First off, I hope all the mothers out there had a day full of happiness and celebration. We'd definitely be lost without all of you.
And now, onto the next installment in our PV saga. (second update in five days...progress!)
####
"Welcome back, Doctor."
It wasn't the dusty path that claimed all prints…all traces. It wasn't the steady, guttural sounds that could have arisen from some peaceful local ritual, if the sounds did not dissolve into individual grunts and strangled cries. It wasn't even the air that compressed impossibly more with each step, as if a large vacuum lay at path's end.
It was the absolute emptiness gutting him inside, echoing their destination before he even saw the first line of 'workers.'
"What the hell is –" Amanda's question, her only rational response against rising irrationality, was cut off as she fell to the ground.
Jake knelt beside her and, assured that she was okay (as okay as either of them could be), shot blindly to his feet and just as blindly swung his arm.
The barrel shoved into his chest readjusted his sight, and he roughly joined his wife on the ground.
"I will allow you that one moment of impropriety." The gun now rested casually at their driver's side. "But rest assured it is the only such moment you will have." The words, though, were anything but casual. The man turned to Amanda and smiled, blinding white against midnight. Jake dug his fingers into the only vulnerable flesh he could access. The bolt of pain sliced through his palms and cleared his head.
"To answer your question, Ms. Martin, I believe your husband could provide the best explanation. I'll simply say that our esteemed doctor friend here was one of our most faithful visitors to this site at one time, and one of our most loyal allies."
"Jake would never be involved with this." Her conviction was sharp, clear, and he almost would have believed in its sincerity if she had spared him one glance. One assurance.
The driver's hold on the gun tightened, and for one instant the smile morphed into something else, affording them a glimpse into the true man. "We furnish our employees with free healthcare. I would think your kind would respect that initiative. We did, after all, return the favor by furnishing Dr. Martin with needed finances to ensure the well-being of his other patients. Until -"
"So what is this?" He risked the interruption because if his past was finally coming home to roost, then Amanda would hear it from no one else but him. "Some kind of fancy revenge? I've gotta say, dragging me back here under the guise of an adoption is convoluted and a little uninspired, even for people like you."
The smile had locked back into place. Frozen. "No, we promised you a child, and a child you shall have. Provided a few concessions on your part, of course."
The gun motioned into the distance – into a past he never wanted to revisit.
Jake looked back. To his past.
To his present.
Ready for the pillar of salt.
It came in the form of one tiny figure.
The little girl was easy to pick out of the line, her small frame an anomaly amidst the larger, hunched, and ravaged figures.
She clutched a pick in one hand and a dirty rag in the other. Another rag kept the damp hair from her eyes.
The photograph, now crumpled in his pocket. had captured a light in those eyes. Real life had done its part in almost extinguishing that light.
Something tugged at Jake's arm.
"Oh my God," Amanda whispered.
But his wife was wrong.
God had not place here.
-(2007)
"Where did you get this?" He really, really did not want an answer to that question.
Luckily or not, he wasn't getting one anyway.
"It doesn't matter. What matters is that we get this to the right people." She held up the uncut diamond as if her proclamation solved everything.
Or anything.
"It's not that simple, Car. You know that."
Cara took his arm and led them outside, trading sweltering heat in the camp for a whole new breed. "We knew there was a mine somewhere around here. We've seen too many by-products of it to ever think otherwise. "
She paused as a set of unforgettable images they'd give anything to forget filtered through them both. "We can't just patch them up and stick our heads in the sand anymore, Jake."
He ran a hand down his face and only got a fresh sheen of thick sweat for the effort. "They're gonna ask questions. You can't –"
"Anonymous tip," she insisted.
"And how do you know you can trust them…trust anybody in this place? How do you know they won't take this thing –" Jake threw a hand on the diamond, cutting himself in the process. The thin streak of blood smearing the dull surface was sickly appropriate. "- and buy themselves their own shiny GI Joe toys?"
"They have guidelines –"
"There's only one guideline out here, and we both know what that is."
"Please, just…have some faith, okay?" She topped off the request with a peck on the side of his mouth.
His sigh was meant to keep the subject open.
The decidedly less peckish response of his lips, however, had other ideas. Jake slipped the diamond into his knapsack and temporarily let those other ideas take hold.
-(2007, one week later)
'Have a little faith.'
She'd put the note on top of the diamond: a final plea to his herohood and a final adios to their marriage all rolled into one.
He wondered briefly if she'd ever given the same spiel to that guy in the truck. He wondered what Cara's new hero had given her in return. Obviously things Jake never could.
He held one large, dirty diamond in his hands. The smaller, prettier, no less bloody diamond – he threw that one in the trash.
Along with that last little bit of faith.
####
-(2007)
She lifted an arm that might as well have been weighted down with wet sand. The time was rapidly approaching when she could no longer continue writing that weight off as just another long workday and push through.
But that time wasn't now.
They didn't live by conveniently scheduled appointments, but by walk-ins. Not an accurate word either, as makeshift stretchers were the more likely mode of entry. Or sometimes their patients would stumble in - eyes wild or, worse, empty - helplessly groping at large gashes, if they were lucky, and empty spaces if they were less so.
The boy, her latest 'walk-in,' was straddling the line between luck and a small misstep over an abyss whose edges Cara knew too well. She ripped the last of the tattered shirt from arms that could have passed for sticks, revealing a ragged, unforgiving hole rapidly overflowing with a dark red lake.
A stab wound…too kind an assessment.
The boy's dark skin had blanched to near-white and he gasped desperately for the dry air around them, only coughing back the snatches he managed to grab. When she poured the last of the rudimentary medicine into the wound and forced her weight on the clean cloth, the gasps devolved into one seemingly endless scream stripped of reason, civility, or humanity.
She continued to work frantically, feeling the tentative threads in her own mind begin to fray.
Then it stopped.
The boy had mercifully – for him, for her –passed out. It would only be a temporary reprieve, however. The one thing he needed was the one thing that was as precious a commodity as water around here: blood.
Most of the reserves had been taken when the rest of the team left for the village earlier. Just a small supply remained. Just enough, because gambles were the way of life here, right?
The man who burst through the tent's opening five minutes later, rapidly advancing on the boy with unmistakable rage in his eyes before promptly sinking into unconsciousness himself – determined to wrong the right.
The new arrival bore a wound almost identical to the boy's, save for its deeper cut. Cara repeated her earlier process with greater ease since the man was in no position to protest. Standing between the two fallen individuals, she wiped the oppressive moisture from her face and reluctantly shifted out of autopilot. Instincts were easy; decisions were not. And decisions were all she had before her now.
The boy began stirring and she made her first decision.
She tried to calm him with the few words she'd internalized and the soft touch that was universal. Lids slowly fluttered open, and for the first time she saw young brown eyes no longer full of whatever hell they had emerged from, but brimming with the innocent trust of a child.
It was enough to help her say the words "You're going to be okay," and mean them.
And it was almost, almost enough to make him believe those words.
Until he saw her other patient.
And until the screaming started again.
She tried to calm him because his strength was too valuable right now.
She tried to calm him because she knew on some level that both of their lives depended on it.
Soothing words and soft hands were poor defenses this time. Only when he shoved a rough, cold object into her hand did his body stop quaking enough for him to speak his first words. "Take it."
Opening her hand, she traced the razor-sharp contours of the dirt-trodden rock. The diamond, appropriately enough, tinted in a blood-red dust.
The next words, Cara wished she could not understand so well….could not understand at all. "He will kill me."
Untold minutes later, she prepared the IV and placed it into his arm. His face filled again with its natural darkness. With life. His eyes filled with gratitude.
Across the room, another set of eyes remained closed. The sheet draped across a chest was still.
Unmoving.
- (Present)
The lips were tilted into a congenial smile, not the sneer she remembered. It spoke of beautiful dreams rather than nightmarish death. The tan uniform was replaced with a suit and tie. And the quote attached to that smile promised to "honor the finer things."
His last words to her had taken a decidedly different, and darker, tone.
Only the eyes, those ever-clear windows, could not hide the monster behind the man.
Cara read the profile of Pine Valley's newest jewelry magnate again, noting a few prominent omissions: former African citizen; former drug cartel kingpin; former faithful brother, bent on delivering a death sentence.
And the former boogeyman who made a ghost of her, back to haunt another day.
####
"This is not officially happening."
The two individuals cramped around him on either side of the small laptop nodded in agreement.
"I did not just take evidence from the station and bring it here." He cast a wary eye to his couch: not exactly interrogation room central.
"I did not accept said evidence from a citizen who cannot seem to understand the concept of 'caution, do not enter.'" The eye circled back and widened for emphasis at the woman sitting to his left.
"Or a 'detective' who doesn't needs to brush up on evidence-tampering in the rulebook." Said detective, sitting to his right, at least had the good sense to look properly chastised. "Nope, none of this is happening at all."
Satisfied that he'd made his point, as ultimately 'pointless' as that point may be, Jesse surveyed the first file. A list of names unfurled before them, each with enough kilobytes attached to it to crash a few servers.
A large database of cases.
And suspects.
A few familiar.
Jesse clicked on the first name, only to be greeted with a small white rectangle blaring three words at him: Please Enter Password. He'd swear each cursor blink was another peal of laughter.
"We'll need to bring someone else in to crack this." The lead detective had finally found his voice again.
Yes, a fine idea. Just induct some other lucky duck into their Future Felons club. Maybe even make up a secret signal and some business cards to boot.
"You have any ideas?" He'd thought he put the proper edge of sarcasm onto the question, but he'd also forgotten he wasn't dealing with ordinary, rational townsfolk here.
Brot immediately offered up a dandy of an 'idea.' "Natalia."
Jesse could only shake his head, the rush of anger dampening the words swirling in his head. Probably for the best, at least for someone in this room.
"She's a genius at this stuff. You know that." His future son-in-law, who could very well be losing that status pretty soon, only gave him a pointed look.
"She's got enough to deal with, and she's not -"
"She's still Natalia. She's still your daughter."
'And that's what scares me most,' he wanted to say.
Their partner-in-crime temporarily tabled the discussion for them. "You need to see this right now."
Bianca had called up another file to the screen. This one was marked not by names, but numbers.
Plain, simple numbers.
Efficient, like assassins.
"I don't think Ryan had time to encrypt it before …"
None of them needed to finish that sentence.
Jesse scanned the large blocks of text, meaningless but meaningful words and letters clawing at his brain: ASPD; MAO A genotype; MHPG; norepinephrine; chromosome; genetic amplification.
"I checked out of science class about the time we cut into the first frog." His eyes settled on the one phrase: subject X. "Afraid I'm gonna need a translator here."
"We've been over it a hundred times," Brot said, quickly looking chastised again at his admission of just how long this little bundle of evidence had been out of official hands.
"We think we have a general idea of what it means," Bianca added.
God, he'd never wanted to throttle the answers out of two people – or maybe gag them so those answers could never come – in his life.
He could only let them fill the silence, for better or worse.
"They're funding a genetic engineering program, among other things," Bianca said.
"Who is 'they'?"
She took control of the mouse again and skipped to the bottom of the document. Dozens of pages of scientific jargon ended with a single picture.
So many times over the past year, Jesse had wanted to be that guy again: the one who didn't care. The one who would just as soon smash this computer and just walk away.
The face smiling up at him in that picture summoned another guy entirely.
One who scared the hell out of him.
The one he needed.
-(1990)
"Damn Remington, damn Remington, damn Remington!"
Each word is a chant, a tangible something to hold onto: a chorus in tune with feet pounding the ground.
A branch tangles and secures, ripping off the last shred of cloth on his back even as it rips into his skin.
It's just another burn, though. Just one more scar for the patchwork.
He'd had worse. Much worse.
Most courtesy of the every-steady, ever-closer drumbeat of feet behind him.
He spares a glance over his shoulder, only to be greeted with a gaping black hole. One he has escaped from, only to enter again. Endless.
The flicker of lights - he can convince himself for a second they're just lightning bugs – is no longer a flicker.
He pays for his mistake when his foot crashes into something hard. And he's hurtling headlong into the dark. Maybe flying, maybe another illusion….one that's quickly shattered by a crunching explosion that begins in his jaw and ricochets into his skull, ending in a brighter light.
He'd gladly drown in the dancing stars, but the herd is advancing and he's somehow gotta part the Red Sea…..turn the tide and drown 'them.'
Jesse reaches for the jagged edges and secures his one piece of leverage against his stomach. It has survived. It will always survive: the lone victor bathing in the rivers of blood spilled in its name. It easily takes just a little more of that blood from him, its latest soldier.
Gasping, he stumbles to his feet and finds that rhythm again.
Dancing with the dark.
Or just running for his life.
-(Present)
"He's the head of the new corporation specializing in jewelry and precious minerals. I've been investigating them because we received a tip that their major source of funding is blood diamonds. I never had any idea, though, exactly where their own funds were going."
Jesse had learned all about the kind of ideas the man in that picture was capable of, first-hand. "What?" He tried to keep his voice even, tried like hell, unsuccessfully, to shake off just a few cobwebs of the past. "What are they doing?"
"We think that they – along with the help of undisclosed partners - are funding this genetic research with aims of selling it in military and secret ops circles to the highest bidder, whoever that may be."
The words settled in his chest. Not settled, though. Not really.
Squeezed.
Strangled.
"The very short of it is that their scientists, their men –" The tone refuted each distinction – "are trying to take advantage of certain genetic variables that enhance traits and behaviors: aggression, lack of empathy, cunning. A perfect blueprint."
"For the perfect killer," Brot finished.
Jesse rubbed his temple. To understand, or maybe to scrub it all away. His fingers tapped on the two words that had captured his attention. "And who is this Subject X?"
The two exchanged a look he wanted no part of. "Their ideal patient, their guinea pig."
Brot pulled up another screen. "And by our best estimation, he's right here….somewhere in Pine Valley."
####
Ten years, and he could not be certain that he had ever uttered a single word to the man. In this town, that was really quite an amazing feat.
Now, the ever-mysterious Zach Slater sat before him, wearing only a paper gown and asking - in his own quiet way - for help.
Joe took his glasses off and evaluated the man.
He was unshaven, unkempt, his body peppered by cuts and bruises he would not, or could not, explain.
And absolutely still.
Ironically, it was the last part that sent the most intense chill through Joe's body, straight into his fingertips, as he reached out.
The skin of Zach s arm both lessened and intensified the chill. The eyes now regarding him turned that chill to sharp ice.
"What are you thinking, Mr. Slater?"
Joe's patient tilted his head thoughtfully. The blink, when it finally came, was merciful.
"I'm thinking, Doctor, how much I would like to just…give in sometimes. "
The object in his patient's hand received no such mercy.
Joe did not flinch or recoil. He waited for the muscles in those arms to unclench. When they did, he took away the distorted cup.
Evaluating the destruction, he looked up to a jaw set in stone and two cold, dark eyes harboring the faintest flare in their depths. A consistent SOS signal comprised of just two words: 'Please, help.'
Taking Zach's arm again, Joe answered the call.