Jaden Baker

by Courtney Kirchoff

  He ran his right hand through her hair, his thumb tracing circles on her soft cheek. She covered his hand with her own and smiled. He tilted his head more toward her, but wasn’t sure. Her eyes flickered down to his lips then back to his eyes. She smirked then twitched her eyebrow up.

  With a quick breath, Jaden kissed her, falling into her.

  His imagination had not come close. The real Libby, the actually Molly, surpassed everything he thought she would be. She returned the kiss. Libby accepted him. She moaned softly, and rest her head under his chin on his chest.

  Jaden sighed a deep, long sigh and closed his eyes, keeping his arms around her, holding her to him. As he kissed the top of her head, smiling into her, Jaden knew he wasn’t going to New York. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  thirty-one

  It was a pleasant and conventional idea to wake up next to her, and as he rolled over to look at the side of the bed, as empty as it had been all night, he imagined how comforting it would be to see her smiling at him. Ideally she would be here now, but Libby had made it clear in a way only she could that, despite him being a real smooth talker, the only way to get her in bed was if she had a gold ring on her finger.

  Sunlight beamed into his room, and from here he saw not a single cloud in the perfectly clear sky: a jubilant day. He swung his legs out of bed and dressed, choosing his nicest clothes, which were not much: khaki carpenter pants and a long sleeved blue t-shirt. He would need to shave and brush his teeth before seeing her, and he hoped, as he skipped down the stairs, that she was still in bed, though he heard sounds from the living room.

  She was awake, dressed in sweat pants and a white tank top, her hair pulled back in a tangled pony-tail. The television was set to the news which played video of a building ablaze.

  Before taking the last step, he turned off the television. Libby whipped her head around, her eyes wide behind black rectangular glasses.

  “Did you do that, or do I need a new TV?” she asked.

  “I did that,” he said. “I can’t watch TV.”

  “Well, why not? Jaden, the news. It’s your building!” She grabbed her remote and turned the television back on.

  He turned his back to it. “Mute it!” he said.

  She did. “Why can’t you watch TV? Your building is on the news. It exploded yesterday!”

  Who was inside? If it was live news coverage, or even something recorded from yesterday, he could risk watching it, right? He faced the television.

  The coverage was recorded yesterday, a helicopter’s perspective. Em House was engulfed, flames billowing from the windows, firefighters trying to contain the fire. Then the building collapsed in on itself, crumbling to the ground like a sandcastle hit by a tsunami.

  Libby was on the edge of the couch, leaning forward as if hoping to glean more information by sitting as close as possible.

  “Who was inside?” he asked, his tone flat.

  She whirled around, hair flying.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Yeah, who was inside? How many people? Have they released names?” A young reporter’s mouth was moving soundlessly, standing in the foreground of the smoking pile of rubble. A marquis at the bottom ticked the facts: a building in Seattle rigged with explosives killed an estimated 14 people inside. Homeland security is investigating but has not commented on whether or not it could be terror related. Families of the deceased are being notified.

  “What channel is this?” Jaden asked.

  Without even checking, Libby said “It’s national.” She stood, hands on her hips. “You knew it was going to explode.”

  She looked so different with glasses, but still Libby. He couldn’t tell if she was mad or simply curious. Obviously she’d turned on the news before doing anything. Had a friend of hers tipped her off?

  “I knew it was going to explode.”

  Her mouth wide now, like her eyes, Libby spun back to the television, then back to him. “You did that?” she asked.

  “Yes. That’s why I want to know who was inside. Hold off your temper and let me explain,” he said, emerging from the kitchen. “That place was locked down solid when we left it. The only person who could get in was me. It was locked from the inside with chained padlocks. Even if someone was strong enough to break the chains, they’d have to move a three ton barricaded wall to get inside. It was a pressure bomb on a timer. The only way to set it off would be to stand on or move around the second floor. It was delayed to thirty-five minutes. That means whoever set the bomb smashed into the building, moved the barricade, and was standing on my home floor for thirty-five minutes, moving my stuff, putting it boxes, dusting for my prints. The only people who would go to all that effort are the people looking for me. Now I know they’re here.”

  Live coverage showed a German Shepherd scouring the wreckage for bodies. Jaden had spent years learning how to set the explosive: what chemicals he needed and in what amounts. He had been careful not to blow himself up in the process. Searching for bodies was a futile attempt. The building had probably burned for hours, incinerating everything inside. The rescue teams would only recover human bones and teeth. To identify bodies they would have to compare dental records.

  “Jaden,” she said, in a forced calm. “Fourteen people. Dead.”

  “Fourteen people looking for me. They had no good intentions. This is war.”

  She chewed on her lips for a moment. “Have you killed people before?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “Yes, I have. I didn’t want to, but they were after me and I couldn’t let them capture me again.” Jaden cleared his throat and kept his eyes on the television, hoping to see speculation of who was inside, if it was anyone he knew...

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Seven,” he said. He thought of the SUV tumbling down from the freeway, not sure if anyone survived.

  Libby’s eyes widened. “Seven?”

  He nodded. There were two people in the helicopter, four in the SUV. The seventh person deserved it more than the others. That man, Hoganoff, had crossed a line. The people pursuing him had been collateral damage, and should’ve known better than to follow him, but they needn’t have died. These new fourteen people, they underestimated Jaden again. They wanted to re-enslave him. He had difficulty mustering sympathy.

  “How did those deaths happen?” she asked.

  “I threw an SUV into a helicopter,” he said, and took a sip of water from a mug.

  “You threw an SUV into a helicopter?” Her eyes were so wide they threatened to fall out of her skull.

  “Yes.”

  “How did you do that?” she asked. “How does anyone throw an SUV?”

  “You know how,” Jaden said. “It was simple. The hardest thing was waiting for it to line up.”

  “Wait a second. You have that much power you can just chuck cars and things at other things?” She was becoming less coherent.

  “Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

  “No!” she said, turning off the television and pulling strands of hair away from her face. “No, I thought you could bend spoons and, you know, open and close the louvers and turn lights on and off, I didn’t know you could chuck a car at something!”

  Jaden set the mug on the counter. “You think an entire organization is after me because I bend spoons? You think these people are risking their lives to get me because I can flip switches? They didn’t hold me captive for six years because I can do stupid little crap. Anything that can be moved I can move. Cars, busses, trains, whatever. It’s not just that,” he said, picking up the mug of water. He dumped it out as an ice block. “I can manipulate matter. Control body functions—”

  “What?” she asked shrilly. “Control bodies?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Like speeding up or slowing down a heart.” He didn’t mention stopping one. “Constricting the arteries and airways. Stuff like that.”

  “‘Stuff like that?’ Oh my God!” she said, her hand on her forehead.

  “That’s
why this is so serious. These people know how to control me. I’m a weapon in their hands. I thought you knew that.”

  “You thought I knew that?” she asked, her hair standing up even after she took her hands away.

  “Why are you repeating everything I’m saying?” he said, putting the ice back into his mug and defrosting it to a tepid temperature. He took a sip.

  “Why am I—” she stopped herself, shook her head and rubbed her face. “It’s just, you know, it’s just—just sudden. I didn’t know. I thought we were joking about the whole Yoda thing. So you’re saying anything that has the potential to move you can. Just like that? Toss a Ferrari through the twelfth story of a building?”

  He finished the water in the mug. “I’d rather it not be a Ferrari, but yes, I could do that.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried figuring that out for years, but I don’t know. Dalton said it was a defense mechanism, and that’s how it started, but it comes as easily to me as lifting a pencil with finger and thumb.” He watched her for several minutes. She was twisting her hands and fingers, and kept running them through her hair, making it messier than it already was. She tossed her glasses on the counter so she could rub her face.

  “Okay,” she said, crossing her arms. “Okay. Help me understand,” she said, facing him.

  “Fine.”

  “I’m having some difficulty understanding this. You’re hiding from these people.”

  “Right.”

  “But this thing, this superpower you’ve got is so strong you can throw a helicopter into a car.”

  “SUV into a helicopter,” he corrected.

  “And you rigged your building to explode to eliminate as many as possible.”

  “Right.”

  She sighed. “Why are you running? Why aren’t you facing them and fighting back? Why aren’t you destroying them head on, and taking your life back? Why all the running and hiding?”

  Jaden was taken aback. He knew she disapproved of the running because of her comment yesterday. But the killings, which at first alarmed her, proved he was capable of defending himself. She took his need for defense and postulated an offensive fight. Why not confront them, end it all?

  It was the part she could not understand because she didn’t know.

  “It’s like I’ve said before,” he said, his voice low and patient. “They know how to control me. They’ve taken measures to ensure it. The day we met, when I woke up in the hospital, I was under an X-ray machine. A doctor and a nurse had me laid on the table and I saw them looking at an image of my head. There were wires in my brain.” He paused to read her reaction. Libby’s eyes were wide again. “I don’t know what those wires do, but I’m convinced they were put there to control me. Chunks of time went missing, when I was back there. One second I’d be sitting then standing across the room with no memory of doing it.

  “I’d love to destroy all of them and take my life back, but I can’t. They put something in my head. I’ve been on a radio and television blackout since I got away, because I’m sure that they can somehow...” he searched for the right word, “trigger me.”

  Libby frowned for a moment, then left the room without a word, and headed down the hall. Jaden didn’t have time to follow her, as she returned seconds later with her laptop and set it on the dining room table. She put her glasses back on and opened a web browser.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You said Joseph Madrid was...”

  “Yes,” he said, sitting next her.

  “Okay. He’s a child psychiatrist,” she said, eyeing him for a moment. “He’s won a lot of awards.”

  “You know him?” he asked her, but as soon as he asked he knew the question was stupid. Dalton and Madrid had a relationship of some kind, a trust. Whatever it was now, obviously in the past Libby would have encountered Madrid.

  “He and my father were close for a long time,” she said, typing on the computer. “He admired and looked up to him—my dad that is. They had a falling out just before I ran away. I don’t know if they reconciled or not. Anyway, Madrid’s been in psychiatry for a long time, nearly thirty years.” She was reading from something now. “He left his job as a business man, a successful one, to enter psychiatry for children.”

  “What are you looking at?” he asked her.

  “The Archcroft website. There’s a brief biography of Joseph Madrid, along with a photo. It says he entered psychiatry to help children...” she drifted off, biting her bottom lip and frowning again.

  So Madrid was a shrink. It made sense. He knew which buttons to push. Manipulative, sadistic, and cruel, Joseph Madrid knew exactly how to torment him body and mind.

  “Well, there’s no catalyst,” Libby said, reading over the biography again. “We’re missing Severus Snape.”

  Jaden grimaced. “What?”

  “Snape. Oh,” she said, “that’s right, you’ve not read that one. Unbelievable. What we’re missing is the reason for it all, the string that holds everything together. The source. Madrid is one of the founders of Archcroft, at least that’s what I think. But there’s no reason for why he founded it, why he became a psychiatrist, nothing. It just says he left his job, entered psychiatry, and has been winning awards for the work he’s done ever since.” She shut the top of the computer. “Which tells us a lot. He knows a lot of, you know, mental things. Okay, this is going to sound cheesy, but maybe he hypnotized you.”

  “How would he do that?”

  “That’s where it gets tricky. See, unlike what a lot of people think, you can’t hypnotize anyone who doesn’t want to be, and you can’t get them to do something they don’t want to do. It’s not like Manchurian Candidate. Madrid couldn’t get you to kill someone if you didn’t want to, he couldn’t get you to do anything you ultimately didn’t want to do.”

  Jaden felt sick to his stomach. The beatings, the burnings, the torturing, all of it was punishment for not doing exactly as Madrid had instructed. Following his orders to the line was the only way to make the pain stop. Maybe Madrid hadn’t asked for the unthinkable, maybe he asked for just enough so Jaden would go along willingly.

  “What does it look like? How does it happen?” Jaden asked her.

  She slid back in her chair and held a breath. “I’m not sure. I think you’d have to be open to suggestion and maybe sleep deprived so your inhibitions were weakened.”

  Yes, both of those things had happened. He had been forced to stay awake for so long he could barely stand it, then Madrid ordered him to sleep. Was that when and how it happened? Probably. Libby’s explanation made sense. If hypnosis had been used to plant suggestions, but couldn’t be used to get him to do something he didn’t want to, that’s why they’d resorted to other means. That’s why there were wires in his head. They controlled something. They controlled him.

  Revulsion and anger surged through him. Madrid took more than his mind. He was an object, part machine, something that could obey an order. With a flip of a switch, he wouldn’t be him anymore. It all started with a little hypnosis. If he hadn’t been so angry, Jaden might agree with Libby. It was cheesy. It was cheap. But because it was him, it was serious.

  Actually—honestly—it hadn’t started with hypnosis. It had started with surrender. Madrid had asked for Jaden’s mind, and Jaden had, unwillingly, given it.

  He pushed away from the table and paced, angry at himself for his past weakness, for not holding on through the pain.

  Libby stood too. “Is there something I can do?” she asked.

  When Jaden didn’t answer, she didn’t say more.

  Maybe she sensed he wanted to be left alone. He heard her leaving. But from the hallway she called out: “Oh, the dogs and I found Cat. He’s hiding in the linen closet.” Then she went outside, leaving him with his thoughts.

  Using a sheet of copy paper swiped from Libby’s printer, Jaden sketched the profile of his brain, and tried remembering where the wires had gone. If he ha
dn’t been in such a hurry to get out of the hospital, he would have taken the films.

  Libby was outside with her dogs and horses, raking manure in the field. He watched her from his bedroom window and felt obligated to help. There was no way to confirm the purpose of the wires safely, and it did him little good to continue dwelling on them.

  The paths before him were limited and narrow. So long as Madrid was alive and hunting him, Jaden could not lead an open life, not until he learned how to disable whatever it was Madrid had done. His original plan of running from Washington and living elsewhere was an idea he resented now. For the whole of his life, he lived on the edge of society and had longed, on some level, to be a part of it. Everyone else was the stream, and he just a rock on the shore, watching the world flow by. Then Libby had swept him up. The thought of leaving her, of going somewhere without her—he couldn’t stand it. She was his connection to reality. Madrid may have taken everything else, but he would not have his life with Libby. Jaden would fight for that.

  He took a last look at his rudimentary sketch of his brain, then crumpled it up and went outside.

  “Need help?” he asked as he took an extra rake and came in through the fence.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder as she scratched the neck of Adama. “Uh,” she said, looking around the pasture. “I need to clean the water trough and dump that poop way down there,” she said, nodding to the bottom of the field where a blanket of crushed manure lay, grass sprouting from it.

  “You recycle it?” he asked.

  “Nifty, huh?” she said, smiling.

  “It’s gross.” He dropped the rake and walked to the water trough. It was a quarter full with dark water, hay, and algae. With a flick of his fingers, the trough turned on its side and the water dumped out, splashing on the hardened ground. The manure was in a two-wheeled wheelbarrow. Libby’s eyes popped as she watched it wheel itself down the pasture hill, dumping itself out, the manure spreading evenly across the ground. Then the hose uncoiled itself and Jaden grasped the nozzle and blasted the grime from the trough by placing his thumb over the nozzle.