No I haven't forgotten about this story. It's pretty much impossible for me to. I'm sorry I was away for so long, school got crazy and this story got put in the backburner for a while, while I concentrated on school, but I won't be disappearing for that long anymore. I feel like I left you guys like the show did to us with that huge cliffhanger about Sara at the end.
This chapter and some of the next was hands down the hardest ones I've done so far. It's just we never got too much background on Sara and the way I wanted Lindy to react was hard to pin down since there's so much emotion there, so if anything seems a bit off I'm sorry.
It's been over a year since I first put up this story and longer since I got the idea for it, so I'd like to thank you all who've been commenting, following, favoring, and just reading this story since the beginning to up till now and whoever comes along next. Thank you guys. You've shown me that I can really write if set my mind to it.
Just one other thing. I'll be posting the next chapter within two weeks hopefully sooner, since it seems unfair for me to leave you guys in a cliffhanger for so long about what happened to Lindy, then Sara, and this next little thing ;)
"Why do you have my sister?" Lindy screamed at Derek, shooting to her feet, not bothering to hide the fear and anger she had been trying hard to suppress. "How did you get her? How did you find her?"
He raised his hands up as though shielding himself from her or making a "calm down" gesture, she wasn't sure which. "All excellent questions, Lindy," he said, leaning back leisurely in his chair, his arms crossing over his chest.
"Then answer them," she said, her voice sharp as a blade.
Derek shook his head as if he couldn't believe how impatient she was being.
"Answer me!" she demanded.
"You see," he began slowly, ignoring her furious gaze. "You weren't the only one searching for your dear sister all these years." He paused as if contemplating how much to tell her. Lindy dug her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from screaming at him to hurry up. "I have a very powerful…associate, if you will. He's been searching for Sara as long as you have."
Lindy ground her teeth together. He was the whole reason that Sara had fled in the first place. He was the threat so powerful that had made Sara fake her own abduction. He was the one that she hated more than anyone else in the world for breaking the remainder of her family apart.
"Who is he?" Lindy demanded, her voice choked with fury. "Tell me!"
Derek smirked, clearly amused. "You're a feisty one aren't you? I can see why your Detective Calligan fell in love with you. You two have much in common." Lindy felt as though he had kicked her in the stomach, winding her at the mention of Tommy.
"Leave him out of this," she spat.
"Oh, but I can't do that, Lindy. To me he is a personal matter I have to deal with in order to get on with the rest of my plan against the government. He's an inconvenience I can't overlook. I need to eliminate him."
"Killing Tommy and bringing down the government isn't going to bring Melanie back, Derek."
His eyes turned cold. "That isn't your concern. Whatever way I decide to avenge her is my choice. It will be my way of showing my patriotism to this wretched country. I will bring it to its knees."
Lindy took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, biding her time. Derek wasn't going to tell her anything if she continued to antagonize him, but she would stop him. She had to.
Derek looked at her expression. "It's okay, Lindy," he said seeming to interpret her look as one of sorrow. "My problem is with Tommy and the rest of the government. No harm will come to you or your beloved sister…on one condition." Lindy knew that if she agreed to anything Bubonic said it would be like selling her soul to the devil… but it had always been that way when it came to her little sister.
"What's the condition?" she said flatly.
"Work for me. There's something big I'm planning that I could use your talents in." His eyes were shining with the idea. When she said nothing he continued. "I'm going to bring down the entire nation's grid."
"You can't do that," Lindy said, horrified. "You'll be taking down the traffic grid, the electricity, the systems that bring our water—everything—the country will come to a standstill.
"Exactly," Derek said, looking almost gleeful.
"You can't do that," Lindy repeated. "They already know your real identity, Derek. It's only a matter of time before they find you."
He chuckled softly. "Oh, but I can do it, and I need you to help me—if you want to see your sister again and keep her out of harm's way. You wouldn't want anything to happen to her now would you?"
Lindy glared at him. Derek grinned, already knowing her answer. "Besides, whatever consequences that come from the country's power outage will be my concern, not yours. I'll claim complete responsibility for everything so you won't be implicated in any way. So what do you say, Lindy?"
She felt her stomach clench, knowing she was being used—again.
She nodded stiffly. "I'll do it," she said softly. She had just sold her soul to the devil, but she had to have faith in herself. She would get her and her sister out of this hell, save Tommy, and sabotage Derek's plan. She had to.
"Wonderful," he said standing up. He looked absolutely delighted, as if she'd just agreed to having a cup of tea with him. "Follow me."
"Where are we going?" she asked suspiciously.
Derek smiled at her. It almost looked genuine. "We're going to see your sister. Maybe this will show you that I am sincere in my offer and it will help keep you in line."
Lindy clenched her jaw, but followed him out into the hallway without another word.
She had been right. There were people watching her. There was a guard stationed right outside her door who stood ramrod straight as soon as he saw Derek come out of the room.
They walked down a hallway and she turned her head this way and that, taking in her surroundings. They walked over cracked cement floors and passed flaking plaster walls. The ceiling was vaulted and it was cold, which further convinced her that they were in a warehouse. Were they in the same one that Amanda had worked in? Had Amanda ever actually told Tommy and the Cyber Unit where the warehouse was located? If she could somehow get her location to Tommy, then he would be able to find her and Sara.
She needed to get her hands on a computer.
It seemed that despite the warehouse's dilapidated appearance it was actually outfitted with several high-tech security cameras that seemed to monitor their every move, meaning that there must be a control room somewhere in the building.
She needed to get to it.
They finally reached a door down another hallway after turning right then left from where she had been held. Lindy made a note of it.
Derek placed his hand on the knob, but before he turned it he looked at her. She wanted to scream at him to open the door already. If Sara was on the other side of that door she wanted to see her now, but she held herself together. "Remember, Lindy. You work for me now. Whatever you do from now on not only affects you, but Sara as well. If you want your dear sister to be safe, you'll behave and do as I say."
Lindy swallowed through the lump in her throat and managed to nod. He smiled at her. "Good." He took out his plague doctor mask from a pocket inside his coat and secured it to his face. Lindy couldn't help but roll her eyes despite the situation. Sara must still not know who he really was and he didn't want any more people to know his identity than was absolutely necessary.
He turned the knob and let the door swing open.
Lindy's eyes roamed around the room. It looked just like hers, dim lighting and all. When her eyes finally landed on her she felt the wind rush out of her.
There she was sitting on her cot, staring at her clasped hands, her posture stiff, her short, dark hair shielding her face.
Her head whipped up when she heard them come in, her hair falling away from her face as she shot to her feet, her face a mask of fury, but there was fear in there as well, although she did a good job of hiding it. The only reason Lindy could tell was because she had seen that look mirrored in her own.
"What the hell do you want?" she spat, zeroing in on Derek when she caught sight of his mask and ignoring her. "You already kidnapped me. Did he send you for me?" The way she said he, was filled with absolute venom. "Let me go," she said fiercely, although Lindy could hear the trace of desperation in her words. Lindy felt frozen. She could do nothing but stare at her sister.
She had been searching for her for so long and yet, she could say or do nothing.
Derek didn't bother to hide his wolfish grin, ignoring the girl's ranting, turning to look at Lindy's face instead.
"Sara," Lindy whimpered.
Sara whipped around to face her, ready to spit fire at her too, but froze, her face paling when she realized just who it was that had said her name.
Sara looked like she had seen a ghost, and in a sense, she had.
Sara reached out to touch her, her eyes wide, as if she couldn't quite believe Lindy was really there and she wanted to make sure she wasn't just an illusion. "Lindy?" her voice wavered. She took a step closer to her. "Lindy?"
Lindy nodded rapidly, her eyes filling with tears. Sara threw herself into Lindy's arms, burying her face into her neck, like a toddler. Lindy immediately wrapped her arms around her sister, hugging her fiercely, tears streaming down her face.
"Sara," Lindy whimpered again, her voice muffled by Sara's shoulder. "Sara." She couldn't stop saying her name. She said it as if it were a mantra she had to live by, and she supposed, she had been living by it for almost four years. She could hardly believe that Sara was in her arms at last.
"Lindy," Sara gasped, as if it pained her to say her name.
Lindy only hugger her tighter, afraid that if she loosened her hold on her sister she would turn into smoke and disappear once again.
"Quite a touching reunion this is," Derek's voice cut through their bubble, popping it. Lindy glared at him, but didn't let go of her sister. She was half angry with herself because she had forgotten he was even in the room with them.
"Now, now," he chuckled, noticing her death glare. "There's no need to be hostile, Lindy. I'll give you two time alone to talk." He turned his gaze to Sara, almost accusingly. Lindy pulled her closer as if to shield her from him. "You two have much to discuss," he said pointedly to Sara and with that he walked out of the room.
Lindy heard a click indicating that they had been locked in and the sound of his retreating footsteps.
Sara disentangled herself from Lindy's death grip, running her hands through her hair, her fingers trembling slightly. "What are you doing here, Lindy?"
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?"
"You shouldn't be here."
Lindy felt like she had slapped her. "I shouldn't be here? I was brought here against my will, Sara. Clearly, so were you. How did they find you?"
Lindy took a step closer to her sister, but Sara took a wild step back. Lindy froze.
"You shouldn't be here," Sara repeated harshly. Her hands gripped her hair as if she wanted to tear it out. "You shouldn't be here."
"Sara-"
"Goddammit!" Sara screamed, kicking the wall beside her. That had to have hurt, but Sara didn't show any signs of physical pain. "You shouldn't be here!"
There was so much fear in Sara's wild eyes she couldn't hide, although Lindy knew she was trying to because of the way she held herself, her chin held high and the way she propelled her anger forward as if to build a wall between the two of them.
"Sara, you don't need to pretend with me. I know you're scared-"
"You don't understand!" Sara wailed. "It means that everything I did was for nothing!"
"What was?" Lindy asked, desperately trying to understand.
"Everything!" Sara screamed. Lindy felt a white hot anger flare up in her. She didn't deserve this. She'd only just found out that her sister hadn't been kidnapped. She had finally found her and yet, here she was being yelled at by the person she had spent so many years searching for.
"What is everything? Leaving me?" Lindy screamed back. She knew she sounded like a scared, abandoned child, but she didn't care anymore. All of the feelings of loneliness and anger and fear were surging forward without volition and she couldn't stop them. "You let me think you were kidnapped, Sara. Who the hell does that?"
Sara flinched. "You know about that?"
"Of course I do! You let me think you had been taken, Sara. At least if I had known you had just left me, I would have known without a doubt that you were alive. Who puts someone through that kind of hell? For three years I thought you'd been taken from right in front of me and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. Do you have any idea how that felt? What that did to me? Do you?!"
"You don't understand!"
"You're damn right I don't understand! All I understand is that you left me. I know it was to protect me from something, but it's from something that I have absolutely no idea about. You never even tried to talk to me about it." Lindy took a deep shuddering breath, forcing herself to calm down. "After I saw that video of you getting out of what I thought of as the kidnapper's van, looking completely fine—"
"What video?" Sara asked sharply, her eyes narrowed.
Lindy didn't want to get into what had happened with Jake, so she just said, "I found a video of you coming out of the 'kidnapper's van,'" she made air quotes to emphasize her point, "and then your boyfriend picking you up."
Sara looked shocked, muttering a string of words under her breath Lindy couldn't make out.
"Do you want to know what I thought when I saw that video? What I felt?" Lindy asked quietly.
Sara said nothing.
"I thought," Lindy went on, taking her silence as a cue to go on, '"She's okay. Thank God she's okay'. You know that for years I blamed myself? I felt like it was my fault because I couldn't get to you in time? It tore me up inside. Your being taken nearly killed me. And then to find out that you had faked the whole damn thing and that you never told me, never contacted me to tell me you were okay. It hurt. It was like going through that experience all over again." Lindy ran her hands down her face, taking a deep breath.
"I swear, Sara, I just want to understand why you did it. I've been asking myself over and over. Why did you fake your own abduction? What were you trying to protect me from? Why did you put me through that? Why did you do it?" Lindy said the last part so softly she wasn't sure if Sara had heard her, but she knew she had by the look Sara gave her.
It was one full of anger and despair and sadness.
"Lindy-"
"Sara, why didn't you tell me? About anything? I could have helped you. Why didn't you trust me enough to tell me about what was really going on with you?"
This was the question that had haunted her ever since she had found out that Sara had made up the elaborate kidnapping plan and had left to protect her from some unknown person. She had wracked her brain for hours on end, but she hadn't been able to come up with an answer to the question she so desperately needed to know.
"I didn't want you to see what I had become. I was in a bad place-"
"But I could have helped you!" Lindy cried.
"I couldn't let you!" Sara screamed in frustration. "It was my fault. You didn't deserve what I could have brought down on you."
"You're my sister. I'd have done anything for you, and with mom gone-"
"You aren't mom, Lindy! Like you just said, you are my sister!" It was the same conversation they'd had the last night they'd been together. It stung now just as much as it did then. Lindy knew she could never be a mother figure to Sara now that they had none, but couldn't she see that she had just been trying to look out for her? To protect her?
Lindy laughed ruefully, smoothing her hands over her hair, trying to hide how they were trembling. "You know, the last thing I thought that we would do when we finally saw each other was fight, but here we are."
Sara exhaled slowly, some of her tension ebbing out. "We have a lot of unresolved issues," she muttered quietly.
Lindy rubbed her temples, hard and sighed. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm just hurt. Look… I know there has to be a perfectly good reason for you doing what you did. I knew it the moment I saw that video, but please, just explain it to me, Sara, and I swear I'll try to understand.
"Don't try to shield me. Don't try to protect me from whatever it was that you fled from anymore. I want to know everything," she pleaded, holding her sister's gaze. "Please don't leave anything out. I just…I want to understand. I thought you were kidnapped for the longest time until recently. I didn't even know if you were alive. I never gave up hope, but I never knew for sure-" Lindy broke off, swallowing the emotional turmoil in her that threatened to spill out. "I deserve to know the truth."
Sara stared at her as if she were at war with herself. Finally, she sighed and sank down onto the cot, as if she had walked a thousand miles and was now finally finding a place to rest. She patted the space beside her, inviting Lindy to sit down, but refusing to look at her. Lindy sat down quietly.
"What I'm about to tell you is really hard for me," Sara began. "The only other person who knows the whole truth is Dylan. He's…"
"I know who he is," Lindy supplied, when Sara didn't say anything else. "You were with him when I picked you up that night, after you'd been gone for three days, and he picked you up after the van dropped you off."
"Right," Sara said quietly. "There's more to it than that, but we'll get to that later." Sara stared at the ground, her body tensing as if she were steeling herself for what she was about to say.
She took a deep breath, looking at Lindy for the first time since she had sat down. "After mom died I was a complete mess. I felt like my world just came crashing down. She was dead, and dad…" she shook her head in disgust. "You know how he was. He was always completely out of it, always ignoring us, always hopped up on sedatives. Not coming home for days at a time, sometimes for a week."
Lindy's heart clenched. She hadn't known that. The longest he had ever left for, before she'd gone away to college, was three days. Never for a week.
"Sara, I-"
Sara smiled at her a little sadly. "It's okay, Lindy. You didn't know…and I didn't want to tell you." She must have seen the confusion on Lindy's face because she explained.
"I thought I could take care of myself. I wanted you to think that I was okay even though I wasn't. I didn't want you to worry about me and come home and see how messed up I was, how I was losing myself in a world so dark and twisted that it felt like nothing could save me.
"You had already deferred your admission to MIT once so that you could stay with me after mom died. You did it even though MIT had been your dream school forever. It's just the way you are, and you were finally getting to go and escape the craziness that was our life. You deserved to leave. I didn't want you to give that up again just because I was losing myself."
She didn't seem to know that Lindy had given it all up.
"What exactly did you lose yourself in?" Lindy asked tentatively. She had an overwhelming feeling it had to do with Sara's ad on Babylon.
Sara took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "Prostitution."
Lindy knew that was what she was going to say, but it still felt like her feet had been swept out from under her.
Sara wouldn't look at her. "I know what you must be thinking about me right now, because trust me, Lindy, I've thought it myself a million times already."
Lindy shook her head and took hold of Sara's hands, making her look up in surprise. "You made a mistake," she told her honestly, looking into her eyes. "I'm not going to judge you over what you did in the past, Sara. What matters is what you do from now on."
Sara searched Lindy's face wonderingly, as if unable to believe what she'd just said. Lindy smoothed Sara's short hair back, away from her face, like she used to do. "If we were all judged over what we did in the past, we would all be stuck on a roller coaster going round and round with no way to get off. We all have the opportunity to change, Sara."
She didn't look convinced. "You need to hear the whole story first."
"Okay, so tell me." Lindy wondered if Sara wanted to tell her the truth as much as she really needed to do it to get some enormous weight off her chest.
Sara hesitated before continuing. "I was stupid." She shook her head in disgust. "So, so stupid." She took a deep breath, her voice wavering as if trying to hold in tears. "I got into drugs again. You know it'd happened before, but mom and dad were around then and sent me to rehab for six weeks and I managed to stay clean afterwards. Now there was no one to stop me. I fell in with the wrong crowd again and someone told me about Babylon and how I could make a lot of money, fast, so I…I…I sold myself. I felt like I had nothing left to lose." She looked utterly ashamed of herself and Lindy felt that cut into her more than the confession did.
"In a way I was happy to lose myself. I wanted to bring myself to my lowest point to convince myself that it was the best I deserved. I wanted to destroy myself Lindy, and I almost did." Her hands clenched into fists. "I almost did when he started calling on me."
She forced herself to go on. Finally allowing herself to tell someone other than Dylan the truth. The truth that they had kept hidden for almost four years.
Lindy held her breath. She knew they were getting to the reason as to why Sara had felt she had to leave. The reason Sara felt the need to protect her from. "Who is he?"
"He," she spit out, "is a rich man who made his fortune through some shady business, but uses a social and entertainment site company to hide behind. He makes a lot of money off of that site and some other investments, but his major source of income is through Babylon—that's how he found me.
His company is based in New York City, but he has a house upstate about twenty minutes away from where we lived so I would just drive there. At first I would be called in occasionally, but then it became more frequent. I didn't see the warning signs until it was too late.
"After a while it became clear that he didn't just want my services—he wanted me. He was obsessed with me. He became more attached, more controlling, more threatening.
"Finally, one day he told me he wanted me to stay with him, but by then I had met Dylan and I was trying to get out of the hole I'd dug myself into. It's like my eyes had finally been opened. I finally saw that what I was doing was utterly screwed up." Sara closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before continuing and Lindy felt a deep dread within her. "I told him no. That I was getting out of this business and he wouldn't be seeing me again—he laughed in my face…and then he took out a file." Sara swallowed hard.
"He'd been collecting information on me. He knew everything about me. He knew what school I went to, where I lived, he knew about our parents… he knew about you. He knew that you were the most important thing to me, so he used you as leverage if I didn't stay with him." Sara's hands were balled into fists as the memories swirled through her, tears streamed down her face and she swiped at them angrily. "You're my only family left, Lindy. I couldn't let him hurt you because of my mistakes."
Lindy felt like she couldn't get enough air into her lungs. "But…you were only sixteen."
Sara shrugged nonchalantly although she was anything but. "That didn't matter. I entered the business. It was my fault and I had to get myself out. I came up with a plan to leave. You already know what it was, but you don't know why I did it."
She rubbed Lindy's knuckles, her voice sounding strained. "I did it because I needed to get him off my trail and the less you knew the less danger you would be in." She squeezed Lindy's hand harder. "I figured if you thought that I was kidnapped, then you wouldn't be able to answer any questions if anyone came around asking them, and you would be safe.
"Dylan helped me plan everything, and suddenly, it was the two of us running away together. That's why I'd disappeared for three days before I disappeared for good—I was preparing. I didn't want you to see that something was wrong, so I kept lashing out at you and pushing you away—right up until the very end. I did it to protect you… and to keep you from seeing what I had become. I was completely and utterly ashamed of myself.
"I thought I could handle it all on my own, but obviously, I only ended up making things worse." Sara's eyes glittered with the tears she was trying hard to hold back. Lindy squeezed her sister's hands tighter. "I fell into the rabbit hole, Lindy. I thought I'd finally found my way out," she surveyed the small, dim room they were locked in, "but it looks like I got dragged back in."
"We'll get out of this, Sara," Lindy promised. "Together." Sara smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She seemed to have lost all hope of ever getting back to a normal life.
Lindy squeezed her hands in reassurance. She would hold the hope that Sara seemed to be lacking, for the two of them. "Sara, who was the man that was after you?" she asked, her chest tight with anger over everything Sara had had gone through, what she was still going through, and the helplessness she felt for not having known about any of it so that she could have helped her. "Who was the man that made you leave?"
Sara stared stonily at the ground as if reluctant to tell her, after a beat she looked up suddenly, her eyes holding a hard angry glint.
"His name," she growled, "is Hamish Stone."