CHAPTER FIVE - THOMAS
It’s not being strapped to a table that starts the panic. It’s not the injection, or the way reality begins to expand almost instantaneously as the burning liquid makes its way up my arm towards my heart. It’s not even the second alarm. I can only see a slice of reality through the nearly shut lids of my eyes, but everyone in this room ignores that alarm.
It’s the memories that come flooding back as they open me up. Not my body, but my mind.
Panic for me has unique consequences. And these people have no idea what they’ve started.
“Thomas,” Yasmine says. Her voice is far away and echo-y. I can’t see her, but I can feel her. Smell her. Sense her in other ways too. There is a spongy aura surrounding her body. Everyone’s body. But all I see is hers, because she is closest to me. “Can you hear me?”
I have known Yasmine since we were small. She was probably my best friend at one time. My only friend for a long time. Her hair was always dark—unless she was standing in front of a window and the sunlight could catch the ends and highlight her head in gold. And it was always long. She was a lot like Molly, I think. Except Molly is a lot younger. She wasn’t even born yet when I knew Yasmine.
“Can you hear me?” she repeats.
It’s dangerous to answer her. I remember this much. Especially under the drugs. She’s a level eight mentalist. Not a ten, like me. But she is a level ten manipulist. And a level ten capturist.
She can steal minds under the right conditions.
She’s wrong if she thinks this is “right conditions,” but I don’t tell her that.
“Thomas,” she tries again.
My very first memory was in my nursery. I was four, maybe. Five, at the most. It doesn’t help to describe the nursery, because the nursery was perfect. Everything was new and high-quality. A finely polished sleigh bed, sized for a small child, with bright white linens, soft pillows and blankets, and stuffed animals.
There were toys to engage my mind and a rocking chair that reminded me of the nurse who cared for me. There was a large mobile in front of the window, just above where I would lay my head at night. It was a flock of flying birds. They would swing and bob on their wire tethers, each one weighted slightly differently to simulate natural behavior. If birds flying in a perpetual circle are considered natural.
“Do I have to dose you again?” Yasmine asks in the now.
She can give me more, but I can’t be responsible for what happens if she does.
The memory of the nursery is always where things start. Something pretty bad happened in there. And when you’re four or five, pretty bad can mean a whole plethora of things that have no real consequence whatsoever.
But that’s not how this memory shakes out because this isn’t a real memory. Oh, the nursery was real. The nurse too. All the things in there. But this… what’s happening to me right now… this is a trigger.
Oh, no. Yasmine is not going to like this at all.
If I had better control of my facial muscles I’d smile. Give her a little peek. A little jolt. A little glimpse into what’s coming.
A chance to escape, maybe. I have never actually hated her. I just… dislike her a lot. Still, I’d let her get away if she could manage it. I’m loyal like that, even though she doesn’t deserve it. She helped me once. We were friends. But then they took her away and she never came back.
She’s not paying enough attention right now. She thinks she’s got me. She thinks she’s the one in control. She thinks a whole lot of things that aren’t really happening.
And why is that?
I’ll tell you. If you can keep a secret, I’ll let you in.
“Come closer.” I don’t mean to speak, but the whisper comes out anyway. This is the part I can’t control. But you understand, right? You’re me, so you must.
“What is it?” Yasmine asks, leaning in. Closer. Then closer still.
“You’re not,” I whisper. Again, not meaning to.
“I’m not what?” she asks.
I don’t think Yasmine hates me either. I think she’s just… one of those women. The controlling types. As least she thinks she is. But no matter how many straps are holding me down to this table, and no matter how many syringes she empties into my bloodstream… she will never control me. I made sure of it.
“Aggressive enough.” There. I said it. A small, weak chuckle escapes my lips. She’s a level two aggressionist, which means she cannot really force people to do things against their will.
“Fuck you,” she whispers back. Her lips are so close to my cheek I can feel her breath.
She hates that. The reminder that they never finished her. They left her incomplete. “I would’ve killed you,” I growl, my voice clear and strong now. “When I killed all the others, you know.”
“Fuck you,” she says again.
“But only to put you out of your misery.” His—my—laughter bursts forth.
“Give him another dose,” Yasmine barks to her team. “We’ll see who’s aggressive enough.”
See, this is her whole problem. She still lives in the nursery. She still thinks she’s one of the favorites. She still buys into the lies they weaved into our tiny minds—day after day. Until the days turned into months and the months turned into years.
I’m sure plenty of people think Yasmine Bates is aggressive. But that’s not what I’m talking about and she knows it. I’m talking about the modifications they did to us. The manipulations they subjected us to when we were small. Before we left that nursery we were complete and she was missing something. Something I had plenty of.
Aggression.
Not aggression, as in the desire to fight. But aggression as in the ability to hurt. Not with my hands, but my mind.
I told you. I told you there’s anarchy up there. I told you it’s inside me. I told you this over and over and over and over and—
“That’s the second dose,” one of her helpers says.
“Gimme more.” I laugh. “Gimme all of it. I can take it. I can take it and you know it. Nothing you do to me will ever change who you aren’t.”
Level ten aggressionist is part of what I am. Just one tiny part, really. But it makes all the difference and Yasmine knows this. She sees what I can do. She sees what I’m capable of. And she knows she can’t compete.
She’s just missing something.
Her soft hand touches my throat and when I force my eyes open to see my little sliver of reality, she’s baring her teeth at me.
“If only you had fangs, darling, then you could suck it out of me like a leech.”
She squeezes my windpipe. Chokes me. I’d still be laughing if she wasn’t cutting off my airway.
I mentally push against her spongy aura, testing things out.
Not yet. Not quite. But almost.
I don’t want to do it. I’ve taken great care of the past fifteen years to keep it in check. But then fucking Case had to go shoot me with that poison.
You want to kill him for that.
No. I correct the voice inside me. I want to kill someone for that, but it’s not Case. He didn’t do this to me. He didn’t turn me into this fucking freak show. He didn’t strap me down as a child and force me to change.
“You’re wrong, Mr. Brooks,” Yasmine seethes into my ear. “So, so very wrong.” But I’m not. And when she barks, “Give him another one,” I know this for certain.
This is it, Thomas. This is the end of you. One more syringe will be enough. One more syringe will trigger it. One more goddamned syringe and I will finally be free because I’ll be dead.
“Do it.” But this time it’s not out loud. That anarchy chained up in my head knows better than to beg. It knows she will get suspicious and put a stop to it. It knows I will die quietly instead of the way it was always planned.
So she doesn’t hear my warning.
I feel the push in my vein. I feel the burn travel up my arm. I feel it entering the right atrium of my heart. And then a contraction. Thump. It’s in. Thump. It’s out. Thump, thump. Into the lungs. Back to the heart. Thump, thump. That quick… everything has changed.
Her aura is no longer spongy. It’s a wall. And walls can be knocked down. Walls are breakable. Walls are meant to be broken.
My eyes open. I see the operating room light. Yasmine off to my right, still partially bending over, her hand still on my throat in a gesture of aggression she knows she can’t use against me.
Oh, she can choke my throat all she wants. But that’s not the part of me she needs to hold in her hand.
She needs my mind.
But now we know who’s up there. You. You’re up there. Holding me close. Keeping me safe. Making me the monster I was meant to be.
Hello, you.
Did you miss me?
The last dose of drug has now flowed through my whole body. It’s been absorbed by the muscles and that’s it, people.
Time to go.
The gathering is not something I like to describe. It’s a contraction of my whole body. I seize up on the table. My back arching. My hands pinned to my sides with straps. My legs bound to the table.
My mouth opens, but I don’t scream. Not with my voice, anyway.
I scream with my mind.
Imagine throwing a pebble into a puddle. Imagine those harmless little circles that radiate out, getting bigger and bigger and bigger the farther away they travel.
You want to be far away from me right now, take my word on that. Because the mental scream that comes out of my mind is a force of nature.
People fly backwards in front of the supersonic shock wave. The wind that comes from the explosion blows past them, taking everything around me with it.
Walls disappear. Windows shatter.
And then there is silence and I’m alone.
I’m free. At least from the restraints holding me down on this table. But I retreat back into my head.
You’re back now, right? This is what you wanted. This was your plan all along.
So fuck you. I don’t wanna be in control anymore. Just fuck you. Take over then. I don’t care.
“What the… fuck?”
I open my eyes and see a girl. Dark hair, olive skin, unknown color eyes. About five nine. Maybe five ten. She’s wearing a uniform but that’s not the part that bothers me.
What bothers me is she’s still standing.
I sit up, the useless bindings falling away from my body. “Who the fuck are you?”
She squints at me. Frowns. Looks down at the floor. Then behind her. Yasmine’s body is visible, but she’s underneath one of her team members. Looking lifeless.
The dark chick shakes her head, then opens her eyes wide, like she’s clearing her vision.
Amber, I see. Her eyes are amber.
“What the hell was that, Brooks?” She says my name with confidence, but it fades quickly. Her eyes dart back and forth for a few seconds. Not focused on me. Not really. Just like… they’re searching for something they can’t find. “You are Brooks, right?”
I swing my legs over the side of the table and step down. My feet are bare, and there’s shards of glass and metal everywhere. It crunches under my soles. I ignore it, but the girl winces for me.
“Yes,” I say, straightening up. She’s kinda pretty. I might want to make a good impression. “Thomas Brooks. Who, might I ask, are you?”
“Did you…” She looks around again. Very confused, this one. “Did you just explode?”
“No,” I say, patting down my chest, just to make sure. That’s when I notice the IV needle sticking out of my arm. I give it a tug and throw it aside. “I seem fine.”
“What was that? This whole place is… gone!”
“Oh,” I say, noticing the side of the building is missing. Car alarms are going off outside. “Well, shit. They just got this building up and now look what I’ve done.” I smile as I take my attention back to the pretty female. “Do you have a name?”
She’s confused again.
“Darling?” I say. “A name?”
She shakes her head.
“You don’t have a name?”
“I do,” she says, letting out a sigh at the same time. “But I don’t understand what’s happening. I… can’t remember why I’m here.”
“You… presumably work here?” I ask, trying to be helpful. “You’re wearing a uniform.” Her name tag says Phil, but she’s definitely not a Phil.
She looks down at her clothes in horror. “What the hell?” Her wide eyes meet mine again. Yes. A very pretty yellow-brown color. Strikingly unusual. “Am I bleeding? Do I have a concussion? Am I halluci—” She stops. “Halluci—”
“Hallucinating?” I offer, again. Just trying to be helpful.
She takes a deep breath. Her lips move, silently counting to three. Then she lets the breath out.
“You’re not bleeding. I don’t know why you’re not bleeding, since everyone else in this room was knocked to the floor. But you seem fine to me.”
Something changes in her. A panic. A moment of pure… fear. “I need to get the fuck out of here. I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no clue how I got here. I don’t even know my name!”
I step forward and take her hand. “Now, now. Don’t worry. We can leave if you want. I just need to grab something from the other room.”
“The other room?” She turns to look behind her.
“Oh.” I’m genuinely disappointed. The other room is mostly gone. Blown to bits. “I was hoping to grab that suit.”
“Who are you?”
“Thomas,” I say, placing her hand on my arm. “You just said my name.”
“No,” she says. “No.” More forcefully this time.
Well, she’s one of the inmates, obviously. That’s too bad. I haven’t been laid in months. I had a little spark of hope there for a second. But clearly, I will be leaving and she will be staying behind.
“It was nice meeting you, whatever your name is. But look, I’m sorta busy today. So I gotta run. Cops are gonna come and—”
Sure enough, there’s sirens downstairs.
When I look back at the girl she’s… flickering. Like… seriously, flickering into other people before my eyes.
One second she’s a man, then she’s an old woman. A few flickers of that and she’s a young woman wearing a different uniform.
“What the fuck?” I ask.
She shakes her head and rubs her eyes.
“What was that?” I ask.
She stares at her feet for a moment, then slowly brings her eyes up to meet mine. “I’m a level ten.”
“Are you?” I ask, jutting my head back in surprise. “A level ten what, exactly?”
“Hallucinal—” She shakes her head again. “Delusional.”
I laugh. “Yes, darling. I think you are quite right about that. You are definitely level ten delusional. Now, as much as I’d like to hang out with you, possibly fuck you crazy and then drop you off somewhere, never to see you again, I’m gonna have to move along now. I’m not into the psychotic ones. They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Illusional,” she spits out with some effort. “No. Illusionist.” She smiles with relief. Like she just solved the biggest puzzle ever. “Yes. I’m an illusionist.”
“A level ten… illusionist?” I raise an eyebrow at her. “Not possible.”
But then she flickers. And for five whole seconds, she becomes me.