by Chanda Hahn
“Nonsense, no one could ever forget you.”
“I did, I have forgotten so much, but never again,” Dr. Barrie said.
“Then you’re ready.” Dr. Mee opened it, waiting a good ten seconds before motioning for Wendy and Jax to enter first.
“What took you so long?” Tink shrieked at seeing them enter before pulling out a backpack and unzipping it, completely preoccupied with her clipboard and other contents of her bag. “It’s time to get going. I’ve packed everything we need to take down Neverland and Hook. Rat repellant—well, not really, but I call it that—it’s a mini stun gun. Also braces with the latest updates, and a full stock of . . .” Tink trailed off as Nana ran through the door and barked, her large body almost knocking Tink over as she tried to lunge up and lick her.
Then she saw who came in the door after Nana, and the clipboard fell from her hands and clattered on the tile floor. Her face scrunched up into an expression that was hard to decipher, but then her censor band went off. “#$*! #%^&!” When her cussing tirade was over, her expression shifted, not entirely readable. There was a wariness in her, but also longing as she said, “Took you long enough, Dad.”
“Too long, Isabelle,” he whispered.
Wendy couldn’t help but grin as she watched the scene unfold between father and daughter. Tink’s face pinched and was soon glistening with tears as she took the most direct path to her father, which meant jumping up and over the couch and into Dr. Barrie’s arms.
Chapter 20
Peter awoke wild-eyed and terrified, strapped to a gurney in a moving medical vehicle. An EMT had used electrical paddles on him to jump-start his heart. He had thought he was dead, but a reassuring woman in a wheelchair explained that he had injured his head during a training exercise with his troops and lost his memories. That he would be back to fighting shape in no time.
Candace. That was her name. It was nice of her to explain that they were in transport to their base and that once there she would be able to reboot more of his memories. He wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but was assured she had done it before.
They took his vitals and radioed another vehicle of his progress. The caravan of trucks pulled over and he was escorted from the medical transport truck to a waiting semi in broad daylight. As he stepped out of the medical transport, guards greeted him with guns. He smiled at them but received nothing in return for his friendly efforts. Just a nod, a grunt, and orders to move and not talk.
As he passed the waiting semi, he took note of the hauling company’s logo on the door. Part of the name was obscured with dirt, but he could read the word Wonder aside a picture of a heart and crown. He couldn’t quite make out the name of the originating town. Three more semis from the same hauling company passed them on the road, shipping various cargo under large white tied-down tarps, followed by another full trailer. He didn’t know how many were in the caravan or how many were ahead of the trailer he was heading toward.
They opened the back door and Peter was ushered inside, where he took an empty seat across from a different armed guard. There were two long rows of kids his age already buckled and strapped in on benches wearing the same uniform. Twenty pairs of eyes watched him closely, their faces wary. Peter swallowed nervously. Nothing about being escorted and shoved into a trailer at gunpoint seemed normal.
The guards were about to close the door when a stranger wearing civilian clothes approached them. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Maybe he came out of the medical transport like he did? A few moments later, the stranger, entered the semi, briefly touched the seated guard’s arm, and whispered to him before he waved for the guards to close him in.
He was tall, with long dark hair that brushed his ears and inscrutable, piercing eyes. He glanced at the open seats and sat in the one next to Peter. Peter couldn’t help but notice his long curly lashes as he occupied the seat next to him. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and stretched his long legs out in front.
The brake released, and the semi pulled back onto the road. The tension in the trailer lessened as the teens began to freely talk.
“Who’s he?” a young soldier asked, nodding to the newcomer in civilian clothes.
“Beats me,” another answered.
Peter tried to observe the laid-back newcomer but couldn’t make out much in the dimly lit trailer. He seemed to be asleep already, in the overly humid enclosed space. Or maybe he was faking.
The noise-level lowered and then died down entirely as, one by one, each of the occupants of the trailer were lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of the trailer. Peter felt drained, but he was too keyed up to sleep, trying to recall what happened to him before he woke up on that gurney. But then the newcomer slumped over in sleep so his head was near Peter’s left ear, and Peter found himself going stock-still. “Hey, Peter,” the newcomer whispered, keeping up the pretense of sleeping.
“Wha—”
“Shh, don’t move, don’t talk,” he whispered. There’s no way I can take on a semi full of Dusters, and neither can you in this condition.”
Peter was motionless, keeping his attention straight ahead. The guard didn’t even seem to notice him; he was preoccupied with a hangnail on his thumb.
“It’s me, Curly,” the boy said, and before Peter could ask anything else, Curly continued. “Yeah, I know you don’t remember me, and maybe that’s for the better, since I’m part of the reason you’re here. Wasn’t a fan of how you were running the Neverwood School, didn’t really feel like I belonged. Had a grudge and I took it out on all of you, but I had a change of heart, and I realized that you guys were the only ones that truly cared. So I’m here to help. If I can.”
Peter looked at Curly out of the side of his eyes and nodded slowly, wondering why this person wanted to help him?
Curly yawned and covered his mouth, continuing to whisper for Peter’s ears only. “In short, this place is bad. Where you’re going is worse. I took the time to do some digging, and I didn’t like what I found. No way am I letting the boys end up there, or at least not alone.”
Peter stiffened when he heard Curly’s warning. Where were they going that was so bad? And what boys was he referring to?
“Look, I know I messed up, and I can tell you’ve panned again. I’m going to try something. I nicked it from Dr. Mee’s office when we went to get her for your girl Wendy.”
The name caused Peter’s heart to flutter. He knew that name. “Nicked what?” Peter asked warily.
Curly’s fist was wrapped around a small syringe, and he jabbed it into Peter’s leg.
Peter gasped and jumped up but the seat belt held him down. He tried to unbuckle and move away from the Curly.
“Remember, Peter,” he encouraged, touching him on the arm.
“What did you just do?” Peter snapped.
Alertness ripped through his mind, and he tensed as memories came flooding back and he began to view the others in the truck with new eyes. They weren’t troops being sent out on a mission; they were young teenagers, and most looked scared out of their minds, all except for a few. One, a blond-haired guy, kept glowering at him with the most intense hate-filled eyes.
Jeremy.
Peter remembered him. And he knew that he meant him harm.
But with Curly’s touch, the boy accidentally shared his own memories with Peter. Peter gained knowledge not only of his own past but also Curly’s, and he knew it wasn’t intentional. Peter was swept through Curly’s own memories and learned more in those few seconds than from years of having lived with him at Neverwood.
Memories of young boys playing in a large mansion that doubled as a school, images of boys refusing to play tag or football with him for fear of being manipulated. Peter learned that even amongst a school of boys, caretakers, and teachers, Curly was always alone, always watching from a distance, never being touched. It was a lonely life.
His heart felt heavy. Peter knew that he was one of them that had hurt Curly, and one of the reasons why Curly turned
traitor to Neverland. Curly had betrayed them because he’d believed that what Neverland had done to him could be reversed, that if he helped them gather up the boys, they might feel grateful enough to help him if he asked for his power to be stripped away. Only after the lost boys were captured did he learn of Hook’s true plan. He was never going to help Curly, intending only to use him to control all the Dusters.
Ashamed that Hook had used him, the master manipulator, he took off and headed back to the school to find it destroyed. It was down by the river, by the fresh gravesites that Curly had his epiphany, his change of heart. He spent the night, weeping and mourning his friend Fox.
Peter reached up and felt his own cheeks glisten with Curly’s tears. He was sure that he’d never meant for Peter to have full access to his memories.
“What’s the plan?” Curly asked after a few minutes. “You always have a plan. Mine was just to find you.”
“We don’t do anything till we find the boys,” Peter said gravely. “Then we bring Neverland down once and for all.”
Chapter 21
The living room was filled with the joyful reunion of the few remaining lost boys and their famous leader and father figure Dr. Barrie. John, Michael, and Wendy found themselves hiding out in the kitchen, out of the way of the gathering. The shed tears, the hugs, and the laughter—it wasn’t meant for them. It pained Wendy to think of Tink reuniting with her father while the three of them were still orphans. When John and Wendy first lost their parents, it had seemed like it would be okay, that they would always have a home at Neverwood. But with the return of an able-minded Dr. Barrie, would that still be the case? Wendy and Michael may be part of the lost boys, but John wasn’t and she wouldn’t stay if he wasn’t welcome.
John ran his fingers along the countertop in the kitchen, tracing the pattern in the stone. She could tell he was worried. Michael couldn’t help but stare at the two doctors in the other room, and whenever they would glance his way, he would quickly lean forward to disappear behind the small partition again. Wendy sat next to them and tried to put herself in Michael’s shoes. He wasn’t one of the lucky ones that had made it on the boat and escaped with Dr. Barrie and Dr. Mee, and she wondered how much he remembered, if he recalled the meeting with the psychologist and the doctor that oversaw their initial testing at Neverland.
It seemed that he remembered enough to be fascinated with them. If only he had been with them, then he might have grown up differently. Who knows what havoc and irreparable damage Hook did to her brother’s mind?
Wendy shook herself off and told herself to stop fretting. Such thoughts were too unsettling, and didn’t help anything.
This was just one more delay in their quest to find the lost boys and rescue Peter.
She glanced at Jax and she couldn’t stop her thoughts from drifting to the kiss she’d inadvertently shared with him, as if she didn’t have enough things to worry about. Could she really tell who it was? Yes, it was Jax. Peter would never be so demanding with her. Did she enjoy it? Yes. Wendy rubbed her face and groaned in guilt. She needed to do something.
She pushed out the chair she had been sitting on, and it scraped loudly across the tile floor. All eyes met hers and she turned, scurrying past them and up the stairs into her room. Maybe it was her guilt over the kiss with Jax that was driving her to act out, but she felt desperate and didn’t see how anyone else had a quicker way to get to him.
Wendy was unwilling to let Peter pan again. She couldn’t let him take that chance, in case he couldn’t come back to her. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t go to him.
Even though she had been warned, even though Jax forbade her, Wendy did it anyway.
She called the shadows to her.
A tingling sensation ran up her arm, and she felt an invisible breeze stir her hair from around her shoulders. First one came, then more. Her hairbrush on the nightstand rattled as she continued to gather more shadows. They wrapped around her, and she had but one thought. Take me to Peter.
The coldness enveloped her like a second skin and a rush of air pulled her through to the shadow realm, where the bitter bite hit her like a slap. She let the shadows lead her through the darkness.
The shadows were pulling, trying to move her faster than she could run, and even moving at an unnatural speed, she heard the terrifying roar of the beast as it caught the scent of its prey.
Wendy hadn’t wanted to believe Jax was right, and she ran as hard as she could, outpacing the beast. But in this other realm, her legs and limbs didn’t move with the same urgency as she wanted. Like a dream, where no matter how fast she ran, it was never fast enough.
The shadows beckoned, then pointed and stopped when they came to a dark body of water. Wendy slowed and stared at the pool of water moving in toward her feet and then receding like an ocean, but instead of an aquamarine or crystal blue, this was a murky black.
Her heart dropped and she quaked in terror. Wendy hated the ocean, hated swimming, ever since she had died at sea. She couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to cross the water.
“I can’t,” Wendy whimpered as the shadows beckoned over the water. “No, I can’t do it.”
A squealing howl of a morphling hot on her trail brought her back to the problem at hand.
She couldn’t go any farther forward, and now it seemed she couldn’t go back the way she came, unless she wanted to run right into the morphling hunting her down.
“Okay!” Wendy cried out, looking over her shoulder in fear. Behind her, the colossal morphling was running straight for her.
Two shadows grasped her under her arms and lifted her into the air, flying with her up and over the water. The morphling—a nightmare beast, half-bull, half-lion—scratched angrily at the water’s edge and began to pace.
Her heart was in her throat and she knew that any minute she could plummet into the ocean.
Wendy felt herself plunge slightly and looked up as the shadows became more transparent. She lost altitude, her body inching lower and lower toward the eerie black ocean.
“NO!” Wendy cried out, as the murky depths were about to swallow her.
Then one of the shadows gripping her arm disappeared with a poof, leaving behind nothing but misty black spirals.
The second shadow doubled his efforts trying to get her to their destination. She knew that in the shadow realm, they traveled much faster than in her world. But there was no way they were going to make it. The black water came closer. She pulled her knees up to her chest, but it was no use. The shadow was trying, but like the one before, he began to fade. She felt the warning tingle in her hand, and like the first one, he disappeared, and then she was falling.
Wendy didn’t have time to scream before she hit the water. Her body went into shock at the cold as the water covered her head and she plunged into its murky depths. Kicking with all of her strength, she felt an unnatural pull on her body as if she was being ripped in two. The current spun her around once, twice, and she kicked and fought, searching for the watery ceiling. Then cresting through the gloom, she finally surfaced and gasped for breath.
Salt and light stung her eyes and coated her lips. She continued to tread water as she searched her surroundings.
Wendy was no longer in the shadow realm. When she had hit the water, she must have passed through to the real world.
Marine blue as far as the eye could see, and above her, clouds dotted the sky, but nowhere did she see a boat or a speck of land.
“Oh no!” Wendy cried out, and a wave sprayed salty water into her mouth, causing her to gag and cough. Trying to keep her mind and body from panicking, she slowly turned three hundred and sixty degrees and had to choke down paralyzing fear as another wave hit her shoulder, splashing water into her nose and face, and she coughed again.
Wendy called for the shadows again, and again but none answered her call.
She was alone, stranded in the middle of the ocean.
A soft whimper escaped her lips as a large wave washed over he
r head, sending her under.
She knew she was going to die.
Chapter 22
“So all Peter knows is that the site was being moved again,” Dr. Barrie said to the group gathered in the living room. “But he doesn’t know where?”
“That’s correct,” Jax answered from his spot leaning against the fireplace. “Hook is too paranoid. He never stayed in one spot more than a few weeks. The Red Skulls are trained to tear down and hide all evidence and be mobile within a few hours. Only the lead driver knows the next location, and it is only texted to him when he is on the road and then deleted. The address is never entered into a GPS either. The other vehicles have their outer and rear windows tinted black, and the teams are held in secure trucks until they’ve arrived at their new base.”
“He really does cover his bases.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Jax agreed.
“Then what do we do?” Ditto asked. “We can’t stay here and wait for Peter to tell us where to go. What if he doesn’t remember? What if this time, he wakes up and is on their side again?”
Dr. Barrie looked to Dr. Mee and a worried look passed between them. “Jax, how far along did you say the new PX drug series is?”
“Pretty far. Last I knew, he had slowed the reaping of new recruits, but a significant percentage of those given the drugs were still experiencing burnout. He must have thought the numbers were sufficient and had turned his focus to the next stage.” Jax’s shoulders slumped, and he gave Dr. Barrie a disheartened look. “He wanted the rest of the first generation—the lost boys. He was culling his own Primes for their gifts when Wendy had come across his radar.” Jax turned and shot a pointed look at Michael, struggling not to blame him for sending his sister’s whereabouts to Hook.
Jax ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “He recognized her as one of the first group members and took a keen interest in her because he thought she could see the future.”
