Betrayed

by Francine Pascal

  He realized now that his tackle had put an end to Loki’s convulsions. Loki had now given way completely to the paralysis, his neck frozen at a stiff thirty-degree angle, his right arm curled up against his side like an injured wing, and his left hand frozen in a clenched fist that clung to Tom’s lapel. His eyes were no longer twitching, either. Now they were simply fixed on Tom’s eyes in a hollow, impenetrable expression that bordered somewhere between pure hatred and animal desperation.

  Neither of them uttered a word. Tom wasn’t even sure Loki was capable of speech at this point. But it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered what either one of them said. It wouldn’t have mattered what either one of them did next.

  Tom wasn’t going to pull the trigger, and he knew it. Despite their supposedly identical DNA, Tom simply didn’t have a vengeful gene in his body. Maybe his brother had taken Tom’s in the womb. Maybe that explained why Loki seemed to have twice the need for vengeance of any other human being and Tom simply had none. He had certainly been pushed hard enough to question his need for vengeance. But here, with a gun pointed directly to his brother’s head, was the answer. No. No, he couldn’t kill his brother in cold blood. Even though Loki had been more than ready to do just that to him. That was really the point, though, wasn’t it? Tom wasn’t his brother. He wasn’t Loki. And he never would be.

  Besides, Tom didn’t really need to exact revenge. Loki had somehow managed to bring his own worst fate on himself.

  Tom lowered the gun from Loki’s head and dropped his paralyzed torso back down to the floor. He turned and stepped quickly to Gaia.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, crouching urgently by her chair as he removed the tight straps from her hands and feet.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Where are you hit? I can’t see where you’re hit.”

  “I’m not hit,” he replied quickly. “This isn’t my blood, Gaia. You get Heather.”

  Gaia quickly undid Heather’s straps as Tom stepped back down to Loki on the floor. A moment more and he felt Gaia right behind his shoulder.

  Tom peered into his brother’s cold and helpless eyes, which were just about the only things he seemed capable of moving now. Tom was at a complete loss for what to do or say.

  But much to his surprise, in spite of what looked like complete paralysis, Loki managed to reach his crippled left arm up and grab onto Tom’s lapel again, pulling him closer with whatever was left of his strength.

  Tom could hear him straining to speak through his phlegm-ridden gurgles and his iced-over face. He was definitely trying to say something. Something was changing now…. He was giving up. The harshness fell away from his eyes, leaving only that unwatchable air of childlike desperation.

  “I can’t understand you,” Tom said, fighting off the sudden unwanted sympathy he was experiencing as he leaned closer. “Say it again.”

  Loki tightened his fist around Tom’s lapel and tugged him even closer. He was still the man that Tom had always known—still using his iron will to fight off the obvious lack of consciousness that was approaching. That’s how important it was for him to say whatever it was he had to say. And finally Tom was close enough to hear the strained words falling from Loki’s locked jaw.

  “My daughter…,”he moaned. “I want to see her.”

  Tom yanked back his head and stared into his brother’s eyes.

  Just a few minutes before he’d heard Oliver refer to Gaia as his own daughter. But this was the first time Tom could see it so clearly. It wasn’t some kind of psychological ploy or tactic. It wasn’t some kind of conniving means of manipulation.

  His brother honestly still didn’t know. After seventeen years, he’d still never learned the truth.

  “Oliver,” Tom began, flashing his eyes to Gaia and then back to his brother. He could only think of him as Oliver now, lying on the floor in such a state. “Oliver, you still don’t understand, do you? I just…assumed you had seen your tests at some point….”

  “What tests?” Loki whispered, slurring to try and hold words together.

  “Your fertility tests,” Tom said, once again struck by the irrational need to be gentle with the cruelest man he knew. “Oliver, you’re completely sterile, don’t you know that? You have been ever since that experimental treatment when you were thirteen. The tests…they’re just sitting there in your Agency files, but I assumed…I assumed you knew by now.”

  Oliver’s eyes seemed to be receding into his head. It was as if he were progressively shrinking from pain. Although it didn’t look so much like pain in his eyes now. It looked like sadness. “What…you talking about?” he muttered, saliva building up in his permanently open mouth.

  “What are you saying?” Gaia demanded from behind.

  “I’m saying he’s not your father.” Tom locked eyes with his daughter. He was shocked to see some kind of dark, oppressive burden suddenly fall away from Gaia’s eyes. He hadn’t even wanted to have this conversation in front of her, but from her look it seemed she somehow knew more than he or Katia had ever chosen to tell her. She seemed quite aware that there had at one time been the potential for Oliver to be her father. Yet the simple fact of his sterility had somehow been omitted. Until now.

  Tom turned back to Oliver. “Gaia is not your daughter,” he stated clearly and for the record. “You’re incapable of having a daughter, Oliver. You never could have fathered a child, and you never will. You’re incapable of—”

  Tom stopped. He felt the need to stop. Because in spite of his brother’s almost completely catatonic face, a tear was now falling from the corner of his eye and dripping down to the wooden floor.

  And Tom felt so relieved. Oliver wasn’t going to waste his time doubting what was obviously the truth. He knew Tom. He knew Tom wouldn’t lie to him right now. He knew Tom had never once lied to him in their entire lives. Oliver had been told the truth, and he had accepted it.

  His fist pulled tighter on Tom’s lapel. It clenched down with such force that it turned bright white from the pressure as he pulled Tom even closer.

  Tom could tell that Oliver had some version of last words to speak now. Something he urgently needed to say to his brother before he faded away. Most likely a plea for forgiveness for an infinite list of merciless crimes…and Tom was prepared to give it.

  “What is it?” Tom replied. “I can still hear you.” He leaned his ear to his brother’s lips.

  Oliver breathed his words into Tom’s ear. “I hope…that you die like this, Tom. I hope that you die paralyzed, and alone…and loved by no one. I know that’s how you’ll die. And you’ll be scared. So pathetically scared. But I’m not scared, Tom. I’m not afraid to die alone….”

  Tom stared into his brother’s very unenlightened eyes. “Then why won’t you let go of me, Oliver? Why have you been pulling me closer and closer?”

  Oliver had no answer for this. But his sudden attack of speechlessness spoke volumes. Apparently he intended to carry his denial with him all the way to the other side. He looked at Tom one last time. He shifted his watery eyes to gaze at Gaia. And then, with nothing left to say, he simply closed them. He closed his eyes for good.

  It was over. The war was finally over.

  “Is he dead?” Gaia asked.

  Tom cracked open Oliver’s eyes and peered through the pupils. “Comatose,” he said. “Brain-dead. Vegetative state. He’ll probably stay that way for years. Until his body finally rots away and his heart stops.”

  “That sounds worse than being dead.”

  “It is.”

  “Good,” Gaia said, staring down at his nearly lifeless body. “He deserves something worse. What do we do with him?”

  “I don’t suppose it really matters now,” Tom said. “We’ll wait here until the Agency picks him up. They’ll lock him away in some medical facility. They’ll probably want to run a lot of tests.”

  “So…he’ll just be a test subject from now on?” Gaia asked.

  “I suppose so.”

 
Gaia shook her head and coughed out the remains of an ironic laugh.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

  Tom raised his head and gazed across the room at all the pointless destruction. Dr. Glenn was sprawled out on the floor, his head still propped up against the drying streak of blood on the wall. The twin brothers were lying next to each other in a puddle of blood. And Oliver’s body was lying before him in a lifeless heap.

  But Heather Gannis was alive. Curled up and still only half conscious in her chair, but alive. And Gaia was alive. And Tom was alive. And the Agency would be arriving shortly. To clean up the mess.

  Stunning Boy

  Hold them at bay while the sun was still out. Before the timer started its countdown again.

  Gaia

  I realized something ten minutes ago. I realized it the moment I stepped foot out the front door of that decrepit Brooklyn brownstone with Heather hanging her arm around my shoulders and the sun glaring so harshly in my eyes that I felt nearly as blind as she was.

  I lost track of all of it for a second. I lost track of the swarm of agents surrounding me, and the body bags, and Loki’s functionally dead body being wheeled into an Agency van, and even my father, who I hadn’t hugged yet in all the insanity of the morning.

  I lost track of everything but the sunny urban wasteland surrounding me on all sides. Somewhere in the deepest outskirts of Brooklyn. Completely neglected by mankind probably since at least the late 1970s. Nothing but boarded-up brown-stones, and abandoned rusty Dumpsters, and gigantic Newport cigarette billboards covered over completely with graffiti.

  And it looked to me like heaven. Total and complete heaven. The bright, vivid colors of the graffiti, the reflection of the golden sun in the rust of the Dumpsters, the millions of glistening specks of quartz in the old sidewalks…It was my very first sight of freedom.

  Because that’s what I realized as I stepped foot out into that heavenly wasteland.

  I realized that I had been raised in captivity.

  Just like any ape in the zoo, just like any cranky parrot in a two-foot-high cage living in some grandmother’s dark apartment that looks out on the air shaft.

  Needless to say, the irony didn’t escape me. Here I’d been under the impression that I was probably the most independent being on the planet—that every choice in my life was entirely up to me. But I was so wrong. I didn’t even realize how wrong until ten minutes ago.

  All my choices and all my family’s choices had really just been coping mechanisms to survive him. Whether we could see the actual cage or not, we had always been Loki’s captives. Everything we’d done since I was six years old had been dictated by his existence. We’d moved to the Berkshires to run from him. My mother died because of him. My father abandoned me to protect me from him, which is what landed me in the care of George and Ella Niven (need I even say more about them?). I lost Sam because of him, I lost Mary because of him, and I nearly lost Ed for the same reason.

  A slave. I’ve been a complete slave to his will—to his entire freaking existence. And to think I’d never even known it until this year. That’s ten years of complete ignorance. Eleven of my most formative years lived in captivity. The better part of this year as more than just his captive but as his goddamned guinea pig—his fearless specimen.

  And now he’ll finally be the captive. If I’ve ever questioned the notion of karmic justice, I swear I’ll never question it again. Because Loki is the captive now. A captive inside his own vegetative body for the rest of his quasi-life. And if enjoying that makes me cruel, then so be it, but I don’t think he’s lived a life deserving of one drop of respect. So I had to laugh. I had to laugh for at least a second when I realized what the future held for my uncle. My dad said they were probably going to run tests on him, maybe try to find out what had turned him into such a sadistic freak, and that seems just perfect to me. He’s going to live out the rest of his nonlife flat on his back and as someone else’s test subject for a change.

  And now I’m actually free. Not my old definition of free. Not free as in escaping the reality of the situation. Not free as in free to beat on whoever I choose. But actually free. Free to pursue an actual life. Free to hope for all the things I’d sworn to avoid for all eternity, like friends and boyfriends and a family.

  And while that’s all quite undeniably heavenly, the truth is…I have no idea how to do that. I don’t know a damn thing about freedom. I don’t know a damn thing about hope or optimism or creating my own fate. I don’t know how to act. I only know how to react. For a goddamned genius, I know next to nothing about life outside a cage.

  So what do I know?

  I know that Loki isn’t my father, a fact which I will be continuously celebrating for the next twenty or so years. I know that if I’d just had my real father around more that I might have learned this fact about Loki much earlier and avoided a whole crock of painful doubts and repulsion. In fact, I know that there’s probably a world of things my father could have explained to me if he hadn’t lived so much of his life as one of Loki’s captives.

  But I also know that my father is back now. And he’s going to be here for a while. So I’ll have time to ask every single question I should have been asking for the last ten years. And he’ll have time to answer me.

  I know that I need to see Ed Fargo as soon as possible and tell him that I’m planning on taking hours and hours of intensive girlfriend lessons. I need to explain to him that growing up alone in a cage leaves one with the exact same human-to-human skills as any other zoo animal or house pet. Ed must know something about that after those years in the chair. That chair must have been kind of like a cage at times. And the freedom to walk again must have felt a little like stepping onto the moon. But still, I don’t think that’s the same. Ed just had to relearn this whole freedom thing.

  I, on the other hand, will be learning freedom from scratch. At an awfully late age.

  Bear with me, Ed. Please just bear with me.

  Insanely Storybook Moment

  “I’D LIKE TO MAKE A TOAST IF I could….”

  Gaia’s father stood up from the table and raised his glass. But as he began to speak, his voice faded from Gaia’s mind. She strained for the tenth time in the last half hour to accept the sight of her “new family” at this grand dining-room table as a truly untainted, non-dream-related, non-drug-induced reality.

  It wasn’t as if rationally she couldn’t recognize that it was real. It was just that the whole scene was so frustratingly dreamlike, Gaia could barely find her place in it.

  Everyone sitting around the dining table in this posh Upper East Side apartment; her father at the head of the table, smiling, with his glass raised; Natasha and Tatiana both unharmed and smiling comfortably; Ed sitting right next to her, quite possibly as in love with her as she was with him…

  This moment was only supposed to exist in Gaia’s embarrassingly childish fantasies. This was meant to be nothing more than a fictional archetypal image. One of those ridiculous and unattainable dreams that only served as beautiful fiction, keeping Gaia moving forward through the drudgery of her real life.

  But it was all undeniably real. It had been real from the moment they’d dropped Heather safely back at the hospital and then walked through the door of the apartment. That’s when Gaia had seen Natasha, sitting on the living-room couch, most definitely alive, just as Gaia had promised Tatiana she would be. Her arms were glued securely around Tatiana as if she had no intention of letting go for a number of days. And just a few feet from their magnetized embrace was Ed Fargo.

  Ed had been sitting on the edge of the couch like a huge welcome-home gift with an intoxicating smile. All three of them had been waiting anxiously for Gaia and her father’s safe return. And when Gaia and her father had walked through that door, the three of them smiled with such acute relief, it actually made Gaia want to let out a huge breath of her own, even though she hadn’t been the least bit anxious.r />
  Gaia had been trying since then to breathe in the reality here, but this moment at the dining table was still so…

  Just listen to your dad, she told herself. Listen to his toast and you’ll settle in.

  She took her own advice and tuned back in to her father. But luckily she hadn’t missed anything yet. He and Natasha were having a little domestic squabble over wine. Even their domestic squabble seemed too enchanting to be real. But it was. All of it was unmistakably real.

  “Oh, come on, Tom.” Natasha laughed. “You can’t toast with a glass of water. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”

  “Water will do,” he said with a smile.

  “No, no,” Natasha insisted, standing up from the table and stepping into the kitchen as she spoke. “Just a little in your glass for the toast, yes? That’s all. I’ve been holding on to this one bottle for a special occasion, and I doubt very much there will ever be a more special occasion than all of us sitting here, together and alive at this table today.”

  “Well, I think you may be right about that,” Tom replied. Gaia couldn’t have agreed more. With all the secrets out of the way, Natasha was beginning to grow on her more and more by the minute.

  Natasha stepped back to the dining table quickly and poured a little wine into one glass for Gaia’s dad. She set the bottle aside on the desk and rushed back to her chair.

  “Well, then,” Tom went on. “A toast…”

  Gaia took a few deep breaths and gazed at her father. Even though she’d known it for at least an hour now, this was the first time she had truly felt it, as she let herself focus in on him at the head of the table.

  He was back. He was truly back. It was almost as if Gaia had spent these last hellacious months taking the father she’d always known and pulling him apart piece by piece, ripping him up into tiny jagged pieces and examining him from every possible angle before finally putting him all back together. But now that he had been fully reassembled in her heart, Gaia could finally look at him with her own eyes, instead of the eyes of a twelve-year-old. She knew that today was the day she had begun to admire him for the man he was. Not just the father.