On May 16, 2015, Survival of the Fittest Version 6 concluded.
On June 1, 2015, at 9 AM, the video feed revealing just what had befallen the students of Cochise High School went live. Thousands of combined hours of footage later, the entire world knew the name of V6’s solitary survivor despite his own best efforts. From the moment the video cut out, the public waited for his return home.
On June 14, 2015, when two weeks had passed from the date of the feed going public and Min-jae Parker had not reappeared, people began to realize that something was wrong.
The initial theory put forward was that he had died from his injuries, or perhaps that he had managed to kill himself after all. The theories that followed on the heels of that one were less charitable, drawing on the accounts of the offer made to the other survivors. No public statement was leaked by the Arthro Taskforce, which seemed damning in one way or another no matter how you looked at it.
The world wondered, speculated, argued, but life went on and death did too. By the time a month had passed from Version 6’s official end with no answers forthcoming, the world had almost begun to move on to the next tragedy.
On July 4th of that year Kingman, Arizona, and other affected cities held a memorial. All four of V6’s finalists were listed among the dead.
The world they had left behind started to pick up the pieces once again. Cochise High School, bolstered by donations and fundraisers in the wake of the tragedy, was building and expanding in preparation for a fresh start. Its remaining students would be shuttled to the other schools in the area for at least the first semester of the 2015-2016 school year while the construction was in-progress. The city of Kingman itself was doing its level best to stamp out the harassment of its grieving families, whatever the assailants’ reasons might have been, and to repair the physical and emotional damage. Progress was slow, perhaps with a few more steps backwards than forwards so far, but there was progress.
As midsummer approached and the desert heat grew oppressive, the tourists began to trickle away again. The reporters lingered on a while longer, but their wells too were beginning to dry up with no winner to plaster all over the papers and television screens and fewer and fewer fresh quotes to sell. It was time, most of them felt, to move away from the small people of Kingman, Arizona, and turn their lenses and microphones to Washington. Next year was an election year, after all, and McAllister’s second disastrous failure on the heels of prematurely declaring Survival of the Fittest eradicated spelled bad news for his party.
By the time that Independence Day memorial service had passed, the world at large was busy moving on.
But the powers that be had a few more tricks up their sleeves. They always did.
Jae should have realized he wasn’t going to get out of anything that easily.
V6 Epilogue: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
????? ??, ????, ??:??: Undisclosed Location
The first thing that became real was perhaps the noise. Raspy breathing and the faint hum of fluorescent lights.
That faint awareness stretched on forever. No concept of time passing. No concept of time even existing. Occasional intrusions washed over the other sounds, garbled noise in different tones, semi-regular impacts against a surface somewhere just beyond the immediate. The lights hummed. A body that couldn’t yet conceptualize that it was still a body breathed.
It floated, weightless, for some unknowable eternity until something shifted almost imperceptibly, and it started to sink.
The sound of the breathing became a feeling. There was a new awareness of air flowing in and out, lungs expanding, chest rising and falling, a sudden realization that the physical body existed. It spread out from there, from breathing to heartbeat, then to the sensation of touch, the slight weight of a blanket and the cushion of a pillow and the indentation in the mattress that the body was nestled into. Fingers twitched in a way that was now something more than reflex from the depths of a coma. Eyelids fluttered, not enough to open, but enough to draw notice from the other bodies in the room.
The stirring of movement passed, and the body relaxed again, but a switch had been flipped somewhere. It stayed sunken in half-consciousness instead of floating off again.
The awareness of physicality slowly but surely brought with it an awareness of discomfort. The blanket was itchy. The distant, garbled noise became less distant, resolved into words and footsteps. The body kept breathing and the lights kept humming.
Eternity stretched on, and then it passed. Minutes. Days. Slowly sinking back into reality.
It kept sinking as the fog cleared, and somewhere along the way it remembered that it wasn’t an it, but a he, and he had a name.
Jae opened his eyes with the effort of prying open a rusted-shut door, and the white sterility of the room blinded him.
He let his eyes fall shut again, back into comfortable darkness, though he was now aware of the fluorescent light on the other side of his eyelids. His thoughts were still slow and floaty, inching along and trying to piece together where he was and why. He eased his eyes open again just a crack.
The glimpse he got said “hospital”, or maybe “jail cell”. Something nagged at the back of his mind which told him it wasn’t quite right.
“Are you back with us, then?”
No.
Gray nothingness.
????? ??, ????, ??:??: Undisclosed Location
Minutes. Days? Time passed, at any rate. The lights in the room were dimmed when Jae slipped awake once more, with as little fanfare as the first time. He seemed to be alone this time.
The room still looked like a hospital room. The feeling it gave him was still uneasy.
Somewhere off to the side, a voice breathed, “Hey.” He jerked in surprise, and the movement drove home just how heavy his limbs felt.
Jae rolled his eyes to the side, unsure if he could turn his head. He could just make out a man with wavy blond hair and a white coat in the edge of his vision, drawing closer to lean over him.
“Trent,” the man called, apparently to someone outside the room, “He’s awake.”
A pause, approaching noises from outside, a door swinging open, and then a second person appeared above Jae. Where he had been alone in empty space, he suddenly felt crowded. Someone was touching him and there was nowhere for him to recoil away to. It was hard to breathe.
The new arrival spoke, but Jae didn’t register his words. Full consciousness faded as abruptly as it had come, and gray nothing enveloped him again.
?????????
Just how long do you think you can keep this up, huh?
…
Oh, you’ve fucked it up good this time, self. Missed your chance when it really mattered, and now you’ve got nobody but yourself for company.
…
The perfect setup, nothing better to do than sit down and have a long, honest chat with yourself after all the bullshit philosophy and having to restructure your worldview in the face of certain death.
Oh, but now you’ve got nothing to say.
…
Here’s a secret, self: there’s no such thing as dying a good death. You die, and that’s it. The most important part of you is off to do something else. It won’t know what you’ve left behind.
But that was never good enough for us, was it?
…
Probably an artist thing. What are you if you haven’t created something worthwhile by the time you go?
…
Nobody. Nothing.
…
Just like everybody you knew and loved and hated is nothing, now.
But you’re still here.
…
Hey, don’t look at me. I can’t give you any advice you haven’t already heard. I don’t know anything that you don’t.
It’s me, your worst enemy.
I’m you, dumbass.
…
All I want to know is – are we going to make it count this time? Can we do that?
Can we do anything at all that matters?
Does anything matter?
…
Asking yourself questions never gets anything done.
Sorry.
…
I’m sorry.
…
I never tried to do the right thing until it was too late and even then-
…
You can’t just… wait for the world to stop burning when you’re the fuel.
…
You had better go on and wake up, before you forget how.
…
Hey, I’ll be here for you.
I’m the one person whose company you can never escape from.
…
Go on now.
It’s time to face the music.
May 24, 2015, 3:47 P.M.: Undisclosed Location
Consciousness didn’t come easily this time.
Maybe Jae had tried crying out, but he wasn’t quite able. Any noise died in his throat.
He shuddered, tangled and twisted up in the thin, scratchy blanket that covered him, and he didn’t have the strength to free himself.
“Take it easy,” someone said.
Jae barely registered the words and certainly didn’t heed them, continuing to gasp and writhe until someone grasped his shoulders, forcing him to lie still. He didn’t have the strength to struggle back against them.
“Be still.”
Jae finally breathed, blinking rapidly until the blur above him sharpened and focused into a face. It was one of the people he had seen before, the scruffier of the two blond men who had leaned over his bedside when he first opened his eyes.
It took several long moments for Jae’s heart rate and breathing to slow back to something approaching normal, and only then did the grip on Jae’s shoulders ease off.
The man – Trent? – gave him a slow, warm smile that felt entirely out of place.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Parker,” he said. “I must say, you had us worried. Even I thought that you might not make it.”
Jae blinked at him.
“I-I don’t…” His voice came out weak and raspy. Why would he…?
The last of the fog dissipated. Jae’s stomach dropped.
He made a low, guttural noise of horror and inhaled sharply, preparing to scream, but Trent interrupted.
“Shh. Enough of that.” He hushed Jae sharply, halting the spiral down into madness before it even began. “You’ve been talking to the ceiling for days.”
Jae stared at him, breathing hard, but he couldn’t find any words. After a few moments, he returned his gaze to the ceiling without saying anything, somewhere between sick, disbelieving, and despairing.
“How’s he doing?” The other man that Jae had seen bustled into the room, pushing a collapsible wheelchair like the sort that Jae’s mom would use when her MS flared up and rendered her unable to walk. Jae’s stomach did a flip at the sudden thought.
“Up and at ‘em?” The man continued.
“I think so,” Trent said, keeping his attention on Jae. Had he had more energy, Jae would have squirmed in discomfort. “There’s a meeting that you’re long overdue for.”
He stepped back and eased Jae up into a sitting position, disentangling the blanket from his legs and helping him turn to sit on the edge of the bed. Jae offered no resistance, head still swirling and limbs too weak to try even a token protest.
The new arrival dropped a pile of clothes onto the bed next to Jae; gray sweatpants and a black t-shirt with the Nine Inch Nails logo across the front.
Jae stared at the shirt, feeling an overwhelming sense of the surreal. It looked like something that might be in his closet at home.
Home. Something in him seized, and he was almost on the brink of not breathing again before the unnamed doctor drew him out of it by taking the clothes and helping Jae into them. He felt weak and sluggish, barely able to move under his own power. Some part of him balked at the humiliation of needing someone to help him dress, but he didn’t have the energy to give it any voice.
Trent maneuvered the wheelchair over to the bed, and the other doctor helped Jae into it. “You take it from here,” Trent told the man, “I have some things I need to look over for when he’s through.” He spoke as though Jae wasn’t even there.
Jae almost felt like he wasn’t there. Like this wasn’t really happening.
He didn’t want this to be happening.
He should have been fighting it somehow, throwing some kind of fit, screaming, doing anything but letting himself get manhandled like a ragdoll, but he couldn’t. It took all his energy to just keep breathing normally, it felt like.
As he was wheeled out of the room, Jae shifted in the chair. From the effort even that movement took, he could tell that he wouldn’t have the strength to stand, much less make a run for it to… who even knew. He’d just flop onto the ground like a dead fish if he tried to get out of the chair. Jae lapsed back against the back of the chair and stayed still, looking straight ahead at nothing until they stopped in front of a nondescript wooden door.
“I’m Dr. Kelley by the way,” the blond man who wasn’t Trent said, leaning into Jae’s field of vision. “All ready for your interview?”
Jae just stared at him. Dr. Kelley cleared his throat and knocked briskly at the door.
“Come in.” The voice that floated through the door made Jae twitch.
He knew that voice. He’d heard it every morning for more than a week, listing off the names of the dead.
He’d heard it congratulating him while he lay dying out on the rooftop, before the people that answered to it dragged him unwillingly back.
Doctor Kelley pushed the door open and wheeled Jae in to face Danya.
Despite everything that he already knew about the man behind the desk, Jae’s first impression was that he looked like a teacher. He looked carelessly handsome in glasses and a dark gray turtleneck, with stylishly messy hair. He smiled with measured geniality as Dr. Kelley pushed Jae’s wheelchair into the room to rest in front of the desk, but his eyes were endless and black.
“Min-jae Parker,” Danya said, with the tone of someone greeting an old friend whom he hadn’t seen in a long time. “Would you care for a drink? I’m afraid I’ve been informed that it will be a couple of days before solids can be reintroduced to your diet, so no snacks, but we have water, juice, tea, soda...” He trailed off, looking at Jae expectantly.
Jae’s hands curled into the hem of the t-shirt, sending an ache up through his left arm. He looked down, distracted, and realized that his left hand was swaddled in thick bandages, the last two fingers splinted together. A real splint this time, not just tape. He studied his hands until he became aware of the silence awaiting his reply. He looked back up and swallowed, noting that his throat did feel dry.
“Water,” he said. His voice felt weak and rusty from disuse. “Just water.” The thought of anything with more substance made his stomach turn.
Danya’s smile returned and he gestured towards one of the bottles of water sitting on the nearby service table. Dr. Kelley retrieved one and twisted the lid open before setting it carefully in Jae’s unbandaged hand, curling his fingers around it for him. Jae twitched away from him in annoyance, trying to ignore how they both watched him and how his hand shook as he lifted the bottle to his lips and drank greedily.
“Would you mind waiting in the hall, Kelley?” Danya said. It was phrased as a request, but refusal probably wasn’t an option.
Dr. Kelley patted Jae’s shoulder with far too much familiarity and exited the room, the door clicking shut behind him.
Danya sighed as though relieved. “Normally, at least one other person would be available to help keep things under control, but the delay in our meeting meant that some of our dedicated staff are busy with other things right now and can’t attend to the formalities.” He cast an appraising glance over Jae. “To be perfectly frank, the only person you pose any threat to right now is yourself, so I thought I’d take the opportunity for a little more privacy for our chat.”
Jae said nothing in reply, absently rotating the half-full water bottle in his hand as he met Danya’s gaze.
Danya continued undeterred. “So, let’s get to proper introductions: my name is Tracen Danya. Welcome back to the world of the living, Mr. Parker.”
Jae’s brow furrowed slightly, perturbed. Tracen – no, Danya, he was still just Danya, he didn’t deserve the humanization of a first name – inclined his head slightly towards Jae, anticipating a reply.
“You’re the second person to say that to me,” Jae said finally, the first full sentence that he had spoken since waking up.
“I don’t say it lightly. Your heart stopped for a minute or two after our extraction team retrieved you, and even after you had been resuscitated it was uncertain for a while if you would stabilize. You had us worried for some time there.”
Jae tightened his grip on the water bottle, feeling and hearing the plastic crinkle under his fingers. He felt dizzy, hot and cold all over.
He had died, after all. Just not permanently enough.
Or was that even true? Jae wouldn’t have been surprised if Danya decided to lie about something like that just to get a rise out of him.
There was no way to know. What was worse, to know that he had failed completely at what was meant to be his last act of control, or to know that he had succeeded, briefly, only to have the accomplishment ripped away from him?
“I didn’t want that,” he said, unable to raise his voice above a whisper.
“Come again?” Danya raised his eyebrows, though Jae was sure he’d heard him perfectly the first time.
“Y-you- I didn’t-” Jae sucked in a breath through his teeth. “You had no right,” he said weakly, the flimsiest accusation ever thrown at someone who abducted children and forced them to kill each other. “You had no right. I wanted to die.”
Danya stared him down, perfectly calm. “You had your chance for that one hundred times over. Your actions tell a rather different story, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask,” Jae mumbled, petulant.
Danya’s mouth twitched and he exhaled sharply through his nose, as though he were trying not to laugh. Another stab of helpless frustration shot through Jae, making his throat tighten and his eyes sting, but he clamped his jaw shut and fought it. It was a losing battle, but he fought it anyway.
“That’s what I appreciate about you, Min-jae,” he said, and a sick, hateful knot tightened in Jae’s stomach at the familiarity of Danya’s tone and address. “Your determination. We’ve seen quite the array of winners come out of our little game by now, but I think you may be the most… oh, resilient. I can’t count how many times you got knocked down, but every time you got back up. Time and time again, circumstance just couldn’t kill you. That’s why you were the fittest of your classmates, despite the odds and the disadvantages you faced.”
There was something mocking in there, Jae was sure, but he was too focused on trying to steady his breathing to care much.
“Jonathan was so single-mindedly focused on revenge that he tried to make it too complex, and gave you too many openings. Brendan held onto those who would still forgive him so tightly that he wasn’t prepared to face someone who wouldn’t. Lily thought that she was beneath notice enough that it would save her. Samuel… well, we can say you were provoked.” Danya smiled slightly again and Jae’s stomach lurched.
“And of course, there was your friend Fiyori, but she made her choice.” Unlike you, Danya did not say, but the implication hung between them nonetheless.
“You surprised me,” he went on. “I must admit, I don’t think many of us watching expected you to be the one to come out of that final confrontation alive. Even when you were deliberately making yourself an easy target though, it seems luck favored you. And here you are.” He made a sweeping gesture at the whole of Jae’s pitiful, wheelchair-bound form.
Danya folded his hands and leaned forward on the desk. Jae noticed for the first time how lean, powerful muscle moved underneath his sweater, and wondered how deliberate the movement was. There was a subtle promise there, something that whispered in the back of your mind that this man was dangerous, for more reasons than just the organization he headed. There was something about him which whispered of violence, even wrapped up in his civilized presentation.
“And now,” Danya said, “you have one last choice to make.
“Do you want to go home, Min-jae?”
Jae stared at him, jaw set, not trusting himself to speak. After a moment of silence, Danya chuckled.
“I must say, the first winner that I dealt with was a much better conversationalist. I suppose Miss Montalvo was more of a social butterfly to begin with, though.” He waved one hand as though to clear his reminiscence away. “It’s traditional to offer the winner a place here, with our team.”
“Your team,” Jae echoed flatly. Like he was being offered a job at some kind of company.
“That’s right. We take people from all walks of life here, so long as they have skills that we value, including those with more… checkered pasts.” Danya’s eyes drilled into Jae. “The entire world knows you now, and what you’ve done. They might hate you, or fear you, but most of them will pity you.” His tone was so even and almost soothing that it made Jae want to throw the open water bottle in his face, if he had the strength to do so.
“Think about all that you’ve been through, and what you had to do to yourself and others to be the one sitting in front of me today. Everyone has at least the potential to do what you did, and most people don’t like being reminded of that.
“Here, though, it is not your past that defines you. Each and every member of our organization is proof of that. If you want to truly start over anew, we’ll gladly welcome you aboard. I think that, in time, your experience and perseverance could be quite invaluable to us.”
Jae stared.
And he pictured it.
Staying here. Starting over. Never having to face anyone who had known him before, never receiving any reminders more personal than a bunch of strangers on the other side of a screen. Taken care of in terms of money, necessities, and security for the rest of his life, or at least for as long as they could keep this up. Hell, Survival of the Fittest had been going for ten years by now; why not ten more, at least?
He could see himself there, faceless among the rest of the monsters, working his way up.
Until he could burn the kingdom down from the inside.
The water bottle crunched in Jae’s grip as he squeezed it. They had to know. Danya had to know what he was thinking. They had watched him come apart over the course of the game, watched his every action and guessed at his every thought, figured out how he worked. “Hey, let’s hand the keys over to this self-destructive asshole with every reason to hate us,” said no villain ever. There was a catch somewhere, there had to be.
Or maybe they really, truly thought he would fall in line. That he had taken enough abuse at their hands that he would gladly turn around and dish it out on someone new, like he’d done a million times before, take everything he had been given and serve it up a hundredfold against strangers whose only crime was enjoying the kind of existence that he could never have again.
Yeah, maybe they were onto something with that line of thought.
But here’s the thing. Jae knew himself, inside and out, even the parts that he hated the most. He knew what would happen sooner or later, with all that anger and resentment building up, time after time, growing twisted and sick and black until it split him open. If he was willing to take it out on total strangers, sooner or later it would just make more sense to make a move against the people who had actually done this to him.
If they let him in, all he really had left was his life, and he had shown the entire world just how much value he put in that. The only thing he would stand to lose by turning against them someday was hardly a price to pay at all.
But of course, that brought things full circle again.
“Fuck you,” Jae whispered, unable to muster the energy to even put any real bite behind it.
God, if nothing else, go be tired and bitter and destroy yourself somewhere else. Not here. Not with these people.
You took everything from me, even my choice to die.
You can’t have me anymore.
Danya’s brow furrowed just slightly, but his overall expression remained calm. Jae looked through him, breathing unsteadily.
At last, when it was clear that no further answer was forthcoming, Danya stood. “It is your choice, after all,” he said. “If you do happen to reconsider, our door is open for as long as you’ll be with us. Your circumstances have already required that you stay longer than most, of course, so I do hope that you’ll think it over while Doctors Camden and Kelley attend to your physical therapy before they deem you ready to be sent home.”
Jae barely heard him, and didn’t acknowledge what he did hear. Danya gave him one last look, studying him for a long moment before his eyes slid away from Jae. As though he had seen all that there was to see, and he wasn’t impressed. He’d seen it all before, and it bored him.
Something about it chafed and gnawed at the part of Jae cognizant enough to care. They were going to go to all the trouble of bringing him back from the dead, and then decide it wasn’t worth it, he was boring? Fuck off. That part of him wanted to be angrier about it than he was.
Just another needle under his skin along with all the others. There was too much in front of him to keep caring and raging at all of it, however deserving.
Jae leaned back in the wheelchair, tilted his head back, and exhaled. There was heat in the pit of his chest and a numbness in his limbs, buzzing in his fingertips. Danya rounded his desk and strode past Jae to open the door without acknowledging him further.
“I believe that will be all, Kelley,” he said to the man in the hall. “You may return Mr. Parker to his room.” Kelley followed him back inside and took control of Jae’s wheelchair once again. Danya obligingly held the door open for him to wheel Jae out into the hall.
As they passed him, Jae let the water bottle slip from his limp hand and bounce against the floor, spilling water across the tile and sprinkling the tops of Danya’s shoes. An expression of displeasure flickered ever so briefly across Danya’s face before he shut the door firmly behind them, much to Jae’s petty satisfaction.
“Min-jae Parker,” Danya said, with the tone of someone greeting an old friend whom he hadn’t seen in a long time. “Would you care for a drink? I’m afraid I’ve been informed that it will be a couple of days before solids can be reintroduced to your diet, so no snacks, but we have water, juice, tea, soda...” He trailed off, looking at Jae expectantly.
Jae’s hands curled into the hem of the t-shirt, sending an ache up through his left arm. He looked down, distracted, and realized that his left hand was swaddled in thick bandages, the last two fingers splinted together. A real splint this time, not just tape. He studied his hands until he became aware of the silence awaiting his reply. He looked back up and swallowed, noting that his throat did feel dry.
“Water,” he said. His voice felt weak and rusty from disuse. “Just water.” The thought of anything with more substance made his stomach turn.
Danya’s smile returned and he gestured towards one of the bottles of water sitting on the nearby service table. Dr. Kelley retrieved one and twisted the lid open before setting it carefully in Jae’s unbandaged hand, curling his fingers around it for him. Jae twitched away from him in annoyance, trying to ignore how they both watched him and how his hand shook as he lifted the bottle to his lips and drank greedily.
“Would you mind waiting in the hall, Kelley?” Danya said. It was phrased as a request, but refusal probably wasn’t an option.
Dr. Kelley patted Jae’s shoulder with far too much familiarity and exited the room, the door clicking shut behind him.
Danya sighed as though relieved. “Normally, at least one other person would be available to help keep things under control, but the delay in our meeting meant that some of our dedicated staff are busy with other things right now and can’t attend to the formalities.” He cast an appraising glance over Jae. “To be perfectly frank, the only person you pose any threat to right now is yourself, so I thought I’d take the opportunity for a little more privacy for our chat.”
Jae said nothing in reply, absently rotating the half-full water bottle in his hand as he met Danya’s gaze.
Danya continued undeterred. “So, let’s get to proper introductions: my name is Tracen Danya. Welcome back to the world of the living, Mr. Parker.”
Jae’s brow furrowed slightly, perturbed. Tracen – no, Danya, he was still just Danya, he didn’t deserve the humanization of a first name – inclined his head slightly towards Jae, anticipating a reply.
“You’re the second person to say that to me,” Jae said finally, the first full sentence that he had spoken since waking up.
“I don’t say it lightly. Your heart stopped for a minute or two after our extraction team retrieved you, and even after you had been resuscitated it was uncertain for a while if you would stabilize. You had us worried for some time there.”
Jae tightened his grip on the water bottle, feeling and hearing the plastic crinkle under his fingers. He felt dizzy, hot and cold all over.
He had died, after all. Just not permanently enough.
Or was that even true? Jae wouldn’t have been surprised if Danya decided to lie about something like that just to get a rise out of him.
There was no way to know. What was worse, to know that he had failed completely at what was meant to be his last act of control, or to know that he had succeeded, briefly, only to have the accomplishment ripped away from him?
“I didn’t want that,” he said, unable to raise his voice above a whisper.
“Come again?” Danya raised his eyebrows, though Jae was sure he’d heard him perfectly the first time.
“Y-you- I didn’t-” Jae sucked in a breath through his teeth. “You had no right,” he said weakly, the flimsiest accusation ever thrown at someone who abducted children and forced them to kill each other. “You had no right. I wanted to die.”
Danya stared him down, perfectly calm. “You had your chance for that one hundred times over. Your actions tell a rather different story, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask,” Jae mumbled, petulant.
Danya’s mouth twitched and he exhaled sharply through his nose, as though he were trying not to laugh. Another stab of helpless frustration shot through Jae, making his throat tighten and his eyes sting, but he clamped his jaw shut and fought it. It was a losing battle, but he fought it anyway.
“That’s what I appreciate about you, Min-jae,” he said, and a sick, hateful knot tightened in Jae’s stomach at the familiarity of Danya’s tone and address. “Your determination. We’ve seen quite the array of winners come out of our little game by now, but I think you may be the most… oh, resilient. I can’t count how many times you got knocked down, but every time you got back up. Time and time again, circumstance just couldn’t kill you. That’s why you were the fittest of your classmates, despite the odds and the disadvantages you faced.”
There was something mocking in there, Jae was sure, but he was too focused on trying to steady his breathing to care much.
“Jonathan was so single-mindedly focused on revenge that he tried to make it too complex, and gave you too many openings. Brendan held onto those who would still forgive him so tightly that he wasn’t prepared to face someone who wouldn’t. Lily thought that she was beneath notice enough that it would save her. Samuel… well, we can say you were provoked.” Danya smiled slightly again and Jae’s stomach lurched.
“And of course, there was your friend Fiyori, but she made her choice.” Unlike you, Danya did not say, but the implication hung between them nonetheless.
“You surprised me,” he went on. “I must admit, I don’t think many of us watching expected you to be the one to come out of that final confrontation alive. Even when you were deliberately making yourself an easy target though, it seems luck favored you. And here you are.” He made a sweeping gesture at the whole of Jae’s pitiful, wheelchair-bound form.
Danya folded his hands and leaned forward on the desk. Jae noticed for the first time how lean, powerful muscle moved underneath his sweater, and wondered how deliberate the movement was. There was a subtle promise there, something that whispered in the back of your mind that this man was dangerous, for more reasons than just the organization he headed. There was something about him which whispered of violence, even wrapped up in his civilized presentation.
“And now,” Danya said, “you have one last choice to make.
“Do you want to go home, Min-jae?”
Jae stared at him, jaw set, not trusting himself to speak. After a moment of silence, Danya chuckled.
“I must say, the first winner that I dealt with was a much better conversationalist. I suppose Miss Montalvo was more of a social butterfly to begin with, though.” He waved one hand as though to clear his reminiscence away. “It’s traditional to offer the winner a place here, with our team.”
“Your team,” Jae echoed flatly. Like he was being offered a job at some kind of company.
“That’s right. We take people from all walks of life here, so long as they have skills that we value, including those with more… checkered pasts.” Danya’s eyes drilled into Jae. “The entire world knows you now, and what you’ve done. They might hate you, or fear you, but most of them will pity you.” His tone was so even and almost soothing that it made Jae want to throw the open water bottle in his face, if he had the strength to do so.
“Think about all that you’ve been through, and what you had to do to yourself and others to be the one sitting in front of me today. Everyone has at least the potential to do what you did, and most people don’t like being reminded of that.
“Here, though, it is not your past that defines you. Each and every member of our organization is proof of that. If you want to truly start over anew, we’ll gladly welcome you aboard. I think that, in time, your experience and perseverance could be quite invaluable to us.”
Jae stared.
And he pictured it.
Staying here. Starting over. Never having to face anyone who had known him before, never receiving any reminders more personal than a bunch of strangers on the other side of a screen. Taken care of in terms of money, necessities, and security for the rest of his life, or at least for as long as they could keep this up. Hell, Survival of the Fittest had been going for ten years by now; why not ten more, at least?
He could see himself there, faceless among the rest of the monsters, working his way up.
Until he could burn the kingdom down from the inside.
The water bottle crunched in Jae’s grip as he squeezed it. They had to know. Danya had to know what he was thinking. They had watched him come apart over the course of the game, watched his every action and guessed at his every thought, figured out how he worked. “Hey, let’s hand the keys over to this self-destructive asshole with every reason to hate us,” said no villain ever. There was a catch somewhere, there had to be.
Or maybe they really, truly thought he would fall in line. That he had taken enough abuse at their hands that he would gladly turn around and dish it out on someone new, like he’d done a million times before, take everything he had been given and serve it up a hundredfold against strangers whose only crime was enjoying the kind of existence that he could never have again.
Yeah, maybe they were onto something with that line of thought.
But here’s the thing. Jae knew himself, inside and out, even the parts that he hated the most. He knew what would happen sooner or later, with all that anger and resentment building up, time after time, growing twisted and sick and black until it split him open. If he was willing to take it out on total strangers, sooner or later it would just make more sense to make a move against the people who had actually done this to him.
If they let him in, all he really had left was his life, and he had shown the entire world just how much value he put in that. The only thing he would stand to lose by turning against them someday was hardly a price to pay at all.
But of course, that brought things full circle again.
“Fuck you,” Jae whispered, unable to muster the energy to even put any real bite behind it.
God, if nothing else, go be tired and bitter and destroy yourself somewhere else. Not here. Not with these people.
You took everything from me, even my choice to die.
You can’t have me anymore.
Danya’s brow furrowed just slightly, but his overall expression remained calm. Jae looked through him, breathing unsteadily.
At last, when it was clear that no further answer was forthcoming, Danya stood. “It is your choice, after all,” he said. “If you do happen to reconsider, our door is open for as long as you’ll be with us. Your circumstances have already required that you stay longer than most, of course, so I do hope that you’ll think it over while Doctors Camden and Kelley attend to your physical therapy before they deem you ready to be sent home.”
Jae barely heard him, and didn’t acknowledge what he did hear. Danya gave him one last look, studying him for a long moment before his eyes slid away from Jae. As though he had seen all that there was to see, and he wasn’t impressed. He’d seen it all before, and it bored him.
Something about it chafed and gnawed at the part of Jae cognizant enough to care. They were going to go to all the trouble of bringing him back from the dead, and then decide it wasn’t worth it, he was boring? Fuck off. That part of him wanted to be angrier about it than he was.
Just another needle under his skin along with all the others. There was too much in front of him to keep caring and raging at all of it, however deserving.
Jae leaned back in the wheelchair, tilted his head back, and exhaled. There was heat in the pit of his chest and a numbness in his limbs, buzzing in his fingertips. Danya rounded his desk and strode past Jae to open the door without acknowledging him further.
“I believe that will be all, Kelley,” he said to the man in the hall. “You may return Mr. Parker to his room.” Kelley followed him back inside and took control of Jae’s wheelchair once again. Danya obligingly held the door open for him to wheel Jae out into the hall.
As they passed him, Jae let the water bottle slip from his limp hand and bounce against the floor, spilling water across the tile and sprinkling the tops of Danya’s shoes. An expression of displeasure flickered ever so briefly across Danya’s face before he shut the door firmly behind them, much to Jae’s petty satisfaction.
People periodically checked in on Jae throughout that night to see if he would slip back into the deeper unconsciousness that had held him for over a week, according to what Trent had told him upon his return. He hadn’t thought that he would be able to sleep again, after spending eight days unconscious, but he was out almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. If he dreamed, he didn’t remember it, but he woke to find the blankets bunched at the foot of the bed where he had kicked them off during the night.
At some point after he awoke, a tray of Jell-O and soup broth was brought to him by what appeared to be the shiftiest hobo that Danya could find to employ. The stocky, messy-haired, mustachioed man introduced himself as Boris, as if Jae could possibly care, and he seemed almost apologetic as he monitored Jae.
“You’ve been very brave,” Boris said quietly as Jae finished eating. His tone might have meant to be comforting. “I am sure your family will be very happy to have you home.”
Something about it struck a chord. “Do you have a family?”
He seemed slightly startled, probably not expecting Jae to actually talk to him. “Yes,” he answered after a moment of hesitation.
Jae fell silent, watching Boris collect his tray. When Boris turned away from him to head to the door, he spoke again.
“I hope they die.”
Boris froze. He didn’t turn back to Jae, nor did he say anything in reply, but his reaction was enough. When Boris started moving again, Jae spoke again.
“I hope it hurts.” He raised his voice slightly as Boris exited the room, just to be sure that he would hear, “And I hope you have to watch.”
Later that day, Trent gave Jae the run-down of his injuries.
His knee had required minor surgery. Ten-plus days walking, running, and fighting on the injury had turned a partially-torn ACL into an avulsion fracture. The bone fragments and ligaments in his knee had to be grafted back together. Along with the surgery scars forming on his kneecap, there was a shallow groove cut across the back of his right knee from one of Jonathan’s attacks. He was going to need a knee brace and physical therapy for months each, but he would be able to walk more or less normally again at some point. Depending on how the scar tissue formed, mobility might be restricted, resulting in a limp, according to Trent. He probably wouldn’t need a cane or similar aid to get around once it healed, but he should consider the possibility if he had too much trouble, which was frankly kind of a surreal thing to be told at 17.
That was the verdict for most of the injuries; it would take time, possibly a long time, but he would eventually recover. The gash across his face was on its way to becoming a scar, stretching in a ragged line from the bridge of his nose, beneath his eye, across his left cheek and to his ear. It was raw and pink when he looked in the mirror, but Trent assured him that it would eventually fade to a less noticeable coloration.
There were smaller scars forming across his right hip, from where Brendan’s girlfriend had shot him, and scoring along his side where Nadia had tried to stab him. On his left side was the faint half-circle of a burn scar where he’d landed on the lit end of his cigarette after shooting Brendan. The cut across his stomach, also courtesy of Jonathan, had been slightly more serious and still pained him when he moved the wrong way. Trent told him that the pain probably wouldn’t last once it had healed, but the mark would.
He had gotten a minor concussion, probably when the bomb that killed Kimiko threw him against the kitchen door, though the other times he had been hit in the head certainly hadn’t helped. Trent didn’t think there would be any permanent damage, and Jae would just need to be careful about not hitting his head in the future. He shouldn’t be surprised if he had headaches long-term, Trent said.
His various other minor scrapes and bruises were starting to heal by the time he woke up, albeit slowly thanks to malnutrition and the sheer volume of damage he had taken. They still ached most of the time, and when they didn’t hurt, they itched.
His hand would never heal properly. The cut from Jonathan’s machete was too deep, leaving nerve damage in its wake. His broken fingers hadn’t set properly either, and would always be slightly crooked despite finally getting proper care after he was picked up. Trent talked about it while changing the bandages on Jae’s hand, letting him get a look at the damage. Seeing his own insides, even to such a minor degree, made Jae’s stomach churn. The machete injury wasn’t quite scarring up yet, but it would. A chunk of thick, ropy scar tissue that extended nearly an inch into his palm between the knuckles of his middle and ring fingers would eventually fill the space that had been split open.
It would hurt him for the rest of his life, Trent told him. Chronic pain and restricted mobility, difficulty holding and lifting things in his left hand. All of that, stretching into the vague, unfathomable idea of forever, however long that would really be.
Jae sat and looked at his hand while Trent wrote up a schedule for the physical therapy he would be undergoing while still in the AT’s care, and he thought about the first day on the island, so long ago now, when he had been vaguely thankful that at least Alvaro hadn’t broken his drawing hand.
“Would somebody get me some pencils and drawing paper if I asked for it?” He asked as Trent turned to leave.
“Probably not. Pencils are sharp.”
Right. No sharp objects, no loose cords, plastic spoons and supervision while he ate.
“You could get some crayons, perhaps,” Trent suggested.
“Never mind,” Jae muttered.
That night, Jae had more difficulty falling asleep. Instead he stared up at the dark ceiling, trying to recall all the details of the faces he had seen in turn.
Danya with his dark, endless eyes and smarmy little half-smile, like he knew so much that you didn’t. Jae bet that if Danya tilted his head just right, his glasses would reflect the light to obscure his eyes completely. Eyeless, soulless. Nothing to see in there. Smug-ass Michael Crowe-looking fuck with that expression. Jae bet that Danya would have found Michael a delightful winner.
Trent didn’t smile much. All business except for when he stared at Jae like a bug underneath a microscope. Trent’s rare smiles were odd, too. Empty. Not quite as smug, but more unsettling. But at least he didn’t act like he was trying to become anyone’s friend.
Trent’s smile in Jae’s mind’s eye shifted and melted and reformed into Dr. Kelley, and then Boris. Boris looked like he hadn’t slept a wink in the last five years. Jae hoped he hadn’t. Jae hoped that Boris had night terrors and that his thoughts never gave him a moment’s rest. He could have wished that on any and all of them, but Boris seemed the most likely candidate for it to actually take, based on Jae’s brief interaction with him.
There wasn’t much to recall besides the four of them, and Boris’s dour face faded into Jae’s own exhausted reflection; he had seen his own face clearly for the first time in nearly three weeks that morning. He thought that he shouldn’t still look the same, but he did. Hollow-cheeked and shadow-eyed, the healing gash on his face unbandaged for the first time in a while, but it was still him.
Had anybody he met on the island looked as tired as he did now? Kimiko had seemed tired. Nate too, Jae supposed. Fiyori had been full of life to the very end. What a bitch.
Jae couldn’t remember what she had looked like before the island, if she had been any different. He couldn’t be sure if anyone had. Asha had seemed herself, but whenever Jae tried to think of her, to picture her smile, all he could see was her laying dead on the floor with her throat gaping open like a second screaming mouth. He hadn’t gotten to see Henry at all. He would never know, really, what the island had done to Henry. Just the end results.
Wondering about people who hadn’t been on the trip was no better. Too many choices, too much distance. Nobody looked real when he tried to remember their faces, their mannerisms. Actors on an old television.
Jae turned over and buried his face in the pillow. All his myriad aches and pains protested the movement. If he strained, groped through the dark and back into the past, he could catch glimpses of the people he knew as they should have been, but then the pictures warped and faded, and he sank back down into nothing.
At some point after he awoke, a tray of Jell-O and soup broth was brought to him by what appeared to be the shiftiest hobo that Danya could find to employ. The stocky, messy-haired, mustachioed man introduced himself as Boris, as if Jae could possibly care, and he seemed almost apologetic as he monitored Jae.
“You’ve been very brave,” Boris said quietly as Jae finished eating. His tone might have meant to be comforting. “I am sure your family will be very happy to have you home.”
Something about it struck a chord. “Do you have a family?”
He seemed slightly startled, probably not expecting Jae to actually talk to him. “Yes,” he answered after a moment of hesitation.
Jae fell silent, watching Boris collect his tray. When Boris turned away from him to head to the door, he spoke again.
“I hope they die.”
Boris froze. He didn’t turn back to Jae, nor did he say anything in reply, but his reaction was enough. When Boris started moving again, Jae spoke again.
“I hope it hurts.” He raised his voice slightly as Boris exited the room, just to be sure that he would hear, “And I hope you have to watch.”
Later that day, Trent gave Jae the run-down of his injuries.
His knee had required minor surgery. Ten-plus days walking, running, and fighting on the injury had turned a partially-torn ACL into an avulsion fracture. The bone fragments and ligaments in his knee had to be grafted back together. Along with the surgery scars forming on his kneecap, there was a shallow groove cut across the back of his right knee from one of Jonathan’s attacks. He was going to need a knee brace and physical therapy for months each, but he would be able to walk more or less normally again at some point. Depending on how the scar tissue formed, mobility might be restricted, resulting in a limp, according to Trent. He probably wouldn’t need a cane or similar aid to get around once it healed, but he should consider the possibility if he had too much trouble, which was frankly kind of a surreal thing to be told at 17.
That was the verdict for most of the injuries; it would take time, possibly a long time, but he would eventually recover. The gash across his face was on its way to becoming a scar, stretching in a ragged line from the bridge of his nose, beneath his eye, across his left cheek and to his ear. It was raw and pink when he looked in the mirror, but Trent assured him that it would eventually fade to a less noticeable coloration.
There were smaller scars forming across his right hip, from where Brendan’s girlfriend had shot him, and scoring along his side where Nadia had tried to stab him. On his left side was the faint half-circle of a burn scar where he’d landed on the lit end of his cigarette after shooting Brendan. The cut across his stomach, also courtesy of Jonathan, had been slightly more serious and still pained him when he moved the wrong way. Trent told him that the pain probably wouldn’t last once it had healed, but the mark would.
He had gotten a minor concussion, probably when the bomb that killed Kimiko threw him against the kitchen door, though the other times he had been hit in the head certainly hadn’t helped. Trent didn’t think there would be any permanent damage, and Jae would just need to be careful about not hitting his head in the future. He shouldn’t be surprised if he had headaches long-term, Trent said.
His various other minor scrapes and bruises were starting to heal by the time he woke up, albeit slowly thanks to malnutrition and the sheer volume of damage he had taken. They still ached most of the time, and when they didn’t hurt, they itched.
His hand would never heal properly. The cut from Jonathan’s machete was too deep, leaving nerve damage in its wake. His broken fingers hadn’t set properly either, and would always be slightly crooked despite finally getting proper care after he was picked up. Trent talked about it while changing the bandages on Jae’s hand, letting him get a look at the damage. Seeing his own insides, even to such a minor degree, made Jae’s stomach churn. The machete injury wasn’t quite scarring up yet, but it would. A chunk of thick, ropy scar tissue that extended nearly an inch into his palm between the knuckles of his middle and ring fingers would eventually fill the space that had been split open.
It would hurt him for the rest of his life, Trent told him. Chronic pain and restricted mobility, difficulty holding and lifting things in his left hand. All of that, stretching into the vague, unfathomable idea of forever, however long that would really be.
Jae sat and looked at his hand while Trent wrote up a schedule for the physical therapy he would be undergoing while still in the AT’s care, and he thought about the first day on the island, so long ago now, when he had been vaguely thankful that at least Alvaro hadn’t broken his drawing hand.
“Would somebody get me some pencils and drawing paper if I asked for it?” He asked as Trent turned to leave.
“Probably not. Pencils are sharp.”
Right. No sharp objects, no loose cords, plastic spoons and supervision while he ate.
“You could get some crayons, perhaps,” Trent suggested.
“Never mind,” Jae muttered.
That night, Jae had more difficulty falling asleep. Instead he stared up at the dark ceiling, trying to recall all the details of the faces he had seen in turn.
Danya with his dark, endless eyes and smarmy little half-smile, like he knew so much that you didn’t. Jae bet that if Danya tilted his head just right, his glasses would reflect the light to obscure his eyes completely. Eyeless, soulless. Nothing to see in there. Smug-ass Michael Crowe-looking fuck with that expression. Jae bet that Danya would have found Michael a delightful winner.
Trent didn’t smile much. All business except for when he stared at Jae like a bug underneath a microscope. Trent’s rare smiles were odd, too. Empty. Not quite as smug, but more unsettling. But at least he didn’t act like he was trying to become anyone’s friend.
Trent’s smile in Jae’s mind’s eye shifted and melted and reformed into Dr. Kelley, and then Boris. Boris looked like he hadn’t slept a wink in the last five years. Jae hoped he hadn’t. Jae hoped that Boris had night terrors and that his thoughts never gave him a moment’s rest. He could have wished that on any and all of them, but Boris seemed the most likely candidate for it to actually take, based on Jae’s brief interaction with him.
There wasn’t much to recall besides the four of them, and Boris’s dour face faded into Jae’s own exhausted reflection; he had seen his own face clearly for the first time in nearly three weeks that morning. He thought that he shouldn’t still look the same, but he did. Hollow-cheeked and shadow-eyed, the healing gash on his face unbandaged for the first time in a while, but it was still him.
Had anybody he met on the island looked as tired as he did now? Kimiko had seemed tired. Nate too, Jae supposed. Fiyori had been full of life to the very end. What a bitch.
Jae couldn’t remember what she had looked like before the island, if she had been any different. He couldn’t be sure if anyone had. Asha had seemed herself, but whenever Jae tried to think of her, to picture her smile, all he could see was her laying dead on the floor with her throat gaping open like a second screaming mouth. He hadn’t gotten to see Henry at all. He would never know, really, what the island had done to Henry. Just the end results.
Wondering about people who hadn’t been on the trip was no better. Too many choices, too much distance. Nobody looked real when he tried to remember their faces, their mannerisms. Actors on an old television.
Jae turned over and buried his face in the pillow. All his myriad aches and pains protested the movement. If he strained, groped through the dark and back into the past, he could catch glimpses of the people he knew as they should have been, but then the pictures warped and faded, and he sank back down into nothing.
Despite Jae’s best efforts to constantly remind himself of the situation he was in, things fell into a routine. He couldn’t keep up the energy to fight against it.
Get up. Wash and groom himself to the best of his ability. Eat breakfast. Verbally abuse Boris. Physical therapy with Trent and Dr. Kelley. Eat lunch. Bitch at Boris some more. More physical therapy. Eat dinner. Get one or two potshots in at Boris just for good measure. Go to bed. Repeat the next morning.
He didn’t keep track of the days, and he didn’t ask about what was going on in the world outside his room. The only things to mark that time was passing in any significant way were when he got to switch from soup broth and Jell-O to rice and cooked vegetables, and when he could finally hobble around enough that he didn’t need to rely on the wheelchair all the time. His meals were supplemented with painkillers and multivitamins, which were always monitored carefully as he took them to make sure that he had no opportunity to start hoarding pills.
He was still weak, and everything hurt more often than it didn’t, and Jae thought very often of his mom and all the times when her illness had reduced her to relying on him and his dad for help in accomplishing day to day tasks. He felt a new, surprisingly fierce kinship with her whenever he thought of it, which quickly turned into almost childish longing. He didn’t like to dwell on those thoughts and feelings, but they were some of the most persistent and hardest to ignore.
There wasn’t much in the room he was confined in to keep him entertained; it was furnished only with the bed, a small table where he took his meals, and a pair of uncomfortable chairs to accompany the table, plus the settings in the modest bathroom which connected to it. Dr. Kelley kindly suggested once or twice that Jae would benefit from venturing into the social areas and finding someone to talk to or a hobby to pass the time, and Jae in turn kindly suggested that Dr. Kelley go fuck himself. Trent overruled Jae’s suggestion, and so Jae found himself sulking on the corner of a couch in some sort of recreation room, curled into himself as tightly as he could manage. He refused to speak to anyone who passed by and after a while, they didn’t bother approaching him. He just sat and studied their faces.
Out of everyone that he had to put up with, Trent was probably Jae’s favorite company because he seemed entirely disinterested in Jae as a person. No sympathetic overtures to ease his own conscience, no false kindness. His presence was discomforting, and Jae was always glad for him to leave, but they knew exactly where they stood with each other, no pretense. Trent showed up, put Jae through his paces for PT, and then went on his merry way to fillet puppies or whatever it was he did in his free time without any nonsense in between.
Dr. Kelley wasn’t quite so impersonal, but at least he didn’t pry. He seemed content to let Trent take the lead in most interactions and only occasionally stepped in as a moderating influence. Normally, Kelley was the one to inquire about Jae’s mental state while Trent attended to the physical side of things. He exuded a quiet professionality that verged on friendliness enough to irk Jae, but not so much that it really made him difficult to interact with.
Jae still hated them of course, as much as he hated everyone else here, but at least there was no extra bullshit to sift through with Trent and a minimal amount with Kelley.
On the opposite end of the scale sat Boris.
Jae had an extra-special store of hate reserved for Boris.
Because Boris kept trying to be nice. Boris hand-delivered his meals without fail three times a day and sat and watched him eat to make sure Jae made no attempts to hurt himself, and he offered words of reassurance and comfort whenever he thought that Jae looked too despondent.
Boris was so easy to pick on.
Boris kept his mouth shut whenever Jae started in on him again, taking everything that was thrown at him and giving none of it back. He didn’t complain. Sometimes he didn’t even flinch. Jae knew that his words got through the cracks in the armor, though; he had seen it the very first time. It wasn’t a pleasure to take things out on Boris, exactly, but it gave Jae some relief.
Until one evening, as Jae was working his way through his third plate of bland rice and veggies for the day while Boris sat and watched. He went to say something as usual, but he caught Boris’s eye as he opened his mouth.
Boris looked like he always did. Tired, mostly. But there was something else there too as he noticed Jae beginning to speak. Some sort of resignation that Jae thought he recognized.
And just in that moment, with that expression, he reminded Jae so starkly of Brendan that it almost made him dizzy.
Boris looked nothing like Brendan did, of course. (Like Brendan had, because Brendan was dead and Jae had murdered him.) It was the expression, though. It reminded Jae of how Brendan had always looked back in school when he got someone, usually Jae, really wound up and mad at him. Like he knew what was coming, and he was just trying to weather the storm.
Jae ended up saying nothing and finished eating in silence.
He didn’t say much to Boris anymore after that.
A torn ACL meant that the muscle on top of the thigh more or less stopped working and needed to be trained back into function. Most of the exercises could be performed sitting down, at least; extending and raising his injured leg, seeing how long he could hold it. Kelley usually supported him, pushing his leg a little further up and out each time until Jae complained of the pain.
They always finished with standing and balance, which was the worst part. It tired him out more quickly than everything that preceded it, forcing him to work out muscles that he’d rarely used even before destroying his knee. Even more touching was required during this part so that Jae didn’t tip over and faceplant on the floor. He always had the urge to shrug Dr. Kelley’s hands off his shoulders, potential fall be damned. More often than not, Jae still had the instinctive fear that his leg was going to telescope underneath him, though. He didn’t trust them not to mishandle him somehow and do even more damage. He was always glad when it was over.
“That’s enough for today.” Trent finally turned away to scribble whatever it was that he did on his notes while Jae gratefully sank into his chair, right leg extended in front of him to work out some of the soreness that the PT had left.
“You’re making good progress,” Dr. Kelley said, hovering nearby Jae’s chair like usual. Jae grunted in response and didn’t turn to look at him.
“It won’t be long now,” Trent said almost absently. That gave Jae pause, but he didn’t have much time to get his thoughts in order before the pair bustled towards the door.
“Oh-” Trent said over his shoulder, as though something had just occurred to him. “Happy 18th birthday, by the way.”
The air left Jae’s lungs and the world went gray. The door swung shut behind Trent and Kelley, and he was alone.
He never came up with a response. He half-rose as though to make for the door and then sank back down, shuddering, good hand clamped over his mouth.
They had been taken in… early May? That made it a month, more than a month, and Jae felt like he barely remembered enough to fill half that time.
Almost everyone he knew had died within about a week, and the rest of that space was filled with fuzzy, faraway nothing.
Jae wasn’t sure whether he was laughing or crying. Either way, there were tears.
Get up. Wash and groom himself to the best of his ability. Eat breakfast. Verbally abuse Boris. Physical therapy with Trent and Dr. Kelley. Eat lunch. Bitch at Boris some more. More physical therapy. Eat dinner. Get one or two potshots in at Boris just for good measure. Go to bed. Repeat the next morning.
He didn’t keep track of the days, and he didn’t ask about what was going on in the world outside his room. The only things to mark that time was passing in any significant way were when he got to switch from soup broth and Jell-O to rice and cooked vegetables, and when he could finally hobble around enough that he didn’t need to rely on the wheelchair all the time. His meals were supplemented with painkillers and multivitamins, which were always monitored carefully as he took them to make sure that he had no opportunity to start hoarding pills.
He was still weak, and everything hurt more often than it didn’t, and Jae thought very often of his mom and all the times when her illness had reduced her to relying on him and his dad for help in accomplishing day to day tasks. He felt a new, surprisingly fierce kinship with her whenever he thought of it, which quickly turned into almost childish longing. He didn’t like to dwell on those thoughts and feelings, but they were some of the most persistent and hardest to ignore.
There wasn’t much in the room he was confined in to keep him entertained; it was furnished only with the bed, a small table where he took his meals, and a pair of uncomfortable chairs to accompany the table, plus the settings in the modest bathroom which connected to it. Dr. Kelley kindly suggested once or twice that Jae would benefit from venturing into the social areas and finding someone to talk to or a hobby to pass the time, and Jae in turn kindly suggested that Dr. Kelley go fuck himself. Trent overruled Jae’s suggestion, and so Jae found himself sulking on the corner of a couch in some sort of recreation room, curled into himself as tightly as he could manage. He refused to speak to anyone who passed by and after a while, they didn’t bother approaching him. He just sat and studied their faces.
Out of everyone that he had to put up with, Trent was probably Jae’s favorite company because he seemed entirely disinterested in Jae as a person. No sympathetic overtures to ease his own conscience, no false kindness. His presence was discomforting, and Jae was always glad for him to leave, but they knew exactly where they stood with each other, no pretense. Trent showed up, put Jae through his paces for PT, and then went on his merry way to fillet puppies or whatever it was he did in his free time without any nonsense in between.
Dr. Kelley wasn’t quite so impersonal, but at least he didn’t pry. He seemed content to let Trent take the lead in most interactions and only occasionally stepped in as a moderating influence. Normally, Kelley was the one to inquire about Jae’s mental state while Trent attended to the physical side of things. He exuded a quiet professionality that verged on friendliness enough to irk Jae, but not so much that it really made him difficult to interact with.
Jae still hated them of course, as much as he hated everyone else here, but at least there was no extra bullshit to sift through with Trent and a minimal amount with Kelley.
On the opposite end of the scale sat Boris.
Jae had an extra-special store of hate reserved for Boris.
Because Boris kept trying to be nice. Boris hand-delivered his meals without fail three times a day and sat and watched him eat to make sure Jae made no attempts to hurt himself, and he offered words of reassurance and comfort whenever he thought that Jae looked too despondent.
Boris was so easy to pick on.
Boris kept his mouth shut whenever Jae started in on him again, taking everything that was thrown at him and giving none of it back. He didn’t complain. Sometimes he didn’t even flinch. Jae knew that his words got through the cracks in the armor, though; he had seen it the very first time. It wasn’t a pleasure to take things out on Boris, exactly, but it gave Jae some relief.
Until one evening, as Jae was working his way through his third plate of bland rice and veggies for the day while Boris sat and watched. He went to say something as usual, but he caught Boris’s eye as he opened his mouth.
Boris looked like he always did. Tired, mostly. But there was something else there too as he noticed Jae beginning to speak. Some sort of resignation that Jae thought he recognized.
And just in that moment, with that expression, he reminded Jae so starkly of Brendan that it almost made him dizzy.
Boris looked nothing like Brendan did, of course. (Like Brendan had, because Brendan was dead and Jae had murdered him.) It was the expression, though. It reminded Jae of how Brendan had always looked back in school when he got someone, usually Jae, really wound up and mad at him. Like he knew what was coming, and he was just trying to weather the storm.
Jae ended up saying nothing and finished eating in silence.
He didn’t say much to Boris anymore after that.
June 9, 2015, 2:45 P.M.: Undisclosed Location
Physical therapy generally consisted of yoga and balance exercises with entirely too many people touching Jae. A torn ACL meant that the muscle on top of the thigh more or less stopped working and needed to be trained back into function. Most of the exercises could be performed sitting down, at least; extending and raising his injured leg, seeing how long he could hold it. Kelley usually supported him, pushing his leg a little further up and out each time until Jae complained of the pain.
They always finished with standing and balance, which was the worst part. It tired him out more quickly than everything that preceded it, forcing him to work out muscles that he’d rarely used even before destroying his knee. Even more touching was required during this part so that Jae didn’t tip over and faceplant on the floor. He always had the urge to shrug Dr. Kelley’s hands off his shoulders, potential fall be damned. More often than not, Jae still had the instinctive fear that his leg was going to telescope underneath him, though. He didn’t trust them not to mishandle him somehow and do even more damage. He was always glad when it was over.
“That’s enough for today.” Trent finally turned away to scribble whatever it was that he did on his notes while Jae gratefully sank into his chair, right leg extended in front of him to work out some of the soreness that the PT had left.
“You’re making good progress,” Dr. Kelley said, hovering nearby Jae’s chair like usual. Jae grunted in response and didn’t turn to look at him.
“It won’t be long now,” Trent said almost absently. That gave Jae pause, but he didn’t have much time to get his thoughts in order before the pair bustled towards the door.
“Oh-” Trent said over his shoulder, as though something had just occurred to him. “Happy 18th birthday, by the way.”
The air left Jae’s lungs and the world went gray. The door swung shut behind Trent and Kelley, and he was alone.
He never came up with a response. He half-rose as though to make for the door and then sank back down, shuddering, good hand clamped over his mouth.
They had been taken in… early May? That made it a month, more than a month, and Jae felt like he barely remembered enough to fill half that time.
Almost everyone he knew had died within about a week, and the rest of that space was filled with fuzzy, faraway nothing.
Jae wasn’t sure whether he was laughing or crying. Either way, there were tears.
Get up. Wash and groom himself to the best of his ability. Eat breakfast. Ignore Boris. Physical therapy with Trent and Dr. Kelley. Eat lunch. Ignore Boris. More physical therapy. Eat dinner. Continue ignoring Boris. Don’t make eye contact. Go to bed. Repeat the next morning.
At some point, Boris stopped delivering Jae’s meals; instead, Dr. Kelley assumed that duty. Jae wasn’t sorry about the change.
Jae tried keeping track of the days since his birthday for a while, but eventually gave up. They all blurred monotonously together. Jae ventured out into the recreation area when prodded to, but he mostly kept to his room when not going through PT. Sometimes he paced around, testing how well and how long his repaired knee and new brace could support him, but most often he just laid on the bed, either sleeping or thinking.
Sometimes he wondered how long he was going to be kept here. The people that he saw regularly kept to their schedules like clockwork with no outward indication that they were tiring of him, though Jae was sure that they were. He was tired of himself most of the time.
Someone brought him fresh clothes every morning, always sweatpants or pajama pants, t-shirts, and socks. No shoes. All in gray and black, possibly because Danya or somebody got a kick out of mockingly adhering to Jae’s preferred color palette, but more probably because those were simplest. Whoever was in charge of laundry returned the Nine Inch Nails shirt to the rotation every few days. Jae had briefly wondered about that, whether they were a fan or what, and then he had remembered that he didn’t want to think of any of these people as actual people.
He hadn’t bothered to wonder much about what happened to his old clothes; there was far too much blood, sweat, and grime caked into them to ever be properly cleaned. Even aside from that, it wasn’t like he would have wanted them back. Yeah, let’s just revisit the outfit you were wearing when literally almost everyone you know died. You know, for nostalgia’s sake.
It occasionally occurred to him to wonder whether Danya had been lying about sending him home. All of the previous winners that he could remember hearing about had gone home after a time, yes, but Jae wasn’t completely willing to dismiss the idea that they might have decided to just hold him indefinitely out of some kind of twisted amusement.
He didn’t like thinking of himself as a winner. Like a wrecked body, fitful sleep, and a stay that was essentially a prison sentence were any kind of prize. At times, it occurred to him that maybe Danya and the people keeping him here didn’t consider him much of a winner either.
He got headaches sometimes. Trent and Dr. Kelley both told him that they were possibly symptoms of the concussion he’d gotten, possibly nicotine withdrawal, possibly a result of staying cooped up more often than not. There were no windows in any of the rooms he was allowed to venture into; Jae remembered hearing somewhere that staying inside for so long without exposure to natural light was bad for you, but there was no outside area available to him. Trent and Dr. Kelley made sure that he was properly hydrated, and refused to give him any extra painkillers besides the ones that came with his meals.
He got nicotine cravings sometimes too. The headaches were most often coupled with them. His hands would shake, and he would stubbornly refuse to meet anyone’s eyes when they noticed. He wasn’t about to bum cigarettes off of some terrorist.
There was no reason why that became the particular line that the shredded remnants of Jae’s pride refused to let him cross; it simply was.
Maybe he remembered too well that the last person who had lent him some was somebody he’d actually known and liked.
At some point, Jae gave in and began to really think about going home.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to kill himself still; or maybe he had never wanted to kill himself so much as he felt like he needed to, needed to make a point, needed to snatch away whatever victory someone else might get if he died by their hand. That was still there, whatever it was, and it might always be there. Dr. Kelley had told him that it wasn’t unusual for survivor’s guilt to manifest in suicidal ideation. Whatever.
In the absence of being able to kill himself, he was forced to think about the other possibilities. His mind returned to the offer Danya had made more than he wanted to admit, but he always shoved it away. He had as good as spit in Danya’s face over the offer, and his biggest regret was that he hadn’t managed to do so for real. He’d burned that bridge and was glad for it.
With that off the table, the truth that Jae hated to acknowledge presented itself.
No matter how much he tried to fight it, Jae wanted to go home.
He wanted his mom and dad. He wanted to see them again, even if that ended up lasting all of two minutes before they threw him out on the street for killing a bunch of people that he knew. Or for being gay, since he had gone and spilled that in front of the whole world thinking that he wouldn’t live long enough to deal with any fallout. People worked in strange, arbitrary ways.
Even knowing that was a possibility didn’t stop Jae from wanting to see them again. If it happened, he’d… he didn’t know. His plans for after high school had always been vague. He hadn’t ever really considered what else might happen in the interim.
In his room, Jae cocooned himself in his scratchy blanket and stared at the wall or the ceiling, and he imagined a hundred million scenarios. Going home, running away, going anywhere but Kingman, going straight to his house and never leaving again.
Sitting in this room day after day, going through the slow, painful progress of physical therapy and the monotony of lying in bed or huddling on the rec room couch trying to forget where he was, everything that Jae had shoved down and denied on the island dredged itself up.
He had wanted to travel after graduation. He’d thought about going to art school after getting his basics done at community college; Mrs. Liberman had given him fliers for a few different places around the country and one or two overseas. She’d gotten her degree in New York, and had hinted heavily that his portfolio was good enough to get into her alma mater if it came with a letter of recommendation attached. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted that yet. He still wasn’t sure about anything.
It was hard to plan for the future when there were still times that Jae couldn’t imagine getting through the next five minutes.
He had tried so hard to convince himself that there would be nothing to go back to, and now he was being shoved back out into it anyway and he couldn’t even say that he was entirely against it.
Sometimes he wanted it so badly that it hurt.
But the thing was this: Jae wanted to go home, but more than anything, he wanted to go back to the way that things were before. That was the impossible dream and the bitter truth all in one. Even if there was something still waiting for him, it wouldn’t be exactly what he wanted.
That was why he had fought it so hard on the island. Those promises that Danya made every day weren’t real. The people who fought and killed just to get to the end, the ones who thought they could just get off scot-free and slip right back into their old lives like they had never left, they were fighting for something that had stopped existing as soon as they were abducted.
That was the unfairness of it all that Jae had raged against so impotently. What they all really wanted had been a lie from the very beginning.
He fell asleep thinking about that, and when he woke he found that someone had left a new addition with the usual pile of clean clothes.
The leather was scuffed and cut in places that a couple of months ago had been pristine, and there was the faintest of dull, reddish stains on the inside lining, but the jacket was significantly cleaner than the last time Jae had worn it. The flower hairpin was still fixed on the lapel, looking rather worse for wear but stubbornly hanging on.
Instead of going to wash and dress himself, Jae climbed back into bed and curled up tightly, clinging to the jacket like a security blanket.
At some point, Boris stopped delivering Jae’s meals; instead, Dr. Kelley assumed that duty. Jae wasn’t sorry about the change.
Jae tried keeping track of the days since his birthday for a while, but eventually gave up. They all blurred monotonously together. Jae ventured out into the recreation area when prodded to, but he mostly kept to his room when not going through PT. Sometimes he paced around, testing how well and how long his repaired knee and new brace could support him, but most often he just laid on the bed, either sleeping or thinking.
Sometimes he wondered how long he was going to be kept here. The people that he saw regularly kept to their schedules like clockwork with no outward indication that they were tiring of him, though Jae was sure that they were. He was tired of himself most of the time.
Someone brought him fresh clothes every morning, always sweatpants or pajama pants, t-shirts, and socks. No shoes. All in gray and black, possibly because Danya or somebody got a kick out of mockingly adhering to Jae’s preferred color palette, but more probably because those were simplest. Whoever was in charge of laundry returned the Nine Inch Nails shirt to the rotation every few days. Jae had briefly wondered about that, whether they were a fan or what, and then he had remembered that he didn’t want to think of any of these people as actual people.
He hadn’t bothered to wonder much about what happened to his old clothes; there was far too much blood, sweat, and grime caked into them to ever be properly cleaned. Even aside from that, it wasn’t like he would have wanted them back. Yeah, let’s just revisit the outfit you were wearing when literally almost everyone you know died. You know, for nostalgia’s sake.
It occasionally occurred to him to wonder whether Danya had been lying about sending him home. All of the previous winners that he could remember hearing about had gone home after a time, yes, but Jae wasn’t completely willing to dismiss the idea that they might have decided to just hold him indefinitely out of some kind of twisted amusement.
He didn’t like thinking of himself as a winner. Like a wrecked body, fitful sleep, and a stay that was essentially a prison sentence were any kind of prize. At times, it occurred to him that maybe Danya and the people keeping him here didn’t consider him much of a winner either.
He got headaches sometimes. Trent and Dr. Kelley both told him that they were possibly symptoms of the concussion he’d gotten, possibly nicotine withdrawal, possibly a result of staying cooped up more often than not. There were no windows in any of the rooms he was allowed to venture into; Jae remembered hearing somewhere that staying inside for so long without exposure to natural light was bad for you, but there was no outside area available to him. Trent and Dr. Kelley made sure that he was properly hydrated, and refused to give him any extra painkillers besides the ones that came with his meals.
He got nicotine cravings sometimes too. The headaches were most often coupled with them. His hands would shake, and he would stubbornly refuse to meet anyone’s eyes when they noticed. He wasn’t about to bum cigarettes off of some terrorist.
There was no reason why that became the particular line that the shredded remnants of Jae’s pride refused to let him cross; it simply was.
Maybe he remembered too well that the last person who had lent him some was somebody he’d actually known and liked.
At some point, Jae gave in and began to really think about going home.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to kill himself still; or maybe he had never wanted to kill himself so much as he felt like he needed to, needed to make a point, needed to snatch away whatever victory someone else might get if he died by their hand. That was still there, whatever it was, and it might always be there. Dr. Kelley had told him that it wasn’t unusual for survivor’s guilt to manifest in suicidal ideation. Whatever.
In the absence of being able to kill himself, he was forced to think about the other possibilities. His mind returned to the offer Danya had made more than he wanted to admit, but he always shoved it away. He had as good as spit in Danya’s face over the offer, and his biggest regret was that he hadn’t managed to do so for real. He’d burned that bridge and was glad for it.
With that off the table, the truth that Jae hated to acknowledge presented itself.
No matter how much he tried to fight it, Jae wanted to go home.
He wanted his mom and dad. He wanted to see them again, even if that ended up lasting all of two minutes before they threw him out on the street for killing a bunch of people that he knew. Or for being gay, since he had gone and spilled that in front of the whole world thinking that he wouldn’t live long enough to deal with any fallout. People worked in strange, arbitrary ways.
Even knowing that was a possibility didn’t stop Jae from wanting to see them again. If it happened, he’d… he didn’t know. His plans for after high school had always been vague. He hadn’t ever really considered what else might happen in the interim.
In his room, Jae cocooned himself in his scratchy blanket and stared at the wall or the ceiling, and he imagined a hundred million scenarios. Going home, running away, going anywhere but Kingman, going straight to his house and never leaving again.
Sitting in this room day after day, going through the slow, painful progress of physical therapy and the monotony of lying in bed or huddling on the rec room couch trying to forget where he was, everything that Jae had shoved down and denied on the island dredged itself up.
He had wanted to travel after graduation. He’d thought about going to art school after getting his basics done at community college; Mrs. Liberman had given him fliers for a few different places around the country and one or two overseas. She’d gotten her degree in New York, and had hinted heavily that his portfolio was good enough to get into her alma mater if it came with a letter of recommendation attached. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted that yet. He still wasn’t sure about anything.
It was hard to plan for the future when there were still times that Jae couldn’t imagine getting through the next five minutes.
He had tried so hard to convince himself that there would be nothing to go back to, and now he was being shoved back out into it anyway and he couldn’t even say that he was entirely against it.
Sometimes he wanted it so badly that it hurt.
But the thing was this: Jae wanted to go home, but more than anything, he wanted to go back to the way that things were before. That was the impossible dream and the bitter truth all in one. Even if there was something still waiting for him, it wouldn’t be exactly what he wanted.
That was why he had fought it so hard on the island. Those promises that Danya made every day weren’t real. The people who fought and killed just to get to the end, the ones who thought they could just get off scot-free and slip right back into their old lives like they had never left, they were fighting for something that had stopped existing as soon as they were abducted.
That was the unfairness of it all that Jae had raged against so impotently. What they all really wanted had been a lie from the very beginning.
He fell asleep thinking about that, and when he woke he found that someone had left a new addition with the usual pile of clean clothes.
The leather was scuffed and cut in places that a couple of months ago had been pristine, and there was the faintest of dull, reddish stains on the inside lining, but the jacket was significantly cleaner than the last time Jae had worn it. The flower hairpin was still fixed on the lapel, looking rather worse for wear but stubbornly hanging on.
Instead of going to wash and dress himself, Jae climbed back into bed and curled up tightly, clinging to the jacket like a security blanket.
July 11, 2015, Undisclosed Location
Jae knew that something was off as soon as he saw that Dr. Kelley wasn’t alone when he brought Jae’s lunch in. Flanking him were Trent, and one of the brawnier guys that Jae had seen hanging around the lounge, the one with the scar across his nose. Richards, or something. Richards was holding an assault rifle.
“No need for the deer-in-headlights look,” Trent said to Jae. “In fact, you should be celebrating. Your time with us is just about at an end.”
Dr. Kelley set Jae’s lunch tray down in front of him like usual. The pills that accompanied his food this time were different than the usual ones.
“Take all of that, and you’ll be off to dreamland in no time. Oh-” Trent added as Jae hesitantly poked at the food, “I’m supposed to ask; I don’t suppose you’ve reconsidered Mr. Danya’s offer.”
Jae pressed his mouth into a thin line. “No,” he said shortly. Maybe they knew that it was a lie, but that was the only answer they were going to get out of him. In the end, Jae was just tired of thinking about things so much. He had spent far too much time alone in his own head.
None of the men seemed surprised. Jae eyed Richards in particular, but he looked almost bored with the whole thing. He’d done this before, probably. Jae couldn’t help wondering which of the other survivors had sat here watching him just like this.
And just like that, it hit him that he was going home. To what? He didn’t know. He could wonder, and he could hope, but he wouldn’t know until he woke up again.
But there would be something. Even wreckage would be something.
That’s all that we have to hold onto for now, self. Keep moving until you can’t anymore.
“It’s safe,” Dr. Kelley reassured him unnecessarily, as Jae still hadn’t touched the food. There was no doubt this time that they were telling the truth. It wouldn’t make any sense to have gone through all that they had up to this point to do anything but what they said they were going to do.
“Where am I going?” Jae asked before he could help himself.
“That’s up to you now,” Trent said. Dr. Kelley just gave him a small, unexpectedly sad smile.
There was a lump in Jae’s throat and he didn’t like it, so he did the only thing that he could.
He ate his food. He took the pills. He sat and waited, looking at the three men in the room with them. He looked at each of them in turn, trying to memorize every last detail of their faces, until his vision began to swim. Trent caught him by the shoulders as the world tilted, and the last Jae would see of any of the monsters faded away.
July 12, 2015, 6:00 A.M., Kingman, Arizona
Angel Brand was not quite halfway through with his morning run when he got the call. He had run daily since he was in high school, but these last few months had seen him up earlier and out on his run longer than previously. If he timed it right, he could miss most of the morning news before he returned home to shower and get ready for work.
Brand’s superiors had offered him the opportunity for a new beat, something that would take him away from Cochise High School for a while, but he had refused. He had been Cochise’s designated officer for most of his career at this point, and a little thing like the loss of over one hundred students wasn’t going to take him away from it.
He might have failed those kids – his thoughts at night insisted that he had failed them, even though logically he knew that there was nothing he could have done to prevent what happened any more than the rest of the school officials – but he didn’t trust the safety of what was left of Cochise in anyone else’s hands. He wasn’t overly friendly with the students, but he could pick most of them out by face, if not by name. He knew some of their families. One of Brand’s buddies on the force had lost his future stepson in the abduction. You couldn’t just pass on all of that baggage to somebody new and expect them to handle it.
So Brand stayed on even as Cochise High emptied out and stayed empty over the summer. When the new construction was announced, he made himself familiar with the workers and made sure they knew to call him if anything needed attention. Vandals and rubberneckers hadn’t been too bad around the school itself, and the powers that be were apparently satisfied enough with that to not put a round-the-clock security detail on the construction site. Brand hadn’t agreed with the decision, but he wasn’t the one with the decision-making authority, so he settled for making himself available to handle any issues the workers might turn up.
And on this fine July morning, which was shaping up to be a sweltering day even at 6 AM, Brand got the call.
“There’s some delinquent passed out up here in the schoolyard,” Hastings, one of the foremen, told him without preamble. “Dunno if he’s drunk or what, but you might wanna come pick ‘im up so he doesn’t get run over.”
Brand sighed and turned around to backtrack his route. “Yeah, I’ll get right on it. Hold up on work ‘til I get there.”
“Ten-four,” Hastings said, because it amused him to talk like a cop sometimes, and hung up.
Brand got home, hopped in the shower even though he knew his uniform would be soaked through with sweat in short order anyways, and got in the car to make the familiar drive out to Cochise’s grounds. He parked at the edge of the fence that had been erected around the construction area and nodded to the workers milling around as he made his way onto the grounds in the direction that they indicated.
He saw what looked like a heap of dark clothing on the ground near where the picnic tables had previously stood. As he drew closer, the shape came into better focus in the early-morning light, and Brand’s heart started pounding.
He took another five or so seconds to confirm that he was in fact seeing what he thought he was seeing, and then he broke into a run, already reaching for his walkie-talkie.
This wasn’t real.
Everything was fuzzy and refused to come into focus – whatever they had given him, it wasn’t wearing off easily – but Jae had opened his eyes briefly and been almost certain that the school police officer of all people was leaning over him.
Sound reached Jae from far off, but the fog swallowed it before it could resolve into words. It was fine. It didn’t matter.
He was dreaming.
“Min-jae.” Something touched him, and Jae recoiled, arms coming up like he was dragging them through water. Eyelids fluttered again, but his eyes rolled back.
A hand caught his wrist, just below where the bandages ended on his left hand.
“Easy,” the voice said. “Easy. You’re safe now.”
More words, not directed at him, This is Brand, I’m at the high school, and then the rest dissolved back into static.
He was dreaming, right?
The balance of his body shifted, tilted, an arm sliding behind his back and trying to ease him up to sit. Jae let out a displeased grunt, again trying to pull away from the hands. He finally forced his eyes open to barely focus.
This wasn’t right.
“We’re gonna get you to the hospital, okay?” The hallucination holding him said.
“Nnnn-” Jae’s mouth wasn’t working. He tried to shake his head, and the movement sent the world tilting again.
This wasn’t real, right? This place?
The world crystalized for a moment and Jae jerked away from Brand’s grasp. His jacket, which had been draped over him like a blanket, slid off onto his legs. A piece of paper that had been tucked inside fluttered out onto the ground.
“Take it easy,” Brand said, bracing his hand against Jae’s back. Jae tried to push him away, but doing so only sent a familiar twinge of pain up his arm.
Why was he here?
“Can you stand?” Brand asked.
“No,” Jae snapped back, voice weaker than he wanted it but at least he could say something.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he wanted to go back to dreaming.
Brand kept talking to him, deliberately calm and soothing, trying to ease him along. Jae tuned him out and tried to keep breathing.The folded slip of paper on the grass caught his attention again, and he grabbed it, hoping for some kind of explanation.
It simply read, Break a leg.
July 12, 2015, 7:22 A.M.: Kingman, Arizona
Ethan was jarred awake by the sound of the landline phone ringing. They didn’t use it very often, and had in fact been debating getting rid of it for a couple of years now; it was pretty much only used for work things when he and Hye needed to be contacted outside of the office for whatever reason. It felt too early for someone from work to call.
He sat up and groped blindly for the receiver, sighed when he knocked his glasses off the nightstand with a clatter, and finally found the phone and brought it to his ear.
“Hello?” He said, voice still thick with sleep.
There was no immediate response from the person on the other end of the call, just a sharp intake of breath.
Ethan rubbed his free hand over his face, trying to rouse himself more. “Hello?” He repeated.
If it was a prank or something less savory, well. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened in the last couple of months. Just another reason to get rid of the landline.
There was still no response, only shaky breathing. Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose and hung up.
He stayed sitting in bed, holding his head in his hands. Beside him, Hye stirred and rolled over to look at him questioningly.
They had both seen the end. They had watched the video feed go dark. They had been hounded for interviews and quotes and had strangers lurking outside their home and workplace. It had been nearly two months since the abduction, and there had been no closure, no sign of Jae. They had been left to wonder. Back at the beginning, every time the phone rang had been a cruelly brief beacon of hope followed by crushing disappointment. Now, Ethan couldn’t manage to be annoyed with it. Only tired.
Before he could decide whether he wanted to lay back down or force himself up to try to face the day, the phone rang again.
That managed to rouse some of the annoyance. Against his better judgment, Ethan snatched up the phone again. “What do you want?”
“Mr. Parker? Is this Ethan Parker?” The voice on the other end of the line was vaguely familiar.
“Yes. Speaking.” Ethan didn’t bother to keep his tone from being brusque.
“Mr. Parker, this is Officer Angel Brand with the Kingman City Police. I work security detail at Cochise High School-” There was a rustle of movement on the other end of the line, and Ethan’s breath caught in his throat when a muffled voice piped up, just close enough for Ethan to catch what it was saying.
“Wait, let me talk to them.”
“Jae?” Ethan blurted out without thinking. It went unnoticed by the voices on the other end, snippets of noise indicating the phone was being handed over to someone else. Beside him, Hye jolted up and grabbed his arm.
“What is it?” She whispered. He barely registered that she had spoken and just gripped her hand like a lifeline.
On the phone, he heard the same shaky breathing before an uncharacteristically quiet, hesitant voice spoke.
“Dad?”
Ethan realized that he was squeezing Hye’s hand in a vice grip and made a conscious effort to ease off, but she held on just as tightly. He blinked, wondering why his vision was blurring.
“Jae,” he whispered. He swallowed thickly. “Oh god, Jae, just- Where are you?” He could feel Hye shaking and realized that he was shaking too.
“Um- the, the hospital.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “Okay. Just stay right there with Officer Brand. Stay where you are, alright, we’ll come get you, it’s going to be okay, it-” He stopped himself as he began to babble.
“It’s going to be okay,” he repeated. “We’ll be right there, okay? Everything’s going to be okay.”
Ethan heard Jae inhale sharply before responding. “Okay.”
“Just go along with whatever Officer Brand says you need to do, alright? We’re on our way.”
The only thing that Jae said was “Okay,” again, voice distant.
July 19, 2015, 11:30 A.M.: Kingman, Arizona
Jae sat on the couch alone; Rhea had taken the armchair, turning herself so that they were close enough to facing each other. The comfort of the Parkers’ living room and the cheerful green and orange knit blanket draped around Jae’s shoulders was a stark contrast to his dark clothes and overall demeanor. His image just now could have made for the perfect sullen counterculture teen in some respects. Not that she could really blame him.
He sat with his shoulders hunched, expression closed off and wary. Rhea had noticed that he was only using his right arm for most things; the left he kept folded across his body for the most part, hand tucked close to his side. She caught glimpses of the scarring on his left hand from time to time as he moved and the blanket shifted to reveal it. She knew what had happened, after all, she had watched the footage. But it felt like she was intruding on his life.
Jae did seem to have made an effort to tend to his appearance in the week since he’d been returned to his home. Grasping at normalcy, maybe. He was barefoot in a t-shirt and ripped jeans, but he had combed his hair and put his earrings and other piercings back in. Every so often, there came the faint clink of him tapping his tongue piercing against the inside of his teeth as he thought. There had been an attempt to cover up the scar on his face with makeup, but a faint line showed through.
Jae’s parents had been reluctant to leave him alone with Rhea, but with a lot of grumbling, he’d convinced them to let her be. It was hard to tell if he was more comfortable with them in the room or not. In the time since Rhea had arrived at his home, she’d seen him swing between withdrawn and flashes of irritability that seemed to fade as quickly as they came. Now he sat at an angle on the couch to face her, grasping at the blanket with his good hand, waiting and watching with suspicious eyes for her to speak.
There was a delay as Rhea considered how to approach the conversation. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him, questions about Danya, about the other members. But at the same time she didn’t want to ruin the opportunity but coming across in the wrong way.
“So, I want to thank you for meeting with me. If you ever want a break just let me know. Since I uh have a lot of questions.” She said, gesturing to the collection of folders sitting on the table.
Jae half-shrugged. “It’s not like I have anything else to do,” he said, an edge in his voice. “Figured they’d have sent somebody to bug me when I was in the hospital.”
He’d spent a couple of days there after Officer Brand collected him, half out of his mind with how crowded it felt. If anyone had brought him Jell-O, he would have thrown it in their face. All it had seemed to do was to confirm that the treatment he’d been given before he was released was sufficient and to get him some prescription painkillers. He’d been given a crutch too, just in case he should need it, and a new knee brace, but his leg seemed to be healing the best out of everything, ironically enough.
He hadn’t left the house since coming home. His parents had barely let him out of their sight. Jae was mildly surprised that he hadn’t noticed anybody creeping around outside, reporters or otherwise. Brand had made some vague promise to his parents that the police department would keep an eye on things so that they wouldn’t be harassed. Maybe it was working, or maybe it had been long enough now that a lot of people had stopped caring and found some other disaster to focus on. Jae didn’t care very much about the reason. He didn’t want to see anybody else.
“Just go for it.”
Rhea took a quick sip of the water she had been given and nodded. “Alright then.”
This was it, countless hours of her own time spent gathering as much information as she could. Strategically bringing up the investigation whenever she could. Finally being able to make her pitch and having it green-lit. Her brief excitement had quickly changed to grim determination after the realization that the task ahead of her was no longer something she wanted but instead had become something she had.
She had watched the footage of the version Min-jae had won to gather as much information as possible. It was a job she could have passed off but she didn’t want to burden someone else with witnessing it. She had recordings of every version, combed from as many places on the Internet as she could bear to look. They were all logged and accounted for, she had notes of all of it. If someone was to ask her who died on the fifth day and if they had been connected to anyone she would have been able to list off a ream of names.
None of that went into the digging she had done on the Artho Taskforce itself. They were ghosts of a digital age. An urban legend that existed in the real world. But there was always a trail and after every event, they always provided a link back to it.
They always returned the winner.
“Okay then Jae. As far as we can tell Jim Greynolds,” She produced a sketch of a man with glasses and a ponytail that had been made using information gathered from interviews with survivors who had seen him. “Has been with the Artho Taskforce from the beginning and took over operations when Victor Danya,” Another sketch, this time of a bald portly man’s face. “Was killed by S.T.A.R.. That was until a new Danya,” There was no sketch. “Seemingly took over. So my first question is, what can you tell me about this Danya?”
“His name is Tracen.”
Jae worked his fingers into the spaces between the knit of the blanket, looking at a spot somewhere over Rhea’s shoulder. “That’s what he told me. He’s a lot younger.” Jae glanced at the sketch of the other Danya to confirm. “Like… early thirties, maybe? If he’s that guy’s son, they don’t look a lot alike.”
How old was the Danya Jae had met? Probably not more than twice Jae’s age. Something about that set discomfort in the pit of his stomach.
“I only met him once, and he was a jackass.” Jae waited a moment for Rhea to tell him off for swearing, but she didn’t. “...I think the first time we saw him, he was in some kind of army uniform, but when I met him, he was kind of dressed up. He wears glasses.” He closed his eyes, trying to call up details, the face he’d tried to commit to memory.
“He’s like… this is going to sound fucking weird, but he’s kind of good-looking? Like I said, he doesn’t look like that guy.” Jae indicated the sketch of the elder Danya with a jerk of his head. “He’s pretty tall, kind of muscular. I guess he was a soldier since he was… you know, dressed like that at first. I don’t think he was white, but I couldn’t tell you what ethnicity. Dunno what language Danya is from. He didn’t have an accent to me.”
Jae caught one of his lip rings with his teeth, chewing at it. “He offered me a job? That’s a thing they do, or something. I told him to go fuck himself.”
His eyes finally focused on Rhea again. “I think that’s all. The last person didn’t tell you guys any of this?”
Rhea tried to strike a balance between making notes and looking at Min-jae, eye-contact or at least clearly focusing on what the interviewee was saying was important for building trust. Min-jae was giving her good information. They'd had a name for the new Danya, but that was it; he'd only given his first name out to the survivors he had met with. The rest was largely a mystery, but little by little, the fog would begin to clear.
She wrote down soldier and circled it. That was something they could investigate and look into. There were always army records. She felt some excitement at finally having something tangible to work with. Investigating the people behind Survival of the Fittest had been like chasing ghosts; the information she did have had taken her years to gather and build up but it was always a struggle. The feeling that she was swimming upstream had never left throughout the years, especially considering she was working on it in her own time.
Rhea shook her head in response to Min-jae’s question. “To be truthful with you I only recently got permission to make this an official investigation. Pretty much everything I’ve shown you and know I gathered unofficially. She took a quick sip of the water she had been given. “So I never got the chance to speak to the last, uh, winner.”
“Mn.” Jae didn’t have much response for that aside from stock objections to the word “winner”.
“So nobody else has been working on this until now.” Sounded about right. Sounded like what he expected from the world at large.
Should it have made him feel better to know that at least one person had been working on tracking these people down, even when the rest of the world couldn’t seem to get its shit together? She, too, had been struggling to do something that mattered.
Maybe at some point, it would make him feel better, if he could ever really feel anything at all for more than a few minutes at a time again.
“Wasn’t there some kind of fuckin’... like a rescue, whenever that was? Who was that?”
It had been in the news at the time, probably, but Jae had been eleven going on the rest of his life, and there had been Mom’s illness and the move, and why should he have given a shit? It had happened to older kids, people he’d never meet, who might as well have been a world away. And everyone had said it was over after that.
She shook her head in response to his question. “That was S.T.A.R. They’re...they were an independent group without ties to any governments. As for us, there was no one besides me. I don’t know why. I was always just told no.”
It bothered her more than she wanted to let on. There had never been a good reason for the constant rejections she had been given. It had always seemed like they had been happy to let America and S.T.A.R. deal with things. So she shared Min-jae’s frustrations.
“It may have been something to do with the fourth version being interrupted, but regardless now that S.T.A.R. has effectively been removed from consideration I guess it was decided to let me finally make my unofficial investigation official.”
Jae twisted his fingers in the blanket. “...What happened to S.T.A.R.?”
That was a loaded question. Rhea was aware of what had happened to them but she was unsure all the political technicalities needed to be discussed. Instead, she settled on a more general overview of the situation.
“They were tricked by the terrorists into attempting another rescue. They’d been given false information on where the island for your incident was and attempted a repeat of what they’d done during version four only to find it full of terrorist forces.” Rhea paused as she considered the best way to explain it.
“From what I’ve been able to gather most of S.T.A.R.’s members were killed during an ambush when they arrived and those that managed to escape went into hiding. The Chinese government captured a group of them and is keeping them in custody but that's a tricky political situation at best. For all intents and purposes, they’re off the board.” There was another more somber silence as Rhea let Min-jae process what she had told him.
“Cool,” Jae said finally, toneless.
Only people who ever did anything, shot to pieces or god knew what in a trap. He tried to dredge up bitterness, or anger, or something, but it never came, and he just sat and stared at the pictures on the coffee table.
He hadn’t ever thought about a rescue in concrete terms, really. If there had been one, he would have gotten on the boats or helicopter or whatever. Maybe. If he’d decided not to be stupid or pissed off and consumed by vengeance, which experience had shown was a pretty big “if”.
In the end, it was just another what-if that didn’t matter.
When things had been quiet for more than long enough and it was clear that there wasn’t much else to say on the matter, he mumbled, “I draw.” Jae disentangled his good hand from the blanket and gestured vaguely at the pictures. “I can… you know, the people I saw. I think I can remember well enough.”
Maybe they had known all along what he was thinking, when he stared them in the face. Grasping at something, anything to throw back at them.
He wasn’t optimistic, even cautiously, but he was fucking sick and tired of doing nothing and wasting away while the world went about its usual business outside.
“Thank you Min-jae. Anything you can give me helps.” Rhea said, and she meant it. They settled into another silence as she figured out what to say. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t going to stop until the people responsible for his suffering were brought to justice. But she didn’t want to say something so cliche and cavalier. She didn’t want to make a promise to him if she couldn’t keep it. Eventually, she took a spare piece of paper and wrote down a pair of phone of phone numbers and email addresses, labeling them as needed.
“These are my contact details. One set is my official work ones and the other two are my personal ones, in case you want to speak to me about anything off the record.” She finished off her glass of water and set it down. “I know that this doesn’t seem like much but I want you to know how important meeting you was.” Rhea said as she rose from her seat. “If you, uh, ever need to talk to someone, I’m here.”
Jae looked at the paper for a moment before slowly reaching over and picking it up to fold and stick in the pocket of his jeans. “Thanks,” he mumbled. Another bout of silence.
“I’m gonna go lay down now. I’ll… email you whenever, I guess.” One last gasp at spitting in their faces. That’s all it was. He wasn’t the hero of this story with a chance to turn everything around. Hell, he wasn’t even the main character.
Just collateral damage.
Jae stood as Rhea did, bringing the blanket with him. “...Bye.” He said over his shoulder, and then shuffled out of the room and disappeared upstairs.
July bled into August. The days got shorter fraction by fraction. Jae’s parents finally went back to work full time, though they frequently called his new cell phone throughout the day to check in. He never left the house. On the first day of the new school year, Jae climbed out his bedroom window and sat on the roof, and watched half-hidden with a cigarette dangling from his fingers as the yellow bus bearing the words “Cochise High School” on the side trundled down the street, stopping every few houses to gather someone.
There was a memorial on the school grounds, he’d found out. His name was on it. Maybe he and his parents could have asked around to have it removed, but they hadn’t brought up the possibility and neither did he.
Despite the constant, irrefutable proof that he was alive, Jae sometimes thought that he was dead along with the rest of them.
Someone was knocking at the front door.
Jae had been sitting in the living room, curled up on the couch with the curtains drawn and the TV on. He’d been dozing more than watching whatever was playing, and he hadn’t heard a car pull up. When the knocking started up, he jumped a bit, sitting up straighter on the couch, tensed and listening.
After a brief hesitation, the knocking came again.
Maybe it was finally someone from a paper or something snooping around for an interview. Maybe it was… something else.
His parents’ cars were gone from the driveway. The house was dark, and the TV was on too low for anyone outside to hear. If whoever was knocking knew that Jae was there, they knew that he was home alone.
Another brief pause. More knocking.
Nearly holding his breath, Jae slid off the couch and crept out of the living room. He was barefoot; he’d barely worn shoes at all since that first fuzzy awakening with Trent standing over him. His feet felt too heavy in them now. Barefoot, he made less noise.
He hesitated between the front hall and the stairs. Go up, hide, wait for them to go away? Seemed like the better idea on the surface.
Say they didn’t go away. Say they got mad or impatient and threw a rock through a downstairs window. Say he was upstairs, alone, unarmed, with someone forcing their way into the house. Did he trust anyone that he could have called to get there fast and not make a worse mess of things?
Jae turned back and went through the living room to the kitchen instead. His mom and dad had kept a close watch on him, but they weren’t so good at keeping things secured after a while. Jae grabbed the largest knife from the block sitting on the counter, and stealthily made his way back to the front hall. His breath came quick and shallow.
Breathe, idiot. Breathe.
No static.
The doorbell rang, almost making him jump again. A small, familiar sizzle of irritation at why they didn’t do that in the first place flashed and then faded.
Jae edged up to the front door, taking care to angle himself so that most of his body would be behind it when opened. Like many of the houses in their neighborhood, the door was sandwiched between rectangular panels of frosted glass, with a decorative oval of the same in the top part of it, which let light through but only allowed the vague silhouette of a person to be visible when they were standing on the opposite sides. The knife was in his right hand; a twinge of pain ran up to his elbow when he slowly turned the lock with his left and then gripped the doorknob.
He eased the door open just a crack, just enough to let a sliver of brighter, unimpeded sunlight fall across the shadowed hall. He couldn’t see too well from this angle, and he wasn’t inclined to lean out. He leaned into the door with his shoulder, prepared to slam it shut again with his full weight behind it if need be.
“Who is it?”
Who’s there? I’m armed.
"Holy fucking shit."
Isaac was never gonna believe it, he promised himself that from Day Numero Uno. The whole town was holding out hope for a prodigal son but he wasn't buying in. Only got easier when months dragged on without a peep. It's not like he was one of those crazy conspiracy types but the whole one survivor thing? Too neat. There was no way it came down to one person who could walk away every single time, that kinda luck would be insane even once. That's why you didn't hear much from the spooks who came home. They were part of a cover-up, actors or some shit bought by the government for...he didn't fucking know, the government gave a bunch of dolphins acid and handjobs that one time, they did weird shit. It wasn't a leap to say they could throw a handful of people in a house nobody wanted to visit and wheel them out for closure until the American Sheeple forgot about them.
All that coulda stayed a theory, but they sent something home. Not a person, a real sick fucking joke. Out of a hundred people, the one they threw back was Jae. Pissed off, couldn't hold his booze, burnt out by middle school Min-jae Parker. You couldn't make up something like that, but you couldn't believe it either. Way he saw it, there were two ways to fact check:
1) Go through the footage minute by minute to find out where it fell apart. Hard pass.
2) Roll up on his house and start knocking. Worst case scenario he wasted a trip. Best case scenario a twitchy CIA type blew his brains out and good luck explaining that one assholes.
Actually finding Jae there wasn't an option. He knew that voice, though. If it was a fake it was a pretty damn good one.
"It's Isaac. Jesus, you're really here?"
“What.”
All the gears in Jae’s head ground to a halt as soon as he got a response. He almost threw the door wide open in disbelief.
What the hell, and more importantly, why?
He had been ready, almost, for some kind of journalist or just a nosy neighbor. He could have understood someone’s family coming knocking. Isaac Fucking Brea had never crossed his mind.
Jae shifted a little bit to better look out, squinting against the sunlight. Isaac didn’t look any different, as far as he could tell. Of course he didn’t. Played hooky or whatever the fuck on the day they all died. Living by merit of being a stupid piece of shit.
“The fuck do you want?” His voice came out dry and papery. Maybe it wasn’t Isaac. Maybe it was just someone pretending to be him, trying to see if Jae would really answer.
His palm was sweating. He was glad that the handle of the knife was wooden and not plastic.
Isaac started laughing. Nervous, disbelieving chuckles that snowballed into belly laughter that doubled him over. That sputtering for breath kinda laughter, where pain is shooting all the way to your fingertips and you might hurl if it keeps up but you can't stop 'cuz you didn't start it in the first place. It was never your call, fate or the universe or whatever needed to laugh at its own joke and you were the most convenient meat puppet to fist.
"I've been carrying this, this…" He hadn't managed to straighten up yet. "This weight, like I owe something for getting left behind. Hours, shit more like days in the desert looking for a good spot and more working wood to say that I see you. I'm sorry. I'm a piece of shit. Shoulda been me. Then you're right here. The one thing that gets to come out of all of this, and…"
Isaac forced himself to stretch up straight, staring through the door. "You're the same freak you were before you left. God, what a relief."
Jae stared at him through the crack in the door, taking longer to absorb the words than he should have needed.
The fuck was this now?
Why now? Why him? Showing up on Jae’s doorstep to, what, pour his heart out? Like Jae cared one little bit about Isaac’s suffering?
How satisfying would it have been a few months ago, to hear Isaac admit that he was a piece of shit, say that he was sorry for whatever dumbfuck thing he’d done? Jae could imagine a ghost of a feeling.
“Yeah,” he rasped finally. “It should’ve been you.” I wish it had been, he almost said, but he couldn’t force the words out of his throat, even if he was almost sure he meant them. He felt lightheaded. He wanted to retreat back behind the door, but he was frozen, staring, because he had never been able to concede anything to Isaac even if they were finally agreeing on something.
Some fucked up kinda solidarity Isaac felt said they shoulda been reassuring each other. Jae didn't look like a guy who thought all that much of himself anymore so he could reach out if he was desperate. Couldn't have many other options banging down his door to talk, and Isaac could pull his head out of his ass long enough to tell him that it should have been him to but it wasn't so they were gonna have to nut up and deal with it. Unless he wanted to fuck off and disappear again. Cuz Isaac was here. Maybe he was kinda glad Jae was here too.
Nah. He was way too sober for that.
Isaac tried to lean a little more on the door. Turn on that classic Brea charm. "You look like shit, dude. You want a drink?"
The slight press of Isaac’s weight on the door snapped Jae out of his fog, sending a jolt of alarm through him that was more instinct than reason. He immediately let go of the doorknob and braced his left forearm against the inside of the door instead, keeping it from opening further.
“Fuck off. Get out of here.” Isaac hadn’t answered his first question, not really. “What do you want?” If Isaac wanted in the house, he could fucking forget it. Unless he decided to use force.
The kitchen knife was still out of sight, he was pretty sure. If Isaac tried to force the door open, all Jae really had to do was step back to let him, and momentum would do the rest.
It took him a few seconds longer than it should have to realize that wasn’t a train of thought to pursue here. This wasn’t- He was home. He was in his house, in his parents’ house if you wanted to put it that way, and there were consequences now greater than anything he’d had to worry about before if he fucked up. Isaac wouldn’t be trying to shove his way in if he knew that Jae had a knife in his hand. That wasn’t what people did in the real world.
God, Jae hoped this was real. As much as he didn’t want it to be happening, there was an edge of surrealness to it that sparked an even deeper panic in his mind if he thought too hard about it. This was reality, right, and in reality you could just tell people to go the fuck away. You didn’t have to think about killing them if they didn’t cooperate.
All of that went through his mind as Jae desperately tried to tether himself back to Earth, but he couldn’t keep from thinking of Isaac as a threat for as long as Isaac wanted in.
On the other side of the door, Isaac was starting to lose his temper. He wasn’t about to blow up but c’mon, what did he want? The fuck was that about? He hated hearing it put like that. It made it sound like he should be the one with his hands out here. Jae could do him some kinda favor by letting him in, is that how he was seeing this? Where’d he get the stones for that? This dude, nah, nah, this murderer had so many better options to fill his time he could bat away the first hand that came out in friendship since they dumped his ass back home?
Unless Isaac wasn’t the first but that...who else would come up here? He’d got all his “friends” killed one way or another and if their folks all knew he was up here Isaac had to imagine there’d be more pitchforks involved. Right? They weren’t gonna just take him back. The whole thing had to be hush hush. Hadn’t heard a word about it other than rumors and if there was a big push to welcome back Kingman’s prodigal son with open arms he’d sure have heard about it. It’d be a huge deal. They wouldn’t quietly take him back. It couldn’t be that easy. Not like you could just waltz up the dude’s doorstep sight unseen and walk away.
Except he kinda had.
Isaac’s face set hard. Whatever he was trying to pull before, fuck it, you know? Jae didn’t want somebody to reach out, whatever. Isaac got to be the last person to know how it really went, fine. If he decided Isaac had to be working an angle, he’d work one. The same one he’d been working this whole time while Jae was off R&R who gives a fuck where. “Shit, man. What’s anybody gonna want from you anymore?” There shoulda been a laugh there. He couldn’t force it. “I came to see if it was really you, and since it is…” He shrugged. There was no way Jae was gonna wanna give a hand with the whole thing, but he knew things. Stuff you couldn’t catch on camera even if you had the stomach for it. Stuff that would probably hurt like hell to dredge up but they had common ground. He’d start there. Direct was what Jae wanted. “I came to talk about Hazel.” Isaac leaned in on the door as he said it, enough that Jae couldn’t slam the fucking thing straight away if he didn’t like what he heard.
What was anyone going to want from him? Fuck if Jae knew. He’d been waiting to find out and dreading the answer ever since he woke up in the schoolyard. It was about time for the other shoe to drop, wasn’t it?
Isaac was leaning his weight into the door more, keeping Jae’s attention split between holding it to and keeping a grip on the knife, and he wasn’t doing a great job of either. Maybe that distraction was good. Maybe if he’d understood the words more than Isaac’s body language and parsed them in real-time, he’d have yanked the door open instead, and it all would have been downhill from there.
They were sliding downhill anyway. Of all the things for Isaac to bring up, this? Her? Isaac didn’t deserve to dredge that up. He’d been ancient history by the time Jae and Hazel had anything going on, and then when- when everything fell apart-
Isaac had no part in it. He hadn’t been a factor at all. Who the fuck did he think he was, trying to weasel his way into Jae’s home, to demand some kind of closure or explanation, like Hazel was his loss?
Anger bloomed in Jae’s chest, comforting and familiar. Now he knew what he was feeling, what he’d always felt and was always supposed to feel with Isaac. Now things were real.
“What the fuck makes you think I have anything to say to you?” Jae’s tone was low and his mouth was dry, but his voice was clear and steady. “How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off before you learn to take a hint, huh? If I had shit to say to you, about- her, or anything, I’d have said it already.” If Issac wanted closure, he should have been there with the rest of them.
It was all going to shit, or it would if it hadn’t started there. The dude wasn’t even supposed to be here so anything past that was all by ear and Isaac wasn’t thinking so clear. Matter of fact Jae’s attitude was pissing him right off. He got to make demands? No, abso-fucking-lutely not, he wasn’t entitled to anything after what he did. He should be thanking him. Isaac, Isaac had been here working. Isaac had actually been sorry for all the miserable fucks like him that disappeared, he had the memorial, he was gonna make something out of this whole thing that they could be proud to remember and Hazel could have been the bridge right? The one person they were both supposed to care about, yeah, the one they could both agree deserved better. One person. A drink. Tears. Lifetime the whole thing up. They could have made something together, but Jae tried to throw him out before he could even get to what he was asking.
That’s when Isaac slammed against the door. His face pressed in right where he could make Jae’s head out through the glass, woulda been right in his face if it wasn’t between them. “You think I care about what you want? Huh? You think anybody does you creepy little fuck?” Shoddy work. That’s what he was thinking. Shoddy fucking work from top to bottom. It felt weak at the hinges. Paint chipped into an indent where his shoulder slammed into it. “You ain’t shit but a messenger anymore! You hear me?”
It looked bad. He slammed in again and heard another crack run deep. If the spooks were watching, but, but shit, they couldn’t want anything to do with him either right? There’d be a suit running up to put one in the back of his head by now. “You were there! You know shit!” There weren’t any footsteps running up behind him though. Shit. He could break this whole thing down and nobody would say a word. “You owe us!” Not even his family. Is that why he was playing like a scared rat?
Good. Isaac felt him pressing back against the door but it was nothing, he wasn’t putting his all into it. As weak as the door was, the guy sitting behind it was even weaker, and it was about time he remembered where he was now. Isaac slammed against the door one more time to rock him off his footing before he screamed. “Somebody comes up here wanting answers and you give ‘em, that’s all you’re good for, that’s why we don’t string you up down fucking town!” Jae had to be pissing himself by now. Some winner. Some killer. Before he could start pushing again Isaac snaked his arm through the gap and tried to catch a handful of his shirt. Fuck asking. He’d drag him out in the daylight and beat the answers he needed out of him.
The knife lost the battle for Jae’s attention first, slipping out of his hand and clattering to the floor, probably just narrowly avoiding Jae’s foot as he scrambled to reinforce his hold against the door. Jae had never bothered before to think about how sturdy his front door actually was; the house hadn’t been brand-new even when they’d first moved. Physically, Isaac had probably been stronger than him even before he got all fucked up. Isaac slamming against the door with his full weight was enough to rattle the whole thing in its frame and bounce Jae back enough for more of a gap to open up.
He didn’t have time to respond to the abuse Isaac hurled at him through that gap. Isaac’s fingers caught the loose fabric of Jae’s shirt, close enough that Jae could feel the warmth of his touch. Then Jae seized the door handle with both hands, regardless of the sharp ache that jolted up his left arm, and he threw his own weight back against it.
He might have heard a crunch as Isaac’s arm was caught in the doorjamb. He didn’t know if it was the door, or Isaac’s arm. Jae didn’t think, couldn’t think, couldn’t hear anything except blood roaring in his ears when he pulled the door back just enough to try to slam it on Isaac again.
Maybe there was screaming now, but Jae screamed over it. “You want fucking answers!? She never said shit about you!”
Slam.
“Not once!”
Slam.
All he could hear was his own voice and the roaring in his ears and the creak of the door as he tried to slam it shut over and over. He was barely aware of the words tumbling out. There was just Isaac, trying to force his way in when Jae had given him so many chances to leave, and Jae, who couldn’t let that happen.
“All you were is a fucking mistake! You owe me, you piece of shit, you should have been there, and then you wouldn’t fucking be here acting like you deserve anything from me!”
Slam. Slam. Slam.
At some point, Jae realized that there was no more resistance from the other side and nothing blocking the door. It slammed close one last time, his sweating palms slipping off the handle. He had been swaying with the door, and the momentum carried him forward to collide with it, his forehead lightly rebounding off the oval of frosted glass with a hollow thunk.
“I didn’t even want this!” Jae’s voice cracked as he spoke to the closed door.
All he got in answer this time was stifled sobbing from the other side.
It never stopped. Things moved in a blur, and when they stilled again, Jae was huddled up in the blankets on his parents’ bed, curled up as tight as he could go. Someone was still crying, and fuck, it was probably him, but maybe Isaac had followed him in and was somewhere in the house now. He wasn’t sure if he’d locked the door after stumbling away. He didn’t know what had happened to the knife, either. It was probably still laying in the front hall.
How badly hurt was Isaac? Jae had no clue. Surely he hadn’t just left his arm in the doorway for Jae to hit him over and over, but still- it had sounded bad. Or he thought it had. Everything had gone- bad. The way he remembered it going on the island. He hadn’t had any moments like that since waking up with Trent leaning over him, and he’d hoped that he wouldn’t again, like it was only the physical presence of the island itself that made them happen.
After a while, it didn’t sound like either of their voices anymore. It could have been anyone, multiple someones. He’d heard so much screaming and crying.
Jae woke again, or thought he did, to more voices. Normal, talking ones this time. His parents and somebody else. No screaming, cursing, or crying. He had a vague recollection that someone had tried to wake him already, but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t getting out of this bed, and they could just live with that. Jae was tapping out.
He wondered fuzzily if - when - someone was going to come around because of what he’d done now. The things Isaac had said surfaced and sank in his mind like the tide ebbing and flowing. When were the fucking consequences of his actions actually going to catch up with him?
Not today. Not tonight. Jae opened his eyes every so often and tracked the time by how the light changed and the shadows lengthened across his parents’ bedroom wall. There was a picture hanging on it, just visible from where Jae was laying. The three of them at some event, back when he was a kid. It was one of those things he’d seen so often that he didn’t even notice it anymore. When the crying came back, Jae’s child self watched him with a bright smile.
There was a memorial on the school grounds, he’d found out. His name was on it. Maybe he and his parents could have asked around to have it removed, but they hadn’t brought up the possibility and neither did he.
Despite the constant, irrefutable proof that he was alive, Jae sometimes thought that he was dead along with the rest of them.
Someone was knocking at the front door.
Jae had been sitting in the living room, curled up on the couch with the curtains drawn and the TV on. He’d been dozing more than watching whatever was playing, and he hadn’t heard a car pull up. When the knocking started up, he jumped a bit, sitting up straighter on the couch, tensed and listening.
After a brief hesitation, the knocking came again.
Maybe it was finally someone from a paper or something snooping around for an interview. Maybe it was… something else.
His parents’ cars were gone from the driveway. The house was dark, and the TV was on too low for anyone outside to hear. If whoever was knocking knew that Jae was there, they knew that he was home alone.
Another brief pause. More knocking.
Nearly holding his breath, Jae slid off the couch and crept out of the living room. He was barefoot; he’d barely worn shoes at all since that first fuzzy awakening with Trent standing over him. His feet felt too heavy in them now. Barefoot, he made less noise.
He hesitated between the front hall and the stairs. Go up, hide, wait for them to go away? Seemed like the better idea on the surface.
Say they didn’t go away. Say they got mad or impatient and threw a rock through a downstairs window. Say he was upstairs, alone, unarmed, with someone forcing their way into the house. Did he trust anyone that he could have called to get there fast and not make a worse mess of things?
Jae turned back and went through the living room to the kitchen instead. His mom and dad had kept a close watch on him, but they weren’t so good at keeping things secured after a while. Jae grabbed the largest knife from the block sitting on the counter, and stealthily made his way back to the front hall. His breath came quick and shallow.
Breathe, idiot. Breathe.
No static.
The doorbell rang, almost making him jump again. A small, familiar sizzle of irritation at why they didn’t do that in the first place flashed and then faded.
Jae edged up to the front door, taking care to angle himself so that most of his body would be behind it when opened. Like many of the houses in their neighborhood, the door was sandwiched between rectangular panels of frosted glass, with a decorative oval of the same in the top part of it, which let light through but only allowed the vague silhouette of a person to be visible when they were standing on the opposite sides. The knife was in his right hand; a twinge of pain ran up to his elbow when he slowly turned the lock with his left and then gripped the doorknob.
He eased the door open just a crack, just enough to let a sliver of brighter, unimpeded sunlight fall across the shadowed hall. He couldn’t see too well from this angle, and he wasn’t inclined to lean out. He leaned into the door with his shoulder, prepared to slam it shut again with his full weight behind it if need be.
“Who is it?”
Who’s there? I’m armed.
"Holy fucking shit."
Isaac was never gonna believe it, he promised himself that from Day Numero Uno. The whole town was holding out hope for a prodigal son but he wasn't buying in. Only got easier when months dragged on without a peep. It's not like he was one of those crazy conspiracy types but the whole one survivor thing? Too neat. There was no way it came down to one person who could walk away every single time, that kinda luck would be insane even once. That's why you didn't hear much from the spooks who came home. They were part of a cover-up, actors or some shit bought by the government for...he didn't fucking know, the government gave a bunch of dolphins acid and handjobs that one time, they did weird shit. It wasn't a leap to say they could throw a handful of people in a house nobody wanted to visit and wheel them out for closure until the American Sheeple forgot about them.
All that coulda stayed a theory, but they sent something home. Not a person, a real sick fucking joke. Out of a hundred people, the one they threw back was Jae. Pissed off, couldn't hold his booze, burnt out by middle school Min-jae Parker. You couldn't make up something like that, but you couldn't believe it either. Way he saw it, there were two ways to fact check:
1) Go through the footage minute by minute to find out where it fell apart. Hard pass.
2) Roll up on his house and start knocking. Worst case scenario he wasted a trip. Best case scenario a twitchy CIA type blew his brains out and good luck explaining that one assholes.
Actually finding Jae there wasn't an option. He knew that voice, though. If it was a fake it was a pretty damn good one.
"It's Isaac. Jesus, you're really here?"
“What.”
All the gears in Jae’s head ground to a halt as soon as he got a response. He almost threw the door wide open in disbelief.
What the hell, and more importantly, why?
He had been ready, almost, for some kind of journalist or just a nosy neighbor. He could have understood someone’s family coming knocking. Isaac Fucking Brea had never crossed his mind.
Jae shifted a little bit to better look out, squinting against the sunlight. Isaac didn’t look any different, as far as he could tell. Of course he didn’t. Played hooky or whatever the fuck on the day they all died. Living by merit of being a stupid piece of shit.
“The fuck do you want?” His voice came out dry and papery. Maybe it wasn’t Isaac. Maybe it was just someone pretending to be him, trying to see if Jae would really answer.
His palm was sweating. He was glad that the handle of the knife was wooden and not plastic.
Isaac started laughing. Nervous, disbelieving chuckles that snowballed into belly laughter that doubled him over. That sputtering for breath kinda laughter, where pain is shooting all the way to your fingertips and you might hurl if it keeps up but you can't stop 'cuz you didn't start it in the first place. It was never your call, fate or the universe or whatever needed to laugh at its own joke and you were the most convenient meat puppet to fist.
"I've been carrying this, this…" He hadn't managed to straighten up yet. "This weight, like I owe something for getting left behind. Hours, shit more like days in the desert looking for a good spot and more working wood to say that I see you. I'm sorry. I'm a piece of shit. Shoulda been me. Then you're right here. The one thing that gets to come out of all of this, and…"
Isaac forced himself to stretch up straight, staring through the door. "You're the same freak you were before you left. God, what a relief."
Jae stared at him through the crack in the door, taking longer to absorb the words than he should have needed.
The fuck was this now?
Why now? Why him? Showing up on Jae’s doorstep to, what, pour his heart out? Like Jae cared one little bit about Isaac’s suffering?
How satisfying would it have been a few months ago, to hear Isaac admit that he was a piece of shit, say that he was sorry for whatever dumbfuck thing he’d done? Jae could imagine a ghost of a feeling.
“Yeah,” he rasped finally. “It should’ve been you.” I wish it had been, he almost said, but he couldn’t force the words out of his throat, even if he was almost sure he meant them. He felt lightheaded. He wanted to retreat back behind the door, but he was frozen, staring, because he had never been able to concede anything to Isaac even if they were finally agreeing on something.
Some fucked up kinda solidarity Isaac felt said they shoulda been reassuring each other. Jae didn't look like a guy who thought all that much of himself anymore so he could reach out if he was desperate. Couldn't have many other options banging down his door to talk, and Isaac could pull his head out of his ass long enough to tell him that it should have been him to but it wasn't so they were gonna have to nut up and deal with it. Unless he wanted to fuck off and disappear again. Cuz Isaac was here. Maybe he was kinda glad Jae was here too.
Nah. He was way too sober for that.
Isaac tried to lean a little more on the door. Turn on that classic Brea charm. "You look like shit, dude. You want a drink?"
The slight press of Isaac’s weight on the door snapped Jae out of his fog, sending a jolt of alarm through him that was more instinct than reason. He immediately let go of the doorknob and braced his left forearm against the inside of the door instead, keeping it from opening further.
“Fuck off. Get out of here.” Isaac hadn’t answered his first question, not really. “What do you want?” If Isaac wanted in the house, he could fucking forget it. Unless he decided to use force.
The kitchen knife was still out of sight, he was pretty sure. If Isaac tried to force the door open, all Jae really had to do was step back to let him, and momentum would do the rest.
It took him a few seconds longer than it should have to realize that wasn’t a train of thought to pursue here. This wasn’t- He was home. He was in his house, in his parents’ house if you wanted to put it that way, and there were consequences now greater than anything he’d had to worry about before if he fucked up. Isaac wouldn’t be trying to shove his way in if he knew that Jae had a knife in his hand. That wasn’t what people did in the real world.
God, Jae hoped this was real. As much as he didn’t want it to be happening, there was an edge of surrealness to it that sparked an even deeper panic in his mind if he thought too hard about it. This was reality, right, and in reality you could just tell people to go the fuck away. You didn’t have to think about killing them if they didn’t cooperate.
All of that went through his mind as Jae desperately tried to tether himself back to Earth, but he couldn’t keep from thinking of Isaac as a threat for as long as Isaac wanted in.
On the other side of the door, Isaac was starting to lose his temper. He wasn’t about to blow up but c’mon, what did he want? The fuck was that about? He hated hearing it put like that. It made it sound like he should be the one with his hands out here. Jae could do him some kinda favor by letting him in, is that how he was seeing this? Where’d he get the stones for that? This dude, nah, nah, this murderer had so many better options to fill his time he could bat away the first hand that came out in friendship since they dumped his ass back home?
Unless Isaac wasn’t the first but that...who else would come up here? He’d got all his “friends” killed one way or another and if their folks all knew he was up here Isaac had to imagine there’d be more pitchforks involved. Right? They weren’t gonna just take him back. The whole thing had to be hush hush. Hadn’t heard a word about it other than rumors and if there was a big push to welcome back Kingman’s prodigal son with open arms he’d sure have heard about it. It’d be a huge deal. They wouldn’t quietly take him back. It couldn’t be that easy. Not like you could just waltz up the dude’s doorstep sight unseen and walk away.
Except he kinda had.
Isaac’s face set hard. Whatever he was trying to pull before, fuck it, you know? Jae didn’t want somebody to reach out, whatever. Isaac got to be the last person to know how it really went, fine. If he decided Isaac had to be working an angle, he’d work one. The same one he’d been working this whole time while Jae was off R&R who gives a fuck where. “Shit, man. What’s anybody gonna want from you anymore?” There shoulda been a laugh there. He couldn’t force it. “I came to see if it was really you, and since it is…” He shrugged. There was no way Jae was gonna wanna give a hand with the whole thing, but he knew things. Stuff you couldn’t catch on camera even if you had the stomach for it. Stuff that would probably hurt like hell to dredge up but they had common ground. He’d start there. Direct was what Jae wanted. “I came to talk about Hazel.” Isaac leaned in on the door as he said it, enough that Jae couldn’t slam the fucking thing straight away if he didn’t like what he heard.
What was anyone going to want from him? Fuck if Jae knew. He’d been waiting to find out and dreading the answer ever since he woke up in the schoolyard. It was about time for the other shoe to drop, wasn’t it?
Isaac was leaning his weight into the door more, keeping Jae’s attention split between holding it to and keeping a grip on the knife, and he wasn’t doing a great job of either. Maybe that distraction was good. Maybe if he’d understood the words more than Isaac’s body language and parsed them in real-time, he’d have yanked the door open instead, and it all would have been downhill from there.
They were sliding downhill anyway. Of all the things for Isaac to bring up, this? Her? Isaac didn’t deserve to dredge that up. He’d been ancient history by the time Jae and Hazel had anything going on, and then when- when everything fell apart-
Isaac had no part in it. He hadn’t been a factor at all. Who the fuck did he think he was, trying to weasel his way into Jae’s home, to demand some kind of closure or explanation, like Hazel was his loss?
Anger bloomed in Jae’s chest, comforting and familiar. Now he knew what he was feeling, what he’d always felt and was always supposed to feel with Isaac. Now things were real.
“What the fuck makes you think I have anything to say to you?” Jae’s tone was low and his mouth was dry, but his voice was clear and steady. “How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off before you learn to take a hint, huh? If I had shit to say to you, about- her, or anything, I’d have said it already.” If Issac wanted closure, he should have been there with the rest of them.
It was all going to shit, or it would if it hadn’t started there. The dude wasn’t even supposed to be here so anything past that was all by ear and Isaac wasn’t thinking so clear. Matter of fact Jae’s attitude was pissing him right off. He got to make demands? No, abso-fucking-lutely not, he wasn’t entitled to anything after what he did. He should be thanking him. Isaac, Isaac had been here working. Isaac had actually been sorry for all the miserable fucks like him that disappeared, he had the memorial, he was gonna make something out of this whole thing that they could be proud to remember and Hazel could have been the bridge right? The one person they were both supposed to care about, yeah, the one they could both agree deserved better. One person. A drink. Tears. Lifetime the whole thing up. They could have made something together, but Jae tried to throw him out before he could even get to what he was asking.
That’s when Isaac slammed against the door. His face pressed in right where he could make Jae’s head out through the glass, woulda been right in his face if it wasn’t between them. “You think I care about what you want? Huh? You think anybody does you creepy little fuck?” Shoddy work. That’s what he was thinking. Shoddy fucking work from top to bottom. It felt weak at the hinges. Paint chipped into an indent where his shoulder slammed into it. “You ain’t shit but a messenger anymore! You hear me?”
It looked bad. He slammed in again and heard another crack run deep. If the spooks were watching, but, but shit, they couldn’t want anything to do with him either right? There’d be a suit running up to put one in the back of his head by now. “You were there! You know shit!” There weren’t any footsteps running up behind him though. Shit. He could break this whole thing down and nobody would say a word. “You owe us!” Not even his family. Is that why he was playing like a scared rat?
Good. Isaac felt him pressing back against the door but it was nothing, he wasn’t putting his all into it. As weak as the door was, the guy sitting behind it was even weaker, and it was about time he remembered where he was now. Isaac slammed against the door one more time to rock him off his footing before he screamed. “Somebody comes up here wanting answers and you give ‘em, that’s all you’re good for, that’s why we don’t string you up down fucking town!” Jae had to be pissing himself by now. Some winner. Some killer. Before he could start pushing again Isaac snaked his arm through the gap and tried to catch a handful of his shirt. Fuck asking. He’d drag him out in the daylight and beat the answers he needed out of him.
The knife lost the battle for Jae’s attention first, slipping out of his hand and clattering to the floor, probably just narrowly avoiding Jae’s foot as he scrambled to reinforce his hold against the door. Jae had never bothered before to think about how sturdy his front door actually was; the house hadn’t been brand-new even when they’d first moved. Physically, Isaac had probably been stronger than him even before he got all fucked up. Isaac slamming against the door with his full weight was enough to rattle the whole thing in its frame and bounce Jae back enough for more of a gap to open up.
He didn’t have time to respond to the abuse Isaac hurled at him through that gap. Isaac’s fingers caught the loose fabric of Jae’s shirt, close enough that Jae could feel the warmth of his touch. Then Jae seized the door handle with both hands, regardless of the sharp ache that jolted up his left arm, and he threw his own weight back against it.
He might have heard a crunch as Isaac’s arm was caught in the doorjamb. He didn’t know if it was the door, or Isaac’s arm. Jae didn’t think, couldn’t think, couldn’t hear anything except blood roaring in his ears when he pulled the door back just enough to try to slam it on Isaac again.
Maybe there was screaming now, but Jae screamed over it. “You want fucking answers!? She never said shit about you!”
Slam.
“Not once!”
Slam.
All he could hear was his own voice and the roaring in his ears and the creak of the door as he tried to slam it shut over and over. He was barely aware of the words tumbling out. There was just Isaac, trying to force his way in when Jae had given him so many chances to leave, and Jae, who couldn’t let that happen.
“All you were is a fucking mistake! You owe me, you piece of shit, you should have been there, and then you wouldn’t fucking be here acting like you deserve anything from me!”
Slam. Slam. Slam.
At some point, Jae realized that there was no more resistance from the other side and nothing blocking the door. It slammed close one last time, his sweating palms slipping off the handle. He had been swaying with the door, and the momentum carried him forward to collide with it, his forehead lightly rebounding off the oval of frosted glass with a hollow thunk.
“I didn’t even want this!” Jae’s voice cracked as he spoke to the closed door.
All he got in answer this time was stifled sobbing from the other side.
It never stopped. Things moved in a blur, and when they stilled again, Jae was huddled up in the blankets on his parents’ bed, curled up as tight as he could go. Someone was still crying, and fuck, it was probably him, but maybe Isaac had followed him in and was somewhere in the house now. He wasn’t sure if he’d locked the door after stumbling away. He didn’t know what had happened to the knife, either. It was probably still laying in the front hall.
How badly hurt was Isaac? Jae had no clue. Surely he hadn’t just left his arm in the doorway for Jae to hit him over and over, but still- it had sounded bad. Or he thought it had. Everything had gone- bad. The way he remembered it going on the island. He hadn’t had any moments like that since waking up with Trent leaning over him, and he’d hoped that he wouldn’t again, like it was only the physical presence of the island itself that made them happen.
After a while, it didn’t sound like either of their voices anymore. It could have been anyone, multiple someones. He’d heard so much screaming and crying.
Jae woke again, or thought he did, to more voices. Normal, talking ones this time. His parents and somebody else. No screaming, cursing, or crying. He had a vague recollection that someone had tried to wake him already, but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t getting out of this bed, and they could just live with that. Jae was tapping out.
He wondered fuzzily if - when - someone was going to come around because of what he’d done now. The things Isaac had said surfaced and sank in his mind like the tide ebbing and flowing. When were the fucking consequences of his actions actually going to catch up with him?
Not today. Not tonight. Jae opened his eyes every so often and tracked the time by how the light changed and the shadows lengthened across his parents’ bedroom wall. There was a picture hanging on it, just visible from where Jae was laying. The three of them at some event, back when he was a kid. It was one of those things he’d seen so often that he didn’t even notice it anymore. When the crying came back, Jae’s child self watched him with a bright smile.
Jae ended up effectively claiming his parents’ bedroom as his own for the next several days, mostly by merit of being unwilling to move anywhere else. Maybe it would be more charitable to himself to say that he was unable, rather than unwilling; the idea of getting up and actually doing anything besides going to the bathroom, shoving some food in his mouth when he remembered food, and then going back to bed felt like convincing himself to do the impossible.
His parents were worrying over him. He knew that, and it made him feel even more like shit, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He probably ought to wallow in the thought that he didn’t deserve it or whatever, but he was still glad when they checked in on him. There was a lingering knot of guilt in his stomach that he couldn’t give them the kind of response they were hoping for. He just didn’t have the energy.
Jae had waited and waited, huddled under the bedsheets, but nobody ever came to talk to him about Isaac. One of the neighbors had heard the altercation and called his parents, but all they had been able to get out of him was that someone had come around yelling and banging on the front door. There was talk of making a police report, but nobody else came to talk to him about it, so he figured that hadn’t come to pass. He wasn’t going to admit that he’d ended up freaking out and slamming the front door open and closed over and over like a maniac if nobody forced him to admit it.
He’d have figured that Isaac might make good on the implied threat of having someone come and drag Jae out of the house to do whatever to him, but as far as Jae could tell, nothing was coming on that front. Maybe Isaac was too proud to admit that Jae had been the one who hurt him. Maybe he knew that waiting without answers was almost worse. More paranoia, more jumping at shadows. Like Jae didn’t already have a reason to jump at shadows for the rest of his fucking life. Some part of him believed what Isaac had said, that maybe there was someone waiting for him to come out so they could exact revenge for any number of things. Like he didn’t already feel like a pile of shit when he felt like anything at all.
His mom had started staying home from work again so that she could keep an eye on him as he spent his time drifting in and out. Sometimes she sat on the bed next to him, talking to him about work, and the day she’d had, chores around the house and what to make for dinner, steadily moving from topic to topic despite his minimal responses. She brushed his hair with her fingers and seemed not to notice how Jae winced when her fingers caught in the tangles. He was uncomfortably aware of how greasy his hair was getting, too; he needed a shower, but she didn’t seem to notice that either.
“You need a trim,” she murmured to him at one point. “When you feel better, tell me, and I’ll do that for you.” She had always preferred cutting his hair herself rather than taking him to a salon, especially since he had started growing it out in freshman year. It probably ended up a bit choppier-looking than if he’d had it cut professionally, but he had liked the way it looked and she seemed to enjoy it, so he never complained.
Her hair had gotten longer too; on the day Jae had left for school, she’d worn it in a neat, blunt bob that didn’t quite reach her shoulders. Now it fell just past them, not quite as neat or even, but certainly not comparable to the mess Jae’s hair was turning into. She continually brushed it back from her face to tuck behind her ears, not seeming to notice that she was doing it. Whenever she leaned forward to look at something or speak to him, it would fall forward too, and the whole process would repeat. Both of his parents seemed bizarrely unchanged in spite of everything, even knowing that they had a killer sleeping under their roof. It was just the small things that said otherwise. Mom’s hair was longer and less kempt. Dad fidgeted more and seemed more forgetful. Each of them had moments where they seemed to check out and just stare off into space, but when they moved, they did it with a purpose that Jae envied.
When you feel better. When, not if. Sometimes his mom’s certainty did make him feel better, and sometimes the idea that he could still fail at something she was so sure of made him never want to get out of bed again.
Mom did bring up therapy, finally. Jae had expected someone to mention it before now. He’d been in anger management before, which might have been funny now to someone with a shitty sense of humor. Now she was trying to ease him into the idea of trauma counseling. That was kind of darkly funny. Like Jae would somehow still be in denial about the fact that he needed help when he had barely gotten out of bed for days, to the point where his body was starting to ache from lack of movement. He was honestly surprised nobody had decided to drag him to therapy by force before this point. Maybe sometime soon, he’d actually be able to make himself get up and go.
He was gradually falling into a pattern, even as he spent most of his time doing nothing. He kept waking early in the morning, anywhere from three to five A.M. Usually, he didn’t get back to sleep. Jae had always been a morning person, but waking in the dark of the early morning, just laying in bed waiting for the sun to come up was different from the morning routines he’d gotten used to over the years. He’d never minded getting up early for school, or even work on the weekends; he had the early hours all to himself, comfort in routine and the quiet of the house before anyone else got up.
When he peeled his eyes open this morning, the room was dark and still. The glowing green lights of the digital clock on the bedside table read 3:19 A.M. The family pictures on the wall that he faced were draped in shadow. Maybe the faces in them were grinning; maybe grimacing. Their eyes weren’t visible. Who were they baring their teeth at?
When you spend a lot of time in one space, you gain an awareness of it that goes beyond the visual. Jae had spent so much time laying in this room that he knew the layout without having to look. The bed was situated with the headboard against the wall directly opposite to the door. On either side of the bed were identical night stands, with identical lamps. On the left side of the bed – Mom’s side, and the side Jae was currently laying on – there was a digital clock and usually a book or stack of magazines, bottle of painkillers, and other assorted small personal items. On the right side was the landline phone that they still had for some reason; most people Jae knew had gotten rid of their landlines. Dad usually left his glasses there too; he routinely knocked them onto the floor if the phone happened to wake him up, but despite that, he’d never been convinced to buy a case for them. They weren’t there now; Jae’s parents had taken to sleeping in the guest room instead of trying to move him out, and their small effects had trickled out with them. On the wall Jae lay facing, there was the collection of photos, and then the window, blinds drawn and throwing only narrow slits of light from the streetlamps outside across the room. On the opposite wall, the closet and a set of bookshelves, then the entrance to the master bathroom.
The way the room looked in the dark, like it wasn’t exactly the same place it was during the day, was familiar to him now. It had a quieter, emptier quality than the feeling of not quite being alone that he could remember on his mornings getting ready for school. Sometimes that was comforting in its own way too.
Now, he could feel -- without seeing -- that something was out of place. Something was there that shouldn’t have been.
Someone was laying in bed with him.
Jae stared blankly at the wall while his fogged mind tried to fully awaken. Nobody was touching him, but someone was there.
One of his parents had come in and laid down next to him. That was the only answer that made sense, even if he didn’t know why.
That was the only answer that made sense, but he couldn’t hear anyone’s breathing but his own.
Jae flexed his fingers, a subtle enough movement that he was secure it wouldn’t draw attention. It seemed like he could move freely. The numbers on the clock had changed. 3:21 A.M. Time wasn’t standing still. He could still breathe. The house was quiet. No voices that shouldn’t have been. No one outside.
There was someone in bed with him, laying just behind his back.
Slowly, not turning from his side, Jae lifted his arm and reached behind himself, stretching his fingers out into the half of the room that might as well be an empty void while he couldn’t see it. He didn’t know what he expected to find. He hoped to find nothing.
His fingers touched fabric, over something solid and cold.
He had felt that coldness before.
Jae had experienced so many kinds of fear. The kind of horror that you tried to shut out and deny until you lived it too long to pretend. Fear of dying. Fear of living. Fear of himself, and all of the other things you could philosophize about. Even in his haunted moments, he had never been so full of cold, visceral dread of the unknown.
It wouldn’t go away until he looked.
He couldn’t look.
He had to.
Slowly and painfully, Jae turned his head, craning his neck so that he could glance over his shoulder at whoever – whatever – was laying next to him. His gaze crawled down his arm, stretched out in the dark, to where it met-
People wrote about the kind of horror that was so deep, so terrible, you couldn’t comprehend it. The mind shut it out, shut down totally to protect itself. Jae wished that one of those horrors had come to visit him instead.
Even in the faint, white light peeking through the blinds, he could make out the peach of her jacket. The black fabric of her tank top against his fingers, bunched up slightly from how she was lying curled with her back to him and exposing a strip of skin on the small of her back. Jae could feel the bumps of her spine under his fingertips. Hair spilling over her shoulder, deep inky black in the darkness. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing. She was icy cold underneath Jae’s touch.
When she started to turn, head tilting back to glance at him just like he was looking at her, Jae started screaming.
Jarring impact of his elbow cracking on the floor, shooting pain both up and down his arm. One leg was twisted in the bedsheets, halting the momentum from Jae launching himself over the side of the bed in blind terror. Something clattered to the floor next to him; the digital clock. He’d grabbed for the lamp but missed.
Light flipped on, blinding him. Hands reaching for him, voices calling his name, sounds and touch detached from actual people. He recoiled from them. He’d have lashed out to try to fend them off if his chest didn’t feel like a vise had suddenly clamped down on it.
One pair of hands freed Jae’s leg from the bedsheets, and he was able to fully draw away, curling in on himself, hands pressed over his face. Touch returned, easing him up off the floor to sit. Jae jerked away from it again, slumping back against the side of the bed instead. If the crushing pressure inside his chest would just let up, he could tell them that he didn’t want to be touched.
The pressure did ease eventually; it always did, little comfort that that was. The garbled noise of his parents’ voices slowly became intelligible words: he’d had a nightmare. It wasn’t real. He was awake now. He was okay.
Jae felt like he’d been awake the whole time. The bed was empty. It always had been. He couldn’t say why he’d ever thought it hadn’t been without sounding crazy. He had survived everything, and when he got home, that was when he finally went crazy.
His dad’s hand folded over his own, and Jae still didn’t want to be touched, but he tolerated it. The hand was warm, solid, alive.
His parents were worrying over him. He knew that, and it made him feel even more like shit, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He probably ought to wallow in the thought that he didn’t deserve it or whatever, but he was still glad when they checked in on him. There was a lingering knot of guilt in his stomach that he couldn’t give them the kind of response they were hoping for. He just didn’t have the energy.
Jae had waited and waited, huddled under the bedsheets, but nobody ever came to talk to him about Isaac. One of the neighbors had heard the altercation and called his parents, but all they had been able to get out of him was that someone had come around yelling and banging on the front door. There was talk of making a police report, but nobody else came to talk to him about it, so he figured that hadn’t come to pass. He wasn’t going to admit that he’d ended up freaking out and slamming the front door open and closed over and over like a maniac if nobody forced him to admit it.
He’d have figured that Isaac might make good on the implied threat of having someone come and drag Jae out of the house to do whatever to him, but as far as Jae could tell, nothing was coming on that front. Maybe Isaac was too proud to admit that Jae had been the one who hurt him. Maybe he knew that waiting without answers was almost worse. More paranoia, more jumping at shadows. Like Jae didn’t already have a reason to jump at shadows for the rest of his fucking life. Some part of him believed what Isaac had said, that maybe there was someone waiting for him to come out so they could exact revenge for any number of things. Like he didn’t already feel like a pile of shit when he felt like anything at all.
His mom had started staying home from work again so that she could keep an eye on him as he spent his time drifting in and out. Sometimes she sat on the bed next to him, talking to him about work, and the day she’d had, chores around the house and what to make for dinner, steadily moving from topic to topic despite his minimal responses. She brushed his hair with her fingers and seemed not to notice how Jae winced when her fingers caught in the tangles. He was uncomfortably aware of how greasy his hair was getting, too; he needed a shower, but she didn’t seem to notice that either.
“You need a trim,” she murmured to him at one point. “When you feel better, tell me, and I’ll do that for you.” She had always preferred cutting his hair herself rather than taking him to a salon, especially since he had started growing it out in freshman year. It probably ended up a bit choppier-looking than if he’d had it cut professionally, but he had liked the way it looked and she seemed to enjoy it, so he never complained.
Her hair had gotten longer too; on the day Jae had left for school, she’d worn it in a neat, blunt bob that didn’t quite reach her shoulders. Now it fell just past them, not quite as neat or even, but certainly not comparable to the mess Jae’s hair was turning into. She continually brushed it back from her face to tuck behind her ears, not seeming to notice that she was doing it. Whenever she leaned forward to look at something or speak to him, it would fall forward too, and the whole process would repeat. Both of his parents seemed bizarrely unchanged in spite of everything, even knowing that they had a killer sleeping under their roof. It was just the small things that said otherwise. Mom’s hair was longer and less kempt. Dad fidgeted more and seemed more forgetful. Each of them had moments where they seemed to check out and just stare off into space, but when they moved, they did it with a purpose that Jae envied.
When you feel better. When, not if. Sometimes his mom’s certainty did make him feel better, and sometimes the idea that he could still fail at something she was so sure of made him never want to get out of bed again.
Mom did bring up therapy, finally. Jae had expected someone to mention it before now. He’d been in anger management before, which might have been funny now to someone with a shitty sense of humor. Now she was trying to ease him into the idea of trauma counseling. That was kind of darkly funny. Like Jae would somehow still be in denial about the fact that he needed help when he had barely gotten out of bed for days, to the point where his body was starting to ache from lack of movement. He was honestly surprised nobody had decided to drag him to therapy by force before this point. Maybe sometime soon, he’d actually be able to make himself get up and go.
He was gradually falling into a pattern, even as he spent most of his time doing nothing. He kept waking early in the morning, anywhere from three to five A.M. Usually, he didn’t get back to sleep. Jae had always been a morning person, but waking in the dark of the early morning, just laying in bed waiting for the sun to come up was different from the morning routines he’d gotten used to over the years. He’d never minded getting up early for school, or even work on the weekends; he had the early hours all to himself, comfort in routine and the quiet of the house before anyone else got up.
When he peeled his eyes open this morning, the room was dark and still. The glowing green lights of the digital clock on the bedside table read 3:19 A.M. The family pictures on the wall that he faced were draped in shadow. Maybe the faces in them were grinning; maybe grimacing. Their eyes weren’t visible. Who were they baring their teeth at?
When you spend a lot of time in one space, you gain an awareness of it that goes beyond the visual. Jae had spent so much time laying in this room that he knew the layout without having to look. The bed was situated with the headboard against the wall directly opposite to the door. On either side of the bed were identical night stands, with identical lamps. On the left side of the bed – Mom’s side, and the side Jae was currently laying on – there was a digital clock and usually a book or stack of magazines, bottle of painkillers, and other assorted small personal items. On the right side was the landline phone that they still had for some reason; most people Jae knew had gotten rid of their landlines. Dad usually left his glasses there too; he routinely knocked them onto the floor if the phone happened to wake him up, but despite that, he’d never been convinced to buy a case for them. They weren’t there now; Jae’s parents had taken to sleeping in the guest room instead of trying to move him out, and their small effects had trickled out with them. On the wall Jae lay facing, there was the collection of photos, and then the window, blinds drawn and throwing only narrow slits of light from the streetlamps outside across the room. On the opposite wall, the closet and a set of bookshelves, then the entrance to the master bathroom.
The way the room looked in the dark, like it wasn’t exactly the same place it was during the day, was familiar to him now. It had a quieter, emptier quality than the feeling of not quite being alone that he could remember on his mornings getting ready for school. Sometimes that was comforting in its own way too.
Now, he could feel -- without seeing -- that something was out of place. Something was there that shouldn’t have been.
Someone was laying in bed with him.
Jae stared blankly at the wall while his fogged mind tried to fully awaken. Nobody was touching him, but someone was there.
One of his parents had come in and laid down next to him. That was the only answer that made sense, even if he didn’t know why.
That was the only answer that made sense, but he couldn’t hear anyone’s breathing but his own.
Jae flexed his fingers, a subtle enough movement that he was secure it wouldn’t draw attention. It seemed like he could move freely. The numbers on the clock had changed. 3:21 A.M. Time wasn’t standing still. He could still breathe. The house was quiet. No voices that shouldn’t have been. No one outside.
There was someone in bed with him, laying just behind his back.
Slowly, not turning from his side, Jae lifted his arm and reached behind himself, stretching his fingers out into the half of the room that might as well be an empty void while he couldn’t see it. He didn’t know what he expected to find. He hoped to find nothing.
His fingers touched fabric, over something solid and cold.
He had felt that coldness before.
Jae had experienced so many kinds of fear. The kind of horror that you tried to shut out and deny until you lived it too long to pretend. Fear of dying. Fear of living. Fear of himself, and all of the other things you could philosophize about. Even in his haunted moments, he had never been so full of cold, visceral dread of the unknown.
It wouldn’t go away until he looked.
He couldn’t look.
He had to.
Slowly and painfully, Jae turned his head, craning his neck so that he could glance over his shoulder at whoever – whatever – was laying next to him. His gaze crawled down his arm, stretched out in the dark, to where it met-
People wrote about the kind of horror that was so deep, so terrible, you couldn’t comprehend it. The mind shut it out, shut down totally to protect itself. Jae wished that one of those horrors had come to visit him instead.
Even in the faint, white light peeking through the blinds, he could make out the peach of her jacket. The black fabric of her tank top against his fingers, bunched up slightly from how she was lying curled with her back to him and exposing a strip of skin on the small of her back. Jae could feel the bumps of her spine under his fingertips. Hair spilling over her shoulder, deep inky black in the darkness. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing. She was icy cold underneath Jae’s touch.
When she started to turn, head tilting back to glance at him just like he was looking at her, Jae started screaming.
Jarring impact of his elbow cracking on the floor, shooting pain both up and down his arm. One leg was twisted in the bedsheets, halting the momentum from Jae launching himself over the side of the bed in blind terror. Something clattered to the floor next to him; the digital clock. He’d grabbed for the lamp but missed.
Light flipped on, blinding him. Hands reaching for him, voices calling his name, sounds and touch detached from actual people. He recoiled from them. He’d have lashed out to try to fend them off if his chest didn’t feel like a vise had suddenly clamped down on it.
One pair of hands freed Jae’s leg from the bedsheets, and he was able to fully draw away, curling in on himself, hands pressed over his face. Touch returned, easing him up off the floor to sit. Jae jerked away from it again, slumping back against the side of the bed instead. If the crushing pressure inside his chest would just let up, he could tell them that he didn’t want to be touched.
The pressure did ease eventually; it always did, little comfort that that was. The garbled noise of his parents’ voices slowly became intelligible words: he’d had a nightmare. It wasn’t real. He was awake now. He was okay.
Jae felt like he’d been awake the whole time. The bed was empty. It always had been. He couldn’t say why he’d ever thought it hadn’t been without sounding crazy. He had survived everything, and when he got home, that was when he finally went crazy.
His dad’s hand folded over his own, and Jae still didn’t want to be touched, but he tolerated it. The hand was warm, solid, alive.
August crawled into September. Jae’s first therapy appointments had been a bit anticlimactic, considering all of the things that had led him there. While he’d been laying in his depression nest, his parents had been shopping around for a good counselor, and when Jae was finally consulted, they jointly decided on someone in Lake Havasu City, about an hour away; still in the same county, so his parents’ insurance would cover some of the cost but not too close to home.
His therapist was named Dr. Peralta, but he told Jae to call him Quentin if Jae was comfortable with that (Jae declined). He was younger than the woman Jae had been seeing for anger management counseling had been, maybe mid-30’s. The shelf behind the desk in his office was covered in small knick-knacks, childish drawings, and an assortment of photos containing Dr. Peralta, a smiling dark-haired woman, and a pair of toddlers. His hair was receding already, and he wore thick, round glasses. The laid-back demeanor he projected during Jae’s weekly visits seemed at odds with both the clutter and his nervous, nerdy appearance; it was hard not to see it as calculated and feel more than a little patronized.
Jae was no stranger to this song and dance, though. He’d dug his heels in plenty when his parents first started taking him to counseling, and shockingly, being a stubborn asshole hadn’t helped anything. He was here willingly this time, so he sucked up his misgivings, filled out the little “feelings and behavior” questionnaires he was given — no matter how pointless they felt — and he tried to put forth an actual effort.
It was a slow start. It had been much easier to spill his feelings everywhere in front of a faceless camera, when he could forget for just a moment that there might be someone real watching and listening. Everything that Jae said felt obvious and shallow. Oh, I’m tired all the time. I don’t want to leave my house. I have bad dreams. I’m paranoid.
He hadn’t been asked to elaborate on his dreams yet, and he was fine with that. He hadn’t had another one of whatever the fuck his recent episode had been, and he was more than fine with that. Most of the time, his dreams were faint and nonsensical.
One thing that he did appreciate was that Dr. Peralta never directly brought up the abduction or the island. He had thought that it would irritate him to dance around the subject, but it actually helped to be the one who decided whether they were going to acknowledge it or not. If Jae didn’t feel like it, he could just talk about his day to day routine, the things he was trying to do to cope.
After all he’d been through, he had the same PTSD as every other crazy person. It was annoying but strangely, the tiniest bit reassuring at the same time.
“Have you thought about getting in touch with friends and family? Classmates?”
“Fuck no,” was Jae’s immediate response. Dr. Peralta raised his eyebrows at Jae’s language but let him continue. “I- someone came to my house.”
“Someone you know?”
“Yeah. A… classmate.”
“Did you talk with them?”
“Not really. He yelled at me, and I slammed the door on him.” Jae didn’t elaborate on how literal that was.
“Are you concerned about experiencing that kind of hostility again if you tried to reach out?”
“I dunno. I guess.”
Dr. Peralta cocked his head to the side slightly, indicating that Jae should elaborate, and Jae sighed, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his good hand over his face. He had gotten better about not reflexively gesturing with the bad one, so as to minimize the aches and pains.
“Look. All my friends are dead,” he said bluntly. He wanted to see Dr. Peralta flinch when he said it, and frustratingly, the psychiatrist didn’t budge. “Okay? I don’t have any friends anymore. I don’t want to just, I don’t know, fuck around and go through my whole class and see if someone wants to hang out or whatever. They weren’t my friends before, and if they suddenly want to be now, I… I don’t trust that, okay?”
Dr. Peralta twirled his pen around his fingers absently. He always held a pen during their sessions, but he never actually seemed to take notes. Jae was starting to recognize the pen-twirling gesture as something that Dr. Peralta did when he wasn’t prepared to let go of something that Jae was trying to push aside.
“Is there anyone you do know that you’d like to talk to?”
There was a fresh coat of paint on the apartment building. Back in the spring, it had been white (though it had mostly faded into grey) and peeling in places. Now it was light blue, with a crisp white trim. It still looked on the cheaper side, which it was, but not as glaringly as it had before. The handrail on the concrete steps that led up the front walk hadn’t been redone; the old paint flaked under Jae’s hand, exposing spots of rust.
Jae’s parents were still leery of letting him out of the house alone. Dr. Peralta had been steadily working at convincing all three of them that it was necessary, so Jae had taken quick trips with one or both of them; a walk in Liberty Park every few days when his mom was feeling up to it, a single trip to the grocery store with his dad when they estimated that activity would be at its lowest. Jae felt eyes on himself everywhere he went, even when there was nobody around. Nobody had approached him yet. He didn’t know what he’d do if they did.
Dr. Peralta had emphasized that he shouldn’t put himself in situations that felt unsafe, but it seemed to Jae that there was no way to get back to being a functioning, independent human without doing that. He could hide away forever, or he could endure the discomfort until it got manageable. He was seventeen – eighteen. The threat of being some kind of anti-social, basement-dwelling weirdo who still lived with his parents years down the line if he couldn’t get his shit together was maybe a trite motivation, but fuck. Jae might not have a clear picture of who he wanted to be at this stage, but that wasn’t it.
This was the first time since he’d set foot back in his family home that he’d ventured out of it again without at least one of his parents. He’d sent a steady stream of text message updates as he went to reassure them that he was fine, easing their nerves and his own. It was the first time in close to five months now that he’d walked around Kingman at all.
He kept his head down as he walked, focusing on his phone. It did a little to keep him from constantly glancing around in paranoia; if he drew anything more than a glance, he didn’t notice. He’d made this trek so many times that he didn’t need to look up to see where he was going, even after the length of time between now and the last time he’d done it. The glimpses he did get felt vaguely off, like things had changed while he was gone. Spots on the road where potholes had been paved over or new ones had been chipped in. Shopfronts hosting different stores than they used to. Or maybe he was just remembering wrong; could he be sure of how any of it had used to look, when even the environment felt inhospitable now?
It was stupidly hot outside still; Jae was never one for shorts, so even in a t-shirt and his lightest jeans, he was sweating heavily by the time he reached the apartment complex. He stopped on the front steps to finger-comb back the strands of hair that had escaped his ponytail and adjust his sunglasses, wiping at the sweat on his face beneath them. That he’d lost some of his tolerance for the heat, of all things, was maybe the most unexpected side effect of everything so far.
First floor, back left unit. It didn’t feel fair to call it a second home, because it wasn’t like he’d ever wanted to live here, but he’d always felt welcome. Still, when Jae finally made it to the door, he found himself at a loss. He raised his good hand to knock and hesitated, standing there for a good ten seconds before he could finally bring himself to rap his knuckles quickly against the door.
There was no answer. There were windows around the side of the building, but none in the sort of exterior corridor that the front doors of the units faced into, so unless someone made noise moving around inside, Jae had no way of knowing if there was anybody in there to hear him.
He checked his phone; two minutes had passed. When another ticked by, he knocked again. Jae opened his mouth to speak and croaked out something that was more cough than word. He should have brought a water bottle with him or something.
Once he’d cleared his throat, he tried again. “Mr. Spencer?”
No answer.
Jae felt a twinge of something between frustration and anxiety. He waited just a couple of minutes more before leaving the door to round the side of the building and check the windows. The screen had always been a little loose on one of them; Jae knew how to pop it out of place from the outside, and if the window itself was at least cracked, it was easy to lever it open more and climb in. He wasn’t planning on doing that right now, in broad daylight when he wasn’t even sure what would be inside, but the process was as ingrained in his memory as the route here.
There were two windows around this side that looked into the living room and kitchen area of the unit. To his surprise, both were open and the blinds were raised. The smell of fresh paint wafted out as Jae approached.
Jae lifted his sunglasses onto his forehead so that he could get a better look. Plastic sheeting covered the carpet, and some of the furniture had been moved away from the walls and covered as well. A ladder and painting supplies stood next to one of the walls, which looked to be half-finished with a new coat of cream paint over the older off-white. All the pictures and decorations that Jae remembered were gone. He couldn’t see anyone inside, regardless of the angle he tried to look in at.
There was a sense of wrongness about this whole thing. Unease turned Jae’s stomach, but he still took a chance to rap on the window with his knuckles, just in case it got a response. As he had more or less expected, there was nothing. He continued standing at the window anyway, not knowing what else to do.
When he finally tore himself away from the window, Jae wandered aimlessly around the building, circling it a couple of times before returning. Still nobody visible inside, even if he pressed his nose up against the screen and strained to try to see through the doorways into the other rooms.
He was so focused on trying to see something new inside that he missed the sound of a vehicle rolling up to the curb, but the doors slamming as someone exited snapped him out of it. Jae jerked away from the window and turned; a pickup truck had pulled up, its bed clearly loaded with more equipment for painting and remodeling. Two men had stepped out, one of whom Jae vaguely recognized as the property’s owner. He’d been around here enough times to have seen the man in passing, but didn’t recall his name. From the way the other man was dressed, he was most likely one of the painters. They had obviously both noticed Jae standing at the side of the building with his face practically in the window, and he was sure he looked guilty of something.
The landlord waved the painter off, and the other man shrugged and circled to the back of the truck to begin unloading its bed as the landlord made a beeline for Jae. He was dressed casually and walked with his thumbs in his front pockets, not seeming overly concerned, but Jae caught wariness in his expression.
“Can I help you?”
“I, um.” Jae’s throat was dry, and he had to clear it again to speak without croaking. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I’m a friend of Henry’s.”
The landlord just stared at him. Was there recognition in that look? He didn’t say anything. Jae’s hand strayed unthinkingly to his waist, but he didn’t find anything other than his phone in his pocket.
“You own this place, right?”
“Sure do. Name’s Kurt.”
Jae nodded, even though he didn’t really care about the man’s name. “Is… can you tell me if Mr. Spencer is here? Did he move?”
Kurt oddly seemed to deflate; his shoulders slumped, and he sighed and shook his head. “Why don’t you come have a seat over here, and we can talk.” He reached out as though to take Jae by the shoulder, but Jae stepped back from his grasp, tensing. Thankfully, Kurt just withdrew his hand, seeming to realize that it wasn’t welcome. He rubbed the back of his neck instead, glancing away.
“Listen, I-” He sighed again. “You’re his son’s friend, yeah. Seen you around.” He seemed to be half talking to himself. “Sorry. That unit’s empty. Derek…” Kurt trailed off. His eyes darted around for a moment, as though looking for help.
Jae knew what Kurt was going to say before he finished. He tasted bile.
“Derek took his own life a few months ago.” Kurt’s voice was quiet, almost drowned out by the buzzing rising in Jae’s ears.
“Oh.”
There was a moment’s pause where Kurt looked poised to say a bit more, but then Jae spun away from him and doubled over to vomit in the grass.
Kurt dithered for a minute, watching him empty his stomach, and then took half a step forward and reached out again. “Hey, take it easy-”
“Don’t touch me,” Jae gasped, still leaned over with his hands braced on his knees. He almost gagged again from the smell, but nothing else came up, so he just spat, trying to clear the taste from his mouth. A dull pain had started up in his left temple.
Kurt watched him with a pinched expression as Jae slowly straightened up, feeling lightheaded. “Sorry,” Kurt muttered. “Sorry to tell you like this.” It was painfully obvious that he knew exactly who Jae was. “If you want to come sit and have some water-”
“No.” Jae wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then wiped his hand on his jeans. His steps were unsteady, but he started walking away from Kurt as briskly as he could, back to the front of the building and then down the concrete steps. He didn’t want to sit. He didn’t want a fucking glass of water. There was only one person here he’d wanted to talk to, and that person was- he wasn’t here anymore.
Jae could hear the painter and Kurt start talking in low voices behind him. He managed to keep himself from just running away, even though he wanted to.
Jae spent the rest of the afternoon wandering in a daze. By the time he realized that he definitely should have accepted water when it was offered to him, his head was pounding, and his clothes felt soaked through with sweat. He needed to just go home, go get out of the heat and have something to drink, but even when he got turned in the right direction, he couldn’t bring himself to go back. His parents would ask. They’d want to know if he got to talk to Henry’s dad, what was said, and the thought of having to explain things to them made him want to puke again.
The afternoon light was starting to turn orange when Jae found himself at the school. There was noise from over near the track, kids shouting and laughing, but nobody was hanging around out front at this point in the day. Jae hobbled across the grass over to one of the picnic tables and dropped onto the bench before his legs decided to give out. He sat slumped over, elbows resting on his knees and his head nearly between them, eyes closed, breathing hard.
God, he felt like shit. He didn’t even know when the last time he’d gotten heat sickness was. He’d been born in central California and lived his entire life there and Arizona, and you had to be a grade-A moron to go wandering around in the afternoon heat in either of those places without water or protection from the sun. Ding ding ding, Jae was that moron today. A-plus.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he didn’t move to retrieve it. He could maybe go inside, see if one of the vending machines was working and get a bottle of water, but he imagined walking through the front doors of the school just like he had a million times before, and the mental image of the front hallway made his nausea rise. The only reason he’d wandered here was because he’d let his brain go on autopilot. He was a fucking idiot.
Even the school had changed. There had been construction here when Jae had been left on the grounds, he vaguely remembered. The picnic table he was sitting at had been moved from where it used to be. The entire city around him, no matter where he went, felt unreal. Like he was walking through it in a dream, and his subconscious wasn’t filling in the details quite right.
Jae wasn’t sure how long he sat hunched over, sometimes digging his fingers into his face or rifling through his sweat-damp hair. Obviously he didn’t start feeling any better; the longer he sat outside, the worse it was going to get. He watched his shadow and the others it mingled with gradually lengthen. Birds called. Insects buzzed. The distant chatter from whatever sports practice or event was going on eventually faded.
When the sound of footsteps approaching in the grass reached his ears, Jae didn’t raise his head, but the voice that followed finally shook him out of his stupor somewhat.
“Hey there- oh, it’s you.”
Jae’s head throbbed vindictively when he finally sat up somewhat, and his neck and back similarly ached. He looked blearily up at Officer Brand, who was regarding him with a perplexity that morphed into mild alarm when he took in Jae’s… everything.
“Jesus Christ, how long have you been sitting out here?”
“Dunno,” Jae rasped. “S’public property.”
Brand dragged a hand over his face and muttered something exasperated into his palm. He leveled a finger at Jae. “Look,” he said slowly, “I’m not gonna ask what you’re doing. But you sit tight right here while I get you a bottle of water, and then I’m going to take you back to your folks, understand?”
“Whatever,” Jae mumbled, but he stayed put as Brand stalked off to do as he’d said. Where was he going to go?
Brand returned a couple of minutes later with a cold bottle from the vending machine and opened it before pressing it onto Jae’s hand. A whisper of memory — Dr. Kelley doing the same thing while Jae sat slumped in a wheelchair — made him flinch away. But Brand’s hold on his hand and the bottle made sure he didn’t drop it.
“Drink up, but not too fast.” He stood there with his hands on his hips while Jae sipped, not looking at him. When Jae had drunk enough, Brand took him by the arm and helped him up, walking him to where Brand had parked his squad car.
Jae’s second-ever ride in a police car. Hooray.
After flopping into the passenger seat and getting his seatbelt buckled, Jae wordlessly handed over his phone before Brand even asked. Brand sighed but took it; Jae’s parents were his only contacts in the phone right now, so it only took a few seconds to find a number to call. His parents were right on the cusp of getting frantic at his lack of response, if what Jae could make out of the voice on the other end was any indication. While Brand calmly explained to them that he’d picked Jae up and was bringing him home, that Jae was a bit sick from the heat but unhurt, and no he wasn’t in any trouble, Jae leaned his head against the car’s window, leaving a sweaty face print on the glass.
When they finally got driving, the town rolled by bathed in shades of orange and gold. Jae barely absorbed the sight.
“You doing this often?” Brand finally spoke up. “Wandering around making yourself sick?” He sounded irritated, but Jae was exhausted enough to think better of poking at him.
“First time.”
Brand grunted at him, and they lapsed back into silence for a few minutes. Jae was the one to break it next.
“My name’s in there. On the memorial.”
“Yeah.” Of course Brand knew that. He probably walked past it every day he was on duty.
Several more minutes of silence. Then, “My best friend’s dad killed himself.”
Jae saw Brand tense in the corner of his vision. “I’m… really sorry to hear that,” he finally replied. After a moment, he began, “A friend of mine…” but then he trailed off. Jae didn’t ask him to finish.
“Are you getting help?” Brand asked him finally, when they were turning into Jae’s neighborhood.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. That’s… That’s good.” Brand tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Jae kept staring blankly out the window, his head occasionally bouncing against the glass when the car hit a bump.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Jae said, the words seeming to slip out with hardly any input from him.
Brand said nothing until they pulled into Jae’s driveway. His parents were both sitting on the porch, and his dad jumped up and strode down the drive to meet them. Dad helped Jae out of the car, frowning with concern when he felt how warm Jae was. Brand climbed out and walked them back up to the front door. Jae could just imagine the neighbors watching and wondering just what the hell he’d done now.
“Hey,” Brand started when Jae had been ushered inside, but when Jae looked back at him, he hesitated and then just nodded curtly. Like he was tacitly approving what Jae had said to him, offering some silent support. Jae couldn’t decide if he wanted to accept it for what it was or tell him to fuck off. He let himself be dragged off to lay down on the couch without further comment.
He felt like shit for the rest of the night, and of course the heat wasn’t just to blame. “A few months ago” could have meant anything. When Henry’s death was captured on camera. Before then. After, when it was just Jae left. Later, when it seemed like Jae wasn’t coming home.
“I want to go home,” he mumbled to nobody. The words he’d never said out loud in those ten, eleven days on the island or in the weeks cooped up in that windowless room.
Where am I going?
That’s up to you now, Trent said.
I want to go home. Let me go home.
He had to figure out on his own where that was, now. There was too much of a void here in Kingman. Jae’s parents drifted in and out of the living room to check on him as the night rolled on, but he stayed put and he stayed quiet, thinking, wanting. He’d thought often enough about how badly he wanted to get out of town, go back to California or anywhere else. He wanted to go someplace where things happened.
Now what he really wanted was peace and quiet, but it was starting to feel more like a matter of survival that he left. The exhausted buzzing in Jae’s head kept him from thinking too coherently about things like where and when; he just wanted to get out. He would have to.
But not now. Not tonight. Tonight, Jae wasn’t going to plot or dream, good or bad. The numbness had been lifted again, for a little while, and when the night was still and he was alone, Jae finally let himself mourn the Kingman that used to be.
His therapist was named Dr. Peralta, but he told Jae to call him Quentin if Jae was comfortable with that (Jae declined). He was younger than the woman Jae had been seeing for anger management counseling had been, maybe mid-30’s. The shelf behind the desk in his office was covered in small knick-knacks, childish drawings, and an assortment of photos containing Dr. Peralta, a smiling dark-haired woman, and a pair of toddlers. His hair was receding already, and he wore thick, round glasses. The laid-back demeanor he projected during Jae’s weekly visits seemed at odds with both the clutter and his nervous, nerdy appearance; it was hard not to see it as calculated and feel more than a little patronized.
Jae was no stranger to this song and dance, though. He’d dug his heels in plenty when his parents first started taking him to counseling, and shockingly, being a stubborn asshole hadn’t helped anything. He was here willingly this time, so he sucked up his misgivings, filled out the little “feelings and behavior” questionnaires he was given — no matter how pointless they felt — and he tried to put forth an actual effort.
It was a slow start. It had been much easier to spill his feelings everywhere in front of a faceless camera, when he could forget for just a moment that there might be someone real watching and listening. Everything that Jae said felt obvious and shallow. Oh, I’m tired all the time. I don’t want to leave my house. I have bad dreams. I’m paranoid.
He hadn’t been asked to elaborate on his dreams yet, and he was fine with that. He hadn’t had another one of whatever the fuck his recent episode had been, and he was more than fine with that. Most of the time, his dreams were faint and nonsensical.
One thing that he did appreciate was that Dr. Peralta never directly brought up the abduction or the island. He had thought that it would irritate him to dance around the subject, but it actually helped to be the one who decided whether they were going to acknowledge it or not. If Jae didn’t feel like it, he could just talk about his day to day routine, the things he was trying to do to cope.
After all he’d been through, he had the same PTSD as every other crazy person. It was annoying but strangely, the tiniest bit reassuring at the same time.
“Have you thought about getting in touch with friends and family? Classmates?”
“Fuck no,” was Jae’s immediate response. Dr. Peralta raised his eyebrows at Jae’s language but let him continue. “I- someone came to my house.”
“Someone you know?”
“Yeah. A… classmate.”
“Did you talk with them?”
“Not really. He yelled at me, and I slammed the door on him.” Jae didn’t elaborate on how literal that was.
“Are you concerned about experiencing that kind of hostility again if you tried to reach out?”
“I dunno. I guess.”
Dr. Peralta cocked his head to the side slightly, indicating that Jae should elaborate, and Jae sighed, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his good hand over his face. He had gotten better about not reflexively gesturing with the bad one, so as to minimize the aches and pains.
“Look. All my friends are dead,” he said bluntly. He wanted to see Dr. Peralta flinch when he said it, and frustratingly, the psychiatrist didn’t budge. “Okay? I don’t have any friends anymore. I don’t want to just, I don’t know, fuck around and go through my whole class and see if someone wants to hang out or whatever. They weren’t my friends before, and if they suddenly want to be now, I… I don’t trust that, okay?”
Dr. Peralta twirled his pen around his fingers absently. He always held a pen during their sessions, but he never actually seemed to take notes. Jae was starting to recognize the pen-twirling gesture as something that Dr. Peralta did when he wasn’t prepared to let go of something that Jae was trying to push aside.
“Is there anyone you do know that you’d like to talk to?”
There was a fresh coat of paint on the apartment building. Back in the spring, it had been white (though it had mostly faded into grey) and peeling in places. Now it was light blue, with a crisp white trim. It still looked on the cheaper side, which it was, but not as glaringly as it had before. The handrail on the concrete steps that led up the front walk hadn’t been redone; the old paint flaked under Jae’s hand, exposing spots of rust.
Jae’s parents were still leery of letting him out of the house alone. Dr. Peralta had been steadily working at convincing all three of them that it was necessary, so Jae had taken quick trips with one or both of them; a walk in Liberty Park every few days when his mom was feeling up to it, a single trip to the grocery store with his dad when they estimated that activity would be at its lowest. Jae felt eyes on himself everywhere he went, even when there was nobody around. Nobody had approached him yet. He didn’t know what he’d do if they did.
Dr. Peralta had emphasized that he shouldn’t put himself in situations that felt unsafe, but it seemed to Jae that there was no way to get back to being a functioning, independent human without doing that. He could hide away forever, or he could endure the discomfort until it got manageable. He was seventeen – eighteen. The threat of being some kind of anti-social, basement-dwelling weirdo who still lived with his parents years down the line if he couldn’t get his shit together was maybe a trite motivation, but fuck. Jae might not have a clear picture of who he wanted to be at this stage, but that wasn’t it.
This was the first time since he’d set foot back in his family home that he’d ventured out of it again without at least one of his parents. He’d sent a steady stream of text message updates as he went to reassure them that he was fine, easing their nerves and his own. It was the first time in close to five months now that he’d walked around Kingman at all.
He kept his head down as he walked, focusing on his phone. It did a little to keep him from constantly glancing around in paranoia; if he drew anything more than a glance, he didn’t notice. He’d made this trek so many times that he didn’t need to look up to see where he was going, even after the length of time between now and the last time he’d done it. The glimpses he did get felt vaguely off, like things had changed while he was gone. Spots on the road where potholes had been paved over or new ones had been chipped in. Shopfronts hosting different stores than they used to. Or maybe he was just remembering wrong; could he be sure of how any of it had used to look, when even the environment felt inhospitable now?
It was stupidly hot outside still; Jae was never one for shorts, so even in a t-shirt and his lightest jeans, he was sweating heavily by the time he reached the apartment complex. He stopped on the front steps to finger-comb back the strands of hair that had escaped his ponytail and adjust his sunglasses, wiping at the sweat on his face beneath them. That he’d lost some of his tolerance for the heat, of all things, was maybe the most unexpected side effect of everything so far.
First floor, back left unit. It didn’t feel fair to call it a second home, because it wasn’t like he’d ever wanted to live here, but he’d always felt welcome. Still, when Jae finally made it to the door, he found himself at a loss. He raised his good hand to knock and hesitated, standing there for a good ten seconds before he could finally bring himself to rap his knuckles quickly against the door.
There was no answer. There were windows around the side of the building, but none in the sort of exterior corridor that the front doors of the units faced into, so unless someone made noise moving around inside, Jae had no way of knowing if there was anybody in there to hear him.
He checked his phone; two minutes had passed. When another ticked by, he knocked again. Jae opened his mouth to speak and croaked out something that was more cough than word. He should have brought a water bottle with him or something.
Once he’d cleared his throat, he tried again. “Mr. Spencer?”
No answer.
Jae felt a twinge of something between frustration and anxiety. He waited just a couple of minutes more before leaving the door to round the side of the building and check the windows. The screen had always been a little loose on one of them; Jae knew how to pop it out of place from the outside, and if the window itself was at least cracked, it was easy to lever it open more and climb in. He wasn’t planning on doing that right now, in broad daylight when he wasn’t even sure what would be inside, but the process was as ingrained in his memory as the route here.
There were two windows around this side that looked into the living room and kitchen area of the unit. To his surprise, both were open and the blinds were raised. The smell of fresh paint wafted out as Jae approached.
Jae lifted his sunglasses onto his forehead so that he could get a better look. Plastic sheeting covered the carpet, and some of the furniture had been moved away from the walls and covered as well. A ladder and painting supplies stood next to one of the walls, which looked to be half-finished with a new coat of cream paint over the older off-white. All the pictures and decorations that Jae remembered were gone. He couldn’t see anyone inside, regardless of the angle he tried to look in at.
There was a sense of wrongness about this whole thing. Unease turned Jae’s stomach, but he still took a chance to rap on the window with his knuckles, just in case it got a response. As he had more or less expected, there was nothing. He continued standing at the window anyway, not knowing what else to do.
When he finally tore himself away from the window, Jae wandered aimlessly around the building, circling it a couple of times before returning. Still nobody visible inside, even if he pressed his nose up against the screen and strained to try to see through the doorways into the other rooms.
He was so focused on trying to see something new inside that he missed the sound of a vehicle rolling up to the curb, but the doors slamming as someone exited snapped him out of it. Jae jerked away from the window and turned; a pickup truck had pulled up, its bed clearly loaded with more equipment for painting and remodeling. Two men had stepped out, one of whom Jae vaguely recognized as the property’s owner. He’d been around here enough times to have seen the man in passing, but didn’t recall his name. From the way the other man was dressed, he was most likely one of the painters. They had obviously both noticed Jae standing at the side of the building with his face practically in the window, and he was sure he looked guilty of something.
The landlord waved the painter off, and the other man shrugged and circled to the back of the truck to begin unloading its bed as the landlord made a beeline for Jae. He was dressed casually and walked with his thumbs in his front pockets, not seeming overly concerned, but Jae caught wariness in his expression.
“Can I help you?”
“I, um.” Jae’s throat was dry, and he had to clear it again to speak without croaking. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I’m a friend of Henry’s.”
The landlord just stared at him. Was there recognition in that look? He didn’t say anything. Jae’s hand strayed unthinkingly to his waist, but he didn’t find anything other than his phone in his pocket.
“You own this place, right?”
“Sure do. Name’s Kurt.”
Jae nodded, even though he didn’t really care about the man’s name. “Is… can you tell me if Mr. Spencer is here? Did he move?”
Kurt oddly seemed to deflate; his shoulders slumped, and he sighed and shook his head. “Why don’t you come have a seat over here, and we can talk.” He reached out as though to take Jae by the shoulder, but Jae stepped back from his grasp, tensing. Thankfully, Kurt just withdrew his hand, seeming to realize that it wasn’t welcome. He rubbed the back of his neck instead, glancing away.
“Listen, I-” He sighed again. “You’re his son’s friend, yeah. Seen you around.” He seemed to be half talking to himself. “Sorry. That unit’s empty. Derek…” Kurt trailed off. His eyes darted around for a moment, as though looking for help.
Jae knew what Kurt was going to say before he finished. He tasted bile.
“Derek took his own life a few months ago.” Kurt’s voice was quiet, almost drowned out by the buzzing rising in Jae’s ears.
“Oh.”
There was a moment’s pause where Kurt looked poised to say a bit more, but then Jae spun away from him and doubled over to vomit in the grass.
Kurt dithered for a minute, watching him empty his stomach, and then took half a step forward and reached out again. “Hey, take it easy-”
“Don’t touch me,” Jae gasped, still leaned over with his hands braced on his knees. He almost gagged again from the smell, but nothing else came up, so he just spat, trying to clear the taste from his mouth. A dull pain had started up in his left temple.
Kurt watched him with a pinched expression as Jae slowly straightened up, feeling lightheaded. “Sorry,” Kurt muttered. “Sorry to tell you like this.” It was painfully obvious that he knew exactly who Jae was. “If you want to come sit and have some water-”
“No.” Jae wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then wiped his hand on his jeans. His steps were unsteady, but he started walking away from Kurt as briskly as he could, back to the front of the building and then down the concrete steps. He didn’t want to sit. He didn’t want a fucking glass of water. There was only one person here he’d wanted to talk to, and that person was- he wasn’t here anymore.
Jae could hear the painter and Kurt start talking in low voices behind him. He managed to keep himself from just running away, even though he wanted to.
Jae spent the rest of the afternoon wandering in a daze. By the time he realized that he definitely should have accepted water when it was offered to him, his head was pounding, and his clothes felt soaked through with sweat. He needed to just go home, go get out of the heat and have something to drink, but even when he got turned in the right direction, he couldn’t bring himself to go back. His parents would ask. They’d want to know if he got to talk to Henry’s dad, what was said, and the thought of having to explain things to them made him want to puke again.
The afternoon light was starting to turn orange when Jae found himself at the school. There was noise from over near the track, kids shouting and laughing, but nobody was hanging around out front at this point in the day. Jae hobbled across the grass over to one of the picnic tables and dropped onto the bench before his legs decided to give out. He sat slumped over, elbows resting on his knees and his head nearly between them, eyes closed, breathing hard.
God, he felt like shit. He didn’t even know when the last time he’d gotten heat sickness was. He’d been born in central California and lived his entire life there and Arizona, and you had to be a grade-A moron to go wandering around in the afternoon heat in either of those places without water or protection from the sun. Ding ding ding, Jae was that moron today. A-plus.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he didn’t move to retrieve it. He could maybe go inside, see if one of the vending machines was working and get a bottle of water, but he imagined walking through the front doors of the school just like he had a million times before, and the mental image of the front hallway made his nausea rise. The only reason he’d wandered here was because he’d let his brain go on autopilot. He was a fucking idiot.
Even the school had changed. There had been construction here when Jae had been left on the grounds, he vaguely remembered. The picnic table he was sitting at had been moved from where it used to be. The entire city around him, no matter where he went, felt unreal. Like he was walking through it in a dream, and his subconscious wasn’t filling in the details quite right.
Jae wasn’t sure how long he sat hunched over, sometimes digging his fingers into his face or rifling through his sweat-damp hair. Obviously he didn’t start feeling any better; the longer he sat outside, the worse it was going to get. He watched his shadow and the others it mingled with gradually lengthen. Birds called. Insects buzzed. The distant chatter from whatever sports practice or event was going on eventually faded.
When the sound of footsteps approaching in the grass reached his ears, Jae didn’t raise his head, but the voice that followed finally shook him out of his stupor somewhat.
“Hey there- oh, it’s you.”
Jae’s head throbbed vindictively when he finally sat up somewhat, and his neck and back similarly ached. He looked blearily up at Officer Brand, who was regarding him with a perplexity that morphed into mild alarm when he took in Jae’s… everything.
“Jesus Christ, how long have you been sitting out here?”
“Dunno,” Jae rasped. “S’public property.”
Brand dragged a hand over his face and muttered something exasperated into his palm. He leveled a finger at Jae. “Look,” he said slowly, “I’m not gonna ask what you’re doing. But you sit tight right here while I get you a bottle of water, and then I’m going to take you back to your folks, understand?”
“Whatever,” Jae mumbled, but he stayed put as Brand stalked off to do as he’d said. Where was he going to go?
Brand returned a couple of minutes later with a cold bottle from the vending machine and opened it before pressing it onto Jae’s hand. A whisper of memory — Dr. Kelley doing the same thing while Jae sat slumped in a wheelchair — made him flinch away. But Brand’s hold on his hand and the bottle made sure he didn’t drop it.
“Drink up, but not too fast.” He stood there with his hands on his hips while Jae sipped, not looking at him. When Jae had drunk enough, Brand took him by the arm and helped him up, walking him to where Brand had parked his squad car.
Jae’s second-ever ride in a police car. Hooray.
After flopping into the passenger seat and getting his seatbelt buckled, Jae wordlessly handed over his phone before Brand even asked. Brand sighed but took it; Jae’s parents were his only contacts in the phone right now, so it only took a few seconds to find a number to call. His parents were right on the cusp of getting frantic at his lack of response, if what Jae could make out of the voice on the other end was any indication. While Brand calmly explained to them that he’d picked Jae up and was bringing him home, that Jae was a bit sick from the heat but unhurt, and no he wasn’t in any trouble, Jae leaned his head against the car’s window, leaving a sweaty face print on the glass.
When they finally got driving, the town rolled by bathed in shades of orange and gold. Jae barely absorbed the sight.
“You doing this often?” Brand finally spoke up. “Wandering around making yourself sick?” He sounded irritated, but Jae was exhausted enough to think better of poking at him.
“First time.”
Brand grunted at him, and they lapsed back into silence for a few minutes. Jae was the one to break it next.
“My name’s in there. On the memorial.”
“Yeah.” Of course Brand knew that. He probably walked past it every day he was on duty.
Several more minutes of silence. Then, “My best friend’s dad killed himself.”
Jae saw Brand tense in the corner of his vision. “I’m… really sorry to hear that,” he finally replied. After a moment, he began, “A friend of mine…” but then he trailed off. Jae didn’t ask him to finish.
“Are you getting help?” Brand asked him finally, when they were turning into Jae’s neighborhood.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. That’s… That’s good.” Brand tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Jae kept staring blankly out the window, his head occasionally bouncing against the glass when the car hit a bump.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Jae said, the words seeming to slip out with hardly any input from him.
Brand said nothing until they pulled into Jae’s driveway. His parents were both sitting on the porch, and his dad jumped up and strode down the drive to meet them. Dad helped Jae out of the car, frowning with concern when he felt how warm Jae was. Brand climbed out and walked them back up to the front door. Jae could just imagine the neighbors watching and wondering just what the hell he’d done now.
“Hey,” Brand started when Jae had been ushered inside, but when Jae looked back at him, he hesitated and then just nodded curtly. Like he was tacitly approving what Jae had said to him, offering some silent support. Jae couldn’t decide if he wanted to accept it for what it was or tell him to fuck off. He let himself be dragged off to lay down on the couch without further comment.
He felt like shit for the rest of the night, and of course the heat wasn’t just to blame. “A few months ago” could have meant anything. When Henry’s death was captured on camera. Before then. After, when it was just Jae left. Later, when it seemed like Jae wasn’t coming home.
“I want to go home,” he mumbled to nobody. The words he’d never said out loud in those ten, eleven days on the island or in the weeks cooped up in that windowless room.
Where am I going?
That’s up to you now, Trent said.
I want to go home. Let me go home.
He had to figure out on his own where that was, now. There was too much of a void here in Kingman. Jae’s parents drifted in and out of the living room to check on him as the night rolled on, but he stayed put and he stayed quiet, thinking, wanting. He’d thought often enough about how badly he wanted to get out of town, go back to California or anywhere else. He wanted to go someplace where things happened.
Now what he really wanted was peace and quiet, but it was starting to feel more like a matter of survival that he left. The exhausted buzzing in Jae’s head kept him from thinking too coherently about things like where and when; he just wanted to get out. He would have to.
But not now. Not tonight. Tonight, Jae wasn’t going to plot or dream, good or bad. The numbness had been lifted again, for a little while, and when the night was still and he was alone, Jae finally let himself mourn the Kingman that used to be.
"Art enriches the community, Steve, no less than a pulsing fire hose, or a fireman beating down a blazing door. So what if we're drawing a nude man? So what if all we ever draw is a nude man, or the same nude man over and over in all sorts of provocative positions? Context, not content! Process, not subject! Don't be so gauche, Steve, it's beneath you."