Part 17
"How's he doing?" Emma's soft voice broke into Adam's thoughts and he looked up with a welcoming smile.
"I thought you were sleeping."
She sighed, a frown creasing her forehead. "I was. Well, trying, anyway. But there was something... I don't know what, but something kept disturbing me, so..."
"Really?" He turned to face her properly, his analytical mind automatically latching onto the lure of a problem to be solved. "What kind of something? Another dream?"
"No, I don't think so. At least, nothing I could distinguish as such. It's more..." She paused, trying to find the words to convey something that defied description. "...more like hearing someone in the distance trying to tune a radio - the kind of scratchy static you get between channels, interspersed with sweet music when they get it right..." She blinked, and smiled at him shyly. "Or something like that, anyway. Why?"
Adam returned the smile, understanding how hard it was for her to express the things she felt sometimes. "I just thought it could have been something to do with Jesse. I don't really know why he isn't settling - with what I've given him and what this whole thing has to have taken out of him he should be sleeping as deeply as Shalimar and Brennan. But his vital signs are still too erratic, kind of building up and then dropping off to almost nothing. I'd been wondering if he was dreaming again, but if you can't sense anything I guess it must be something else." He paused, not really wanting to explore the avenue his instincts were trying to drag him down, but unable to ignore the scientist in him. "Was there any sign of life from the others?" he asked, almost casually.
"No. I looked in on them, just in case, but they were all sleeping still."
"Joshua too?"
"Yes," Emma confirmed with a warm smile. "You were probably too tied up with Jess and Shal to notice, but he was exhausted by the time we got back. I don't know exactly what he was doing, but I was aware of his presence the whole time we were out there. I think he was trying to help us..." She looked at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "Why? You don't think he's doing this, do you?"
Adam shrugged. "By his own admission, he's been responsible for stimulating the past two precognitive nightmares Jesse's experienced. This feels too much like the last time for us to ignore the possibility. Though, if he's asleep..."
"He was smiling, too, looked really relaxed," she said, with a hint of wonder in her tone. "I don't think I've ever seen him like that..."
The idea he was fighting moved up the scale from implausible to at least conceivable, and he felt justified in taking things a bit further. "Emma, can you read anything from Jesse? Anything at all? Anything that would help us find out what's keeping him in this state?"
She stepped closer to gaze down at Jesse's sweat-sheened face, mouth and nose hidden under the oxygen mask assisting his laboured breathing, and memories of another time sprang to mind, a time when sleep had held horrors for them all.
She frowned, eyes growing distant for a few seconds as she concentrated. "No, not really - which is strange. I should at least be able to tell something about how he's feeling, but... well, if he is dreaming, he's not broadcasting the same way he did before." She rubbed at her forehead, wishing she could shift the almost permanent throb that had taken up residence there. "It's almost as if he's blocking me, except he can't do that."
Adam looked at her, assessing the potential impact of what he was about to say, before asking carefully, "Do you think you could break through, get in there with him? I'm worried about what this is doing to him - his system isn't strong enough right now to keep this up."
Though she knew she should have expected this once it became obvious Jesse was caught in what was now showing all the signs of being an unnatural sleep, it still sent a shiver through her. The last time she'd ventured inside the dreams of one of her friends she'd been trapped there with them, fallen prey to the deep and unspoken fear that left her blind and helpless, forcing Adam's intervention to get them all out safely. And even with her shields at maximum, she was feeling too exposed to the rawness of everyone's emotions in the aftermath of what had been happening recent days.
But she could see the concern in Adam's face, knew that she had the best shot at finding out what was going on, of helping Jesse as she knew without question he would help her if the positions were reversed, so with a sigh she agreed to try.
*
...and then...
"Death!"...
*
It took direct contact with him, and an intense mental effort, but she finally made the transition from reality to dreamscape, shocked to find herself in what felt like the scene of their recent firefight - well, a sun-drenched heated version of it, anyway. From where she stood just behind the kneeling Jesse, she could see and hear the crowd ranked up the surrounding hillside, though she wasn't totally clear on what they were saying. What she did understand were the words being intoned by the man standing over the molecular, the damning indictment for sins she knew her friend had never, could never have committed, and she cried out silently at the sudden knowledge that he believed it to be true.
Moving forward to crouch down beside him so she could talk to him, reassure him this wasn't real, she got her first look at his face and felt a lump form in her throat at the expression there - she didn't think she'd ever seen anyone so devoid of hope, so utterly convinced of the inevitability of their fate. His eyes were half closed, the blue glazing over to gray as if he knew what was coming and didn't want to see its arrival, and she could see the sweat of fear beading on his skin, the clenched teeth, the rigidity of the muscles in shoulders and arms.
"Jesse, listen to me," she said, leaning closer, trying to reach him as she had Shalimar in that other lifetime when Henry Voight had taken her into his telepathic house of horrors. "It's not real, it's just a dream. They can't hurt you if you remember that." She thought the tension in his jaw might have slackened off just a little, but before she could say anything more she found herself being pulled away from him by some unseen force, lengthening her perspective telescopically until she became a distant spectator, one who could only watch in despair as two men stepped forward to haul the unresisting prisoner to his feet and drag him towards the open pit that had appeared a few yards away. Two more men with shovels stood by a pile of earth, and as she realised what it was they intended she let out a heartfelt cry of "No!" that cut through the cheering and jeering.
She strove to get back to Jesse, to try and help him fight whatever it was that held him captive here, but the force pushing her away grew in direct proportion to her endeavours. But as it grew it also became more familiar, and when she dragged her eyes away from what lay ahead she knew she shouldn't be surprised to see Joshua sitting up on the top of the hill, one hand extended in her direction as he gazed with avid raptness at the scene below.
"Joshua, what are you doing?" she called, hoping to distract him enough that she could reach Jesse, and indeed, his eyes flicked her way allowing her to move forward again. But with a yell he brought her up short again.
"No! You can't have him. I'm not finished with him yet!"
Down in the arena she saw full awareness of what was in store for him suddenly hit Jesse, his instantaneous and ferocious attempts to slow his progress to what he now knew would become his living grave making no impact on the nameless men in whose grasp he struggled. She heard his fear-filled cries, adding her own as he was hauled to the edge of the pit and pushed effortlessly in, his kicking legs the final part of him to disappear from view.
Then with a violent snap she found herself back in med-bay, staggering sideways into the support of Adam's arms. She raised huge eyes to his, panting out, "It's Joshua - he's in there with him!" at the same moment that Jesse started convulsing on the bio-bed, breath coming in huge harsh gulps despite the oxygen, hands moving feebly towards his face.
"Stay with him," Adam ordered, pushing her towards the bed again as he sped away, racing down the corridor to slam in through the door of Joshua's room. He was certainly smiling, but it wasn't a pleasant sight. It was a grin of malevolent satisfaction, and it shocked Adam to think what the boy could be seeing that could have that effect. But it was more important to stop him, and fast, so he reached forward to grip him by the shoulders and shake him firmly, shouting his name.
"Hurry, Adam!" Emma's voice, panic uppermost, came through the comms system and he re-doubled his efforts, finally rewarded by the dark eyes blinking open to glare up at him in reproach.
"But I wasn't finished..." Joshua whispered, balefully.
"Finished...?" Adam shook his head, staring at him in confusion and consternation. "What were you doing to him? And why?"
The boy turned his face away and pulled free of the older man's faltering grasp as he responded with a bitterness that chilled his soul. "Because it's his fault!"
"What is?"
The glare stabbed back his way again, accompanied by a psionic jolt that was like a physical slap in the face, and he recoiled before he could stop himself.
"All of it! The dreams, the voices, the pain - mine and everyone else's, which I have to live with every day, which I can't stop, which goes on and on until I think it's going to drive me mad... And everything I lost, everything I'll never to be able to do..." He thumped his balled fists against his useless legs in futile frustration. "*Everything*!!"
"But..." Adam floundered, "it was the GSA who caused the accident. They're responsible for this, not Jesse - he saved you. And you tried to help him, too - you shared the visions you'd had of his future so he could try and avoid what was going to happen."
Joshua laughed raggedly. "I had to - couldn't keep it all inside, needed to get it out of my head, pass it on. But it wouldn't go away! Even when I'd given it back to them, it was still there, I was still living it with them. That's why I wanted him to live too! I couldn't let him escape the pain so easily, not when he hadn't let me. I needed him to know what it was like, what he'd condemned me to by not letting me die. So I helped him cheat his own fate, helped him survive his future so that I'd have my chance."
Adam fought the urge to raise his hands to his ears as the perceived volume of the words reached deafening proportions, though he knew rationally it was just a telepathic side-effect of the boy's distress. "And now you have? Has it helped? Do you feel any better for it?" He leant his head on one side to look questioningly down at him. "This isn't the way, you know that. Jesse doesn't deserve this, any more than you do."
"But it's his fault!" The petulance in his voice should have made this sound like nothing more than a teenage tantrum, but there was so much more to it that that. "I didn't ask him to save me! He should have let me die - why didn't he let me die?!"
"Because he believed that the boy he knew would want to survive. Like he did - like he does now. Destroying him won't make your pain go away, Joshua. But I can help you control it so it doesn't consume you like it does now. You just need to trust me."
For long moments they stared at each other, and Adam watched the struggle going behind the deep brown gaze - anger and suspicion warring against hope and the need to have something to believe in, until one side emerged victorious and the building agitated pressure he'd been feeling laying siege to his mind shut down with a crack.
"It's so lonely in here," Joshua whispered plaintively, eyes flooding with tears that spilled down over the pale cheeks, and the older man put out a tentative arm to pull him into a hug.
"I know - but it doesn't have to be. Let us help you. Let him go."
There was another pause, but eventually the head resting a little awkwardly against his shoulder nodded, and Adam let out a soft sigh as he raised his voice slightly to question, "Emma?", waiting anxiously for her response.
When she did reply, her voice held nothing but overwhelming relief, a sentiment he shared when he heard her say, "He's breathing OK again. And I... I think it's over. He's free."
Adam felt the heaving sobs shaking the thin frame and tightened his grip, murmuring soothing words that did nothing to lessen his own remorse for having allowed this to happen in the first place. Because no matter that he wished things differently now, in failing to keep track of those he'd promised to protect he'd caused more heartache than any of them deserved.
**
Gray eyes hidden behind the reflective lenses of his Ray-Ban's, the man formerly known as Moncrief slid down a little further into the cushioned sunlounger and absently watched the bikini-clad lovelies parade up and down the golden sands of the Copacabana. But his mind was several thousand miles away.
He'd known the job was likely to be of limited duration, but the financial rewards had been sufficiently high to make it worth taking. And like the professional he was, he'd been prepared for a rapid tactical withdrawal even before the cracks had started to show. The remote control that detonated the strategically placed C4 charges had never been far from his person, making it a simple matter to eliminate any clues to his existence once it became obvious the operation was being forcibly closed down, and his meticulously planned escape route had worked as smoothly as expected.
The public removal of the increasingly unstable DeSalles had ensured that anyone the authorities questioned could point to their deceased employer as the instigator - though as he was quite confident there was insufficient evidence left for a clear picture of what had been going on there to emerge, he doubted they'd need to say anything. And from what he'd read about those who had brought about the end of what had proved a highly lucrative but personally less than satisfying undertaking, he didn't think they'd be sharing their suspicions with the police.
His pride had him wondering briefly just how the two male prisoners had managed to free themselves, take out so many of his men and rescue the woman, but he wasn't given to retrospective second-guessing. And though some small part of him hoped that they crossed paths again at some point in the future so that he could settle the score, it wasn't something that he'd be losing sleep over. What was done was done, and it would be some time before he felt the need to look for further gainful occupation.
With a contented sigh, he ordered another Caipirinha and resumed his idle observation of the female talent.
****
"How's he doing?" Emma's soft voice broke into Adam's thoughts and he looked up with a welcoming smile.
"I thought you were sleeping."
She sighed, a frown creasing her forehead. "I was. Well, trying, anyway. But there was something... I don't know what, but something kept disturbing me, so..."
"Really?" He turned to face her properly, his analytical mind automatically latching onto the lure of a problem to be solved. "What kind of something? Another dream?"
"No, I don't think so. At least, nothing I could distinguish as such. It's more..." She paused, trying to find the words to convey something that defied description. "...more like hearing someone in the distance trying to tune a radio - the kind of scratchy static you get between channels, interspersed with sweet music when they get it right..." She blinked, and smiled at him shyly. "Or something like that, anyway. Why?"
Adam returned the smile, understanding how hard it was for her to express the things she felt sometimes. "I just thought it could have been something to do with Jesse. I don't really know why he isn't settling - with what I've given him and what this whole thing has to have taken out of him he should be sleeping as deeply as Shalimar and Brennan. But his vital signs are still too erratic, kind of building up and then dropping off to almost nothing. I'd been wondering if he was dreaming again, but if you can't sense anything I guess it must be something else." He paused, not really wanting to explore the avenue his instincts were trying to drag him down, but unable to ignore the scientist in him. "Was there any sign of life from the others?" he asked, almost casually.
"No. I looked in on them, just in case, but they were all sleeping still."
"Joshua too?"
"Yes," Emma confirmed with a warm smile. "You were probably too tied up with Jess and Shal to notice, but he was exhausted by the time we got back. I don't know exactly what he was doing, but I was aware of his presence the whole time we were out there. I think he was trying to help us..." She looked at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "Why? You don't think he's doing this, do you?"
Adam shrugged. "By his own admission, he's been responsible for stimulating the past two precognitive nightmares Jesse's experienced. This feels too much like the last time for us to ignore the possibility. Though, if he's asleep..."
"He was smiling, too, looked really relaxed," she said, with a hint of wonder in her tone. "I don't think I've ever seen him like that..."
The idea he was fighting moved up the scale from implausible to at least conceivable, and he felt justified in taking things a bit further. "Emma, can you read anything from Jesse? Anything at all? Anything that would help us find out what's keeping him in this state?"
She stepped closer to gaze down at Jesse's sweat-sheened face, mouth and nose hidden under the oxygen mask assisting his laboured breathing, and memories of another time sprang to mind, a time when sleep had held horrors for them all.
She frowned, eyes growing distant for a few seconds as she concentrated. "No, not really - which is strange. I should at least be able to tell something about how he's feeling, but... well, if he is dreaming, he's not broadcasting the same way he did before." She rubbed at her forehead, wishing she could shift the almost permanent throb that had taken up residence there. "It's almost as if he's blocking me, except he can't do that."
Adam looked at her, assessing the potential impact of what he was about to say, before asking carefully, "Do you think you could break through, get in there with him? I'm worried about what this is doing to him - his system isn't strong enough right now to keep this up."
Though she knew she should have expected this once it became obvious Jesse was caught in what was now showing all the signs of being an unnatural sleep, it still sent a shiver through her. The last time she'd ventured inside the dreams of one of her friends she'd been trapped there with them, fallen prey to the deep and unspoken fear that left her blind and helpless, forcing Adam's intervention to get them all out safely. And even with her shields at maximum, she was feeling too exposed to the rawness of everyone's emotions in the aftermath of what had been happening recent days.
But she could see the concern in Adam's face, knew that she had the best shot at finding out what was going on, of helping Jesse as she knew without question he would help her if the positions were reversed, so with a sigh she agreed to try.
*
...and then...
"Death!"...
*
It took direct contact with him, and an intense mental effort, but she finally made the transition from reality to dreamscape, shocked to find herself in what felt like the scene of their recent firefight - well, a sun-drenched heated version of it, anyway. From where she stood just behind the kneeling Jesse, she could see and hear the crowd ranked up the surrounding hillside, though she wasn't totally clear on what they were saying. What she did understand were the words being intoned by the man standing over the molecular, the damning indictment for sins she knew her friend had never, could never have committed, and she cried out silently at the sudden knowledge that he believed it to be true.
Moving forward to crouch down beside him so she could talk to him, reassure him this wasn't real, she got her first look at his face and felt a lump form in her throat at the expression there - she didn't think she'd ever seen anyone so devoid of hope, so utterly convinced of the inevitability of their fate. His eyes were half closed, the blue glazing over to gray as if he knew what was coming and didn't want to see its arrival, and she could see the sweat of fear beading on his skin, the clenched teeth, the rigidity of the muscles in shoulders and arms.
"Jesse, listen to me," she said, leaning closer, trying to reach him as she had Shalimar in that other lifetime when Henry Voight had taken her into his telepathic house of horrors. "It's not real, it's just a dream. They can't hurt you if you remember that." She thought the tension in his jaw might have slackened off just a little, but before she could say anything more she found herself being pulled away from him by some unseen force, lengthening her perspective telescopically until she became a distant spectator, one who could only watch in despair as two men stepped forward to haul the unresisting prisoner to his feet and drag him towards the open pit that had appeared a few yards away. Two more men with shovels stood by a pile of earth, and as she realised what it was they intended she let out a heartfelt cry of "No!" that cut through the cheering and jeering.
She strove to get back to Jesse, to try and help him fight whatever it was that held him captive here, but the force pushing her away grew in direct proportion to her endeavours. But as it grew it also became more familiar, and when she dragged her eyes away from what lay ahead she knew she shouldn't be surprised to see Joshua sitting up on the top of the hill, one hand extended in her direction as he gazed with avid raptness at the scene below.
"Joshua, what are you doing?" she called, hoping to distract him enough that she could reach Jesse, and indeed, his eyes flicked her way allowing her to move forward again. But with a yell he brought her up short again.
"No! You can't have him. I'm not finished with him yet!"
Down in the arena she saw full awareness of what was in store for him suddenly hit Jesse, his instantaneous and ferocious attempts to slow his progress to what he now knew would become his living grave making no impact on the nameless men in whose grasp he struggled. She heard his fear-filled cries, adding her own as he was hauled to the edge of the pit and pushed effortlessly in, his kicking legs the final part of him to disappear from view.
Then with a violent snap she found herself back in med-bay, staggering sideways into the support of Adam's arms. She raised huge eyes to his, panting out, "It's Joshua - he's in there with him!" at the same moment that Jesse started convulsing on the bio-bed, breath coming in huge harsh gulps despite the oxygen, hands moving feebly towards his face.
"Stay with him," Adam ordered, pushing her towards the bed again as he sped away, racing down the corridor to slam in through the door of Joshua's room. He was certainly smiling, but it wasn't a pleasant sight. It was a grin of malevolent satisfaction, and it shocked Adam to think what the boy could be seeing that could have that effect. But it was more important to stop him, and fast, so he reached forward to grip him by the shoulders and shake him firmly, shouting his name.
"Hurry, Adam!" Emma's voice, panic uppermost, came through the comms system and he re-doubled his efforts, finally rewarded by the dark eyes blinking open to glare up at him in reproach.
"But I wasn't finished..." Joshua whispered, balefully.
"Finished...?" Adam shook his head, staring at him in confusion and consternation. "What were you doing to him? And why?"
The boy turned his face away and pulled free of the older man's faltering grasp as he responded with a bitterness that chilled his soul. "Because it's his fault!"
"What is?"
The glare stabbed back his way again, accompanied by a psionic jolt that was like a physical slap in the face, and he recoiled before he could stop himself.
"All of it! The dreams, the voices, the pain - mine and everyone else's, which I have to live with every day, which I can't stop, which goes on and on until I think it's going to drive me mad... And everything I lost, everything I'll never to be able to do..." He thumped his balled fists against his useless legs in futile frustration. "*Everything*!!"
"But..." Adam floundered, "it was the GSA who caused the accident. They're responsible for this, not Jesse - he saved you. And you tried to help him, too - you shared the visions you'd had of his future so he could try and avoid what was going to happen."
Joshua laughed raggedly. "I had to - couldn't keep it all inside, needed to get it out of my head, pass it on. But it wouldn't go away! Even when I'd given it back to them, it was still there, I was still living it with them. That's why I wanted him to live too! I couldn't let him escape the pain so easily, not when he hadn't let me. I needed him to know what it was like, what he'd condemned me to by not letting me die. So I helped him cheat his own fate, helped him survive his future so that I'd have my chance."
Adam fought the urge to raise his hands to his ears as the perceived volume of the words reached deafening proportions, though he knew rationally it was just a telepathic side-effect of the boy's distress. "And now you have? Has it helped? Do you feel any better for it?" He leant his head on one side to look questioningly down at him. "This isn't the way, you know that. Jesse doesn't deserve this, any more than you do."
"But it's his fault!" The petulance in his voice should have made this sound like nothing more than a teenage tantrum, but there was so much more to it that that. "I didn't ask him to save me! He should have let me die - why didn't he let me die?!"
"Because he believed that the boy he knew would want to survive. Like he did - like he does now. Destroying him won't make your pain go away, Joshua. But I can help you control it so it doesn't consume you like it does now. You just need to trust me."
For long moments they stared at each other, and Adam watched the struggle going behind the deep brown gaze - anger and suspicion warring against hope and the need to have something to believe in, until one side emerged victorious and the building agitated pressure he'd been feeling laying siege to his mind shut down with a crack.
"It's so lonely in here," Joshua whispered plaintively, eyes flooding with tears that spilled down over the pale cheeks, and the older man put out a tentative arm to pull him into a hug.
"I know - but it doesn't have to be. Let us help you. Let him go."
There was another pause, but eventually the head resting a little awkwardly against his shoulder nodded, and Adam let out a soft sigh as he raised his voice slightly to question, "Emma?", waiting anxiously for her response.
When she did reply, her voice held nothing but overwhelming relief, a sentiment he shared when he heard her say, "He's breathing OK again. And I... I think it's over. He's free."
Adam felt the heaving sobs shaking the thin frame and tightened his grip, murmuring soothing words that did nothing to lessen his own remorse for having allowed this to happen in the first place. Because no matter that he wished things differently now, in failing to keep track of those he'd promised to protect he'd caused more heartache than any of them deserved.
**
Gray eyes hidden behind the reflective lenses of his Ray-Ban's, the man formerly known as Moncrief slid down a little further into the cushioned sunlounger and absently watched the bikini-clad lovelies parade up and down the golden sands of the Copacabana. But his mind was several thousand miles away.
He'd known the job was likely to be of limited duration, but the financial rewards had been sufficiently high to make it worth taking. And like the professional he was, he'd been prepared for a rapid tactical withdrawal even before the cracks had started to show. The remote control that detonated the strategically placed C4 charges had never been far from his person, making it a simple matter to eliminate any clues to his existence once it became obvious the operation was being forcibly closed down, and his meticulously planned escape route had worked as smoothly as expected.
The public removal of the increasingly unstable DeSalles had ensured that anyone the authorities questioned could point to their deceased employer as the instigator - though as he was quite confident there was insufficient evidence left for a clear picture of what had been going on there to emerge, he doubted they'd need to say anything. And from what he'd read about those who had brought about the end of what had proved a highly lucrative but personally less than satisfying undertaking, he didn't think they'd be sharing their suspicions with the police.
His pride had him wondering briefly just how the two male prisoners had managed to free themselves, take out so many of his men and rescue the woman, but he wasn't given to retrospective second-guessing. And though some small part of him hoped that they crossed paths again at some point in the future so that he could settle the score, it wasn't something that he'd be losing sleep over. What was done was done, and it would be some time before he felt the need to look for further gainful occupation.
With a contented sigh, he ordered another Caipirinha and resumed his idle observation of the female talent.
****