Amnesia, Book 1: A Girl Lost In The Woods

<Solomon> Chapter I: Whom the Gods Wish To Destroy...

DAY 79,868 since Wade took Her from me

“You can go straight to hell.” Solomon forces out a deranged laugh. The sound cuts halfway between a snarl and a grunt. He spits on the floor for emphasis.

“I’m trying to be civil here, Mr. Creed. I don’t have to be. I thought that your kind could appreciate that,” Weir’s tenor falls softy into a silence, a cold and methodical foil to his captive.

Solomon can’t place what Weir’s voice reminds him of.

“I guess you been talking to—who—Vic? Good to know that nerd is still around,” he sneers. His voice is like the growl of an old engine. “But in case you didn’t notice, we don’t exactly have a lot in common dickless.”

Weir folds his hands carefully, professionally on the dark steel table. This is only the first stage of negotiations, he reasons; he’d expected it not to be easy.

Secretly, though, he’s pleased. He’s already gleaned more information from contradictions in the responses of both his Subjects than either of them are aware.

Weir shifts imperceptibly forward, his face a perpetual mask.

“Whatd’ya doing? You gonna stare me to death?” Solomon pauses, considering that he forgot to punctuate with an insult, then adds, “Dickhead.” He goes to run a hand through his greasy hair, but the manacle on the chair arm stops him halfway. “Mother—argh!” he roars, throwing his weight against the constraints. The thick steel chains strain and the metal chair whines in protest. But he’s still restrained.

Solomon’s motto is ‘laugh when you’re being tortured.’ That sums up his life. The only exception for him is a cage. The solitude and the silence are the two things he can’t stand. The Screaming knows that—apparently Weir does too. In a cage he’d have too much time to think. In a cage he might finally lose it.

“I’m trying to think of your options,” Weir begins, “because it seems to me you don’t actually have any.” He pauses to let the message sink in. “Dr. Belmont has been a wealth of information, yes, but his data always ends up being a bit less… ‘reliable’ than yours. He has nothing before the seventeenth century and only a haphazard impression of the twentieth, except his proud jaunt into South America which is where I first discovered him—”

“Yeah, well that’s not my problem, is it?” Solomon grumbles.

Every word outta this guy’s mouth is more annoying than the last.

Weir is unfazed. “I need information about the other fragments, these Essences, as you call them. Let me rephrase, I’m going to find the rest of these fragments—with or without you. So—and I realize this may sound cliché—you have nothing to lose by helping me.”

He stands up and walks around the room. Slowly. It’s a calculated gesture: he has no reason to do it except to show that he can and Solomon can’t.

“I would rather do business with you. Dr. Belmont was only able to provide me with the location of two of them—which reports from the field indicate are there no longer. Which means all I have in my possession is the one from your penthouse—your brother, I believe?” Weir betrays a smirk as he finishes his circuit of the empty cell. He leans over the table in a way that says I’m-the-boss, and locks eyes with Solomon.

Solomon’s played chicken before. He never flinches, never blinks, but his square jaw clenches in suppressed fury that tells Weir he’s hit a soft spot.

Solomon smiles—a rugged grimace that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Weir thinks he has him.

Weir thinks he always gets what he wants.

Weir doesn’t know Jack.

Solomon broke those chains the minute Weir stepped into this lightless hole. Then he made his way quietly over to the wall. He put an illusionary copy of himself in the chair, so as to take Weir by surprise.

That’s Solomon’s thing, illusions. He doesn’t know why. It’s just something he can do. Now he’s just biding his time.

See, this guy knows way too much for a human, and Solomon wants to know just how much. And he doesn’t even have to grill him—he’s the kind of joker who’d spill his guts on his whole damn life story if you told him his hair plugs looked good.

Vic always whined that they’d catch on some day, the humans, but this guy must be his worst nightmare. Weir’s in the right place at the right time, and he’s got the power and resources to threaten all of them… wait, oh yeah, it’s just the two of ‘em left. Doesn’t really matter anymore.

But then again, Solomon knew that nothing did.

The frustration—or maybe the boredom fuels a surge of the Screaming. Solomon clutches his head in agony. Throat fills with bile. Eyes go dark. Who’s he killed this time? Horror fills his mind. Revulsion washes over him and for a moment he can’t hear anything but her screams. He can’t turn it off. He can’t stop it. He. Can’t. Think.

I DIDN’T DO THAT. THAT WASN’T ME. THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN!

Solomon rages. He pushes the image of the nonexistent girl out of his head. He screams as the Screaming takes hold. He frenzies and roars until the feeling is forced out of him—forced at Weir.

Why is he still listening to this douchebag? Why does he give a rat’s ass?

“—and I’d like to know from your perspective what this ‘screaming’ as Dr. Belmont calls it, is. He describes it like it’s alive, and I’d like to know what it feels like.”

The illusionary copy of Solomon rips through his chains like they’re made of paper. “You wanna know what it feels like dickhead? It knows what scares you. It knows what hurts you deep. And you know what? I do too!” he rumbles like thunder.

The real Solomon steps out of the ashy shadows and launches himself at Weir. He’s built like a soldier and Weir looks like a ragdoll by comparison—a ragdoll in a little silk power-suit.

“Smile for the birdie, bitch,” he snarls, grabbing the man’s throat.

Only he doesn’t.

His deadly hands go straight through Weir—Weir’s image.

It’s a trick, Solomon realizes, the same one he was playing.

“It’s called a hologram,” a crackling voice explains from somewhere out of sight. The image of Weir fizzles and disappears.

Solomon glares up at the spotlight overhead.

“Dr. Belmont told us about your ‘unique’ ability, as well as his own. It seems he can repair damaged tissue in others, and you—you create illusions that for all intents and purposes are perceived as real,” Weir proclaims with glib self-satisfaction.

Solomon knows why. The bastard thinks he outsmarted a man twenty times older than him. And maybe he just did.

“I have to say your demonstration was even more impressive than I’d hoped. You fooled my men when they tried to detain you, and you even fooled my monitors—at least when I looked at them. Interesting.” He says the word with distracted apathy.

Solomon says nothing. He doesn’t have anywhere to channel his fury—nothing to beat into a pulp until the Screaming stops and he can breathe again and not feel like he wants to vomit.

His hands quiver. His blood keeps boiling. He knows this is gonna get bad fast.

“Maybe you’ll reconsider after you’ve had some time to think.”

Funeral bells. That’s what Weir’s voice sounds like.

Damn funeral bells.