Why not. Hogan could only have something that would lead to progress. Progress meant getting out of this place.

  “Okay.”

  “Good. I have a pilot coming for you. Meet him at the landing zone.”

  Lauren didn’t question it. She hung up and got to her feet. She let her body walk itself to the landing area. She stood and waited. A helicraft descended from the sky. She stepped into its belly and buckled herself in. She didn’t care where it was taking her. Everything outside of her head was numb. She didn’t watch the school disappear or the city on the horizon glow as they flew along the mountains. She didn’t feel the cold, or respond when the pilot offered to seal the doors.

  The flight was maybe twenty minutes. They were still in the same general climate, a range of forested mountains when the helicraft began to descend. No civilization could be seen nearby. They landed on a concrete helicopter pad.

  Lauren unbuckled and stepped out. The pilot waited inside his craft as the rotors spun down. She checked her phone for anything else from Hogan. No messages.

  A staircase led from the pad to a slab of a building built into the mountainside. It was low profile; it’s gray sides and roof stained with lichen and deadfall. A few antennae blinked lights on and off. Windows lining the front of the building, at an angle Lauren couldn’t see as she walked down the steps, shed some weak light onto the surrounding pines. She entered an unlocked steel door.

  The interior hallway smelled like mildew and cigarettes. Deep water damage stained the maroon carpet. The whole place was eerily quiet except for the electric buzz of the overhead lighting. If she were in a better mood, she might care if this was some sort of ambush. She walked forward.

  Doorless rooms lined the halls. She half-peeked into a few. Some looked like dorms or living quarters. Others more like lab spaces. What machinery she saw looked ancient, for what little she knew of tech. Complex equations written in old chalk covered wheeled blackboards. Bulky computer terminals hibernated, their screens dark and covered in dust. Projectors loaded with reels. And paper. So much scattered paper. No signs of people yet. Where was Hogan in all this?

  She turned a corner into another hall. This one was some sort of bridge connecting two halves of the building. The wall facing outward to the dark forest was all glass. Halfway down it were some floor-to-ceiling cases. Lauren stopped and idly checked them. Inside the cases were three mannequins. Two were bare. One wore a shiny white padded outfit with a black spacey sort of helmet. It looked like a dated idea of what a futuristic astronaut might wear.

  There were some framed pictures by the case. A team of people in lab coats. One of them was in a wheelchair. The pictures were taken in one of the building’s labs, back when it was maintained and operational. Lauren was a bit biased against scientists, but these ones looked nice.

  She kept walking. Not too far down the other half of the building, the hallway let out into an open area. It was a sort of cafeteria. Old wood and metal tables and chairs were scattered around the room or stacked against the far wall. The kitchen area across the way was dark and quiet. Only a few lights were on here, leaving stretches of shadow.

  Hogan sat in a chair in the center of the room, in one of the pockets of light. He had been waiting. A folder on a table nearby. His elbows rested on his knees, hands laced together. He said nothing as Lauren entered.

  “This is pretty dramatic,” Lauren said. She walked in and fell on her butt a dozen feet in front of him, not bothering to take a chair. She still ached from Lucy’s lashing. And so tired. But she waited to hear what Hogan had to say.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  Hogan shifted. “It was a base for the Egonauts. A new-agey transcendental hero team back in the sixties.”

  “Mm, so when you were just starting out?”

  Hogan didn’t find her barb very funny.

  “I heard about your foray underground.”

  “Mm.” Lauren remained detached. It was easier. She couldn’t dwell on what her friends had gone through for her. “You know how it is. Slavers gotta die. Might as well be the one to do it.”

  “Sola’s people are slavers, y’know,” Hogan said. “I don’t think she particularly hides that fact. You gonna go topple their stellar empire too?”

  Lauren didn’t rise to meet his challenge. She was so beyond done with him.

  “I didn’t bring her here. I just used her. Just like I use all my friends, I guess. The US government importing a slaver-princess to fight for them just to hastily patch the holes in their security sounds about right, though.”

  Hogan sat up straighter. “I guess teenagers can only be expected to care about the issues right in front of them.”

  “What does she get out of being here, anyway?” Lauren asked.

  “Jaigal nobles are expected to journey beyond their home world and find their glory in the stars. Princess Solaria J’gundatha’s family chose Earth. We did an exchange program.”

  Lauren raised an eyebrow. “You sent a human to her planet?”

  Hogan shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

  Lauren didn’t particularly care to hear it. She thought about something that had been on her mind since she had last seen Hogan. Since she had lashed out at him.

  “What was her name?” Lauren asked.

  Hogan stiffened, caught off guard.

  “What?”

  “Your daughter,” Lauren said. It was the only reason she could come up with for Hogan having reacted like he did. “What was her name?”

  Hogan swallowed. His eyes softened with memory. It took him a moment to speak up.

  “…Her name was Kristen.”

  Lauren waited without pressure for him to continue. His fingers dug in and bunched the fabric of his pants.

  “She’d be twenty-three now.”

  She wasn’t a topic he talked about much. That much was clear. Probably because it was painful. Lauren watched his face as he reeled up her memory from his dark depths.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “…She was social, and friendly, and good at everything she tried. She had so much love for the world. She was born with an ultra-gene.”

  “She had superpowers?”

  He nodded. “First ever in the family. Manifested at puberty. Nothing world changing. She’d be a street-super at most. But that’s exactly what she wanted to be. A superhero with her own community to look after.” The pain overwhelmed him. He released it like pressure in a tight hiss from his mouth. Lauren thought that might be all he had in him to share. But he continued. “When she was your age, there wasn’t anything like Rosewell. I wish there had been. I wish she had peers like you. Things would have been different.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got her into a program. Unofficial, mostly. It was to help her learn the ropes. Apprentice under different heroes. Get experience. Eventually she settled for awhile in Drakesburg. She had this mentor she liked. Wanted to stick with him. I was so busy with my work. I should have paid closer attention. I should have looked into the situation more.”

  His eyes grew wet, but Hogan wasn’t a sobber. He had cried all the tears he could have for this long ago.

  “She told me on the phone she liked her training. It was pushing her. But she sounded weak. I trusted that it was what she wanted. I should have visited her more. Her mentor was a bad man. A manipulator. A devil in plain sight. He… he broke her. When I found her, it was too late.”

  Hogan wilted. He looked so old, like he couldn’t even hold himself up anymore. There must’ve been light in his eyes at one point, when his daughter was alive. It was gone now, the only thing keeping him going his duty.

  “What happened to the man?” Lauren asked. “Is he in prison?”

  “He’s paying for what he did,” Hogan answered.

  Lauren stood. She did something neither of them expected. She walked over and hugged Hogan.

  He was unsure of what to do. He awkwardly waited for it to end. But Lauren held on. She squeezed his shoulders in her grip, putting her head against his.

  Hogan’s arms slowly rose, and he hugged her back.

  “I’m sorry,” Lauren said as gentle as she could. “I’m sorry. It’s not fair to lose people we care about. It’s not fair that others can hurt them.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not fair.”

  Maybe this whole time, Hogan was the only one she had met that understood the pain. He felt it worse, and longer, than she had. He had no hope left. Maybe a newly-empowered teenage girl falling dirty and half-feral into his life was some sort of redemption. All this time, he had just been trying to protect her. She shouldn’t be pushing him away.

  Lauren released him and rested her chin on top of his head for a moment. She stepped back. When she saw his face again, Hogan looked wretched. Sick with guilt.

  For the first time since she had come into the room, Lauren eyed the folder beside him. She stepped further back.

  “Why did you bring me here? What did you find out?”

  He shook his head, looking like he had lost his nerve. “Maybe we should do this another day…”

  “No,” Lauren said. “No, you brought me out here for a reason. You wanted to tell me something. And you right now, you’re looking at me like I’m a sick dog you need to put down. So what is it?”

  He pulled himself together and steeled his expression. “You’re right. I guess this is inevitable.”

  Lauren waited for the continuation. Hogan took the folder in his hands and flipped it open. He pulled out a pair of reading glasses to wear.

  “Lauren, do you know what Tay-Sachs disease is?”

  That wasn’t at all what she was expecting. She had never heard of it. Was this what Rachel was sick with?

  “No.”

  “I didn’t either.” He read from something in his folder. “Tay-Sachs disease is a neurological disease caused by a failure in a specific gene that causes toxic buildup in nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, progressing into loss of physical and mental ability, paralysis, loss of senses, and eventually death. The juvenile form, which begins to become fatal in the teenage years, has symptoms including motor-speech issues and seizures. Like most genetic diseases, there is no known cure.”

  “Okay. So I take it this is what Rachel was sick with,” Lauren said. “That’s good to know. What else?”

  Hogan waited for a pause.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Lauren, you were born with Tay-Sachs disease.”

  She froze. She must have heard him wrong. It was so ridiculous she almost laughed. Then she grew frustrated.

  “…Have you been listening to me at all?” she asked. “Rachel was the one sick. Rachel. I’m fine. I’ve always been fine. What are you even getting this from?”

  “Your medical records,” Hogan said. “I’ve had them since right after you were hospitalized the first time. My assistant Ramsey found them for me.”

  “Well, no offense, but Ramsey needs to go back to agent school,” Lauren said. “Because you really hired an amateur. I barely even got sick growing up.”

  “I double-checked myself, Lauren. I triple checked, I got the records from the county hospital.” He looked up at her with a strange expression. Like he was willing her to realize something before he had to say it.

  “What?” Lauren snapped. She paced in front of him. None of this made sense. What was he playing at? What did he get out of lying that she was sick?

  “I got your birth records too.” He flipped slowly through his folder. Lauren watched with bared teeth. “Lauren Boone,” he read. “Born sixteen years and one-hundred-fifty-one days ago.”

  “Okay?” She threw her hands up. “Congratulations. You know my birthday. What is this for?”

  He looked back up at her. He really wanted her to realize something.

  “Just spit it out!”

  “Lauren Boone… was the only registered birth in the county that day.”

  Lauren stopped pacing. Icy emotions washed over her. He was not possibly saying what it sounded like he was. There was no way.

  “Lauren…” Hogan spoke slowly and carefully. “I can’t find any evidence that your parents had twins. By all records, accounts, and information I was able to uncover, they had one daughter named Lauren Boone. She was a very sick girl. Tay-Sachs disease. They were preparing for her death in a few years. They died in a bridge-crossing accident. Lauren avoided CPS and struck out on her own. She worked in Callis for a man named Tommy Lucenko for a few years before disappearing.”

  Hogan waited for her reaction.

  Lauren screamed.

  She grabbed the nearest table and threw it. It flew fifteen feet and shattered against the wall.

  “NO! NO NO NO NO NO!” She wheeled on Hogan. He shrunk back, afraid as if she were going to strike him. She grabbed the lapels of his suit. “RACHEL IS REAL! I HAVE A SISTER! I DON’T CARE WHAT YOUR FUCKING RECORDS SAY! SHE’S REAL AND I LIVED EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE WITH HER!”

  He put his hands on her balled fists. “Lauren, please…”

  She couldn’t handle the rage. She let go of him and stomped to the next nearest table. She put her fist through its center. She did it again and again until it broke in half. She kicked away the pieces and turned to Hogan again. He had stood up from his seat.

  “Dr. Smythe fucking manipulated it.” She panted. “She got our records and changed them to make me look crazy. She wants Rachel to disappear. She wants you to stop looking for her. You get that, right? You have to fucking get that!”

  Hogan kept his hands up. “I know this is distressing—”

  “Distressing?! Fucking distressing?!” Lauren grabbed a chair and threw it against the ceiling. Both dented.

  “Can I please tell you my working theory without you murdering me?” Hogan asked.

  “What. The fuck. Is your theory?”

  “I think that Rachel… your memories of her and the pull you feel to find her… is a mental construct.”

  Lauren shook with anger. Her fighting sense rose up within. She had to keep the door at the back of her mind shut with all her strength to keep it from going for Hogan. She felt her claws grow and retract rapidly.

  Hogan took her stillness as a sign to continue.

  “It makes sense. This Dr. Smythe is now based in Pacific City. She wants to keep you on an invisible leash. Close, but not under constant monitoring. So she invents a reason for you to stay. You’re subconsciously forced to keep looking, keep getting into trouble and fighting, keep getting stronger, until the day she’s ready to bring you back into the fold.”

  “…No.”

  “Lauren…”

  “No!” She gripped the back of her head. Her claws dug into her skin, making her bleed. She sunk to her knees. Her anger was drowned in sudden sadness. She began sobbing all over again.

  Rachel was real. She knew she was real. They played together outside. In the creeks, in the lots. She was Lauren’s only friend. She couldn’t be fake. There was too much to fake. It was too real. Hogan had to be wrong. He… had to be…

  She fell onto her shoulder, then rolled to her back. She gasped for air to fuel her crying. Hogan walked over to fill her vision.

  “Let me take you home.”

  “F-f-ffffuck you!” she blubbered out. She kicked at him, not really intending to hit him even in her grief. “Leave me alone! You don’t know anything!”

  “We can work on conditioning the false memories out…”

  “Fuck you!” she screamed. “You’re not taking my memories of her! Just fuck off! Go back to your fucking castle in the sky! I’ll fucking find her myself!”

  He sighed; a dark figure deeply exhausted in a halo of artificial light made by the water blurring Lauren’s vision.

  “I’ll wait for you outside. I’m not leaving without you. Take the time you need.”

  His steps echoed away.