‘Mother,’ he whispered.
Emmaline Beckett stood, hands tucked neatly in front of her starched apron, her blue high-necked dress unbuttoned at the throat and without the austere collar he’d known her to wear. Likewise, her dark hair was loose and tumbling over her shoulders instead of being tucked beneath a white cap. Her brown eyes were deep and luminous as she watched him, a small smile tugging at her lips.
Theo swallowed painfully. The last time he’d seen her she’d been waxy white, still and lifeless, her eyes glassy and unseeing. Her belly, still swollen from carrying his sister, was concealed beneath a soiled blood-stained sheet as he stood at her bedside, no more than a child himself, holding the wailing baby.
‘Theo,’ she called to him again, raising her arms to him.
He crossed the space between them in two strides and lifted her into his arms. She was so tiny as he crushed her to him but then again, the last time she’d held him he’d still been a boy. Now he was a man, towering over her diminutive size.
She was so warm and real in his arms as he held on and gave a little sway of contentment, his cheek resting against the top of her head. He let out a slow breath as she stroked his back soothingly, the way she had when he was a child.
She finally pulled back and gazed up into his eyes, stroking his cheek softly.
‘My beautiful boy,’ she murmured as she studied his face, ‘your shoulders have had to bear so much weight. I’m so sorry I left you. Know that I didn’t want to, I didn’t have a choice, but I’m here now.’
Theo closed his eyes painfully as he shook his head, feeling her warm hands still pressed to his cheeks.
‘No,’ his eyes were glassy as he opened them to stare back at her, memorizing every inch of her face, a single tear slipping from the corner of his eye. ‘You’re not real, just like James. You’re nothing but a figment of a drug induced dream.’
She smiled as she released his face and stepped back.
‘It’s true, James is a memory, one that brings you comfort and strength.’
Theo turned back to look, startled to find James was no longer standing there. In fact, the orchard, the trees, the farmhouse all swirled around them melting and disappearing until he suddenly found himself standing on a shore overlooking a lake. The familiar jetty was to his left and as he turned his head and looked up, he saw the house he had come to think of as home. On the grass just beyond the small sandy dunes he could see himself and Olivia sitting on a large blanket with Logan and Theia, surrounded by a picnic and brightly colored toys as the sun shone high in the midday sky.
‘You look happy,’ Emmaline tilted her head thoughtfully as she studied the scene in front of her.
Theo watched as Olivia threw her head back and laughed at something he’d said. Logan sat in his lap clapping happily at his mother laughter as Theia sat on the blanket happily chewing the slobbery piece of bread scrunched in her chubby little fist. A sudden overwhelming longing had him almost taking a step toward them when he remembered they weren’t real. It was all in his head, just like the lake, the house. The reality was he was trapped in a tiny airless plastic box drugged out of his mind.
‘You really need to stop feeling so sorry for yourself you know Theo,’ Emmaline told him matter of factly.
He looked down to find they were no longer standing on the shore. Emmaline was sitting on the jetty, no longer wearing her puritan clothes but instead a light flowery summer dress with thin straps revealing her slim shoulders. It stopped at her knees, leaving her legs and feet bare as she trailed her toes in the glittering water of the lake.
‘This really is a beautiful place,’ she sighed. ‘I wish things could have been different. I saw this so many times you know, you and Olivia and my grandchildren. I wish I could have had the chance to get to know them. Well… maybe there’s still time.’
‘Time?’ Theo frowned as he took a seat on the jetty next to her and dipped his feet in the water. ‘Mom, you’re dead and not only that, you’re a figment of my imagination. You’re not real.’
‘I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ she murmured.
‘What?’
‘I’m here but not here,’ she replied, as she looked out over the lake, enchanted by the way the sunlight rippled across the water making it seem like thousands of tiny diamonds were dancing across its surface.
‘I don’t understand,’ Theo answered in confusion.
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve waited a long time to have this conversation with you Theo, but you weren’t ready and now we’ve run out of time. Things are about to get very difficult for you Theo and painful. I wish I could spare you the path that lays before you, but I can’t. We were all born with a destiny.’
‘That’s just another way of saying we were born with no choices,’ Theo replied resentfully.
‘We always have a choice my love,’ she turned to glance at him. ‘Just because you have a destiny it doesn’t mean you have to abide by it. So many, fight against it but it brings them nothing but pain and misery.’
‘You want me to believe that you’re real,’ Theo stared out across the water, ‘but I can’t.’
‘I’m not going to try and convince you,’ she sighed, ‘we don’t have the time. You’ll figure it out eventually, but Theo, death…’ she shook her head, ‘it’s just a doorway. I never really left you, or your brother and sister. We all have our parts to play in the coming days.’
‘You’re talking about the prophecy, aren’t you?’
‘Among other things,’ she replied ambiguously. ‘You can’t let Faraday get his hands on the completed prophecy; you know that don’t you? That’s why I left it incomplete.’
‘You know what the whole prophecy says don’t you?’ Theo turned to her as she nodded.
‘This is your task Theo,’ she told him quietly. ‘You have to figure it out for yourself and in doing so, you may just figure out who you really are.’
‘I can’t,’ he denied, ‘I’m not like you, or Hester West. I have no control over the visions; it’s like having my head split open with a dull axe over and over again. I don’t understand the language I keep seeing, the visions are disjointed and make no sense. I’m not some great and powerful seer. I can’t do this, it’s not who I am.’
‘Then who are you?’ she asked softly.
His lips parted to answer but he found he had no answer to give. He didn’t know and that was the whole problem. He was a man displaced from time, with no purpose, afflicted with visions that were more a curse than a gift.
He couldn’t find his friend Sam when he’d gone missing in the woods the night of the awakening, nor for the two years after that. He’d not seen the danger coming from the Veritas until it was too late, and they’d already breached the protective wards of their home, he couldn’t even protect his wife and children.
‘You know why the visions aren’t working and you have no control over them,’ she reached up much the same as James had and tapped his forehead. ‘The answers are all in here, you just need to figure it out.’
He watched silently as she pulled her feet from the water and stood up, brushing the dust from her dress before turning to look down at him seriously.
‘The days of prophecy are coming Theo, and nothing will ever be the same.’
He blinked and everything around him shifted, swirling in a blur of colors. His body was on fire, there was not a single muscle that didn’t ache painfully. His whole body felt like a raw open wound as he swam sluggishly through the layers of gray and blinked owlishly. The room swam, spinning around and around in circles. His stomach lurched traitorously, causing him to swallow convulsively so as not to vomit.
He breathed shallowly, closing his eyes until the spinning sensation stopped and when he finally opened them again, he found Nate staring down at him in concern.
‘You were under for longer that time,’ he frowned as he checked Theo’s pupils with a small pen flashlight.
‘Then stop fu
cking drugging me,’ Theo rasped, his throat dry and painful.
It wasn’t like him to use that kind of language. Despite being around Jake and Olivia constantly, he usually reserved curse words for very rare occasions. Although, with the memories of his mother and father swirling around his confused mind and his barely contained emotions dangerously close to the surface it was obvious this was one of those occasions.
‘You have no idea how much I wish I didn’t have to do this,’ Nate murmured with a scowl.
He heard the rattle of the buckle and felt the wide leather strap at his forehead and chin released. Nate lifted his throbbing head gently and raised a glass of water to his lips.
‘Sip it slowly,’ Nate warned, ‘you’re going to feel a little nauseous.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Theo dropped his head back against the headrest as the cool water soothed his vocal cords. ‘You don’t seem like you want to be here.’
‘I don’t really have a choice,’ Nate placed the glass down on a nearby table.
‘There’s always a choice.’
‘I suppose so,’ he nodded, ‘but in your case the alternative choice is much worse.’
‘What do you mean?’ Theo asked as Nate placed a fabric cuff around his bicep to take his blood pressure.
‘I mean if I don’t do as they ask and get the results they want Faraday will hand you over to Quentin Abigail and let him get results.’
‘This Abigail, he’s a doctor?’
Nate snorted.
‘Barely,’ he replied in disgust, ‘he’s a butcher. I study Psychopharmacology and its effect on the mind. Our brains contain over a hundred billion neurons, cells that carry information and as a species we’ve barely scratched the surface of human evolution. Our brains are capable of so much more. Imagine if you had conscious access to all that information contained, subconsciously and subliminally. I believe drugs when used properly can unlock those parts of the mind, even latent abilities. However, Abigail favors a much more hands on approach.’
‘When you say hands on…?’
‘Surgical intervention,’ Nate replied as he made a note of Theo’s blood pressure on his chart before pressing his fingers to his inner wrist to check his pulse. ‘If it was up to Abigail, he’d give you a paralytic to immobilize you, keeping you awake and aware of everything. He’d saw into your skull and remove a circular plate of bone exposing your brain. Then he’d attach electrodes to the tissue and stimulate it with micro shocks to awaken dormant parts of the mind.’
Theo stared at Nate silently.
‘The only reason I’m here and doing this, is because the chances are Abigail would kill you or at the very least leave you severely brain damaged. Faraday isn’t willing to risk it, until he has what it is he’s looking for, this prophecy… whatever.’ Nate shook his head, ‘the truth is Theo, I couldn’t give a fuck about the prophecy or all the magic shit. I thought that part of my life was behind me. All I wanted was to kick back on the Jerrica, smoke a bit of weed, sink a beer or two and haul lobster traps.’
‘How did you end up tangled up with Faraday?’ Theo asked as Nate began to remove the sensors from Theo’s temple and chest. ‘You don’t seem like the type to get caught up with the Veritas.’
‘I was young and dumb once,’ Nate sighed. ‘To be honest I was high most of the time, but I was doing some cutting-edge work with Neuropsychopharmacology, tapping into areas of the brain never before successfully reached. That’s when the Veritas came knocking on my door, offered me unlimited funding and no red tape. I could basically do whatever I wanted, push the boundaries without consequence.’
‘Only there were consequences,’ Theo guessed.
‘Yeah,’ Nate replied a little sickly. ‘By the time we figured it out we were in too deep, we were trapped.’
‘We?’
‘My friend Mac and I,’ Nate blew out a slow breath as he neatly coiled the wires from the sensors and stacked them on the trolley. ‘He was a cop from Philly, recruited around the same time I was. We became friends. When we realized what the Veritas really was, we decided to take the risk and get out, but we both learned the hard way, there is no ‘out’ with the Veritas.’
‘Mac?’ Theo repeated, ‘you mean Layton Macallister?’
‘Yeah,’ Nate nodded, ‘you probably know him. He settled in a town called Mercy in Massachusetts. That’s where you’re from isn’t it?’
‘Yeah I know Mac,’ Theo’s eyes widened, and his heart started to beat with the smallest hint of hope, ‘I know Mac really well. Is there any way you can get a message to him?’
Nate stopped what he was doing and turned slowly back toward Theo, his eyes assessing.
‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘Know what?’
‘Mac’s dead,’ Nate replied quietly.
‘What?’ Theo whispered, his blood running cold as he shook his head in denial, ‘no… that’s not…’
‘They shot and killed him the night they took you,’ Nate told him bitterly. ‘He was executed on Faraday’s orders, an object lesson for anyone who thought retiring from the Veritas was an option. The fact that Faraday didn’t like Mac was just a bonus.’ Nate shook his head in disgust. ‘Mac was a good man; he didn’t deserve that.’
Theo’s heart sank, his chest heavy with grief for the friend he’d lost but also for his sister who had loved Mac deeply. He could only imagine how much pain Temperance was in, no wonder she’d disappeared. He only hoped she stayed under the radar where Faraday couldn’t find her.
‘It’s the same fate which awaits me if I try to run again,’ Nate indicted the angry looking brand burned into his neck. ‘It’s the mark of the traitor,’ he explained. ‘I’ll never be a free man again. You have no idea how far the Veritas’s reach is. They’re everywhere man, there’s nowhere you can run where they won’t find you. I’d tell them to go fuck themselves just on principle. I’d rather take the bullet than live like this, but it turns out I’ve got just enough conscience left not to leave you in the hands of that butcher Abigail.’
‘Thanks, I guess,’ Theo frowned.
‘You should get some rest,’ Nate nodded as he undid the rest of Theo’s restraints. ‘You need some help?’
‘I got it,’ Theo shook his head.
Nate watched as Theo slowly and unsteadily walked into the adjoining room and slumped down on his sleeping cot.
‘They’ll bring you some food in an hour or so,’ Nate told him, but Theo didn’t respond. He lay with his back to him, staring at the blank glass wall and the darkness beyond it.
Nate stepped back, watching as the doorway sealed itself, leaving no trace of an entrance, just a wall of glass. Turning around he picked up the stack of handwritten papers and headed toward the exit.
He felt the same disturbing cold, wet trickling sensation as he stepped through the rippling wall to the room beyond and stopped dead when he saw who was waiting for him.
‘What a sweet little bonding moment,’ Faraday smiled coldly.
Nate thrust the papers at him, his eyes blazing with hatred and his lips pinched together tightly to stop himself from saying something stupid.
‘Not so fast Nate,’ Faraday’s cool voice stopped him as he moved past intent on heading back to his own small, confined, prison-like room.
Nate turned back glaring at him.
‘These aren’t good enough,’ he held up the papers, covered in the same looping scrawl, written in an ancient language, none of his code breakers seemed to be able to crack. ‘I need the translations.’
‘He doesn’t know how to translate it,’ Nate replied through grated teeth.
‘You sure about that?’
‘I’ve been working with him for days now,’ Nate frowned, ‘he doesn’t understand the language.’
‘Up the dosage,’ Faraday replied callously, ‘or give him something else. The prophecy is no good to me if I can’t read it.’
‘Not my problem,’ Nate shrugged. ‘Keeping him alive is my p
riority, he’s no use to you dead. I’ll get you the full prophecy, but he can’t read it, he doesn’t know the language. No drug in the world is going to change that.’
Faraday stared at Nate thoughtfully as he tapped the papers against his smooth cheek. He glanced back through the glass walls to Theo who was still laying on his side on his sleeping cot. Finally, Faraday turned to one of the men standing behind him.
‘Bring the woman,’ he decided with a cool smile. ‘I think it’s time we introduced them both.’
9
Theo sat on the cold, hay strewn ground with his knees drawn up to his chest. He shivered violently, watching as his breath was expelled from his lips as a fine mist. It was freezing in the dark, dank barn. The familiar scents of horse sweat, manure and mildew filled his nostrils, his stomach clenching with a deeply ingrained fear that, even after all this time, he didn’t realize was still there, hiding in his subconscious.
The horse snorted, unsettled, as it sensed someone approach. A few moments later Theo heard slow footfalls, scraping along the floor. His heart began to bang against his ribs and an icy clammy sweat broke out along his forehead. He crawled along the floor, peering beneath the door of the stall he was hiding in.
He could see a pair of well-worn, soiled boots, the flash of an almost empty bottle as it was held against a powerful thigh and a long sturdy leather belt gripped in a meaty fist as it trailed along the floor.
‘THEODORE!’ A furious slurred voice roared.
Theo leapt up in panic and pushed his way out of the stall. He had almost made it to the door when a thick hand wrapped around his neck and wrenched him backward and off balance, throwing him clear across the room.
Theo hit the wall and crumpled to the ground but when he looked up, he was no longer in the freezing cold barn.
He pushed himself gingerly to his feet. He was in a darkened corridor; he could feel the rough wood of the floor beneath his bare feet. Dead ahead of him was a door, slightly ajar and beyond it the faint flicker of candlelight. He heard a familiar whispering, over and over, a voice filled with fear and pain.
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