Evie wakes and for a moment doesn't know where she is. The light coming in through the window is all wrong, soft early morning light, that particular golden light that comes just before dawn, when it is neither night nor truly morning. Evie stretches on the bed, taking in the unfamiliar apartment and the smell and feel of the blankets wrapped around her. Jacob, they make her think of Jacob—and then she remembers that of course they do, she's at his place.
"Are you awake yet?"
Evie sits bolt upright in bed, eyes scanning the room, but she's just barely caught a glimpse of the boy sitting at the end of the bed before he's surged forward, he's on top of her—Evie shouts (angry, not afraid), but she hadn't been expecting this and the boy is fast and strong. He pins her down and grabs her arm—she feels a pinch and then nothing, but when the boy scrambles away he is grinning, waving an empty syringe at her.
"I've been saving this," he says. Evie tries to stand, to go after him, but her legs shake so badly she can barely move. Her vision blurs a little around the edge, and her heart speeds up.
"Saving what?" Evie asks.
"Oh, I dunno what it is," the boy says. "Bought it off this guy I found on the internet, he swore up and down it's the best weapon you could ever have."
"It's poison?" Evie asks. "You killed me?"
"Nah," the boy says. "You're Jacob's sister, aren't you? Evie?"
"And you're Jack," she says.
His grin is almost proud. "They also call me Ripper. But that's not the point. The point is, Jacob cares about you." He pulls something out of his pocket, a phone. He fiddles with it a few minutes, then sets it up on a table across the room from Evie, camera facing her.
"How did you find me?" Evie asks.
"What?" For a second, Jack's face slips into a very ordinary confusion. "Well I mean—it wasn't exactly hard, was it? This is Jacob's place. He was living here when I knew him. I mean, he was here whenever he wasn't with Roth."
Roth. Always, always Roth.
"So... I guess that guy on the internet was wrong, the drugs aren't the weapon…" he takes a step back and crouches down, checking the view. He nods, apparently satisfied. "You're the weapon, and you're going to hurt Jacob."
"Never," Evie says, but there's not as much force behind the words as she wants. Something's wrong in her head, she doesn't feel quite right…
"You are," Jack says, perfectly cheerful. "He's going to watch his sister go insane." He gestures to the phone, and Evie feels a second of excitement at the thought of Jacob on the other end. But the excitement won't stick, it fades as something bigger crowds it out. Fear. Evie is suddenly terrified, and she doesn't know why. True, she's in the same room as a boy (but no, no boy would do something like this, he's a man, a monster) who has kidnapped her brother, terrified her friend, and admitted to murdering five women. But she shouldn't feel this, her pulse racing, heart beating like mad, hands sweating.
"I'm not insane," Evie says.
"I didn't get around to telling you what this does, did I?" Jack asks, holding the syringe up to the light.
"N—no." She can't get her breathing right, there's something wrapped around her chest like an iron band, squeezing tight.
"It's fear," Jack says. "Visions, hallucinations, whatever terrifies you, you're about to see it. More than see it, if my guy's product description is right." He taps the side of his head, grinning a crooked, sideways grin around the old scar on his cheek. "Gets inside your head, I guess, makes you feel things, think things… I dunno. You're about to find out, I guess."
Evie mumbles something. She shakes her head, trying to clear her vision as it starts swimming. The colors in the room blur and the last thing Evie hears before her vision goes dark is Jack, laughing and laughing and laughing, and then footsteps and a door slamming closed behind him.
She doesn't exactly pass out, but she's not exactly conscious, either. When she finally manages to drag her eyes open and prop herself up against the wall, the world is tilting on its axis, the lights hurt her eyes, and she feels like she's going to throw up. Her heart is still pounding and she can't breathe right, she might be about to hyperventilate. And there's someone in the room, someone that flickers in and out and Evie's thinking, she's thinking someone said something about hallucinations but memory isn't working right now and thoughts aren't that great either.
"I think we have something in common, love," the maybe-hallucination says, standing up. He swims in and out of focus for a minute before solidifying into something vaguely familiar. A man, older than her, gray haired with a mustache. She's seen him in pictures, but can't quite place here, not right now, not with everything off balance inside her.
"What do we have in common?" she asks. "Who are you?"
"Don't you know me?" he asks. "I'm shocked. Shocked and disappointed, really. Hasn't Jacob ever mentioned me?"
"I don't—"
He makes a dramatic gesture almost like a bow. "Maxwell Roth." Something in Evie seizes up and the fear comes pouring down on her, a fresh tidal wave on top of everything she's already feeling. "A pleasure to meet you. And as for what we have in common, I believe darling Jacob's tried to kill us both. The only difference being, he succeeded with me."
"Shut up," Evie snaps. "Shut up, don't call him that."
Roth smiles, and suddenly without moving he's on the bed next to her, on the bed where he had slept with her brother, and his hand is on her knee. Evie feels cold, like ice shooting through her veins. She whimpers, a high, thin noise that in any other circumstance she would have been ashamed of.
"I do love him, you know," he says. "And I don't know if I love him more than you do…" He gives a little shrug of the shoulders. "I think I do. But I know for certain that I loved him first."
"That's a lie," Evie says. "It's a lie, I loved him since I was a little girl, ever since I knew he existed. Long before you knew him." But part of her is thinking that it's true, that she'll never be able to compete with Roth in Jacob's eyes, because this is exactly what she's always been afraid of.
"Alright then," Roth concedes. "Alright, maybe you did love him first. But he loved me before he ever heard about you. And I will never be out of his head, he will never be over me, he will never be as much your brother as he is my lover."
He is close now, so close that Evie should be able to feel his breath against her face. But she can't, he's not breathing—he's a dead man, but somehow Evie is still less afraid of the fact that he is dead than his identity as Maxwell Roth.
"That's not true," Evie says.
Roth pulls away from her, and for a moment Evie feels relieved. But just for a moment. He's not touching her anymore, but he's still so close. Too close. "Let's think about that, darling," Roth says. He draws the last word out, like he knows how much it will hurt her. Darling, dear, love—those had been the words he used for Jacob, the ones Jacob had once admitted to Evie he misses hearing. Evie doesn't want to hear them now. She is not her brother, and she does not want to hear Roth's pet name's for Jacob used on her—
"Think about what?" she asks, and she means it to be strong, angry. It comes out as barely more than a whisper.
"Let's imagine another world," Roth says. "One where Jacob did his job, and succeeded in killing you. He might never have learned you were related, and he might never have had that crisis of conscience that brought him to the Alhambra to kill me. I would have lived. Do you really think that Jacob would have spent so much as a moment regretting what he did?"
"Yes—"
"No!" Roth says, and he shouts the word, he roars it at her. "He would have never given you a second thought! He would have walked away from you, he would have come back to me! You took the man I love away from me, you took the man he loves away from him!"
He is on top of her, so close he blocks out the whole rest of the world. She tries to say something but her whole brain has frozen in fear, her body is locked in place. Roth just keeps going. "Do you want to know how he felt?" he demands. "Do you want to know what you ruined?"
"I—"
It's just—it's so hard to think. It's like drowning, it's like fighting to get to the surface while water is just pouring down and down and down. Nothing seems real, not the room, not her body, not what she sees. Paradoxically, Roth seems to become more real, more present, until he is the only thing that matters.
"Jacob, darling," Roth says, and his voice is kind for the first time. "It has been a very long time."
Evie wants to argue that she is not Jacob, but the fear in her chest is turning slowly to something else, something… deep and rich, undefinable but impossible to ignore. It's the drugs, Evie thinks desperately. It's whatever Jack had given her. What she's feeling is no more real than the fear.
But it feels real, and Evie cries with how real it feels. How important, how overwhelming. This is what Jacob has been trying to explain to her for twelve years, these are the feelings she's been telling him to ignore. She reaches for Roth, desperate, and he is kind. He takes her hand in his, and holds it tight. Evie is shaking, she wants him, she just wants to be near him, there is no room for any other thought in her head and Evie doesn't want there to be. She doesn't want to think or feel anything, she just wants this.
Roth isn't really here. He's a figment of her imagination and a product of her fears, and Evie knows that. It doesn't help. She presses herself up against him and cries. Evie thinks she must be saying things, promising him things, begging, but she doesn't know what they are, she's still not thinking straight.
She stays like that until the drugs wear off, but there is a horrible in between moment where Evie doesn't really know what's going on, where the feelings from the drugs linger but the hallucinations are gone. When she can't see Roth but she needs him.
For the first time in twelve years, Evie understands why her brother hasn't been able to let go of him. If these are his feelings, if this is what's going on in his head, then it's no wonder, no wonder at all…
It takes a long time for the effects to fully wear off, but when they finally do Evie runs to the bathroom and throws up. Again and again, for at least half an hour she stays in the bathroom, sprawled against the toilet, heaving everything in her stomach into the toilet. She's shaking, she's horrified by what she's just seen and said and felt.
It was the drugs, she tells herself over and over.
But it doesn't matter.
When she's down to coughing up bile, Evie sags against the wall and pulls her phone out of her pocket. She wants to call Henry, she wants to hear his voice, hear Nadia's, but—no, no. Roth hadn't been real, but Evie isn't ready to explain what she'd felt to Henry. She needs to find the words, but there aren't any. Not yet, anyway. Maybe, after she gets Jacob back, she'll be able to think. Later. She'll call him later. For now, she just needs a friend.
She dials Freddie with shaking fingers, and has to hold it to her head with both hands because just one isn't enough to keep from dropping it. When he picks up, Evie bursts into tears and for several long minutes she can't do anything but cry. Freddie finally manages to coax her location out of her, and then he stays on the phone while he comes to her. Evie keeps crying until it's too much, she has to stop or hyperventilate.
Freddie gets really worried then, when she goes quiet. He keeps asking her to say things, so Evie will mutter a word or two into the phone to prove she's still there.
"Evie," he says at last. "I'm here, I'm outside and I'm coming in, alright?"
She takes a breath, tries to speak.
"Evie, is that okay?"
"It's okay," she whispers, and a moment later she hears the door open and Freddie's footsteps coming toward her.
"Oh, Evie," he says, and that's how she knows she must look a fright. "Evie, what happened?"
"I don't…" she shakes her head. "Can you just sit here for a while? I just don't want to be alone."
Freddie nods and sits next to her on the floor. He puts his arm around her and Evie is so, so grateful for him. He's always been a friend, and that's exactly what she needs right now. Just to be held by a friend, and let his arm around her shoulder wipe away the phantom of Roth.
It takes a while, almost an hour, but finally Evie manages to tell Freddie everything. Jack tracking her down, the drugs he'd injected her with, the things she'd seen.
"I told you not to go after Jack," Freddie says. But the way he says it, it doesn't sound like an I told you so. It sounds like I'm sorry.
"I'm not going to stop," Evie says. "He's still my brother. He's still Jacob. And if this is what Jacob is capable of, then I absolutely need to get Jacob away from him. As soon as possible. Or sooner. I just… don't know where to start."
Freddie sighs. "I was afraid you'd say that," he says.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize," Freddie says. "I've never heard you apologize for anything, don't start now."
Evie chokes out a laugh. "Fine," she says. "I won't."
She knows she should be looking for Jacob now, she should be finding some new lead, tracking him down. But right now all she can do is sit here, on the floor of Jacob's bathroom, the smell of vomit still lingering in the air, taking what comfort she can from Freddie's hug.
Neither of them moves for quite a long time.
-/-
Jacob is quiet, apart from the quiet rasp of his labored breathing. Things have gotten worse for him, fast. He is covered in blood, in burns, in bruises. He is lying in his own filth, slumped against the wall and apparently without enough energy to sit up on his own. There's a gag in his mouth. One eye is swollen shut, but the other stares at a cell phone propped up in front of him, just out of reach.
The volume on the phone is turned all the way up, and it echoes against the walls of Jacob's prison. It's Evie's voice—crying out to nothing, her terrified response to the hallucinations Jack's drugs had inflicted on her. Jacob closes his good eye, shifts away from the phone as the footage continues.
Finally, the drugs wear off. Evie goes quiet, apart from the sound of retching, and then a while later Evie's phone conversation with Freddie. Jacob cracks his eye open again, and takes a deep breath (wincing) when Freddie arrives to comfort her.
Jack walks into the room, completely unnoticed by Jacob. He's still staring at the phone, even though Evie and Freddie are outside the range of the camera now. Jack walks up next to him and leans down to see what's going on. For a moment they're both silent, listening to Freddie trying to reassure Evie.
"Aw," Jack says. Jacob flinches away, so violently that his head hits the wall behind him with a crack. "That's… that's sweet, isn't it?"
Jacob makes a moaning noise around the gag that might be pain or might be an attempt to say something. Jack ignores him. "Kind of bummed I missed her freaking out," he says. "These drugs were supposed to make her crazy for way longer than they did. I should see about getting a refund."
Jacob moans again, but Jack ignores him in favor of fiddling with his phone. When he's hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket, he looks down at Jacob and grins. "Or maybe I won't," he says. "I mean the whole point of freaking her out was to hurt you, and that seems to have worked."
He pulls the gag out of Jacob's mouth with two fingers, holding it at arm's length like it's something disgusting. Jacob chokes and coughs as the fabric is pulled out, then says, "That's my sister." His voice is rough, hoarse.
"I know," Jack says. "That was the point."
"You hurt her," Jacob says.
"No," Jack complains. "No, Jacob, No! You're getting boring!" He stands and kicks half heartedly at Jacob's side. "Stop whining, stop—don't you have any anger left in you? Don't you have anything left for me to hurt?"
"Leave Evie alone," Jacob says. "Just leave her alone, leave her alone…"
Jack throws him a rude gesture but Jacob doesn't seem to see it. "Listen," Jack says. "You should be thanking me, really. I didn't actually hurt Evie. I could have done a lot worse than that but I didn't. You're welcome, Jacob."
Jacob makes a pathetic spitting noise, and launches a thin glob of mucus in Jack's general direction. It gets about halfway to his shoes and splats onto the floor.
Jack makes a show of wrinkling his nose. "I could still hurt her, you know that? It was so easy to find her, it's almost funny. I can find her again. I can do to her what I'm doing to you."
"No!"
"Relax," Jack says. "I said could, not would. No—women, I like killing them faster. When I come for your sister, I'll kill her quickly." He smiles, a quick flash of a Cheshire grin. "It'll still hurt, don't get me wrong. She'll die screaming—maybe I'll burn her alive, the way we almost did when I was a kid. But I won't drag it out for her like th—"
Jacob lunges at him, suddenly, a sudden burst of energy that gets him nearly close enough to Jack to actually hurt him. Had his arms been free, it might actually have done some damage, but as it is he only crashes into Jack, knocking him to the ground. Jack's head hits the floor with a crack and he shouts in pain.
And then Jack—he loses control. He roars in anger and lashes out, one heavy blow after another, raining them down on Jacob's body, his head—Jack doesn't stop shouting but there are no words there, only a brutal, uncontainable anger. His face is transformed into a mask of sheer hatred, and for as long as the tantrum lasts he is utterly unrecognizable.
At the end of it, Jacob is limp within his bonds, struggling for breath on the floor. Jack gets up and runs his hands through his hair, clearly trying to compose himself. "Look," he mutters, more to himself than to Jacob. "Look what you made me do."
Jacob shakes his head, a feeble protest. But when he speaks, it's not to argue. "How much longer are you going to… to drag things out?" he asks. "Before you kill me?"
Jack takes his time answering. He walks closer, slowly, frowning down at Jacob. Then he crouches over him. "Are you ready to die?" he asks, quietly.
Jacob doesn't answer, but his eyes slide away from Jack's face, like he doesn't have the strength to look him in the eye, and he lets out a long, raspy breath that is as good as an admission, as good as giving up.
"Well, I'm not quite ready to be done with you yet," Jack says, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "You've been hanging over my head my whole life. I can't forget you, I can't forget that you sent me away when I needed you the most. When this stops feeling good, when hurting you isn't fun anymore, when you bore me, that's when you get to die."
He surges to his feet, turns around and strides away from Jacob all in one smooth motion. When he is gone, Jacob closes his eyes. His shoulders shake as tears drip down his face.