7. June

Chapter seven

June

T he restraints bite into my wrists, leather and steel and the sour stink of fear. Cold metal kisses my bare skin, a perversion of intimacy that sets my teeth on edge. I stare up at the ceiling, a roiling sea of shadows cut through with harsh fluorescent light. Exposed. Vulnerable. A bug pinned to a fucking specimen board.

"Patient 3679, prepped for electroconvulsive therapy," one of them drones, his voice as lifeless as his eyes. "Fifteenth session to date. No significant improvement noted."

I want to laugh at that, a harsh, broken sound that would rip my throat to shreds. Improvement. As if the goal was ever to fix what they perceive as broken in me. No, this is about control, about breaking me down until there's nothing left but a hollow shell for my mother to puppeteer.

Dr. Faulkner looms over me, his face a mask of cold detachment. "You've brought this upon yourself, Juniper," he says, his voice as oily as his slicked-back hair. "If you had simply cooperated, if you had embraced the treatment, we could have avoided these unpleasant measures."

I bare my teeth in a feral grin, relishing the flicker of unease that darts across his smug face. "Fuck you," I rasp, my voice hoarse from screaming. "Fuck you and fuck your treatment. I'll never be what she wants me to be. I'll never stop fighting."

His eyes narrow, a vein pulsing in his temple. "We'll see about that," he hisses, nodding to the orderly manning the ECT machine. "Let's begin, shall we?"

The whine of the machine powering up fills the room, a high-pitched drone that sets my teeth on edge. I clench my jaw, bracing for the pain I know is coming. But beneath the fear, beneath the dread, there's something else. A kernel of warmth, of light, that even the darkest shadows can't touch.

Cara. The memory of her face, luminous with joy and love as I held her in my arms, as I felt the swell of our child beneath my palm, is a talisman against the darkness. They can tear me to pieces, can fry my brain with their machines and their drugs, but they can't take that from me. They can't erase the truth of what we have, of the unbreakable bond that ties us together.

The electrodes press against my temples, cold and unyielding. I close my eyes, conjuring the memory of Cara's smile, the melody of her laugh, the honeyed warmth of her skin against mine. I hold onto that feeling, that glorious, shining moment of connection, as the current rips through me, as my body convulses and my mind splinters into a thousand jagged shards.

I surface from the haze of pain to the sound of voices, distant and muffled like I'm underwater. "...showing resistance to the treatment..." "...increase the voltage, up the dosage of the sedatives..." "...if this continues, we may have to consider more drastic measures..."

I force my eyes open, blinking away the spots that dance across my vision. Dr. Faulkner is huddled with a group of white-coated figures, their heads bent together in conspiratorial whispers.

"Ah, Juniper. Back with us, I see." Dr. Faulkner's voice is a snake sliding through the grass, poised to strike. "I must say, your resilience is quite remarkable. Lesser men would have crumbled by now."

"I'm not lesser men," I rasp, my tongue thick and clumsy in my mouth.

"Indeed." He smiles, a thin, reptilian thing. "But even the strongest will can be broken, given the right pressure. And believe me, Juniper, we've only just begun to apply pressure."

He nods to one of the other doctors, a severe-looking woman with a tight bun and glasses perched on her beak-like nose. She steps forward, a syringe glinting in her hand.

"This is a new formula," Dr. Faulkner says, his eyes glittering with a sick sort of excitement. "A cutting-edge blend of psychotropics and neuroinhibitors. It targets the centers of the brain responsible for willpower, for self-determination. In layman's terms, it makes you...suggestible."

Ice slides down my spine, a sick dread knotting in my gut. "You can't... that's illegal. It's a violation of every human rights law on the books."

He chuckles, a dry, mirthless sound. "Oh, Juniper. Still so naive. Laws are for the little people, for those without the power and influence to shape reality to their will. And your mother? She has more power than you can possibly imagine."

The doctor with the syringe steps closer, her shoes squeaking against the linoleum. I thrash against the restraints, panic clawing at my throat as I watch the needle descend towards the crook of my elbow.

"No," I whisper, hating the broken note in my voice. "You asshole! Don't do this."

But it's too late.

The needle pierces my skin, the plunger depresses, and I feel the icy rush of the drug entering my bloodstream. For a moment, there's nothing, just the thundering of my heart and the rasp of my breath.

And then...

The world stretches, warping as colors bleed like melting ice cream. My limbs feel heavy, disconnected, like I'm floating outside my body. And in the distance, getting closer with every passing second, I hear it.

My mother's voice.

"Juniper, darling." She sounds like she did when I was a child, all honeyed concern and poisoned affection. "It's time to stop fighting. It's time to come home."

I try to shake my head, to scream my defiance, but my body won't obey. It's like I'm trapped in a nightmare, paralyzed and helpless as the monster bears down.

"This is for your own good," she croons, her face swimming into view above me. But it's wrong, distorted, her eyes black pits and her smile a gash of blood. "We only want what's best for you. And that girl, that gutter rat you've latched onto? She's not good for you, darling. She's not one of us."

"Cara," I manage to choke out, clinging to her name like a lifeline. "Love...her..."

"No, you don't." My mother's voice is sharper now, laced with impatience. "You only think you do. But we can fix that, Juniper. We can make you see the truth."

She nods to someone I can't see, and then there are hands on me, cold and impersonal as they wheel me out of the room. The hallway scrolls by in a sickening blur, the lights overhead strobing and pulsing in time with the throbbing in my skull.

We come to a stop in a room that smells of antiseptic and ozone. A man in a surgical mask looms over me, a bone saw whining in his hand.

"Juniper Deveaux," he says, his voice muffled and distorted. "By order of your mother and in accordance with the powers vested in me by the Deveaux Corporation, I hereby sentence you to a complete prefrontal lobotomy. May God have mercy on your soul."

Terror, pure and primal, rips through the drug-induced haze. They can't... they wouldn't...

But even as the denial screams through my mind, I know the truth. There's nothing they wouldn't do, no line they wouldn't cross, to maintain their power. To keep me under their control.

The saw descends, the whine rising to a deafening shriek. I squeeze my eyes shut, hot tears leaking down my temples as I brace for the end. For the oblivion that will rip away everything I am, everything I love.

And in that final, desperate moment, I see her. Cara, my fierce, beautiful warrior, cradling the swell of our child as she smiles at me with love in her storm-grey eyes. The image sears into my mind, a burst of light amidst the encroaching darkness.

I love you, I think, pouring every ounce of my heart, my soul, into the words. I'll always love you. In this life and whatever comes after. You're my forever.

The blade kisses my skin, icy and sharp. And I-

Wake with a strangled gasp, my body jackknifing off the thin mattress of my cell. For a moment I'm disoriented, my mind reeling as I try to separate nightmare from reality.

But then it comes rushing back. The ECT session. The threats of lobotomy, of some twisted new drug that would strip away my free will. The sickening helplessness, the soul-deep terror of losing myself, losing Cara.

It was a dream. A horrific, gut-wrenching dream, but a dream nonetheless.

I'm still here. Still whole, still sane. Still clinging to the memory of my love, my child, with every shredded fiber of my being.

I draw a shuddering breath, scrubbing my hands over my face as if I could wipe away the lingering images. The ECT sessions are bad enough, leaving me fractured and raw and aching in every cell. But this...

This was something new. Something I know, with a bone-deep certainty, is a harbinger of worse to come.

I have to get out of here. Have to find my way back to Cara before they break me, before they hollow me out and fill me with their poison. But how? Faulkner is watching me closer than ever, the noose of his control pulled taut against my throat. And without Sarah, without Dr. Brenneman's negligent leniency, I'm cut off from any allies, any resources I might have used to stage another escape.

I'm well and truly trapped, a rat in a maze with no way out, and I can feel the walls closing in, feel the sickening certainty in my bones that time is running out.

It burns through me, an inexorable tide, scouring away the stains of fear and despair. I cling to it, to her, a drowning man scrabbling for driftwood in a storm-tossed sea.

They can break my body, ravage my mind. But they can't touch my soul. Can't tear out the core of me, the part that belongs to her, that pulses in time with the tiny heartbeat sheltered beneath her skin.

I am hers, and she is mine. And no force on this wretched earth will keep me from her side. Not Faulkner, not my mother. Not even Death Himself.

Time slips away, blurs into a smear of blood and sweat and the distant, tinny echo of screams. My screams, I realize dimly, an endless animal howl scraping my throat raw. They come for me again and again, a relentless tide of agony, until my neurons fry and my synapses shred and the world dissolves into an impressionist nightmare of harsh light and grasping hands.

But through it all, I hold fast to her. To the smoke-velvet warmth of her gaze. The ripe-peach sweetness of her lips. The steady drum of her heart against mine, the metronome to which my own stuttering pulse yearns to beat in time.

She is the lighthouse on my shore, the celestial body around which I orbit, helpless and yearning in the void.

And though I am unmade, though I am broken on the wheels of their ambition and cruelty... I will find my way back to her. No matter the cost. No matter how long it takes. I will crawl on my belly through perdition's flames, will pay any price, bear any scar. For her. For the promise of absolution, of grace, that flows through her veins and beats in her blessed womb.

I come back to myself in jagged pieces, a shattered mosaic resolving into a cohesive whole. Pain is the first thing to filter through the haze, a deep, grinding ache that settles into my bones like a cancer. Next, the stench of terror-sweat and despair, the sour reek of my own weakness.

But then, with a clarity sharp as winter starlight... The rasp of paper on concrete. A whisper of salvation.

My eyes snap open, my battered body jackknifing upright on the thin, stained mattress. For a heartbeat, I'm suspended between nightmare and dream, phantom echoes of voltage crackling across my skin, the taste of blood sharp on my tongue. But then reality filters through the gauze of confusion, cold and vital as a slap.

There's something in my cell. A scrap of incongruity amid the piss-stained squalor and despair. I squint, my eyes gritty and raw, hardly daring to believe...

But no, it's there.

A slip of paper, crisp and white and shining like a fucking beacon in the dimness. My heart slams against my ribs, a wild, careening rhythm of desperate hope and wary dread.

Trap, my battered psyche whispers, a slither of self-preservation. Another of their games, their tests. Bait for the beast, to see how far they've brought you to heel.

But another part of me, the part that remembers the feel of Cara in my arms, the quicksilver dart of my child 'neath her flesh...that part knows, with a certainty lodged deep as marrow in bone: This is different. This is deliverance.

I lurch to my feet, my muscles screaming a symphony of protest. Each step is agony, a trial of will over sinew, but I grit my teeth and soldier on. Failure is not an option, not now. Not with the taste of freedom, of her, so close I can almost roll it on my tongue.

I reach the note, my hands shaking so hard I nearly fumble it. The paper is heavy, expensive. A frisson of confusion, of unease, trips down my spine. But then I unfold it, and the world tilts, realigns on its axis with a nearly audible click.

Two words, bold and black as a death-head grin: "Cell phone."

For a moment, I can only stare. Blink. Breathe through the sudden upwelling of emotion clogging my throat, my chest. Contact with the outside. A chance, however slim, to reach her. To hear her voice, the lilt and sway of it, warm as honey and twice as sweet.

But how? And more importantly...who?

I flip the paper over, my eyes snagging on the crimson crest embossed in the corner. Familiar, hauntingly so, a throwback to a past I've tried so hard to outrun.

The Corleone sigil.

Questions buzz in my brain like hornets, stinging and insistent. Why now? What could they possibly want with me, caged and clipped and left to rot?

But in the end, it doesn't matter. None of it matters, save the gossamer thread of possibility clasped tight in my aching fist. They've thrown me a lifeline, and I mean to grab hold with both fucking hands.

They think they've broken me; think they've snuffed out the last embers of defiance. But they're wrong.

Dead wrong.

If they say I'm insane, I'll show them the true face of madness.

I'll rain hellfire down upon them until the very foundations of this twisted place crack and crumble. I'll reduce their vaunted power to ashes and dust, and from those ashes, I will rise.

Unbroken.

Unbowed.

I'm the Grandmaster of this chess match, and when I make my move, I'll execute a devastating queen sacrifice, offering up a piece of myself to lure them into a false sense of security.

And when they least expect it, I'll unleash a blistering attack that will leave their defenses in ruins and their king exposed.

Checkmate.

I will fight with every last shred of will, every last ounce of strength in my battered body. I'll claw my way out of this nightmare with bloody fingernails and gritted teeth, fueled by the memory of Cara's smile, the feel of our baby's kick against my palm.

Because I made a vow, there in the golden warmth of our reunion. A sacred oath, whispered against tear-damp skin and sealed with desperate kisses.

A vow to come back to her, to hold her, to build a life in the shelter of our love. To be the father, the partner, the man she deserves.

And I keep my fucking promises.

The note crumples in my fist, the edges digging into my palm. And as I stare at the door, at the lock that stands between me and everything I hold dear, I feel a smile curve my lips.

Sharp. Savage. A blade in the dark.

"Let's play, Dr. Faulkner…" I whisper with a smirk, my pulse pounding war drums in my ears. "I hope you're ready, Mother Dearest."

Because you have no fucking clue what's coming for you.