Chapter 18: N0th1n2F3AR

It took a while for me to regain my memory. I returned to work as soon as I had enough to function. Various staff members mentioned things I had no memory of, and I would always seek independent verification of their stories in case they were attempting to trick me. All too often, it seemed that they were. I dealt with them harshly, I had no use for people I could not trust.

My memories of Sanctuary remained frustratingly vague. I had been there, I had travelled there from Genomex. Yet those memories were always out of reach. The agents who had accompanied me proved equally useless at filling in the gaps. I had got a taste of Sanctuary, and now I desperately wanted to get back there. I had been so close to thwarting Adam and shutting down his terrorist organisation. But nothing I tried got me no nearer to this aim. Until I met Henry Voight.

The abode of Mr Voight was an odd one. He had fashioned an old train car into a place where he could keep his things, at the least. Vivaldi's La primavera concerto was playing on an old reel to reel tape deck. A prosaic choice, but I supposed it could have been worse. Old cut out pictures and photographs were strung from the ceiling like some sort of outsider art project.

"Feral's in my control," he said from the space where he was huddled wearing outside clothes. "Now I'll be able to reel them all in, one by one."

"I'm concerned, Henry, that you're more interested in torturing them and less interested in giving me the information I need," I said.

"You'll get what you want."

I looked around the train car in morbid fascination. Mr Voight's only furniture appeared to be rows of shelves. His bizarre, childish art project seemed to take up most of the space. "Have you ever considered renting an apartment?" I asked him.

"I like it here," he said.

"Well I suppose you've made it your own, so to speak," I said. I noticed that many of the pictures were of smiling women. They gave the place the chilling air like that of the haunt of a serial killer or stalker. I supposed that was not an unlikely possibility, given Mr Voight's seeming delight in using his powers to torment people.

Mr Voight got to his feet suddenly, and I gave a start, concerned that perhaps he was reading my mind.

"Instruct Miss Fox to give us the location of Sanctuary and any pertinent information about the new mutant underground," I said, turning quickly back to business. "And keep in touch," I took a cell phone from my pocket and dropped it in a space I found, to avoid having to approach the man.

He just looked at me. I left before he or any of the countless microorganisms that he surely shared his home with could do me any harm.

I returned later to check on Mr Voight. He was sitting with his eyes staring fixedly at the ceiling on top of what looked like some kind of throne constructed of piles of newspapers. I approached him and asked, "How's it going in your little dreamscape?"

He flinched and blinked his eyes, seemingly coming back to the world of the living. He turned to me. "Would you like to see for yourself?"

Without giving me time to respond, he reached a hand out to my temple. There was a searing, burning pain and reality shifted. I saw flashes of myself, and Miss Fox, in a place that bore some resemblance to Genomex. I watched and listened to myself interrogate Miss Fox, with the aid of a flamethrower. It was almost frightening. He withdrew his hand, snapping the connection.

"Don't ever do that to me again!" I warned.

"You asked to see it."

"You do a very good impression of me," I said as I moved to a more comfortable distance away from him. "The look, the behaviour, the choice of language."

"You're just more obvious than you'd like to think," he said, getting up and walking past me.

"I want the location of Sanctuary, and the data on the underground," I called after him.

"And that's what you'll get," he said, starting the reel to reel player again.

"You seem more interested in watching her suffer," I said. The flamethrower was perhaps a step too far.

"I'm doing whatever I need to do to get anything out of her."

"Well don't kill her in the process, I have a stasis pod with her name on it," I said. The smiling woman in the hanging photographs kept catching my eye. It did indeed look like the same woman in each picture. "Who is this?"

"You should know who she is. She used to work at the GSA," Mr Voight said.

I looked again. "I don't remember her at all," I said, hoping that this was not another important memory I had yet to get back. Perhaps she had been insignificant, or didn't last long. Perhaps both were true. Those were unfortunately common traits of the employees of Genomex.

"Tell me when Miss Fox breaks. Let me know when you're ready for the others," I said on my way out again.

Disappointingly, Mr Voight did not contact me, so I was forced to visit him again. He was still sitting on his newspaper throne.

"You promised me something you haven't delivered," I said.

"Their minds will become exhausted and they will no longer have the energy to fight me," he said, his breathing erratic. "You must be… must be… patient… patient." His focus wavered and his eyes closed.

"And what?" I asked. I could see him drifting away again. "Henry. Henry!"

I stood and waited until I could not bear to be in that place any longer. When he finally contacted me, it was after most of the day staff had finished their shifts at Genomex.

"They're all in there now. And they'll pay for what they did," he told me.

"Mr Voight, as I feared, you seem to have lost sight of your immediate goal," I said, pacing my office.

"My wife died in the crossfire between your GS Agents and Mutant X."

"Yes of course, tragedy beyond reckoning."

"I blame Mutant X," he said.

"As you should."

"And I blame you," he said. "You should have protected her. She wasn't trained or prepared for those kinds of operations."

I felt suddenly faint. Not unusual, most likely a symptom of my condition or a side-effect of one of my medications. "If she was out in the field…" I began, but paused to rub my forehead.

"What's the matter? You feeling tired?"

"What do you mean?" I said, fearing I knew the answer even as I asked the question.

"I wondered how long my toxins would take to sink through your plastic skin."

I felt nauseous.

"Remember I showed you the dreamscape," Mr Voight said. I put my hand to my temple. He hadn't actually touched me, so I had falsely assumed that I was safe.

"Oh my God," I said, holding onto my desk for support.

"Are you ready for your nightmare?" His voice was getting distant now. I felt myself slipping, losing my grip on the edge of my desk. All of my strength was being sapped from me, and I fell to the floor.

My eyes fell shut, and when I opened them again I was in a filthy cage filled with rats. It was a nightmare straight out of Nineteen Eighty Four. My heart was pounding and I was filled with revulsion. It's not real, Mason, hold it together, I told myself. But the rats were coming nearer, and one crawled across me. I was starting to hyperventilate.

"Get me out of here," I said, and was horrified at how weak my voice sounded. If this was not real, it was a damned good illusion. A rat was on my head. Another one was in my face, its whiskers twitching and brushing against my nose. The thought of the bacteria and viruses these hideous creatures were doubtlessly carrying horrified me. "This is not happening."

I closed my eyes, but it was hard to say whether that made it better or worse. Either way, I could feel their disgusting feet skittering over me, hear their incessant chirruping. The cage was large, but not big enough for me to stand. If I even had the energy to try to escape, I would be scrabbling about on my knees. Regardless, my instincts kept my body frozen, for all the protection that might offer.

I heard footsteps, and a familiar face came into view.

"Adam," I said. "Are you real, or just some other horrible figment of my imagination?"

Adam smirked, and it seemed like he was laughing at me. How apt for him to be staring down at me, trapped in this cage of nightmares. How like reality, where he had trapped me in the metaphorical cage of chronic illness. I could almost laugh myself.

"Tell Henry what you know about his wife," Adam said. And the man in question joined him in looking down at me in the cage.

"I told him before, I don't remember a thing about her," I said, feeling unbearably uncomfortable now. "My skin! The bacteria from all this filth has already infiltrated."

"Mason, look at me," Adam said. "Look at me! Tell him what a section nine is."

"Get me out of here and I'll tell him."

"Tell him now."

"I'm slightly distracted in here!" I spluttered. There were several rats on me, I couldn't be sure how many. The phantom sensations of their feet remained and made my skin crawl. "When one of our GS agents is deemed unreliable, we put them in section nine."

Mr Voight leaned closer to the bars of the cage. "Is she dead or not?"

"If she's in section nine she's alive. She's in stasis."

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know. She must have been so far down the bureaucratic chain that I wasn't even informed," I said. That might have been true. It might have also been that I had still not regained that memory after Adam had set another one of his new mutants on me. Either way, it was not my fault. I did not deserve to be in this cage of horrors.

"She hated working for you. She hated everything about what you did," Mr Voight said.

"That must have been why her reliability was questioned," I snapped back.

"Let the others go. You can keep me here until you get Brianna back," Adam said.

Mr Voight stared at me for what seemed an eternity. Was he going to let me out? I didn't expect Adam would care whether he did or not.

I woke up feeling weak and sore. I reached out a hand and saw that I had countless wires connected to me. But I was alone, and the only sounds were the hums and beeps from the machinery. I was in one of Genomex's medical labs.

A medical technician approached me with considerable caution. "Brianna Voight is in a pod in section nine. If she's not gone, let her out. Make sure Henry finds her. Make sure they both leave the premises," I told him. I felt terrible, but that was nothing new. Laying here uselessly, attached to machines was not going to improve that. "And someone find me my clothes!"

I was strongarmed into a psychological assessment soon after I returned to work. Which I passed with flying colours, as I always did. I suppose they thought it inevitable that two traumatic incidents so close together would affect my mental state. I had studied psychology extensively, so I knew in great detail what was considered an acceptable answer to any question that might be asked. The real reason for psychologists in the workplace was to accrue a file of evidence against personnel in case they needed to be used as a scapegoat or removed from the organisation. I had never yet allowed them to see a crack in my armour.