CONSEQUENCES

BY SPENSE

Chapter Twelve

Alan woke because he was retching. There wasn't anything in his stomach to throw up, but the cramping didn't care. Moaning, he curled in on himself, longing for the darkness again.

Over the sounds of his own groaning, he could have sworn he heard his father's voice. Another voice, closer, answered clearly.

"No, it's okay, it isn't unexpected, it's just reaction."

Alan felt hands steadying him as he heard his father's voice once again. He felt the unmistakable prick of a needle and the other voice saying from a long way off, "This will help."

He certainly hoped so. He felt awful. And that was his last thought before he dove smoothly into the deep dark pool and knew nothing more.

TB TB TB TB TB

The next time Alan surfaced, he woke enough to realize he was in his own room at the clinic. Upon further reflection, he was surprised to discover it was probably late afternoon. And that he felt awful. His head ached with a dull, far away throb that was more an annoyance that a real pain, and he felt a little nauseous.

As he started to wake up, he shifted, beginning to unfold, and quickly realized that was a big mistake. He felt incredibly sore. The kind of sore you felt after you overdid it on exercise. He closed his eyes with a soft moan and lay still.

"Hey, Son."

Alan heard his father's familiar voice, and felt a weight settle on his mattress. He opened his eyes again as Jeff smoothed the hair back off of his forehead.

"Feeling pretty lousy, Sprout?" Scott asked over the scraping of a chair being moved.

Alan could see his older brother sitting on a chair next to the bed. Scott had turned it backwards and was resting his arms on the top of the chair back. He smiled as he met Alan's eyes.

"Uh-huh," Alan acknowledged, grateful his stomach was settling down.

"That's not terribly surprising," Jeff said soothingly. "It will pass quickly. You're just still feeling reaction from yesterday."

Alan shuddered involuntarily as the memory of terrible pain came flooding back. "Is it over?" he whispered.

"Yes," Jeff said firmly, "it is."

"What happened?" Alan asked, puzzled.

Scott and Jeff traded glances and Scott got up. "I'm going to go find Dr. Taylor and tell her Alan's awake."

"Good idea," Jeff agreed.

After the door shut behind him, Jeff turned back to Alan who was looked at him questioningly.

Jeff sighed. "It's a long story Alan, and it goes back to spring break and the Hood's attack."

Alan tensed slightly, and settled into his pillow and waited, not taking his eyes off his father. He felt . . . strange. Like something was different. Like something was gone that he'd never even realized was there before.

Jeff kept a light touch on Alan's shoulder as he began to explain. He really wasn't sure how Alan was going to react.

"The Hood has developed some kind of mind control. John's been researching it. The Kyrano's apparently have some kind of gift. TinTin has been working with Brains to see if there is some way of blocking it."

Alan nodded. He knew that.

"The Hood was apparently able to block the minds of the guards in his cell and gain free access to his henchman. In doing so, he developed a plan to get back at our family, and specifically, you and me."

"He managed to dose your food with some kind of magnifying compound, making you extremely susceptible to his suggestions, as well as seriously depleting the levels of seretonin in your brain. This is the chemical that causes depression. John and Virgil are tracking how it was given to you. There's a lot we don't know, but we're on it," he said reassuringly to Alan's widening gaze.

"Once he had it up to the levels he wanted, as near as we've been able to tell, he began planting suggestions." Jeff chose his words carefully. "I don't know exactly what they were, but whatever he was planting in your mind was alienating you from the rest of the family."

He stopped as Alan gave a brief shudder and began to turn away. "No Alan," he said, and climbed onto the bed next to his son, leaning back against the headboard so he could wrap his arm around his son. For the first time in months, Alan didn't move away from the contact. Jeff hugged him closer, grateful to be allowed to by his son and continued talking.

"He was very insidious. Only you can tell me what was going on, but I can tell with all assurance, they weren't your own thoughts."

He could feel Alan trembling lightly next to him, and all he could feel was anger at the man responsible.

"He chose you because not only were you the agent of his downfall this spring, but as a teenager, you're more vulnerable to the emotional mood swings that come with that age. In doing so, the Hood was doing his best to destroy me, and he came dammed close."

At that, Alan looked in startled surprise at his father. Jeff smiled at him and held his gaze so he could see the truth in it.

"I was devastated at what was happening to us. You were so distant and I couldn't reach you. I was so frightened that you'd try to take your own life. I didn't know what to do."

Alan looked away. "I almost did," he whispered inaudibly, thinking of the drug cabinet in the infirmary at Tracy Island.

"But you didn't. You were still fighting back, regardless of what you were feeling."

Alan shook his head blindly.

Jeff shook him lightly. "Yes Alan. I saw that so clearly yesterday. The pain was a result of Scott, Virgil and Gordon cornering the Hood. John and Scott had tracked him down. When they cornered him, he told them he would kill you."

Alan looked in shock at his father. The pain in Jeff's eyes was there with shocking clarity.

"John isolated the compound he was using and told me to get here as fast as I could. He was very nearly too late. We almost lost you. But he isolated it, and Dr. Masonn blocked it. The onslaughts were still bad, but you began to fight back. You'd been fighting it all along. That's why you're still with us."

Alan absorbed all of this silently, then suddenly turned his face and buried it in his father's side. He wrapped his arms tightly around him and held tight.

"It's all over now, Alan, I promise. I'll be here, and I'll make sure you get whatever help you need to get over this."

"It was like I was talking to myself," Alan said, his voice muffled. Jeff had to strain to hear him as he wrapped both arms tightly around his son.

"There was all these thoughts. About how all you ever did was send me away - to school, to the clinic, just anywhere except home. That I'd never measure up to my brothers and that I was useless and an anchor holding everybody else down. It was so clear. I just stopped defending myself because it seemed so useless."

Jeff closed his eyes against the despair in his son's voice. It had been so insidious. But he just let him talk, glad Alan was talking to him, at last.

"The thoughts just wouldn't stop. They were always there. Then it just became easier to believe them because they seemed so right."

"No Alan," Jeff had to break in there. "They weren't true," he said firmly.

Alan nodded into his father's shirt, then started talking again. "I didn't trust anybody. Everything seemed twisted somehow. Then you brought me here, and it was the ultimate betrayal. You were just dumping me off again."

"No . . ." Jeff began to protest.

"But that's what it felt like, and that's what my head was telling me. Then, the pain started. And the thoughts became actual voices. Really, really clear." Alan paused and took a deep breath. "And all I wanted was you."

Jeff felt tears prick his eyes and he hugged his son even tighter.

"And you came," Alan said softly. "Even as awful as I'd been."

"Of course I came Alan. You've been scaring me to death the last few months, and I was afraid I'd lose you. I couldn't take a chance that you'd try suicide. The hardest thing I've ever done was to leave you here. But I knew you'd be safer here than at home."

Alan nodded again, clinging tightly.

Jeff steeled himself and asked quietly, "Are the voices still there?"

"No. I felt different when I woke up. Like something's gone."

"Thank the Lord," Jeff breathed.

The two sat like that for awhile, quiet, restful.

Finally Alan asked, "What's going to happen now?"

"I'm going to have you stay here for a week or so."

At the immediate tension in Alan's arms, Jeff added quickly, "And I'm staying as well." As the tension faded out of Alan, Jeff could see how frightened he still was, and he didn't blame him. This had been very subtle and very, very insidious.

"I want to make sure we've isolated how you were getting the magnifying agent, and close those avenues. I also want to make sure Brains has developed something to block it. The Hood is locked up, and now they are aware of his gifts. This will. Not. Happen. Ever. Again."

The steel in Jeff's voice reassured Alan further. He never wanted to feel like that again. "Good," he said softly.

Father and son stayed sitting quietly, glad for the peace.

A tap on the door disturbed them finally, and Dr. Taylor poked her head in. "May I come in?" She said with a smile.

"Come on in," Jeff said, returning the smile.

Sitting down in the chair Scott had abandoned, she looked at Alan. "How are you feeling, Alan?"

"Okay, I guess," he answered tentatively.

"In other words, not great," she grinned back.

Alan smiled slightly, shrugging. "But the voices are gone," he offered.

She looked relieved. Exchanging relieved looks with Jeff, she continued. "Good," she said, exhaling slightly. "Scott will be back in a moment. He went to get some coffee."

"Okay," Jeff acknowledged, waiting for her to continue. He stayed where he was, an arm around Alan's shoulders, so incredibly grateful to have his son back, whole and healthy, without having to deal with an extended mental illness. He was one of the lucky ones, he knew, when he thought of all the kids here at the clinic.

"We've isolated the compound, thanks to your son, John. He's quite a scientist, by the way."

"Yes, he is," Jeff said proudly.

A tap, then an opening door heralded Scott's return, with two cups of coffee, one of which he handed to his father. Jeff smiled his thanks, took a sip, and set it on the nightstand, returning his attention to the doctor.

Scott quietly took a chair so as not to interrupt her, smiling a greeting at Alan, who returned the smile.

"The compound was a plant of some kind, not known here in the west. It has hallucinogenic properties and is a severe depressant. Because it isn't a known drug, per se, it doesn't show on our screens." She exhaled heavily. "It also seems to make the recipient extremely prone to suggestion, hence the voices in your head, Alan. It makes you susceptible to your greatest fears."

Alan thought briefly again of the letters he'd found, then firmly pushed those thoughts away.

She smiled at him again. "And you, being a teenager, are going to be subject to the typical self-esteem issues that go with that age. The drug just magnified that tendency to a huge degree. That coupled with the depressive effect made you shut down. And, as near as we can tell, you finally had a bad physical reaction to it yesterday. If John hadn't found it, isolated it, and given us the information on how to block it, we might have lost you, Alan."

As Alan absorbed that frightening fact, Jeff stepped in to mitigate the startling truth. "But we didn't. And Alan is going to be fine, correct?" He said, looked at her unwaveringly.

"That is correct," she said convincingly. "You'll need to stay here a week or so, Alan, and give us a chance to work through any aftereffects, and your reactions to all that's happened, and to make sure that your seretonin levels are going back up, but then you can go on home. How does that sound?"

"Great!" Alan said, almost surprising himself with how good that really did sound.