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Ike dreams but he doesn't sleep. (He remembers.)
Pretty smiles, silver stars streaking across the sky, and the shadows dancing along the jagged wall of a cave. A rush of scenes come flooding back to him and he flips over in his bed. He feels like there's a truth tangled up somewhere in his visions.
Ike stops sneaking into his father liquid cabinet but when the dreams continue, he realizes they aren't just alcohol induced hallucinations. He feels a flop of disappointment, that he really is as screwed up as his mother says he is. His father has his own ideas. Everybody does, really. Their concerned scowls follow him around and their eyes narrow in on him as if they're searching for the fracture in his facade. They wait for him to crack, but he'll never give them the satisfaction. They think Ike needs another shrink. Or a vacation. More medication, probably.
It's easier to lie then it is to cover the bruise-like circles under his eyes, so Ike agrees with them. It becomes increasingly more difficult to sneak away from the therapist's office, and come up with excuses to avoid island getaways. He can only run away from the truth for so long. It's not in his nature to be agreeable, but he knows it's the safest course of action.
He's a boy with sharpened knives in his smile and arrogance in his stride, who treats life like a chess match. The only problem being, now he's not sure what game he's playing and who his opponent is.
His father never asks why Ike wakes up screaming. Abraham barely even pokes his head in to check on Ike anymore.
Abe just ignores the haunted look in his son eyes and asks him how the new therapist is treating him. Asks him if he's opening up to her. Asks him to give it a shot.
Abraham always keeps a few feet
of space away from his son, as if Ike doesn't notice the odd distance his father puts between them. It's like he's afraid to get to close to Ike.
But for the life of him, Ike can't think of any reason he's given his father to be afraid of him. Every time Abraham looks at him with that disheartening glare, Ike can't help but wonder what he's missing.
Ike can hear it wherever he goes: the echo of quiet laughter, a voice that belongs to someone he can't quite remember. At least, not while he's awake. Ike hears her more clearly at night.
"Did I ever know someone named Jade?" He asks his father one night, when he's feeling particular brave. The name feels hot on his tongue, like he's said it scathingly a million times before. They sit at opposite ends of the banquet table, practically worlds apart. Abraham's silhouette is plastered against the wall and Ike tries to ignore the horrified look that crosses his father's face. He thinks the fork may slip right out of Abe's hand, but his father regains his composure almost as quickly as he lost it.
"Sounds like a prostitute's name." Abe responds, eyes cold and reserved, "So probably."
He sounds desperate to crush the conversation before it goes any further. Just like that, they are miles away from each other again. Ike never asks him about anything he dreams (remembers) again, and he doesn't have to. That look told him everything he needs to know.
Ike isn't sure when he starts writing. Somewhere between his mother's bitter glances and his sleepless nights, he decides to spend his time using the leather notebook his father gave him so long ago to start putting the puzzle together. All the pieces are stuck somewhere in his head. The answers are lodged inside his skull and he doesn't know why it feels so desperately important to get them out.
He starts journaling instead of working. Instead of eating. Instead of hooking up with the girls dancing at his father's club. Nothing else comes close to feeling as imperative, and it begins to take over.
Soon, his notebook is filled with a lifetime full of memories of a person he used to be. Or maybe the person he's meant to become. Ike writes down every detail his mind can conjure up. He puts down even the most small and insignificant details: the way her freckles remind him of a constellation, a boy whose eyes were shining green like American money, and the smell of the library when he stacked books on the wrong shelf.
1. The flood hit them first. Water poured down on them like the biblical disaster. She sunk like a rock to the bottom, dissipating under the waves. He did nothing. Just watched her get swallowed into the darkness. He doesn't know why.
2. He had three classes with her, and he sat behind her in all them. Soon, she started appearing in all his classes, at least, the ones he bothered going to. The blonde girl sent her to keep an eye on him, but he did more observing then she did. She was careless and blunt. Those weren't good traits in a place like this.
A place like this. That's the part that's troubling Ike the most. The people, the characters involved in his strange dreams, they begin to make since. He believes that a blonde girl named Casey lived in Chicago and kneed him in the balls. Hunter is too annoying for his mind to possibly conjure up, so Ike is convinced he's real.
Every night the story unfolds more and more and he learns about them. They shift and become more vivid and realistic. Casey. Jade. Hunter. Irina. Gribbs. These shifting images he sees in his mind feel as familiar as the people he passes on the street. It's the location that he can't decipher. He doesn't know what he's hoping for. Does he want these dreams to be real? But how can they be? He's never lived outside his sparkling Manhattan penthouse, let alone in a pathetic dormroom with other people. Even if he was trapped inside some torturous, otherworldly school, Ike would still have standards.
His therapist is an extremely striking woman who stares at him for a beat too long. Dr. El poses questions she shouldn't even know how to ask. It's almost like she's been there with him, racing through the woods and praying side by side in the cave. She suggest hypnosis treatment, which he didn't even think was a real thing. Dr. El goes on about suppressed memories and past lives and how to assess them. It all sounds very clinical. She speaks aggressively and with excitement.
She has morning glories growing in a basket on her desk, and Ike stops himself from telling the doctor that they should be in direct sunlight, because how the hell does he know anything about gardening?
The questions become more precise. Do you have the dreams every night? Who else have you shared this information with? Can you travel to other places within the space like lucid dreams?
Ike tries to leave shortly after that.
He's always trusts his gut. It always leads him in the right direction, whether it was to avoid the shrimp at his mother's holiday gala or when it told him to take Jade's slender hand when she reached out to him in the cave. (That night was the worst. He saw her face with such clarity, bitter tears welling up in her eyes, and could almost smell the cinnamon and smoke drifting off her. The dream hit him like a punch to the gut, left him curled up for a day. Ike didn't want to wake up from it. He needed to understand what happened. He needed to understand her.)
"Lastly," She shuffles her legs under her pencil skirt, "Isaac, what did you see when your eyes were opened?"
714. Jade holds her head high when they drag her to the altar in the woods. The cloaked figures demanding a sacrifice pull her into the shades of the forest. She's never looked less human in her life. The girl is a goddess and they are all young gods. They don't say goodbye, because somehow Ike knows it won't be the last time he sees her. Jade comes back three days later and she's something more now. He can see it. Everyone can. He thinks this will all be over soon.
715. "It’ll be better this way, Ike. A little lonelier but better. Maybe we'll find each other after this." She looks up at him, mascara running, clutching something shiny in her hand. He doesn't understand her. He hopes, and he begs, and he prays. Ike can't remember what he was so afraid of. (But he starts to remember what he was afraid of losing.)
Ike locks himself in his room once he gets home, which isn't really necessary since nobody ever bothers to check in on him. He knows how the story begins. With six lost kids and a school and a tower.
But he can't figure out where the ending is. How did he get from there: with all of the Glories and in that hellhole, to here: his privileged life in Manhattan. The timeline of the story is so disjointed that the pieces don't seem to fall in the right order. He doesn't know how to find them.
When Ike sees Abraham sitting at his desk, notebook in hand, he could kill his father right there and then. His first reaction is fury and then fear. This time, it's Ike who stays on the other side of the room. He doesn't want to get too close to his father and do something that he'll regret. The book just feels so sacred to him. It's the only connection he has to them.
"Isaac, this is crazy. If anyone ever saw this, they would have you locked up. Sacrifices in the woods? Young gods? Ike, you've attended the same private school in the upper east side since you were a child. You don't honestly think this is true? That you were experimented on? That some redhead who saved you from a pit of snakes? It's nonsense. This extremely concerning." His father lectures him as if he were a little boy again, who got caught playing with matches.
"What did you say?" He poses carefully, leaning against the doorframe to steady the shake he feels in his chest.
"I'll have to speak with your mother about this. I had no idea your delusion were this intense..." Abraham's eyes widen. There's something more then concern in his expression.
"No, before that. You see father," Ike smirks, "I'm nothing if not thorough, so I know that book cover to cover. In every careful description I wrote, I never once mentioned that her hair was red."
799. Their last night at the Academy is spent in silence. Everything that needs to be said has been. (Well, maybe not everything. There's some things Ike won't admit to anyone but himself.) When Casey and Hunter sneak off, he and Jade sit on the bed alone. She's quiet, but he feel her terror, the fear pulsing through her body as she sits still like a statue perched in a chapel. He wraps his arms around her chest and pulls her close to him. Ike is a jumble of emotions: anticipation, dread, and fear, and something he doesn’t recognize, that makes his chest feel tight but warm, that makes him want to sob and laugh at the same time.
800. When the time comes, Casey tries to bargain with Daramount. After everything they've seen, he doesn't think the blonde can honestly believe that she can talk their way out of this, that if she paints just the right picture they'll consider letting them go. Casey is annoying, but she's not delusional. This is all a test. Ike begins to put it all together. He hopes it isn't too late.
801. Jade believes in Casey so faithfully that when everything goes to hell, she's surprised. She's shocked that they failed and it's over. After winning so many battles, how can they possibly lose the war? And then he heard Jade screaming, chilling and drawn out, and it's heartbreaking in a way that turns his body into ice.
"Everything I've ever done, I've done for you, Ike." His father told him once, and he believes that's what Abraham is trying to do now. His father is trying to protect him, in his own twisted way. Abraham is useless, and he has nowhere else to turn.
Dr. El's office looks deserted, everything is cleared off her oak desk, and the piles of books have vanished. It looks like it was never inhabited in the first place. (It reminds Ike of his mind. Once, it was filled and brimming with answers and now someone's up and cleared it out.)
"I'm glad you came back." Dr. El says, appearing in the chair behind him. Ike doesn't think it was there a minute ago.
"I'll tell you whatever you want to know." He relents, and he is not one to ever give in first, so he keeps a clumsy smirk plastered on his face to make her think he's winning.
"I think you already know what I want, Isaac." Dr. El clutches a book in her lap, and stares at him with an unshaking gaze, "But what do you want?"
"I want what you took from me." He snarls. His memories. His life. His friends. The doctor spins in her chair, smiling amusingly.
"I didn't do this to you." Dr. El assures him, and he almost believes her. Dr. El looks so much like someone he used to know, but it's not her.
"But I can help you find them. That's what you want, isn't it? You want to find your friends." Dr. Ellsworth says, her fingers tracing patterns on the arm of the chair.
Ike doesn't want to lose this silent battle that's raging between them but he pictures Jade's face, and it's a sweeter prize then anything else.
"I can only tell you about Jade if you answer my question first. I need your help, Isaac. What did you see when your eyes were opened?" Her smile is luminous and wretchedly hopeful. He is getting exactly what he wants, yet he still has the nagging feeling that he is losing.
Ike opens his mouth to answer her but he doesn't know what to say.
The whole world goes quiet.
"An island." He answers. Dr. El flattens a hand against her chest and looks like he's just given her the most amazing gift in the world.
804. He never asks Jade what it's like to die. She must be the expert on the matter after how many times her heart has stopped. Ike wonders what death feels like when you know it's not permanent. It's not like he's tactfully avoiding it, as he's not one to be polite for someone else's sake. It just never comes up. He doesn't think the Academy is going to kill them now. The school was just the beginning of the experiment, they're moving on to the second phase. He asks Hunter what time it is while they wait for the guards to collect them. Ike really must be losing it.
Dr. El gives him the first address on a piece of folded paper and he follows it to a cemetery. Ike has never been to Canada before, but he's expecting to find Hunter in a movie theater or a museum with a Star Wars exhibit, not surrounded by a brittle gate and rows of headstones. At first, he's confused and then it becomes startling clear what's going on.
It takes him all day to find his roommate. His feet barely skim the ground as he raced through the rows of headstones. They stuck in Hunter in the back corner, and branches hanging low cover his last name. There are marble statues stretching out over headstones and the cemetery is empty except for Ike. He almost trips over a tree root trying to wipe his friend's headstone clean. It's almost like they ran out of room and just hid Hunter in the back. Typical.
Ike starts screaming and he wishes he could stitch himself back together, but everything is pouring out of him now. There's no end in sight. He burns with equal parts fury and sadness. Ike stands there in the cemetery searching for some sign that this is all some terrible mistake and his out of body experience ends when he hears someone approach.
"Would you like to see the rest of them? Casey was shipped back to Chicago. There's no name on her stone, since her parents were dead. Nobody could identify her." Dr. El asks through her teeth when the car pulls through the wrought-iron gates. He wonders if she's being so chipper on purpose.
"I've had enough." He answers the doctor, the sound shaking out of his throat, and the car speeds away. Ike wants to double over and collapse like he did on the floor of the library until some of us this makes sense and everyone is alive.
"They decided to spare some of you. The ones they thought had the most potential had their minds cleaned and were sent back into the world." She shakes her head and turns a little.
"Who else is alive? Besides myself, I mean." Ike demands, and he feels the sharpest glimmer of hope for a minute. Maybe they aren't all gone.
"A girl. She lived in the room next to yours, actually. You probably knew her." Dr. El pauses, obviously drawing out the moment, "Pamela. Unfortunately, she didn't take the adjustment very well."
"Fantastic. The knife girl and I are the only ones who survived."
"Why?" She purrs ever so innocently, "Were you hoping for someone in particular?"
"No." He feels white hot anger flush through him.
"Oh, about that redhead you were always toying with? They killed her last." She mutters casually, "The Headmaster wasn't happy with her. She called for you. He let her scream for three days before he finally ended her. Cut her head clean off. That's the only way to stop her from coming back."
Jade.
He feels the fear creeping under his skin. Everything slows for a few seconds and there's nothing but fire raging inside him. It's not fair. He'll burn that place to the ground. Everyone will pay. It's not fair that he survived while the rest of them-
Dr. El has played her cards well. He wonders if anything she said is true. Did Jade really suffer for three days? Did she actually call out for him? Or did the Doctor just say that to add fuel to his fire?
807. They stick a needle in his neck, different then the one they just shoved in Casey. The green liquid plunges into his bloodstream ands feels like a ice pumping through his veins. He grits his teeth and falls to the floor. He hears Hunter and Jade, still held on the other side of the room, calling him name. Telling him to hold on. Telling him that he can't forget them. Telling him-
He agrees to help Dr. El. This life is a warped version of the two he's experienced: the playboy from New York and the survivor in the Academy. Ike is neither of them now. He's nothing but rage fueled revenge. She's trying to find a way to the Academy, and Ike can't imagine why anyone would want to go back to that hellhole, but what else does he have to do? He only brings three things with him: the clothes on his back, his father's scarf, and his leather notebook.
811. Gribbs gets in one final gut punch as they load Ike into the car. He keeps trying to run back, but he's stumbling around like a fool. You would think spending so much time drunk would have prepared him for this, but he feels like a child who needs to be carried. So much time passes that the serum sets in and he can't even remember what he was trying to get back to. Ike can't tell where he is. He can't remember who he is.
Dr. El tells him that Jade's remains may still be in the basement. He doesn't know if it's supposed to be some incentive to get him to go with her, or if she's trying to be cruel. Ike wonders how difficult it would be to strangle the doctor with his scarf, and spends the rest of the car ride fantasizing about what he'll do to the Headmaster when they finally catch up to him. The doctor says she's taking a nap once they're on the plane and he should do the same.
It's the first time in months Ike feels like he can actually use some rest. He's hit rock bottom, and every part of him is drained. The despair hovers around him like a cloud. Ike doesn't know when he falls asleep, but he dreams and he sees how the story ends. He writes so quickly that he almost tears the pages of the notebook.
812. The guard tells him that the man in the overcoat is his father. The guards hand him over to Abraham who's eyeing him as if he's the shiniest jewel in the world. He shouldn't remember a thing. Don't risk anything that could possibly trigger his memories and call us if there are any changes. The stranger they say is his father takes him by shoulders and leads him towards a waiting car. The first part of the tests is finished and Ike passed. He is free. After so many years, (Years of what? He's not sure. But freedom is an unfamiliar taste.) Ike is going home, his father tells him, even though he's not sure where that it.
813. That last time he sees Jade is in the rear view mirror of the car. Ike doesn't recognize her at the time, but he knows the flash of red getting loaded into a car must be her. She's gritting her teeth. It takes three guards to push her in and her tiny arms claw at them with the fierceness of a mountain lion. He's too tired to keep his eyes open or to wonder who the ferocious girl is.
"She got in a car." Ike mutters and suddenly the world turns back on its axis as he doesn't feel like he's going to fall out of his seat.
"What?" Dr. El wakes up, not bothering to look over at him. She sprawled out over the leather seat on the private jet, hair wild like a mane around her tired face.
"They put her in a car. She's alive." He remembers and then nothing can keep him there. Voices call after him as he dashes out of the plane.
Ike will find Jade. (He will find all of them. Not in a graveyard. Not just in his dreams.) Ike thinks of the way Jade smiled at him. He'll work to be worthy of it.
So Ike has to save the Glories. It's his turn to step up and fight.
But he's sure, this time, he's going to save himself along the way. It's not going to be easy. It's not logical.
But Ike dreams. (He remembers.) So he knows.
Their love defies many things.