Two days after Kayla, John, and the ISA agents had landed in Pisa they were still in planning mode, and that made her positively nuts. Steve had now spent five days in Stefano’s prison waiting for either rescue or a jump, enduring whatever torture they were inflicting on him. Electric shock, beating his family out of him – she didn’t want to think about it. But she couldn’t help but think only about it. He was suffering, and she still hadn’t found him. How could she have failed him like this? When the people in power had everything they needed to storm the proverbial castle well before she’d jumped there?
Now they sat in the comfortably appointed living room of the large Tuscan safehouse trying to explain to her why they couldn’t do exactly just that. It was a long trip, and no one was in much of a good mood.
“Kayla, we can’t just go in guns blazing! He’ll see us coming a mile away, we’ll lose our opportunity, and there’s no telling if we’d ever get another.” It wasn’t their first time around the block on this subject with her, and between that and the fact that he’d lost her, Shane had a hard time keeping the frustration from his voice.
“C’mon, Shane, we’re talking about Steve, here,” John said with equal frustration. “We don’t know what they’re doin’ to him in that mountain. And I can tell you from personal experience, the longer this goes on the more damage we’re gonna have to undo! There’s no reason not to go in guns blazing, it’s not like we don’t know where he is!”
And that was another thing. A mountain? That was a shock to Kayla. When Tarrington had debriefed the entire team on the plane just after takeoff, describing how Stefano had fortified a small island to his purposes, a dread fell upon her that seemed insurmountable. It wasn’t a structure they had to penetrate but an actual land mass. How were they going to do that? With what army, there were 18 of them total including her. Against a mountain. She could only imagine the worst with an endless number of armed men at Stefano’s disposal picking them all off one by one. She never imagined it would take this long to get Steve out, or that they wouldn’t have jumped by this point. Logically, she knew that you didn’t just go to Italy overnight and leave with him the next day, but the irony of it was killing her. She had advanced knowledge, which she’d tried on several occasions to share, which always seemed to end when suspicious questions would arise that she had no way of answering. Even so, how could they still be at the disadvantage like this? The helplessness made her sick to her stomach.
John saw Kayla pale and shifted his attention to her. “Kayla, you ok, honey?”
“No! No, I’m not ok! Because it’s been five days and my husband is still in the hands of Stefano Dimera.”
“Entering the compound is going to be complicated, but if you can be patient, you’ll have him back very soon,” Tarrington said.
Kayla narrowed her eyes at the ISA chief. “Mr. Tarrington, it’s not the five days that have me at my wits end,” she said with slightly more composure. “It’s that you’ve known for God-knows-how-long, and you said nothing. Only after I asked Shane to get involved did you fess up. So, tell me, do you still think I’m being impatient?”
“And just how did you come to that knowledge, Mrs. Johnson?”
“You first, pal,” John cut in before Kayla could scramble for an answer. She looked at John and saw his fierce protectiveness. Years and years hadn’t gone by yet, and for him, this was still his sister, and she could see him ready to advocate for her. She wondered if the fact that no one ever came for him when he was the one who needed saving as the Pawn influenced his anger. John glanced at her, and Kayla got a strange feeling. As if he knew something was very off about her and would be expecting an answer when they were alone.
Completely unfazed, Tarrington calmly but firmly began filling them in.
Mrs. Johnson, when your husband died last October –“
“Which he didn’t.”
“—Regrettably, that fact escaped us … the ISA was fully focused on Lawrence Alamain, not on Stefano Dimera. Indeed, we had no idea he was alive until a transfer was made from him to a buyer some seven months later.”
“A buyer,” Kayla sneered. “You mean Stefano Dimera. In May. You knew back in May that my husband was alive and being … purchased,” she spat the word like it was venom on her tongue, “… by Stefano Dimera!” It was an accusation. One which the seasoned ISA operative didn’t entirely argue. “How can you do that to people? How can you sit there and say you’re helping people, protecting them, when you’re allowing good men, innocent men, to be bought and sold like cattle?! People’s husbands and sons and fathers! Who gives you the right?!”
“Kayla, this isn’t helping,” Shane warned.
To his credit, Tarrington respected her rage for what it was. Almost accurate. “It’s quite alright, Shane, I think it’s time for full disclosure to all involved. That’s when Tarrington finally layed it all out on the table for them. Kayla listened in stunned shock as he explained it all. That they didn’t know it was Steve when the transfer happened, only that a transfer occurred. That they began to suspect it was someone previously assumed dead based on continued surveillance on Lawrence Alamain. That once they were positive it was Steve the were able to retroactively track his transfer back to Italy where operatives discovered a very complex network of human trafficking that actually dated back much farther, impacting others, including John and Roman.
“Mrs. Johnson, you are correct, we did know that it was your husband for some time, but not as far back as May. But you must understand, this is much larger than Steven Johnson, because Stefano Dimera is a global threat. Of course, we wanted to save your husband, but this went far deeper than any one man. When you don’t understand a man’s motivation, that is the most dangerous kind of man. And Stefano Dimera’s motivation has never made any sort of sense. It’s clear to us now that he’s assembling an army of some kind, but for what purposes we can only guess. The fact of the matter was that we had to cut off the head of the monster before that army could be launched, and frankly, before we could rescue anyone.
John stood up. “So you let an innocent man who’s done your bidding plenty of times in the past wallow in that hellhole until you can get to the head of the dragon?!” Shane stood, as well, and went to the window in silence. “You have nothing to add?” John aimed at him.
Without turning back to them, he replied, “As I’ve already explained to Kayla, I was kept in the dark.” He was clearly angry as hell about that. John wasn’t sure he was convinced, but he left it alone.
Seething with barely controlled anger of her own, Kayla tried to just get to the end of this. “His track record is pretty clear to me. His motivation is that he hates the Brady family, plain and simple. Every one of us, starting with my father. So, anyone connected to the Bradys has to pay the price, and all of us have. Every single solitary one of us have paid, or they will in the future.
“Yes, but Kayla, we don’t know why he hates the Brady’s, that’s the problem,” Shane interjected.
Kayla didn’t have time for this, she needed to get her husband. “It doesn’t matter how long it’s been, we’re here now, and we’re still not going in for Steve, what’s the hold up?”
Agents were coming in and out with papers and weapons; Tarrington multi-tasked that, signing off on documents, and glancing at reports with acknowledgement to whomever had entered the room.
“As I was saying, it took several months to track down, he’s covered his tracks very well. If it wasn’t for the mole we may very well have still been chasing red herrings at this very moment. Now we know the actual island that contains Stefano’s base of operations.” It all seemed very coincidental to her, but she was tired of questioning and simply moved on.
“Fine, when we do we go in?”
“We” don’t do anything, Kay,” Shane piped up, “you” will be here at the safehouse waiting for our return.”
Kayla calmly folded her arms and crossed her legs and said, “Like hell I will.”
“Don’t argue with me, this is not negotiable. Now, you’re here, aren’t you? Leave it at that and let us do our jobs, dammit!”
Kayla looked to John, but she saw that she wasn’t going to get any help from him this time. He held his chin in his hand as he said, “I agree with Shane on this one. I’m sorry, honey.”
“Kay, you’re too close to this to think clearly. You need to think of Stephanie.”
Kayla laughed. Too close? What they didn’t know, the irony of it all, made that laugh a disturbing sort of sound. “Shane, you have no idea. Look, you’re going to just have to trust me when I say you are the one in more danger than I am. It’s Andrew and Jeannie you have to worry about more than I do about Stephanie. And John, you have Brady to get back to.”
“I have the Brady’s? Well … I’d like to think so.”
“Nevermind, I meant, you have people, too, your baby is coming, and you are going to be the one — you have to get home. We all have to get home. Why are any of us more expendable than others?”
“Kayla,” Shane tried once more, but she cut him off.
“Now, I am going with you. I’m in great shape, I can keep up, and I’m not taking no for an answer, so get used to it!”
“Alright, Mrs. Johnson, but you’re taking an awful risk, here, don’t you think?”
Kayla laughed again. Shane and John looked at each other perplexed by her demeanor. “It’s that or lay around waiting to go to my next destination, and Steve would never do that if it were me. So, when do we go?”
*****
“Dude, don’t you know it’s rude to come to someone’s house and make the host do all the talking?” The man with the grey hair took up his same pose as the first time, hands clasped in front of him. He carried no paper or pens, but Steve could see him taking mental notes all the same. “How’s the weather? What kind of weather am I missing out there?” Now the man perked up ever so slightly and looked at Steve with even more interest. “At least a newspaper, man, c’mon.”
“What year is it?”
Even though Steve had been doing nothing but trying to get the man to do more than stare at him, Steve was surprised when he finally did. “Hey, dude! You’re talkin!”
“What year?” he repeated. His voice was very smooth, almost calming.
“Well, I don’t know, you tell me, man.”
“You don’t know the year.”
Steve rolled his eyes. “How many times I gotta say it, no.”
What’s your name?
“Oh, I don’t have a single doubt that you know my name.”
“Remind me.”
“Steve—“
The sensory torture began immediately. It was the one name Steve hadn’t thought to test out, his own. Steve fell to his knees and waited it out. Before he’d squeezed his eye shut, he noticed the man was serenely standing there with his eyes calmly closed. He was breathing very deeply and appeared to be … meditating? Steve didn’t know if this attack was worse than the others or if he was just becoming less able to tolerate them, but he practically left his body with this one, it was so intense. When it stopped and he’d finally recovered, the man had not moved and was clearly waiting to see how Steve would react. It was a scientific, clinical sort of observation, not the evil, underhanded kind of his captor, whom he’d not seen since that first visit.
Steve went to the bed and fell upon it against the wall. A wave of hatred passed through him as the doctor stared. “What?! What are you staring at, you white-haired freak?!”
“I find it very curious that you don’t remember the year, but you’ve suddenly remembered your old name. Why is that?”
“I only have one name.”
“Mr. Stockton, you are very curious to me.”
“My name’s not Nick Stockton.”
Now the man smiled. “You’re playing with me. It’s not nice to play with your doctor. Now you tell me why you’ve suddenly chosen to fight your conditioning again? You’d made such progress. You shouldn’t have the capacity to do it at all.”
Steve was quiet, all sarcasm gone. His mind racing as fast as it could to try to fit the pieces together. Had he already been brainwashed by now? How many years ahead had he jumped? Five? Ten? He had to know when he was if he was going to be able to break out and look for Kayla. The way he was feeling, however, maybe just waiting for the jump was the way to go.
Now the man had taken out a Tarot card from his lab coat’s breast pocket and flipped it over and through his fingers like a magician, taunting Steve with it. “What’s your name?” The doctor said it with warning.
“If you think your little Tarot card is going to make me forget K—” Steve stopped short, not wanting to court any more torture. “My name’s not Nick Stockton, and your little Tarot card there isn’t going to turn me into a soldier, either.”
The man smiled. “If that’s the case, then why didn’t you say her name? You stopped. The conditioning is within you.”
Steve’s heart leapt to his throat with the realization that the man was right. All it took was five days for them to break him enough that he wouldn’t say her name out loud. How much longer until he wouldn’t whisper it against the wall, either? How much longer before he agreed to be Nick again?
Steve threw himself against the bars and reached his hand out trying to reach the man. “F*ck you, you sh*t! You’re not breaking me! I’ll say her name! I’ll say it over and over again! “Kayla!” The audiovisuals began right on schedule, and Steve continued shouting the name of his wife and daughter over and over again, the intensity only increasing until finally his world went black.
When Steve awoke, he was laying face down in a small pool of saliva he’d drooled while he was passed out. The man was still there, his hands clasped in front of him like always, continuing his infernal stare. Steve pulled himself onto the bed and laid on his back with his arm over his eyes.
“Name?” the man asked.
“What about it?” Steve whined.
“Recite it, please.”
“Kunta Kinte.”
“Back to that, are we?”
That shocked Steve. Back to that? Had he made that reference the first time around? Apparently. Nice to know some things never change, whether I remember them or not.
“You can call me Toby all you want, asshole. I know who I am.”
“Yes, clearly you do,” the man snapped as he roughly stuffed the card back into his lab coat pocket. It was the first hint at any emotion at all since his very first visit. “And I want to know why.”
*****
Kayla held on to John for dear life as the waves of the Mediterranean Sea tossed their zodiac like it was a bathtub toy. Even Kayla, who was practically raised on the water, felt sick. You asked for it, she reminded herself. It took two more days for them to get everything in place for the rescue. Arguments ensued every day as to whether she’d be going or not, but eventually they got tired of arguing with her. Three zodiacs in all held 12 ISA agents, plus the three of them. Shane led the mission in one of the other boats while Tarrington stayed back with three agents at the safe house operations center. Everyone was dressed head to toe in black, but nothing was as black as the night surrounding them. The dense clouds covering the moonless sky blocked out whatever light the stars would have provided. She knew that the nautical instruments were all the navigators needed to get them to Stefano’s island, but it was still unnerving to look from side to side and not be able to see so much as the water beneath her, let alone any land ahead.
“How are we supposed to know where to go?” Kayla asked as the team dragged their boats on to the shore.
“Apparently, the mole left specific instructions on just how to get in and find Steve,” Shane explained.
What mole? It wasn’t the first reference to a sympathizer inside of Stefano’s operation. Since when was there a mole? “Shane, how, long has there been a mole? Why didn’t he show up before?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Kay, from what I understand, a communiqué was sent directly to ISA headquarters about a week before I’d inquired. It told us which island, which I understand we’d already sussed out, the best way to access the compound, which we hadn’t, and exactly where Steve is being kept.”
John and Kayla’s mouths hung open. “And you trust this mole?” John asked incredulously. “We’re here based on information from within Dimera’s compound? Has this person been verified?”
“How exactly were we supposed to do that, chap, ring them up and ask?”
“Then it could be a trap for all we know, Shane!”
“John, we’re hardly in a position to do much more than watch our step. So far, all the information has panned out.”
Kayla could feel him. He was close, she knew it. She didn’t care if it was a trap, she just needed to get to Steve. Just then Kayla felt John shudder. She put her hand on his arm and shot him a concerned look. “You ok?” she asked.
John’s face was twisted in a slight grimace as he exhaled. “Yeah, just … snippets of memory sometimes. Place feels familiar. The wind … déjà vu.”
Kayla looked upon him with sadness. Such a wrong had been done to him. He didn’t ask to be brought into this world. And when he was, he never got a day of peace. Stefano made very sure of that. He was born Stefano’s brother, became Lawrence’s brother, was re-created into her brother, and was now clueless as to who he really was. She wanted so badly to tell him, but now was not the time. She simply put her hand on his arm and said, “I know what you mean.” John shook it off, and Shane began giving instructions.
They were to hike two kilometers to the base of the mountain, ridiculous as that sounded to her, then they’d know if the mole had led them into a trap or not. Everyone had firepower but her, and she didn’t like that.
“Roman I need a weapon, too.” She didn’t even realize she’d slipped, and John didn’t correct her.
“I’m begging you to stay at the rendez-vous point,” John tried one last time. “I’ll get him out for you, honey. Trust me, if he’s reachable, I’ll get him.”
Kayla smiled and slowly shook her head. “No deal, I’m afraid.”
“You sure you can handle one?”
“How hard can it be? Aim, pull the trigger.”
John laughed at her sweet naivety; Kayla was not thrilled. “Not quite that simple, but that’ll work. Come on, partner,” he said to Shane, you can’t send her in unarmed.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “I don’t like this, Kay,” he said as he pulled a gun off one of the agents. “Here, standard issue 9-milimeter. This button releases the magazine; keep this one on our person as backup.” She watched him swallow and figured the concept of needing to actually reload was as unnerving to him as it was to her. “Push the button when you’re out, then you shove this one upward and click it into place.”
Kayla nodded and held it in her hand. She hated the feel of it. She hated that she was holding it at all. Part of her wanted to turn back right now. Swim all the way back to the dock they left from in the dead of night, swim all the way home to Salem, hold her daughter, and cry herself to sleep.
“That’s the safety,” Shane continued. Push down to release it, then you slide this part back to load a bullet into the chamber. Then just fire.”
I want to go home.
“We have to go, Kay, do you have that?”
John saw her stare blankly at the gun. “Yeah, she’s got that, Shane.” He tilted her chin up to look at him. “You ready in there?” he asked her.
Kayla came very quickly back to herself. She was terrified, there was no getting around that. But there was also no getting around the fact that her husband was being tortured, and she needed to go get him or die trying. So, she sucked it up and came back to herself.
“Yeah,” she chuckled nervously. “Let’s go.”
*****
Steve was climbing the walls. He’d been through every inch of his cell, tested every portion of every bar, searched for notes he’d made to himself, and checked the entirety of his mattress looking for somewhere he may have hidden a weapon. There was nothing. Not a single thing. How had he survived this whole time with not a shred of anything to do? Why had he not left any kind of sign of life? He still had no idea when he was, and he was struggling to remember how many days had passed. He thought it had been a week, but the food was the same day in and day out, so he couldn’t even use that for a reference.
The doctor, whom he’d now discovered was a hypnotherapist whose sole mission was to figuratively beat Steve’s previous life out of him, had come every day, far overstaying his welcome each time. He’d ask him his name, and Steve would tell him. He’d ask him questions meant to court the names of his wife and daughter, and he refused to shy away from them. He’d utter them, knowing the putrid smell would assail his nostrils, that the noise and Kayla’s screaming would permeate his ears, and that the strobe lighting would make him sick with dizziness. But he did it anyway, passing out more than once, all while the doctor managed to mediate his way through it. Eventually, Steve would refuse to speak anyone’s name, because he just couldn’t take it anymore, but when he was alone again he’d turn to the wall and whisper their names over and over again, refusing to let the man have his way. Did he know about this cheat of the system the first time? How long before they’d ground that out of him, too? The one question the doctor wanted to know more than anything else was why he was defying the conditioning. Of course, he couldn’t possibly know that it was because the awareness inhabiting this body had already been deprogrammed so thoroughly that no amount of torture was going to bring him back to where this body left off.
“It’s killin’ ya, isn’t it, Doc? You can’t figure it out. Well, that’s just too damn bad, ‘cause your mind games aren’t going to work on me anymore.”
Without missing a beat, the doctor replied very simply, “then we’ll just have to go to Plan B. You do remember Plan B, do you not, Mr. Stockton?”
“Please, call me Kunta. And while we’re at it, remind me of the horrors of Plan B.”
The man smirked and leaned in slightly. “We don’t bluff here, Mr. Stockton. You were, of course, warned.” He then turned to go. As he did so, it was clear to Steve that the man’s guard was as down as it would ever be. So, Steve shouted his wife’s name as loud as he could. The only reason he didn’t throw the pillow over his head while the torrent ensued was because he was getting extreme joy out of seeing the doctor caught off guard. He tried to meditate, find a Zen, center himself, something, but not expecting it threw him off, and he wasn’t able to do it.
When it was over, Steve smiled through the tears. “How’s it feel, asshole?! Huh? How’s it f*cking feel?!” After a few moments, the man straightened himself to his full height and smiled before leaving the room.
Now, the doctor’s latest visit was different. Steve knew the moment the man walked in that they were going to be turning a page into something heavier, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up in anticipation.
“Good morning, Mr. Stockton.” Steve was immediately struck by the distinct lack of electronic hum that always accompanied speech taking place in that room. “Your wife is dead.”
Steve froze as a chill ran from the soles of his feet up through the top of his head. He didn’t reply, afraid that if he moved a muscle, even just to talk, that he wouldn’t wake up from the nightmare.
“Now, you will tell me your name, and if you do not tell me the correct answer, then your daughter will be next.”
“I don’t believe you,” Steve rasped low and gutterally, deep from his throat.
“The year is 1992, the month is February, and name of the woman who now lies dead on a hospital slab is Kayla Caroline Brady Johnson.” Now that I’ve told you all that you wanted to know, I suggest you begin forgetting it before the same fate befalls Stephanie Kay Johnson, age 16 months.”
Steve’s hands were shaking. He couldn’t help it. The torture mechanism had been turned off, but the success at these names being voiced in the room wasn’t even on his radar. Your wife is dead … your wife is dead … your wife is dead. It reverberated in his skull and crushed down upon him. What if we die in these bodies …
“You show me you sick son of a bitch. Because I don’t believe you.”
“Of course, Mr. Stockton. I wouldn’t dream of having you take me at my word, good as it is. The doctor shoved the manila envelope through the space at the bottom of the bars where various guards had been giving him his meals. Steve grabbed it, ripped it open, and pulled out photo after photo of Kayla’s beaten, bloodied body. She was thinner than he rememberd, and her hair was short, and her clothes were shredded upon her body , but there was no question that the face he was looking at was that of his wife.
“God … Oh God … No … NO! WHO DID THIS! You’re lying! These are faked! They’re photoshopped!”
The doctor showed no reaction at all to Steve’s outburst, nor did he question the anachronism that Steve had spat at him. “Let me assure you, Mr. Stockton, in no way are these photos faked. That woman is your wife. She is dead, and now we have followed through on Plan B as promised.”
Steve started to weep. He screamed and tore at his hair and clutched the photos to his chest. “Baby … ? Please, God, let her have jumped! Please … GOD!!!!”
Was this what it felt like? When he died, was this the pain that ripped through Kayla as she climbed in that bed with him as he now did with the photos he was still clutching? Steve wanted to die. He wanted to roll over and die right now.
“So, Plan B stops now as long as you give me the proper name. Otherwise, we finish out Plan B with the death of your baby daughter. And as promised, her death will be just as slow and painful as that of your wife’s. We’re equal opportunity players, Mr. Stockton.”
“YOU DON’T LAY A HAND ON MY DAUGHTER!”
“You are in no position to make demands.”
Steve faced the wall and chanted Stephanie and Kayla’s names over and over as his tears continued to pour down his face.
“What’s your name? You’ve got one shot, so choose your name wisely.”
“Just kill me!”
“Your name, sir.”
“Don’t kill my baby … please, she’s never done anything to Dimera, she’s just a baby!”
“This is your very last chance. Name.”
Steve didn’t know when he’d be leaving this jump. He did know that it would all reset, and he could just let they kill Stephanie and it wouldn’t matter once they jumped, she’d be right back where this jump started. But he couldn’t allow it to happen. To any Stephanie in any timeline, no matter what was going to happen. They’d already killed Kayla, and he had no idea if that killed her awareness along with her body or not. He couldn’t lose his baby girl, too. The words ripped through him with a whimper as shame spread through him, and misery swallowed him up.
“N-Nick S-S-Stockton.”