Hold On! - Season 1

by Peter Darley

  Brandon turned toward the sound of the voice. It seemed to come from the far side of the living room. He could make out a shock of thick white hair above the top of his leather recliner by the moonlight.

  And then the face leaned forward, emerging from the shadows.

  Brandon’s jaw dropped with horror and mystification. “N-no, it can’t be.”

  Garrison Treadwell grinned cruelly, illuminated eerily by the candlelight and the cold, lunar reflection emanating through the rear window. With a glass of brandy in his hand, he took another draw upon his Cuban cigar before offering his sinister greeting: “Welcome home.”

  Thirty-Three

  Shadows of the Night

  “How did you find this place?”

  Brandon’s first question upon finding his enemy sitting in his safe haven spilled out of him uncontrollably. It was the place nobody else could have possibly known about. His grandfather had built it to bring his mistresses back to, and to hide his loot in. His grandfather had told his father about it. His father had told Brandon about it on his deathbed. Even his mother didn’t know about the cabin. Belinda was the first non-Drake to learn of its existence.

  And yet there sat Treadwell.

  The crooked politician placed his brandy glass on a small table beside him and drew a pistol from underneath his jacket. “I’m only using this gun to talk to you, Brandon. After all, I know what you can become when you lose your temper.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “In a helicopter. It’s parked just over the ridge on the north plateau. I assumed you’d be coming up from the south so I wasn’t about to leave a snow trail. I wanted to surprise you. I used the basement entrance to get in when I arrived this afternoon.” His glance swept the room approvingly. “It’s quite comfortable isn’t it? I have a similar cabin in . . . another state. As you know, a home in a remote, isolated location with self-contained electricity is perfect when you need to lay low.”

  Brandon moved steadily toward him. “How do you know about the basement entrance?”

  Treadwell trained the gun on him, halting him in his tracks. “Young man, I know far more about you than you know about yourself. In the beginning, I had no idea why you’d fled from Mach Industries, until you intervened at Carringby. I always knew where you were hiding out, but I had to be cautious. I’m just as protective about this cabin as you are. Secrecy from the world is its purpose. ”

  Belinda came up behind Brandon and held him tightly. He knew, with everything they’d been through, Treadwell was thoroughly unnerving her with his creepy manner.

  Treadwell extinguished the cigar in an ashtray next to the brandy glass. “Ms. Reese, don’t think he can protect you. He can’t even protect himself. Surely my being here is proof of that.”

  His dignity compromised, Brandon’s rage began to rise and his voice emerged as that of a guttural beast. “What do you want, Treadwell?”

  “Ah, there you are. I suspected there would be a little of the old you remaining.” The senator grinned, intentionally goading Brandon while hiding behind the protection of his loaded pistol. “You must understand, my boy. I created you. I trained you, tested you, put you through the most rigorous of ordeals, until I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I had my man.”

  “I barely even know you,” Brandon said. “You put me into the weapons testing program after I got hit on the field. I met you once in the hospital, and again at Mach Industries. That was it.”

  “That’s only what you remember.”

  “So, what? You’re saying I’m brainwashed, is that it?”

  “Brandon, almost everybody is brainwashed to some degree, even if they believe they’re truly free. For example, parents allow their children to play video games full of gratuitous violence. But they become horrified if the child simply hears a profane term. Their sense of priority is completely reversed.”

  “Point taken. Now, what do you want?”

  Treadwell reached across with his free hand, picked up his brandy again, and sipped it tauntingly. That complacency caused a chill to surge through Brandon. Belinda tightened her grip on his shoulder.

  “I don’t want anything anymore, Brandon,” Treadwell said with an uncharacteristically sad tone. “My life is over. You won, my boy. You destroyed me.”

  “What did you expect? You used members of my own division to try to kill me.”

  “Merely a test. It was doubtful I was going to be able to reacquire you in Wyoming, so I used the incident to see if you would kill one of your own in order to survive. Even before that, I’d decided to use your cheap heroics as a means of testing your abilities.”

  “Testing my abilities?”

  “Yes. I ordered a team of my most highly-trained operatives to kill you at Colton Ranch just to see if you could thwart them—and you did. Just not in the way I expected.” The senator paused for a moment to allow his words to register before resuming. “In Wyoming, I saw that your former savagery had been dominated by your intellect. I gave you that blessing.”

  Brandon’s brow crumpled under the weight of what he was hearing. “What are you talking about? What ‘former savagery’?”

  “You received a head injury when you rescued David Spicer in Afghanistan from a grenade.”

  Brandon touched the scar on his forehead. “It healed. So what?”

  “The trauma to your head induced amnesia, and so . . . we gave you new memories.”

  Brandon was barely aware of Belinda coming around to face him, but he knew she was looking into his eyes. “New memories?” he murmured, trancelike.

  Treadwell stood and made his way toward him, his left arm outstretched, and his right brandishing the pistol. “Kid, I did what I could to protect this country. You were a test case for a new breed of operative.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were in Afghanistan and you did save Spicer. Your head injury gave us an opportunity to rid you of your past.”

  Brandon felt the scar on his forehead throbbing. “W-what are you saying? What past?”

  Carefully, Treadwell stepped closer. “You have an IQ of one hundred forty-four, Brandon. You’re far brighter than most. You were also a martial arts champion, an extremely talented athlete, and a killer of the highest caliber. They used to call you The Scorpion. You would strike fearlessly and without hesitation, which is far more lethal than mere skill. Willingness overshadows training every time, and you, my boy, have both.”

  “But . . . ?” The fighting skills, the spin-kicks, and aerial acrobatics Belinda had told him about finally made sense. It also explained how he didn’t understand it when she’d told him what he’d done. Now it was all clear. He was a trained martial artist, but—why didn’t he remember?

  Treadwell continued. “After the explosion in Afghanistan, we treated you with electro-chemical appliances and subliminal induction in order to give you a new memory. A new persona. I didn’t want to lose you, you were so useful. But you were also very dangerous and uncontrollable. Nobody ever liked you, Brandon. In fact, you were hated. I gave you a kind and sensitive personality to make you more manageable.

  “You were the ideal test case for memory revision. If the operation was successful and you believed your false history, I knew you’d be the perfect operative. A trained combatant, a brilliant engineer, and one who would be easy to control. I only failed on the last point, it seems.”

  “What kind of operative?” Brandon demanded. “And why put me in Mach Industries?”

  “You were a different person. I had a medical report written up saying you were no longer fit for combat. I had to get you far away from anyone who knew you. I put you to work at a place where your non-combat skills could be utilized, and where I could keep a close eye on how your mind was responding to your new self.”

  “Putting me there was your big mistake.”

  “Indeed it was. Clever boy that you are, you discovered my other plans somehow, and then everything I’d worked for came a
part.”

  Brandon swallowed hard as the cold grip of shock took hold of him. “Why, Treadwell? Why?”

  “Our country needs to be great. Our economy is disastrous. I needed to create problems. I needed to make us look like we were under attack again. I would then arrange for a scapegoat nation, retaliate, and the war profits alone would have revived our economy.”

  “At the expense of how many innocent people?”

  “Collateral damage,” Treadwell said flippantly. “I have only myself to blame for your moral attitude toward all this. There was a time when you wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. The national image alone would have been worth the death toll. We would have been victims yet again, and fighters to the end.”

  Brandon looked at Belinda’s expression of abject fury. He couldn’t imagine believing this if he was in her position. It would seem like a nightmare. Like the world had turned insane. He turned back to Treadwell. “What about my memory?”

  “You were injured,” Treadwell said casually. “You lost your memories. We gave you new ones. We even cleaned up your overly-stained military record for you.”

  Brandon lurched forward, his heart bursting with passionate rage. His right foot shot up with lightning speed, kicking the pistol out of Treadwell’s hand. With both hands, he gripped the older man’s throat. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Treadwell!”

  “Brandon, stop it. Stop it now!” Belinda pleaded.

  Through the haze of rage, he saw the face of his nemesis assume a dark shade of purple, alerting him to what he could become if he continued. Immediately, he released him.

  Treadwell sank to knees gasping for air. After a few moments, he caught his breath and stood. “Oh my, there’s still some of the old you in there, after all.” He paused again, and then unleashed the ultimate torture upon Brandon. “You have no mother in New Mexico, no father who had a position in the army, and you never had an unscrupulous grandfather with a small fortune in a cabin in the snow.”

  You have no mother. The words resonated in Brandon’s soul like shards of ice. But how could that be? He loved her so deeply, and eagerly wanted Belinda to meet her. She was his only family. The hope of the three of them being together someday had been his anchor, his dream of a time when all the horrors of running and the conspiracy had come to end. He remembered his mother with such clarity—the color of her hair, her perfume, her smile, everything about her.

  In numb devastation, he looked at Treadwell again. “Why?”

  “Because I wanted the perfect soldier, Brandon. A covert operative who was a born killing machine, but who was brilliant, under my control, and unlikely to turn against me. I wanted you, and I was willing to do anything to make you mine.”

  “For what?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, other than to say, there is another out there who won’t rest until he has what he wants from you. I’ve already set your final test in motion. A killer who’s, arguably, even more merciless than you were.”

  Desperation came over Brandon. He found himself becoming almost drawn to Treadwell for comfort. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”

  “It is true.”

  “I-it can’t be. Who the hell am I?”

  “Your name is Brandon Drake. That much is true. But nothing else is.”

  “So, what is?”

  Treadwell laughed maniacally, as though he was on the verge of madness. “You thought you were the only one who knew about this cabin. You thought the money in the basement was a secret. Don’t worry, it’s still there. It’ll be a moment before the two of you are the only people on earth who know about this place.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Brandon spat.

  “I was alone when I narrated the details of this cabin to you during your memory-revision procedure. Not even the neuro-specialist I hired to perform your reconditioning has any knowledge of it. The only person who was sure to maintain its secrecy was the one who was programmed to do so.” Treadwell picked up the pistol, sat back down in the recliner, and placed the gun to his temple. “You’re a puppet, Drake. Sayonara, genius. You’ve got yourself one hell of a mystery to uncover.”

  “No!” Brandon shot forward in an attempt to seize the gun, but he was too late. Treadwell pulled the trigger and a spray of crimson instantly painting the back wall.

  Belinda screamed, her hands instinctively covering her eyes.

  Brandon looked down at Treadwell’s lifeless body. The shock took him completely. The senator’s feet twitched and knocked against the recliner in his death throes.

  The blood drained from Brandon’s face as he tried to process the absurd. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know where he’d come from. He had memories of a mother he’d cherished, a father he had fought with, and a grandfather he barely remembered disliking as a boy.

  None of them had ever existed.

  He stood motionless with Belinda sobbing hysterically behind him. His greatest enemy, the man who could have answered all of his questions, lay dead before him. The answer to the mystery of his identity flickered in the candlelight, vanishing into the smoke, and into the shadows of the night.

  Thirty-Four

  Crushed

  3:14 a.m.

  Questions swirled around in Brandon’s mind chaotically. The worst of all was his mother. She symbolized peace and family to him, and he loved her so deeply. He couldn’t come to terms with feeling so strongly toward someone who didn’t exist. “Annabelle Drake isn’t real” echoed in his mind repeatedly. She’d been nothing more than a fictional suggestion that had been planted into his brain, but his memories of her were so real.

  The rage he’d felt for his father was compelling. His grandfather had been so unpleasant that thoughts of the man continued to instill him with fear. But these men were complete fabrications also, leading to further questions—such as who was Brandon Drake? And where had he really come from?

  It all affirmed his empathy with Belinda. They had both been victims of authority, and they had both been violated by it. They’d violated his mind as surely as the priest had violated her body. He could no longer see that authority existed for any reason other than to bully, control, and destroy.

  The question why authority even existed pounded inside his head. Was it to maintain order? If so, how was he to define the nature of order now? Laws changed daily, and varied dramatically from nation to nation. There was no set, tried and tested method of assessing right and wrong, but this clearly erroneous system continued to be imposed upon all. Regardless of its arguable necessity, who could possibly impose it? Men like Treadwell? Fallible, corrupt charlatans who had no superiority or immortality to validate their positions?

  Such was how Brandon viewed the lifeless husk he’d pulled uphill for two miles in deep snow. He glanced down at the body bag containing the remains of Garrison Treadwell as he arrived at the north plateau. Clad in heavy, cold weather gear, exhaustion from his effort brought him to his knees. His interlude in L.A. had resulted in the loss of his acclimatization to the mountainous altitude. Given the low oxygen level, he realized he should have used the Turbo Swan, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Shock had taken a powerful hold over him.

  He saw the helicopter ahead of him and threw the straps from his shoulders.

  It took a few minutes for him to deliver the heavy sack to the helicopter, pull the corpse from it, and strap it into the left pilot’s seat. With his leather-gloved hands, he placed the pistol carefully into the fingers of his deceased foe.

  A packed parachute on the pilot’s seat caught his attention. His plan was to create the illusion that Treadwell had shot himself inside his own helicopter—anything to protect the cabin. He didn’t know why a parachute would have been on the seat, although Treadwell and his intentions had proven to be far from usual.

  He considered the possibility that Treadwell faking his own death in a helicopter crash and bailing out prior to impact may have been his original intention. Perhaps he’d realized in his final moments th
at there would have been no life to which he could escape. Only minutes before his death, he’d been protective of the location of his other cabin. What difference would it have made if he knew he was going to die all along?

  Whatever Treadwell’s twisted thoughts were, the parachute gave Brandon an idea. He reached over, grasped it, and gazed at it for several minutes. Still in shock, emotionally and physically exhausted, he shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind.

  He carefully examined the parachute. It would have been in keeping with Treadwell’s persona to have sabotaged it in order to set him up. After an initial peripheral examination of the gear, all looked to be in order and he put it on.

  Having secured Treadwell’s body into the left pilot’s seat, he then strode through the snow to the other side of the helicopter. Finally, he climbed in.

  Dazed, he started up the rotors and waited as the blades came up to speed, creating a snow-storm in the darkness.

  He looked upon the shattered, bloodied face of the corpse sitting next to him with vitriolic loathing. “You son of a bitch.”

  Once the rotors had achieved the required speed, he pulled the collective lever and the helicopter began to rise. The light at the nose of the aircraft illuminated the crystalline snow of the mountains as it ascended. Once he’d attained the required height, he set his plan into motion.

  After ten minutes, he was approximately thirty nautical miles away from the cabin. He glanced at Treadwell’s body one last time, then looked ahead to see another mountain ahead of him.

  Releasing the controls, he threw the door open. The helicopter was already unsteady without his hand gripping the controls, and he was mindful of the tail rotor catching him when he bailed out. The powerful, chilling wind beat against his face reviving him from his weariness. It was almost impossible for him to open his eyes. He’d bailed out of helicopters before in the desert, but never in such extreme cold.

  Gently allowing himself to slip from the edge of the cockpit, he fell out and arched his body into earth-fall position ready for deploying the parachute. Despite having checked it, the paranoia that Treadwell had set him up with a sabotaged ‘chute gripped him again.