Chapter 27: Depths and Darkness

It was bright and early Sunday morning, and Scrappy went bezerk alarming the entire apartment at the sound of knocking on the door. Joey quickly scooped up the hyperactive dog and answered the door. "Hi. Thanks for coming. Come on in."

Jeff and Lynne gave him a bewildered stare. They stood in the hallway, Jeff carrying guitar cases and Lynne her bag. "You're really doing this, aren't you? You're really going to Purgatory?"

"Yeah."

They entered cautiously, and Jeff placed the guitar cases in the front hallway. Scrappy squirmed and kicked frantically in Joey's hands trying to examine the two new people. "This is Scrappy," Joey said, holding the dog out to them. "If you take your shoes off, keep an eye on them around him." Lynne gave the dog a tickle, and as Jeff took the dog, Lynne wrapped her arms around Joey and gave him a squeeze and a kiss.

"Thank you for doing this for me," Lynne whispered into his ear.

"Thank you for coming." He extracted himself from her arms and led them into the apartment. "Annie had a rough day yesterday, and I don't think she should be alone for a while. We normally have a nurse we would call for something like this, but he's busy today."

"To tell you the truth, I don't feel like being alone either. I'm going to be too worried about you." Jeff dropped the dog and followed, while Scrappy ran around sniffing ankles and guitar cases. "So what happened yesterday? You left in a huge hurry."

"It was a disaster. Annie nearly killed Snow Angel by trying to get her to cure her paralysis." The twins startled at this, and Joey shrugged. "You know how mages work. They have some weird rules they have to follow, and if they don't follow them right then it can be life-threatening. Annie got ahold of one; got her caught in some contradiction. They're both okay now, and Snow Angel has forgiven her, but Annie is pretty humiliated and depressed over the whole thing. I don't know if she'll be good company. I was hoping you can cheer her up."

"I'll do my best." Lynne pondered for a moment. "Is there something else I need to know about?"

"Well, she's pretty self-sufficient. I don't think you'll need to help her change or clean up or anything..."

"That's not what I'm talking about." They gave him a serious stare. "You're telling me she tried to get rid of her condition and failed. You're talking depression, and now you're asking me to watch over her. Has she tried anything?"

"Tried what?"

"Is this a suicide watch?" she asked bluntly.

Joey paused on that. "I don't know. I mean ... I don't think she would try that. And if it were, I don't think I would be going off to Purgatory."

"But you're worried," Jeff said. Joey hesitated on that. "Don't worry. It's not my first one."

Joey started to ask who JeffLynne had been on a suicide watch for, but Tricia took that moment to come in from the kitchen. "Hey there!" she called out to the twins. "Good to see you. You two did a marvelous job yesterday."

"Thank you." "Thanks for letting us play."

"Yeah, you were so good, Joey got hardly any work done." Tricia checked her phone. "Thanks for coming over. Now I don't know what security we have to go through, but with travel time and the actual meeting, I don't think this will take more than a couple of hours. Is that okay?"

The twins nodded and frowned. "But isn't it all the way over in Virginia?" Jeff asked. "That's over three hours..."

VRAMM! Quantum Knight appeared on the balcony, and the twins jumped in shock. Tricia nonchalantly opened the door. "Don't worry. We have a ride," she answered. "Come on in."

Quantum Knight stepped into the apartment. "Morning Trish, Joey." She yawned and did a double-take at the sight of Jeff and Lynne. "Oh, I know you two. Hi." It was an odd reaction, and Joey realized it was because she had actually met them twice before, but both times she was out of costume. She pointed to the twins. "You must be the Miller kids."

Jeff and Lynne stared and blinked at the superhero. "Um ... yeah," Jeff managed. "How did you..."

"Read your file. Trish?" She poked her in the arm. "Need coffee."

"Come on." Tricia led the superhero into the kitchen. "How do you take it?"

"Like my men. Strong, black, and overpowered from an industrial accident."

"I can get you a dirty cup," Tricia offered.

"I wouldn't mind a man in one of those too."

Jeff and Lynne watched in awe as the superhero followed Tricia into the kitchen. "Joey?" Jeff said in star-struck wonder. "That's Quantum Knight!"

"Yeah. Don't worry. She arrested me, but we're good."

"Quantum Knight is having coffee in your kitchen!" said Lynne, digesting the idea.

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, she works nights, so this is late for her. And she doesn't go for the herbal tea."

Lynne pointed to the kitchen. "Is she over here a lot?"

He shrugged again. "Kinda. Usually, if she didn't get injured the night before." He pulled on Lynne. "Come on. Let's see Annie." As he took her hand and guided her to the bedroom, Jeff wandered towards the kitchen, trying to get another look at the superhero. "Jeff? Come on. I need both of you."

"I just want to..."

Joey took Jeff by the hand and pulled. "Come on. I need your undivided attention. Let's check up on Annie."

Hands in hands, Joey led the two to the girl's bedroom.

"So Trish," Quantum Knight whispered, sipping her coffee. "That boy. What's his name?"

"Jeff?"

"Yeah. Are you getting it too?"

"Getting what?"

"A vibe of about a eight point five pjomas on the gaydar scale."

"You too?" She sipped her own coffee. "You should have seen him yesterday. He was trying to play it straight and give me the eye every once in awhile, but I swear, he kept looking at Joey like he wanted a bottle of ketchup."

Joey knocked on the door. "Annie? Are you okay in there?" There was no answer. "We're coming in."

He opened the door to the darkened room and stepped in cautiously, followed by Jeff and Lynne. Annie just sat alone in her chair next to the window, facing the wall, and her head dipped down low. The blinds were closed, and morning light leaked through the edges, illuminating her in hard slices of light. "How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she muttered back.

"We're going to be leaving soon, but we'll be right back. These are my friends from school, Lynne and Jeff."

Annie turned her head towards them, took a quick look, and turned back to the wall. "I know who they are," she said with a mild level of disgust.

"They're going to be here for you while we're gone. In case you need anything."

"I don't need anything."

"Annie, please. Come out. Nobody is angry at you."

"I was so stupid," she cursed. "I almost killed her. Why was I so stupid? What's wrong with me?"

"You're not stupid," he said, approaching her. "Don't say that."

Annie turned towards him "Joey, I don't want you to..." she started to say, but Joey reached and caressed her cheek. She stopped, gasping at his touch, and leaned her face into his hand.

"What?" he asked.

She closed her eyes, reveling in his touch. "Nothing."

Joey could feel her mind slip towards creativity for that answer. A lie. "No, what was it?"

She took a breath, and glanced at the twins. "I don't ... want them here."

Truth. "They're here to take care of you while I'm gone. And I won't be gone long." He brushed back her bangs and kissed her forehead. "Hey, you like music. You'll like them."

Jeff and Lynne frowned slightly as they watched Joey kiss Annie. Annie just scoffed and turned towards the wall.

"I'm going now," Joey said to her. "But I'll be back soon." As he stepped back towards Jeff and Lynne, he silently mouthed the words "You may be right," to them.

"I'll watch her," they mouthed back. "Thanks," "Good luck," they whispered to him. Annie gripped the wheels of her chair tightly as she heard the telltale sound of lips kissing lips, and Joey stepped out of the room.

Jeff and Lynne, now left alone with Annie, took a moment as they accustomed themselves to the awkwardness of the situation. Lynne stepped forward. "Annie? It's good to meet you, and I wish you were feeling better." She stepped closer and sat on the edge of her bed. "I heard what happened, and I just want to say that I don't blame you for trying. I don't think anyone belongs in a chair. And I'm sorry that things didn't work out."

Annie turned and gave Lynne a blank stare.

Lynne tried again. "I don't know how much help I can be, but if you want someone to talk to, I'm here for you."

Annie paused on this for a few seconds. "Lynne? Take this personally," she finally said. "I have nothing I want to say to you, and I would appreciate it if you just left me alone." And then she turned back to the wall.

Lynne sighed, and Jeff asked. "Do you mind if I stay?"

"I don't care."

So Lynne nodded and left the room while Jeff sat on the edge of the bed.

Lynne stepped out of the bedroom and wandered into the living room while keeping another pair of eyes on Annie in her bedroom. Scrappy was in a corner gnawing on an unrecognizable well-chewed mass of leather, and Joey emerged from the dining room, followed by Tricia and the superhero Quantum Knight. Lynne flustered at the sight of the superhero, smoothed out her shirt, and approached her boyfriend. "You're leaving now?"

"Yeah."

She threw her arms around him one last time and held him close. Her eyes teared. "Promise me you will be careful!"

"I will," he assured her. "I've got a superhero with me and Tricia will be fully charged before I walk in. And he won't be able to touch me."

She held him by the face and stared into his eyes. "If he tries anything, you just get away from him. Don't try to fight him. Promise me!"

"I promise. I'm not going to fight him."

Lynne glanced at Tricia and Quantum Knight, and then pulled Joey in for a kiss. A long kiss. A very long kiss. A kiss that went on long enough until Tricia and Quantum Knight started feeling awkward about it.

"Um, Joey?" Quantum Knight said. "We're on a schedule."

Joey pulled his lips from Lynne, and stepped back. She held onto his hands for as long as possible. "I have to go now."

"You come right back to me."

"I will." She watched him as the superhero took his and Tricia's hands in hers, and they vanished in the signature strumming.

Over in her bedroom, Annie startled at the sound, and shuddered in terror.

Purgatory is misnamed.

According to the definition from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Purgatory is a stage of the afterlife. It is a place of purification, a place where the souls of the recently departed who have achieved a state of grace purge themselves of their final sins in order to enter heaven and approach God. But to those who actually live there they know it is no such place. It is simply a hole, a prison system crafted to contain those deemed too dangerous to be free. It is a place of no redemption, no teaching, no reflection, no forgiveness, and no escape. It is a place where humans who have turned into monsters are stored permanently. Hell is a better description.

The Purgatory Federal Ultra Secure Criminal Containment Facility is located in the mountains of Botetourt County, Virginia, one hundred seventy miles away from the nation's capitol, a normally three and a half hour long drive from Washington D.C., or ten minutes by serial teleportation. It is actually named for the mountain in which it is built. It is hugged on the south side by the James river and served by the local town of Buchanan. At the top of the mountain stands a small set of buildings and guard towers which surround a heliport, and this serves as the only entrance/exit to the facility. And it was on this heliport where Quantum Knight, Tricia, and Joey appeared.

As Tricia and Joey took in the surrounding buildings and towers, and watched fearfully as several rifles pointed in their direction, Quantum Knight simply watched one doorway and waited.

"They're pointing guns at us," Tricia said. "I don't like it."

"Yeah. Nobody does," said the superhero. "Try not to do anything that will make them want to pull the trigger." She was casual. "They know we were coming, but they still have procedures to follow. Right now somebody is probably panicking because they have sixteen cameras on me and none of them can see me clearly."

The door she was watching eventually opened, and two armed guards emerged followed by a man in a business suit. Joey took a step towards him but Quantum Knight held him back. "Just stay put. Let them come to us. That's the way this works."

The three men approached. Joey and Tricia could see the guards intense stares and firm grips on their weapons. The guns looked heavy in their strong arms. The third man in spectacles and goatee beard nodded to them all. "Quantum Knight, Miss Sanchez, Mister Harper, I'm Doctor Gaston McLean, manager of this facility." He shook their hands. "Welcome to Purgatory."

"Thank you for letting us visit," Quantum Knight said.

"Please follow me for a security briefing," he said, leading them into the nearest door. "We do have some protocols to follow, for your safety and ours as well."

There was only so long Annie could sit in a dark room and sulk in silence before turning her attention to the young man who sat with her. The awkwardness just grew and grew. Finally she turned to him.

"So, are you going to try and get me to talk about it too?"

"Is there any hope?" Jeff asked.

"No."

He shrugged. "If there's no hope, I won't try."

She smirked, and glanced over his body. "So, what's your specialty?"

"My specialty?"

"What do you do?" she asked.

"I play guitar, drums, keyboard..."

"No, I mean your powers. You're in that school too. What can you do?"

"Oh, um ... high-strength telekinesis."

Annie sighed. "That must be nice. I could use that. I could get things off the top shelves."

Jeff shook his head. "It's really not that useful. Lynne can do things like that, but I can only move large things." He pointed across the room. "Like if I tried to get that hair brush, I'd miss, or wind up pulling the whole dresser."

"Why? What's it like?"

"It's like ... ever try eating jello with chopsticks?"

Annie blinked as she processed this. "Um ... no. But I'll have to try it sometime."

Jeff grinned. "It's pretty hard to get ahold of anything. That's what it feels like to me."

She dipped her head down. "It still must be nice to be able to do something special."

He watched her return to her depression, and he then stood up and walked to her dresser. "You know, there is something else I can do."

"What?"

He returned to her, brandishing the hairbrush. "French braids!"

"No, you don't have to..."

"Hold still." He started brushing.

"Jeff, you don't..."

"I'm really good at this. I do my sister's hair all of the time. Now hold still."

Jeff brushed Annie's hair in long strokes, smoothing out the strands and massaging her scalp with the soft bristles. Annie just sighed and succumbed, and she sat and let him groom her. "You have lovely hair, you know that?" he said. "Straight, healthy, strong. It's got good body. Don't see any split ends, but it is kind of dark in here. I'd love to ... for Lynne to have hair like this. Hers curls up a lot, and it's hard to keep under control." He brushed and brushed her hair. "Now, if you're not going to talk to this other woman who's barging into your life, you really don't have any choice but to talk to your effeminate male hairdresser."

Annie let out a snort of laughter. "So, you're admitting it?"

He struck a pose. "I admit nothing, girlfriend!" He stepped back to her dresser. "Now where do you keep hair bands?"

"Top left."

He pulled some hair bands out, wrapped them around his wrist, returned to her, and continued brushing. "So, spill it, girl. What's going on?"

Annie sighed as he worked on her hair. "It's just that..." She sighed again. "I don't know what the limits are any more. I mean, I worked with Snow Angel for over a week now. And I pushed her. I pushed her hard, really hard to talk about her problems, to talk about her illness."

"Snow Angel is sick?"

Annie nodded. "Yeah. I pushed her to go to the doctor. I pushed her to go to the hospital. And she fought me every step of the way, but even after all those times, she thanked me. She THANKED me for pushing her. So then I thought that was what she needed, but then ... but then I pushed one too many times, and she ... and I almost killed her!" She turned to Jeff. "And I couldn't have known! I didn't know about this other promise that I was forcing her to break. She couldn't tell me! And she begged and pleaded, and I thought she was just, you know, fighting back out of stubbornness or something. But she was really fighting for her life!"

The loose braids were starting to take shape, and Jeff expertly wrapped the hair bands around the ends, tying them tight. Annie continued. "It's like, I thought I understood what it was I could do, and how things worked, but I was wrong. It's more complex than I could imagine."

Jeff draped the long braid down over her shoulder, showing her the result. As Annie admired his work, he knelt down next to her. "I know what you mean. Every time I think I've figured something out, some new complication in life comes along messing everything up, and it can be frustrating." He took her hand in his. "I think what's important is that we all remember that we're all struggling, trying to figure out life. So it's important that we all give each other chances. You were giving Snow Angel chances, and she thanked you. Joey said that Snow Angel has forgiven you. She's giving you a chance. I think you should take it."

Annie gave him a half-smirk. "And what about you? You're giving me a chance too?"

"I see a girl sitting alone in the dark sulking, damn straight I'm giving her a chance. I know despair when I see it."

"What do you know about despair?" Annie asked. "You're young, healthy, intact, superpowered. You've got it all going for you."

Jeff paused on this for a long moment, and turned his arm, pulling his sleeve back a bit. He held his forearm up into the bands of light that leaked through the blinds, and guided her attention to his wrist.

In the bright bands of light, she could see the scars on his wrist.

"Believe me," he said. "I understand despair."

The security briefing, as far as Joey was concerned, was short, simple, to the point, and could be broken down into three rules: Don't wander off, do as you're told, and don't touch anything. Joey had no plans to break any of those rules.

Doctor McLean explained in some detail some of the designs of the prison. Although it had several feeds for water, sewage, power, and ventilation, there was only one humanly accessible access point, which was located at the top of the mountain. The fact that it had only a single opening meant there were no emergency exits in case of a disaster. The place was designed so that in the event of a structural collapse, fire, attack, escape, or other catastrophe, the prison would close up much like a submarine, seal sections off and sacrifice everyone within individual components rather than let anyone escape. The guards knew this, and the staff knew this. They were expendable; that's why they got paid the big bucks. The lesson behind this detail was simple; Don't start a fight.

Another part of the briefing was on Psi-Clone. They discussed his telepathy, and they discussed his telekinesis. They showed Joey video footage of Psi-Clone standing over a victim and enjoying the sight as his victim screamed from psychic pain, rolled on the ground, and tried to rip her own skin off, and they watched in horror as the supervillain would mentally grab a person, lift him in the air, and crush his skeleton. The video footage, they explained, was taken from Psi-Clone's own personal collections. Joey flinched and grimaced at the gruesome sights, and on more than one occasion, Tricia could see Joey's hands darken as he primed his black field. They explained the security features of his holding tank. No humans approached him, and his food was delivered via a small double-sealed airlock. The cell was fitted with cameras which fed to a remote monitoring room. The floor was lined with conductors, capable of delivering thousands of volts of electricity on command, and gas nozzles fed into his cell, capable of filling the entire area with anesthetics. The plan was that Tricia would wait within the monitoring room along with some of the guards, and Quantum Knight would stand guard in the hallway, just outside of Psi-Clone's accessible view. In the event of an emergency, the cell would be sealed and anesthetic gas pumped inside, knocking both Joey and the supervillain out. Quantum Knight would only be responsible for removing Joey from the area if needed.

Joey took it all in silence, listening, watching, and nodding. Every subject turned towards the dangers of the situation. The prisoners were dangerous, and the prison was dangerous. It was okay to be afraid. This was a place superheroes did not like coming to. And Doctor McLean made it very clear that if Joey were to change his mind at this moment, were he to turn back now, no one would think it was of cowardness. No one would think ill of him. In fact, everyone involved would be greatly relieved.

"I understand what you're trying to do," Joey finally said during the briefing. "And you're not going to change my mind. I'm still going to talk to him."

Dr. McLean paused on this. "You do realize that your presence here endangers not just yourself and your friends, but everyone in this facility, including me. If word gets out that you are here, who knows what will happen? You are not well liked here. You're mere presence might enrage some of the prisoners. They may try something drastic, because after all, they have nothing to lose in here." He folded his arms across his chest and stared at him. "Now if you're going to endanger my life as well as my staff and charges, I think you owe me an explanation. Why are you here? What exactly are you trying to prove? That you're tough? You're brave?"