Supernormal (21 page)

“I’ll make arrangements,” Director Cole said after a moment, holding the back door of his sleek black car open.  “We’ll have transportation waiting for us.”

“No.”  Meg shook her head and pulled herself back.  “I’ll give them a ride.  I can at least give you a ride.”

Brody took Meg’s elbow, and they shared a look.  “We’ll follow you,” he told the director.

“It will be a restricted airfield,” Director Cole said, then, continuing smoothly after a glance at Brody’s expression, “but I am certain we can arrange something.”  He nodded to Ashley.  “Miss Garrett.”

The doors on the black car swatted shut as Meg and Brody headed for her Jeep.  Ashley looked at the sun, which was well and truly up now, and felt the warmth of it on her skin.

“Ash.”  She turned to look at Tyler.  “Here.”  He kicked at the other black tote at his feet.  “What the hell’s in there?  The thing’s fucking—heavy,” he finished as Ashley swung it easily up onto her shoulder.

“I don’t know.”  She’d never needed actual weapons before.  Her hands had been enough.

“Well, you want to use it all on that guy, consider this the green fucking light, okay?”

“Okay,” Ashley said.

She would have turned to the Jeep, but Tyler called her back.  “Not just Cam,” he said.  “You have to promise me that.  Danny and Liz are there, too.  You can’t just think about Cam, you have to think about them, too.  Promise.  You get everyone back.”

“I’ll get everyone back,” she said.  And felt the warmth in the words spread along her skin.

Tyler nodded.  He stayed, standing on the sidewalk, watching as Ashley headed to Meg’s car and swung herself in.  Watching as Meg gunned the engine and they peeled away.

Ch. 24

Cam had lost count of the CAT scans.  To be fair, he’d never actually started counting, and he was reasonably certain it was somewhere around ten.  It had been enough that he could find the room on his own if needed.  He wondered if that happened, if they were able to wear a subject down enough that they’d feel safe letting him trot back and forth on his own, like a good dog.

He doubted it.  He’d seen Ian shuffling along, as near a zombie as it could get, and he still had guards.  Big guy that he was, even zombie Ian was intimidating.

Cam thought, once, when the guards weren’t looking, that Ian had caught his eye, and winked.  But it was fast, and Cam couldn’t be sure it actually happened, because by the time he turned to look, Ian was shuffling on.  Maybe he wanted to have seen it.  Maybe he wanted it to be real, because he didn’t want to think about what this place could do to someone to turn them into that.

He never saw Danny or Liz.  But he did see one or two others—a skeletal-looking boy about his age and a girl several years younger who was generally ushered out of the CAT scan room as Cam was ushered in.

They took Cam to the CAT scan room every—well, often.  Very often, it felt like, but there was no way to tell in this white box.  The lights were never dimmed.  There were no clocks.  Food came through the slot in the door every so often, though it wasn’t anything that could be identified as breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  He’d fallen asleep a couple of times, but never, it felt like, for long.

Twice now they’d had to take him to the Medlab for bandages.  He tried to fight back when they came for him, and so far it hadn’t worked out well.  So far, the only thing he’d managed to do was give himself a black eye and a split lip, and it was deeply and profoundly embarrassing that he was still uncoordinated and shaky enough that he had done these things to himself.  The guards were quite capable of getting Cam to go where they wanted without having to hurt him.  The fact that they’d looked bored while defending themselves only made it worse.  Anger and shame and hate churned a red-hot spiky ball in his gut.  He hated that he couldn’t fight back.  That it didn’t matter if he did.  That for him it was his life, and for everyone else it was simply 9-to-5.  He wanted to hurt them, wanted it sometimes more than he wanted to get away, and the black seething need of it turned his mouth bitter.

Cam stared at the ceiling, willing the bitter taste out of his mouth.  Ashley had gone through this.  For years.  He wanted to rip through the walls after only a few days—a lot less than that.  He’d known it was awful, had to guess at exactly how awful, from what little she said.  But living it now, knowing, cut deeper than his hate.

Cam thought of Ashley a lot.  It hurt, in a way.  But in a different way, and it was a hurt he could live with.  It was a comforting hurt.  Much easier than thinking about Meg or Naomi or the way the white walls seemed to warp in towards him out of the corner of his eye.  She would find him.  She’d come for him and she would find him.  It had become his mantra to live by, the drumbeat inside his chest that kept him on his feet when he wanted to crawl.  He knew she would come because they were friends and he was—important to her.  A different important than Danny or Liz or Ian—and further than that he couldn’t think.

The lock clunked back in the door, and there was a split second of hope, but it was only the guards.  Cam managed to hook both his feet around the leg of the cot, which bought him a couple moments, and he tried going slack in the hall, but they simply dragged him along like a petulant child.  Last time they’d simply thrown Cam over their shoulders like a sack of potatoes, but that had been a mistake because that had put Cam at hair-and-eye level.  Cam had still been the loser in that scenario, but one of the guards had a wonderfully comforting bald spot on the back of his head.

They didn’t take the turn to the CAT scan room.  Maybe they’d grown tired of him refusing to play with the future so they could map what part of his brain lit up.  This time they took him to the Medlab. 

There were restraints on the gurney—more like handcuffs, really, but to be fair there were restraints on everything here.  On a tray by the gurney were several needles, sealed in protective wrapping, and a row of small bottles with neatly printed labels in electronic type.  The bottles were new.  They meant something more than just tests and blood samples.  Cam looked around desperately for something he could grab.  The gurney was secured to the floor—the tray, the needles?  There wasn’t
anything
he could use to defend himself.  He tried to kick out at the tray of needles, but the security team easily caught him off guard and he fumbled and missed and crashed hard to his knees.

“Ah, Two-Thirteen.  Thank you, gentleman.”  Proom nodded cheerfully to the guards as they hauled a twisting, kicking Cam towards the gurney.  “Still full of vim and vigor, I see.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“You’ll be very happy to know that we’ve finished the preliminaries.  And we all know what that means.  This is one of our most exciting times.”  Proom was humming to himself as he flipped through his tablet.  “You’ve been doing very well, and we’re all very impressed with your ability.  But it does seem as though you are not living up to your potential.  Our tests have given us reason to believe that you’ve quite a bit of resources you have yet to tap.  You’ve been holding out on us.”  He wagged a finger at Cam, but his eyes were twinkling.  “But—we are going to see what we can do about that.  Amplify your signal, as it were.”

“I don’t want to amplify anything,” Cam spat out.

“Of course you do.  Everyone wants to know just how far they can go.”  Proom nodded to Craig and his friend, who lifted Cam bodily and hefted him onto the gurney.  “Think of it this way: Right now you have basic cable.  We’re going to upgrade you to satellite, with a free weekend of HBO.  And perhaps Showtime, if we’re lucky.  Relax, it’s just a little experiment.  We are reasonably sure the effects will be temporary.  A few days at most.”

“I don’t want satellite.”  Cam fought even as the metal restraints bit into his wrists.  “I like basic.  I have worked long and hard to get basic.  I have basic for a reason.  I can only have so much in my head at one time.”

Craig checked Cam’s restraints, then nodded to Proom, who smiled down at Cam.  “Comfy?  Good.”  He peeled a syringe out from its plastic, then selected one of the bottles.  He turned it upside down to insert the needle and drew back the plunger.  “First, a little something to help you relax.  You do like to get worked up, don’t you?”  There was a slight pinch as Proom slipped the needle into the vein at Cam’s elbow.

Whatever that was, it worked fast.  Cam felt his muscles slacken and grow heavy, even as he tried to make them pull and yank.  “Please don’t do this.”  His tongue felt too thick to move, and it slurred his speech.  Proom unwrapped another syringe and selected another bottle.  “Please…
don’t do this…
”  Cam was begging, but begging didn’t do anything.

The world tunneled up in front of him, the surgical lights overhead growing so bright it hurt to look.  The gurney along his back was supporting now, the restraints holding him together.  He was sinking, fast, far too fast, like a rock through deep, dark water, until it closed in overhead, and there was nothing.

They had followed the director’s black car to an airfield, the fence around the perimeter wreathed in barbed wire and strung with large RESTRICTED signs proclaiming that trespassers would be shot.  There were two armed soldiers manning the fence.  Cole’s driver’s side window slid down, and one of the soldiers stepped forward to peer at the badge he held out.  There was a brief conversation, and then the gate rolled back.

They let Meg in through the gate, but not much farther.   Not far off was a tarmac, smelling of rain in the cool, damp air, where a plane was waiting, its engines already thrumming.

Director Cole cast a deliberate look at Meg and gave her a professional smile. “Very nice to meet you, Ms. Gowan,” he said, pitching his voice over the thrum of the plane’s engines.  “I hope we meet again under more pleasant circumstances.”  Holding his smile, Director Cole turned to Brody.  “Five minutes.”  He headed towards the plane.

Meg wrapped her arms around Ashley, and for a brief moment Ashley let herself hug back.  “Do you want to take my sledgehammer?” Meg asked.  “You can if you’d like.  Might make me feel better if you pounded that man’s fat head in with something of mine.  Like I was contributing.”

“I’m better with my hands,” Ashley said.  Then she pushed back.  What she said had to be said face-to-face.  “I’ll bring him back.  I promise.”

Meg blinked rapidly, then shook her head and tugged Ashley’s hair.  “I love you, Ashley Garrett.”

“
Meg
.”  It was strange how some words could just reach out and cut you off at the knees.  Ashley had wondered before how it would feel to hear those words.  She didn’t know.  She’d had no idea.  She couldn’t breathe.

“No, don’t cry,” Meg said, and managed a ghost of a smile.  “Not in front of S.H.I.E.L.D.”  She rubbed up and down Ashley’s arms.  “You go on, get my boy.  I’ll—wait here.”

“Meg—” Brody began.

She cut him off, arms still wrapped around Ashley, her eyes hard, the bright wisps of hair that had pulled free of her messy bun whipping in the wind.  “Back with your shield or on it.”

Brody looked at her for a moment, then headed toward the plane.  Ashley pulled herself away from Meg and headed after him.  Agent Phillips smiled at them awkwardly and gestured for the two of them to head into the plane ahead of him.

The plane ride was very long.  Or it wasn’t, and only felt very long.  It was hard to tell because by this point every second was a century.  Ashley buckled herself into a seat by the window, with Brody next to her and Agent Phillips across from them.  It was a nice plane, the sort with clusters of wide leather seats facing each other and a table stretched between them so that the passengers could do business.  The young man smiled at them awkwardly, several times opening his mouth to speak, but then there was always a moment when he appeared to think about it and chose not to say anything.  It probably didn’t help that Brody was staring at him.

Finally Brody said, “Agent Phillips, is it?”

“Yes.  Yes,” he repeated, giving Brody a nervous smile.  “It’s Bennet, actually.  Or Ben.  Or Agent Phillips.  Whichever you’d prefer.”

Brody didn’t smile back.  “And you’ve been with this agency for…”

“Fourteen months.  I joined last May, after graduation—just-just before Miss Garrett…”  Phillips hesitated, his eyes shifting to Ashley.  To her surprise, he finished.  “Killed Mr. Spencer.”

There was a little hollow of silence, and Ashley heard herself say, “Jase Spencer.”  She saw Phillips’s eyes shift to her and asked, “That was his last name?”

“Yes,” Agent Phillips said.  “They…they didn’t tell you?”

Ashley shook her head.  “He just told us to call him Jase.  The doctors didn’t use names.”

Brody cut into the awkward pause that followed.  “You’ve been out in the field—how many times now?”

“I…um, that is—”

“Rough estimate.  More than five.  Less than ten?”

“If we did not have every confidence in Agent Phillips’s abilities, we would not have assigned him to this operation.”  Director Cole had come out from the cockpit and made his way down the aisle to take a seat beside Phillips.  “You understand that we cannot discuss specifics of his record, but rest assured that he is not without experience.”

Whereas Phillips was tall and gangly, and had a fresh-out-of-the-box feeling, Cole was a smaller man.  Precisely, almost fastidiously, groomed, with a stillness that bespoke a certain amount of control.  Of himself and of others.  He had a tricky face, with blandly pleasant features that gave the impression of youth without actually being young, and an expression that seemed to always be just on the edge of smiling.  It was a face you wanted to trust, until you saw his eyes.  His eyes were cool, and shrewd, and assessing.  They made the rest of his face seem like a mask.  “My apologies for the interruption, but we had to discuss a slight course correction.”

“You know, someone might think since you’re actually taking us to this top secret Mr. Potato Head factory, the need for secrecy has passed,” Brody remarked.

“Is that so?”  Cole’s voice was like his face, pleasant without actually being warm.  “All doing well, I hope?  Miss Garrett?  Not uncomfortable, are we?”

Ashley shook her head.  No matter how long they flew, no one in this plane could be uncomfortable.  She tucked her legs up under her, the upholstery on the chair soft as silk against her skin.  She’d wanted this once; she’d been so unused to softness once, and luxury, that she’d jumped at the chance when it’d been offered.  After the foster homes that had never worked out and the group homes she’d always run from, and always, always being hungry, letting a few doctors poke her with a few needles for a bed of her own, a room of her own, and whatever she asked for.  And there had been luxuries in the program, at first, and at first she’d thought it worth it.

Ashley ran her hands over the arms of her seat.  She’d stopped caring about softness.  Now she just wanted to sleep at night, and not dream.  She wanted to wake up in the morning and know that Cam was there.

“Good.  Do let me know if there’s anything you need.”