Gizmo sighed.
"How could this happen? How did we end up here?" fumed Mammoth.
Gizmo just shook his head sadly, dropping down into a chair beside her bed. He leaned his elbows onto his knees and his face on his palms.
"I'm so sorry, Jinx." She was surprised by the pain in his voice. "I never should have left you alone. Not for a second. He NEVER should have been able to touch you."
He wasn't looking at her. "It's my fault. I wasn't there to save you. And now you can't even remember who I am!" He said this with a flash of hurt and anger, clenching his fists. "A fitting punishment for my mistake, I suppose."
"I'm sure that I accept your apology," she began, carefully. "But it really would be helpful if you could give me the entire story now."
Mammoth put a hand on Gizmo's shoulder, who nodded.
"Alright," Mammoth said. "I'll start."
The story Jinx is told is hard to swallow. She doesn't want to believe them, but how else can she explain floating girls and boys with green skin? Her mind feels cloudy. She thinks that maybe she needs to get some more sleep. The boys try their best to give her detailed information about everything, but there are still gaps. Still things that don't make sense, don't fit.
They tell her about the incident that put her into this 'hospital bed.' Apparently she worked for an organization called the HIVE. She was surprised to learn that she was a criminal and quite possibly a murderer. Mammoth and Gizmo were her partners; they'd been together for years.
According to them, the three of them had become a danger to the HIVE. They were obediant first to each other, then to the organization. The HIVE, their leader Blood Brother had said, always came first. They were unified. Any separation from the whole, any bonds that became too close, had to be punished. The ones in question had to prove their loyalty.
When he discovered how close the relationship between Mammoth, Gizmo, and herself had become, he immediately set to put a stop to it. He was going to make an example out of them, show all the other HIVE members just what happens when your loyalty doesn't first lie with him.
Jinx stared, horrified, as they recounted exactly what Blood Brother did to tear them apart. He planned to kill one of them. And the lucky winner was Gizmo. Of course, he didn't know at the time. Blood Brother talked to Jinx and Mammoth alone. He threatened and bribed them, said that the death of their teammate was the only way to save themselves.
Mammoth told her this part without looking at either her or Gizmo.
"He wanted us to kill our teammate, our best friend. He knew that if he could make us do that, then he would have us under control."
He wiped his face with one hand. "Don't worry. We refused, of course. Surprisingly, he did nothing to us then. Just said, 'If that is your decision, then so be it.' and sent us to our dorms. We were naive, Jinx. We thought that his questioning us was the test. We thought that he wanted to make sure that, as a team, the three of us would lay down our lives together. We thought that was the kind of unity that he was looking for. We figured that Gizmo had been questioned about the same thing." He paused. "We were wrong."
He scrunched up his face in anger as he spoke the next part. "I left you then, to go to the female dorms. I went to my room, shared with Gizmo, and told him all about our meeting, expecting him share his experience also. But he said that Blood Brother hadn't spoken to him in days. Then I started to worry. Of course Blood Brother wasn't a good man. He was the leader of a criminal organization, taught teenagers how to become assassins, killed people even. I just never thought he would turn on one of his own students, just to teach a lesson. Unfortunately, I didn't think of the big picture. I didn't stop to think that you and I might be in danger. My only thought was to get Gizmo out of there as fast as possible."
He stopped talking, taking deep breaths.
Gizmo looked worriedly at him and picked up where he left off. "We left the dorms quickly, ended up outside in the rain. Mammoth told me to lay low a while, maybe get out of the city even. I told him I wouldn't leave until you two were with me. He promised to go back and pick you up as quickly as possible after we found somewhere for me to wait safely."
"We were just about to enter a late night rave club, figured it would have a dark corner for me to hide in, when someone yelled our names. Jolt--you probably don't remember him. He was an aquantence from the HIVE. He told us that Blood Brother had been looking for me, said he was quite angry when he realized that I'd disappeared. He said that since Blood Brother couldn't find me, he turned on you. Attacked you right inside your room, no warning at all. We ran as fast as we could back to the HIVE. Just as we were nearing the building, we saw something fall out of a third story window."
He was choking up. "It was you, Jinx. He'd knocked you right through the window. And before we could reach you, before we even knew if you'd survived the fall, he was out there blocking your body from us. We barely managed to hold him off long enough for Mammoth to grab your body. We had a few friends in the organization and they tried to help, but everyone was cautious, afraid to be targeted by our leader next. The HIVE was our home. We had nowhere safe to go. So we brought you to the only people we thought would be able to defend you. The Titans."
Jinx looked at the distraught Gizmo.
"Holy. Crap," she said.
This brought a tiny smile to his lips and he even managed a small laugh. "Thank god there doesn't seem to be any major damage to her personality," said Mammoth fondly.
"So what do we do now?"
