Fic: Deja Vu - Chapter Three
Dean decides to head back to Sector Nine, figuring that it’ll be easier to lose himself there than in a residential sector. And then… what? Head to the Lower District to hide out? Try to get to Mars to figure out what he supposedly blabbed about? Dean’s head is spinning and his hands have started to shake. The ear-drum-splitting klaxon that sounds as soon as he steps onto the platform doesn’t help with that at all; nor do the half a dozen transit officers who rush toward him with their guns drawn, yelling, “Disarm now, Citizen! Down on the ground!”
Dean freezes. And then he remembers Carmen’s gun, shoved into the back waistband of his jeans in a way that feels comfortable and reassuring. He looks up at the security scanner and sees the gun’s outline, looming large on the big screen. Dean panics, running into the crowd of people on the platform, just as the train arrives. He jumps the tracks, narrowly avoiding getting mowed down, and then ducks underneath the train and clings horizontally to its underside. He thinks he may have done this before, because he seems to intuitively find a section of the carriage that is a little higher off the ground and comes with convenient hand holds. The train is late leaving the station, while the transit officers search to make sure he isn’t aboard. Eventually, though, they let it leave, the general consensus seeming to be that he ran off.
It’s scary as fuck clinging to the underside of a fast moving train. His knuckles are white, his eyes and nose are streaming, and he can feel his skin pulled taut.
When the train comes to a stop, Dean pries his fingers loose, drops and rolls. He abandons the gun on the tracks and sneaks his way up onto the platform and then swipes out of the station without any drama. He loses himself in Chinatown and then sits down to think. So far, the people who are out to get him, the Agency, if Carmen is to be believed, don’t seem to be working with the local authorities, but Dean can’t be certain how long that will continue. He can’t be certain of anything really, up to and including, who he actually is. Dean puts his head in his hands and is startled when his i-band alerts him to an incoming call. Dean looks at the caller ID and frowns. He has no idea who Dr Badass is, but his gut is telling him to answer the call, so he does.
“Dean Winchester?” says the voice on the other end.
“Why you gotta start with the hard questions?” Dean gripes.
Dr Badass’s laugh surprises him. “Fair enough. Okay, look, we gotta be quick here. You already seem to have figured out that you’re not you. That’s a good start. Now, I need you to trust me. I need you to go to the corner of Montrose Street and Bourke Road. There’s a street vendor there who sells nuts-”
“How very appropriate,” Dean mutters.
“He’s gonna give you a briefcase and a new i-band. Put the new i-band on immediately and smash your old one. It can be used to track you. The new i-band will have an address in it. You need to get to that address pronto. You with me?”
“Yeah,” Dean says and before he can say anything else, the line goes dead.
Dean brings up the location of the nut vendor on his i-band’s GPS and then goes there quickly. An Asian man wearing Chef’s pants, a white shirt and a white hairnet hands him a small silver briefcase and a new i-band. He takes his old one off immediately and grinds it under his heel before posting it down a storm water drain. He puts the new one around his wrist and the new message tone sounds immediately, giving him an address which he looks up straight away. The place is an abandoned cement factory and Dean jogs there.
He puts the briefcase down on a work bench and looks around. “Now what?”
Almost on cue, his i-band makes the incoming call tone and Dean answers promptly.
“Yeah?”
“Open the briefcase. The combination is,” Dr Badass rattles off a series of numbers and Dean spins the dial until the lock clicks open. “Inside you’ll find a device, looks a little like a socket wrench.”
Dean picks it up. “Got it. What now?”
“I need you to shove it up your nose.”
Dean blinks. “I beg your pardon,” he says, rather politely he thinks, under the circumstances.
“You’re bugged,” Dr Badass says. “Partly so they can track you physically, but mostly so that they can keep an eye on the memory implant. So hurry up and do what I say, they could be tracking you here, right now.”
Dean swallows and then gingerly places the socket wrench thing in his nose.
“Shove it in hard,” Dr Badass says.
“You don’t want me to buy you dinner first?” Dean quips, because he’s pretty much on his last nerve right now, but he does what he’s told.
“Press the button on the handle,” Dr Badass says.
As soon as he does, Dean feels something shoot upwards and blinding pain nearly cleaves his head in two.
“Jesus fuck!” he cries out.
“Pull it out,” Dr Badass says calmly.
When he gets it out, Dean finds that the socket wrench is clamped tightly onto something that looks a little like a silverfish made of fine wire, only with a fuckton more waving antennae things. He doesn’t actually throw up, but it’s a close thing.
“And that, my friend,” says Dr Badass, “is a Lepisma tracker. Smash it now.”
“No problem,” Dean says, placing the little horror on the floor and then smashing it with the heel of his boot.
“Excellent,” Dr Badass says. “You’ve gone off their grid.”
“You sure?”
“Oh yes,” Badass replies. “I’m hacked into their system and your light just went out. So to speak.”
“Who are they?” Dean asks. “Why did they put that thing in my head?”
“I’ll answer those questions for you,” Badass says, “but first we need to get you to a safehouse. They’ve been tracking you and I don’t know how close they got before we knocked you off the grid.”
As if on cue, Dean hears the thud of boots on concrete and sees the silhouettes of people with guns running past the opaque factory window.
“They’re here,” he says, voice low.
Dr Badass lets out a long breath. “Okay,” he says. “Not good, but not unexpected. Leave the briefcase. Head to the back of the building and go right. There’s a room at the end with a large drain. Pull the cover up and go down into it.”
Dean’s moving before Dr Badass finishes speaking in his ear. He jogs in the direction he was told to go, stopping to flatten himself against a wall on several occasions when he hears footfalls coming close. He edges toward the final corridor and peeks around the corner. There’s an armed man at the end, right in front of the room he needs. “Dude!” he whispers into his i-band, “they’re everywhere! It’s no go, man.”
“Give me a minute,” Badass says.
Dean hears an abrupt cry of excitement, followed by gunfire and then he has to hide inside a storage cupboard because the armed man who was blocking his way is suddenly running to join in the fun.
Dr Badass is snickering. “Okay,” he says. “The way is clear.”
Dean is just exiting the cupboard when there’s a massive explosion. He stumbles and swears, but keeps running. “What the hell did you do?” he says.
“Triggered the briefcase’s holo projector to show an image of an armed man firing a laser gun, then, when the agents were all gathered around, I activated the self-destruct on the briefcase. The bottom of it’s packed with Semtex. Kaboom!”
Dean has to admit, that is pretty badass.
He finds the drain cover and pulls it up. It’s a bitch of a thing to move, but he gets the job done.
“Awesome,” he groans as he lowers himself into the cavernous tunnel below. “This is a sewer isn’t it? As if there hasn’t been enough shit in my life lately.”
Dr Badass guides him through the sewer, until finally he says, “Okay, stop for a minute. To your right, there’s a hollow in the wall. Can you see it?”
It’s pretty dim in the sewer, but Dean can just make out what he’s talking about. “Yeah,” he says, “there’s a locked box sitting in, like a hollowed out hole.”
Dr Badass gives him the combination and Dean opens the box. “There are six envelopes in there,” Badass says. “Choose one and follow the instructions inside it. We’re going to radio silence for a while now.”
Before Dean can give his agreement, the line goes dead again. He picks out an envelope and opens it, activating the torch app on his i-band so that he can read what it says.
He follows the directions it gives and fifteen minutes later, he’s climbing out of the sewer tunnel and emerging into… a slum. Several dive bars compete for trade from the pimps, peddlers and gang bangers who stalk the dirty streets, and there’s a hooker or three on every corner and drunks sleeping in doorways.
Fuck. He’s in the Lower District. Dean consults his piece of paper and reads his next instruction: Go to The Titz Brothel and tell them you’ve just finished back-to-back tours on Mars and you’re looking for a three-titted girl to help you spend your severance pay.
Dean blinks. “That is so cheesy,” he mutters.
Still, he either does it-and maybe gets some answers-or he cuts his losses and runs. Dean looks around-he doesn’t like his chances of not ending up peddling himself on a street corner if he has to make his own way from here on in. So. Titz it is.
The madam behind the desk at The Titz is a buxom blonde, dressed head to toe in black latex. Dean flashes her his most charming smile and tries not to be completely intimidated.
“Hi,” he says, and then delivers the cheesy line. The madam stares at him a moment and then calls out, “Danneel, special customer for you.”
Sure enough, Danneel has three breasts. She takes Dean by the hand and leads him into what appears to be a BDSM dungeon. Dean is honestly getting more freaked out by the second. When she turns to face him, it’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it’s all been a terrible mistake, but her expression forestalls him.
She points at what looks to be a faux dungeon door. “Panic room’s through there. If a red light starts flashing, you hit this button here, and you get inside. I’ll let HQ know that you’re here and your contact will be in touch shortly. We’ve got a decent scrambler, so there won’t be anyone listening in who shouldn’t be. Good luck.”
She leaves and Dean sits down cautiously on what he suspects is a spanking bench.
Ten tense minutes later, Dr Badass calls him.
“Excellent work, Compadre,” he says. “So, what do you know about the Ghost Program?”
Dean frowns. “The Ghost Program…uh…nothing. Why?”
Dr Badass sighs. “Okay, Cliffnotes version: Prisons are expensive to run, the government decided that implanting new, law-abiding identities in the heads of criminals and sending them out to work in areas where there are skills shortages, was a win/win scenario.”
Dean’s stomach does a sort of sick flip flop. “So…I’m a criminal?”
“You? No. Not really. We don’t get involved in freeing common criminals. Your file was marked with a ‘P’, which means that you were a political prisoner.”
“Huh,” Dean says. “Do you think that’s why I had people keeping an eye on me? Because I’ve gotta say, that doesn’t sound real cheap.”
Badass clears his throat. “The tracker in your head was activated when you suffered some kind of memory-related episode. That’s what triggered the Agency to bring you in for adjustment and that’s what made you trigger my search program.”
Dean frowns. “No-one was trying to bring me in,” he says. “They were trying to kill me. And I was being watched the whole time.”
There’s a long silence and then Dr Badass says, “Is it possible you’re maybe being a bit paranoid?”
“No!” Dean says. “Both Carmen and Gordon told me they’d been tapped to keep an eye on me; right before they both tried to kill me.”
There’s another silence and then Dr Badass says, “Dean? Would you mind switching to visual? We don’t usually do that, the less we all know about each other the better, but, uh…it’s possible you may be someone.”
Dean scoffs at that. Obviously he’s someone. But Dr Badass did save his life and get him clear of people who were trying to hurt him, so Dean doesn’t mind letting the guy see his face, even if Badass won’t return the favour.
He flicks the appropriate setting on the i-band and Dr Badass sucks in air harshly. “Holy shit!” he says. “Holy mother-fucking shit.”
“I know right?” Dean says, deadpan. “I’m adorable.”
“You’re...you’re alive. Holy shit. We thought you were dead. This is. Wow. This is big. I can’t believe I found you! Sit tight, buddy. I’m gonna have to consult with the Boss Man,” there’s a pause and then, before Dean can ask Dr Badass who he really is, the line goes dead again.
Danneel comes back in. She brings him a very tiny cup of thick black coffee and Dean immediately recognizes the aromatic, almost cinnamon scent of it. He looks up at her sharply and she puts the cup on the table in front of him and inclines her head, “Barakah Bashad,” she says.
“Shukriya,” Dean replies automatically. And then he frowns. “I… don’t know what that means.”
Danneel smiles. “It means you’re familiar with the Martian Coffee Ceremony,” she gestures to the cup. “Enjoy.”
Dean picks up the cup and takes a sip and his head nearly splits in two with pain as memories rush him. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of a cave. It’s warm and smells of coffee, cinnamon and spice. There are hand-woven rugs in various shades of orange and red and brown on both the walls and the floor, and there’s a low stone table in front of him. Opposite, sits a man with a shock of dark hair and blue eyes. He’s wearing a tie- dyed kaftan. There’s a brazier filled with hot coals off to one side and a stone mortar and pestle beside that. The man is pouring coffee from a long-necked jebena into half a dozen finjal. An arm settles gently across Dean’s shoulders and he turns and looks and it’s Jay! Jay from his dreams.
“Jensen, if we can get your dad on board,” Jay says, “it’ll change everything.”
He shakes his head. “That’s just a pipe dream. You don’t know my father. He’s a complete and total asshole. He wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”
As the memory starts to fade, and blackness envelopes him, Dean almost laughs at the fact that they’d carried his daddy issues over to his new persona.
“Mister?”
There’s a vile smell under his nose and he jerks away, the heel of his palm smashing against his forehead when another blinding headache hits him.
“What the fuck?” he manages.
“Smelling salts,” Danneel says. “Here,” she thrusts a glass of water and a couple of tablets into his hand. “Painkillers.”
He downs them fast and then discovers that the leg of his jeans is wet.
Danneel sees him rubbing at it. “You spilled your coffee when you fainted.”
Dean scowls. “I didn’t faint.”
Danneel rolls her eyes. “Apologies to your male ego,” she says. “At least you didn’t pee yourself when you passed out.”
“Better,” Dean says. “Passed out is much more manly,” and then he frowns. “Smelling salts? Really?”
Danneel shrugs and then she sits down behind him and massages his shoulders. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Look, you seem like a nice girl, but I don’t bat for your team, so if you’re gonna offer me a happy ending, you’re wasting your time.”
Danneel slaps him across the back of the head. “I ain’t offering. Asshat,” she moves her hands to his head and begins to massage his temples. “You know these memory flashes can trigger an embolism in your brain, right?
“Sweeheart, I don’t even know who I am, so let’s just assume I don’t know anything about anything.”
Danneel hums thoughtfully. “Okay,” she says. “The only way to completely destroy a memory is to destroy the neuron that’s supporting the memory. When the Agency creates a new Ghost, they don’t wanna do that, because then they lose the structure that they need for the new memories. So they supress the subject’s existing memories with drugs, basically giving them retrograde amnesia, and then they superimpose new, false memories over the top. If the suppression starts to fail, it can cause the subject to have a stroke.”
“So I guess I should avoid things that might trigger old memories,” Dean frowns. “Which would be awesome, except I have no way of knowing what those things might be, because I can’t remember!”
Danneel nods. “The Martian coffee seems to have been a trigger. Which isn’t really surprising because scent and taste are huge memory triggers.”
Danneel stops massaging him and gets to her feet, offering him her hand and helping him to stand. He sits back down on the spanking bench and she folds her arms and tells him that his contact wants him to remain in the safe room for a little while longer and is he hungry? Is there anything she can get him?
Dean shakes his head. Truthfully, he is a little hungry, but he figures it wouldn’t be smart to access his bank account and he can’t ask Danneel to pay for his take out.
“We’ve got a pot of tsebhi keeping warm on the brazier out in the kitchen,” Danneel tells him. “You’re welcome to a bowl of it.”
“Tsebhi,” Dean echoes. “Sounds familiar. Is it Martian?”
Danneel confirms that it is. She’s one of three Martians on staff and they prefer to eat their own traditional dishes.
Dean nods. “Better not risk it,” he says. “Don’t want me passing out again.”
It’s quiet when she leaves and Dean paces the room, examining the play equipment with varying degrees of horror and amusement. The drawer full of animal-tail butt plugs, he could have happily gone his whole life without seeing and he finds it very hard to believe that some people enjoy being whipped, but, hey, whatever trips your trigger.
It’s maybe an hour later, getting on for 1.00am, when Dean’s i-band makes its incoming call tone.
“I’ve uploaded a new ID to your i-band,” Dr Badass says without preamble. “You’re now Eric Brady, a flight engineer assigned to the Mars Cargo Shuttle Ares. You need to get yourself to the Spaceport by 18.00 hours tomorrow. Docking Bay 44. You’ll go in through the employee entrance at Gate 18 and ask for Jo Harvelle.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dean says. “Are you gonna tell me who I am now?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line and then Badass says, “No. It’s been decided that it’s safer for you if you don’t have those details just yet.”
Dean huffs irritably. “I’m pretty sure that I’m called Jensen,” he says.
“Who told you that?” Dr Badass asks.
“No-one. I’m just having memory flashes, is all. Who’s Jay?”
Badass’s tone softens. “You remember Jay?”
“Practically the first thing I remembered. He must be important to me, huh?”
Badass chuckles. “I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll like that. But listen, Eric. Try not to remember anything else, okay? Once we’ve got you safely back home, we’ve got some tricks we can try to restore your memory safely, but until then, the less you know about yourself, the better, okay?”
Dean agrees reluctantly.
“Good,” Badass says briskly. “Now repeat your instructions back to me.”
Dean rattles off the details. Apparently there’s nothing at all wrong with his short term memory.
Danneel comes back just as Dean’s dozing off on the spanking bench. She shakes him awake and takes him through to another room, this one with a pink, heart-shaped double bed in it. Dean’s so tired that he doesn’t even care. He shucks off his boots, takes off his jacket and gets into bed. He’s surprised when Danneel strips naked and climbs in beside him.
“I’m your cover story, sweetheart,” she says. “HQ tells me your ID’s in order now, so how about you give me your name?”
“Oh. Uh. It’s, um, Eric,” he says.
“Eric,” she leans over and kisses him on the forehead. “Sweet dreams, baby.”
He spends the night running through a labyrinth. There’s a voice in there somewhere calling out his name. Not Dean, not Eric, but Jensen. Over and over again. He has the disconcerting feeling that he’s had this dream before, many times, and that he’s going to forget it when he wakes up. The dream is frustrating. He’s searching for something, desperate to find it, but he keeps coming up against dead ends and cold stone walls and he just can’t find the source of the voice.
He’s tired when he wakes up and even though Danneel gives him regular coffee, it’s been brewed in the same kitchen as the Martian stuff and he can still smell the cinnamon and spices. It gives him a headache.
Danneel has an STS Ares maintenance uniform for him, a duffel bag with spare clothes and toiletries in it, and a tool box.
The tools don’t look as strange as they should and he hopes to God Jensen knows his way around the mechanics of a space shuttle and that he’ll pass that knowledge on if Dean… Eric… needs it. With a bit of luck, this Joe guy will be covering his ass, but if there’s an all-hands-on-deck emergency, he’d hate for the ship to go down, because he was taking up a spot on the maintenance crew and couldn’t pull his weight.
“HQ says they’ve sent a dossier to your i-band,” Danneel says. “The cover story for Eric Brady. Learn it.”
Danneel lets him spend the day in the staff’s private lounge. He alternates between watching cable and trying to memorize his cover story. Apparently Eric is from the Middle District, single, never married, toyed with the idea of joining the priesthood for a long time, before finally going to college to study flight engineering. His hobbies include photography and karate and he has a twin sister, Samantha, along with a whole bunch of half-siblings. It’s all a little crazy, to be honest, and reminds him more of one of the soap operas that Carmen likes to watch than a genuine cover story.
The girls relax when they learn that Dean… Eric… is neither a john, nor remotely interested in them and before too long they’re adjusting their crotchless panties in front of him and putting their feet up on his thighs to paint their toenails. It’s all a little bizarre, how comfortable he feels in the environment.
He leaves at three in the afternoon, because it’s going to take a good two plus hours to get to the Spaceport from the Lower District and he doesn’t want to call attention to himself by being late. He’s nervous about his new i-band, but he passes through the train station’s security without any drama and is able to swipe onto the train, no problem.
He arrives at the Spaceport at a quarter to six and he’s activating his holo ID for the security guard at Gate 18 ten minutes later. “I’ve been told to report to Joe Harvelle,” he says.
Not five minutes later a small blonde woman wearing the same uniform as him opens the staff door. He thinks he sees a flash of curiosity in her eyes, but it’s gone before he can be sure.
“Eric,” she says, reaching forward and shaking his hand in a strong, firm handshake. “Come on through.”
“Where’s Joe?” he asks as he follows her down a pristine white corridor. “I thought I was supposed to report to Joe Harvelle?”
“I’m Jo,” she says. “Chief Engineer on the STS Ares,” she grins at him. “And you, Eric, are my new Grease Monkey. I sure hope you don’t have any qualms about working under a woman.”
He ignores the obvious double-entendre, because he’s not stupid. “No Ma’am,” he says.
Her smile dials up a notch. “Brains and beauty. Just the way I like ‘em.”
He licks his lips. “I like ‘em tall, broad and masculine myself,” he says.
She turns to look at him, expression thoughtful and then she nods. “Good to know.”
Jo walks him through Security and onto the ship. They go to her office first. She sits him down at her desk and activates a small scrambler before perching on the edge of the desk and staring down at him with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.
“So,” she says, “how much of a dead weight are you gonna be? How much am I going to have to carry you?”
He meets her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know. My… uh, Ghost personality knows how to repair and maintain a classic car, if that’s any use. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”
Jo sighs. “What about your core personality? HQ told me that he has some engineering skills and might be useful to us. What are your thoughts?”
Dean shrugs. “I have no clue what my, uh, core personality knows until I need it. I didn’t know I knew kung fu until someone tried to kill me, and then all these moves just…happened.”
Jo folds her arms and her eyes narrow even further. “Huh,” she says. And then she snaps her fingers. “Remedial Maintenance Simulator Program, On.” The program’s logo appears in the air before her. “Show Available files.” The logo becomes a list of file names. Jo scrolls through them. “Commence Test Scenario 27B,” she says, and the room is filled with an almost to scale holograph of the shuttle’s engine room.
Suddenly a red light starts flashing and a siren sounds.
“Omigod!” Jo’s eyes widen and her mouth falls open in horror. “What do we do?” her tone is high pitched and panicky. “What’s wrong? How do we fix it?”
Dean looks at the light flashing on the control panel. “Okay,” he says. “There’s a problem in the number five engine. We, uh,” he scans the dials and gauges that relate to engine number five and is quick to spot that the engine temperature is in the red zone. “Let’s get this cover off,” he says. Jo snaps her fingers and runs a hand across the holo image of the cover. It vanishes, allowing Dean to see the inner workings of the engine. “It could be a problem with one of the turbo-pumps,” he says, powering the engine down, “or with the main fuel valve. Or the hot gas manifold,” he’s inspecting the various systems as he speaks. “But no… we’ve got a coolant valve issue. This one’s only open about,” he inclines his head and considers, “about twenty percent. In flight, it should be sixty percent open.” Dean lowers his head and examines the valve carefully. “No sign of any physical obstruction. So it’s probably an automation issue; software rather than hardware.”
“Very good,” says Jo, closing down the hologram. “Your core personality knows his stuff.”
Dean smiles faintly and says a silent thank you to Jensen.
It’s kind of odd, the way he’s starting to think of Jensen as a friend; some kind of ghost sharing skull space with him. Of course, in reality he’s the Ghost; nothing but a collection of fake memory implants. He wonders how similar he is to Jensen. What will happen to him if Jensen gets his memories back? If the implanted memories are wiped clean, will he cease to exist? Is that the same as dying?
Dean shakes his head and decides he has too much on his plate to get existential right now.
Now that she knows that he’s not going to be dead weight, Jo puts Dean on the duty roster. She goes over his duties with him and then assigns him quarters.
“I’ll take you over to meet your bunk mate now,” she says. “And Eric? What you told me earlier? About preferring guys? I’d keep that quiet if I were you. The crew here aren’t the most enlightened bunch and I’m sure you’d prefer the next ten days to go as smoothly as possible.”
Truthfully, Dean isn’t worried. He’s not here to make friends and he’s pretty sure he can take any of the guys down if he has to.
But Jo has a point, and she doesn’t deserve to have disharmony in her crew. It’ll be a lot easier on all of them if the ten day trip to Mars is incident free. He goes with Jo to meet his bunk mate, a weedy little guy called DJ, who disconcerts him completely by bypassing Dean’s offered hand and going straight for a hug.
Dean will play his part. He’ll do his job, he’ll keep a low profile and he’ll count down the days until he finally sets foot on Mars and comes face to face with his past.
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Dean freezes. And then he remembers Carmen’s gun, shoved into the back waistband of his jeans in a way that feels comfortable and reassuring. He looks up at the security scanner and sees the gun’s outline, looming large on the big screen. Dean panics, running into the crowd of people on the platform, just as the train arrives. He jumps the tracks, narrowly avoiding getting mowed down, and then ducks underneath the train and clings horizontally to its underside. He thinks he may have done this before, because he seems to intuitively find a section of the carriage that is a little higher off the ground and comes with convenient hand holds. The train is late leaving the station, while the transit officers search to make sure he isn’t aboard. Eventually, though, they let it leave, the general consensus seeming to be that he ran off.
It’s scary as fuck clinging to the underside of a fast moving train. His knuckles are white, his eyes and nose are streaming, and he can feel his skin pulled taut.
When the train comes to a stop, Dean pries his fingers loose, drops and rolls. He abandons the gun on the tracks and sneaks his way up onto the platform and then swipes out of the station without any drama. He loses himself in Chinatown and then sits down to think. So far, the people who are out to get him, the Agency, if Carmen is to be believed, don’t seem to be working with the local authorities, but Dean can’t be certain how long that will continue. He can’t be certain of anything really, up to and including, who he actually is. Dean puts his head in his hands and is startled when his i-band alerts him to an incoming call. Dean looks at the caller ID and frowns. He has no idea who Dr Badass is, but his gut is telling him to answer the call, so he does.
“Dean Winchester?” says the voice on the other end.
“Why you gotta start with the hard questions?” Dean gripes.
Dr Badass’s laugh surprises him. “Fair enough. Okay, look, we gotta be quick here. You already seem to have figured out that you’re not you. That’s a good start. Now, I need you to trust me. I need you to go to the corner of Montrose Street and Bourke Road. There’s a street vendor there who sells nuts-”
“How very appropriate,” Dean mutters.
“He’s gonna give you a briefcase and a new i-band. Put the new i-band on immediately and smash your old one. It can be used to track you. The new i-band will have an address in it. You need to get to that address pronto. You with me?”
“Yeah,” Dean says and before he can say anything else, the line goes dead.
Dean brings up the location of the nut vendor on his i-band’s GPS and then goes there quickly. An Asian man wearing Chef’s pants, a white shirt and a white hairnet hands him a small silver briefcase and a new i-band. He takes his old one off immediately and grinds it under his heel before posting it down a storm water drain. He puts the new one around his wrist and the new message tone sounds immediately, giving him an address which he looks up straight away. The place is an abandoned cement factory and Dean jogs there.
He puts the briefcase down on a work bench and looks around. “Now what?”
Almost on cue, his i-band makes the incoming call tone and Dean answers promptly.
“Yeah?”
“Open the briefcase. The combination is,” Dr Badass rattles off a series of numbers and Dean spins the dial until the lock clicks open. “Inside you’ll find a device, looks a little like a socket wrench.”
Dean picks it up. “Got it. What now?”
“I need you to shove it up your nose.”
Dean blinks. “I beg your pardon,” he says, rather politely he thinks, under the circumstances.
“You’re bugged,” Dr Badass says. “Partly so they can track you physically, but mostly so that they can keep an eye on the memory implant. So hurry up and do what I say, they could be tracking you here, right now.”
Dean swallows and then gingerly places the socket wrench thing in his nose.
“Shove it in hard,” Dr Badass says.
“You don’t want me to buy you dinner first?” Dean quips, because he’s pretty much on his last nerve right now, but he does what he’s told.
“Press the button on the handle,” Dr Badass says.
As soon as he does, Dean feels something shoot upwards and blinding pain nearly cleaves his head in two.
“Jesus fuck!” he cries out.
“Pull it out,” Dr Badass says calmly.
When he gets it out, Dean finds that the socket wrench is clamped tightly onto something that looks a little like a silverfish made of fine wire, only with a fuckton more waving antennae things. He doesn’t actually throw up, but it’s a close thing.
“And that, my friend,” says Dr Badass, “is a Lepisma tracker. Smash it now.”
“No problem,” Dean says, placing the little horror on the floor and then smashing it with the heel of his boot.
“Excellent,” Dr Badass says. “You’ve gone off their grid.”
“You sure?”
“Oh yes,” Badass replies. “I’m hacked into their system and your light just went out. So to speak.”
“Who are they?” Dean asks. “Why did they put that thing in my head?”
“I’ll answer those questions for you,” Badass says, “but first we need to get you to a safehouse. They’ve been tracking you and I don’t know how close they got before we knocked you off the grid.”
As if on cue, Dean hears the thud of boots on concrete and sees the silhouettes of people with guns running past the opaque factory window.
“They’re here,” he says, voice low.
Dr Badass lets out a long breath. “Okay,” he says. “Not good, but not unexpected. Leave the briefcase. Head to the back of the building and go right. There’s a room at the end with a large drain. Pull the cover up and go down into it.”
Dean’s moving before Dr Badass finishes speaking in his ear. He jogs in the direction he was told to go, stopping to flatten himself against a wall on several occasions when he hears footfalls coming close. He edges toward the final corridor and peeks around the corner. There’s an armed man at the end, right in front of the room he needs. “Dude!” he whispers into his i-band, “they’re everywhere! It’s no go, man.”
“Give me a minute,” Badass says.
Dean hears an abrupt cry of excitement, followed by gunfire and then he has to hide inside a storage cupboard because the armed man who was blocking his way is suddenly running to join in the fun.
Dr Badass is snickering. “Okay,” he says. “The way is clear.”
Dean is just exiting the cupboard when there’s a massive explosion. He stumbles and swears, but keeps running. “What the hell did you do?” he says.
“Triggered the briefcase’s holo projector to show an image of an armed man firing a laser gun, then, when the agents were all gathered around, I activated the self-destruct on the briefcase. The bottom of it’s packed with Semtex. Kaboom!”
Dean has to admit, that is pretty badass.
He finds the drain cover and pulls it up. It’s a bitch of a thing to move, but he gets the job done.
“Awesome,” he groans as he lowers himself into the cavernous tunnel below. “This is a sewer isn’t it? As if there hasn’t been enough shit in my life lately.”
Dr Badass guides him through the sewer, until finally he says, “Okay, stop for a minute. To your right, there’s a hollow in the wall. Can you see it?”
It’s pretty dim in the sewer, but Dean can just make out what he’s talking about. “Yeah,” he says, “there’s a locked box sitting in, like a hollowed out hole.”
Dr Badass gives him the combination and Dean opens the box. “There are six envelopes in there,” Badass says. “Choose one and follow the instructions inside it. We’re going to radio silence for a while now.”
Before Dean can give his agreement, the line goes dead again. He picks out an envelope and opens it, activating the torch app on his i-band so that he can read what it says.
He follows the directions it gives and fifteen minutes later, he’s climbing out of the sewer tunnel and emerging into… a slum. Several dive bars compete for trade from the pimps, peddlers and gang bangers who stalk the dirty streets, and there’s a hooker or three on every corner and drunks sleeping in doorways.
Fuck. He’s in the Lower District. Dean consults his piece of paper and reads his next instruction: Go to The Titz Brothel and tell them you’ve just finished back-to-back tours on Mars and you’re looking for a three-titted girl to help you spend your severance pay.
Dean blinks. “That is so cheesy,” he mutters.
Still, he either does it-and maybe gets some answers-or he cuts his losses and runs. Dean looks around-he doesn’t like his chances of not ending up peddling himself on a street corner if he has to make his own way from here on in. So. Titz it is.
The madam behind the desk at The Titz is a buxom blonde, dressed head to toe in black latex. Dean flashes her his most charming smile and tries not to be completely intimidated.
“Hi,” he says, and then delivers the cheesy line. The madam stares at him a moment and then calls out, “Danneel, special customer for you.”
Sure enough, Danneel has three breasts. She takes Dean by the hand and leads him into what appears to be a BDSM dungeon. Dean is honestly getting more freaked out by the second. When she turns to face him, it’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it’s all been a terrible mistake, but her expression forestalls him.
She points at what looks to be a faux dungeon door. “Panic room’s through there. If a red light starts flashing, you hit this button here, and you get inside. I’ll let HQ know that you’re here and your contact will be in touch shortly. We’ve got a decent scrambler, so there won’t be anyone listening in who shouldn’t be. Good luck.”
She leaves and Dean sits down cautiously on what he suspects is a spanking bench.
Ten tense minutes later, Dr Badass calls him.
“Excellent work, Compadre,” he says. “So, what do you know about the Ghost Program?”
Dean frowns. “The Ghost Program…uh…nothing. Why?”
Dr Badass sighs. “Okay, Cliffnotes version: Prisons are expensive to run, the government decided that implanting new, law-abiding identities in the heads of criminals and sending them out to work in areas where there are skills shortages, was a win/win scenario.”
Dean’s stomach does a sort of sick flip flop. “So…I’m a criminal?”
“You? No. Not really. We don’t get involved in freeing common criminals. Your file was marked with a ‘P’, which means that you were a political prisoner.”
“Huh,” Dean says. “Do you think that’s why I had people keeping an eye on me? Because I’ve gotta say, that doesn’t sound real cheap.”
Badass clears his throat. “The tracker in your head was activated when you suffered some kind of memory-related episode. That’s what triggered the Agency to bring you in for adjustment and that’s what made you trigger my search program.”
Dean frowns. “No-one was trying to bring me in,” he says. “They were trying to kill me. And I was being watched the whole time.”
There’s a long silence and then Dr Badass says, “Is it possible you’re maybe being a bit paranoid?”
“No!” Dean says. “Both Carmen and Gordon told me they’d been tapped to keep an eye on me; right before they both tried to kill me.”
There’s another silence and then Dr Badass says, “Dean? Would you mind switching to visual? We don’t usually do that, the less we all know about each other the better, but, uh…it’s possible you may be someone.”
Dean scoffs at that. Obviously he’s someone. But Dr Badass did save his life and get him clear of people who were trying to hurt him, so Dean doesn’t mind letting the guy see his face, even if Badass won’t return the favour.
He flicks the appropriate setting on the i-band and Dr Badass sucks in air harshly. “Holy shit!” he says. “Holy mother-fucking shit.”
“I know right?” Dean says, deadpan. “I’m adorable.”
“You’re...you’re alive. Holy shit. We thought you were dead. This is. Wow. This is big. I can’t believe I found you! Sit tight, buddy. I’m gonna have to consult with the Boss Man,” there’s a pause and then, before Dean can ask Dr Badass who he really is, the line goes dead again.
Danneel comes back in. She brings him a very tiny cup of thick black coffee and Dean immediately recognizes the aromatic, almost cinnamon scent of it. He looks up at her sharply and she puts the cup on the table in front of him and inclines her head, “Barakah Bashad,” she says.
“Shukriya,” Dean replies automatically. And then he frowns. “I… don’t know what that means.”
Danneel smiles. “It means you’re familiar with the Martian Coffee Ceremony,” she gestures to the cup. “Enjoy.”
Dean picks up the cup and takes a sip and his head nearly splits in two with pain as memories rush him. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of a cave. It’s warm and smells of coffee, cinnamon and spice. There are hand-woven rugs in various shades of orange and red and brown on both the walls and the floor, and there’s a low stone table in front of him. Opposite, sits a man with a shock of dark hair and blue eyes. He’s wearing a tie- dyed kaftan. There’s a brazier filled with hot coals off to one side and a stone mortar and pestle beside that. The man is pouring coffee from a long-necked jebena into half a dozen finjal. An arm settles gently across Dean’s shoulders and he turns and looks and it’s Jay! Jay from his dreams.
“Jensen, if we can get your dad on board,” Jay says, “it’ll change everything.”
He shakes his head. “That’s just a pipe dream. You don’t know my father. He’s a complete and total asshole. He wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”
As the memory starts to fade, and blackness envelopes him, Dean almost laughs at the fact that they’d carried his daddy issues over to his new persona.
“Mister?”
There’s a vile smell under his nose and he jerks away, the heel of his palm smashing against his forehead when another blinding headache hits him.
“What the fuck?” he manages.
“Smelling salts,” Danneel says. “Here,” she thrusts a glass of water and a couple of tablets into his hand. “Painkillers.”
He downs them fast and then discovers that the leg of his jeans is wet.
Danneel sees him rubbing at it. “You spilled your coffee when you fainted.”
Dean scowls. “I didn’t faint.”
Danneel rolls her eyes. “Apologies to your male ego,” she says. “At least you didn’t pee yourself when you passed out.”
“Better,” Dean says. “Passed out is much more manly,” and then he frowns. “Smelling salts? Really?”
Danneel shrugs and then she sits down behind him and massages his shoulders. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Look, you seem like a nice girl, but I don’t bat for your team, so if you’re gonna offer me a happy ending, you’re wasting your time.”
Danneel slaps him across the back of the head. “I ain’t offering. Asshat,” she moves her hands to his head and begins to massage his temples. “You know these memory flashes can trigger an embolism in your brain, right?
“Sweeheart, I don’t even know who I am, so let’s just assume I don’t know anything about anything.”
Danneel hums thoughtfully. “Okay,” she says. “The only way to completely destroy a memory is to destroy the neuron that’s supporting the memory. When the Agency creates a new Ghost, they don’t wanna do that, because then they lose the structure that they need for the new memories. So they supress the subject’s existing memories with drugs, basically giving them retrograde amnesia, and then they superimpose new, false memories over the top. If the suppression starts to fail, it can cause the subject to have a stroke.”
“So I guess I should avoid things that might trigger old memories,” Dean frowns. “Which would be awesome, except I have no way of knowing what those things might be, because I can’t remember!”
Danneel nods. “The Martian coffee seems to have been a trigger. Which isn’t really surprising because scent and taste are huge memory triggers.”
Danneel stops massaging him and gets to her feet, offering him her hand and helping him to stand. He sits back down on the spanking bench and she folds her arms and tells him that his contact wants him to remain in the safe room for a little while longer and is he hungry? Is there anything she can get him?
Dean shakes his head. Truthfully, he is a little hungry, but he figures it wouldn’t be smart to access his bank account and he can’t ask Danneel to pay for his take out.
“We’ve got a pot of tsebhi keeping warm on the brazier out in the kitchen,” Danneel tells him. “You’re welcome to a bowl of it.”
“Tsebhi,” Dean echoes. “Sounds familiar. Is it Martian?”
Danneel confirms that it is. She’s one of three Martians on staff and they prefer to eat their own traditional dishes.
Dean nods. “Better not risk it,” he says. “Don’t want me passing out again.”
It’s quiet when she leaves and Dean paces the room, examining the play equipment with varying degrees of horror and amusement. The drawer full of animal-tail butt plugs, he could have happily gone his whole life without seeing and he finds it very hard to believe that some people enjoy being whipped, but, hey, whatever trips your trigger.
It’s maybe an hour later, getting on for 1.00am, when Dean’s i-band makes its incoming call tone.
“I’ve uploaded a new ID to your i-band,” Dr Badass says without preamble. “You’re now Eric Brady, a flight engineer assigned to the Mars Cargo Shuttle Ares. You need to get yourself to the Spaceport by 18.00 hours tomorrow. Docking Bay 44. You’ll go in through the employee entrance at Gate 18 and ask for Jo Harvelle.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dean says. “Are you gonna tell me who I am now?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line and then Badass says, “No. It’s been decided that it’s safer for you if you don’t have those details just yet.”
Dean huffs irritably. “I’m pretty sure that I’m called Jensen,” he says.
“Who told you that?” Dr Badass asks.
“No-one. I’m just having memory flashes, is all. Who’s Jay?”
Badass’s tone softens. “You remember Jay?”
“Practically the first thing I remembered. He must be important to me, huh?”
Badass chuckles. “I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll like that. But listen, Eric. Try not to remember anything else, okay? Once we’ve got you safely back home, we’ve got some tricks we can try to restore your memory safely, but until then, the less you know about yourself, the better, okay?”
Dean agrees reluctantly.
“Good,” Badass says briskly. “Now repeat your instructions back to me.”
Dean rattles off the details. Apparently there’s nothing at all wrong with his short term memory.
Danneel comes back just as Dean’s dozing off on the spanking bench. She shakes him awake and takes him through to another room, this one with a pink, heart-shaped double bed in it. Dean’s so tired that he doesn’t even care. He shucks off his boots, takes off his jacket and gets into bed. He’s surprised when Danneel strips naked and climbs in beside him.
“I’m your cover story, sweetheart,” she says. “HQ tells me your ID’s in order now, so how about you give me your name?”
“Oh. Uh. It’s, um, Eric,” he says.
“Eric,” she leans over and kisses him on the forehead. “Sweet dreams, baby.”
He spends the night running through a labyrinth. There’s a voice in there somewhere calling out his name. Not Dean, not Eric, but Jensen. Over and over again. He has the disconcerting feeling that he’s had this dream before, many times, and that he’s going to forget it when he wakes up. The dream is frustrating. He’s searching for something, desperate to find it, but he keeps coming up against dead ends and cold stone walls and he just can’t find the source of the voice.
He’s tired when he wakes up and even though Danneel gives him regular coffee, it’s been brewed in the same kitchen as the Martian stuff and he can still smell the cinnamon and spices. It gives him a headache.
Danneel has an STS Ares maintenance uniform for him, a duffel bag with spare clothes and toiletries in it, and a tool box.
The tools don’t look as strange as they should and he hopes to God Jensen knows his way around the mechanics of a space shuttle and that he’ll pass that knowledge on if Dean… Eric… needs it. With a bit of luck, this Joe guy will be covering his ass, but if there’s an all-hands-on-deck emergency, he’d hate for the ship to go down, because he was taking up a spot on the maintenance crew and couldn’t pull his weight.
“HQ says they’ve sent a dossier to your i-band,” Danneel says. “The cover story for Eric Brady. Learn it.”
Danneel lets him spend the day in the staff’s private lounge. He alternates between watching cable and trying to memorize his cover story. Apparently Eric is from the Middle District, single, never married, toyed with the idea of joining the priesthood for a long time, before finally going to college to study flight engineering. His hobbies include photography and karate and he has a twin sister, Samantha, along with a whole bunch of half-siblings. It’s all a little crazy, to be honest, and reminds him more of one of the soap operas that Carmen likes to watch than a genuine cover story.
The girls relax when they learn that Dean… Eric… is neither a john, nor remotely interested in them and before too long they’re adjusting their crotchless panties in front of him and putting their feet up on his thighs to paint their toenails. It’s all a little bizarre, how comfortable he feels in the environment.
He leaves at three in the afternoon, because it’s going to take a good two plus hours to get to the Spaceport from the Lower District and he doesn’t want to call attention to himself by being late. He’s nervous about his new i-band, but he passes through the train station’s security without any drama and is able to swipe onto the train, no problem.
He arrives at the Spaceport at a quarter to six and he’s activating his holo ID for the security guard at Gate 18 ten minutes later. “I’ve been told to report to Joe Harvelle,” he says.
Not five minutes later a small blonde woman wearing the same uniform as him opens the staff door. He thinks he sees a flash of curiosity in her eyes, but it’s gone before he can be sure.
“Eric,” she says, reaching forward and shaking his hand in a strong, firm handshake. “Come on through.”
“Where’s Joe?” he asks as he follows her down a pristine white corridor. “I thought I was supposed to report to Joe Harvelle?”
“I’m Jo,” she says. “Chief Engineer on the STS Ares,” she grins at him. “And you, Eric, are my new Grease Monkey. I sure hope you don’t have any qualms about working under a woman.”
He ignores the obvious double-entendre, because he’s not stupid. “No Ma’am,” he says.
Her smile dials up a notch. “Brains and beauty. Just the way I like ‘em.”
He licks his lips. “I like ‘em tall, broad and masculine myself,” he says.
She turns to look at him, expression thoughtful and then she nods. “Good to know.”
Jo walks him through Security and onto the ship. They go to her office first. She sits him down at her desk and activates a small scrambler before perching on the edge of the desk and staring down at him with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.
“So,” she says, “how much of a dead weight are you gonna be? How much am I going to have to carry you?”
He meets her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know. My… uh, Ghost personality knows how to repair and maintain a classic car, if that’s any use. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”
Jo sighs. “What about your core personality? HQ told me that he has some engineering skills and might be useful to us. What are your thoughts?”
Dean shrugs. “I have no clue what my, uh, core personality knows until I need it. I didn’t know I knew kung fu until someone tried to kill me, and then all these moves just…happened.”
Jo folds her arms and her eyes narrow even further. “Huh,” she says. And then she snaps her fingers. “Remedial Maintenance Simulator Program, On.” The program’s logo appears in the air before her. “Show Available files.” The logo becomes a list of file names. Jo scrolls through them. “Commence Test Scenario 27B,” she says, and the room is filled with an almost to scale holograph of the shuttle’s engine room.
Suddenly a red light starts flashing and a siren sounds.
“Omigod!” Jo’s eyes widen and her mouth falls open in horror. “What do we do?” her tone is high pitched and panicky. “What’s wrong? How do we fix it?”
Dean looks at the light flashing on the control panel. “Okay,” he says. “There’s a problem in the number five engine. We, uh,” he scans the dials and gauges that relate to engine number five and is quick to spot that the engine temperature is in the red zone. “Let’s get this cover off,” he says. Jo snaps her fingers and runs a hand across the holo image of the cover. It vanishes, allowing Dean to see the inner workings of the engine. “It could be a problem with one of the turbo-pumps,” he says, powering the engine down, “or with the main fuel valve. Or the hot gas manifold,” he’s inspecting the various systems as he speaks. “But no… we’ve got a coolant valve issue. This one’s only open about,” he inclines his head and considers, “about twenty percent. In flight, it should be sixty percent open.” Dean lowers his head and examines the valve carefully. “No sign of any physical obstruction. So it’s probably an automation issue; software rather than hardware.”
“Very good,” says Jo, closing down the hologram. “Your core personality knows his stuff.”
Dean smiles faintly and says a silent thank you to Jensen.
It’s kind of odd, the way he’s starting to think of Jensen as a friend; some kind of ghost sharing skull space with him. Of course, in reality he’s the Ghost; nothing but a collection of fake memory implants. He wonders how similar he is to Jensen. What will happen to him if Jensen gets his memories back? If the implanted memories are wiped clean, will he cease to exist? Is that the same as dying?
Dean shakes his head and decides he has too much on his plate to get existential right now.
Now that she knows that he’s not going to be dead weight, Jo puts Dean on the duty roster. She goes over his duties with him and then assigns him quarters.
“I’ll take you over to meet your bunk mate now,” she says. “And Eric? What you told me earlier? About preferring guys? I’d keep that quiet if I were you. The crew here aren’t the most enlightened bunch and I’m sure you’d prefer the next ten days to go as smoothly as possible.”
Truthfully, Dean isn’t worried. He’s not here to make friends and he’s pretty sure he can take any of the guys down if he has to.
But Jo has a point, and she doesn’t deserve to have disharmony in her crew. It’ll be a lot easier on all of them if the ten day trip to Mars is incident free. He goes with Jo to meet his bunk mate, a weedy little guy called DJ, who disconcerts him completely by bypassing Dean’s offered hand and going straight for a hug.
Dean will play his part. He’ll do his job, he’ll keep a low profile and he’ll count down the days until he finally sets foot on Mars and comes face to face with his past.
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