My apologies to anyone reading this story who happens to be a scientist. My knowledge of the human body comes mainly from reading wikipedia articles, and obsessively watching House. Add that to my own creative extrapolation and you get what you see here. Sorry if I make anyone cringe.
Thanks, as always, to the wonderful Nancy, and a reminder to people who still might forget that parts outlined in *** are flashbacks.
PART FIVE
Jay had gone to sleep in my bed already. Although normally, he wouldn’t take over my apartment like that, I could tell he was still suffering from the treatment he had received by whoever had done all those things to him, and a good night’s sleep certainly couldn’t do him any harm. I opened my sliding bookcase to reveal all the trappings of my NIA career, and pulled the small lead-lined box out of its nesting place. Although Jon never really went around x-raying parts of my apartment, there was still some instinct within me that made me put some extra precautions into making sure he didn’t stumble across this. He didn’t need to know about any of this. It’s not like I would actually need it or anything. It’s just a… precaution.
I placed only a few objects within the box, yet each carried a specific meaning behind them. The inky black obsidian stone that he had brought me the first time he had visited my apartment without having to save me first, a vial of sand from the island that had been the location of our first date, a few rose petals from the table in that café in Paris he had taken me to before he proposed, and a number of other items.
Despite my constant struggle to dismiss them, Jay’s words still stuck in my head. What if I did lose my memories of Jon? I didn’t dare to really contemplate the repercussions of such a thing, yet I still felt the need to do *something*. Just in case. I knew the objects wouldn’t replace my memory, yet I still hoped that they would somehow let me connect emotionally if I couldn’t do it intellectually.
Although I hadn’t outwardly admitted it to anyone, this assignment scared me. As Jay had said before, it was more than just the typical risks in this assignment. These were memories. They made up who I was. What would happen to me if I lost them?
And despite my better judgment, I couldn’t help replaying my dad’s visit in my head. Had I compromised my good sense as an agent in order to fulfill my personal interests? Of course not. I had good reason to do what I did in the Sproxton case.
Yet, did that mean that my capability as an agent was compromised? My dad obviously thought so. And if I wanted to survive this investigation, I had to be as focused as possible. There was no room for mistakes, and no room for weakness.
* * *
The next day, I went to Riverview to start on some of my preparations for September. There was a lot of preliminary work that needed to be done before the students came back to school, and I had hoped to get a good start on it before things got too crazy with the investigation. Of course, I hadn’t counted on the fact that being recently engaged leads to certain distractions.
“You’ve been holding out on me!” my friend and coworker Thea exclaimed when I filled her in on the latest development.
“I told you I was seeing someone,” I explained, embarrassed by her intense attention to my left hand.
“But you didn’t tell me that it was that serious! I thought you had only been dating about a month or so.”
“It’s been longer than that,” I corrected. “We just didn’t want to tell a whole bunch of people, and… Well, we just didn’t want the pressure of a public relationship until we were sure.” It was a bit of a loose excuse, but I felt Thea wouldn’t really push the issue. It was one of the reasons why we got along so well together.
“So have you guys set a date?” she asked. “And when do I get to meet him?”
“No date yet,” I replied. “And he said he might make an appearance for the school’s open house. I’ll introduce you then.”
“How good looking is he?” she asked, only half teasing.
“Thea!” I exclaimed, feeling my face heat up.
“Pretty good, I see,” she responded wickedly.
“You know, I’m supposed to be working here,” I replied primly, ignoring her good natured teasing.
“Well, I hope not too hard,” she replied. I could instantly notice the change in her tone. “It looks like you have a visitor.”
I turned around to see Jon standing in the doorway, his arm raised to knock on the open door.
“Jon!” I exclaimed, jumping out of my seat and rushing into his arms. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I decided to surprise you,” he replied cheerily.
I turned back to face Thea. “Jon, this is my friend Thea,” I introduced. “She teaches at the school as well.”
“Nice to meet you,” he greeted.
“Likewise,” she replied. “How did you find us? I didn’t think any of the office staff were in yet to help visitors.”
“I just wandered around until I found the science classroom,” Jon lied. Thea didn’t know that he had already been to this room as Supernova. “It’s not a big school, so it wasn’t hard to find.”
“You know, you’re not just supposed to walk into a school and wander through the halls,” Thea told him teasingly. “People may think you’re looking to abduct one of the students or something.”
“Oh. Um, I’m sorry…”
“Thea, go easy on him,” I told her. “He doesn’t know you’re just kidding.”
“Lucky for you, there aren’t any students here yet,” Thea winked. “And even then, I wouldn’t tell on you. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, Jon, but I’m guessing that right now you had other plans in mind. I’ll see you two later.” She exited the classroom, pausing as she walked past me. “I was *so* right,” she whispered in my ear. Jon blushed, running his fingers through his hair self-consciously, and I could tell that he must have been aware of the meaning behind that comment.
“Serves you right for listening in on private conversations,” I said as I swatted him playfully in the chest.
“I was only listening to make sure you were in the room,” he explained sheepishly.
“Yeah, and if you happened to find out what I was saying about you to other people, then that’s just good luck,” I teased.
He shrugged innocently. “Can you blame a guy for being curious?”
“I guess not,” I conceded, and moved in to kiss him gently. Unfortunately, we soon remembered our promise to be more careful in public, so we drew apart before anything interesting developed. “So what’s the reason behind the surprise visit?” I asked a little flushed.
“Well, I have the rest of the afternoon off, so I decided to swing by to see if you wanted some company to go to STAR labs. You’re heading over there soon, right?”
I glanced up at the clock. Had it really gotten that late? “Yeah, I better get going if I want to get through the traffic. I promised Jay I’d meet him at four-thirty.” I quickly shut down my computer and started collecting my possessions. “But you don’t have to come with me. Brad volunteered to give him an exam to see if we can get some more concrete information. It’ll probably be kind of boring for you, though.”
“I don’t mind. I want to be able to help out.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him distractedly. “We won’t really need you there.”
“Oh. Okay,” he said, slightly stung. “I guess I can… do an extra patrol or something instead. Since you don’t seem to need me.”
“Great idea!” I said with satisfaction, although I have to confess I was too busy thinking of my plans for the rest of the day to really pay attention to what he was saying. But at least this way, I didn’t feel as guilty for not spending time with him. “By the way,” I remembered, “I did want to talk to you about this whole… investigation thing. Somewhere not as public. Do you think you could swing by my place later tonight?”
“Maybe,” he said distantly. “But I might not get done my patrol until late.”
I blinked, taken aback by his attitude. He wasn’t upset that I didn’t need him at STAR labs, was he? “Oh. Well, um, maybe sometime tomorrow, then,” I offered, a little hurt.
His face softened. “How about I come by tomorrow morning? I’ll bring breakfast.”
“That sounds good.”
We split to go out separate ways as we exited the school. As I drove to STAR labs I reflected on the conversation we had just had. Jon *had* seemed a little put out that I didn’t want him to accompany me to the lab. But at the same time, there was no real reason why he should come, beyond my personal feelings.
And those feelings could wait, I decided. This was a dangerous assignment, and I didn’t want to put my personal relationship right in the middle of it. I wasn’t willing to risk it. And right now, I needed to concentrate on getting this investigation done in the most efficient way possible.
* * *
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Brad told us after taking countless scans and running endless tests on Jay. “I had thought we were ages away from doing something like this.”
“What exactly is it they did?” I asked pointedly.
“It appears that the clusters of neurons that actually contain your memories are still intact,” Brad explained to Jay. “It’s just the connectors that have been scrambled.”
“It’s really neat,” Ellie chimed in, full of scientific excitement. “Because the brain relies on a chain of neurons to transfer information, there’s no way it can access the memories it wants even though they’re still stored in the cerebral cortex like they always were.”
“Yeah, really neat,” Jay commented dryly. “Except for the fact that it’s my brain we’re talking about.”
Ellie’s enthusiastic demeanor lowered, and I could see her blush a little in chagrin. “Of course I didn’t mean… I-I know it must be difficult…”
“How does this explain the fact that some of his memories from before he worked on this case are missing?” I asked, rescuing her.
“The brain is strange,” Brad shrugged. “We sometimes make connections based on seemingly random things. My guess would be that the memories Jay is missing from earlier are somehow linked to his investigation, even though they may seem to be completely random.”
“Not to mention that the people who did it might not have been very careful,” Ellie added.
“A warning,” I murmured to myself. Perhaps these people were trying to show us just how much their device could do, and how far they were willing to go.
“Any chance of me getting the memories back?” Jay asked quietly.
“Possibly,” Brad told him optimistically. “If we could find the device that did it, we may be able to reverse the procedure.”
“Fat chance of that happening anytime soon,” I grumbled. “I have hardly any information to go off of thanks to your inability to send in regular reports.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way you can just interpret the random neurons in my brain to find out what I’ve forgotten, is there?” Jay asked Brad.
“No,” he replied. “There’s no way someone can interpret your personal brain waves and turn it into something that makes sense to them. But that’s probably a good thing in your case. Who knows what your attackers could have found if they were able to see your personal memories.” It was a sobering thought. If they had been able to read any of Jay’s personal memories, what kind of position would that put him in? Jay had access to some extremely sensitive information.
“I think I may have an idea,” Ellie spoke up, breaking the silence. “We already know that your incidental memories are all messed up right now, but there are other types of memory that might help us. Physical memory, for example. That’s stored in the cerebellum, not the cerebral cortex. And that part of your brain is fine!” She jabbed meaningfully at the scans. They didn’t mean much to me, so I had to take her word for it.
“How will you access those memories?” Brad asked her. “Without remembering specific incidences where he used those physical skills, he has no way to tap into them.”
“It would be a lot of work,” she murmured under her breath as she stared intently at Jay, making him shift in discomfort. “But I think I could do it. I’d have to map out all his brain activity and we could put him through some VR simulations to try to tap into his subconscious…”
“It might work,” Brad agreed. “But you’d have to head this up, Ellie. It would be an intensive project with a lot of time commitment and I can’t justify doing that at this time.” She nodded enthusiastically in response, and then turned to Jay.
“Are you okay with this?” she asked bluntly. And I realized what it would mean. Ellie and Jay. Alone together in a small lab for hours on end. They had better move all the hazardous chemicals to another location.
“I’ll be fine,” Jay replied, obviously irritated. “I am capable of getting along with another human being.”
“Oh, really?” she said sweetly. “That must be why you lied to everyone and pretended that nothing was wrong with you.”
“Maybe it was because I didn’t want someone making smarta-”
“Jay, can I talk to you outside for a moment?” I interjected. We stepped out into the hall together. “Can you just try to get along with Ellie?” I begged him. “For me?”
“I’m sorry, Kaylie,” Jay apologized exasperatedly. “She’s just so… I mean, does she *always* have the right answer to everything?”
“Just promise to stop baiting her,” I asked him. “I can see she’s not exactly your favorite person right now, but it’s been hard enough trying to fit you into this whole situation without all this added conflict.”
“I know. And I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll try to control myself, okay?”
“That’s all I’m asking,” I told him as we went back into the lab.
“Kaylie, I was just thinking,” Ellie told us upon entering. “I had this old prof who works for the neurology department at Met U. He did a lot of research in the field of memory. You might want to try asking him for an idea of who could have the capability of doing this kind of thing.”
“Thanks,” I nodded in response. “That might be a good starting point.” Of course that meant I would have to interview him. That wasn’t something I could pick up by rifling through his filing cabinet at night. Which meant that some undercover work was necessary. And I had the perfect idea for an alias.
* * *
***It was a charity function for the Metropolis Children’s Hospital. Jon supposed that he should feel flattered that the organization had asked for him to come. It showed that the citizens of Metropolis were starting to regard him with just as much respect as his father. Yet all he was ever feeling these days was numb.
But he had wanted to help out a good cause and it meant one less night where he had to deal with a life that was rapidly spiraling out of control. So he had come to the function, made a speech, and spent the rest of the evening mingling with rich guests who were getting steadily drunker as the night progressed. He didn’t eat or drink anything, of course. It wouldn’t be seemly for Supernova to consume anything in public. And even if he had drunk a few glasses of champagne, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.
So he had stood in the large room watching other people make fools of themselves, all the time wondering how this could be seen as an appropriate fundraiser for a *children’s* hospital. He was just about to leave for the night when he caught sight of someone out of the corner of his eye. A spark of recognition flared through his body for a split second. And then it died. From the back, with most of his head hidden from view, the man had looked like…
But of course it wasn’t. There was no logical reason why Jon should even think that man was his grandfather. And yet…
The room which had seemed mildly crowded at first was now suffocating him. He flinched away from the people who brushed against his shoulder. The cacophony of laugher warped strangely in his ears and the smell of booze and food gave him a rare headache.
He left. Suddenly, and without looking back. He soared high over the buildings in Metropolis and thankfully breathed in the acrid smog. He stretched out his hearing to take in the sounds of the city. Somewhere, there had to be someone who needed him. Someone who could let him forget, even for just a little bit. ***
* * *
“So how old are you supposed to be?” Jon asked me from his position lounging on my sofa. I tweaked my mousy brown wig for the billionth time. It still didn’t look quite right.
“Twenty-one,” I replied somewhat absently. “I’m a journalism student who’s tailing Lois Lane to learn more about the fascinating world of reporting.”
“You know, you’re going to have to say that a bit more convincingly if you want to pull it off.”
I threw my comb at him. “I can be convincing,” I defended. “Just not when I’m trying to fix my hair. Do you think this looks ugly enough?” I turned around so he could get a good look at my entire ensemble.
“You always look beautiful to me,” he replied.
“That’s sweet, but not exactly the kind of feedback I need right now,” I smiled. “I’m going for a kind of bookish loner type of person.”
Jon lifted his glasses off his face to get a closer look at me without having to move. “Do you have contacts in?” he asked.
“No, it’s just the change in hair color,” I replied. “More brown in my hair brings out more brown in my eyes. I also did a bit of shading and stuff on my face which makes a difference too.”
“So why go for ugly? Why not be the stunning beauty that you are?”
“People don’t notice plain people as much as beautiful ones,” I explained. “They’re easier to miss, which makes my job easier for me. If I was constantly turning heads everywhere I went then I would never get any good information.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. I’m sure that cocktail waitress job you had last time got you plenty of information.” I didn’t have my comb anymore so I had to settle with throwing the wig at him instead. He caught it in one hand and brought it closer to eye level. He studied it intently, and I could see that something was upsetting him. I pushed his feet off the sofa so that I could sit across from him.
“What’s up?” I asked seriously.
“Just worrying, I guess,” he replied, smiling ruefully. “I know you’ve done stuff like this before, but I just can’t help… feeling anxious about you. You know, whenever my mom’s off doing some investigation by herself my dad always goes crazy worrying about her. But I never really understood that fear until now.”
“Jon, even though there are risks involved in this investigation, I can’t just avoid it.”
“I know,” he agreed. “But I still worry about you. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I replied immediately. “You’re supposed to care for me, and it’s only natural that you worry when I take risks. You know, I worry about you whenever you run off on a rescue.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I do. But that’s natural. I see it as us looking out for each other. I guess the important thing is that we don’t let our worries stifle the other person and prevent them from doing what they want to do.” Jon nodded in agreement. “And Jon, about this whole investigation,” I continued. “I know I told you I wasn’t going to do it, but then I went ahead and took it anyway. And I didn’t even talk to you about it like I said I would.”
“Well, I have to admit it makes things more difficult to juggle,” he said. “But you had to take it, Kaylie. Jay needs you right now.” He meant the words, yet I could still see he was holding something back.
“But you do, too,” I argued. “Even though Jay is my family, so are you. And I know that every minute I spend on this investigation is one more minute that I won’t get to spend with you.” I thought back to our brief conversation earlier today.
“That’s true,” Jon agreed. “But we can still manage to make it work,” he told me. “We just need to put a priority on it. For instance, I know you’re going off to visit that professor today, but how about we meet up later this evening?”
“Okay,” I agreed happily, stealing the wig back from him and slipping it on my head once again.
“And about the whole worrying thing,” Jon continued. “You know I wouldn’t be nearly as worried if you weren’t going to investigate something with my mom. She’s a trouble magnet, so be careful, okay?” He was teasing me, but I could still see the inner concern behind his words.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
