The Deck's Ace

Part 1 Chapter six: Ghosts

“Reese.”

“Hey, it’s Joel.”

“Where in Christ did you go?”

“Denver, Dovolo’s in the hospital.”

“Again? What, did she get a paper cut?”

“She jumped off a cliff and her head on a rock broke her fall. I will be here for a few days until she is stable enough to move.”

“Jesus is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. She was in surgery for a long time. The doctors say that she has some brain damage.”

“Is she retarded?”

“Nope, same old Dovolo, she’s just…nicer.”

“Creepy.”

“How is Ari?”

“Still in a coma. They have her under guard in ICU at Memorial. I pulled a few favors and got some of Dovolo’s people to keep an eye on her. I don’t know how long they will stay once they hear what happened to Torrance.”

“Don’t tell them. Have you found a connection yet?”

“Yeah I think so. Meyers and Wess were buddies. I think Meyers was getting back at Wess for killing him.”

“But Ari didn’t kill him.”

”Yeah I know, but she did the OR for the person who did. The naked copy was in its own folder in her computer. The timing stamp shows that she played it over and over again, kid is fucked up in the head.”

“Can you tell me who did it?”

”Heh, you’re in Denver because of her.”

“Shit, did she know about the rape?”

“I don’t think so. Usually when she has a vendetta she monologues, a lot. But this one looks like she was silent. She made him hurt, but it was pretty quick.”

“Either way, if Dovolo knows that someone’s gone after her pet, she’s going to kill them.”

“Good thing she’s a sweet little retard now.”

“Say that to her next time you see her. I am going to work on Ari from here. I will call you if I find anything.”

“Alright I will- did you hang up on me?”

_________________________________________________________

There were over a dozen people who came in to see her the next day.  Of course she didn’t recognize any of them. Every time someone came in, it was the same painful song and dance. They asked her who they were, she said she didn’t know. They asked her what she remembered, and she went about making humorous remarks about a combination of memories.

Every one of them just drove in the fact that she was now half a person. It was like she was a clone of her previous self. She had all of the attributes, the mentalities, but none of the memories.

Her grandfather seemed like a very powerful man. It was difficult to understand him at first, because of the thick Italian accent. He was surrounded by bodyguards. Even when he ordered them out of the room, they hovered in the hallway, as if afraid to lose the boss from their sight. Her Grampa Giovonni, as he told her he liked to be called, informed her about the family, the family business, and what it meant to be a Dovolo. It was all very intimidating.

Her Aunt and Uncle brought flowers and pictures from her childhood. They told her about birthdays, fishing on the bayou, and her American Bully, Cisco. They were very caring and loving people. It was difficult for Torrance to believe that her Uncle, with his boyish grin and slapstick humor, could be a mafia family Captain. It was obvious that Martha Dovolo was the glue that held the family together. She ordered bodyguards, family members, and doctors around as if she were the family director. She even harped on Giovanni, making him take his pills. It was comical, but insightful.

Logan came to visit, but she pretended to be asleep.  She didn’t know how she felt about the surfer on steroids. Evidently they had so much history, but she didn’t remember anything. She didn’t remember his voice, his face, the way he was in bed. She didn’t remember sex, period. That realization had been extremely depressing.

Ryan and Joel came by with Taco Bell.  She was starving, but not enough to eat the hospital food. They ate tacos and talked about life at Banfoul Academy. They told her about the Harvard of all boarding schools. Joel was evidently the head of something called the Over Riders. She was slightly confused as to what they did and why they existed, but she understood that they were basically super geeks.  They told her that she was the Captain of the paintball team, honor role student, bad ass, and the only person that could get away with riding a skateboard through the halls. They told her about her illegal drug operation, her twelve man army, and Ryan told her about street racing. It was all very interesting, but rather confusing. The boys left her with a copy of the Godfather Part One and some Punisher comic books. The said that it would make her understand what it meant to be the Dovolo. 

Rae was the last to visit, requesting Tori’s biggest timeslot.  Despite the large number of influential individuals, the hospital was very strict when it came to Torrance’s visiting hours. Perhaps that was why Richard Dovolo did not come to see his daughter, instead opting to go snow skiing. No one told Torrance, but Rae found it difficult to keep her mouth shut.

Sunset found Torrance tucked into the covers in her bed and Rae on top of it.  Rae had changed into a pair of orange cargo pants and a green knit sweater.  Her flip flops were on the floor and her feet were folded under her. She sat at the foot of the bed with a manila folder and a notebook in her lap.

“Ok, I think we are going to have to start out from the beginning.” Torrance said, sighing. “Let’s start rewriting my memory.”

“What’s the beginning?” Rae asked, “I didn’t meet you until four years ago.”

“Everyone said that you would be the best person to tell me who I was.” Torrance said, furrowing her brow.

“Why don’t I start when we met.” Rae suggested.

“Sounds good, let’s go.” Torrance pushed, growing slightly impatient, but not close enough to lose her temper. 

“Well I met you at the Andrew McMannis Military Academy. You were the new kid and I got assigned to show you around.”

“Wait, a military academy, am I a little militant?” Torrance asked, slightly joking.

Rae noted her friend’s tone, but the truth was that Torrance was the be all end all of little militants, “Um, that’s kind of hard to explain. You didn’t want to be there, that’s for sure. You had been kicked out of most boarding schools in the south. So your dad and step-mom sent you to the Academy.”

“What about my mom?” Torrance was confused by the term step-mom. She hadn’t even considered that she hadn’t seen her mother, or anyone with her father. Where was her Mom?

“She died when you were little,” Rae looked away, not wanting to tell her best the horrible details of how her mother was raped and killed in front of her three year old daughter.

“I guess my dad can fill me in on that.” Torrance said, but she was still troubled by the fact that she had no mother, and did not consider it earlier. “Ok, I was a problem child, what about you?”

“My dad was a Senator. Momma lives life on the run after a couple of federal crimes, and Dad was afraid that I would end up like my mom. So he sent me to the Academy.” Rae laughed like it was all one big joke, which it was. Her father wanted to make sure that his re-election campaign would run smoothly, so he tucked Rae under the rug. He had assumed that the Academy would be a good place for her, but Senator Harper never really considered his daughter’s well being over voters approval. “Well, you and I became friends, Logan too. It took a bit, but soon you were ruling the school, like you always do. The Commandant thought that you had talent, so he brought West Point recruiters to see some of us. I think that’s when the Deck first saw you. Sorry I will get to them later. We had a lot of friends, and things were going great.”

“And I take it that this is where the story turns south.” Torrance hinted, noting Rae’s falling tone.

“Oh Yeah,” Rae said, rolling her eyes, ”The Commandant had a heart attack and died. One of the commanders replaced him, and he wasn’t a cool dude.”  She glanced at the open door and the bodyguard in the door jam, “I am going to close the door, ok?”

Torrance wasn’t very fond of the muscle eavesdropping on her memory rewrite, so she nodded, “Sure thing.”

Rae hopped off the bed and bounded to the door, giving the guard a smile, and then slamming the heavy door in his face.  She looked through the tiny window and waved at him once more before turning back to the bed.  Her stance was more somber as she walked back, this time getting under the covers at the foot of the bed. Torrance moved her legs to the side to give her friend more room. She hadn’t tried to sit up by herself yet, and save a trip to the bathroom, hadn’t gotten out of bed since the surgery.

Rae sighed and then began, “Ok don’t ask questions, just let me finish this. So, the Comandant gave the MPs a lot more power than they needed. There were a couple that we always thought were creepy. Well, we always joked that they were molesters, but we were right.  They,” she paused for a moment and regained her composure, “They raped me. And you stopped them.  They tried to do it to you too and you killed them like a pro. I had heard romurs about you, and some of your stories, but I didn’t think you were a killer until I saw you tear a guards organs apart. “The new Commandant was in on it, he beat the shit out of you, like with whips and chains. Your back is still covered in scars. If you weren’t in such good shape, the docs say that you wouldn’t be able to bend over because of all the scar tissue.
“They put us both in something called the Box.  It was a concrete box, kind of like isolation for convicts in the 60's.  They think we were in there for a few days, and when we were able to break out all hell had broken loose.  Evidently the Commandant tried to do it to some of the other kids, boys and girls. You and I organized all of the kids, and turned them all against the faculty. Kinda funny how ill-prepared those ex-Army bastards were.
“You were so fuckin’ smart, I mean, you had this thing that we used to call the Overloader. Before everything went down, we used it to overload the power supplies whenever we had pop quizzes. We didn’t know that it was actually the first non-nuclear EMP ever created.  We used it when we took on the guards. We killed every one of them that hurt us. You did most of the killing, said you didn’t want to force blood on anyone else’s hands. Killing is in your blood. Hell it’s a big part of who you are.
“We let the decent people go, and somehow the Commandant got away. He told the cops that we had gone psychotic or something. We were kinda forced to hold up in the academy. No one wanted to go to jail, but at the same time, we wanted the world to know what happened.
“You let everyone out who wanted out. About 40 of us stayed, and we were able to hold up for a little over a week. The Feds tried everything from negotiations to breaking in, but you managed to trump them every time. And then they brought in our parents. They didn’t do anything for most of us, because we all knew that our parents didn’t really care about us. Damn, did that screw up my Dads re-election numbers. 
“But there was a smaller kid, Cory. He crumbled when you weren’t there. Because we knew that we weren’t keeping hostages, we let him go. He squealed like a pig and they were able to capture you when you went to check the perimeter. Without you, we didn’t stand a chance. They took us down, but even when they had you, you protected us,“ Rae came out of her trance with a snap of her head and a soft smile,  “Okay, that’s a lot, questions so far?”

Torrance thought for a moment, taking it all in. She had been out of bed only once, but it was very brief. The nurses scolded her for pushing herself too early after surgery. Was her back really as bad as Rae said? Why on earth would it take the federal government a week to get into a school? Why would her father send her to a boarding school in the first place? Too many questions were swirling in her head, so she decided to ask one of the more technical ones, hoping not to overload her emotions. “I made an EMP?” She asked. She vaguely knew what an Electro Magnetic Pulse was, but how to construct one was beyond her.

Rae laughed and nodded, “Yeah, you made the first one in existence. It made you fucking rich too.”

“Rich?” Torrance perked, her left eyebrow rising as much as the forehead bandage would allow.

“Yeah, like 64 million rich. You are the richest person probably in this hospital.” Rae said, throwing her arms wide to accentuate her point.

“Um, wow, that’s a lot of money,” Torrance said, then suddenly frowned, “Do I still have it?”

“Oh yeah,” Rae nodded, “I mean you take out about half a million  a year for all of our schooling, you pay for 11 of us to go to Banfoul with you, and we kinda tend to go through cars. You build them and I race them. But you make money like crazy, so I don’t know how much you have in your account.”

This was too much information for an oblivious Dovolo to take in, “Wait, what? Banfoul? Racing? Okay, I am confused again.”

Rae held her stomach as a full belly laugh took her. The sound was sweet and calming to Tori, and again, Torrance noted how beautiful the girl was, both inside and out. “Sorry Baby. Let me keep going with the story. When you were caught, they stormed the building, hard. Some of us fought, but they didn’t hurt us.  I found out later that you agreed to let them in if they didn’t hurt any of us. Heard that your EMP shot their surveillance all to hell. We were running out of supplies anyway. But they took us away, put us in different jails. You never told me exactly where they took you, but we didn’t stay in jail long.  I think it was like two days before we were released. You came and got me yourself, as fucked up as you were. You got us all out because of the deals that you made.”

“Deals?” Torrance asked, having finally succumbed to the fact that she would be bombarded with information and she shouldn’t concentrate on one area for too long.

“Yeah.” Rae said, “Well, evidently they didn’t take you to jail, the government took you somewhere.  They bought the EMP for that 64 million, and gave you a contract. In exchange for our freedom, you agreed to be America’s white knight.”

A vision of her riding a white unicorn into a Middle Eastern palace filled Tori’s head, “Again, what?”

Rae knew that she had dug herself a hole with the medieval reference,”They recruited you to be the next great General. They needed someone to lead the soldiers, because they can’t make a good leader, not for a long time.  See they revamped the system, starting with you.”

“Um ok, how did that go?” Tori asked, assuming that it was a short process, like a one week course and a certificate of achievement.

“Well it’s still going.” Rae explained, “They gave you a scholarship to Banfoul, which is supposed to be this kick ass boarding school where only the really smart or the really rich go, but its not like that for us. See there’s these people called the Deck, and they are supposed to train you, or prepare you for something.  It’s all very complicated. I can only really tell you so much about them, because they only give you the good information. I brought your journal, so maybe that will help, and there are stacks of them back at the school. I got Joel to print out some of the old news stories about McMannis too.”

Torrance took the manila folder and notebook from Rae with her good hand. She placed them in her lap and opened the notebook, noting her sloppy, yet legible handwriting on the pages. Was her penmanship that horrific? This was man's handwriting. She sighed and glanced up at Rae “This is kind of a lot to take in. I mean, hell, is my life normal?”

“Shit no!” Rae yelled. Perhaps she was getting a little too excited, “You could write a pretty good book about your life. Hell, Barbra Walters had a field day with you!”

“Who?” The name did not ring a bell, like everything else.

“Really old news lady.” Rae said, “She interviewed you once.” That had been a fun evening. A few months after the mutiny at the military academy, Barbra Walters and her crew interviewed the key players. But the news special seemed to be more geared around Torrance than anything. Of course that was what the public wanted, they wanted to know about the 15 year old that was able to stump America’s finest.

Torrance was still unimpressed, and full of questions, “Ok so what do I do at Brandyfield?

“Banfoul.“ Rae corrected, ”Well, you’re a student, kinda. Banfoul is just like any boarding school, well actually they say it is the best, and most of the kids there are just there to get a good education. They don’t deal with all of the shit you do. See there are a couple of groups you have to worry about. Remember Joel? He is the head of a group called the OR. They control the cameras of the Academy. There are cameras all over the school, so it’s kind of hard to get away with anything. The OR are basically computer geeks that can erase a camera record, or change it, hell we get our test answers from them. They do pretty much everything with the computers. You are what they call Golden. It means that they can’t touch you; in fact the OR will do anything for you. That’s why Joel is here.”

“Why am I ‘golden’?” Torrance asked, making the quotation marks with one hand.

“You sell them drugs.” Rae said easily. It was matter of fact, without great emotion as if it were an everyday thing, like taking the dog for a walk.

“Oh, well I guess that’s understandable.” Torrance said, matching her tone. Drugs were supposed to be bad, and the fact that she sold them should also be bad, but for some reason, Rae didn’t present it that way.

“Yeah, you sell A LOT of drugs,” She explained, using her arms to exaggerate again. The girl was very animated, “I mean, like, the entire school buys from you one way or another.”

The pieces of the puzzle were slowly starting to fit together, “So that’s how I make money,”

“Yeah that’s the bigger part of it. That and racing. You and Ryan build the cars, well actually Ryan and some of our friends do the building. You finance it, and then we set up races and I race our cars against everyone else’s.” Rae beamed. Torrance decided that Rae must be good behind the wheel, or at least overly confident in herself.  “Most everything else you do is for favors or respect.” Rae said as an afterthought.

“Okay, we can talk about the other jobs later, and I want to know more about the drugs and cars. Now I want to hear about these other two groups.” Torrance said, trying to get into a comfortable position. This was extremely difficult because she could not lay on her stomach or her left side, and her right side was considerably bruised and beaten.

Rae noticed her discomfort and shifted herself under the covers, allowing Torrance to rest her feet on her lap. “Okay, well you have your soldiers and the Deck. There are twelve of us from McMannis enrolled in Banfoul. You got a full scholarship, but you pay for the other 11 of us. It was another part of your deal with the government. Me and Logan are your closest, but you check in with everyone else every week, make sure they are okay. You take care of them and they take care of you. Your soldiers are the only ones that know about the Deck. I will try and explain them, but will probably end up confusing you more.
“The Deck is supposed to be molding you into some sort of war machine. They work under some obscure government agency and are basically a secret to the world. They are constantly testing you and getting you ready for something. We haven’t figures out who everyone is, but we know a couple, like Dean Hart, the headmaster of the school, and Maggie Rodgens. Read all you can about her, because we think she is the center of everything and she has always been straight up with us. For the most part, they are pretty secretive.  They give you missions, sometimes easy, sometimes not. Usually you just have to steal something from this person’s room, or protect someone, or hurt them. lately though they have been pitting you against the group. Whenever that happens, you pretty much try to take the bullet, either figuratively or literally, so that no one else gets hurt.
Rae’s tone suddenly shifted from light and easy to serious and stern. “Evidently you weren’t the first one they chose, you were the second. The first one had some kind of psychotic break and they killed him. That’s why it’s such a big deal that you lost your memory. If they find out, they are going to kill you”

This was an easy problem to fix, “Ok so I just won’t go back. Problem solved.” Torrance smiled, congratulating herself on being a genius.

Rae shook her head, “You have to go back, you cant just walk away from this, andour friends are still there,”

“What’s your point, if I go back I die right? Well that doesn’t do anyone much good,” Torrance reasoned.

“If you don’t, then they will find you, and cover their tracks. They put too much money in you to let you go. Hell they will probably kill all of us.” Rae said, her voice hiking a few octaves higher than normal.

Torrance considered this for a moment. She didn’t have any real attachment to these people. Yes, they cared about her, but did she really care for them? If all of these people died, would she mourn them? Was it the fact that she couldn’t remember them, or did she truly not care? But what about Rae? She could feel this girl’s love for her, and loyalty, and despite the lack of memory, Torrance still felt very strongly for her. She sighed, deciding that she would have to face these people, if only for Rae, “So, what’s your plan?”

Rae smiled, “We need to bump our heads together. I think we need to let Joel know about the Deck.”
_____________________________________


Ryan, Rae, Logan, and Joel sat around Torrance in her bed. The first order of business had been informing Joel about the Deck. Ryan already knew, despite the fact that he was not from McMannis Academy. Torrance had evidently trusted him enough to bring him in on the whole operation. It spoke a lot to his character.

Logan was the one to tell most of the story, “Every time you do an Over Ride for someone, the school knows. They hired people just to watch you and the other ORs. The only reason that you guys are not in federal pound me in the ass prison is sitting in that bed.” He pointed to Torrance and then continued. “They are training her. Well I don’t know about training more than testing her and maybe getting her ready for training. Sometimes they make you do some fucked up stuff baby,”

“Logan your getting off topic,” Rae said patiently, watching Joel’s reaction.

“Sorry. Alright, she’s going to need a support team. She’s already got us, and we will be there until the end, but she is going to need technology whizzes.  We are only so good on computers, and I don’t give a fuck about how the emp works.” he pronounced it imp instead of E.M.P., “So she’s going to need OR kids. Just like they test her and us, they test you too. If you pass, well no one has passed yet, but I guess you get to do what we get to do after high school. We don’t know what the fuck that’s going to be, but I think West Point or something.”

Joel glanced at Torrance, “And now I feel as clueless as you. Let me get this straight. There is a secret government organization, run by the school no less, that is training Torrance into the super soldier, and they are watching us so that we can be tech support.  Sorry if I am not buying this. I mean if it would happen to anyone, I can see it happening to Dovolo.Yeah, she is important, but not that important. Now tell me what’s really going on,”

Torrance shifted in her bed, struggling to scratch an itch on her left elbow.  She spoke absentmindedly as she scratched, “It was hard for me to believe too. Hell, my family is in organized crime, I evidently made a technological breakthrough, and then I held up against all that America has to offer at age 15. Hell, that is enough for one lifetime. And then they tell me that I am so rich that I could shit gold, and that I am supposed to be some great general. You think you have a lot to chew? I have everything you do PLUS I DON’T KNOW WHAT SEX FEELS LIKE!” She ended screaming at the sheer frustration of it all.

“Logan can help with that,” Ryan said. Torrance gave him a cold look, but the comment was a serious one.

“No thanks, I’m good right now,” She growled, sitting back in a huff.

“Dovolo, you cannot have a temper tantrum right now.” Joel chastised, although a smile curled his lips. It was amusing to see the great Dovolo, who never lost composure, was now writhing in bed like a small child.

“Joel, you show me a lot of respect, all of you do. These three do it because they are my friends, and I believe they love me, but not you. The way you sit, the fact that you choose your words with me. We are not friends, and yet you traveled across the country to be here. No, you respect me for another reason entirely. I am beginning to understand how much power I hold. You are seeing me in a moment of weakness and if you choose to use it against me, or chastise me, you will pay for it when I return to my normal self. Do I make myself clear?”  Torrance said in a deadly tone. She was not playing games, and her eyes, which were piercing a hole into Joel, were filled cold malice.

Everyone in the room was stunned.  Joel was about to say something snide in retort, but the look stopped him. What she had said was correct, they weren’t friends. If anything they were acquaintances, both necessary evils. He was not really there out of genuine concern, but he had to make sure that Torrance survived. He was there because if anything happened to Torrance, the OR wouldn’t last a day. He hated to think of it, but the OR had become dependent on Torrance Dovolo. What would happen when she graduated?  If what everyone was saying were true, what would they do with the kids after Torrance had a team?

Ryan was the one to break the silence with a laugh, “Well at least we know that there is some of the Old Dovolo left in there.”

“I’m sorry. This is quite a lot to take in and I am not sure how to react. You all expect me to be this great leader, and I don’t even remember how I got into this bed.”  Torrance said, looking down at her lap. All of the information, all of the expectations were beginning to sink in. The journals, the files, the news stories about this amazing girl. This fearless, courageous, loyal, ethically twisted hero of a girl. How could she possibly be these things? She was 17 years old, she should be worrying about prom, and whether daddy would approve of her boyfriend. She shouldn’t have to rebuild her life from scratch. She shouldn’t have to be the savior of her generation.

“You guys try to come up with something in the hall. I need to talk with Tori some more. Just be low profile about it, who knows if the Deck is already here.” Rae said, giving the three boys pointed looks that told them to leave, now.

The boys mumbled slight protests as they got up, each saying their own personal goodbye to Torrance before they took their conversation into the hall, closing the door behind them. They made sure that they were out of range from the posted guards and hospital staff before restoring their conversation by a gurney at the end of the hall. Logan took his normal intimidating stance against an off white wall, folding his impressive arms over his chest and pushing one foot against the wall. Ryan was much more at ease, sitting on the gurney and gently smiling at the crinkling of the plastic under the hospital sheet.  Joel stood next to Ryan, his shoulders slumped slightly. He was never really alone with the two boys without Torrance or at least Rae in the same room.

“She has to go back to school. She has to be able to pass all of the physical and mental tests that they are going to put her under. And no one can know about the memory loss.” Joel said. Even though he did not know everything about the Deck, he knew Dean Hart. The headmaster had always been very harsh on Joel, demanding near perfection, but not tolerating perfection. He wanted to keep Joel in school for as long as possible, and if Joel was making perfect grades, the board would move to graduate him. Joel was never really sure of the man’s reasoning until now.

“Well that is a tall order,” Ryan chuckled.

“Ok, we are going to need a cover story. We could hide a few scrapes and bruises, but she has no forehead. The Deck is going to look into her medical records and the ski patrols report. They are going to know about the head injury.” Joel said, remembering the yellow and red stained bandage on Dovolo’s forehead.

“Rae and the Dovolos can fix the hospital and ski patrol records. She seems fine when it comes to motor skills and higher level thinking. I haven’t seen her get up and walk, but she can move her legs just fine. Its just like she had a giant lobotomy and it took everything.” Logan huffed, trying to calculate some way to get everyone out of this situation. He was the muscle, not the idea guy, but sometimes he had his moments.

“Not everything, she still has her instincts and subconscious. You saw how she took down that doctor and snapped at us. There are still parts of Torrance in there; she is still essentially the big bad Dovolo.” Ryan said, “But I think we need to be careful with what we say around her.”

Both Joel and Logan raised an eyebrow at this. If Torrance was anything, it was trustworthy, that was well known. “What does that mean?” Logan asked, his tone slightly threatening.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean that we just gave her a lot to take in.” Ryan said, his own tone matching logans, as if to tell Logan that he was not afraid of him. “Put yourself into her shoes for a minute. Imagine waking up to a world that you don’t know, to people that you don’t know, fuck, in a body that you don’t know. Now imagine that everyone around you is telling you that you’re Batman, and you need to go save the world. She probably thinks we’re crazy right now, and I think that if we push her hard enough, she’s going to shut down and we are all fucked.”

“Your right,” Logan muttered, furrowing his brow as he stared at the ground.

“Well we can’t lay off of her for too long. I’m surprised that these deck dudes aren’t already down here. Not that I would know who to look for, but you would thing with such a big investment MIA, they would be swarming this place.” Joel said, running his hand through his hair. He needed a shower and he needed to keep working on Arianna’s situation. He needed Dovolo helping him with this, and he certainly didn’t need to be babysitting her.

Ryan shook his head in disagreement, “We’ve only been gone for four days, and we were supposed to miss five days of school plus the weekend. We still have three more days before they start to worry. Tori and Rae have disappeared before only to resurface a few days later. I think after like the fifth time the Deck stopped sending out search parties.”

“Does the OR know why you’re down here?” Logan suddenly asked, pushing up off the wall and standing at his full height as if he just realized something horrible.

“Reese knows that something happened to Dovolo.” Joel shrugged, not understanding Logan’s sudden burst of intelligence.

“Shiiiiiiiiiit” Logan groaned rather loudly, “Then there is already someone here, and we are probably fucked.” The Deck monitored everything that the OR did and said. With Torrance on vacation, the surveillance would be kicked into high gear. If Joel told Reese, then he essentially told the Deck aswell.

Ryan understood immediately, “We need to get her out of here, now.”

“Someone needs to tell me what’s going on,” Joel spat, unable to control his anger. Most of the time he was the one with the cryptic sayings, but he was not having fun on the receiving end.

A nurse walked past them, causing the three to pause their conversation until they were alone again. Ryan was the one to explain, “Do you remember Adam Lache?”

Joel nodded. He had been a senior when Joel was a freshman, and everyone in school knew Adam, the star quarterback, honor roll student, most popular guy in school. He had the OR wrapped around his finger. “Yeah, he killed his girlfriend and committed suicide in a weight room.”

Ryan nodded, “That’s what everyone think happened. Truth is that Torrance isn’t the first that the Deck was responsible for, she’s the second. Adam was first. He had a mental break down and they said he was a lost cause. So they covered their tracks and killed him, along with his girlfriend, who knew about the project. If they find out that Tori has lost her mind, they are going to cover their asses again. And they won’t just whack her, but all of us.”

Joel suddenly came to the same epiphany as the other boys, “We have to get her out of here now.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Logan barked.

“Well what’s the plan?” Ryan asked, heading off an argument. They didn’t need to be squabbling amongst each other when they had so little time.

The three were silent for several moments, each trying to formulate some plan or action, or in Logan’s case, hoping that the others came up with something good.  Joel’s head was the first to snap up with an idea, “Let’s kidnap her.”

“What?” Logan asked, hoping that the head of the OR, one of the smartest people in school, did not just suggest that they kidnap Torrance.

“Think for a second. She needs time to heal and the Deck knows that she’s here. Even if we change all of her records, the Deck could still walk in and see the giant hold in her head.  And there is no way in hell that we are going to convince a hospital or any of the Dovolo’s that we should move her. What other choice do we have?”

“That is the worst idea I have ever heard.” Logan scoffed.

“Then you come up with something, Dumbass.”  Joel shot back.

“Shut up, both of you.” Ryan scolded, “It’s a shitty idea, but it’s the only one we have right now. Rae is not going to go for it, and Torrance barely trusts us as it is.  She is not going to be inclined to walk out of here, if she even can. And where would we put her? We can’t go back to the cabin, that is one of the first places they would look, and we can’t throw her on a plane. No commercial jet is going to let her on and they probably track your jet. Not to mention that we don’t know what kind of damage flying can do to her.”

“Well there have to be people that we can hire for this sort of thing,” Joel growled. He was not used to getting his hands dirty. He could hack a computer with the best, but deep down he was always a spoiled rich kid. Whenever he needed something done, he could always just a pay a butler, maid, or hit man to do it for him.

Logan laughed, “Yeah, you’re looking at them. But I am not going to kidnap Torrance against her will. Its not that I have a problem with fighting girls, it’s the fact that I know Tori will kick our asses, even as fucked up as she is. I watched her rip a commando’s head right off of his body in the academy. And this was after being whipped 40 times for god sakes. You guys haven’t seen what happens when she goes all blood lusty. She doesn’t see or hear anything except people to kill. It’s like her body is only focused on finding new and creative ways to end lives. I think that is we scare her bad enough she’ll fuck us up.”

“Why don’t we just drug her?” Ryan asked.

They boys thought for a moment, “That could work.”

Ryan hopped of the gurney, “Fine, we will do this tonight. Someone has to get Rae away from her long enough for us to do this. She won’t let it happen if she’s there, but she will just be pissed off if she learns after the fact.  I need to find a place to hide her and a doctor who will make under the table house calls. You guys need to get her medical records straightened out and find away to drug her and get her out of here without drawing suspicion.”

Joel’s brilliant mind began running on overdrive, “I can distract Rachel, and with a good network connection I can fix the medical records, but I will need someone to tell me what to write.”

“I can do that and the drugs too.” Logan nodded.

Joel laughed, “I mean someone medical.”

Ryan shrugged, “Actually, Logan is the closest thing we have to a doctor.”

“Really?” Joel asked in disbelief. He looked between the other two boys, waiting for them to drop the joke, but evidently they weren’t kidding. He never thought of Logan as a med head. Of course he didn’t know Rae could handle a race car at one hundred fifty miles an hour, or that Dovolo was America’s angel of retribution. “You guys really had the wool pulled over my eyes.” He laughed.

Logan and Ryan smiled. It was almost comforting to share their secret lives with an unsuspecting bystandard. But Joel wasn’t really a bystandard. He was always a player, but now he was aware that he was on the board.

Ryan saw the nurse gathering surgical bandages, “Ok the nurse is going in to deal with Tori’s new hole. We don’t have much time.” He said as she walked into Dovolo’s room.