Blank Slate

Chapter 25: "Where am I?"

Chapter 25: “Where am I?"

* Don't worry...another Flint Pov is coming up

Jared Morgan

A couple hours had passed while they were waiting for Jay.

In the meantime however, a redhead came over to his table while Carter was gone.

Drake looked across the table from him. Her big blue eyes dawned a devilish grin. Jared didn't know what to think. Carter, his father, had gone off to the bathroom and this woman had just pulled up a chair. Jared sipped his coffee slowly. Biting her lip, this stranger, who had named herself as Drake Baxter, Annie's sister; she spoke to him with intense desperate eyes.

“I need you to drink this.” She lifted a cup of a blue liquid to his face.

Jared lifted his eyes in growing suspicion. “Who are you really? I know you said you’re ‘Drake Baxter', but what do you exactly want from me? I didn't kill your mother.” Jared began to choke up and crinkle the napkin in his shaking hands. “That was Flint's fault. Not mine.”

He knew it was a lie, but it was all he had to keep his sanity.

Drake's eyes dragged a heavy agony towards his. “My mother never died. Carter made her disappear.”

Jared looked at her in disbelief. “No. He's my father. My real father. He would never do that to me. He broke me out of prison and told me all of this wasn't my fault but Kate's."

Drake dropped her hand to Jared's shoulder in a comforting motion.

He flinched and pulled away with coldness dripping out of his every feature.

“Look, you aren't at fault. He is. He made my mother, Jessica Baxter, disappear.”

 Jared said nothing. He just shuttered and his fists curled up in unfurled anger.

Drake's expression softened. “We all want to believe our parents are better people than us. They're not. They just have more experience pretending not to be. Why do you think he never looked you up or found you despite Ryan Morgan?”

Jared was speechless as she demanded an answer with her crossed limbs.

With no answer, she only continued, “my mother told me that he didn't want to find you. You were just a roadblock in his plans. He was selling off my mother's inventions bit by bit and the worst part was…your brother Jay…he was the one to let it happen. He knew what Carter had done and he wanted to be a part of it. He even conned Phoenix out of her money because she was so desperate for revenge.”

Anger creased over Jared's steel eyes. “How do you know any of this?”

“I know it sounds crazy…but I can hear all the people who've disappeared.”

Jared scoffed. “You don't just sound crazy...you sound like you’ve escaped from the looney bin.”

Drake looked down in shame. “Look, this is hard for me to admit…but you're our last hope to take out Carter. All I need you to do is drink this.”

She held up the bottle close to his pursed lips.

Seeing his heavy hesitation, Drake went further. “You can never truly redeem yourself if you believe that this was all someone else's fault. You need to admit it to yourself. You've done some bad things…but you've also done some great things. You were never a monster. You were just completely human.”

A tear chased down his eyes as he drew Drake into his arms. “Thank you for thinking I'm more than a monster...but I'm not--"

Drake departed quickly from his arms as Carter returned to his chair.