Jaden Baker (31 page)

—and his eyes. There was a blurred light above him, not blinding, dull.

Jaden sat up and examined his wrists. Some kind of thick, hard leather cuffs had been sewed onto each wrist, preventing any future attempt on his life. He put his hand to his neck and felt a fresh scar above his collar. How long had he been sedated?

That wasn’t all, the mirror was covered with security bars, like a small chain-link fence.

Hot tears brimmed in his eyes, his cheeks flushed red, and a hollow feeling gutted his stomach.

Failure.

Jaden ran to the mirror and grabbed the security bars, trying to rip them from the window. He pulled, pushing his legs against the wall, willing the bars to break. They wouldn’t budge.

“LET ME OUT!” he screamed, the tears streaming down his face. “LET ME GO!”

Suicide wasn’t even an option. They had him completely trapped, completely controlled. He couldn’t even take his own life.

“Let me out!” he pleaded, sobbing and pulling at the grated bars. “Please!”

There was no toothbrush to stab himself in the heart, no ledge to jump off, no fixture on the ceiling from which to hang himself, no gun to shoot into his mouth, no sharp edges to smash his head. Why hadn’t he slit his throat first? Obviously it was going to take too long to bleed to death from just his wrists. He should’ve sliced his head off when he had the chance. He hadn’t been afraid, there was nothing, no one he was leaving behind. He wanted to die more than he had ever wanted anything.

Escaping had not worked. It had taken four years before he’d had a remote chance at freedom. And the door had been right there, within his reach. Why hadn’t he run faster? Why had he taken pity on the people who chased him? He should stopped all their hearts in that house, he had been merciful. Weak.

After everything he wound up back in a cage.

“Kill me,” Jaden cried, falling to his knees. “Please, kill me.”

But they wouldn’t kill him. He was worth too much to them, their prized lion. They had invested a lot of money into his existence, they weren’t going to let him escape so easily, they weren’t going to let him escape at all. There was nothing he could do to make them kill him. Jaden was uniquely powerful. Powerful enough to kill others, just not himself.

He rolled on his back, his whole body quaked under his oppressive sobs. An enormous weight pressed upon him. At least when he had Alan, there was hope. Alan gave him the code to break free. Alan sympathized, had formed an affection for Jaden. Alan taught him to fight.

But there was no one here.

Something moved.

Jaden leapt up and studied the room.

His eyes found the mirror.

The blurry faced boy was there, standing where Jaden was. He walked forward, his image growing larger as Jaden also walked to the mirror. When Jaden put his hand on the grate, so did the other boy, but now his face wasn’t blurry, he looked exactly like Jaden.

Maybe I imagined it, Jaden thought. He dreamed of the boy, so it was plausible he imagined the same thing in his waking moments.

Jaden yawned.

His reflection yawned with him.

Jaden raised his eyebrows three times, and his reflection did the same.

Jaden sighed, watching his reflection’s chest heave up.

Jaden frowned.

His reflection grinned.

Something cold trickled down Jaden’s neck. He was hallucinating, it was the only explanation. The drugs, the pain he’d been through, he was cracking up at last.

His reflection shook his head.
You’re not crazy
.

The voice came from the back of his head, and strangely Jaden recognized it.

He took a step back but couldn’t pull his eyes away. The reflection took one step forward.

I am crazy, Jaden thought.

The other Jaden shook his head and opened his mouth in a laugh, though Jaden heard nothing.

No. I’m just as real as you are.

The humming of the elevator motor disrupted Jaden’s focus for a moment. He saw the man’s feet then legs lowering into the cell.

Jaden watched his mirror image.

It put its index finger to its lips, then winked. He walked backwards and disappeared. Jaden’s reflection was now his own.

“You’re on your feet. We had to give you a lot of blood to save your life,” the old man said.

Jaden whirled around. “That was very kind,” Jaden said, aware of the words after they were spoken. “Sorry my attempt at suicide inconvenienced you.”

Jaden crossed his arms in confidence instead of fear.

The old man’s eyes narrowed.

Jaden tapped his wrists together, the hard leather clacking. “I see you’re preventing me from doing it again. Thank you, sir.”

The old man grimaced. “Are you mocking me?” he asked.

Jaden replied with a curt shake of his head. “Certainly not.”

“You’re not yourself today.”

“No, you’re right. I’ve been to the other side,” Jaden said. This was a lie. He didn’t mean it—didn’t even want to say it. Why did he, then? “You’re dead there, too.”

“No more,” the man said, shoving his fist into a pocket to grab the remote. “Not another word. You didn’t see the other side of anything, and you won’t. There is no ‘other side.’”

“Who’s Ethan?” Jaden asked, again, only aware of the words after they left him.

The old man took a small step back, his mouth opened a little.

Ethan was somebody, but Jaden didn’t know who, nor did the voice in the back of his head. Jaden was curious, not about Ethan, but how he knew the name.

“Where did you hear that?” the old man inquired, advancing on Jaden, who stood firm.

“Ethan will get you in the end,” Jaden said, at least his voice did. Jaden didn’t know where these words or “Ethan” came from; it was like he was having an out of body experience. It was strange to speak to the stranger, unafraid, actually titillated by the man’s perplexity and dread. Jaden knew nothing of Ethan, but the name meant something to the man standing before him. Ethan frightened him.

“Where did you hear that name?” he asked again, his face devoid of humor.

“But I already told you, sir. You didn’t believe me. Shall I repeat it?”

Shaking his head, the man’s devilish smile returned. “No,” he said. “We’re done with this conversation. You’re going to do as I say now.”

The corners of Jaden’s mouth rose, transforming from a smirk to a wide grin. “But of course I will, sir. Your wish is my command.”

“That is very well,” said the man, “for I don’t tolerate people trying to escape their responsibilities like you tried with your little stunt.”

A worm of fear wriggled in Jaden’s stomach, and the ethereal assuredness he channeled moments before evaporated as the worm burrowed deeper. When he next spoke, his own voice of trapped hysteria broke through, the worm having reached journey’s end.

“What do you mean?” Jaden asked. But he knew exactly what the old man meant. He had spoken out of turn in a way that was displeasing. Knowing what he did about this man, Jaden marveled at his brief display of bravery. Now he wondered what kind of sadistic penalty awaited him. It would not be swift nor easy. The punishment would chip away at Jaden’s crumbling sense of worth and only rekindle his desire for a permanent end that only death could give.

As his feet carried his unwilling and already battered body up the elevator and into room D, Jaden transported himself to the park where he’d been with the other boy on the swings. The sky had been a blue so bright it was unreal, and the sensation of flying so freeing and literally uplifting, just thinking about it threatened tears.

He snatched frantically for that place, but it danced just out of his reach. All he was left with was an aftertaste, a memory of someplace without pain or sorrow, a world drastically different from the one to which he regretfully belonged.

Jaden’s wet eyes glazed over as he watched the green hills of the park slip from his imaginary view and the tragic circumstance of his life took its place, reaffirming everything he believed: as long as he lived, he would suffer.

Stiffly, perhaps forever, Jaden flexed his right hand. The joints of his middle and ring finger were larger than the joints of his other fingers, and Sam said they would always be so. In time he would regain full range of motion, but his grip would never be as strong as it would’ve been, had his hand not been battered as horribly as it was.

The left hand was a grim visage of the right. While only one finger had been broken and the metacarpal bones healed well, the hand itself looked like a reject from Frankenstein’s laboratory. Thick permanent scars paralleled and crossed each other like the many roads and bridges of a city’s superhighway. Every time he saw his hands, flashes of how they’d been thrashed flared and burned in his mind.

Reminders of his attempts at defiance were all over his body, his hands a small memorial. If he didn’t walk with a limp, hold his stomach, or pitch himself a certain way to keep his back in one place, then he was probably sleeping. Even that hurt. When his eyes closed at night, memories came to the forefront, making sleep a miserable experience.

He woke frequently, clutching his stomach from sharp pains that sometimes kept him awake all night. But he hid this from everyone, bearing through the pain, showing no sign of it on his face. The pains were internal, and he hoped he could keep them secret long enough for the cause to become lethal.

It was impossible to hide when he vomited blood. Every movement was monitored, including what he did at the toilet. His secret was exposed when blood hit the bin and splashed onto the seat.

Out of habit rather than wisdom, Jaden resisted a doctor’s visit, but was forced into it. Sam let him lay on his side rather than his back, and palpitated his stomach as the old man watched.

“What is it?” the old man asked.

Sam’s fingers hit whatever it was, and Jaden vomited blood all over him.

“Stress ulcer,” Sam said, giving Jaden a cloth to wipe his mouth.

“Stress doesn’t cause ulcers,” the old man replied, his face emotionless as he stared at Jaden.

“It doesn’t help them,” Sam said back. “We have to start him on antibiotics and you need to tone it down,” he said to the old man. “This is serious.”

“How long to recover?”

“I’m not sure, depends on how bad it is. A few months maybe. It could come back if you don’t back off him,” Sam said. He scribbled something on a chart. “He can only handle so much, and you found the threshold. Leave him alone for a while and let him recover.”

“I can’t do that, I’m on a time crunch.”

Sam shook his head and laughed coolly. “You’re time crunch could kill him, and after all the effort we went through to keep him alive, it would be a big waste. Lay off him for a few days at least, then tone it down.”

Jaden stayed in the infirmary the rest of the day. Sam pumped him full of antibiotics and other drugs through an intravenous line, as he lay on his side in bed. Sam tried talking to Jaden, but he didn’t respond. He stared straight ahead, thinking of the playground again, imagining birds flying through the sky.

When he was back in his cell, he shut his eyes and drew his legs and arms into him, exhausted and feeling ill. Like earlier, he tried to imagine birds flying through a perfect sky.

He heard humming. The light above him was dimmed, so his cell glowed dark blue. There was no one else here, but someone hummed.

Jaden knew the tune. It was a nursery rhyme, or a folk song. He didn’t remember how it went or where he’d heard it before.

The humming grew louder.

Sitting up steadily, Jaden looked for the source of the sound. He stood and found the mirror. His reflection smiled and beckoned him with a finger.

Maybe he was sleeping, and this was just another dream. Sleeping had been impossible of late, so it made sense if he dreamt this now, after succumbing to his exhaustion. In any case, he approached the mirror.

Hello
.

“Am I dreaming this?” Jaden asked, his eyes drooping low.

The boy in the mirror put his finger to his lips.

Don’t talk. They can’t know I’m here.

Who are you?

The boy grinned.
I’m here to help you.

Help me what?

The boy laughed, but no sound was made.

Help you escape
.

Jaden shook his head. I can’t leave, he thought. There’s no way out. They’ve got me under control now.

I know. You finally gave in.

Jaden felt shame, yet knew the boy was right. He had finally given in.

That’s okay. I understand why you did it. You don’t want to feel it anymore.

Feel it?

Yes. Pain. But you will get out of here one day.

How? Jaden couldn’t see a way out.