Page 128 of Captured Immune

31

TREY

“Shut your mouth,Jodi, or I’ll fucking kill you,” Victor shouts. The chains rattle as he points a stern finger at me. “I’ll kill him too.”

Jodi shakes my forearm to grab my attention back. “Remember that one time we made a blanket fort? We ate spray cheese out of the can, and you told me you had a crush on a girl at your Zordi school. Oh, what was her name? God, I can’t remember. Maybe that’s not the best way to prove?—”

“Don’t listen to her,” Victor says. “She’s a goddamn liar.”

Jodi ignores him again. “One time, I took you to the zoo. It was just you and me. When we got to the open aviary, you grabbed one of the small birds walking around and stuck it down your shirt. You wanted to take it home. No matter what I said to you, you refused to let the bird go. Eventually, the zookeepers got the bird out of your grasp, and they kicked us out. Do you remember that?”

I shake my head. “I don’t remember ever going to a zoo.”

“That’s because she’s a liar!” Victor says. “She’s making this all up to try to save her skin.”

All thirty-ish people hooked to this long chain between me and Victor gawk at us with wide eyes and silent mouths. The three Enforcers guarding us are silent too. Like me, they’re probably unsure what to believe.

Jodi takes her hands off me and runs them through her greasy, matted hair. The chains clink against her thick handcuffs as she thinks. “Oh! I know! One Christmas morning, I came over early and we snuck down to the tree. We opened up those Nerf guns I got you. While we played, you bumped into the tree and?—”

“Stop!” I shout so loudly, it makes Arella jolt back a step. I lock my attention onto Victor. “What happened next?”

“Huh?” he says.

“If you’re really Victor, then you’ll know what happened after I bumped into the Christmas tree.”

He scoffs condescendingly. “Of course I know what happened. You tipped it over.”

I turn my attention back to Jodi, whom I’m now pretty sure isn’t Jodi. “What happened next?”

“You broke your mama’s crystal angel ornament.”

“And?”

“The wings broke off. We spent the rest of that morning trying to glue it back together but ended up breaking the head off too, so we dumped the thing in the neighbor’s trash bin and made a pact to never tell anyone. That’s how we came up with our secret word.”

“Which is?”

Jodi doesn’t hesitate. “Crystal.”

I choke up as the realization sinks in. This whole time, it wasn’t my sweet Uncle V who abused me and called me names. It was Jodi in Victor’s body. Now that I think about it, it makes sense. It was always Jodi who treated me like shit, not Victor. This whole time, I thought he started treating me like that because he was sad about losing his wife. Turns out, he did it because his wife stole his goddamn body.What the fuck?

“So?” Cameron says, breaking the silence. “Who got it right?”

“Yeah,” another Enforcer says from behind me, “we wanna know.”

“Jodi is correct,” I say, then shake my head. “I mean Victor. More specifically, Victor in Jodi’s body.”

Cameron chuckles to himself, shaking his head. “Damn. The Keepers gon’ have a heyday with this one. A Mind Swapper? I thought them fuckers was extinct by now.”

This explains why Arella saw Victor’s eyes go black. It was Jodi trying to swap minds with Arella. I can’t imagine what would happen if it had worked. For someone as toxic as Jodi to have immunity? I don’t want to know all the things she’d do with that ability.

My dad places his female hands over my forearm again. “Jodi told me your mama’s dead. Is that true?”

The pain in his eyes makes me think about lying, but I can’t do that to him. “Jodi blew her up. She blew up both my parents.”

“I didn’t blow up anyone,” Jodi sneers from Victor’s body. It’s disgusting that her mind has been living in my dad’s head for this long and no one knew it. “They blew themselves up. My men’s orders were only to detain Suzie and Andy. I had plans to torture them in front of Victor. Whatever happened that night, they killed themselves and took my men with them. I had nothing to do with it.”

It’s official: Jodi is a fucking nutcase. Abusing me is one thing, but keeping her husband locked up for twenty years, with plans to torture people in front of him for her pure enjoyment? Nutcase.

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