Her Loyal Seal (24 page)

He walked towards the semi-private room the Hawks arranged for their son. The door to room two-fourteen was open and he pushed it open slightly so he could see inside. Stella Hawk had aged some and put on a little weight, but she was still a woman that made Dakota smile. She talked with her hands and then she laughed making the bangles on her wrists tinkle like bells. Dakota couldn’t make out what she was saying, but was transported back in time.

He knocked on the door. She turned and smiled.

“Kota, you’re here. I was expecting you tonight.” She got out of her chair, and held out her arms, expecting a hug like it was her right. She was correct.

“I caught an earlier flight.” He enveloped the small woman in a warm embrace, memories flooding him as she hugged him back. How many times in his childhood had this beautiful lady made him feel welcomed and loved? He should have visited her more often.

“You look tired, Kota.” She stood on her toes to brush back the hair from his eyes, reminding him he needed a haircut.

“You as well, Stella. How is John?”

“Today is one of his bad days.” She grasped his hand and guided him closer to the bed. She gazed fondly at her son. It was clear it didn’t make a difference, no matter what kind of day it was for her son, he would only receive love and laughter from her.

“He’s sleeping?”

Her grip tightened and she bit her lip as she explained. “Now he is. A little earlier he was hallucinating. He doesn’t know where he is, and he’s not making any sense.”

“That’s okay, I have all the time and patience in the world for John,” he reassured her.

Dakota thought back to the boy who befriended him when he first arrived at the reservation. John Hawk hadn’t cared Dakota didn’t speak. He played with him, talked to him, and treated him like he was perfectly normal. Dakota owed John more than he could ever repay.

Stella gave a slow smile and then nodded. “Well all right then. Kota, I’m going to leave for a little bit and pick up some sandwiches. We can have a picnic. Maybe John will wake up. He doesn’t eat much but I’ll bring back some pudding. Do you still like roast beef?”

“Yes ma’am. Things haven’t changed that much.” Dakota smiled.

“Now bend down so I can give you a kiss and I’ll be back soon.” He bent down. Stella kissed and patted his cheek, and then gathered up her huge purse and left.

He sat down in the chair Stella vacated and picked up John’s thin hand. “Well John, it’s just you and me now. Wanna swap some stories?”

As if his lids were spring loaded, John’s eyes popped open. “It’s about time you got here, Kota.”

Dakota reared back.

“Weren’t expecting that, were you?” John let out a dry laugh that turned into a long bout of coughing. Dakota lifted his friend’s head off the pillows and brought the cup of water with the straw to his lips.

“Slow sips, John.” Finally the cough turned into slow wheezes and John waved the cup away. Dakota carefully lowered him back on to the pillows.

“Raise the bed, will you?” Dakota found the remote and positioned the bed so John was in a more seated position. He got a really good look at his friend. It was sad and shocking to realize he was a mere shadow of the man he once was.

“Yep. You’re right, I’m going to die soon. It’s okay, Brother. I’ve made my peace with it. At least. I will after I’ve sent you on your quest.”

“But your mother told me the doctors haven’t discovered anything really wrong with you,” Dakota protested.

“It’s my brain. It’s going to stop functioning soon.”

Dakota frowned. He opened his mouth but John cut him off.

“I know, you’re going to tell me it’s not that bad. Your exact words were going to be ‘John, we’ll figure a way to fight this together’.”

A chill raced down Dakota’s spine. That was exactly what he was going to say. John gave him a wan grin.

“Oops, I just felt more of my brain die.”

“That’s not funny,” Dakota said. The conversation filled him with dread.

“Man, they messed with my brain and there’s no fixing it.” John’s hand trembled as he swiped his mouth.

“Who’s they, John?”

“We’ll get to that. I’ll show you some of what they did to me. How they screwed with me, and made me into something different. Want to see me force you to get out of the chair?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” But Dakota was pretty sure he knew.

“Open. The. Window,” John slowly said through gritted teeth.

Dakota stood up, not of his own volition, and started towards the window. It took every ounce of strength he had to fight the compulsion and turn away and walk back towards John.

“You’re strong, Kota. I’ll give you that. Or I’ve lost my touch since I’m dying.”

“You sure as hell didn’t suffer some Humvee explosion over in Afghanistan like they reported. This isn’t a fucking traumatic brain injury.”

Dakota dropped into the chair beside the man who was like a brother to him. He was trembling from the exertion he expended fighting his friend’s compulsion. But it hadn’t scared him. John was and always would be his friend. He grasped the hand John held out to him through the bars of the bedrail.

“Tell me what they did to you.”

“It’s my own damn fault. I volunteered. First thing you learn at boot camp, keep your head down, and never, ever volunteer. Well, I volunteered.”

Dakota waited while looking at John’s worn and haggard features. It was obvious he didn’t have much time left on this Earth.

“I look that bad, huh?”

“So you can read minds as well as command people to do your will?” Dakota asked.

“I have a little pre-cog too. I knew I was going to die. Some had the ability to heal, others to read minds, others to find people, there were a myriad of different abilities, but those were the most coveted.”

Dakota absorbed John’s words, letting him tell his story at his own pace.

“You don’t seem surprised. As a matter of fact, as I’m plowing through your thoughts, you’ve already met people with these abilities, my Brother.” John’s eyes were wide with wonder.

“Finish the story.” Dakota smiled gently. “How did they develop these skills in you? Because I sure as hell know you didn’t have them before.”

“First they gave us some powerful fucking hallucinogenics, and then pumped us full of something else. Jesus, it went on for months and nothing happened.”

“How many of you were in this program? Where did it take place?”

“It was some place on the Eastern seaboard. All of us were Airborne. We were flown in to either Benning or Bragg and then driven in the back of a truck to our new barracks. We could smell the ocean. There were ten of us in the beginning. The final day there were five of us and then just me.”

“So how did you come into powers like the ones you described? Was it just the drugs?”

“The drugs started us down the path. We could do little things. I remember the first time I got someone to move their hand. The next day Conners figured out if Ratliff was thinking about a blonde or a redhead. Things like that. What finally got us to this point was Simon.” John gave a beatific smile. He didn’t say anything, just looked past Dakota lost in thought and smiling.

“John?” Dakota prompted after a while.

“Huh?”

“You were telling me about Simon.”

“Oh yeah. He’s wonderful. I’ve never met anyone like him before. He has this grace about him.”

Dakota squeezed John’s thin hand trying to get him to focus.

“And?”

“And he has these amazing gifts. He worked with us one-on-one. He unlocked our abilities and helped us find our true potential.”

“So he had the ability to heal, read minds, and do mind control?” Dakota was pretty sure he knew exactly where Simon came from, he just couldn’t wrap his head around it.

“No, he said his ability was to free the potential in others. But first he needed a fertile mind to work with. The drugs made it possible for him to manipulate our brains.” John’s entire countenance glowed as he talked about Simon, and it filled Dakota with a deep sense of unease.

“What happened? You said at first there were ten of you, and then there were five.”

“After he helped unlock the power of our minds we never saw Simon again. We spent months working on developing our powers. But there were others there who monitored us—scientists. In the first ten weeks, five died one way or another. They couldn’t handle what they were becoming.” John was beginning to sound upset instead of so enamored with Simon.

“What do you mean they died one way or another?”

John started coughing. Dakota got the glass and brought the water to his lips, but he couldn’t stop the coughing fit. A fine trickle of blood seeped out of the side of his mouth. John reached up with a frail shaky hand, but Dakota got a tissue and wiped it away, earning him a grateful smile.

“One of the men’s powers was the ability to see the future. At first it was just little things. He would tell us what was going to be for dinner. Then one day, after Simon enhanced us, he said one of the scientist’s daughters was going to drown in their swimming pool. He tried to tell the scientist but the man laughed. The next day the scientist wasn’t there and nobody would look at Rudy. He’d been right and all of the non-military personnel looked at him like he was a monster.”

John started coughing again, worse than before. Dakota ached for his friend.

“Would it be better if you were lying flat?”

“It’s easier to talk when I’m sitting up. I need to finish.”

Dakota clasped his shoulder and John smiled his thanks.

“The next day, Rudy looked at all of us and said everybody but me would be killed. I was the only one who believed him. He went berserk. He grabbed one of the scientists by the throat insisting they bring Simon back. One of the guards, a young kid, got nervous and ended up shooting Rudy and killing him.”

“It kept going on like that, one weird thing after another would happen. Sheldon kept hearing voices, not just reading minds, but voices from all over the compound. He couldn’t shut them out. He hanged himself.”

Dakota listened in horror as story after story was told of Army Airborne men being killed or killing themselves, until the last day where John was so gravely injured.

“What happened that day?”

“It was awful, just like when I was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“What made it so bad?”

“Seeing the four of them turn on one another and then on me. What made it worse was I knew it was going to happen, but only by a minute. I had just a quick flash of pre-cog. The knowledge and time was enough to stop the nurse from being hurt when she came in to deliver our daily dosage of meds.”

John started coughing again, and Dakota brought the water to his lips.

“Aaron and Christiansen started to fight. I can’t remember what about. I just remember the meaty thuds of flesh hitting flesh. Aaron had the ability to demand truth. Nobody could ever tell him a lie.”

“Christiansen was a pre-cog—a strong one. I still don’t understand why he didn’t see what was going to happen if I saw it.” John weakly shook his head, trying to clear it.

“Okay, they were fighting one another. Then what happened?” Dakota asked.

“The nurse walked into the barracks and I knocked her to the ground. I knew Foreman intended to use her as a hostage to escape. Foreman was a mind reader and he was furious with me. He took me from behind while I was trying to keep Nurse Danvers safe. Then he had me by the throat, yelling at me, saying he knew I thought he was better than him. That I believed my Indian ways would save me.”

John laughed, it came out as a dry rattle. Again Dakota got him to drink more water.

“Foreman was right, that’s exactly what I thought. He was a bully and a moron.”

Dakota laughed, neither of them had ever easily suffered fools.

“Then the healer of our group came up behind Foreman, and touched him. Foreman fell to the concrete dead. Nurse Danvers was huddled on the floor in shock, and I asked Randolph, the healer, how in the hell he managed to kill Foreman. He explained he could use the same energy to either heal or harm. He chose to harm Foreman with his energy.”

Dakota nodded, this all sounded eerily familiar.

“So Kota, this isn’t the first time you’ve heard of such a power. How interesting.”

“Shut up, John. Like I said, tell your story first.” Again his friend let out a raspy laugh.

“How true, I’m the one who doesn’t have much time left on this Earth.”

“So Randolph killed Foreman, then Christiansen and Aaron stopped fighting, and Christiansen the brilliant mind that he was, touched Randolph, who grabbed him and killed him.”

Dakota mourned that soon John’s macabre sense of humor would be gone from this world.

“Aaron grabbed Nurse Danvers and said he’s going to use her as a hostage to get out of there. Randolph said he’ll block their way, so they’re at an impasse, they’ll have to team up.”

“Where were you in all of this?”

“I was still trying to get off the floor after almost being choked to death by that gorilla Foreman. I’m not superman for God’s sake.”

Dakota choked out a laugh.

“Aaron demanded to know if Randolph was going to double-cross him, and Randolph was forced to tell him the truth. He said ‘yes’. Randolph lunged for him and touched him, the same moment that the guard comes in and shoots Aaron who is holding Nurse Danvers. Aaron and Randolph were dead, and the poor woman will never be the same.”

“John, I don’t understand, why did they send you back to your parents? Weren’t they afraid that you would tell about the experiments?”

“My main power is mind control. I used it to make them all believe I was catatonic and no harm to them. They took pity on me.”

“Why me? Why are you telling me all of this?” Dakota asked.

John rested against the pillows with his eyes closed. There were long pauses between the breaths he was took. Dakota knew he really was close to death.

“Kota, you’re my best friend in this world. You’ve never told me everything you’ve been working on these last years, but I know it’s been some crazy shit. I figured if anyone might believe me, it’d be you. Don’t let them hurt anyone else. I know they’re not done. Don’t let them kill any more good men.”