Things aren’t the way they were before
You wouldn’t even recognize me anymore
Not that you knew me back then
But it all comes back to me in the end
You kept everything inside and even though I tried, it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when I tried so hard
– In The End, Linkin Park

---

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Kiremit House: Lucky’s Bedroom

Lucky set a steaming cup of coffee next to the laptop, then cracked his knuckles, preparing for a few hours of personal research before the rest of the house stirred.  His brother kept to his study most of the time, pouring over old Cassadine records as if he’d find a new truth after more than a year. His father kept late hours, scouring the city when most had gone to sleep. Luke wouldn’t wake until late morning.

Britt was the wild card, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d chosen the second bedroom on the top story of the narrow house, wanting some distance between himself, Luke, and Nikolas. And maybe to annoy his father a little bit, to make Luke wonder about Lucky’s loyalties. It didn’t bother him to be so close to the devious brunette — Lucky knew he couldn’t trust her and didn’t have to pretend that he did.

There weren’t a lot of people in this world Lucky did trust anymore—

The cell phone at his side buzzed — Elizabeth’s face flashed on the screen with a text message preview. Need a video chat. Urgent.

Lucky flicked on the laptop, pulled up the video conferencing software and made the connection. Elizabeth answered almost immediately, her face filling the screen. Behind her, he could make out the dark shadows of the kitchen at the house.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “It’s late there, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s—it’s about one in the morning.” Her eyes were tired. “But I wanted to talk to you. Nothing’s wrong. Nobody’s hurt,” she added.

Lucky swallowed hard. She wasn’t going to press him on that last terrible conversation, was she? He didn’t really have it in him—

“What’s going on?”

“Spinelli put together a new folder with files—Lucky, we—” She took a deep breath. “There’s no easy way to say this. Lucky, you were Patient 2.”

The words didn’t process at first. He squinted. “What are you talking about? That’s not possible.”

“Lucky—”

“There’s a mistake. I wasn’t—I mean, what happened to me was years ago. A lifetime. And it wasn’t the WSB—” He wasn’t part of this. No. Not the experiments that had done so much damage to Jake, to his family—

“Lucky,” she said gently. “That’s the reason we didn’t think of you before. But earlier today—yesterday, I guess for you—I found records that began right after the fire. They were on the drive with a prefix for the date of the fire.”

He exhaled slowly, looked up, away from Elizabeth, and blindly out the window overlooking the desk. “I’m—That’s—I’m Patient 2.”

“Yes. And Spinelli found some video files that had the same file prefix. There are four of them. Lucky, I’ve watched them. Jason saw the first one because I wanted to prove that I knew—but no one else has. Or will. They’re security footage of you.”

His chest felt tight, and he couldn’t quite make it work in his head. “Security footage.”

“We think—I think—that Helena intended to use these to taunt your parents. Or me. Or maybe Nikolas. I don’t know. She never had a chance to use them because you didn’t come back on her schedule. But there’s no other reason for them to exist— it’s just videos of you trying to get out.”

“Screaming for someone to let me out,” Lucky murmured. He’d screamed until his vocal cords had seized and he’d lost his voice. For almost two weeks. “Did you read the files?”

“I’m working my way through them, Lucky, but I had Spinelli put them into an encrypted folder for you. Lucky—”

“Thanks. Um—” His mind started to pick up again, started to process, and he was able to think. Elizabeth had made the connection and had stayed up so he could be told personally. And was apparently trying to protect him by not letting anyone else see what happened to him.

Even now, after all these years, her instinct had been to take care of him. Wasn’t that a kick in the face? He sat in this damn house, two floors up from Nikolas, the man Elizabeth believed to be dead, and she was back in Port Charles, raising the boys he’d promised to love as his own. He’d been lying to her for years—

“Thank you,” he repeated, opening his eyes, meeting hers. “For staying up. For doing this. For telling me. I—I’ll go through them, but so should—Jason—and Drew. I mean—” He shook his head, trying to clear the last of the fog. “To see if there are people in common. They were there. The videos, um—Christ.” He put his head in his hands. “This included me. I’m one of the patients.”

“I’m so sorry, Lucky. Is Luke there? Can he—”

“It’s good. It’s fine. Um, it helps that it’s you.” It shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve the consideration. And he didn’t know why it was hitting him like this. He’d known Helena had screwed with his brain, had planted triggers and traps inside his mind to destroy his life and use him as a weapon—why did it matter if his records had a number attached to him?

Because Jake had been the next number? Because Lucky hadn’t been the first or the last? Just one of many.

“Lucky.”

“Hey. Listen.” He looked at the screen, meeting her gaze, almost wishing they were in the same room. “You know—you know that—” All the words he wanted to speak were trapped inside. How could he do this? What right did he have to feel grateful to her when all he did was lie and hurt her? She’d never deserved it. Not even after the affair.  “I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“It’s a hard habit to break,” she admitted ruefully. “And I know that seeing those reports, it brought me back to what happened back then. How hard it was. How much I wish we’d known it wasn’t over. It kills me that the numbers went on. That Jake and Jason and Drew—God, what if there’s a Patient 7, Lucky?”

“We’re going to stop it this time,” Lucky told her. “Jake is the last child they’re going to use. I don’t want our boys to be part of this fight. Never again.” He gripped the sides of the desk. “The boys—and Spencer—all of them. You and I know what it’s like to have our lives destroyed by the Cassadines. We’re finishing it this time, I promise you.” He paused, wincing when he realized he’d referred to the boys as his, and hoped she was too tired to notice. “I’ll go through the files, and you—you show them to anyone who wants them.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself, Lucky.”

“You, too. Go get some sleep.”

“I will. The folder is in the drive with the rest of them, Lucky. Same encryption key.” Her eyes were sad. “Good night.”

The call ended, and Elizabeth disappeared from the screen. With a few clicks, he was inside the folder, and brought up a record at random.

July 12, 1999

Patient 2 is combative and impossible to control. Sedation works for a time, but he’s fighting through it. Developing a tolerance. Have related to Madame that he may not be a good subject for the procedure and that we should consider other methods of control. Madame has sent for Cesar to implement the next stage.

Beneath the report were the initials L.O.

Liesl Obrecht.

Kiremit House: Study

Three hours later, and two floors below Lucky, Luke Spencer was awake and ready to get back to work. Armed with a cup of coffee—his second of the day—he went to relate the progress they’d made the night before to Nikolas.

“I crossed off two sites,” he told Nikolas, setting the cup on the edge of the desk. “The first was a clinic, the second was an office building. No signs of a lab externally. Watched them both yesterday and did some recon last night inside to be sure. People come and go, the inside looks pretty standard. If they’re hiding something more, I can’t find the evidence.”

Nikolas grimaced. “I suppose it’d be too easy to find Valentin in the first two days,” he muttered. “Do you think it would help if you had Lucky on this?”

“Nah. He and Little Obrecht are making some progress on those files. Lucky told me last night they went through the old WSB records. Interesting that so many of them ended up on the old bat’s drive, huh? Looks like old Uncle Vic gave her anything she wanted.”

“The idea that Grandmother had unfettered access to their files isn’t a cheerful thought, no. And why the old Ice Princess files? Was she even involved in any of that?”

Luke shook his head. “Maybe behind the scenes, but never saw her until a few months later when Laura and I got married. It was just the brothers and Alex Q.” He picked up the coffee, took a seat. “I have two more places on the list today, and one of my guys from the old days is scoping a few more addresses. Spinelli gave us a few, too. I’ll start on them in a day or two, when we’ve cleared yours.”

Nikolas sighed, scrubbed his hands down his face. “Just all feels like a wild goose chase sometimes. I wanted to be part of it. Staying in Marseilles while you and Lucky looked for leads into Valentin’s origins and Britt was up in Russia last year — but we still have nothing.”

“Let’s hope that Spinelli gets into Maddox’s files. I’d be mighty interested in Jason’s records and finding out why Little Obrecht couldn’t get him out of that bed.  He says he woke up after she left. You don’t wonder about that?”

“No. She tried to explain the protocol to me once, but it—it didn’t make sense to me. And I looked at the notes we had from Robin. It—” Nikolas made a face. “It’s something about brain waves. And you needed just the right formula to get the brain waves back to consciousness without damage. You can’t just use the same one for each patient. I guess she couldn’t get the formula right, but maybe it stimulated everything enough that he could wake on his own.”

“Still, might be worth talking to her again. Let Cowboy handle the interrogation—”

“You think Britt’s not telling the truth about last year?”

“Hey. I don’t think anyone’s telling the truth, even my own kid. Question everything, that’s the Spencer motto.” Luke shrugged, sipped the coffee. “Don’t see why you trust Britt at all. Maybe she’s a double agent. She went on the run with her father, didn’t she?”

“If I take her at face value, she risked a lot to go to that lab,” Nikolas said slowly. “And I’m inclined to believe that she couldn’t wake Jason on the schedule we needed because he did wake up. Just wish we’d known. We could have extracted him ourselves—”

“And then you’d be forced to reveal yourself because no chance in hell Jason agrees to stay dead so you can go after Valentin Cassadine.” Luke snorted. “Look what he did as soon as he did get out of that lab. Went straight home, could have brought the whole world down around him, but it didn’t matter.”

“What do you make of the fact that nothing’s happened since he came home?” Nikolas asked. “Beyond Anna’s accident and Valentin’s trip here.”

“I think that the guy running that place in St. Petersburg didn’t know what to do with Jason once he was awake. If you’re right, and Britt’s work actually woke the guy, that wasn’t the plan. The doc at the lab sent men after Jason—but it stops when he gets to Port Charles. Because Valentin knows Jason’s awake. No reason to keep covering your tracks when the secret is out.” Klein pulls back, and Valentin takes a minute to assess things.

“What about Anna’s accident?”

“She got into that accident right after Maddox told her about the files. But Valentin doesn’t know that. All he knows is that the PCPD has Maddox for several weeks, then finally gets transferred to a cushy prison. And Anna was the one who questioned him. So whatever she knows from Maddox — he tries to stop her from doing anything with it.” Luke shrugged. “That’s my feeling. I think Valentin was perfectly content to let sleeping dogs lie when Morgan got home. For all he knew, Morgan accepted the conventional wisdom that Victor and Helena were in on it together with assistance from Faison. Valentin’s only connection is Ava Jerome and the clinic visit.”

“Which fits with our theory about Chimera last year,” Nikolas said. “Valentin triggered it and arranged for himself to look like the good guy. We never did find out how those men knew to invade the ballroom and come after it. But he got a lot of goodwill after that, or so you said.”

“Yeah, Laura told Lucky that it was getting harder to find anyone who was angry about what happened to you. Outside the family,” Luke added. “You were, uh, a bit erratic those last few years. Most people were willing to accept the self-defense theory. Not like Ava had a lot of credibility.”

Nikolas grimaced, looked away. “So Valentin was going to let Jason rot in that coma and just live his life. He wanted my money, my power. And once he had it—”

“He acted to secure it. Which means if he’s here in Turkey now, there’s something here he wants.” Luke got to his feet. “Like I said, Nikolas, I may not love the idea of Laura and Lulu mourning you back home, but you being dead used to be the only thing keeping Valentin quiet. Things got all stirred up with Morgan coming home — but they settled back down. You walk back onto the stage, no telling what Valentin does. He nearly murdered a ballroom of people just to boost his reputation.”

“And he’s the one that pilfered Chimera from the WSB for Helena in the first place. No one admitted it was missing until they got it back.” Nikolas met Luke’s eyes. “I’d hate to find out what else he stole from the WSB.”

“You and me both.”

Maslak Lab: Office

Valentin scrolled through his phone, deleting all but Nina’s most current voicemail, keeping one ear on the conversation with Klein.

“We have hopes for Herr Cassadine to awaken within a day or so. His brain waves are stabilizing, and rising towards the level of consciousness—”

Valentin glanced up, frowned. “What? Oh. Right. What do you expect his condition to be when he wakes? Will he be able to talk, to think, answer questions?”

“It’s difficult to say as of yet. His medical records don’t go back very far — he was transferred to this location only three years ago.”

“Three years.” Valentin considered this information. He hadn’t thought to ask how long Stefan had been in Turkey, but it might give him more insight into what Helena had been planning. “When exactly?”

Klein checked his notes. “Ah, November 12, 2014.”

“That…is interesting.” Nikolas had appeared to join his mother’s ranks about that time. Had he learned about his uncle’s survival and hidden him away? Or had Helena worried that Nikolas would find Stefan and moved him? “Do you know where he came from?”

“The lab in Mykonos. It was closed at that time and relocated here, but no one knew why. Most of the people who work here came from there. I’ve been gathering information, but Stefan is the only patient and has been for as long as anyone knows. The longest term of employment is six years.”

“Which means my dear old brother has been a vegetable since at least 2012. His records didn’t come with him?”

“No. Not that we’ve found. Does that matter?”

“It might. Mother never cared much for Stefan,” Valentin said. “If she kept him around, it was for a purpose. I’ve wondered if she used him as motivation for Nikolas, but it’s more likely that the Webber boy was Nikolas’s motivations. He had a way of going along to keep Helena happy, but I thought he was trying to undermine her from within.” But Mother never saw it that way. Nikolas likely would have done anything his grandmother required to protect the boy.

“Back to the matter at hand. You saw Morgan wake from a coma that was five years long. What was his condition?”

“We kept him under sedation,” Klein admitted. “When his brain waves began to improve. But the protocol notes disappeared from the clinic around that time. We had no way of knowing that the sedation meant he was awake, but—” He grimaced. “It was a type of locked-in syndrome.”

“Poor bastard,” Valentine murmured. He wasn’t a monster after all. He’d left Morgan in Russia because he wasn’t useful. But it didn’t mean there wasn’t a twinge of sympathy for someone who couldn’t move or talk or do anything but think. “How long did that last?”

“A few weeks. And once we stopped the sedatives, it took him some time to regain his strength. But he never communicated with us or acquiesced to any of our tests, so it’s really difficult to know. From what we know about the other brother, he had periods of consciousness, but it took a day or so to be fully awake. Most of the records were destroyed when the lab in New York burnt.”

“Yes, that tracks.” And Faison’s daughter had clearly taken the protocol notes with her when she’d left Russia. He’d contacted his father who claimed that he had no idea why Britta would have been doing anything related to Jason Morgan. It worried Valentine that Liesl’s daughter and his half-sister was out there, working on her own agenda, but it was a low priority. He believed his father — for now.

“Keep me informed of the progress. I need to return to Port Charles as soon as possible—” He looked back at his phone, at the text messages from his daughter. “My absence has been noted.”

Kiremit: Lucky’s Bedroom

Britt tapped on the inside door frame, her tablet in hand. “I need your help to make sense of these records—”

Lucky jerked his head away from the laptop screen, frowned at her. “What? What time is it?”

“Almost noon. I have these medical records, but I don’t understand how they fit in with the rest.” She folded her arms, frowned. “What are you doing in here? You haven’t come out all morning.”

“Let me see—” He held out his hand, and she handed him the tablet. “These are about the freezing techniques? Am I reading that right?”

“Yes. But—”

“The date—it’s the weather machine. I told you about that. Alexandra Quartermaine, Tony Cassadine, and Mikkos — they all ended in the machine and died.” Lucky frowned. “But this—this suggests that they’re working on defrosting brain waves.”

Britt sat on the edge of the bed. “Did the WSB take the weather machine apart? Learn anything about how it was built? Or worked?”

“If they did, we don’t have the files yet—” Luke looked at her. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, coming from a pair of supervillains myself, I have to ask — why would you create a machine that might accidentally kill you? Is it possible—knowing what we know about the Cassadines and what they’re capable of—the freezing technique wasn’t designed to kill—”

“Oh, hell.” Lucky exhaled slowly. “Maybe they were experimenting with freezing someone until they could be brought back. Cryogenics. That would explain these medical reports. We know Helena eventually perfected it. They had to start somewhere. Why not here?”

“It’s just a theory.”

“It’s not a bad one. I’ll put it on the list of notes to shoot back to Port Charles.” He handed her back the tablet.

She squinted at the computer screen behind him. “I thought we were supposed to be working on the Ice Princess records—those look more recent—”

“These came over this morning.” Lucky handed her the laptop. “I wanted your opinion on this one.”

Britt skimmed the report, began to read out loud. “Despite previous reports, Patient 2 is susceptible to the control words. After some consultation with Cesar—” Her voice faltered, but then she continued, “we determined that Madame’s request to continue the experiment was possible. Patient 2 was detained after he completed his mission, and Madame used the anchor to instruct Patient 2 that he does not love Elizabeth Webber and never has—” Britt stopped. “What is this?”

“It turns out that Patient 2 was a sixteen-year-old kid from Port Charles.” Lucky looked at her, his eyes grim. “He went to sleep one night in April 1999 with candles burning. They were later blamed for the fire that engulfed the garage where he lived. Patient 2 was removed to a research facility named Crichton-Clark where he was kept for the first two months while a team of doctors kept him sedated, and after some failed procedures that I don’t know about yet, they called in an expert. Cesar Faison came in, created control words, and brainwashed Patient 2 into becoming Helena’s pet.”

He looked back, out the window. “Patient 2 was aggressive, violent, and controlling because he knew something was wrong in his brain, but he couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t stop himself from saying and doing things that hurt the people around him. He nearly killed a man with a knife, poisoned his cousin, and committed a variety of other crimes in the name of his queen, Helena Cassadine. Even though his family knew after a certain point that there was brainwashing, they couldn’t break the control. Not fully, and not forever.”

“Lucky—”

“Right before the brainwashing and control over Patient 2 was finally destroyed, they played one more little trick. They told Patient 2 that he didn’t love the girl that had stood beside him at great personal, emotional, and physical risk. And even after the control was broken, Patient 2 never quite came back the way he’d been before. He never loved that girl the way he had before. And he was still aggressive, violent, and controlling. Because he knew something was wrong with him and he was never going to be able to fix it.”

Britt’s throat was tight as Lucky related these facts, his tone even and devoid of emotion. “You were Patient 2.”

“Yes.”

“And Helena used you like a weapon.”

“Yes.” He looked at her. “Go to the bottom of the report, Britt. Look at the initials.”

“I don’t have to,” she said softly. “I knew it as soon as I saw the notes. No one calls him Cesar. No one except my mother. She was your doctor.” She sighed.

“Yes.” He took a bracing breath. “Liesl Obrecht worked on my case and recommended Cesar Faison to brainwash me.”

“1999.” Britt looked at the report. “We lived in New York then. Scarsdale. Mother had a research position. I was in high school. I remembered it as a normal time. She had a steady job, and I was a cheerleader.” Her smile was thin. “You were the stable, steady job that made it possible for me to complete the last two years of high school in one place.” She slid the laptop across the bed. “Patient 2. That’s a long gap between you and Patient 3. Between you and Jake. That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is. Ten years.” Lucky cleared his throat. “You were a cheerleader?”

“Pom-poms and all.” She rose to her feet. “I’d apologize for my mother, but it wouldn’t make a difference. I can tell you I’m sorry for what she did. But she wouldn’t be. You were probably a means to an end. She never cared about the collateral damage. Only for the research. It’s why she never calls you by name.”

“Yeah, well, I guess she didn’t learn enough. Because she went back to work for them.” He looked at her. “If I find out your mother had anything to do with Jake—”

“You don’t need to tell me that my parents have forfeited their lives by what they’ve done. Prison can’t hold them. The world will be a better place when they’re gone.”

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