Who: Alex & Neil Where: The Library When: Afternoon, Thursday 11/16 Status: Complete
It was Thursday and Neil was at work which wasn't really newsworthy except he hadn't been to work the day before. Oh no, he had indulged in staying home 'for the fuck of it' and spent the day being lazy and eventually watching videos online. Videos that had really angered his virus protection. In hindsight it was mortifying and Neil would still be wrapping his head around it if he wasn't so stubbornly determined to Not Think About It. Instead he was thinking about other unpleasant things, like what to do about his strange dreams and the effects they were having. He'd heard things in his head sporadically over the last few days, thoughts that were so definitely not his. It wasn't unusual to have intrusive thoughts, echoes of what other people had said around him and such - that was just human - but these felt different. By the time he heard Carson praising greasy pizza he knew that thought couldn't ever have originated from his own mind. It just felt a little strange to ask the others if they were experiencing something similar.
He had started typing a message to the group a few times and changed his mind about sending it, then busied himself with work to try to take a break from his worries. It wasn't really working and he was cursing quietly to himself as he rounded the corner and ran right into Alex Woodard who posed a whole other set of problems to him.
It had been a couple of weeks since Alex had really worked on his conspiracy theories. He had asked around about any new missing peoples cases and was convinced that the Lucas kid was somehow connected, especially since everybody had stopped talking about her this week. It was that silence, more than anything about the rest of the circumstances, that convinced him money had changed hands somewhere to keep everything quiet. It smelled like AIR alright but nobody would believe him. Not without solid proof, anyway.
It had been a while since Alex had been to the library. He'd stopped going after the first time he'd met Neil but it had been long enough that he felt like simply being in a shared public space wouldn't be suspicious. He'd turned up to continue the non-Neil parts of his research but had kept an eye out for the paranoid guy anyway. If he was there, Alex hadn't seen him yet. Instead, he was standing in the stacks looking for a particular book in the local history section. It was a collection of essays about life in the region which sounded boring but it had been cited when he'd searched specifically for the American Institute of Research which had piqued his interest. It was probably only a small reference to local industries but when he checked the shelves, it wasn't there. He stared at the call number he'd written on his phone but rereading it didn't help.
He was about to go back and recheck he'd written it down properly when somebody bumped into him. “Oof, watch out,” he snapped and looked up to see Neil standing there. “Oh, sorry. Actually though, do you have a moment?” For paused as he tried to find what to say first but he was sure Neil would scurry off if he opened with any of them. Instead, he shoved his phone at him. “I'm trying to find this book and it's not checked out but it's not here either. Any ideas?”
There were many possible reasons for why that might happen and Neil hated all of them. Sometimes books ended up in the wrong place and unless someone spotted it and brought it back, it was as good as lost. Neil did want to roam the halls and make sure everything was in its place but he had other things to do and rarely had the time. He looked at Alex's phone, irritation rushing through him. First of all, Alex had startled him, second? He'd snapped at him. Neil was already feeling miserable and this wasn't helping. "I can double check the computer," he sighed as he started looking over the shelf because of course it was absolutely possible that Alex just hadn't seen what he was looking for and the book really was there.
“Yeah, thanks.” Alex doubted that the computer would have any more answers than the library catalogue had already shown him. They usually said if the book was on loan or not but maybe the librarian’s check would show if it had been taken for repairs or something. He briefly considered that it had been stolen but he doubted there was any damning evidence in it, even if he wasn’t that paranoid about the big conspiracy. Which reminded him, he’d finally started to understand where Neil was coming from and had something to say. He kept his eyes on the shelf and spoke quietly in case there was some kind of truth to their paranoia. “Hey, look, I’m sorry if I’ve come on strong about… well. You know. I can’t blame you for wanting to forget it. I would too.”
Neil's eyes were narrowed as he scanned the shelves but they widened again when Alex spoke and he wasn't sure what to say. People didn't often apologize to him because they too often felt like they were in the right and he wasn't. Alex's apology sounded genuine but at the same time he was hinting that Neil knew more than he claimed he did, that his forgetting had been on purpose. Yes, it had been but Neil didn't need anyone else knowing that. "You have your theories," he muttered. "Some might call them pathological, you know? But I understand. You need answers. Dylan Bailey came to see me, he seems to put some stock into what you've been saying."
“He did?” Alex looked at him, surprised. He had been sure that Dylan had thought he was some crackpot and he hadn’t heard from him again so he was surprised to hear he’d followed it up at all. There was a small thrill of vindication as he realized that Dylan had unintentionally confirmed Neil as one of the missing children too. Probably one of the last, maybe even one of the survivors of the fire. The age was right. It had to be why he’d talked to him. “I do, I need answers,” he agreed. He looked back down and pretended to scan the shelf but by now, he didn’t care too much about the book. “I’ve spent my whole life knowing half of the story but never being able to make much sense of it. I think they did something to her so she couldn’t talk about any of this stuff when she was awake but…” He took a deep breath. “I just want to compare notes with somebody else who was there. Just to find some proof that she wasn’t just crazy and it was all for nothing. Right now you’re the only survivor I know and you’d probably have some of the puzzle pieces I’m missing so… I just jumped on that and I shouldn’t have.”
"I went missing," Neil muttered. "It doesn't mean I was in the same place she was." He sounded as tired about it as he felt and a part of him wanted to blurt everything out and have it done with. His life was already so screwed up, there was something in his head wanting to do god knows what to him and it probably wasn't even related to AIR since the others had no connection to it. Or maybe they did, maybe they were all missing something. "A lot of people have gone missing in this town, some of them came back. I'm sure you can find them." Speaking of finding, he finally spotted what he was looking for; the book Alex needed which was in a terribly wrong place and Neil could only guess which one of the other staff members had been so negligent. "I hope this gives you some answers," he said as he grabbed it from the shelf and handed it to Alex.
Alex could hear the exhaustion in Neil and knew he'd probably pushed it too much. Nobody wanted somebody coming around to ask questions about the worst times of your life but wouldn't you want to talk if there was somebody who knew it too? Then again, Neil didn't know he'd gone through it. It wasn't the same but he'd been there too, in a way. “Well, I hope it wasn't the same place but…” He was about to add more when the book he'd been looking for was in front of him. He frowned slightly as he took it, glanced at the back briefly and tucked it under one arm. He looked up at Neil again and forced a small smile. He was grateful for the help after all, he just wasn't ready for Neil to disappear again. “Thanks. One last thing though, why did you think I'd broken into your apartment? What happened?”
"I honestly don't know," Neil said quietly. He didn't feel quite as impatient with Alex as he usually did, perhaps it was because he hadn't seen him in weeks now or because he was just too damn tired, dealing with everything that was going on. "Someone broke into my home, the lock was destroyed but nothing was taken. The police are useless, of course, they barely looked into it. I thought it might have been you because, well, you have been acting strangely on the few occasions I've seen you. A bit crazy, even."
Alex could understand why Neil thought he was being crazy but it still made him bristle a little. “I had my reasons,” he mumbled. He turned the book over in his hands to study the blurb. There was nothing on their about AIR so he assumed any mention would be tiny. He’d check it before he borrowed it. “Do you think it was them, the people who took you? I’ve seen what they can do so I wouldn’t put it past them.” He frowned. “If we are talking about the same people. Hypothetically.”
Neil crossed his arms over his chest, his expression tightening for a moment but then he sighed. "I suppose, hypothetically, anything is possible," he muttered even if he knew he shouldn't be feeding into Alex's theories. "Nothing was taken, nothing was out of place so it might have been a warning. Perhaps I should stop talking to you." He might have passed that off as a joke but he was no good at that and it really was no joking matter.
“Maybe…” Alex glanced at Neil to check if he was joking but he couldn’t read his expression. There was probably truth to it anyway. He knew he wasn’t a danger to Neil but if they were still keeping tabs on their former victims, was talking to him just painting a big target on his own back too? “But I think we’d be better off if we kept in touch. If something else happened, is anybody else going to make the same connections?” Not that he was sure he’d do much about it but he’d at least tell somebody. Probably.
Neil sighed, probably louder than he technically needed to. "You're asking me questions that sound more hypothetical than anything," he pointed out. "I can't predict what other people will do or think, Alex. I'm not psychic." He sighed again and shook his head, glancing behind his shoulder before going on. "If I give you my number, will you only use it for emergencies? Getting a new number would be such a hassle if you choose to abuse your privilege."
Alex wasn't sure if that meant if other people knew enough about where to look the or not if it happened. Who else could he have told? He wondered if that meant if he was in touch with other survivors and if so, were they the other kids who had escaped or kids who were handed back willingly? He decided it had to be the former but he knew asking would be useless. The only reason Alex even knew anything was because he didn't outright deny it. “I wouldn't but if it makes you feel better, take mine instead.” He patted his pocket but remembered he didn't have a pen on him so shrugged and waited for Neil to pull out his phone. “That way you can give it to anyone else who… You know, hypothetically, of course.”
"I suppose," Neil said and dug around in his pocket for his phone. He thought about directing Alex toward Jane but she had enough on her plate and he wasn't sure it was a good idea anyway. He wasn't even sure if giving her Alex's information was a good idea, but then he really didn't know which way to turn lately. Everything was strange and difficult and he was ill-equipped to deal with it all.
Alex waited until Neil had brought out his phone before he rattled off his phone number, peering over Neil’s shoulder as he did to make sure that he heard him and wrote it down properly. He didn’t actually expect Neil to pass it onto anybody but at least the option was there if he needed it. He stepped back as soon as Neil started typing in the name and looked around the library, pretending to be casual. “Sooo…” There was so much he wanted to ask but Neil still hadn’t actually admitted anything so there was only so much he could talk about before the paranoia came back or he went back into hiding. Not that Alex could blame him if people were breaking into homes. “Before you go… I guess I’ve kind of asked a lot of things you can’t answer so in the interests of being fair, I guess is there anything you want to know?”
Neil wanted to say no, to make Alex leave already but he had to admit he was curious so he hesitated as he finished saving Alex's information, then put his phone away and drew a deep breath. "What makes you think your mother was... How was she different?" Alex had been vague about it but it had sounded like she showed him things with her mind while she was sleeping. Neil knew one person who could do that so it wasn't unreasonable to think that Alex's mother had been a dreamwalker too. No, they were more than just walkers; they altered dreams, they could torture a person easily by stepping into their sleeping minds and wreaking havoc, 'Dreamwalker' certainly didn't do that justice.
“Wow, okay, so we’re diving right in.” Alex chuckled. He knew he should have seen it coming but he was still caught off guard by the question. It wasn’t like Neil to be so direct, at least not as far as Alex knew him. He frowned down at the floor as he considered the best ways to answer that and to try to minimise how crazy he sounded. “Well, okay. You already think I’m insane so what’s one more thing, right?” He exhaled slowly and looked back up at him. “So it was like sleepwalking but it was in dreams. She couldn’t control it very well when she was having an episode and so she’d come into my dreams and change them to that place. But she could never remember it when she was awake and couldn’t tell me anything if I asked. I didn’t even know it was anything until she died and I found out she’d been missing for a few years. It had to be that, right? Then I came here to find out more and….” He trailed off with a shrug. “I’m only guessing she got it from there because nothing else makes sense. What about you, did you come back different?”
"No I did not," Neil replied but he wasn't angry or annoyed this time. He knew Alex was telling the truth because he knew what Jane could do and this sounded like that but with a dash of mental illness or amnesia. Going into your kid's dreams and fucking them up? Yeah, definitely a insane. "Maybe she was always like that," he said with a little shrug. "Maybe it wasn't something that happened to her, just something that she was born with." He didn't know if Jane had always been that way or not, but it was hard to deny the mysterious events when he'd seen so much of them lately.
Alex waited. He’d expected Neil to tell him to go take his meds again or even a roll of his eyes as he humored him but when that didn’t happen, he felt caught off guard. “Maybe,” he said slowly, still waiting for the sarcasm to return. He’d considered that possibility before but she hadn’t developed that skill until her 20s. Well after she’d been returned so maybe the link wasn’t actually there but he had a feeling they were connected. They just had to be. “But I’ve just got a feeling everything she used to dream about had something to do with it. Why would scientists put kids through that kind of... Ever seen Deadpool, how they tortured him to trigger the X gene? That’s my theory.”
Neil had not seen Deadpool, it really didn't seem like the kind of movie he'd want to watch and his expression said as much as he shook his head. He remembered some X-men comics enough to vaguely know what the X gene was but that wasn't information he was willing to divulge. "So you think she was tortured to... activate whatever it was she could do," he muttered and there it was, an unwanted memory he tried so hard to forget, a white room, a white lab coat, a button right there in front of him. He'd been so small, his feet didn't reach the floor and the chair was too big but the button had been close to him, attached to the table or not? He couldn't remember. His expression was haunted for a moment before he shook it off, though that feeling of falling wasn't as easy to shake, a twisting lump in his stomach.
Alex watched something come over Neil and he could easily guess at what it was. Had he deliberately forgotten or had they tried to clear his memories too? Either would have been an explanation. He waited until Neil didn't look as ill, though he didn't completely recover either. “Are you okay?”
"I'm fine," Neil muttered. "You didn't answer my question." He wasn't even sure if it had been a question or a statement but it didn't matter, he needed something to distract himself from the memory. Even if the topic itself had triggered the memory in the first place. "You think they tortured her to make her... did you see that in her dreams?"
“Yeah, everything I know is from them. I don’t think she even remembered any of it. Whatever they did, it was all locked up in her subconscious.” Alex wanted to ask why Neil remembered, what was different, but he didn’t dare. It was the longest conversation they’d had without Neil rolling his eyes and he didn’t want to jeopardize that. “What did they do with them if it worked though?”
"You keep asking me questions I don't know the answers to," Neil said with a touch of irritation. He'd already said he didn't remember anything, whatever he said about Alex's mother was pure speculation. "Who's to say they did anything to anyone, maybe they did, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. Until you have proof..."
“Really?” Alex said with a roll of his eyes. Even if Neil didn't know the answers to everything Alex was asking, surely they were past all of the hypotheticals and pretending the two things weren't connected. It was tiresome to have to pretend otherwise. “Though I guess you're right. You can't know, you came back.” He paused to check his watch. “I should go…”
Neil couldn't help but feel relieved that Alex wanted to leave, especially since that little eye-roll had rubbed him the wrong way. "Your mother came back too," he pointed out. "And you did admit that maybe this dream thing of hers was something she was born with. Whatever happened to her was buried deep in the subconscious so what makes you think any of it is accurate?"
“I can’t explain how I know but it just feels right.” Alex shrugged. Neil’s theory was probably a fair one but he’d found too much since he started looking that matched everything he’d seen. None of it was definitive or ‘proof’ but it was enough for him. It was probably the first productive conversation he’d had with Neil and he wanted to stay longer but he had to go to the grocery store on his way home. He took a step away and raised the book Neil had found for him, he’d check it out on the way out. “Thanks for this. You’ve been a big help.”
Neil didn't feel like he'd been a big help and in a way it felt like maybe being a big help was exactly what he didn't want to be. He licked his lips nervously and nodded sharply, brows furrowed. "Just.. Tread carefully," he muttered, unsure why he even gave a shit about the kid. "Just in case you're onto something." Like he didn't know that Alex was onto too much, that these things were dangerous.
“I will, thanks.” Even though it was small, Alex found himself pleasantly surprised by Neil’s concern for his safety. It was probably the most productive conversation he’d had with the guy but he hoped it wouldn’t be the only one of them. Time would tell if that lasted or not. He was about to walk away when he paused and added, “You too. Not because you’re onto something but because, well, you know…” He trailed off. There was more he wanted to say but he wasn’t sure how and the library wasn’t the best place either. After a moment of awkward hesitation, he turned and headed to the check-out desk.