Sam had been having trouble sleeping for a few nights now.
When he checked his phone for the thirtieth time and found it was nearly two a.m., he gave in to the idea he'd been on the fence about for days. It was as bad an idea as it had been when he'd went with Eric—worse, even—but he needed answers.
The distant sound of crashing waves echoed through the otherwise empty halls. The waters were rougher than usual tonight, and the ground beneath Sam's feet swayed as he made his way to the cellblock.
Sam hesitated outside the door. Charles had mentioned the other day that Malcolm had been sleeping an unusually high amount the past couple of weeks. He might be out right now, especially given that it was the middle of the night.
Well, if he was, Sam could always leave and try again later. Maybe a few laps around the ship would be enough to tire him out.
Sam willed himself to put his hand on the door handle and push it open.
He only took three steps into the hall before Malcolm's voice cut through the darkness. "Back again?"
Sam jumped. "Geez. You're awake."
A lamp clicked on, illuminating Malcolm and his cell. He stepped away from the small table next to his cot and approached the cell bars. "I am. Sorry if you only came to watch me sleep."
"What? No, I wanted to talk to you." Sam walked the rest of the way to the cell, hoping Malcolm wouldn't notice the slight tremble in his hands. "About my, uh, memories. I want to know what happened to me."
"Hm." A smug smile crossed Malcolm's face as he adjusted the long sleeve of his black shirt. "Well, figuring out where to start will be trickier with you." He looked at Sam and lifted an eyebrow. "Do you have any recurring nightmares?"
"Not that I can think of." Sam's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure you can help me? Your powers are just dream and sleep-related."
"Oh, it's a little more than that."
Sam folded his arms. "Are you ever going to tell us where your powers came from?" It probably wouldn't be useful information, but he was curious.
Malcolm laughed. "I fell into a vat of chemicals," he said, his tone thick with sarcasm.
"Did the chemicals make you more annoying, too?" Sam deadpanned.
A smirk touched the corner of Malcolm's mouth. He moved a few feet to the nearest wall and leaned against it, folding his arms. "Fine, I'll tell you what I know about where I got my abilities. It won't change much, anyway."
Despite Malcolm's feigned indifference, Sam suspected he liked talking about his abilities. He needed everyone around him to know he was powerful.
"My powers were created in a lab experiment," Malcolm said. "I'd love to bore you with the details, but I haven't been able to track down the reports. Yet." He gave a slight shrug. "I was too young to remember much. However, I've been told that I became too much for the scientists to handle. Drove about half of them to insanity, apparently."
Lovely.
"At any rate," Malcolm continued, his tone as casual as if they were discussing the weather. "They decided to get rid of me. They attempted to undo what they accomplished and dropped me off at a children's shelter. They didn't do a very good job of getting rid of my powers, though, and it didn't take long for me to catch the attention of a man named Andrew Hale."
"You keep mentioning that guy," Sam said. "Is he connected to Scorpion?"
"That is information I'm going to hold onto until you let me out of here. Now, I promised you I would tell you where I came from," Malcolm said. He leaned toward the bars. Toward Sam. "Let me finish."
A heartbeat passed. "Fine," Sam said. "What happened after this Andrew guy found you?"
"Andrew helped me learn to control my abilities," Malcolm said. "And when I was ready, he sent me on missions. Stealing information, mostly. Intel from SCI, other governments, and anything we could find related to the pyramid fragments. Including the one at Delta Labs."
"Andrew knew about that one?" Sam asked.
Malcolm nodded.
Sam frowned. "Did you find it for him?" If the accident had happened twelve years ago...
"No, not that one," Malcolm said with a chuckle. "I was only...seven at the time? Living with Andrew, but not quite ready to do real work yet."
Not quite ready? Seriously? How young was he when he actually started going on missions?
"A few years after that, though, I did get my hands on a different fragment for Andrew," Malcolm continued.
"So, Andrew has one, and we have the one from Delta Labs," Sam said slowly. "Do you know of any others?"
"I'm not answering that."
Sam's jaw clenched. "Fine."
Malcolm waved a hand. "Come on, this is interesting. Andrew didn't go after the fragment at Delta Labs, but he did contact them, hoping he could get them to work with him. After the accident, a few employees wound up moving on to Scorpion. Like Claudia."
"Claudia worked at Delta Labs?"
"So did a few other scientists who are with...Scorpion now." Malcolm chuckled. "Given that they were so willing to experiment on children in Tyche Point, it shouldn't be a surprise they signed up with an organization running a child army."
This conversation had gotten entirely derailed. But Sam knew better than to say so. Malcolm was giving him information, and while he was being careful not to reveal too much, there was always a chance Sam could find something useful in his story.
"Did you work with Scorpion, then?" Sam asked.
"I took them intel sometimes. They were...friends of ours, in the loosest sense of the word," Malcolm replied. "I wasn't too invested in their operations though. And by the time I was sixteen, I was busy with plans of my own. Escaping from Andrew."
"Was he keeping you prisoner?"
Malcolm snorted. "He wouldn't call it that. But he had me guarded twenty-four-seven by those androids that make up Scorpion's army."
"Your powers don't work on the soldiers," Sam realized. "You can't put robots to sleep."
"Correct."
Sam asked a question he knew he wasn't going to get an answer to. "Andrew owned soldiers, and he was involved in getting Delta Labs scientists to Scorpion. Does he work for Scorpion?" Why would Claudia outrank him as the Overseer if he'd been with the organization for longer than her?
Malcolm laughed. "I think you're going to figure that out soon enough."
Sam glared at him.
"You know, if you decided to let me out, Andrew's connection to Scorpion would be the first thing I told you. It's key to taking them down." Malcolm stepped away from the wall and straightened up. "But I'm not giving up everything I have that easily."
Frustrating. But it was a fair play. "Sounds like you want to take down Andrew," Sam said.
"I do." Malcolm grinned. "But escaping him was difficult enough. I won't be able to bring down his operation on my own."
He needed their help to get revenge on Andrew. Maybe even more than they needed his to bring down Scorpion.
"How did you end up escaping?" Sam asked.
Malcolm's head tipped to the side. "The short version of the story is that I faked an intruder alert by tripping some alarms at the edge of Andrew's yard, luring most of the soldiers away from me. I shot down the rest with a gun I snuck into my room and stole his fastest car." Something dark flickered across his expression. "It didn't go as smoothly as I wanted, but at least I made it out."
Sam frowned.
Malcolm continued without prompting. "I wanted to take Andrew's pyramid fragment with me, but he moved it without me realizing." His gaze shifted to the opposite wall of the cell. "And his wife tried to stop me from leaving. Despite all my training, at the time I wasn't...quite as in control of my abilities as I am now. And I was determined to get out."
A chill ran down Sam's spine. A feeling in the pit of his stomach urged him to leave. "What did you do to her?"
"Tried to put her to sleep normally and ended up putting her in the Dreamvoid," Malcolm said. "I found out later she was out for nearly ten hours. She woke up a completely different person." His eyes met Sam's again. "Last I heard, Andrew had her put in an asylum up north. All she does is now ramble about the end of the world and whatnot."
Sam studied Malcolm's expression, hoping for some shred of insight into how he felt about what he'd done. If he really regretted it. Slowly, he opened up his senses and tried slipping into Malcolm's mind.
He hit a wall.
"Nice try. I can sense what you're doing." Malcolm's cold smile didn't reach his eyes. "I didn't consider her an enemy, you know. I didn't want to hurt her."
"How did you—?"
"You tried to search my mind for something specific. You were projecting that intention the way you would project a deliberate thought," Malcolm explained. "Most people wouldn't have noticed."
Sam believed that Malcolm wouldn't have put Andrew's wife in the Dreamvoid if he could have avoided it. Regardless, it was a terrible fate. A fate he'd deliberately given to people that he did consider enemies. Sam's eyes narrowed. "No wonder they call you the Nightmare Kid."
Malcolm chuckled. "You think you're much better than me?"
"Yes?" Sam wasn't entirely sure why the word came out a question.
"I don't know exactly what it is you're forgetting," Malcolm said. "But I did read something else about you while I was skimming the Delta files. I wasn't going to mention it in front of your other friends."
"What?"
"When we first met at the motel, I mentioned that the Delta researchers had time to do a few experiments before the government showed up, remember?"
Sam nodded.
"While I believe it was Scorpion that took Eric, your disappearance correlates with that brief window of time after the accident. Your name was mentioned in their lab reports."
Sam's heart quickened. Malcolm had known more than he'd let on, after all.
He'd known who'd taken Sam.
The whole time he'd been missing...he'd been at Delta Labs? Just a few miles from home?
"Of course, a few of those scientists went with Claudia to Scorpion, so it could have been the same people who wound up kidnapping other altered," Malcolm continued.
Sam's hands tightened into fists. "What did you read about me?"
"That you were dangerous." Malcolm's voice lowered as he leaned forward. He wrapped a hand around one of the bars. "Far more dangerous than they expected. I didn't have time to read all the details, but the last few entries mentioned that they'd come up with a way to physically suppress your powers. They referred to it as a...binding."
"Why would they do that?"
"Because you scared them, I suppose." Malcolm smirked. "Like me."
"I'm nothing like you." Sam shook his head. "And I'm not that powerful. I mean, I can't even use my powers for very long without getting a headache."
As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it.
"You get headaches when you use your powers?" Just as Sam expected, Malcolm sounded far too interested in that detail.
"This binding," Sam said, ignoring the question. "What was it exactly?"
"Not sure."
"Did they actually succeed in using it on me?"
"Not sure about that, either."
"But you have the files with that information?"
"Yes. Somewhere." Malcolm lifted an eyebrow. "You know, I could put you under," he suggested. "For only a split second. It won't hurt you, but it could help you figure out what you're really afraid of."
"What if it has nothing to do with what they did to me at Delta Labs?"
Malcolm shrugged. "Only one way to be sure. But I'd bet if I dug up your deepest fears, it would be whatever happened there. You were only six when it happened, right?"
Sam considered it. This was a chance for answers. If he could figure out exactly what they'd done to him at Delta Labs, maybe he could find a way to undo it. Get rid of his headaches.
Would he be more powerful after that? They clearly hadn't succeeded at getting rid of his powers entirely. But maybe they had weakened them.
What was he really capable of?
"Fine." Sam took a deep breath. "Do it."
Malcolm's cold smile made him want to reconsider, but it was too late. He was briefly aware of the sensation of falling asleep, and then the world was gone.
Blinding lights greeted Sam on the other side. As his eyes adjusted, he found himself standing in an endless hallway. The ceiling above him felt so much higher than it should have been. No, Sam was smaller. He looked at his hands. Childlike. How old was he again?
A hand grabbed him. "Come on, they're waiting for you in the lab." The man spoke in a gruff voice. His lab coat was wrinkled and stained with coffee. The beginnings of a ragged beard clung to his face.
"I don't want to go back there." The words tumbled out of Sam's mouth.
And then he was in the lab, surrounded by more scientists.
"Doctor, I'm not sure this is a good idea," a woman said. "You saw what he did to that car. He has no control."
"But he has power," a new voice responded. "We have to test it."
The world spun around Sam.
"We're running out of time. If we don't get out of here by the end of the day—"
"Get more blood samples from him."
"See how he responds to another injection—"
"Check his vitals again."
"The government—"
The chorus of voices blended together. Sam closed his eyes and tried to shut them out. That only seemed to amplify them.
Something cold pricked his skin. He opened his eyes to watch his own blood be drawn up through a needle.
Panic welled in Sam's chest. "Don't take my blood!" he protested.
"Relax," the man holding the needle said. "This won't hurt you—"
"I said leave me alone!"
The man flew backward across the room. Sam's blood splattered across the floor.
Sam rose to his feet. "You said you'd take me home!" It was coming back to him, now, a faint memory. Being taken from school by people he didn't know. Desperately fighting back when they brought him to this building, a strange new feeling in his chest, watching people fly into walls—
And now that feeling was coming back.
"You can't go home yet," the man who'd brought him here said.
You're not going home, the same voice echoed in Sam's head.
The thoughts and feelings of these people who'd kept him prisoner for days overwhelmed him. They were nowhere near done with him. They didn't see a kid when they looked at him. They saw a test subject.
The feeling was coming back. Sam tried to fight it, scared of what would come next. Losing control. Watching people around him break and bleed. Why was he doing this? He was scared of these people, but he hadn't meant to hurt them like that—
"We're taking him with us," a man said.
"His family will look—" a different man protested.
"They'll never find him."
There was a blank space in his memory after that.
The next thing Sam knew, he was on his knees, dimly aware of the cold tile pressing against his skin through his pants, lights flickering overhead, the smell of blood. Dark blood spreading across the white tile.
The bodies lying around Sam blurred.
He hadn't gotten all of them. Footsteps echoed behind him. No, these were people who had just entered the room. Sam found the strength to glance back.
"He wore himself out. Now's our chance." The man lifted his chin. He looked familiar. Maybe it was something in the shape of his jaw, or something in the eyes that were just visible on the other side of his glasses as they reflected the light. "Put him under. We'll make sure he can't do this anymore and return him to his home."
"But his power—" the man next to him protested.
"We know where he lives. We'll advance our own research with the other altered, and come back for him when we're ready." The familiar-looking man turned. "Come on. Maiden is waiting for us."
Sam gasped for air. Not six-year-old Sam, the Sam who went missing for a few days while scientists experimented on him in a lab. He'd returned to the present. Slowly, his life came back to him. He was eighteen. He was on the Fortuna. He was in the cell block. He was looking for answers.
"What did you see?" Malcolm asked, unconcerned with the way Sam's hands trembled as he backed away from the cell.
"Bodies. I think they—" Sam swallowed. "They were dead. All of them."
Malcolm frowned. "Who? Where were you? Did you recognize the place?"
Sam tried to think. "It—it was Delta Labs. I think." He looked down at his hands. "You don't think I...?"
"Think you what?"
Sam dared to meet Malcolm's gaze. "I wouldn't have killed them. I couldn't have."
Malcolm's laugh echoed around the cellblock. "There's a reason it's a nightmare, isn't it?"
"I was six! I couldn't have—"
"Relax, Sam." Malcolm waved a hand. "I'm afraid I can't assure you that you didn't kill anyone. But if you're this bent out of shape over it, then I'm sure you didn't mean to."
"That doesn't make it okay!" Sam found himself pacing back and forth in front of Malcolm, shaking out his hands. "How could I have done that and forgotten? Did I repress it?"
"Maybe. But it's more likely related to the fact that someone at Delta Labs was working on memory-altering tech."
Sam paused and shot him an incredulous look. "Oh. They just had that lying around, did they?"
Why did Malcolm look so damn amused? "No idea how well it worked at that point in time, but yes," he replied. "I don't see what you're so upset about. Weren't those people experimenting on you? Hell, those were the people that tested their serum on children."
Sam stared. Malcolm had a point. But he still felt sick to his stomach. The image of blood pooling across the floor flashed in his mind again. He grimaced.
"You wanna know how they made that list of altered after the accident?" Malcolm asked. "The lab made up a story about finding dangerous chemicals in the groundwater and offered to test people for free. Parents took their children right to the labs, and the researchers located their test subjects and figured out they'd developed abilities."
"But—" Sam swallowed. "Did they deserve to die?"
Malcolm shrugged. "Who's to say?"
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Not really. I don't care that much. I'm just trying to figure out—sorry, help you figure out this binding thing."
Sam forced himself to take a deep breath. Fought back the memory that tried to overtake him again. "It's not just that they were hurting me. The fact that I was capable of doing it—" His fists clenched. "Maybe they didn't all want to do it. Maybe some of them weren't as awful as they seemed."
His gaze flickered to Malcolm. Malcolm's amused expression had faded to something more guarded.
Sam took another shaky breath. "They tried to get rid of my power—Is that why I get headaches when I use it?"
"The headaches sound like a side effect of whatever that binding they came up with is," Malcolm replied. "I could find the lab data and tell you what exactly they did." He rested his forearm against the bars and leaned forward. "I just can't do it in this cell."
Sam bit back a curse. He was terrified of what he'd find written about him in those files, terrified of confirming the horrors he'd seen in his dream. But he needed to know. And if there was something limiting his power, he needed to get rid of it.
"Look, if you really want to help us take down Scorpion, that would be great." Sam straightened up. "But I just don't see how you can expect us to trust you."
"Oh, please," Malcolm said. "How much have I done to you, really?"
"Besides attacking all of us at the motel?"
"That was nothing personal. I just wasn't in the mood to get a dose of electricity from Summer. And I wasn't sure you all had what it would take to handle Scorpion," he said. "Now I do."
"Well, it's not up to me, anyway." Sam slowly backed away from the cell. "But we have plans to bring down Scorpion ourselves now. I guess we'll see if we succeed."
"To be honest, I think you have a decent chance at...accomplishing what you're setting out to do," Malcolm said. He straightened up and took a step back. "You just don't realize that you're missing an important piece to the puzzle." He thought for the moment. "Actually, it's more like you have one piece, and you're missing the rest of the picture."
Sam's eyes narrowed. "We'll see what happens, then."
"We certainly will."
Sam turned and headed for the cellblock door, putting the rest of his energy into appearing calm as he walked.
"Good night, Sam!" Malcolm called. Sam couldn't bring himself to decipher how sarcastic that was meant to be.
Still, he rolled his eyes as he grabbed the door handle. The guy had way too much confidence for someone who had been a prisoner for a month. Just what had he been up to all this time? Had he been using his powers?
They'd all assumed that they were safe on the ship as long as they stayed away from Malcolm, but who knew what he was really capable of?
Sam hurried through the ship's halls, desperate to get back to his room so that he could collapse into bed. His heart still pounded and images from the dream still flashed in his mind. Maybe it wasn't a real memory. Maybe it was just a nightmare. Sure, he'd been taken to Delta Labs. But had he really...
Had he really killed those scientists?
Sam stumbled through his room's door and into his bed. Minutes passed. He gradually stopped shaking. His heart slowed.
He'd learned more than he'd expected. But the information that others would find interesting—the few details he had on Andrew Hale, the fact that Claudia had worked at Delta Labs, the things the researchers had done—he'd have to keep that all to himself for now. If the others knew he talked to Malcolm...well, they'd be upset he'd done something dangerous, wouldn't they?
Sure, going after Scorpion was dangerous, too, but it was something they had to do. Sam's past wasn't a priority. Until he knew more about this binding, what exactly it was doing to him, and how to get rid of it, he'd have to keep all of this to himself.
Even if he could tell the others, did he want to? It didn't matter if they didn't blame him, if they told him it wasn't his fault—which they undoubtedly would. He didn't want them to think about that when they looked at him. What had happened to him. What he'd done. Especially Veronica.
For now, the only people who would know about Sam's time at Delta Labs were him and...Malcolm.