Page 14 of Fire
Tobias made a short noise of frustration. “You’re being stubborn.”
“Damn right I am.”
Dropping the file folder onto the desk, he gave Jake a hard look. “If you’re not taking this seriously?—”
“I am, Toby. Seriously-seriously.” Jake lifted his hands in the air, palms out. “Give me some credit. I’ve basically thought about this my whole life. There’s nothing that can jump out of the closet that we can’t take down, okay? Same as any other haunted bitch of a house. Have some faith in us.”
Tobias looked away. It scared him, how obstinately Jake hung onto those blinders. There were so many terrible possibilities thatwouldend them.
But Jake waved a folder in the air. “I don’t care what’s in these or any other papers. It won’t change who you are, tiger.”
And Tobias had no choice but to believe him. They were already here, after all, and they had just survived the worst he had imagined.
He could put his trust in Jake, who had already pulled off the impossible for him over and over again.
Then he looked down again at the folder open before him, and his breath froze.
89UI6703.
There it was. The ID number that had been his entire official identity for most of his life, that had been stamped on the collar he’d worn around his neck for eleven years. Printed on the page before him.
Tobias wasn’t aware of seconds passing or of Jake speaking until he was at Tobias’s side, sliding the page out from between numb fingertips. He swore.
Using the secondhand camera they’d bought at a pawn shop, Jake took pictures of every page in the file. Then they put it back as they’d found it before making their way out of the house.
It wasn’t until much later, after they’d gotten the photos developed, that Toby was able to begin to process what the pages said. Jake paced and hovered over him until Tobias called him a wannabe Florence Nightingale and told him he needed space.
The files showed records from the ASC, following up on case numbers the judge had overseen. Much of it had been redacted, thick black lines swallowing up lines and paragraphs. But there was a list of each case number, a description of the convicted monster, their newly assigned Freak Camp ID, and the date they were admitted into the camp.
Under another column titled “Legal Name,” everything had been redacted.
But across from 89UI6703 was a date: December 13, 1989.
He had never known exactly when he’d been brought inside Freak Camp.
And Jake kept asking him how hefelt.
“Weird, okay? It feels weird,” Tobias told Jake later that night. He was antsy, nowhere near ready to sleep, and wanted to try meditating while listening to Chopin on his portable CD player. But Jake wanted to talk.
Tobias still couldn’t remember anything from his life before the camp. No faces, names, or sounds. He honestly had no curiosity about it. In fact, he felt an aversion to the information.
Whoever he had been on December 12, 1989 had nothing to do with him now. It wasn’t who he was. He didn’t like how invested Jake seemed in the idea, almost feverish, like they were about to discover somethingimportant.
Jake was going to be disappointed. Tobias knew it in the marrow of his bones.
Something else disturbed him from the packet of judge’s records. Several pages further on from the one listing his Freak Camp ID and date of entry, he had seen another record for 97SS7223. Date of entry: November 8, 1997.
He had looked at it twice before the ID number produced a face. Or rather one face of many. A shapeshifter girl several years younger than him who had been the only other kid he’d known to last.
He had no idea if she was still alive. Often he had tried to believe she wasn’t, but the core of him—the part that still breathed the air of Freak Camp, some days, no matter how far they were in terms of miles—felt certain she was. Kayla was still doing what she needed to survive, exactly as he had done. Exactly as he had taught her.
* * *
Now that they had a date,they could target their research. They dug into records for the late fall and winter of 1989, eventually narrowing it down to three states: North Dakota, Florida, and West Virginia. All three had classified cases referring to unknown supernaturals captured in December 1989.
Posing as an FBI agent, Jake made calls to officials and families in Jacksonville, Florida. The fifth call crossed Florida off the list as it confirmed that the family detained by the ASC only had two young girls. They hit another dead end with calls to Bismarck, North Dakota.
Then Tobias found the article inThe Times West Virginian.
