Hold On! - Season 1 (17 page)

Welcome Home

Brandon and Belinda held themselves perfectly still, trying not to attract Payne’s notice.

Caught in a vacuum, Brandon knew he was in a position to apprehend him. But at what cost? The man facing him was a killer. He was one of the men responsible for the attack on Carringby Industries and the deaths of many. However, the killer didn’t recognize them and appeared to be more concerned with catching his train. Unable to do anything, they watched as he ran from the ticket office and down the stairwell to the platform.

With another sigh of relief, they approached the ticket window.

“How’re you doing, sir?” Brandon said, feigning an ultra-friendly persona. “We’re trying to get to Aspen, Colorado.”

The vendor said, “Quite a trek. From here, you need to go to San Francisco.
From there, you’ll take the California Zephyr to Glenwood Springs, and then a bus to Aspen. It’ll take a couple of days.”

“I know. When does it leave?”

“There’s been a delay due to a technical problem. The next one leaves at seven a.m.”

Brandon looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. “That’s over seven hours.”

“I know. I’m sorry, sir.”

Knowing he had no choice, Brandon conceded. “OK. Is there anywhere around here where we can rest while we wait?”

“Sure. You can use the waiting room. You can also buy coffee and food in there.”

“Thanks.”

The vendor calculated the cost of their journey and Brandon handed him the cash for the tickets.

The waiting area seemed to have a church-like quality, with tiled flooring, and rows of brown, leather-cushioned seats. Brandon and Belinda found two in the far corner and sank into them.

Belinda sat in stony silence.

Brandon draped his arm around her shoulder. “It’s all over, baby. We’ve done everything we can. Once we get back to the cabin, that’s where we’ll stay. I’ll drop the Turbo Swan off someplace where the army can find it, and then we’ll stay put.”

“It’s not just that, Brandon,” she said. “It’s you.”

He frowned, confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What happened to you when those guys pulled knives on us?”

He looked away trying to picture the moment. They’d arrived at the end of the street to find themselves facing a gang. The next thing he remembered was the disturbing vision of himself in Afghanistan. Then he was looking down at the leader of the gang with a gun in his hand. But what had happened in between? And why hadn’t he thought about that until Belinda just prompted him? “What did happen?” he said.

“The same thing that happened in Wyoming. You moved like lightning. You kicked the knives out of their hands with one kick, and then you beat the crap out of every one of them. One guy pulled a gun on you, and you caught his arm. The gun went off and he shot his friend behind you. You laid waste to them all within seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He shook his head as he tried to process what she was telling him. It sounded utterly absurd.

“You get this weird look in your eyes, like you’re somebody else. And when it happens, that scar on your forehead becomes deeper. It’s really creepy.”

He touched the scar, almost without thinking. Belinda’s words were profoundly disturbing. He truly had no answer for her, neither did he have any understanding of what it all meant. He was aware of ‘something’ that came over him in a heated moment. He’d managed to pull it back and stay focused when they were in the deserted factory. But what did it all mean? “I was in the army. We were trained in armed and unarmed combat, and—”

“No way, Brandon. This wasn’t army combat training. This was expert martial arts and acrobatics. Do they teach you
that
in the army?”

He held her tightly, shaking his head. “I . . . don’t know what to say. Honestly, baby. I don’t.”

She looked into his eyes and then rested her head on his shoulders. “Just hold me.”

There was a considerable police presence in the station throughout the night. Photographs of Brandon, Belinda, and Payne were handed out around the building. One officer actually asked Brandon if he had seen himself, his disguise was so convincing.

The hours rolled on, and Belinda eventually fell asleep in his arms. He remained awake all night, his thoughts in turmoil.

Brandon and Belinda stood on the platform the following morning. Despite their disguises, they both struggled to avoid appearing apprehensive. Even the station attendants caused them to feel anxious, as though their uniforms suggested ‘authority.’

A middle-aged lady holding a Burberry purse stood beside them. She smiled politely and they reciprocated.

To their relief, they heard their train coming and turned to see it in the distance growing larger by the second.

“Here we go,” Brandon said.

Belinda gripped his hand and instinctively walked toward the train, as though the few steps would get them to their destination faster.

Without warning, a scream came from behind them. They turned with a start to see two young thugs charging toward them. Brandon noticed one of them holding the Burberry purse. Then he saw the look of horror on the face of the lady who had smiled at them.

Belinda instinctively backed away when the muggers were almost on top of them.

Brandon spun around, his left arm shooting out with perfect timing to collide with their solar plexuses. The blade of his hand caught one with devastating force, and his elbow struck the other. The Burberry purse fell from the attacker’s hand as he fell to the platform in a fetal position with his partner. They both writhed in agony, and three station guards hurried over to them. The commuters scurried away from the scene with sounds of distress all around.

The train pulled up and the doors opened.

Brandon grasped Belinda’s hand again and ushered her into the crowd of boarding commuters. “Come on. Keep your head down and get inside.”

Once inside the train car, they watched the commotion and unrest outside through the window. The lady retrieved her purse and two police officers arrived to assist the station attendants with the two muggers.

“What happened?” the first officer said.

“T-these men took my purse,” the lady stammered, “and then this man stopped them.”

“What man? Can you point him out?”

She looked around but there was no sign of him. “I don’t see him.”

“What’d he look like?”

“I-I wasn’t paying too much attention, but I think he was about mid-forties, brown hair, and he had a neatly-trimmed beard.”

“What was he wearing?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

The officer looked into the train through the carriage window, but he could only see a swarm of people inside scurrying to find places to sit. With only himself and one colleague to arrest the two thugs, he decided his priorities lay somewhere other than questioning a passing hero.

Brandon and Belinda took the last two seats facing the entrance.

After a few minutes, all was finally clear, and Brandon chanced glancing across at the platform. All of the travelers had boarded, but he could see the station attendants helping the police to escort the muggers away in handcuffs. Another attendant appeared to be lending a sympathetic ear to the lady with the purse.

As the train started up, he sat back and tried to relax. Glancing at Belinda, he noticed her eyes were closed as though in relief.

It gradually came to him that he’d just taken down two men, and he vaguely recalled the way in which he’d struck them. It had happened so quickly it was a haze to him. But it seemed to fit with what Belinda had told him about him seeming to display martial arts skills. He remembered her telling him in Wyoming that he’d beaten the man who’d accosted her with karate. He’d never practiced martial arts, and yet he’d just taken down two muggers without even thinking about it. It didn’t make any sense.

He considered the particulars of what had happened. His self-imposed mission to expose Treadwell’s conspiracy on national television had almost ended in disaster, and he always knew his credibility was challenged. For years, governmental conspiracy theories had been circulating in Western culture, never more so than since 9/11. Most people dismissed such ideas as the ravings of the disenfranchised and socially outcast, and they would have been correct—
then
.

But this time, it was for real. As he thought about it, he became certain such public doubt had played right into Treadwell’s hands. It would’ve encouraged his confidence that any accusations the attacks had come from within would be dismissed as ridiculous. This was another obstacle Brandon’s story had to overcome.

The train built up speed and the farther it took them away from Los Angeles, the easier they felt.

Exhausted from being awake all night, the mild hum of the train’s engine and the rumble of the track gradually lulled them to sleep.

***

The two lovers braved their way uphill through the snow after their long train journey and a bus ride from Glenwood Springs. It had taken mere minutes for them to feed themselves into their pre-packed snow boots. It was then a three mile trek to the wooded lot.

Driven to despair by the itching of her disguise, Belinda hadn’t been able to bear it any longer. Out of sight, she and Brandon finally managed to remove the prosthetics.

“Let me know when . . . we . . . get there . . . Brandon. ‘Cause then . . . I’m going to . . . throw . . . up,” she said, gasping for air.

“It’s not much farther. I don’t know why, but I can’t see the Swan.”

Night was falling
as the exhausting ascent up the snowy mountain continued. The moon provided them with illumination, but it was becoming darker by the moment.

They arrived at the trees, but the Turbo Swan was nowhere to be seen. Brandon pointed to the area where he’d left it and noticed the snow was extremely dense. “It looks like it’s been almost submerged by a snowfall. Hang in there, babe. We’re nearly there.”

Out of breath, she didn’t respond.
So, this is love,
is all that went through her mind.

They plowed through a forest of aspen trees and fourteen inches of snow until they reached the aircraft.

“Do you think it’ll still fly?” Belinda said.

“It’ll be fine. Get in.” He opened up the doors and snow fell off them.

After climbing into their seats, they braced themselves for flight.

“OK, sweetheart. It’s over,” he said with a hopeful note of finality in his voice. “Let’s go home.”

She sank exhausted into the seat, and the Turbo Swan came to life. As it lifted off, a joyous smile spread across her face. There was nothing and nobody around who could possibly harm, or even find them. Her mind relaxed in anticipation of the wonderful, serene life they were returning to, once and for all.

They were finally free.

Brandon unlocked the cabin door and stepped inside, bewildered by a candle burning on the mantelpiece. He quickly detected a familiar scent. “Belinda? Do you smell smoke?”

She followed him in, and the unmistakable smell struck her. “Cigars?”

“Hello, Brandon.”

The disembodied voice startled Belinda as was evidenced by her chilling scream.

Brandon turned toward the sound of the voice. It seemed to come from the far side of the living room. He could make out a shock of thick white hair above the top of his leather recliner by the moonlight.

And then the face leaned forward, emerging from the shadows.

Brandon’s jaw dropped with horror and mystification. “N-no, it can’t be.”

Garrison Treadwell grinned cruelly, illuminated eerily by the candlelight and the cold, lunar reflection emanating through the rear window. With a glass of brandy in his hand, he took another draw upon his Cuban cigar before offering his sinister greeting: “Welcome home.”

Shadows of the Night

“How
did you find this place?”

Brandon’s first question upon finding his enemy sitting in his safe haven spilled out of him uncontrollably. It was the place nobody else could have possibly known about. His grandfather had built it to bring his mistresses back to, and to hide his loot in. His grandfather had told his father about it. His father had told Brandon about it on his deathbed. Even his mother didn’t know about the cabin. Belinda was the first non-Drake to learn of its existence.

And yet there sat Treadwell.

The crooked politician placed his brandy glass on a small table beside him and drew a pistol from underneath his jacket. “I’m only using this gun to talk to you, Brandon. After all, I know what you can become when you lose your temper.”

“How did you get in here?”

“In a helicopter. It’s parked just over the ridge on the north plateau. I assumed you’d be coming up from the south so I wasn’t about to leave a snow trail. I wanted to surprise you. I used the basement entrance to get in when I arrived this afternoon.” His glance swept the room approvingly. “It’s quite comfortable isn’t it? I have a similar cabin in . . . another state. As you know, a home in a remote, isolated location with self-contained electricity is perfect when you need to lay low.”

Brandon moved steadily toward him. “How do you know about the basement entrance?”

Treadwell trained the gun on him, halting him in his tracks. “Young man, I know far more about you than you know about yourself. In the beginning, I had no idea why you’d fled from Mach Industries, until you intervened at Carringby. I always knew where you were hiding out, but I had to be cautious. I’m just as protective about this cabin as you are. Secrecy from the world is its purpose. ”

Belinda came up behind Brandon and held him tightly. He knew, with everything they’d been through, Treadwell was thoroughly unnerving her with his creepy manner.

Treadwell extinguished the cigar in an ashtray next to the brandy glass. “Ms. Reese, don’t think he can protect you. He can’t even protect himself. Surely my being here is proof of that.”

His dignity compromised, Brandon’s rage began to rise and his voice emerged as that of a guttural beast. “What do you want, Treadwell?”

“Ah, there you are. I suspected there would be a little of the
old you
remaining.” The senator grinned, intentionally goading Brandon while hiding behind the protection of his loaded pistol. “You must understand, my boy. I created you. I trained you, tested you, put you through the most rigorous of ordeals, until I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that I had my man.”

“I barely even know you,” Brandon said. “You put me into the weapons testing program after I got hit on the field. I met you once in the hospital, and again at Mach Industries. That was it.”

“That’s only what you remember.”

“So, what? You’re saying I’m brainwashed, is that it?”

“Brandon, almost everybody is brainwashed to some degree, even if they believe they’re truly free. For example, parents allow their children to play video games full of gratuitous violence. But they become horrified if the child simply hears a profane term. Their sense of priority is completely reversed.”

“Point taken. Now, what do you want?”

Treadwell reached across with his free hand, picked up his brandy again, and sipped it tauntingly. That complacency caused a chill to surge through Brandon. Belinda tightened her grip on his shoulder.

“I don’t want anything anymore, Brandon,” Treadwell said with an uncharacteristically sad tone. “My life is over. You won, my boy. You destroyed me.”

“What did you expect? You used members of my own division to try to kill me.”

“Merely a test. It was doubtful I was going to be able to reacquire you in Wyoming, so I used the incident to see if you would kill one of your own in order to survive.
Even before that, I’d decided to use your cheap heroics as a means of testing your abilities.”

“Testing my abilities?”

“Yes. I ordered a team of my most highly-trained operatives to kill you at Colton Ranch just to see if you could thwart them—and you did. Just not in the way I expected.” The senator paused for a moment to allow his words to register before resuming. “In Wyoming, I saw that your former savagery had been dominated by your intellect. I gave you that blessing.”

Brandon’s brow crumpled under the weight of what he was hearing. “What are you talking about? What ‘former savagery’?”

“You received a head injury when you rescued David Spicer in Afghanistan from a grenade.”

Brandon touched the scar on his forehead. “It healed. So what?”

“The trauma to your head induced amnesia, and so . . . we gave you new memories.”

Brandon was barely aware of Belinda coming around to face him, but he knew she was looking into his eyes. “New memories?” he murmured, trancelike.

Treadwell stood and made his way toward him, his left arm outstretched, and his right brandishing the pistol. “Kid, I did what I could to protect this country. You were a test case for a new breed of operative.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You
were
in Afghanistan and you did save Spicer. Your head injury gave us an opportunity to rid you of your past.”

Brandon felt the scar on his forehead throbbing. “W-what are you saying? What past?”

Carefully, Treadwell stepped closer. “You have an IQ of one hundred forty-four, Brandon. You’re far brighter than most. You were also a martial arts champion, an extremely talented athlete, and a killer of the highest caliber. They used to call you The Scorpion. You would strike fearlessly and without hesitation, which is far more lethal than mere skill. Willingness overshadows training every time, and you, my boy, have both.”

“But . . . ?” The fighting skills, the spin-kicks, and aerial acrobatics Belinda had told him about finally made sense. It also explained how he didn’t understand it when she’d told him what he’d done. Now it was all clear. He was a trained martial artist, but—why didn’t he remember?

Treadwell continued. “After the explosion in Afghanistan, we treated you with electro-chemical appliances and subliminal induction in order to give you a new memory. A new persona. I didn’t want to lose you, you were so useful. But you were also very dangerous and uncontrollable. Nobody ever liked you, Brandon. In fact, you were hated. I gave you a kind and sensitive personality to make you more manageable.

“You were the ideal test case for memory revision. If the operation was successful and you believed your false history, I knew you’d be the perfect operative. A trained combatant, a brilliant engineer, and one who would be easy to control. I only failed on the last point, it seems.”

“What kind of operative?” Brandon demanded. “And why put me in Mach Industries?”

“You were a different person. I had a medical report written up saying you were no longer fit for combat. I had to get you far away from anyone who knew you. I put you to work at a place where your non-combat skills could be utilized, and where I could keep a close eye on how your mind was responding to your new self.”

“Putting me there was your big mistake.”

“Indeed it was. Clever boy that you are, you discovered my other plans somehow, and then everything I’d worked for came apart.”

Brandon swallowed hard as the cold grip of shock took hold of him. “Why, Treadwell? Why?”

“Our country needs to be great. Our economy is disastrous. I needed to create problems. I needed to make us look like we were under attack again. I would then arrange for a scapegoat nation, retaliate, and the war profits alone would have revived our economy.”

“At the expense of how many innocent people?”

“Collateral damage,” Treadwell said flippantly. “I have only myself to blame for your moral attitude toward all this. There was a time when you wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. The national image alone would have been worth the death toll. We would have been victims yet again, and fighters to the end.”

Brandon looked at Belinda’s expression of abject fury. He couldn’t imagine believing this if he was in her position. It would seem like a nightmare. Like the world had turned insane. He turned back to Treadwell. “What about my memory?”

“You were injured,” Treadwell said casually. “You lost your memories. We gave you new ones. We even cleaned up your overly-stained military record for you.”

Brandon lurched forward, his heart bursting with passionate rage. His right foot shot up with lightning speed, kicking the pistol out of Treadwell’s hand. With both hands, he gripped the older man’s throat. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Treadwell!”

“Brandon, stop it. Stop it now!” Belinda pleaded.

Through the haze of rage, he saw the face of his nemesis assume a dark shade of purple, alerting him to what he could become if he continued. Immediately, he released him.

Treadwell sank to knees gasping for air. After a few moments, he caught his breath and stood. “Oh my, there’s still some of the old you in there, after all.” He paused again, and then unleashed the ultimate torture upon Brandon. “You have no mother in New Mexico, no father who had a position in the army, and you never had an unscrupulous grandfather with a small fortune in a cabin in the snow.”

You have no mother.
The words resonated in Brandon’s soul like shards of ice. But how could that be? He loved her so deeply, and eagerly wanted Belinda to meet her. She was his only family. The hope of the three of them being together someday had been his anchor, his dream of a time when all the horrors of running and the conspiracy had come to end. He remembered his mother with such clarity—the color of her hair, her perfume, her smile, everything about her.

In numb devastation, he looked at Treadwell again. “Why?”

“Because I wanted the perfect soldier, Brandon. A covert operative who was a born killing machine, but who was brilliant, under my control, and unlikely to turn against me. I wanted
you,
and I was willing to do anything to make you mine.”

“For what?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, other than to say, there is another out there who won’t rest until he has what he wants from you. I’ve already set your final test in motion. A killer who’s, arguably, even more merciless than you were.”

Desperation came over Brandon. He found himself becoming almost drawn to Treadwell for comfort. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”

“It
is
true.”

“I-it can’t be. Who the hell am I?”

“Your name is Brandon Drake. That much is true. But nothing else is.”

“So, what is?”

Treadwell laughed maniacally, as though he was on the verge of madness. “You thought you were the only one who knew about this cabin. You thought the money in the basement was a secret. Don’t worry, it’s still there. It’ll be a moment before the two of you are the only people on earth who know about this place.”

“You son of a bitch!” Brandon spat.

“I was alone when I narrated the details of this cabin to you during your memory-revision procedure. Not even the neuro-specialist I hired to perform your reconditioning has any knowledge of it. The only person who was sure to maintain its secrecy was the one who was programmed to do so.” Treadwell picked up the pistol, sat back down in the recliner, and placed the gun to his temple. “You’re a puppet, Drake. Sayonara, genius. You’ve got yourself one hell of a mystery to uncover.”

“No!” Brandon shot forward in an attempt to seize the gun, but he was too late. Treadwell pulled the trigger and a spray of crimson instantly painting the back wall.

Belinda screamed, her hands instinctively covering her eyes.

Brandon looked down at Treadwell’s lifeless body. The shock took him completely. The senator’s feet twitched and knocked against the recliner in his death throes.

The blood drained from Brandon’s face as he tried to process the absurd. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know where he’d come from. He had memories of a mother he’d cherished, a father he had fought with, and a grandfather he barely remembered disliking as a boy.

None of them had ever existed.

He stood motionless with Belinda sobbing hysterically behind him. His greatest enemy, the man who could have answered all of his questions, lay dead before him. The answer to the mystery of his identity flickered in the candlelight, vanishing into the smoke, and into the shadows of the night.