19-06-9. That was him.
Hand shaking, he opened the folder. Inside were a number of files: Identifying Information, Preliminary Medical Exam, Baseline Ability Test Results, and Baseline Psychological Profile.
The door opened and shut as Caleb returned to the apartment. He leaned over John’s shoulder, then let out a soft “Okay, then.” He wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders—then Gray rose to the surface, a storm of sheer etheric power closing around John like a protective ward.
John clicked on Identifying Information.
SUBJECT: 19-06-9
NAME: Jonathan Daniel Low
There it was. His name.
John mouthed it, then said it out loud. “Jonathan Daniel Low.”
A flare of pain shot through his head. A woman’s voice came back to him, clear as if she sat beside him: “It’s going to be okay, Jonny.”
What had Walsh said about the numerical system? That it was to keep the researchers from thinking of them as people, but also for clarity. There’d been a John and a Jonathan in the group. A Johnny and a Jonny.
He kept reading:
SS: ###-##-####
AGE: 15
RACE: White
GENDER: Male
PLACE OF RESIDENCE: Savannah, GA, no fixed address
PARANORMAL ABILITY: Exorcist
CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION:
Unlike other subjects, 19-06-9 was delivered directly to the study via SPECTR. Subject was involved in identifying a lycanthrope possession. (See SPECTR Case File #: 5-190789301.) Responding agent took subject to local headquarters for further questioning and discovered subject and mother are homeless and living on the streets of Savannah. Given the circumstances, it was determined subject could easily be relocated to the Center for Loving Redemption without notice.
Note: Darlene Beatrice Low (mother) filed a missing persons report shortly after subject acquired. Due to circumstances of homelessness, police interest is minimal and should not present an obstacle.
John folded his hands over his mouth, holding back a cry. He’d spent over a decade believing that he’d been rejected by his family for being paranormally abled. Telling himself that was all right, because SPECTR had become his family instead.
But that hadn’t been the case at all. SPECTR had stolen him from his real family. His mother had been looking for him. She’d wanted him back.
Pain seared through his skull, and he bent over, reaching for any memories that wanted to come.
He huddled into his layers of tattered clothing, on a bench beneath the spreading branches of a live oak. Mom strummed her guitar and sang in a high, sweet voice, the case open in front of her in hopes of tips. But it was winter and the tourists few and far between. She had less than five dollars in the case when she sat down by him to take a break.
“It’s going to be okay, Jonny,” she said. Her face was worn thin from constant worry, and he knew she cried sometimes at night while they tried to sleep in the car. “We’ve got this. Our luck is going to turn around any day now.”
He’d been trying to get work at any fast food joint that might hire him, but it wasn’t easy with no permanent address. Maybe he’d start hitting places in the historic district, little spots that might be willing to pay him under the table if he agreed to work for less than minimum wage. If only it was summer, tourist season, when places needed more workers. January was low tide, though, the streets virtually empty of anyone but locals.
“I know,” he said anyway, because he wasn’t going to make Mom feel any worse about their situation than she already did. It wasn’t her fault she’d gotten fired at the same time the landlord raised the rent. If Dad hadn’t taken off, or at least had the decency to pay child support, maybe they could have avoided eviction. But he was long gone, maybe dead for all they knew. “It’s just an off day. Tomorrow’s going to be better.”
John blinked rapidly, found himself staring at the coffee table. Caleb or Gray had rescued the laptop from going onto the floor, and it sat beside him on the couch now. Gray was still holding him, his immense strength keeping John in place.
John pushed against his embrace. “I’m okay. I need to stand up.”
Gray released him and receded. John went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and drank the whole thing down in a gulp. His head pounded as it always did after remembering what had been suppressed so long.
He knew, finally. Not every detail, but everything important.
His name was Jonathan Daniel Low. Son of Darlene Beatrice Low, who’d loved him and tried to find him. She’d never sent him away, never wanted to see the back of him the way the real John Starkweather’s parents had with him.
But they’d been homeless, and so very easy to victimize. He’d been snatched away, and the police hadn’t given a fuck, because who cared about anyone who was poor, who didn’t have enough to put a roof over their heads?
Everything had conspired against them, but SPECTR were the ones who’d set the nightmare in motion. Who’d taken him away from the real family who loved him, let him believe he had no one else, and filled the void they themselves had created.
His nostrils flared as pain began to crystallize into rage. He’d been betrayed and used and lied to, turned into a puppet by the very organization that had abused him in the first place. Fifteen, the real John, might have rewritten his memories, but it was SPECTR who’d truly brainwashed him.
Where was the real John? What had SPECTR done to him? To the other two “subjects” who’d survived? Had SPECTR turned them into agents as well?
It would make sense. They’d be the same way John had been, living in ignorance, their names and histories lost, wiped away by the very agency they reported to every morning. Unaware SPECTR had tortured them, had abandoned another young girl to turn into a monster.
Had they all been friends? If nothing else, shared horror would have formed a bond between them. He believed what Walsh had said, that they’d come up with the plan together, or at least followed Fifteen’s lead.
Another flash, too brief to send him reeling. Hands reaching out, joining atop the other, fingers curling together. A voice he almost recognized: “Let’s do this.”
“Sweetheart?” Caleb asked uncertainly from the edge where the linoleum met the carpet. “Are you okay? No, wait, stupid question, of course you aren’t. Is there anything we can do for you?”
John fingers clenched around the glass. Though his head hurt, for the first time in ages him mind felt shockingly clear. The hot wind of anger had blown away the fog, showing him his destination at last.
They’d been comrades united by suffering. Terrified children, trying the only desperate gamble that might have gotten them out of that place.
They’d never meant to abandon one another, he felt that with a bone deep certainty. They’d meant to meet back up, return, save…
Her name escaped him, so he touched the pendant that had hung around her throat for so long, and now adorned his. They’d meant to save her. To save each other.
She might be gone now, but the rest were still out there. Still waiting.
“I know what I have to do,” he said.
Caleb looked as though John’s calm tone worried him. “What?”