The SEAL in My Attic

by Jan Irving

  “Possibly. Or the third floor was restricted and the elevator went into automatic lockdown during the evacuation.” Caleb ventured deeper down the hallway, looking confident and alert. I could imagine him in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever they’d sent him as a SEAL. He was a natural warrior.

  The fourth floor was a disappointment. The first room we explored was a large gymnasium with silently swaying heavy bags and treadmills and other workout gear. The next was another cafeteria, but its supply of junk food had been raided, machines left upended and empty. The rest were conference rooms and janitorial spaces.

  “Are you getting anything?” I asked, watching Caleb closely. A fine tension seemed to vibrate from him.

  “I think…I was in that gym a time or two. Preparing for…” He winced and shook his head.

  “Wait.” I reached up and looked into his eyes, seeing the pupils were blown. “It hurts you when you get those flashes of memory.”

  “Like a mother.”

  “Maybe someone did something to make sure you never fully remembered. Your symptoms seem to be psychosomatic, possibly induced by some trauma.” I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and gently massaging his temples. He sighed and then rested his forehead against mine.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” I finally asked.

  “It would help if we could find a computer,” Caleb said. “Or a file room. They have to have records somewhere…”

  I nodded. “You’re hoping to find your file, why you were here.”

  His hand massaged his shoulder where one of the deepest scars crisscrossed his back. “And what they did to me.”

  “Could those marks have been the result of some kind of…discipline? I mean, both you and the man who attacked us bore the same scars. And you both originally come from the military.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Maybe both of you rebelled in some way, hence the extremity of your punishment.”

  Caleb looked down at his fingernails. “I remember losing a couple of these. I just don’t know when.”

  Torture. My gut tightened but I pushed my emotions back. “Well, this floor seems a wash.”

  “It does tell us that whoever is haunting this installation has been here, from the missing food.” Caleb headed back to the elevator. “Come on, Doc, time to get a look see at level three.”

  “But the elevator doesn’t stop there.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me almost coyly. “Ex-Navy SEAL here.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “Forgive me for forgetting you walk on water.”

  “You’re forgiven.” I watched him enter the elevator and disappear.

  “Son of a—You’ve got to stop doing that.” Standing underneath him in the elevator, I saw he had shimmied up to the ceiling, somehow balancing himself as he opened a little square entry panel at the top of the lift. “The whole disappearing act thing, I mean.”

  “I’ll try to remember.”

  “Do that.”

  The plate fell and he swung himself up and again was out of sight. A moment later he offered his hand. “Can you make it?”

  “You bet.” I braced myself, did some shimmying of my own…and Caleb somehow took most of my weight. “Are you sure you’re not one of those supers?”

  “Yep,” he huffed. “Because you’re not a lightweight, even with your cute butt.”

  “I have a heavy bone structure.” We were in a dusty and confined space. Caleb shone his flashlight and I saw the closed doors just above us, which belonged to the floor we’d bypassed.

  “Now we do some climbing.”

  It wasn’t easy, not as easy as Caleb made it seem. But I managed to clamber behind him, getting hot and dusty and dinging my left hand a good one on some kind of hook. The walls were so close together I tried not to remember the scene in Star Wars with the trash compactor.

  “I’d do better with a little C-4,” Caleb gritted. He was striving to pull open one of the closed doors. I positioned myself on the opposite side and helped him, feeling the muscles in my back like hot, hurting strings.

  The door gave suddenly and we both fell through the open space into a hallway that was completely black, like the maw of a sleeping beast.

  “Shit!”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “I lost the flashlight when the door opened.”

  “Okay.”

  He laughed. “You’re a brave one, Doc.”

  “We might be able to find another.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Are you sticking with me while I go exploring or waiting here?”

  “Sticking with you.”

  He climbed to his feet and I felt his hand grasp mine, helping me up. I was stiff from the climbing. How Caleb could see anything in the abyss surrounding us, I didn’t know.

  We groped our way down the hallway, our progress slowed by the need to explore each room without the benefit of light. Finally, in the fourth room, another lounge space, Caleb hit gold.

  “A laptop.”

  As soon as he booted it up the screen offered a faint greenish illumination, enough for me to see that this room actually had glass windows. I walked over to one and looked through it, seeing dirt and rock and tree roots. I shivered, feeling like we were buried alive.

  “Can we email Lilah?”

  “I just logged on to do that.” My throat tightened. Of course he would know how much I needed to make sure she was okay.

  Caleb gestured for me to take his vacant seat and I wasted no time in writing her a quick note.

  “Denny’s?” Caleb grinned at me. “Sounds good, Doc. I could use a stack of pancakes.”

  The exchange gave me a little glow of hope. I was counting on sitting with Caleb and Lilah soon over too much food.

  “Now what?”

  Caleb closed the email and began looking through the directory. “Password protected. Look around, will you? At the photos and books in this little cubbyhole. Most people use something familiar, so it’s easy to remember.”

  There were a number of ski holiday photos with various people sporting beery smiles and tall glasses. A hunk of coral on the file cabinet and a few books. I read the spines, disregarding the scientific titles as too clinical. One little book caught my eye. “Poetry book.” I opened it, flipping through words and sketches. “Looks self-published.”

  Caleb took it and after trying a dozen titles from the not-so-great poetry we discovered—whoever the scientist was, he should keep his day job—we hit pay dirt a second time.

  “Dickwad33.” Caleb laughed. “Interesting password.”

  “His age—thirty-three—and his girlfriend’s favourite nickname for him. Somehow I don’t think their relationship had potential.”

  The directory smoothed out from gibberish into intelligible headings. I stiffened at the first one. “Subject Black, Caleb A.”

  Caleb hesitated and I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. Then he clicked on the mouse to open the file.

  The first part consisted of physical statistics and Caleb’s background. He bumped quickly through the listing of his medals as a SEAL but I could imagine if he was in uniform he’d wear a helluva lot of them.

  Finally we got to the journal entries. It turned out the scientist who’d made them liked to do the YouTube version, recording himself.

  Caleb stiffened as a man with a long face, wispy moustache and pale eyes appeared on the computer screen.

  “You know him, don’t you?”

  Caleb nodded. “Yeah, you could say.” His tone had the edge of a blade. “His name is Hamilton, Doctor Hamilton.”

  “What a day, kids!”

  Doctor Hamilton’s cheery recorded voice broke in before I could ask Caleb for more details.

  “Jeffries is on the rampage, needing new candidates.” Hamilton paused and took a deep gulp from a mug. “We’re coming up short since the last batch is out in the field but we got an ideal subject today—Caleb Black, a Navy SEAL no less. Hopefully now Jeffr
ies will get off my ass. I’ve got orders to push Black through the programme quickly.”

  “Huh, this is dated almost a year ago,” I noted. “Who is the Jeffries he refers to?”

  “Doctor Jeffries ran the whole show. We don’t have time to go through all of these recordings, not now. Skip ahead,” Caleb ordered.

  I checked the dates and jumped ahead by three months.

  Now Hamilton wore dark circles under his eyes but his voice remained annoyingly bright. Apparently he loved his work.

  “I’ve gone through all the procedures to prepare Black for fieldwork but he’s either very smart, or very stupid. I’ve come close to breaking him a couple of times, but when he emerges from his cell the next day, it’s like he’s hit a rewind button. What the fuck is he holding on to? I’ll find out.” Hamilton’s eyes burned. “And I’ll take it away from him.”

  Jesus. I scrubbed my cheeks and jumped ahead to the final entry. Hamilton looked even more haggard. His face was unshaven and his hair stood up in spikes.

  “I wasn’t able to make a breakthrough with Black and that lunatic Jeffries just won’t listen to my theory—Jeffries gets crazier by the day, I swear. But I think I found out why I’d failed when I examined Black’s cell myself.” He gave a ragged laugh. Scared, the man was scared. “All that is moot now. Caleb Black is more than we thought. A mole. A fucking mole.”

  Chapter Ten

  Caleb’s silence gave me an itch in the middle of my back.

  “Hey,” I said and touched him. His back was rigid and he was sweating visibly. “Hamilton’s dead,” Caleb said, his voice without any inflection.

  That itch turned cold and prickly. “How do you know?”

  He looked me in the eye. “Because I killed him, Doc.”

  Breath escaped me in a long exhale. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

  “Then you must have had a good reason.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s all?”

  “What else is there? At the core, you are still the same man you were when we met in

  that cheesy bar. I let you do things to me that night I wouldn’t with any other man. I trusted who you are.”

  Now Caleb sighed. “You are naïve.”

  “Why are people who see the glass half full considered naïve?” I griped. “Without a positive outlook, I don’t think you can be very productive.”

  Speaking of productivity, I returned to the file cabinet and opened it, searching. When I found Caleb’s hard copy file, I pulled it out and sat on the desk next to Caleb. He was still staring at the computer screen. I ached to know what he was thinking, but I thought it better not to push him right now. He was still perspiring, his face glowing pale and sick.

  I began to read. The coldly outlined procedures that Hamilton had referred to turned my guts. Caleb had been deprived of food and water, given hallucinogenic drugs. He’d been driven by severe physical exercise and abuse, tested by pain.

  “This Jeffries and crew lack imagination,” I noted. “This isn’t science—it’s torture.”

  Caleb glanced at the file. “Waterboarding. I don’t remember much of it.”

  “Thank Christ for that! And this shit was before they knew you were a mole.”

  He held my gaze. “I knew I had to break out. They’d find you, find out what I might have told you. I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  “You closed me out when we first met. I think I hated you for how secretive you were but all along you were keeping me safe, weren’t you?”

  “Keeping secrets doesn’t go over well in relationship 101. But it’s who I am, Murph. If I were still a SEAL, I wouldn’t be able to talk about my missions.”

  “They broke your bones. Broke your ribs and left you alone in your cell for days without food or water. It’s a miracle you survived.”

  He looked away. Swallowed. “I’m not sure what came out on the other side. I’m not…the man I was. I feel like an old coffee mug that’s been shattered over and over again.”

  “You’ve added some glue to that mug and I’d say it’s standing up.” I looked down at the spread papers. “As near as I can make out, they didn’t use anything on you that was experimental.”

  “So I’m not a super.” He let out a breath. “That’s one thing. Guess I should have known because the supers were much faster at healing than I was.”

  Anger burned. “What the hell kind of place is this?”

  “Like I said, a bad place.”

  The sudden clanging sound seemed to give emphasis to his words. My hands clenched on the papers.

  “I think it’s time we find out who’s making that sound,” Caleb said casually.

  I grabbed his arm.

  “This is what I spent years training for, Doc,” Caleb chided. “I’m the sharp end of the stick. I go to the bad places.”

  And however shattered he thought himself, I could see he was still essentially that same man.

  I made myself let go, but it was hard, so freaking hard. I wanted to protect him. “All right. I’m going to stay here, find out as much as I can.”

  Caleb looked at the thick file with his name on it. I knew he hungered to know what they’d done to him, everything they’d done to him. “We may not have much time. You better find out how they experimented on those men.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Caleb ghosted to the door.

  “Caleb,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Come back to me.”

  A smile touched his lips. “Always.”

  Reluctantly, I put aside Caleb’s file and dug deeper into the despicable Hamilton’s work. I found more videos, some showing live action of Caleb’s torture.

  I couldn’t watch them.

  I sat back in the chair, listening to it creak as I rocked meditatively. I was still washed out and my brain felt heavy and slow.

  There was no repeat of the clanging sound, which should have made me grateful but, when an hour passed, I was getting increasingly anxious.

  Had Caleb run into trouble?

  What was I thinking? Caleb was all about trouble. I’d tagged that about him on our first meeting.

  But he could handle himself. I reminded myself he could handle himself before I buried myself in the files on other subjects, finding mention of a formula A-33. The files documented the milky eyes as the first sign of a breakdown in physiology. Deterioration continued until a kind of madness, then death.

  Various therapies were applied but all of it had the feel of too few lifeboats on the Titanic.

  Desperation. Something had been unleashed they were powerless to control.

  When Caleb didn’t return for another hour, I left the files and went searching for him. I’d found a small flashlight in Hamilton’s desk, more like a penlight for computer repairs, but it was better than nothing.

  After studying Caleb’s file, I had a hunch where I could find him—if he hadn’t run into something he couldn’t handle with our resident noise-maker.

  I passed rooms with examination tables, so like the hospital where I worked, but used for a much more sinister purpose. I couldn’t help but imagine Caleb on one of them.

  I hated the idea of him, helpless.

  The cells were at the end of the corridor, through a steel door with some unsettling fistsized dents in it. From one of the subjects in the last stages of breakdown? What had these scientists done, coldly locked them up when their subjects didn’t respond to therapy?

  I found Caleb curled up in a small cell. He looked as fragile as the first time I’d seen him in my attic.

  “Hey.” I made my voice gentle. “Didn’t find whoever was making those noises, huh?”

  He shook his head.

  I crawled in with him. The place wasn’t even large enough for a grown man to stand.

  “I thought…” He rubbed his forehead. “I thought more of it would come back if I came here.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense.” It hurt seeing him like this.

  His lip
s quirked, but there was only darkness in his eyes. “You’ve got a good bedside manner, Doc.”

  “Did anything more come back?”

  “Only one thing.” He shifted and I blinked at him. “Give me the flashlight. Pretty frickin’ useless toy.”

  “Hey, it beats a lighter.” Which was what he’d been holding when I’d found him.

  “Whatever works.” He pointed the little star of light and I stiffened.

  “So that’s how you beat Hamilton?”

  His voice came out like rusty water from a pipe. “Yeah.”

  Scratched into his cell wall was a single word—Murphy.

  “And people say romance is dead.” It was stupid, trying to make light of it. Seeing that word was huge, big as the world. I felt it expanding in my chest, making my eyes sting.

  “I told you I took you into the dark with me.”

  He’d meant it. Literally. Jesus.

  “Caleb.” I cupped his cheeks. “I love you. I love you.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. He was shaking.

  We bumped noses when we made to kiss, awkward like the first time. I met searing blue eyes, felt him claim me with that look. When our lips met I moaned. He gave a husky laugh and his hand was gripping my head, wild in my hair.

  “I came here lookin’ for me and all I found was you. I thought about you in here, relived every moment we were together, every word you said, the way your eyes crinkle when you smile, that sarcastic sense of humour.”

  “Who are you calling sarcastic?” I demanded breathlessly.

  “You.” He laughed again. “God, I love that about you. You don’t back down from me. A lot of guys…and women. They’re like groupies, you know?”

  I could imagine. Excited by what he did and not who he was.

  “Believe me, a guy in the military is the last person I saw myself with.” His face stiffened so I shook him gently. “Not because you aren’t honourable and deserving but because I’m a coward.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re such a coward.”

  I flushed, realising it was a stupid thing to say when I was in a cell with him after breaking into a secret facility. “Okay, maybe just half a coward.”

  “You’re a coward the way Scully from The X Files is a coward.”