Juncture 3.8

“Jake!” I yelled, and began jog-walking down the hall toward him. I didn’t really know what I was going to say to him, but I was dead-set on at least attempting to apologize.

He didn’t react when I called his name. Either I was quieter than I thought, or he was acting really suspicious, confirming my idea that he hadn’t given me his actual name. I decided to try again, now that I’d halved the distance between us.

“Jake!” I shouted, a bit louder. His spine straightened, and he turned. I reached him, and stopped right in front of him.

I noted to myself that the jog over took barely any effort, as compared to just before I was taken to the OST. That was pretty cool.

I didn’t know what to say, but I started to talk anyway. “I-“. Jake raised his hand to stop me.

“You don’t need to apologize,” He said. It was difficult to hear him speak. His words were quiet, and he spoke abnormally slowly. “You were trying to stop a dangerous situation. I understand.” He touched his hand to his face, to where the bruise would have been from the beating I’d delivered. He continued to speak in his slow, numb manner. “All I ask is that you don’t ask me to apologize.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He thought that he was in the right? He held up a bank, and he apparently didn’t feel bad about it.

My mind went through the ethical and moral arguments against attempted murder and the sacrifice of innocent human lives, and formulated the best response to what he was saying.

My mouth didn’t get the message, and all that I said was “Huh?”

“I’m not going to apologize.” He repeated, “I never actually planned to blow up the dynamite. I would die too, why would I want to do that? I needed the money, and this was the easiest way to get it.”

It clicked that if I kept him talking, I would be able to get more information from him.

“Why did you need the money?” I asked.

He leaned against the wall. “I owed a lot of money. Like a lot a lot.”

“How much?”

He grinned – or it was possibly a grimace. I couldn’t tell.

“Around thirty thousand dollars. That was more than I would ever be able to make in one lifetime, so I had to find a way of getting it. This seemed like a good plan.”

Thirty thousand didn’t sound like that much to me. Then I remembered that he was talking about the fifties. Thirty thousand was probably a huge amount of cash back then. Still, I wasn’t fully convinced that he wasn’t lying.

“Why did you owe that much? How could one person get that far in debt?” I asked.

“Hospital bills, dumbass. Look at me,” He gestured at his face, “That much money just barely kept me alive. My entire childhood was one huge process of nearly dying, and my parents took the first chance they could to ditch me. I don’t blame them. I was dead weight. They probably changed their names, moved away. I was saddled with the debt.”

He stopped, breathing heavily. Talking this much was clearly an effort on his part, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook now. I had to know.

“And?” I asked.

“And when I was fifteen, it just… stopped. I wasn’t sick anymore. I mean, I looked awful, couldn’t use half of my face, and could barely walk from being in bed for so long, but I wasn’t sick. I didn’t pass out for days or weeks at a time. I didn’t have any more seizures, or strokes. I could leave the hospital. But I was homeless.”

“I managed to get a job doing menial, easy labor. I could survive, but it wasn’t fun. The money I owed kept piling up, bigger and bigger. So I robbed a bank.”

He was done. He leaned down, taking deep breaths, sucking in air hard, then letting it out in slow hisses.

“Okay. I’m not going to ask you to apologize. You seem like you know that you were wrong, and anyway, nobody got hurt. Well, you got hurt, but nobody innocent got hurt.”

We stood there in awkward silence for several seconds.

“I am going to ask you what your actual name is though.” I said.

He didn’t answer for several seconds. Then: “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who any of you are. I don’t trust you. So call me Jake.”

“Fine,” I said, “But you will have to tell us who you are at some point or another if you’re going to join us.”

“I don’t know if I’m joining you just yet.” Jake said, “Like I said, I don’t trust any of you just yet. Besides, I don’t have anything I can give you guys, so I’m pretty sure that you’re just keeping me prisoner here.”

“Bull. I saw you teleport that dynamite. I don’t know how you did it, but I know that you did. That’s what we’re interested in.” I changed tactics to something that I knew worked. “And of course, you’re free to leave at any time. You’re not a prisoner. If you want to leave, you can go on your way. But since this facility is secret, you’ll have to undergo a procedure to make sure that you don’t remember anything about this.”

His eyes widened marginally. He opened his mouth to protest, but I talked over him. “Don’t worry, it’s not dangerous. Well, not too dangerous. Worst comes to worst, you forget some stuff.”

“Some stuff?” He asked.

“Well, all of the stuff. But don’t worry, it probably won’t happen.” I answered.

“Uh, no. I’ll stay for now,” was Jake’s reply. It worked. I clapped my hands together. “Great! So I’m gonna head back to sleep, but I’ll see you around!” I gave him a thumbs up and started walking to my room. When I got to the door, I looked where we were standing. Jake had left. I went back to bed.