Endgame (Book 3)

Chapter 10

But, being the clumsiest one in the household, I spilled everything all over the floor.

Hearing the sound, Sierra rushed back into the room. "Oh, my gosh. Jay, what happened?"

"I spilled everything in the folder," I said, dropping my hands into my lap. "Help?"

"Sure," she said.

I watched from my bed as she grabbed all of the contents and placed hem neatly back into the folder. Some photos were included.

On second thought, maybe I shouldn't have asked for her help.

"What's this?" she asked, holding up an image of one of the pods we had woken up in. "Not to pry, but this looks like some alien-type shit."

She was right, it did look a bit alien. I couldn't find a good lie to cover it up- possibly a geek club thing, but that wouldn't make any sense in a city filled with people getting over a disaster.

"I haven't looked in it yet," I said. "So I don't know."

"Hm," she replied. "And there's also a picture of you. Wow, what are you doing?"

She held up the image for me to see, but I snatched it out of her hand instead of looking at it. "Okay, that's enough. I'll take it from here."

She crouched next to my bed so she could stare at me at eye level. "What are you hiding, Jay West?"

"Your breath smells like mints." I tried to distract her.

"Aren't you the one always telling me to stop trying to change the subject?"

I probably was, but I didn't know any better.

Eventually, she let it go, stuffing the rest of the information back into the folder and dropping it in my lap.

"Enjoy," she said. Then she curtly excused herself and left the room.

I let out a deep breath. Then, I began my own search through the pages of paperwork.

The first sheet was titled Project Ares. But that was pretty much all it said. I assumed the rest of this was included in that.

I set the sheet of paper aside and moved on to the next page. This one was the exact opposite of the previous sheet, with lots of small text that contained words I didn't understand.

"You can skip that. You don't need it," Zero told me.

I was nearly done reading it anyway.

The next item was a photograph. I held it up to the light to see it better.

In it, a small figure that must have been a smaller version of myself was picking up a metal box using my lightning powers. The rest was just black, as if whoever had taken the picture was trying to get rid of the background.

I must've been quite the prodigy, I thought.

"Yes, I was," Zero said.

"Zero, why does it feel like you're reading over my shoulder?" It irked me.

"Just pretend I'm not here."

It was hard to do that with him commenting on everything, but I moved on.

The next paper was a journal entry. It was a torn out piece of paper with ragged edges on the left side that threatened to jeopardize the text. The tear only cut out a few words, though.

I'll read out the important parts, which is really only what I read, anyway:

Day 50 of Project Ares.

Day 50? I thought. What about the other 49 days?

"Just wait," Zero said with a sad tone.

Today's the day, the entry read. The day Jay will have to act against everyone on his team. The day he betrays the ones he trusted the most.

This must be the day I turned against the team, I thought.

After months of convincing, he's decided to go along with the plan, much to Jeremiah's pleasing. We've triple-checked everything so that nothing can go wrong during the process.

The worst part of this will be the waiting period. A month in a tank can tax the body and have long-lasting effects. Jay and the others will be apart from their families for so long..it'll be difficult to cover that up, if we have to.

It ended there. Below the text was a hand-drawn picture of the facility we were kept in. It looked like absentminded doodling.

Even though there was no date on the paper, I knew this was only from less than two months ago. There must have been plenty of scientists working at the site then.

But none were there when I broke out. Seriously heavy security was all that waited for me. So what happened with the project? Did it go unfinished?

"Why did you give me this?" I asked.

"Because I wanted to show you how those scientists think. They take no consideration of people, they just see everyone as an asset or a test subject," Zero said bitterly. "And they would do whatever it takes to get what they want.

"Jeremiah was the person who led the fight from earlier. He's the head of MARAD."

"MARAD?"

"Yes. It's a government agency dedicated to perform the 'research' needed to combat or use metahumans. I don't remember what it's an acronym for. You could ask your sister."

"Yeah, that's all good and all," I said. "But I really don't understand why you gave me this. I mean, it seems like you have the last sixteen years of my memories, and you could just tell me this stuff. Why can't you just remember all the information we need?"

"Because I can't!" he exclaimed. "All of the memories about Project Ares are cut off from my brain. They destroyed them while we were in the pod."

We, I thought to myself, musing about the way he said it.

"Well, there's a simple solution to that. Now that I'm thinking straight, why don't I just ask Sage about what she knows?"

"That's...not a good idea," Zero said slowly.

"Why?"

"Because asking her about that isn't the way to go. She's already had her doubts about you- about us."

"What does that mean?"

"Look, she's already tried to kill you once, Jay. I wouldn't encourage begging her to try it again."