Chapter Seventeen

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Everything in the room that had been suspended in the air came crashing down again, including Alex. Cracking and smashing sounds echoed throughout the space as many of the tables and chairs broke due to the force. Marzia and Signe both visibly flinched, taken aback by the sudden collapse of the telekinetic suspension, but Jack didn't move an inch.

Anyone else would assume that Jack's lack of action was due to the fact that he was entirely in control of what was happening, but the truth was that he wasn't. The whole ordeal had happened because he had lost control, and now he was standing there in stunned silence, trying to process what had happened.

A groan was heard from Jack's right. He looked over and saw Eileen, who was only just now sitting up. The thought that Jack might've caused her to levitate, only to send her crashing back to the ground made him feel sick. He hadn't meant to hurt her, and he sure as hell didn't want to hurt her.

Jack rushed over to Eileen's side, helping her sit up a bit more and providing support in case she collapsed again. Thankfully, she was moving without much trouble, although any time an injured area was irritated she winced.

Eileen didn't appear to have any new injuries since Jack had last assessed the damage, which was a relief. It seemed he hadn't managed to move her after all. Some part of his subconscious must have prevented him from lifting her like everything else.

"Jack?" Signe's voice called.

Jack turned his head and saw the two women slowly approaching him, looking around the room in bewilderment.

"What happened?" Marzia asked hesitantly. She seemed to be walking on eggshells, as if she was scared of something.

Scared of Jack. Still.

"I... I don't know," was all Jack could muster, and it was true. He didn't know why he'd snapped like that, or how he went full-on Eleven from Stranger Things and developed telekinesis.

"Are you sure?" Came another voice, new to the conversation. Jack looked down and found that it was Eileen who had just spoken, her voice a bit shaky after all that Alex did to her.

"Yes... or no, I don't-" Jacks stammering stopped as he felt all his strength leave him. His immortanimus abilities vanished all at once, reality warping back to normal in a snap and leaving Jack reeling. He managed to use the ground to steady himself as his head swam, trying to adjust to his environment yet again.

"Woah, take it easy," Eileen said, reaching out a hand to help steady Jack in spite of her condition. "We'll talk about it later."

Eileen glanced around the room as if looking for something. Marzia and Signe looked at her in confusion for a moment before they turned to look at each other with grim realization.

Jack was completely lost, though this could be attributed to the fact that his brain felt like a smoothie.

"What is it?" He asked.

"Alex was just here a second ago," Marzia muttered, looking around the room.

Signe stared at Jack, fear evident in her expression, before speaking.

"And now he's gone."

Suddenly, the double doors slammed open. In burst PJ, Lin, Egan, and Rory, all of them looking panicked. The looks on their faces quickly switched to absolute confusion once they saw the state of disarray the room was in.

Lin voiced what the four of them were evidently thinking.

"What the fuck did we miss?"

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They sat in the recovery room, occupying the circle of couches that encompassed a comically small coffee table. Eileen was the only one missing, as she had had been taken to the medical wing just next door, but all of the remaining party members stared at Jack worriedly.

"So...," Egan said, attempting to get a conversation started. "We've got some big news that you guys might need to hear, but I don't know if you all want to go first or..."

He trailed off, looking for some kind of reaction from Signe, Marzia, and Jack. None of the three responded, although to be fair, Marzia and Signe couldn't exactly answer anyways. They didn't have an explanation. Not the full one, at least. Jack was the only one who could tell them.

And, frankly, he was looking forward to reliving everything at the moment.

With a sigh he looked up to face all of them, preparing himself for the sheer amount of crap he now had to somehow make sense of.

"We met Alex in here. Again. Eileen and I went to grab coffee, but the whole dining area was empty. Alex was the only one there. He started being a fucking creep and pulled this remote-type thing out of his pocket and pushed the button. Next thing I know my wrist feels like someone stabbed it and my brain is basically on standby. Then..."

He stopped, remembering Alex's chilling expression and all the events that had been stolen from him. God, he didn't want to do this.

"Then what?" Lin prompted hesitantly. She seemed to sense that Jack was reluctant to talk about this and was reluctant to pry.

But, Jack knew he had to do it if they wanted to make any progress.

"Then I remembered. After I got hit by that truck, I woke up in this weird black void."

All of the immortanimus in the group nodded, apparently understanding what Jack was referring to. Ending up in that place must be an expected experience after death.

"Alex was there with me. He started talking to me and trying to calm me down. I trusted him at first, but the longer we talked the weirder he acted. Eventually, he dropped the act and pulled out this... telescope? That's not what it was, but it looked similar. He used it to put something in my arm, but I don't know what it was. There was this command, too, that I think came from the device. 395. Not sure, what that means, but after it did that I blacked out, and when I woke up I didn't remember anything from that whole encounter."

The room was quiet for a moment. Then PJ muttered "motherfucker" and all eyes were on him. He looked like he immediately regretted saying that, as now he would have to explain himself.

"I... I've had a theory that Alex was partially, if not totally, responsible for the disappearances for awhile now."

Lin, Egan, and Marzia all began talking at once, yelling over each other with confused remarks or blatant accusations. Jack couldn't tell who was saying what until Lin raised her voice even further.

"Why the hell didn't you tell us?" Lin's voice bellowed above the rest. "That would've been handy."

"Oh come on! Would you have believed me?!" PJ countered, his eyes daring her to even attempt to say 'yes.'

Lin shut her mouth immediately, recognizing that PJ had a point and realizing that any argument she made wouldn't get her anywhere.

"I would've," Marzia chimed in. She'd been significantly quieter than the other two, less angry than Egan and Lin. But she did seem a bit disappointed that PJ hadn't come clean to her either.

PJ looked at her, but didn't attempt to protest. "Okay, fair enough. You and Alex never did get along. You probably would've believed me. But Lin, Egan..."

They both stared at him, the matching expressions of disappointment and slight betrayal making the twins look more similar than ever.

"I'm sorry. I should've told you. But we've got bigger concerns at the moment. Alex is obviously in on this, and we've got the name of one of his partners in crime."

Lin and Egan exchanged a look of begrudging acceptance. It was clear they hadn't move past this just yet, but Jack doubted they'd be angry about it for long. It was such an insignificant detail compared to the bigger picture, and, like PJ said, they had bigger concerns at the moment.

"It's Casey. She's working with him too."

Marzia's eyes went wide with shock, but Signe just looked confused.

And Jack, well, that name delivered like a blow to the head. It was another one he unfortunately remembered, and he was hoping it wasn't the same Casey he was thinking of.

"I met a Casey after I woke up on the side of the road," he blurted out.

PJ's face went from concerned to immensely distressed. Even Signe, who was the one who knew the least in all of this, was starting to look a bit unnerved.

"What?"

"She told me she was with emergency services and that she had to check for any permanent damage, or something. I was totally out of it, so I just cooperated. Then she got up and walked into the woods. I tried to follow her at first, but I looked away for a second and then she was suddenly gone."

PJ put his head in his hand and started cursing under his breath.

"I should've known...," he muttered. "She told me back in the alley that you already knew her."

He looked up at Jack again to ask a question.

"Was she wearing a blonde wig?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Fuck!" PJ exclaimed, looking defeated.

"Sorry to interrupt, but what the absolute fuck is going on?" Signe asked. The distress the others were displaying was starting to get to her, and not having any idea what was happening probably only doubled the worry she felt.

Marzia decided to be the one to tell her, though some of what she said would be news for Jack too.

"There was an agent here awhile ago named Casey. We were all friends with her. Then she started rebelling against the IH and allegedly set up plans to destroy it from the inside. She was kicked out, and there were some people assigned to keep an eye on her, but one day she vanished from her home. Nobody could find her. A lot of people thought she was dead, but...,"

"Obviously, she's not," Egan said matter-of-factly.

"And she's working with Alex now?" Signe asked.

"Apparently," Lin replied, a sense of betrayal in her voice. "Probably others, too. And I guess she hasn't given up on her plan."

"So, how do we stop her?" Jack asked.

Nobody answered. Not verbally, anyways. Egan was the only one to react, pulling a note out of his pocket and handing it over to Jack.

Hesitantly, Jack took it, unsure of what was written on the paper. His eyes widened when he saw his own name scrawled in messy handwriting towards the bottom of the page. Desperate for context, Jack read the whole letter in great detail, but his panic only increased upon finishing it.

This was terrifying.

A random location, the mysterious "him" that clearly referred to Felix, the insistence that they tell no one.

And their proposal of using Jack as a bargaining chip.

"They want me?"

Signe and Marzia looked at him in shock before Jack passed them the letter. They had the same reaction as he did after reading it, a sense of grim understanding passing over their faces.

"Yeah," PJ said, avoiding eye contact with Jack. "Any idea why?"

"I've got no fucking clue," Jack replied. "They... need me for something, I guess? Probably the same thing they kidnapped all of those people over."

Including Felix, he thought bitterly.

"But if it means we get Felix back alive, then I'm going." He declared.

A mixture of cries of protest were heard from the group around him, the only one onboard with this plan seeming to be Jack.

"Yeah, nice try, but we're not just going to let you waltz in there," Signe said. "And if you try it, you bet your ass I'm going to come over there and stop you."

"I want Felix back more than anything right now," Marzia chimed in, a tinge of sadness in her voice. "But you swapping places with him isn't an option."

Jack smiled sadly at them. The fact that none of them were willing to lose him, although he shouldn't have expected any different, warmed his heart. Especially considering what was at stake here. But leaving all those people in the hands of some psychopaths didn't sit right with him, and he was determined to put a stop to this one and for all.

"Okay, okay, I won't do it. Is there anything else we can do?"

"We've already got a waaaay better plan," Lin stated. "Or should I say, I've got a way better plan. Which doesn't involve you fucking dying or whatever."

Egan scoffed. "It's not really a plan. In fact, it's very poorly thought out, and there's a whole lot that could go wrong. And Casey probably overheard it in the alley, too. She showed herself as we were talking about it."

"Doesn't matter. It's the best and only chance we've got," Lin countered, ignoring the option that had been proposed in the note.

"She's right," Rory said suddenly, speaking for the first time in ages. "We've only got until 10 pm, which isn't enough time to create a better plan of attack."

"Unfortunately, I'm going to have to agree," PJ mumbled. "I hate this idea, but I highly doubt we'll be able to come up with anything better in time without screwing ourselves over. Something about the way that note is phrased tells me they're not willing to be lenient with their directions. We wait too long, they'll probably leave or hurt a hostage. We tell any officials, they'll probably leave or hurt a hostage. "

Marzia, Signe, and Jack all looked at each other, collectively bracing themselves for whatever insane idea Lin had in mind. They had to do this, no matter how dangerous it was, but that didn't mean they weren't scared.

The three of them nodded in Lin's direction, prompting her to pitch her strategy. She smiled in return, the way an evil genius would in every over-the-top Saturday morning cartoon. Whatever this was, whatever she'd been formulating in her brain for the past couple of hours, she had faith in it.

"Okay, so, here's what we're going to do."

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"You're a traitor," she had spat all those years ago. Her gun had been pointed at his head, but her hands had given away her true feelings. They'd trembled, throwing off her aim and revealing her reluctance.

"You didn't... you never told me how many innocent people were going to die over this!" He'd cried. "I thought you wanted to change things."

She'd let out a sad, sarcastic laugh. "Oh, but I am changing things."

"You know that's not what I meant," he'd growled.

"No, I actually don't know what you meant," she'd hissed. "Why don't you enlighten me? By 'change,' did you mean sit idly by as more people died? Did you mean kiss our 'superiors'' asses, hoping they decide to keep us around? Did you mean watch more of our comrades fall as they did nothing to protect us, as they kept using us as their guinea pigs?"

Her breathing had become uneven at that point as her words slowly became shouted, tears percolating in the corners of her eyes.

"Did you mean letting Peggy get killed?"

Those words had turned his world inside out.

"That's not what happened. You know that's not-,"

"Oh, shut up." She'd laughed again, with even less humour than the time before. "You were there. You knew she didn't want to go through with it. You knew how dangerous it was, how fragile that technology was. And you, you yourself, did it anyways."

Her hands had stopped shaking at that point, the gun's aim staying true and her breathing steadying.

"You killed my sister."

He hadn't been able to form a reply to that. She'd found out. Some of the details were wrong, but she'd found out about the day he would literally give anything to undo.

"I trusted you. But you're going to have to decide whose side you're on.

The revolution will be televised, PJ. And it's airing sooner than you think. Why sit in the audience when you could be one of the leads? Why be a bystander when you could actually change things? We could end all of this.

You, of all people, need to help fix this."

He remembered how livid she'd looked, her dark eyes clouded over with even darker thoughts.

There had only been two options.

And the first one hadn't been the right one.

"No," he'd stated flatly. "I'm sorry, Casey. But I won't."

A sneer had formed on her face. "I thought you'd say that. What's that one saying? 'You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain?'"

He'd taken a deep breath, knowing what was coming next.

"You're going to die, but not as a hero. And when you come back, you'll have to live with the fact that you've become the worst kind of villain.

You're a coward.

And you've forfeited any hope of redemption that this operation could've given you."

Then she'd pulled the trigger.

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