A STUDY IN BLACK ✓

XXXIII

When Josh came to, his hands and feet were bound with metal chains, and he sat in a glass box in the back of some vehicle. His gaze focused on a sleeping Jenna, who was curled up on the seat in front of him.

Dallon and Pete sat across from her, their faces dirty and solemn. A small grunt of discomfort escaped Josh's lips, making them both jump and grab for their guns.

"What happened?" Josh groaned again.

He couldn't remember anything that occurred after Josh stabbed Hayley, but he had a sick feeling that he didn't want to remember. Pete scowled and didn't respond. Dallon let go of his gun, but watched Josh with great caution.

"Which Josh am I talking to?" He demanded.

Josh paused.

"Tyler's favorite candy is Swedish Fish," he mused, laughing to himself. "Yours is peanut M&M's, but Tyler hates those, calling it reverse trail mix."

Dallon grinned, but his tired eyes made Josh ask again. "What happened?"

"Gerard escaped. Not only did he escape, he managed to put you under his control before you passed out from blood loss."

Josh raised his arms up, the chains clinking together. "What's all this for?"

"Safety precaution. You killed thirteen of our best
men before Jenna stopped you. She smacked you over the head so hard we thought she killed you."

Jenna stirred but didn't wake up. Dallon watched her with a near palpable amount of love and adoration. He'd told Josh before that despite how much a pain in the ass Tyler was, he always saw Jenna as a little sister.

Josh's heart ached with wanting.

"Hayley told me Tyler was dead," he said. "I didn't want to believe it at first, even after the funeral, but she was there. She was with him when he fell, and she said his body was trapped under the rubble."

He didn't mention the part where she told him his lifespan was a third of what he could live, because the strain of everything going on was clearly talking a toll on Dallon. The last thing Josh wanted to do was add to that burden.

Especially now that they know the brainwashing worked on Josh.

"Where are we going now?" Josh asked.

Dallon looked up. "Back to the U.S., duh. I have a lot of paperwork to do so you two don't get caught in some legal standoff because of your involvement in Heaven's Templar."

"Thanks, Dallon."

Pete shifted so he sat against the wall. "I'm sorry that Gerard slipped through our fingers again. But now, with every facility gone, he has nowhere to go. He has nothing left. We'll catch him."

"Don't underestimate something who has nothing to lose," Josh warned.

Dallon clicked his tongue, and Josh knew he agreed with him. Josh didn't have as long of a history with the Way brothers that Tyler and Dallon did, but he knew enough from his experience.

"What do we do now?" Pete rested his head back on the wall.

Josh flinched at the sharp sting he felt under his ribs as he tried to sit back down. "We pray to God that he doesn't come for us."

The next month, Josh spent locked in his apartment, trying to piece together what he knew with his missing puzzle pieces of life. He didn't leave for anything. Debby brought him groceries- the serum gave him the appetite of a giant bull- and Dallon brought him news on the survivors of Heaven's Templar's experiments.

Brendon Urie, one of Josh's friends from the army, was one of them. He'd been missing for six years, which made Josh wonder why he thought he had been medically discharged.

Then, he realized why.

Heaven's Templar had a branch in the U.S. military, one that Dallon took down on his spree to find them. They chose the elite soldiers "discharged" them due to injuries from unfortunate accident. Ie, Josh's nosedive in his Humvee.

After a surprisingly short argument, Dallon agreed to give Josh the Cerberus files, only having to promise he wouldn't look at Tyler any different.

Slowly, his erased memories started to return.

Josh was Hayley's second in command, who at the time, was their charismatic and bitingly witty leader. One day, her personality changed and their missions began to become increasingly more dangerous.

There were five of them in total. Hayley, Josh, Brendon, their medic, Lyn, and the oldest, Chester. Josh never remembered what happened to Lyn or Chester. Any memories around the time his memories were twisted.

He did, however, remember how he knew Tyler. It was during mission in Serbia, Hayley had lied to them and said there were hostages inside an underground bunker taken by rebel forces. Their job was to break into the facility and get all of hostages out alive, and they did.

Except those hostages were actually brainwashed soldiers that were being held until they could be returned to normal. As it turned out, some brainwashes were permanent.

Tyler was one of those hostages.

Josh, now knowing what he knew, kicked himself for following Hayley so blindly. He was just following orders, and now hundreds of innocent people paid for price for his mistakes.

After the 19th day locked inside of his apartment, he found himself picking up Tyler's certain mannerisms without even realizing it. He ate excessive amounts of candy in replacement of sleep, he started developing nervous ticks, and his blackouts grew longer but less frequent.

When he left his apartment for the first time in 32 days, Josh was deemed a hero by the public. A hero who could barely brush his teeth without seeing Gerard's reflection in the mirror.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Jenna chastised him as she unpacked the box of books she owned.

She moved in with him on day 34, taking up the spare bedroom across from his. Josh knew they were both seen as a security risk by VESSEL and having them in the same general space was a good way to keep them in check, but he was just glad for another person to be around and make him feel like he's not as crazy as he felt.

"I'm not being hard on myself, I'm being realistic," Josh retorted. "You don't have blackouts."

"Yep, instead I lose my mind every couple days. It's so much better, I highly recommend it."

Josh rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean. I'm a liability, and they know it. You've trained for stuff like this, torture and brainwashing and shit. Me? I was a children's book illustrator. My best skills are being able to draw Dr. Seuss characters with deadly accuracy."

Jenna blew raspberries at him. "The blackouts are just side effects, they'll wear off once your body gets used to your new DNA. Just like my bouts of crazy. That's not permanent. Just annoying."

"How does that even happen, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Neurotransmitter imbalance. My brain produces too much of one thing and too little of another, which causes mania and crazy talk. It'll balance out eventually."

"Yikes," Josh shivered.

Jenna pulled out a couple books and paused, smiling sadly. "Yeah. Yikes."