Times of Torment (Peregrine x ChaosMage)

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For nearly a minute after Silvia spoke to him, Jay was silent. Several times he opened his mouth, thinking he was ready to begins speaking, but at some point between his brain and his mouth the words got lost, and he found himself closing his mouth again, able to release nothing more than an exhalation of breath.

If you don't tell her, I will.

No

Then tell her something. Now. I'm tired of waiting.

There were some things you just didn't dare ignore. He didn't look up as he started speaking. He left his head bent forward, speaking towards the floor.

"I don't remember the point where I started to distinguish... it... from my own thoughts. It wasn't that obtrusive at first, and the transition was gradual. Nor do I remember when exactly it started telling me things that I wouldn't think myself. But I do remember the first time I learned that the things this voice was telling me were true."

At the time, Jay had been working at a small, local theater. The place wasn't part of a chain, and the person who managed it was also the owner. Because of that things were generally laid back. Far more laid back than they would have been at a large chain theater, where reputation was everything. The manager was good to his employees. He paid above minimum wage, and so long as the customers didn't complain he let them get away with a lot of things.

"I got fired from the theater about a week ago. I called to let you know. But there was a reason I left the full details a little vague." Slowly Jay filled in the gaps in the story of his firing, cleanly fitting together the pieces that hadn't seemed to quite lay together smoothly in his last rendition of the tale. Now he didn't skirt or distract. He barely even gave Sil a chance to speak. A part of him was afraid to stop speaking. They had never lied to each other. Their relationship was built upon trust. And Jay was desperately afraid that his omission of the truth would turn Silvia against him.

"From that point onwards... it just continued to grow." He briefly outlined how it seemed as though the dark voice had continued to swell inside of him, how its "advice" had become more poignant and more aggressive. "I knew it was getting... closer. Stronger almost. But there was nothing I could do. I knew I wasn't insane, but no one was going to believe that." His eyes were sad as he finally looked up at Silvia. "Even you. Can you honestly say you would have believed me if I told you that there was a magic voice in my head that was telling me to do thing?" He let out a self-mocking snort, and lowered his eyes once more. There was no accusation in his voice against Silvia. It wasn't her fault. If their situations had been reversed he wasn't sure he would be handling this as calmly as she was.

"This morning, things felt... different. It was as though... I don't know. As though things were finally... ready. I tried to run away, but I guess there is no running away from yourself." He was silent for another moment, and it was clear from some sort of shifting in the air that he was done speaking. But a moment later his head lifted again. Something foreign flashed in his eyes. He uncurled from his fetal position against the wall, and lounged comfortably.

"It really is funny that you never realized how perfect you were." For a moment it seemed as though he was still speaking to Sil, but there was something off about his words. Something off with his inflection. There was no doubt that it was Jay's voice, but it didn't seem like Jay. And a moment later that belief was made into a certainty.

"Jaylon," he crooned, voice soft and endearing. In some ways it sounded like the way a person would say the name of their lover, but there was something wrong about that too. Something cruel and twisted and sadistically possessive.

"This little experiment had had hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of trials, scattered all through time and space. And it never worked. Something always went wrong. But I never gave up hope because I knew, somewhere in that vast web of time, you were waiting for me.

All that time we were waiting for things to be, what did you call it? Ready? All that time I was running my tests. They were so mild that you can't connect them, even now. That time the popcorn popped bright yellow, the hundred dollar bill that the man insisted had been a ten only a couple of seconds ago, the one knife you'd had for years that was suddenly too long to fit in its slot. All of that was me seeing if you were going to break like all the others under the weight of my power. But you didn't."

There was a moment of echoing silence, but Sil would find herself unable to speak, even if she tried. The dark voice had not yet finished its monologue.

"Those moments where I offered you the pieces of information, those little tastes of power, they were tests as well, just of a different kind. I wanted to see how receptive you would be to me. And you weren't. But I don't mind. I live for a good challenge." The voice's borrowed eyes had been directed inwards, towards Jay, but now they changed focus. It almost seemed as though her brother was looking straight through her. But it was the eyes of a monster that looked deep within her.

"You are mine to now, just as much as he is," he told her, "albeit in a different way. Right now you are the only thing saving him. But someday you'll be the very thing that breaks him. You'll fight that destiny too." He grinned at her, feral and cold. "But that is just another part of the challenge."

There was a resounding silence, and then suddenly Jay slumped sideways, all of the life seeming to slip out of him. He crashed heavily into the floor, unresisting. Sil might not believe it, but he was fine. Physically there was nothing to keep him from pushing himself up. But at that moment he didn't have the will to move.

Why? There was no protest in the question, no accusation, and barely even a taste of curiosity.

Things are going to get a lot weirder than this, my little bird. If she is going to break easily, I want to know it now.
 
Silvia listened intently to Jays words. It was like he was reading from a story, his eyes lowered to the ground and his voice bordering on the monotone. She retained each and every statement that escaped his lips, even ones that sounded out of place for him. His tone when he asked about her belief in him took her by surprise. He knew her..how could he even ask such a thing!? With a slight tear in her eye, she slapped him across the face.
"Don't question me or my faith in you Jay! Didn't I tell you that before? Don't you remember!?" The only other time she told him that was the only other time she had slapped him. When they were at the orphanage and the family left after meeting with them. He was upset over not being picked and said he would never have a family or home. She slapped him for such foolishness and told him never to think that again.

He let out a slight snort and continued, his explanation finally diving into the events of Grand Central Station. When his body became more relaxed and less tense, she knew something was going on. When he was stressed, he wouldn't lounge like that. When Jay referred to himself as Jaylon, she knew it had to be the apparition. The demon speaking through him. It spoke of evil pranks and testing limitations and other sinister sounding things. Then it turned its attention on her.

Right now she was the thing saving him and she would be the thing that broke him? What did that mean? Was this..thing saying that because she was there that he would eventually lose it? Her face hardened and she stared at the demon speaking through Jay, even after his body collapsed to the ground. She knew that demon was still listening, she could feel it. "You're wrong. Whatever you are..whatever you think will happen, I won't give up on him. He is my brother and he is stronger than you. I am stronger than you think and you will not beat me...no matter what you try and pull. You will not win..I won't let you beat me..or him."
 
The laughter of the dark voice may have been contained inside Jay's head, but it was hardly silent. To him it echoed, bouncing around the room, reverberating off all of the cracks, and even seeming to steal some of the sunlight that fell through the windows.

She is adorable.

No, Jay disagreed quietly. Puppies are adorable. She is fierce. Like a lioness.

She certainly thinks herself fierce, I don't doubt that. The voice said. But that does not make her words any less adorable.

To that, Jay had no reply. He longed to believe his sister, longed with all of his heart, but the dark voice's possession of his body had scared him more than even he was willing to admit to himself. At Grand Central Station he had been the one moving. He had been the one to go there. But that... There had been no ounce of control over his own body while the voice spoke. He couldn't have stopped it, no matter how much he wanted to. How could they beat something which could read their every thoughts, which knew their every move, and which could, should it so choose, control their very bodies?

But admitting that he had no control was akin to admitting there was no hope. He had been traveling with this voice in his head for months, and, whether he liked it or not, he had grown used to it over that time. Things had shifted suddenly this morning, but he could shift as well. He could adjust. He had to adjust. For Silvia's sake, if not for his own.

He was tired of cowering, of being broken. And he didn't know if attempts at assertiveness would aid or hinder the dark voice, but nor could he know that weakness would have any different effect. He stood at a crossroads, and he could do anything he wanted. He could go left, he could go right, he could keep going straight. He could turn around, and go back the way he came. He could sit down, and not move at all. If he wanted to, he could leave the road altogether, and go forging out into the rolling fields beyond. And, maybe, if he wanted to, he could even go straight up, into the sky, or straight down, to deep within the earth. His options were unlimited.

That's the spirit.

Shut up.

He pushed himself up off the floor, turning to look at Silvia. At the moment, her concern for him was one of the most beautiful things that he had ever seen, and he loved her so dearly. He knew that the panic was always going to be there, one stray thought away, one moment of inattention or unexplained occurrence would remind him that he wasn't in control. But that didn't mean that he had to act as though he wasn't in control.

"What are we going to do now?" he asked, returning to a seated position. It wasn't the lounging grace of the voice, but nor was it the fetal position he had inhabited moments before. "We can't stay here. Not for very long. We can't stay anywhere for very long..." he trailed off, but quickly pushed the dismal thought out of his mind.

"We've got to do something." It seemed like a statement. There was certainly no inflection to hint that he was asking her a question. But there was some sort of laden uncertainty, a quiet, desperate, almost invisible hope that they could get away with doing nothing.
 
Silvia wasn't one to give up lightly, especially when Jay was involved. Whatever this thing was..an apparition, an evil spirit, a possessive poltergeist..it didn't matter. She would show it the worst kind of hell if it meant saving Jay. No matter what she had to do....
"We will...these outskirts are rarely visited even by the police. We still have some time before we have to move. We'll have to avoid heavily populated areas that have security cameras and well fed media outlets, so our options will be limited. Still, believe in me that I'll figure out something."

They had a decent amount of food and spare clothes. New york was massive and they could always hide out in the alleyways and the underground. Disguise themselves, but they'd have to watch out for the money grubby slums. They'd turn Jay over for any reward. "We'll stay here for another hour or so and then try and get out of New York. Make our way someplace close that has less threat to us, but some level of usefulness. Trust me Jay...I've got this."
She went back to her phone. Another text. FBI asking about Jay. What should I do? She didn't want her friend to be involved, but right now she was left with little choice. She texted back.

Complicated. Tell truth and stay out of this. Sorry. With that, she smashed her phone and broke any possible tracing tech into pieces. Getting a phone that can't be traced might be hard, but that's where we should start. After that, looking into what is going on with Jay.
 
"I believe you, Sil," Jay said quietly, his eyes darting from the broken pieces of her phone to her face, and then over to the door. "But we've got an unwelcome traveling companion who is going to make things a lot more difficult than that."

Unwelcome? Don't be so unfriendly.

I'll be nice when you are.

Oh, I can be many thing. Amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's just the A's. But don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

"If we run and hide for too long, our companion will get bored, and then it doesn't matter where we are.

Very true. The inside of your head is only so interesting.

I'm ignoring you now.

"We've got a razor thin line to walk. We have to keep interesting, or at least intriguing, without putting anyone else into danger. I've got to believe we can do it, but it is something that we need to keep in mind."

"Sorry about the phone," he concluded, rather lamely.

Don't worry too much about keeping me entertained. I've got my own plans. The FBI are going to find an entertaining surprise waiting for them once they get a little closer.

A shiver ran down Jay's spine. Anything the voice considered entertaining could not be a good thing.

Do you want a nationwide manhunt for me?

Oh, I'm thinking more along the lines of a worldwide manhunt. You are going to go down in the history books, Jaylon. I'll make sure of it. Everyone will know your name.
 
AT FBI HEADQUARTERS

Director Strauss was pacing. He hadn't yet heard back from Virginia or the agents that were supposed to investigate the apartment complex of the resident that left with the suspect from the recent attack. He had been taking and making call after call after call, hoping for a break from the ensuing chaos. Most of the agents had been working and following leads nonstop since the incident, taking few breaks besides getting food, going to the bathroom or catching what little sleep they could.

Right now he was sitting in his office with the secretary of defense, being grilling as to what progress he had made. "What do you mean there's still no word?" Strauss sighed. "That's just it sir. My second in lead here hasn't reported in yet, but she should be shortly. I promise that the minute I hear something that I will update you and the other cabinet members as to what is going on. Until then, I can only ask that...."

His phone rang and it seemed like a explosion. Both men jumped and he grabbed the receiver, holding it to his ear. "This is Director Strauss." In his mind, he realized he forgot to check who the caller was and silently hoped it was Virginia with some good news. Otherwise, this was going to turn real bad..real fast.
 
It had been a little bit of a surprise when Strauss had ordered Ginny out into the field, but she accepted the order with only a tiny bit of mental grumbling. News of the attack on Grand Central Station had spread over the country like wildfire. Every reporter was having a field day, and blame was flying everywhere. There was no doubt that the eyes of the entire nation were on the people who were working on this case, and Ginny had done her best to make sure that she would always be in the most valuable position. Usually that meant combining rank with little work, but right now the American public would only recognize hard work. That was exactly what Virginia intended to give them.

As soon as they had arrived at the apartment complex the team had scattered off to their various duties. Most of them would be interviewing the various tenants of the building, looking to see if any of them could offer up information about Jaylon Brets or Silvia Wilson, the mysterious woman who owned the apartment that Jaylon had last been seen at.

Most of the questioners would not get much useful information, but the most important details were relayed up to Ginny immediately through the use of simple radios. This was how she learned, from a close friend of Silvia, that Jaylon and her had grown up together in foster care, and while there was nothing in records to connect them to each other, which is why none of the agents had known what to make of their departure together. But the two were closer than many siblings.

It was doubtful that they were going to find anything useful in Silvia's apartment, but they were most certainly going to check. That did not really bother Ginny. Every single person in the United States was looking for Jaylon now; information on him would turn up eventually. No, what bothered her was the fact that Jaylon and Silvia had run. It was one thing to flee from the scene of as devastating of a crime as the Grand Central Station Bombing, but it was quite another for both of them to flee from the safety of Silvia's apartment. It was starting to look more and more like Jaylon was somehow intimately connected to the attack. Ginny was not going to jump to any conclusions, nor would she tell Strauss about her growing suspicions until he reached the same conclusion himself. But she would keep her eyes peeled for any information that would help to affirm her conclusion.

The same techs who had come and gone from the remains of Grand Central Station were with her now, ready to look for any pieces of forensics that would link Jaylon to the attack. They had painted a strange picture for her about the bombing, one that only added to the strangeness of the whole situation. The annalists had, rather hesitantly, informed Ginny that the explosion had not originated from a single source, but had rather seemed to start instantaneously from every square foot of the main lobby. What was even stranger was the fact that there was no chemical residue left over from the explosion, no traces to say what kind of explosives had been used in the attack.

No, Ginny did not expect any answers from Silvia's apartment to the constantly growing mysteries surrounding this case. What she found, however, was more than enough to completely turn this case on its head, in an entirely impossible way.

Silvia's apartment was completely empty. Not just in the sense that the furniture had been removed, but truly and completely empty. The carpet was gone. The walls separating the living room from the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom were gone. The paint coating the walls was gone. All outlets for plumbing or electricity were gone. Ginny hovered on the edge of the door, unwilling to stride boldly into such an oddity. The forensics team, however, had no such doubts. They gently moved her aside and went in to collect whatever evidence they could find.


An hour and a half later, both Ginny and the forensics team were forced to admit defeat. And Ginny was no longer able to delay her call to the director. She stepped down a side hall, determined to keep her voice upbeat as she offered her explanation. Maybe, if she was absurdly lucky, he wouldn't ask about what she had found in the apartment.

Yeah, right.

"This is Hecker," she said, before diving quickly into her information. She didn't give him a chance to ask. "Silvia Wilson, the owner of the apartment that Jaylon was last seen exiting, is a foster child who grew up in the same orphanage as Jaylon. From the reports of neighbors and friends it has been a while since they have seen each other, but they talk on the phone frequently and are quite dedicated to each other.

"It is likely that Silvia is hiding Jaylon somewhere until he recovers from the experience. Whether or not she will bring him in is uncertain."

"Good," Strauss replied. "What did you find in her apartment?"

Ginny was silent.When it became clear that she was doing far more than just gathering her thoughts, Strauss was forced to prompt her. "Hecker."

"There was... nothing, sir."

"What do you mean, nothing? Were you able to place Jaylon there?"

"No, sir."

"No? Were you able to find anything that was linked to the scene of the crime?"

"...no sir."

"Hecker, what was there?"

"Sir... there was nothing."

"What on earth do you mean by that?"

"The furniture was gone." She could almost feel Strauss glowering at her from the other end of the line. "The carpet was gone. The internal walls were gone. The paint was gone. The forensics team was able to find no organic material within the walls. Not even dust."
 
Gone?

How could everything just be gone? It was improbable..impossible..inconceivable. There was always evidence left behind from wherever people went. A fingerprint, a follicle of hair, a patch of skin that fell off somewhere, even a drop of sweat. For her to say that there was nothing was disturbing to say the least. Did this mean that whoever this pair was had professional help?

"Did you check the furniture? What about the carpet? How about the sinks and windows?" His tone was slightly insulting and he instantly regretted what he said. Hecker was a excellent agent in and out of the field and for him to treat her like a rookie was out of line. This assignment must be getting to him more than he thought. When she told him that everything was gone; the evidence, the furniture, the carpet, and that the whole apartment was brand new like no-one had ever stepped inside was hard to believe. What the hell is going on here!?

"Alright, have the team take samples and pictures regardless. Return here and help me get this sorted. Leave a couple agents outside the apartment in case they decide to come back. We need to try and figure out where these two are heading...get ahead of them in their game plan. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get them in custody and get some answers!" He slammed the receiver down and headed into the main room where they had the billboard full of pictures and information, what little they had to go on.

"Attention agents, so far it seems that the apartment was a bust. As crazy as that sounds, that means that everyone here is going to be working overtime. Find anything we can use! Camera feeds, eyewitnesses, at this point I'll even take what burger joint they like to go to! Figure out where they are or where they're going! Move it people!"
The room flooded with moving bodies. They all knew the importance of this case and could see how much it was affecting the director. The wear and tear was evident on his face and body. He wanted this to end, but felt like this was only the beginning.
 
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As soon as the pictures were taken, Hecker was out of the building and into her car with one of the forensic members. She wasn't fleeing. That would be both inelegant and pointless. No, she had simply accepted the fact that there was nothing for her to find at the apartment, and that her time would be better spent elsewhere. The complete lack of things in that apartment, the total impossibility of that, had not unnerved her. She was an experience field agent, and nothing could throw her off balance. Truly.

She let out a quiet breath, running her hand over her face, before turning to the man who sat in the passenger seat of her car. He looked rather uncomfortable to be in here with her, but no matter how much that room in there had fazed her she was not going to let it be.

On the drive back they ran through every possibility, no matter how unlikely. Eventually the analyst warmed up to Ginny's faked easygoing attitude, and started to actually have some fun with the guessing game. Ginny didn't complain as some of his guesses got ridiculously wild, alien abduction being one of the things to come up, but she did keep the conversation mostly steered towards the possible.

Ultimately, they were both forced to conclude that the time frame made everything they could suggest nearly impossible, and that alien abduction was starting to look like the most probable solution. The construction crew that would have been needed to remove the walls that normally closed off the bedroom and bathroom would have left behind massive quantities of sawdust and powder. The cleanup crew that would have had to come along behind them to render the place clean of even a trace of anything would have looked like they were from the CDC. Yet none of the neighbors had noticed anything. Not even long before the attack at Grand Central.

How long had they been planning this? More and more, this Jaylon fellow was starting to look like a terrorist, a man who had been meticulously planning this attack. But then why had he gotten caught on the camera? It wasn't as though it was hidden. And, if he wanted to toy with them he would have left them some sort of clue at his apartment. But there had been nothing.

By the time that Ginny got back to the office the various other people working on the case had gathered together a small handful of information. Silvia was the registered owner of a car, and it had not been there when the FBI unit had arrived. Either they had dumped it, or they had driven away in it. They sent the information to the police, who would keep an eye out for make, model, and the license plate number specified.

Finally, one of the techs searching through the countless hours of security footage that covered the whole city found something. The car had been caught by the camera on an ATM, driving out of the city, towards one of the abandoned industrial sections that bordered the edge of New York City. The license plate was clear and uncovered, and almost seemed to glow in the photo, so clear was the shot.

There was something odd about this. Something that made absolutely no sense. The apartment spoke of professionals, yet driving their own car to such an obviously abandoned area spoke of complete amateurs. Or a trap. If they were clever and well-connected enough to do that to the apartments (a report had come in that Jaylon's own place of residence had been wiped equally clean) then they would have simply disappeared completely.

Maybe it was a trap, maybe it was a red herring, maybe it was just supposed to look like one, maybe one of them had accidentally fell down the stairs and now had a concussion and was making poor decisions. It was all just more speculation. Speculation was all they had, and it was driving her mental.

Unfortunately, the video footage of the car was the only lead they had, and until they found something else, decoy or no decoy, trap or no trap, they would be following it.
 
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