SIXTEEN

Wraith blinked rapidly as I recounted my conversation with Madelyn. He was clearly as confused as I was. "Are you telling me that this woman is trying to get you to trust her?" He asked incredulously. "She's too close to Worthington, and right now, we don't know how much he knows about his granddaddy's business affairs. Just stay the hell away from her, man."

I shook my head. "She seemed different somehow. Scared."

Wraith fiddled with the radio and when he couldn't find anything he liked, he switched the thing off with a disgusted flourish. Everything Wraith sis was with a flourish, I suddenly noticed. "You don't know enough about the girl to trust her, Logan."

A few beats of silence. "She looks like a girl I was in love with."

He shot me a sideways glance, long enough to show me his surprise. "You remember your time with that girl?"

"A girl who could have been her twin, yes."

"And you remember the whole time? Not just flashes of memory, but whole chunks at a time?"

"Sometimes."

He slammed the heel of his hand on the dash and exploded. "God damn it!" He wrenched the car into the parking lot of an old gas station, and fixed me with a hard look. "When you remember these moments," His voice had lowered a little, and there was calm in his eyes. "When you see yourself with this girl? Do you feel a joy so limitless you feel as if you'd never been happier at any other time?"

I frowned. "Wraith, we don't have time for this psychological shit. We need to get moving…"

"Shut the hell up and quit with the patronizing. Answer the friggin' question."
I took a breath and closed my eyes, for the first time recalling my dream from the motel. Nothing had changed; if anything, the details were more real. Jean was leaning into me. I could feel the fabric of her dress against my skin and I could feel the sun trying to struggle through the veil of her umbrella. We were in the bustle of Madripoor and we were in love. As much as I hated to admit it, I'd never been happier in my life. "It's the only good memory I have," I said to Wraith finally. "Does that make you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Wraith shook his head. "Naw, Logan. It doesn't make me happy at all." He sighed like a language teacher trying to explain the nuances of a strange and mysterious culture. "I have similar memories."

"What, of Madripoor?"

"My happiest memories." He was fast losing patience. "I remember whole chunks of the good stuff, never in any kind of order. I think maybe I was married at one time…" He looked at me with mournful eyes and smiled sadly. "My happy memories are in my kitchen, a room that I know for a fact that I built for myself, and I see a beautiful woman in a skirt that has one o' them summery floral prints, all pink and white and yellows. You know them colours that shouldn't go together anywhere but on a Hawaiian shirt?" His smile broadened. "I come up behind her, nuzzle her neck and smell that perfume she loves so much that smells like vanilla…She's like the smell of vanilla on chocolate, if you get my meaning…She was without a doubt the most untainted woman I had ever met. I remember the relief I felt when I fell into her arms after a few months of service…when an operation was over she was there. She could pat my head and tell me I'd done the right thing, even when she probably knew I hadn't."

"What's so wrong about that?" I asked.

"Not a damn thing is wrong about it," He replied. "But you have to understand what that sort of memory can do to men like us. It is a grounding tool. Something they used to keep us oriented in a real world." He let that sink in for a few moments before speaking again. "They created unreal worlds for all of us, implanted the memories so deeply it would take a lifetime to undo it all…Memories of the atrocities we carried out were invariably wiped. You're having daydream-like flashbacks to our missions I remember as well, and I think it's because for whatever reason, our brains are rejecting that false information."

"So that stuff-in Russia..."

"Most of that shit is better left buried, Logan," Wraith said wearily. "The Terry Adams kill, that did it for me. After seeing what Creed did, I couldn't continue. I wanted to return to my wife and my home…Only I found out that the woman in my dreams didn't exist and I had a whole world of hurt coming to me if they ever found me. I've been running ever since then."

This was the most information Wraith had ever shared, and I could see from the stricken look on his face that every word he said was true. I shook my head and tried to say something, anything significant, but my mind was reeling with the broader implications of Wraith's revelation. Edmund, Xavier, Worthington…They probably already knew what Wraith had just told me. If Edmund assisted Xavier's father during his period with the military, then the sly old man was dropping hints the last time I spoke to him. He was trying to tell me to abandon the search for who I am because the answers, when they came, would cost me. "So what do we do now?" I asked Wraith.

He stared bleakly through the windshield and shrugged. "I could start this engine back up and we could get out of here…Head to Mexico or jump on the next ship to Madripoor, but that would only delay the inevitable. If Worthington knows what his grandfather was up to, and if he sent that girl to find you, then it wouldn't be too hard for him to just pick up a phone and order our capture. Does it strike you as odd that he hasn't done that yet?"

I had to admit that I hadn't considered Worthington as any more than a jealous nut who didn't want me poking about in his club, and even when the connections with his grandfather arose, I didn't immediately make that leap either. "He could have ordered Kwannon to assassinate me," I said, looking at Wraith through hooded eyes. "The thought crossed my mind more than once after it happened, but I dismissed it as me being paranoid. North pointed out I was too fixated on the Worthington angle."

Wraith mulled this over. "Could North have anything to do with this?"

I couldn't immediately say yes to that particular question; North had been nothing of not helpful in the last few days, and I was loathe to drag him into the quagmire of suspicion that I was currently stuck in. "I'd be willing to lay serious money down that he doesn't," I responded in a measured tone. I hoped it was sufficient to get Wraith off the topic.

"North's not as clean as you think he is," Wraith said quietly.

"Don't you be sayin' this shit to me now, Johnnie Wraith," I warned him. "David North is a good man. I can feel that in my bones."

Wraith knew better than to call my gut instinct into question. He nodded lamely, held up his palms in a conciliatory gesture. "He can be a good man and still be a crooked cop." He shrugged. "I mean, what I hear, he's not worse than Summers. But North has done some stupid stuff in the past, and he's not risen all this way by being stupid, else he would have been killed long before now."

"North would not have ordered the hit on me."

Wraith shook his head. "You're not getting my meaning. I don't know who set the hit on you up, but I reckon North knows a lot more than he's telling you. A lot more than will even go into his final report on the dead hooker. You need to stop letting your loyalties get in the way of seeing the situation as it is."

I nodded after an uncomfortable pause that was crammed with tortured thoughts. "We should see detective North."

When we reached the police station, we were intercepted by a blandly polite young woman with too much make up that unfortunately detective North would not be available.

Wraith frowned down at her. "If he's out, we can wait. He'll want to see us."

She smiled after a few beats. "Are you from the Express?"

I gave Wraith a sideways look and he smiled at the woman. "Yes indeed we are."

"Follow me, please."

Wraith shot me a look as we were led into the conference room, which was bustling with media. On the stage behind a bank of radio microphones stood Phillip O'Neil, the current police commissioner. He was a man whose time was running out: His skin was pale and sallow, his eyes watering. If the papers were to be believes, he was a very ill man. He gripped both sides of the lectern as he began to speak.

"Thank you all for coming." He cleared his throat and shuffled papers while the murmur of the press men died down. "As many of you may have already guessed, I have called this conference to make some announcements." He leaned forward as flashbulbs went off in every direction. "This month marks my 20th year as police commissioner. When I look back on my career, I feel like the luckiest man on earth. From my small beginnings as a beat cop in the 7th precinct, to my progression through the ranks, my marriage and the birth of my children, I feel as if I have had a rich and fulfilling life." He drew a shuddering breath and continued. 'Six months ago my doctors confirmed that I have lung cancer. The disease has progressed so far that there is nothing they can do now to stop it." The crowd of newsies began to murmur again, and O'Neil held up his hands for silence. "Since my diagnosis I have been forced to make some tough decisions. The first is that I will step down as commissioner effective at the end of this conference. I have given much thought on whom to name as my successor, and I could think f no one more suitable to the task then my old friend William Pope." Captain Pope stood and acknowledged the crowd as he shook hands with O'Neil. Flashbulbs went off everywhere and in that moment I saw David North sitting behind the Commissioner's wife. He watched the whole thing solemnly and looked to the side, where Wraith and I stood, and his gaze settled on me, his eyebrows knit with confusion. Pope took over at the lectern and led applause for the outgoing commissioner, and North leaned forward to say something in O'Neil's ear. The old man smiled up at North and patted his hand.

"Looks like there is a changing of the guard," Wraith whispered to me. 'No prizes for guessing who's going to step into Pope's shoes as captain now."

At that moment Pope announced Wraith's prediction: "…A fine detective and an asset to the force, David North, will take over as Chief of Police, a role he has filled in when Commissioner O'Neil took ill, and so a natural choice."

The applause around us grew and then the floor was open to questions. The news men around us exploded with questions and I could see North moving towards us. Some of the journalists he passed patted him on the back or shook his hand, and he accepted each congratulation with one of his movie star grins. When he was close enough to speak without being overheard, he said "What are you doing here?"

"Seeing you being anointed," Wraith commented.

North's eyes narrowed imperceptibly in Wraith's direction, but he soon swung back around to me. "Look, Logan this is not the time or the place for…"

Wraith cut across him. "We have just come from being shot up by some goons at Xavier's storage facility."

North looked me up and down, and his gaze settled on the dried blood on my shirt. "What happened?"

"Same old same old, really," I replied. "I'm trying to do my job and people are trying to kill me."

North gripped me by the arm and led me out into a deserted hallway, Wraith following. When we were outside, North's tense demeanor had mellowed. "Talk to me," He said wearily.

"We came across some information that may have bearing on Kwannon's murder," I said, holding North's glare.

"And this 'we' would be you and Wraith here?"

Something in the way North looked at Wraith and the accusing timbre of his voice startled me. They knew each other. "That would be right," I replied.

"You'd do well to stay away from this guy," North said with a flick of his eyes in Wraith's general direction. "He's a crazy man that will end up getting you killed."

"North, I got no beef with you…"Wraith began, then shut his mouth and looked away.

"He tell you he's approached me before?" North said. "He claimed I was part of some experiment that went wrong, that we were lab specimens on the loose. He give you the same story, Logan?"

I looked from Wraith to North and frowned. "What if he has?" Wraith had obviously lost interest in the conversation and looked at the floor.

"It's bullshit and he knows it."

Wraith looked up then. "You had the same memories, the same dreams of the past as me and Logan," His voice was calm, measured. "If you want to deny that it happened. So be it. There's a reason you two feel like you've known each other for decades, the sense of De javu when you talk to each other."

North smiled enigmatically. "You're grasping at straws, Johnnie Wraith."

Wraith turned to me. "You see what I'm saying, Logan?"

I ignored Wraith and stared into North's eyes. "What do you remember, North?"

"This is hardly worth my time..." North made to step away but I grabbed his arm. He looked down at my hand on his arm. "You'd better let me go, Logan, or so help me God…"

"What do you remember?!"

Wraith let out a long sigh and shrugged off my hand. The fight had all but gone out of him. "I remember fighting alongside you and Wraith a long time ago. I served in the War, and at first I thought I was having flashbacks to combat. But they became vivid, detailed. Wraith, you, me and Creed. We were a unit of some sort…" He shook his head. "I dismissed it all as some kinda trick of the mind, you know? I woke up in a hospital one morning and the shipped me back off home, said I was too injured to continue fighting. I thought maybe my ordeal had caused all these fake memories to surface." He looked over at Wraith, who lifted his eyes and the pair seemed to back off from their hostilities. "What Wraith told me about his memories scared the hell outta me. I didn't want any of this hurting my career."

"So you're here now, at the top of the ladder," Wraith said. "What would stop you from trying to make that part of your past just disappear?"

"You think I ordered the hit on you, Johnnie Wraith?"

Wraith shrugged, scratched his beard. "Things don't look good for you at the moment, Captain." He used North's new title to drive his point home. "If you didn't who did?"