Chapter 33
Hey Boogie!
C'mon Boogie, you gotta get up.
The voice was clear among the haze of pain and muffled rat-a-tat of gunfire that filled Faith's ears. She raised her head slowly, lazily opening her eyes, despite the swollen skin that surrounded them.
A short, sturdy woman stood in the corner of the cell, a closed-mouth smile on her plump, lined face. She looked like she had during the happier times in Faith's life. Not the dull, drawn, gray face with dark circles under lifeless eyes like when she said goodbye to her for the last time.
"Mom?" Faith asked hesitantly.
"C'mon! Let's go! Shit to do, fish to fry!" She replied.
From behind, Susan Spencer stepped another figure, tall and lanky, complete with bright green hair and a gummy worm.
"See? What did I tell you? Your eyes are, like, exactly the same!"
"Remy?"
"Hiya!" He greeted enthusiastically, clamping a red gel squiggle between his lips.
Faith squinted eyes blinked rapidly. She forced herself to slowly rise to her knees, the bone-deep exhaustion keeping her palms flat against the ground.
"Am I dead?"
Remy snickered.
"Nope, your egg just got a little scrambled."
"So come on! Let's go! You got a treasure to find!" Faith's mother announced, gesturing emphatically towards the open cell door.
Faith gave a look around. The lifeless body of one of Jasper's goons was sprawled in the corner, his face smashed against the thin layer of sand on the floor. One of the men that had dragged her in last night, she assumed. A trail of blood ran from his ear. She scrunched her face and looked away.
"I know, dead people. Gross," Remy commented. Faith's mother threw him a sideways glance. "Present company excluded, of course," He added with a smile. She raised an eyebrow before returning to her daughter. Faith had shakily gotten herself to one knee. She fell backward on her ass before she could get to the second.
"Fuck," She muttered to herself. "Why? Why should I even bother?"
"Why?" Remy's eyebrows raised to almost meet his grass-green hairline.
"Come on, Faithadoo, do you really want it to end like this?" Her mother asked.
"I just came for answers, and I got them. More than I wanted," Her shoulders heaved with a sigh. "And please don't call me Faithadoo. You know I hate that," She added with a disgusted quirk of her dry lip.
"Come on, man, it's right there!" Remy pointed out the window of the cell. Faith glanced at the cannon before the sound of gunshots made her eyes drop back to her hands. Even with her broken, jagged-edged nails, she picked at her cuticles nervously.
"And what about Sam?"
Her mother sighed.
"Come on, get up," She said, motioning her towards the door. "We'll do a walk and talk on the way," She added more gently than her previous command.
Faith got herself back to her knees and finally to her feet with the help of the back wall. Her legs were as wobbly as the room around her but still held her. She took a couple of experimental steps towards the door, feeling like a baby trying to get its balance for the first time. Making it across the cell, she grabbed the edge of the brick doorway, feeling a little more steady.
She looked behind her, the visions of her mother and Remy gone. Faith sighed and looked down the vast hallway in front of her. Her mother leaned against one archway while Remy leaned on another.
"You coming?"
"Yeah, going to get a treasure and talk with my dead mother. Yup. Ok," Faith spoke to herself. She was still not wholly convinced that Jasper hadn't killed her.
Sam hid behind the crumbling remains of the armory wall. Blind fury had gotten him out of the cell, past Jasper, and into the courtyard before getting pinned down. He popped a full clip into his gun as bullets cracked the old bricks above his head, dusting him in red flakes. The sound of Jasper's voice made him steal a peak around the side of the wall. The movement of a light khaki-colored suit caught his eye. Followed by two lackeys, Jasper had already made it to the second level on the other side of the fort, closing in on the cannon. Sam pulled his head back behind the safety of the bricks as a bullet zoomed by.
"Samuel," Sully's voice crackled over his radio that he'd manage to retrieve from one of the guards he had taken down in the hall. "Samuel, you got incoming."
Just under the thunder of the gunshots, he could hear the nervous thrum of an incoming plane. He grabbed his radio with a sweaty hand.
"Time for Plan B. Check the bag!" He yelled into the speaker as the three men across the courtyard fruitlessly fired at him.
With a furrowed brow, Sully maneuvered to the back of the plane. The two black hockey bags Sam left lay on the side. He flung the zipper open as Sam's voice and muffled gunfire came back through the radio. "You remember how to use one of those, right?" Sully ran his hand over the cool, black metal pipe with 'PLAN B' hastily scrawled across the side in what could only be Sam's poor excuse for penmanship.
"I'll be goddamned. The boy left me a bazooka."
Sam heard the moan and thud of the last body hitting the ground, his cue to get a move on. He sprinted across the yard, grabbing the handguns of two men he had put down as he went. Sam popped his head up, checking for Jasper's location, his eyes settling on Mudd's cell instead. Sam knew Faith was still in there, lying on the damp cement floor, her battered body soaked in blood and tears. He didn't know if she was alive or dead, but Sam was sure that Jasper Knox would be before the sun hit noon that day.
"Not much farther," Remy said, bouncing happily down the walkway. Even dead, the kid had more energy than Faith ever could remember having at that age. Though being dead, energy level wouldn't be an issue. Best not to ponder that too hard, she decided. Her skin screamed as she fell against the back wall of the spiraled staircase. Sweat bloomed and dripped down her shoulders and back, trailing dirt, sand, and blood in its dewy wake.
"Ok, Boog, two more hallways! Let's go, you got this," Her mother urged—her constant cheerleader.
Panting, Faith trudged forward. A small information station jutted out from the side of the hallway, holding pamphlets of curious tidbits and maps of the fort. The edge of Faith's sneaker caught the corner of the display. Already unsteady, she went down clumsily and hard on her knees.
"Shit!" She said as blood-tinted spittle sprayed from her lips in frustration.
"Just a little farther," Faith's mother motioned down the concrete hall. Muttering in defiance and defeat, Faith plopped down. The pain from the cuts and burns had turned into a constant stinging. No throb, ebb, or flow, just the continuous sensation of hot sandpaper being dragged along her body. She leaned back against the information cabinet behind her.
"Nope, no more. I'm done. I'm done," She breathed hard and closed her eyes, a vain attempt at a respite. She shook her head before the painful marble rattling in her skull made her stop.
"You don't want to end it like this, do you?" Her mother said.
"I don't think you're one that should be talking about giving up and letting things end," Faith said quietly, a hidden bitterness slipping through her words. She'd hoped that it would make her go away. Her mother and Remy. All she wanted was to get out of there and to find a way home. Far away from Key West and from the Lincoln treasure. Far away from Sam Drake and the truth she had so desperately wanted and the truth she hadn't counted on learning.
She cracked her eyes open to see if they had disappeared. She instead found her mother's face inches from her own.
"Faith Evelyn Spencer, you are going to listen to me, and you are going to listen to me right now. You do not want to go through the rest of your life with a 'what if.' Wondering what would have happened if you just kept going a little more, if you had done something different. It will eat you alive, and it won't swallow you whole. It will gnaw at you in little chunks. A piece here, a piece there with just enough time in between to let you heal a little bit. Then just when you think done, it comes back. And that's how it will go. Do you understand?"
Faith let her eyes drop. She was silent and bordering on ashamed. Her mother stood up and walked towards Remy, who had stopped and been soundlessly watching on. Remy darted his eyes between mother and daughter. "So…are we, like…going…or what?" He asked cautiously.
Faith's mother cocked her head and looked at Faith. Remy joined her. The image was a striking imitation of the RCA dalmatians. Faith pushed the damp strands of hair out of her face and snorted.
"Ow," She muttered, her voice flat and resigned as she got to her feet.
Her mother flicked a hand towards the stack of half-sheet maps nestled in a holder on the kiosk. "And grab a handful of those. You never know when you'll need them," she said and began to walk down the corridor, followed by Remy and finally Faith in tow, jamming the thin papers into her back pocket.