THE DAM

PART 1

"Look, if your mother finds out, she'll tell Daniel. If Daniel finds out, he'll try to kill me. Please, get your mother going."

Genuine fear in Victor's eyes was not a common sight. He looked nothing like the confident conman Nick got to know him as back in LA. Even with the old world rules he seemed to be a pro at, there were things he couldn't control or trick. No more than one man can trick a tsunami to roll around him as if he were Moses.

"Have a meal and then I'll decide what we do," Madison had told Nick earlier. The way she looked at him made him regret coming to help. He knew that look for many years, and he was profoundly sick of it.

This time was different, though. Uncalled for, so it stabbed deeper.

He always brushed it off, because he had to. There was no other way and it was the solid fact of all the blame resting on him. It was always on him. Had been every time, until this day. This day, he searched himself for the same willingness to brush it under the rug and move on, and suddenly couldn't. It was the worst moment to carry the bitterness around, but there it was.

'Get your mother going.'

'I'll decide what we do.'

Nick wondered if there was more despise coming when he would let her know that he would decide for himself. It was the most bizarre thing, if he considered and analyzed all the circumstances before they came here, but his time alone with Troy had shifted something in him. Nick didn't want to be decided for, anymore. He couldn't go back to it after having tasted something better. With no knowing despise shed on him for any of it.

He didn't find her where he peeked, but there was Daniel. Ofelia's rosary dangling from his fingers.

Not a good sign.

"Your mother is wiring the dam with your friend," he said. Nick nodded and turned to leave, but Daniel didn't let him. "Nick, please, sit with me. I wanna ask you something."

Nick sighed and let the door close, coming down the stairs.


Proctor John winced subtly as Alicia peeled the soiled bandages off his back with forceps and tweezers, and she could hear him inhale as if trying to keep his own reaction contained. He was a tough man, that was for sure. She didn't know it was possible to walk and move the way he did just a mere hour after having spinal surgery. She supposed he still had some Oxycontin in his system, but it still didn't explain his near-miraculous recovery.

"You have a high pain threshold." A simple truth not meant to flatter.

"Years of living with a white Buddhist with a sharp tongue and a yoga mat," Proctor John answered immediately, lifting his head slightly.

"I hear narcissists are drawn to Buddhism." The words slipped from her mouth before she could truly take the time to consider them, whether it was wise to insult her captor who her continued survival was now depending on. Probably not.

He turned a little to look over his shoulder. From her current vantage point, she couldn't tell if he was offended.

"The truth of the real self is a lie, as it is in every religion."

Alicia didn't know what to make of that.

Voices called out from somewhere outside, maybe below them. She prayed it wasn't someone of hers. Seeing Strand down by the canal as she arrived with The Proctors had damn near given her a heart attack. She hadn't truly made the connection between the bikers' destination and her family's current location until she saw him. This was the very reason she had decided to go off on her own after the massacre at the ranch. Being responsible for her own safety – that she could handle. But to continuously bear witness to the people she loved being in danger… It had become too hard. Too painful. And as time passed and certain events unfolded, she wasn't even sure she belonged with some of those people, anymore. They were too different.

"And I detest liars," Proctor John continued as she readied a new bandage. "Above all else. Strand's an excellent example. How do you know him?"

Alicia stilled, but only for a moment before fixing the gauze in place, ensuring it would stay until it next needed to be changed. She didn't say anything.

Should she lie? Or tell the truth? Would it make a difference?

"Hmm?" He tilted his head to look at her after she pulled his shirt back down and moved to put the medical instruments away. "Alicia?" His voice was soft, coaxing, deceivingly nice. Like that of a father speaking to his daughter. "I've made my living holding others to the light."

"Strand helped my family escape from Los Angeles." He'd made a threat. It was subtle but she recognized it. And she acted accordingly.

"And you didn't acknowledge him because you felt indebted to him?"

She turned to face John. "Yes, we've gotten to know him."

"A lie of omission is still a lie, Alicia."

"I thought my mother was here," she admitted, not at all liking the direction this conversation had taken. It made her feel uneasy, as if she was somehow putting her family's heads on the chopping block. "She and Strand are friends."

John Proctor watched her a moment, then nodded, lowering his gaze as he asked: "What's your mother's name?"

Once more time, she hesitated. "...Madison."

He smiled. It wasn't a nasty smile, not the kind you'd usually expect a guy like him to wear. But it still felt wrong. Off.

"She is here," he said, making her heart constrict with sudden panic. "Or was. One of Strand's deal points for letting us in, we'd spare a woman by the name of Madison. I hope we haven't killed her yet."

The very possibility they might have made her feel nauseous. Was he testing her? Curious to see how she would react? If she would lash out with violence or fall to her knees and plead with him?

Alicia tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke. "If she is alive and here, would you spare her?"

For a moment, it seemed he was considering it. For a moment, she remained hopeful.

"Your mother was a part of a larger negotiation. And that negotiation collapsed," he said, pushing away from the desk he had been leaning against and moving towards her. He picked up the gun lying next to the bag of medical equipment and slipped it into the holster at his hip. "Strand's lies."

It was getting harder to breathe. Harder to think. She couldn't find it in her to meet his gaze for a while. She was feeling nowhere near confident. So she had to fake it.

"I've served you well in a short time," she said, stepping closer to him, chin held high. "I can continue to do so."

He seemed to like having a 'nurse' at his side anyway, and for the next week or so, he would definitely be in need of someone to help him with his recovery.

"You can trust me. Spare her."

He considered the girl for a long moment, eyes narrowing in thought but never wavering from hers.

"I will if you come with me to Tampico. We'll board my ship and sail for what's left of Houston. Will you do that?"

She swallowed. "You're testing my loyalty?"

He breathed a laugh, shaking his head. "I'm testing your wisdom."

The prospect of going anywhere else with this man, with his crew of rowdy bikers, sent shivers down her spine. And not the good kind. If she did this, she would not be safe for a very long time. She would be a slave. But what choice did she have? If there was a chance he would not harm her mother, she needed to take it.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'll do that."

Proctor John smiled. "Good."


Troy shadowed Madison out of the central office, grateful to be away from the 'others', the outsiders that meant as little as a throwing stone.

Especially the older Mexican man.

Troy didn't like what he saw in his eyes. It was too similar to the animosity he'd seen in Travis, and from experience, that wasn't going to bode well for any kind of civility.

Troy didn't deserve it, did he? He'd convinced Nick to set down his shot glass and to come to the dam, to help his mother and everyone else because that was the right thing to do – not for her – but for him.

He might be in his own space right now, but if she died, he'd feel responsibility for it.

At least that had been the initial reasoning.

Being alone with her, watching her handle the C4 as if she feared it would detonate in her hand was fascinating, reminding Troy that, despite her bravery, she also had a breaking point.

"You don't have to worry," he supplied, walking up behind her, picking up the block she'd been fingering carefully, tossing it into the air as if it were a hacky sack.

Madison's eyes widened, features pinched with accusation and fear as she took an inadvertent step back. He'd never had this type of power over her before, not even in the past, and to see that mask slip was intoxicating. Even more so than the drugs Nick had encouraged him to take last night. Had Troy witnessed that the first day or even later when she had wormed her way into the folds of Otto home, into his head, things would have been a lot different, and his ranch would have survived her destructive force.

He caught it and smirked. "Did you know that even a bullet wouldn't set this thing off?"

Madison's terror swept away, replaced by incredulity. "Now is not the time to be playing games, Troy, people's lives are at stake."

"Who's playing? I just thought it would be easier to give you an example of how stable it is than to watch you trying to figure out how best to fairy it into the tunnels."

She looked exasperated. "Grab the rest," she ordered in that singularly condescending tone she possessed when dealing with a disorderly child – with him. A quirk that reminded him too much of his own mother.

Troy dropped the block onto the pile and dipped to his haunches, counting them off in his head, mentally noting that, if they were to detonate it in the end, there wouldn't be much escape for anyone.

They'd all be flattened, and those below would be the first to go.

He would have to talk to Nick about that.

"Do you even know anything about bombs?" he asked, directing a look at Madison as she tried to sift through the rest of the stuff in search of anything that might scream destruction.

She was like a fish out of water.

He crossed the space and peered into the boxes, handing her the one that had wires and detonator. He emptied two of the others in a corner and returned to the C4.

When they exited the storeroom five minutes later, Madison was edgy and in possession of her solute face again.


"It was Jake."

It wasn't a question, but yet it was. Daniel's eyes bore into Nick's daring to lie again.

Nick held the stare and did: "It was Jake."

After a long moment of silent staring contest, Daniel tossed him the keys. "Your mother will be happy to see you."

Nick nodded and got up and started away, but paused a second. "I'm sorry."

It was Jake. It was Jake. You killed Jake's father?

Daniel's eyes, sharp and probing, kept staring at Nick inside his mind, his mouth kept asking with that statement tone uttering the wrong name. The wrongly stained name.

And it was hard to keep track of reality as it mixed up with what had been before Nick came down to the tunnels where his mother and Troy were busy with the C4. It was like some divine hand had spilt ink of the past into the clear water of now, and it was all blending together like magic around him, leaving him a helpless witness to something dark and dreadful. He couldn't quite tell what it was, but every fiber of his body and soul was trembling, like one's hair standing on ends when a lightning is about to strike.

"You got them all killed." Despise soaking Madison's voice. Nick could see her face clearly in his head even standing behind them facing her back. "You had no right."

"I had every right," Troy played back. "I had every, every right. That was my home, and you gave me that right. You allowed me to run. I'd do it all again. All of it, Madison. And you would, too, you know you would, 'cause you understand, 'cause you see things—"

A gunshot thundered; they both jumped.

She turned, her eyes, wide with momentary horror, locked on Nick, then to the side – on his hand squeezing the gun's handle. A faint breath of smoke left the muzzle and disappeared. A few cement splinters fell down from the ceiling where the bullet hit.

Nick's eyes were black ice stabbing into her. He lowered the gun and held out another hand, beckoning.

"Come on, Troy, we gotta leave."

His eyes never left his mother's. A black storm of astonishment, disgust and weariness twirled in them. Her hand drawing back to swing the hammer at Troy kept replaying in his mind. He never felt himself grabbing the gun – his body did before a conscious thought could form. It was like inside the mixing past and present, a droplet of future had fallen, and Nick could see Troy going down with a bleeding hole in his temple, and a piece of his bloodied skin stuck on the hammer in her hand while she watched with grim satisfaction.

"Nick—" she started.

"No," he said. "You have no right."

She looked astonished, unbelieving, as if he'd just started to speak Chinese. And then, it dawned on her, turning her spine into ice. "You knew."

Nick's face was calm and inscrutable. "I know what he's done. He knows what I've done. I know what you've done. You don't get to make that call."

Her hand with the hammer pointed at Troy like an accusing sword. "He got them all killed. He killed them all, Nick. He killed—"

"I've killed, too!" he yelled. "Wanna take a swing at me first? Go ahead." He tossed the gun on the ground and spread his arms, made a step toward her. "Do it. DO IT."

Troy had shifted closer toward Nick and now stared, wide-eyed, from one to another, like watching a tennis duel.

Madison winced. "Are you seriously comparing now—"

"There's no fucking comparing anything, mom!" Nick rapped out the words as if she had a problem understanding him. "There's not a single person left in this fucked-up world who has his hands clean. Don't you get it? The ranch is gone. It's GONE. They're all gone. You don't turn back time with this – it's just that: another kill. Another one down. Nothing more."

"He's a murderer, Nick! He's always been. He destroys everything around him."

"And you don't?! Every place we've been thus far is dead, mom. DEAD, because you think you have that right."

"Don't you dare! You and your sister are alive because we did what we had to. Because I did everything I could to protect my family."

"Did you? Did you, mom? Tell that to Chris. Tell that to Travis."

She made three rapid steps and slapped him. The sound was like another gunshot; it made Troy jump a little.

Nick slowly turned his head to face her again, his cheek stinging. Rage was flaring in her eyes. Nick looked at her, the corners of his mouth twitched ironically. He gave a few subtle, knowing nods, and fell back a step, then another.

She remembered to breathe and took an urgent inhale. "Don't do that, Nick. Your sister needs you. Don't make her pay for my mistakes. I need you. Don't do this to us. To yourself."

"You know nothing of what I need," he said. "You never did. Dad never did."

"You can't be with him, you can't be protecting him. You're choosing a monster over your closest people, Nick. Please. You, Alicia and I - we're all we have in the whole world." She turned to Troy with desperate anger. "You can go. Just go and leave him be."

"Where does it stop, mom?" Nick asked.

She turned to him, her face a question.

"Me, stepping into the same trap, somehow believing that this time it would magically pan out differently; you stepping over corpses to do what you believe is right for everyone... Where does it stop?"

"You can't say that," she snapped. "Everything I ever did was to keep you all safe. For Alicia, for you-"

"Not for me!" he yelled, his eyes blazing. "For YOU, for your selfish need to control everything and everyone."

"I did things I'm not proud of, yes, I did! But you can't judge me! You can't judge a mother for protecting her children. I had no choice! And one day, you won't have a choice."

"Yeah, that's the scary part, mom: someday I won't have a choice. And someday, you won't have a choice with me."

"I would never hurt you," she breathed, dismayed that he would suggest something like that.

"You never know. But I do, mom. I do now." He glanced at Troy: "Let's go."

"Nick," she made to catch his sleeve, to stall him, but didn't. Her hand jerked and fell back. "Don't walk away from us, Nick. Don't walk away from Alicia, she doesn't deserve it. Please, Nick. Nick!"

Nick climbed up the metal railing steps without looking back.

Troy picked up the discarded gun and followed. He threw a single gander over his shoulder, saw Madison put a hand on her face, another still gripping the hammer. He had noticed she started to swing it. He could swear he had. If not for Nick...

Her face changed. Another realization dawned on her, and she grabbed onto it because all other bridges were crumbling away.

"What is there between you two, really? Is THAT what this is? You… you chose him?"

Nick walked away, never faltering in his step. "It's none of your business, anymore."

Troy jogged, catching up with his friend. Neither spoke for another few moments.

"Thanks," Troy ventured.

"Don't." Nick looked straight ahead; his face reflected no emotion. "Don't talk to me right now."

"Okay," Troy mouthed, looking down as he picked his steps. Then looked up again, remembering. "But the dam... We won't help?"

"No. Not anymore."

"The proctors will kill her. You know that, right?"

Nick stopped, sucked in a breath, and turned to look at him.

Troy was surprised to discover he was not doing so good at reading his friend's face. Nick seemed both angry and tired to him. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Nick had changed back there in the tunnels. But there was no time to analyze it.

Troy produced a detonator from somewhere under his jacket and brandished it, smiling.

Nick pondered, nodded. "Okay. We need a hiding place. They might be already here."

He jogged past Troy. Troy smirked and followed.

The winds had changed. Troy could feel it under his skin. It was not an unpleasant feeling. Not at all.