There’s something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
Consuming, confusing
This lack of self control I fear is never ending
Controlling
I can’t seem
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
(Without a sense of confidence, I’m convinced)
(That there’s just too much pressure to take)
I’ve felt this way before
So insecure
– Crawling, Linkin Park

---

Friday, January 5, 2018

Kiremit House: Kitchen

Luke scratched out a route on the map, glancing up at the footsteps in the narrow hallway connecting the kitchen to the back of the house. “Cowboy.”

“Dad. You’re already up?” His son wandered over to the coffee pot, poured himself a cup. “Or didn’t you go to bed yet?”

“Door number two.” Luke folded his map. “Eliminated two more addresses. I’ve got one more to clear, then we’re going to tackle Spinelli’s list today, so maybe some good news tonight. I also have to call back home, reassure them, so that needs prep.” He frowned when Lucky just grunted. “The Dark Prince passed on the news you got yesterday. About being Patient 2.”

“Yeah. I spent yesterday reading the files to see if they’d give us anything.” Lucky leaned against the counter. “It’s not a lot of help. Elizabeth is right, it moves the timeline back, and then Britt pointed out the gap between me and Jake. No other patients between us got assigned numbers. Don’t know what it means yet, but—”

“Trust Little Obrecht to find those details.” Luke leaned back. “Makes you wonder if maybe your grandma was Patient 1.”

“Maybe.”

“We never got too deep in what was happening then. Your mom and I figured Lesley was payback for Laura’s escape and for Stavros. But I can’t think of anyone else that would fit. And it would explain Lesley’s condition when we found her.”

“There’s that.” Lucky squinted. “Britt came across something interesting in the medical files. Testing brain waves on a frozen body, mixed up in the Ice Princess files. It’s dated around the same time as the weather machine stuff. So there’s another possibility for Patient 1.”

“Well, it can’t be Stavros. He was after—” Luke stopped. “No. If the old bat could bring Mikkos back from the dead, she’d have done it already.”

“That’s true. Doesn’t mean they didn’t try. Maybe that’s why we can’t find anything for Patient 1 or 4. Maybe they didn’t survive.” Lucky looked past his father, to the window overlooking the minuscule yard. “Anyway, just a theory. I’m gonna send it to Elizabeth later.”

“Yeah, Nikolas said she was the one to pass it on to you. That—that was good of her.”

“Yeah, always nice to know I can’t abuse her enough to make her actually hate me.” Lucky snorted and started for the door.

“Cowboy, if Elizabeth knew what you were doing—”

“Dad—” Lucky stopped, took a deep breath. “Look, I made my decision when we found Jake. When we thought the only reason Jake was kidnapped was because of me — as long as Helena Cassadine was in the picture, she was going to target me and my family. She doesn’t care about Lulu. That was Stavros. For Helena, it’s always been about me.”

“You’re the weapon she never got to use the way she planned,” Luke said. “I know that—”

“She went after Jake because she thought he was my son. Biologically. You ever think about that? The opportunity presented itself with the car accident, so she took it. But it could have been Aiden. There’s a reason she switched those tests, Dad. Not just to cause trouble, but maybe she wanted to get her hands on my son. Cameron? Helena wouldn’t understand biology, so maybe he was safe. But I couldn’t take that risk. With any of them. I kept my distance, and it worked. They’re all safe. Happy. Healthy.” Lucky looked down into his coffee. “I wasn’t a good father even before we found Jake. I was too angry at how my life turned out to appreciate what I already had. I wasn’t who I wanted to be. I turned my back on my sons. Now they’re not mine anymore.”

“We’ll fix this. When this is over—”

“It’ll never be over, Dad. The Cassadines—they always come back. I made a choice that it was better if I did this alone. I don’t get to complain now because I am. Elizabeth did the hard part. She stayed behind, she did the grunt work, she raised them alone.” He rubbed his mouth. “I can feel sorry for myself, but what does that accomplish? No, Dad, if Elizabeth knew what I was doing, it wouldn’t solve anything. She’d only be more angry, and she’d be right. I made my choice,” he repeated. “It was the wrong one, but I have to live with it all the same.”

Kiremit House: Study

Nikolas scowled, shoved away the paperwork, glared at Britt. “What does this tell me? Nothing. It doesn’t give us anything—”

“You wanted me here to read files,” Britt said, slowly, and he narrowed his eyes. Why was she treating him like an idiot? “Don’t complain because we didn’t hit the jackpot on the first group. Lucky said Spinelli is still decrypting files and working on Maddox’s, too—”

“Four days.” He rose from the desk, went to the window. “Four days and we have nothing. All we know now that we didn’t before is that Lucky was Patient 2. And it doesn’t even matter.”

“It matters—hey, don’t roll your eyes at me, Nikolas. It matters. Not just because of what your brother went through,” Britt said, and he looked at her. “Though it’s interesting that you haven’t even tried to talk to him about it—”

“Who are you to demand—”

“It matters because it connects the experiments to Crichton-Clark an entire decade before we know the WSB was using it under Victor Cassadine.” Nikolas closed his mouth. “We know that Helena considered Jake part of this because she waited ten years to begin those experiments again. And then, within a year, she’s had at least four more patients. We know Patient 4 is between March 2011 and July 2012. But Crichton-Clark? That’s not a WSB facility after all.”

“Okay, so—”

“You want some big bombshell but what we’re getting is little pieces. Nikolas, my aunt was kept at Crichton-Clark. Nina,” she added, and he nodded. “She was sent there after a few years in the rehab center. When Nathan and I were getting to know each other,” she continued, “we talked about it. Lucky was kidnapped in April 1999, and my aunt was moved there three months earlier. It’s the same year. That might not mean anything, but it’s a part of the puzzle. Nina was kept there. Lucky. Drew, and probably Jason. And probably Jake and Patient 4. It all stays local, in New York.”

“That’s…” Nikolas sat back down. “That’s an interesting point.”

“Scarsdale isn’t close to Port Charles, but it’s close enough you can travel back and forth. Helena could have kept a close eye on all of her experiments and lab rats. My mother was just one of them.” Britt took a deep breath. “Will you let me contact her? To ask about those days?”

“No—”

“She could fill in some gaps — I don’t have to tell her what I’m working on — I can come up with a reason to bring it up—”

“It’s not worth the risk. And you said you couldn’t get in touch with your mother. She didn’t respond the last time you tried.” He narrowed his eyes. Just when he was about to trust her—

“I could try again,” Britt said. “I don’t know, Nikolas. You’re the one demanding results. Luke is working as hard as he can. Lucky and I are going to go blind from reading screens. The only one who isn’t producing anything is you.”

“You have no right—”

“You want answers. You want to end this, I get it. We all do. But demanding that I stop what I’m doing to report to you isn’t helping. If Lucky and I find something, you’ll know—”

“Lucky’s going over the same files as you, isn’t he?” Nikolas asked as Britt reached the doorway. She looked back, her eyes dark. “To be sure he reaches the same conclusions.”

“You mean to look over my shoulder. Yeah. He’s keeping tabs on me.” Her lips twisted. “He doesn’t trust me anymore than you do.”

Maslak Lab: Office

Valentin typed in a different string, grimacing when the drive rejected it. He was having absolutely no luck in breaking into his mother’s files — he hadn’t expected such deep security when Helena had sent the drive to Alexis for safekeeping. But that was the trouble with his mother. She rarely did what was predictable.

“Sir?”

Valentin glanced up, sharpened his focus when he saw Klein hovering in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Stefan Cassadine is beginning to regain conscious.” Klein paused. “As we discussed, he’s disoriented, drifting in and out. We are monitoring him, but it is a very promising sign.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Valentin leaned back in his chair. “Thank you. Inform me as soon as he’s ready to be questioned.”

“Of course.”

Klein disappeared, and Valentin returned his attention to his mother’s files. All he needed was a few more breaks to go his way, and he’d be able to claim victory over his mother. Again.

Kiremit House: Britt’s Bedroom

Britt scrolled down to the next page of notes and frowned at the chemical formula. She couldn’t think of a single reason why you’d want that combination of chemicals in a person’s body—was this meant to be part of the protocol, or—

“Am I interrupting something?”

Britt shook her head, not glancing up from her notebook where she’d scribbled more than a dozen chemical equations. “No. Just wishing I’d paid better attention in organic chemistry.”

Lucky closed the door behind him and sat on the small bed. He slid a tablet her way. “I, uh, I’m still working my way through the Patient 2 files,” he told her. “Nikolas will get pissed if I tell him I’m not reading yours, but—”

“I already told him you were,” Britt supplied. He frowned. “I figured you’d get around to it eventually, and there’s nothing there in today’s stuff anyway. Just pages of chemical formulas. I think they’re part of the protocol, but—look, if you’re mad I lied to Nikolas, you can tell him yourself—”

“I was going to ask you to cover for me,” Lucky said slowly. “I’d appreciate if you’d wait until I ask you to lie for me, unless it just comes naturally to you.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then dropped her eyes to the tablet. “Is that something you want me to look at? Or did you come in to insult me?” No point in being irritated, or in hoping that maybe he’d started to trust her, at least a little, after yesterday.

But no such luck. Britt was still Public Enemy Number One, and no one was going to let her forget it.

“I’m sorry—”

“No big deal. I’m the bitch who hurt your sister, and that’s all you need to know about me. Whatever. What did you need?”

Lucky grimaced, then tapped the tablet screen. “Okay, so I’m working my way through the original medical reports. I’m trying to understand the scope of Helena’s plan for me. I know what happened wasn’t the whole thing. But it’s all in German. And you can’t just feed that into a translator.”

Britt picked up the tablet, skimmed through the report. “This is from my father. He’s reporting to Helena that he feels confident that the patient—you—will respond to her commands. She, uh, worried that you might have some—” She frowned. “Okay, this word…it’s not one I’ve seen before, give me a second. German vocabulary—”

“Is a pain in the ass. They just keep shoving words together and hoping it works out.”

“Not too far off,” she murmured. “How it felt learning it—okay, yeah. So Faison thought Helena was unintentionally setting herself up for failure by not including a failsafe in your programming. Um, to break you out of the control in case it was needed.” She kept reading.

“Why would he want me to have a failsafe?”

“It’s…” she squinted. “It’s a protection against the programming failing. Brainwashing is hard to actually accomplish — the kind that can’t be broken. The natural kind. Helena didn’t have the time it would need. You weren’t a good candidate for that kind of thing. You know, the way the Manson girls killed for Charles Manson?” Britt said.

“Vaguely.”

“Brainwashing isn’t even really a great term for it. It’s more like a conditioning program. You build up this intense loyalty—” Britt paused. “And you need a candidate who has the right weakness, the right…deficiency to respond to the programming. The Manson girls tended to have a lot of relationship issues with their fathers, and he responded to that by becoming a father figure to them. Which was the first step in the conditioning. Once he had them hooked, he used drugs and sex to get them under his control. Within a year, they would murder for him.”

“You know a lot about it.” Lucky tipped his head. “You study under your father?”

“No.” Britt pressed her lips together. “No. But I knew who he was, and I wanted to know everything about brainwashing so that I could stop him if he tried it on me. I researched it as part of my Ph.D.”

“I thought you were a medical doctor.”

“I am,” Britt murmured, lost in the German document again. “I did a dual program. Okay, yeah — you weren’t a good candidate,” she repeated. “Faison said that you didn’t have a lot of vulnerabilities to exploit. You were, by all accounts, a well-adjusted kid with mostly healthy relationships. You wouldn’t respond to natural conditioning. Which is probably the procedure they said failed on you. Faison wanted to try a different kind of programming, but he worried that your conscience, that your natural self, would fight it. And it would ultimately fail. Ironically, building in a failsafe to break control can lessen the chances,” Britt continued. “Because it gives something for your brain to latch on to. It’s kind of fascinating,” she murmured. “If it wasn’t being used on real people.” She glanced up at him. “I have my mother’s interest in asking questions, Lucky. Not her lack of ethics.”

Lucky smirked. “Really? You consider yourself to be an ethical person?”

Britt sighed. “No. No, I don’t. Not anymore.” She slid the tablet back. “It’s not a report, Lucky. It’s a memo from Faison to Helena advising her to use a failsafe in the programming. He notes at the bottom that she denied it. It would have added too much time, and she wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to keep you a secret. It’s dated in August, the year you were kidnapped.”

“My dad found me a few months later. So she wasn’t wrong.” Lucky picked up the tablet. “I’m sorry. I told you I’d stop taking shots at you—”

“That wasn’t a shot.” Britt returned to her notes, picking up her pencil. Then paused. She looked up, straight ahead at the chipped paint on the bedroom wall. “I considered myself an ethical person once,” she said. “Before I came to Port Charles. Before—before a lot of things. When I was in college, in medical school, I thought I’d escaped. I knew who my parents were, and I knew who I didn’t want to be. I thought I’d made it.”

“Why’d you do it?” Lucky asked. “Take my sister’s embryo. Use it for yourself. She trusted you.”

“She did,” Britt murmured. She sighed, turned to face him. “I could blame being raised by a woman who only ever taught me that the end justified the means. That collateral damage was necessary when the prize was worth being won. I could blame my mother. I used to. I used to tell myself if she’d stayed away from Port Charles, it would have been different. But it’s a lie, Lucky. You want to know why I did what I did to Lulu and Dante?” She shrugged. “Maxie was pregnant. It was successful. I knew Lulu and Dante weren’t planning to use those embryos. I wanted Patrick to love me, to stay with me. And I saw what he had with Emma. I wanted a family. So I tried to steal it. They weren’t using the embryos, I thought, so why waste them?”

Lucky looked at her for a long moment. “And then after, when Maxie came back to you, told you she’d miscarried—”

“It was too late. I’d already taken them. I’d already done the procedure on myself. I had guilt, sure. But I thought — well, that’s Maxie’s problem. And Dante’s father was rich. They’d just get more. And then the baby started to grow—and I stopped thinking of it as hers. I started to think of it as mine. And I wanted to keep it. Selfish. Destructive. Cruel. Pick your adjective, Lucky. They all apply to me. I did a terrible thing, and I eventually got caught. I wish I hadn’t done it, but I can’t change it. Does that answer your question?”

“Yeah.” Lucky nodded. “Yeah. I won’t take any more shots, Britt. I can’t stop my dad or Nikolas, but I won’t do it again.”

“Can’t blame you if you do—”

“When I was married to Elizabeth,” Lucky said, cutting her off, “I slept with other women. Maxie. Sam. A year apart. I blamed the drugs for the first affair, and the second, I blamed Elizabeth for not loving me. Some of that’s still true. Just like being raised by a woman like Liesl Obrecht doesn’t exactly set you up for success. But I knew what I was doing. And I made the choice. I did it because I wanted to. We all have our regrets.”

Britt smirked, though there wasn’t much humor in the expression. “You’re comparing your lack of fidelity to me stealing your sister’s embryo and using it for myself? I appreciate it, Lucky. But they’re not comparable.”

“No. But I know what it’s like to do the wrong thing because I wanted to. You’re here, Britt, helping. Really trying. I can tell that, even if my dad and Nikolas can’t. And I’d be an idiot to turn that away.” He looked down at the tablet in his hand. “I can’t fix what the Cassadines broke in me. They took something I can’t get back, no matter how hard I try. They destroyed my life. And I want to see them gone.”

“I want that, too,” Britt said. “I want to put a little good into the world for all the damage I did to it. And I want to stop my parents. They’re not in retirement, Lucky. They just haven’t gotten involved yet. The Cassadines didn’t do this alone.”

“No, they didn’t. As long as you and I have the same goal, we can work together.”

← Chapter 49 | Chapter 51 →