“No idea, dude.”
“How long—”
“Look, I’m having a hard enough time convincing Aaron not to come back a few days early.” He showed me a few of the last text messages.
Aaron: Shelia told me I was ‘worrying over nothing’ and ‘being a newb.’ God, did her son have to teach her gaming lingo?
Aaron: We’re coming back ASAP.
Chase: No point. He’ll be asleep by the time you get back.
Aaron: Not if we speed? Or maybe Merritt can run there with me on his back? Is that a serious option we can consider?
“Why don’t you stow the guilt and make yourself useful?” Chase nodded to a nurse, who brought something over. “This is all he had when we found him. They were washing it during his escape. Why don’t you give it back?”
A blanket, once his only possession. Yet he’d been eager enough to escape that he left it behind.
John wasn’t running from an actual threat anymore, only the monsters in his mind that made letting his guard down or trusting others too tricky. I had no idea how to help him, but I wanted to try.
4.A Little More Than You Had Before
John
Doom. Once my future held nothing else. We’d called ourselves Especially Doomed, us unluckiest of people who were supposedly special. Special enough to warrant kidnapping for the hidden powers that spelled our doom.
That life seemed so far away as we headed back to the rehab center. Watching everyone glare at the other agent had been mildly amusing, especially since Chase joined in on the game. It allowed me to focus on whatever office drama played out instead of thinking about myself.
Until I was alone in a conference room on the ground floor at the Better Tomorrow facility. Why not let me go back to bed? Uh-oh. Was a punishment coming?
Sweat prickled along my brow and my heart began to pound. If I faced consequences for escaping, how the hell could I stop anything from happening? I already pulled off one prison break tonight. Did I really have another in me?
A polite knock at the door startled me. The other agent who escorted me back entered.
“You again,” I murmured, not ashamed to fall back against the conference table in the middle of the room to support myself.
“Lysander Temple.”
Despite any number of medical and psychological conditions, short term memory loss wasn’t on the list.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s hard to forget a name like—" he carried an item with him, a purple fleece blanket. “Is that a blanket in your hands or am I just happy to see you?”
He held it out and my frantic attempt at seizing the thing stopped abruptly as several body parts protested, which reminded me about the dangers of accepting gifts from strangers without checking for strings attached.
“In exchange for what?”
“Nothing. It's already yours."
Pressing my lips together tightly, I kept my hands at my sides. A nice offer, too nice for the man still blocking the exit—tilting his head, he apparently read my body language and reached the correct conclusion, stepping away from the door.
He moved in an offhanded manner like he hadn’t read my fear, allowing me to save face as he kept a healthy distance between us while moving to set the blanket down towards the middle of the table. He set something else down with it, but my long-lost sanity began returning and stole my attention.
Right, these weren’t the bad guys. I hadn’t been brought here for a punishment. I wasn’t backthere.Lysander Temple wanted to talk some sense into me, and we couldn’t meet in my room because I never allowed strangers to enter.
“Is it confusing?” he wondered. “Given your mobility and health issues, you can’t move around freely. It would be easy to feel stuck. That can’t be a comfortable feeling for you.”
“Sorry, there must be a mistake.” I mustered as much attitude as I could while feeling overexposed. “I already have a psychologist.” A whole team of them, including a chipper point person who offered me many opportunities to share my feelings, all of which I passed on.
Lysander Temple only smiled. “Does that mean I’m right?”
