Nearby, on the mission specialist desk, Torrance was lightly frowning down at the panel as she typed then adjusted something, with Tasha standing over her, sipping what smelled like coffee as she watched.
His capsule hissed when he stepped forward, the glass sliding down in front of him. Before he could go on farther, he stopped then stared at what was on his way.
Sensing this, Linux awoke, too, from his sleep. He rolled onto his back, lifted up his head, and then stared back at Chase amiably.
Donald suppressed a chuckle after seeing the boy and the dog's exchange. "Good morning, Chase," he said with a smirk. "Did you sleep well last night?"
"Yes, a little bit," Chase said, his brows lightly knitting as Linux continued to stare at him. Looking up at his family for help, he stammered, "Um…"
"Linux, please," Torrance called out to the dog.
Seeing that the boy was not going to play with him, Linux got up then trotted towards Torrance. With a smile, Torrance rewarded his obedience with a piece of doggy biscuit, which he accepted gladly and gratefully. As he ate beside her, Torrance also pushed his new toy close by so he could play after he was done.
"Why does he do that?" Bree asked Torrance just as Adam came in, hugging four bottles of orange juice to his chest. "The first two nights, he slept close by you, but then last night he started sleeping by our capsules. Oh. Thanks, Adam," she said after he handed her a bottle.
"It is what he's trained to do," Torrance answered.
"To do what, exactly?" Chase asked.
Torrance poised to answer, but Adam spoke for her. "To watch out for us," he said before handing his little brother an orange juice. Then, he came by the mission specialist desk and handed Torrance a bottle, too. He smiled at her conspiratorially as she took it with reluctance. "Leo trained him to do that. Didn't he, Torrance?"
Seeing that Adam did this to help, Torrance smiled back. "Yes. Yes, he did," she said.
Bree exchanged puzzled looks with her father.
Instead of lingering on that new piece of information about the girl, which Chase suspected might not even be true, he nodded towards the device in his father's hands. "What are you working on, Mr. Davenport?" he asked.
"A more advanced simulator. Unlike the one that you, Adam and Bree train with, this one can record your vitals for monitoring," Donald said. After glancing at Torrance, he said, "I think we found a way to connect to Douglas' simulator."
"So – we know where Leo is?" Chase said.
"No. Not quite," Torrance said. "I tracked down the bug Donald Davenport embedded on one of the subjects' chips at a South American island, but the exact location is yet to be determined."
"Well, if that's the case, then how can we be connected to Douglas' system?"
"We're not yet connected," Torrance said.
"We're just about to test it," Donald added.
Torrance explained, "Once the set-up is done, Donald Davenport and I will route the signal towards the same directions Douglas Davenport bounced it off to. Follow the breadcrumbs, if you may."
"If there are breadcrumbs, shouldn't we already know where the end point is?" Chase asked.
"That's the problem," Donald said. "Before we could get any closer, the trail just vanishes. We just get faint traces of things."
"But traces are something we can work with," Torrance said. "I've programmed the simulator to follow any bits it could find. It's bound to connect to Douglas Davenport's somewhere along the way, especially when it picks up where the bug is."
"Why don't we try it now?" Chase asked.
"It's not that easy, Chase," Donald said. "Because we're not sure of the location, we can only do this once. If we don't get it in one go, we might not get a chance to connect to it again, especially if Douglas finds out we figured out a way to locate him. And plus, I had to redo some things in the simulator so it won't be as dangerous. I need to be able to pull out whoever's going to wear this out of the simulation in case something bad happens."
"Wait. If it's a simulator that's making those other three bionic people do what they do, why can't we just send a virus to destroy it?" Adam asked. "Like what Leo did with our Triton app?"
"Because," Donald said, "if what Bree said was right, that Leo is somewhat connected to the simulator there, it could hurt him."
The silence between them was interrupted by the mission specialist desk's beeping. Torrance checked on the message displayed on it before telling Donald, "Everything is ready."
Donald nodded. He looked around at his family. "As much as I'd like to be the one to put this on, just to be safe, I can't. I have to be at the controls," he said. "This simulator is similar to the one you guys train with, but it's different at the same time. This one presents potential neural strain."
"Potential?" Bree repeated.
"If the simulator on the other side is connected to a person, it will create a link with ours, and the person on that side and the person on this side will be connected," Donald explained. "Thus, the strain."
No one spoke for a while as the rest of them contemplated over the information. It wasn't that they were unwilling; it was that they were apprehensive with the possible results.
But then, soon after, someone spoke, "I'll do it." They looked at Tasha and found her smiling warmly. "I haven't seen my baby in a while. If he's really on the other side of this and I could see him, then I'll do it." She placed down her empty cup on the floor. With a deep breath, she walked over to her husband. "So, after I wear this, what do I have to do?"
"Tasha, are you sure you want to do this?" Donald asked worriedly. "There's no guarantee that it's going to be Leo. What if it's Douglas who's connected to it?"
"Then he's going to need someone to pull him out," Tasha said with a smirk. When she saw that Donald was not satisfied with the answer and was terrified, she cupped a hand on his face and smiled consolingly. "I'll be okay," she assured him.
Donald smiled back, reaching up to take a hold of her hand and to kiss it. "Okay," he said. He looked at Adam. "Could you please bring in that chair by the elevator and put it here?"
Adam nodded before vanishing towards the smaller tunnel to retrieve the object.
Watching his parents, Chase was moved to reconsider his reluctance in volunteering. The simulator could present problems if things didn't work out well. With Torrance being half in-charge at the helm, he suspected that the chances of that happening greatly increased. The girl hadn't done anything to hurt their search, but, after the nearly six month deception that Marcus pulled just last year, he wasn't very trusting. It also didn't sit well with him that his mother could get hurt. So, before she could sit in the slightly elevated, armless white leather recliner that Adam brought in, he gently grabbed her forearm. "Please. Let me do it," he asked of her.
"Sweetheart, it's fine. Really. It's okay," Tasha said appreciatively with a chuckle.
"No, I— My bionics. It will allow me to handle the strain better," Chase reasoned. "Shouldn't it, Mr. Davenport?"
"Well, yes, it should," Donald said, "but—"
"So please. Please let me do it," Chase implored.
Tasha stared at her child, and from the expression on his face she knew that he wanted to take her place for a good reason. It was also apparent that, if he didn't go in her stead, it would make him more restless than he already was. "Okay," she granted.
Chase smiled at her gratefully as she stepped aside and allowed him to take the seat. He kept his eyes on his father as he attached the system on him after he lied down.
"If the simulator on the other side is just computer-programmed, you won't see anything. It will be blank, and it should kick you back out immediately," Donald said as he worked. "If the simulator on the other side is connected to a person, one of two things could happen: you'll either connect to them—see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel—or…"
"Or what?"
Donald smiled a small smile. "Or, you'll see them," he said, at that time finishing. He stepped backwards to the desk. "Best case scenario, the two of you will be in a neutral simulation where you can talk."
Chase nodded. As he looked away from his father, he caught Torrance's glance.
"Are you ready?" Donald asked.
Chase eased back on the chair, placing his hands on either side of him. "I'm ready," he said, closing his eyes.
"You have roughly two minutes in this. Take note of everything you see and remember it," Donald instructed. Then, he added, "If he's there… ask him where he is. Tell him we're coming."
Chase said nothing but kept all of these in mind.
He heard a tap. Then, Torrance spoke. "The simulators will connect in nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four—"
Her voice was soon drowned out by a loud screeching sound that made Chase cringe. He balled his hands into tight fists to prevent himself from ripping away the device from his head, and he locked his jaws tight so he wouldn't scream in pain. He told himself that he only had to endure for a few more seconds, but he also wished that the simulator would spit him back out already so everything would stop.
Sooner than what he expected, though, all noise ceased to exist, even the sound of his own breathing. All feelings did, too. Despite the inclination to do it immediately, Chase decided to count for a few more seconds before opening his eyes and asking what happened, but before he could start, he felt the room, with the chair he was in, slowly swivel upside down, and it pushed him out of his seat and onto his feet.
When he opened his eyes to reorient himself, he noticed that the falling sensation was gone. When he looked around for his family, he found that they weren't there. The simulator system, the chair and the lab were nowhere in sight, too.
Instead, he was standing in the doorway of somebody's home.
With the bright daylight streaming into the storm door, Chase was offered a good view of the home from where he stood. Straight ahead was a smaller window, shining light on the polished hardwood floor leading to the first two steps that curved towards the stairs. To his left was a living room. Pushed against the faint blue wall in that room was a wide, four-foot TV that was at least two decades old. On either side of it were bookshelves, one on the right for VHSs, CDs and DVDs and two on the left for books. Standing between the television and the cream-colored couch was a wide, dark coffee table, with puzzle pieces and a folded up newspaper cluttering it.
Walking in, Chase noted how inviting the home seemed. The feeling only increased as he looked through the several family pictures decorating the wall.
His eyes caught onto a picture as he recognized one of the people in it. It was a simple family portrait that seemed to have been taken at a park. Sitting on a bench, was a man, who looked to be in his late 20's, and a woman, who appeared to be near the same age and was hugging to herself a two year-old baby boy. The couple was smiling and appeared very happy.
The woman in the picture was a younger version of Tasha.
Chase drew closer to the picture to analyze it further and to see if his suspicion regarding the baby was right when a movement in his periphery alerted him to a movement in the connecting room. He stopped then swiveled around.
When he saw him standing by the kitchen, looking around in confusion as he seemed to recognize the place but not know why he was there, Chase froze.
If the simulator on the other side is connected to a person, one of two things could happen: you'll either connect to them—see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel—or…
Or what?
Or, you'll see them.
"Leo?" Chase said.
Leo spun around. He stared at him unsurely. "Chase," he said. "Is… Is that you?"
All Chase could remember as he looked at him was the last time he saw him alive like this. It was a Sunday night, and before they bid each other goodnight he was telling him that they needed to have a rematch on the game they played earlier on in that day next weekend. Leo grinned at him weakly and told him that they would. Then, the next day, he found out that he had died. The very last time he saw him, or what he thought was him, was in that green casket.
And now, standing just a few feet away from him, he was seeing Leo again—conscious, taller, and was speaking to him.
Like six months ago, Chase forced himself not to let his emotions get the best of him but this time, he failed. As tears of happiness blurred his vision, he said with a grin, "Of course it's me, you goofball." He quickly made his way around the island standing in the middle of the room to reach his younger brother. When he did, he gathered him into his arms and hugged him.
Leo grumbled a little bit because of how tight Chase was hugging him, but he said nothing, and he didn't embrace him back.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" Chase asked.
"No," Leo said. "Because you're not real."
Chase frowned as he let go of him. He chuckled wryly. "What are you talking about? I am real," he said. "Leo, I'm here. This is me. This simulation, Mr. Davenport's controlling it from the lab."
"From the lab?" Leo repeated, his tone almost fearful. "You – you guys know where I am?"
"No, not yet, but we're working on it," Chase said. "Mr. Davenport and Torrance worked to put this together so we can find out where you are."
Leo considered everything he said. "Torrance. She's with you guys?" he asked.
Chase nodded, though he was slightly bewildered that he asked about the girl instead of answering his implied question. "Yes," he replied. "She came to us for help a few days ago. She told us you're alive but that you were captured. She's in the lab right now, supervising with Mr. Davenport."
It was Leo's turn to nod. He still seemed hesitant to address him, until he looked up and noticed something on the fridge.
Chase turned around to look at what Leo was staring at.
Leo plucked out the sizeable green post-it note pinned under a magnetic photo of a younger Tasha and a younger man, who now Chase guessed was Leo's father, sitting on a tropical beach, and then read the note on it.
Curiously, Chase glanced at the message as he watched Leo think deeply. One plus one. This is real, it said.
Leo smiled when he understood. "What do you think of Torrance?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Chase asked.
Leo shrugged. "I mean, what do you think of her?" he said.
Chase thought of how he could answer appropriately. Leo and Torrance were supposedly good friends, and he didn't want to say anything negative about her and upset his brother. At the same time, he didn't want to lie.
"You don't trust her, do you?" Leo asked knowingly. When Chase said nothing, he said, "Ah, I don't blame you. I didn't trust her either. At least not at first. And it's not like she makes it easy for people to not not to. She's so secretive. But that's the thing about her, and it's the most important thing you should know. There are many things she doesn't say, many things she keeps to herself, but—she doesn't lie, most of the time. She doesn't see the need to. That's why you should trust her, Chase. She tries her best to be honest with you, even if at times she does it brutally."
Chase shook his head. "Look, Leo, it – it doesn't matter what I think of her," he said. "What's important now is to know where you are. I don't have much time. Do you know where Douglas is keeping you?"
The smile on Leo's face waned down to a faint curl of the lips. He shook his head.
"You don't know?" Chase asked, the hope he held dwindling considerably.
"No. I'm saying you shouldn't come for me," Leo corrected.
Chase stared.
"Chase, it's too dangerous."
"Dangerous—Leo, that's not what I'm asking! We know it will be dangerous," Chase said. "If you're worried about us having to go against those three other bionic kids, we don't care. We're going to manage. What's important is that you come back home. Do you even know how long—"
"I'm dying."
Chase stopped. "What?"
"Coming for me will just be a waste of time, because I'm dying," Leo said. When he saw that his brother still didn't understand, he slowly raised up his left hand to show him, wincing as the pain shot up through his arm.
Chase's features curved into an expression of shock and pity as he beheld Leo's heavily bandaged wrist.
Leo explained, "The simulator. I'm not connected to it the way you probably are with the one in the lab. This one is in me. It's a chip inside my wrist. Douglas said that the more simulations I go under, the more I won't be able to tell what's real and what's not. I'll lose control of my own brain. Then it'd get to the point that I'm not…me, anymore." He smiled an empty smile. "I don't know how many hours I have left."
Chase sighed as he racked his brain for a solution. "A few hours is still a few hours," he reasoned patiently. "If you know where you are, if you tell me now, we can get ready, and—"
"It's not that easy, okay?" Leo blurted out in frustration. "Douglas – He put target marks on yours, Adam's, Bree's and Torrance's backs. The moment you come here, Darwin, Echo and Fielder will go after you—"
"So what?" Chase fired back. "You don't think we can put up a fight against them?"
"That's just it, Chase. The three of you are the ones who always do the fighting," Leo said. Then, calmly he added, "But not this time. Not anymore. This is my problem to pick up and solve."
Chase laughed humorlessly, shaking his head. "So, what am I supposed to tell everyone when I come back? 'Hey, Leo knew where he was, but he said it wasn't a good idea for us to go there so we should probably just sit here and wait. See where this takes us,'" he said snidely. "Do you know how hard it is to carry on with your life after someone you really love dies? I'll tell you right now, it's the most horrible thing I've ever gone through. It killed me, and it killed everybody else! And now that we have a chance to see you again, to get you back, you're acting like this." He scoffed. "What am I supposed to tell Adam and Bree? They're waiting right now, at the lab. And what about Mr. Davenport? He's been working hard, and he probably didn't sleep last night just to be able to put this simulator together." He hitched his shoulder resignedly. "What about our mom?"
Leo avoided his gaze out of guilt. "Tell them I'm sorry I did this to all of you. What I did was wrong," he said contritely. "These things that are happening to me, this is probably what I deserved for doing that, but… But I can't let you put yourselves in danger for me. I'm not going to watch all of you die. It's happened before, with my dad, and I couldn't do anything about it then. I'm not gonna let it happen again."
"But—"
Leo encased him in a one-armed hug. Chase could tell from his weaker grasp that he didn't have much energy to expend, and it was most likely due to the chip on his wrist. "I'm glad I got a chance to talk to you again, man. Thank you," he said, sincerely happy.
"If you do this, I will never forgive you."
Slowly, Leo let go. Chase could tell from his expression that what he said scared and hurt his little brother, but he didn't regret it. He was willing to take whatever necessary measures were available to get him to cooperate.
But, instead of doing so, Leo just smiled sadly. "Please tell everyone I'm sorry and that I love them, all of you, very much," he said. Then, after thinking about something, "Tell – Tell my Anna, too, that Guillermo said hi."
"You're coming home, so you tell them yourself," Chase responded quietly but vehemently.
The same familiar loud screech blasted from a distance suddenly, and it again made Chase cringe from it.
"Goodbye, Chase," Leo's calm but muffled voice came through the noise.
In the darkness caused by him shutting his eyes tightly to fight the pain, Chase felt the room turn again. He fell back, but instead of landing on the hard floor, he felt soft leather.
He opened his eyes when everything has stopped, and he found himself staring up at the ceiling in the lab.
"Time," Torrance announced weakly, as if releasing a bated breath.
"Is… Is it over?" Adam asked while Chase was sitting up.
Donald nodded. "How was it?" he asked Chase. "Did you find anything useful?"
"No," Chase answered darkly.
"So, the simulator – we can destroy it?" Bree asked hopefully.
"We can't." Chase brashly pulled out the simulator system from himself then left them in tangles on the chair when he got up. "We do that, we kill Leo."
"What?" Donald asked.
"Douglas is controlling everything through one chip. And he wired that chip inside him," Chase said. "Leo told me that each simulation messes more and more with his brain. He loses control, and he's going to continue losing control until…" he trailed off, not wanting to provide any more details.
"If that's the case then, we should go get him," Adam said.
"How?" Chase asked. "How can we get him if we don't know where he is?"
"He didn't tell you?" Donald asked.
Chase shook his head. "Apparently, Douglas has set up a trap for us," he said. "He didn't tell me because he didn't want us to get hurt."
A thick silence befell them as they all thought over the situation. Adam felt lost. Bree, who had been hoping since yesterday that her theory was wrong, felt crushed by being proved right. Donald tried to come up with another solution but had to face the fact that, at the moment, there was nothing he could do.
Tasha felt a weight of grief come upon her and so sank down on the leather chair. "So I'm never going to see him again," she spoke out as the thought came to her.
As Chase stared at the woman he accepted as his mother, he felt pity overpower the anger he had. He also felt remorse. Perhaps it would have been better to have let her go to see Leo. That way, she would have had a chance to talk to her son. It would have done so much to lift up her sorrow.
But then again, maybe it was for the better that she didn't. Leo was in a terrible shape, and maybe it was good that she didn't see it. The exuberance his younger brother once had was not there anymore. He didn't make any jokes; he spoke softly. He questioned reality, questioned the possibility of him seeing and receiving something good. Pain had dominated most of him. It hurt Chase to think back on the hug he was given. Leo's grip was weak, and it was evident with the subtle way his hand shook as he backed away that the chip was causing him to lose some of his motor functions, too.
And how would she have taken that? Knowing that he had a few hours left, suffering like that?
Torrance, also bearing a burden of her own after hearing what Chase had said, offered, "I will try to retrace the signal again. Maybe we'll be able to narrow down the exact location better since we made contact."
Donald nodded, accepting the suggested solution, but it was evident that he wasn't as optimistic as earlier.
Chase, however, felt differently. "No. You've done enough," he said, turning towards her bitterly. "In fact, you know what? This is all your fault."
"Chase," Adam warned.
"If you hadn't interfered, this wouldn't have happened," Chase continued. "Because of you misinterpreting that blueprint, we're in this situation. You've gotten us all involved because you felt like you have the right to dig around someone else's life. You justify it by saying that you did it to help out, but are you really? Is this what you call helping out?"
Before Donald could stop them, Torrance spoke up. "Misinterpreted or not, the results would have been the same, Chase Davenport," she said defensively. "If I had not stepped in, you and your older siblings would have died, and Leo would have ended up being alone, defenseless, under Douglas Davenport's control."
"But you didn't stop that last part from happening, did you? You just delayed it," Chase said. "He's still alone, suffering. And that's all because of you."
Torrance continued to look at him with an unwavering gaze, but it showed from the swift way her emerald eyes lost their fire that he had said something that had extinguished it. Her stare soon became soft. She took a deep breath to compose herself as much as she could, and then she turned towards Donald. "Donald Davenport, may I be excused?" she asked.
Donald shot Chase a disappointed glance before nodding at Torrance. "Yeah," he said.
Torrance nodded back. She got up from her seat, and then made her way towards the elevator.
As he watched her leave, Chase's anger melted, and he was soon flooded with remorse.
When she was gone, Adam frowned at Chase. "Sheesh, Chase. The girl was just trying to help. Why do you always have to pick on her like that?" he asked. After huffing, he beckoned Linux to come with him. Soon, they too vanished to where Torrance had gone to.
Knowing that her son was feeling guilt, Tasha placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'll go talk to her," she said.
Chase waited for his father to say something after Tasha followed Adam and Torrance upstairs, but he didn't. Instead, Donald proceeded to dismantle the simulator system, starting by wheeling the recliner out of the room.
That, to him, was worse.
"Was I wrong?" Chase posed the question mostly to Bree but also to himself.
Bree walked up to his side, her arms crossed. "Not entirely," she said. "But, I think you and I are going to have to reconsider a few things, mostly about who we blame." She looked at him. "Adam was right. She was really giving it her best shot during the simulation to help."
One glance at her told Chase that his sister was right. He had no reason to doubt Torrance anymore. Leo had told him that she was trustworthy, and his family had seen the proof. Excluding her like that was not fair. He didn't know what he had said to hurt her, but he knew he had to right that, too.
He had to find her and apologize to her.
to be continued.