Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 18:36:58 -0700 (MST) From: "Katherine R. Freymuth" Subject: Circles of Fate - Part 4 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Quantum Leap "Circles of Fate" Part 4 Al closed his eyes, waiting with a know in his stomach for the poker to come down. "Father," Alia said softly. Al opened his eyes to look at the girl. She was touching her father's arm gently. "Father, don't do it," she told him. "Please. He's your son, even if he won't acknowledge it. Let him think about what has happened. Please. I'm sure he'll realize his mistake soon." She slowly took the poker from him. "Please, Father." The father took a deep breath, allowing Alia to take the poker from him. She placed the poker where her father had procured it and knelt before him. She took his hand. "Please, Father, allow me to put him back in his room and I will then come up and make dinner for you." The father looked at her pensively. Her blue eyes looked at him not with a plead but rather with a request. His eyes softened from hatred to firm authority. He gave a brief nod. "Very well," he finally said. "Do so. You may even clean his wounds but he is allowed no food or water. Is that clear?" "Yes, Father," Alia replied as her father released her hand and climbed the stairs. Al exhaled with relief. "Gawd, Sam! That was close! He would have really killed you!" Alia helped Sam onto his feet and placed his arm over her shoulder. She led him to a chair and sat him down on it. "Gawd, Freddie, that was so close," she said as she dunked an old hand towel into a bucket of cold water. She dabbed the now wet towel onto the cuts on Sam's face. There were tears in her eyes when she saw Sam wince strongly. "We have to get away from him somehow," she whispered conspiratorially. "Some way so that he can't come after us again." She finished cleaning Sam's wounds. "I can't let him hurt you again." Al was studying Alia carefully while, at the same time, watching Sam with concern. "It IS her," he said mostly to himself. "Geez, she can't be more than fifteen!" He looked more closely at Sam. "Are you okay, Sam?" Sam nodded slowly in response. It was obvious that he was too exhausted to answer. Al frowned. "No, you're not okay," he muttered. Alia looked into Sam's eyes with regret. "Freddie, I have to put you back in there." A tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm sorry." She gently hugged him. "I'm sorry," she cried. Al felt as if his heart would collapse as he watched Alia hug Sam lovingly. His eyes turned towards the stairs with hatred. "What kind of a monster would do such horrible things to his own children?" he asked with a seethe. Alia was helping Sam back into the small cold room from which he had been dragged. Al noticed her actions immediately. "No, Alia!" he pleaded. "Don't put him in there!" She laid him on the cot, crying as she did so. She then covered him with the thin blanket and kissed him on the forehead lovingly. "ALIA!" came an angry shout from upstairs. Alia jumped in fright. "Coming, Father!" she shouted back, her voice shaking. She looked at Sam with great sorrow before leaving the room quickly and locking the door. Al looked about the room in total shock. There was absolutely no light and it was obvious there was no heat. It almost reminded him of the places in which he was imprisoned when he was in Vietnam. *Gawd! How long was Frederick in this hellhole?* He looked towards the cot on which he knew Sam was lying but he couldn't see him in the dark. He nonetheless walked towards him, checking the handlink. Sam was very weak and dehydrated. He needed water. Al shivered as the man's words can back to him. "...he is allowed no food or water." Al closed his eyes, full of anger and sorrow, unsure how to react. *No wonder he hates his father! That bastard!* He fought to prevent tears from leaving his eyes. "Sam, can you hear me?" he asked quietly. "Al," Sam replied. "What the hell is going on? This room. That man. Alia. What's going on?" Al sighed. "I wish I knew." There was quiet. "Why am I here, Al?" Sam asked quietly. "Who am I?" Al hesitated. He closed his eyes. After all Sam had just gone through, he didn't want to tell him the truth. But he would. "We don't know. I wish I could say otherwise. What we do know is that the guy you've leaped into, Frederick, refuses to go by his own name because of his hatred for his father, after whom he was named. He apparently has been in this awful place for a long time because he's not used to warmth and light." The idea of one of his own daughters being in the room came to Al's mind. He forced it out as soon as it came. The thought was too horrible to handle. "If this is the kind of environment Alia grew up in, it's no wonder her life became what it was." He took a breath. "But since we've already saved her from Zoe and those others, you must be here to help Frederick." There was no answer. "Sam, can you hear me?" Al asked. He looked at the handlink. Sam was asleep. Al breathed a sigh of relief. "I'll be right back, Sam. I'll get you out of here. I promise." With that, he pressed some buttons on the handlink and centered himself on Alia, concerned about her. What he saw repulsed him more than the beating Sam had gotten. Alia was attempting to cook some chicken while her father was in the act of raising her shirt with his left hand, brushing her cheek with his right, and kissing her neck. It was obvious from the expression on Alia's face that her father's actions were not welcome but she was too afraid of him to fight him. Al closed his eyes, unable to watch what he knew would happen. Without looking at the handlink, he punched in the sequence to open the Imaging Chamber door and stepped out. He marched into the Control Room with determination and looked about for a particular face. Gushie, Tina, and Sammy Jo were conferring with each other by the console. Of the three, Sammy Jo was the only one to look at Al. Their eyes met. Sammy Jo's was full of sorrow and regret. Al recognized the look immediately. He took a step towards her. "Excuse me," Sammy Jo told Tina just before she quickly left the Control Room. Al followed her quickly. Catching up to her, he grabbed her arm and pinned her against the corridor's wall. "Al, let go of me!" she demanded. "Not until you tell me what the hell is going on!" Al told her angrily. "I don't know what you're talking about!" she exclaimed, struggling against his firm grip. "Like hell you don't!" Al yelled. "Where's Sammy Jo?" There was silence between them. She had known it was just a matter of time before Al figured it out and she knew the time had come. "Okay, Al," she finally said. "I'll tell you everything. But, could we please discuss this in private?" Al released her from his pin. He'd also recognized the way she had spoken to him. He had really frightened her. He nodded in agreement to her request. "Thank you," she replied to his gesture before leading him to Sammy Jo's lab and calling for privacy. "So," she said, turning towards him. "What do you want to know?" Al took a step towards her. "You're Alia, aren't you? And the person in the Waiting Room is your brother. That's why you disappeared from the Control Room when Dr. Beeks was telling me about him." She nodded slowly. Al lowered his head and closed his eyes. Alia knew the meaning of Al's actions. "You saw what he did to me and Freddie," she surmised. She walked a short ways from him. "We hated him, Freddie and I. We'd tried to get away from him, runaway, but he'd always find us. We were afraid to talk to the police. We knew he would have literally killed us if we did. And we had no other relatives. Our mother had died giving birth to me." Al looked at her with sympathy. "And the state didn't do anything to get you away from him?" he asked in astonishment. "The state didn't know anything about it. On the outside, we were the perfect family. We obeyed him, displayed affection for him, and spoke favorably of him in public because we were afraid of his retribution." She paused. "When we were children, he wouldn't ever hit us, just in case someone saw bruises on our faces when we went to school. If we had done wrong in his eyes, he'd force us to strip naked and he'd lock us in that room in the basement. Once that didn't have the desired effect, the abuse became worse. He pulled us out of school on the grounds that he needed us to help him with his work." "His work?" Al asked. "My father worked as a carpenter in the backwoods of Northern Ireland. We were isolated from the rest of the world. Hermits almost. No one ever visited us and we rarely went to the nearest town except when he had to sell his furniture. Because we were so isolated and Freddie and I were no longer in school, he found he could whip us without anyone knowing." Al closed his eyes. "Alia," he said quietly. "Why is your father punishing your brother?" His eyes slowly grew angry. "Why did I just see Sam getting the shit beaten out of him? And why the hell did you just put him back in that damned room?" A tear started down Alia's cheek. "I didn't want to put him in there. But I knew that, if I didn't, my father would have forced me to beat him or be beaten myself. Freddie insisted that I do what he said. Freddie was certain that our father would have killed me. And I knew that, if I died, Freddie wouldn't have had a chance." She took a shaky breath. "I was keeping him alive." "But why was he being tortured in the first place?" Al demanded. She was crying now, trying to keep her emotions under control. "Freddie was going to leave and take me with him. I'd just turned thirteen. Freddie was eighteen. He told our father that we were no longer going to live under his rules and he was ashamed to have our father's name. He denounced him as our father. My father beat him until he could hardly breathe. The other reason he didn't kill him is I told him I would do anything he wanted if he would just spare his life. And so I helped him keep Freddie locked in that room." She knelt on the floor, unable to hold her own weight. She looked up to the ceiling. "Oh, gawd, Freddie! Please, forgive me!" Al lowered himself to look at Alia. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Alia," he said softly. "What's going to happen?" Alia didn't say anything. She looked at the floor. Al raised her chin gently. "Alia, I need your help. I need to know what's going to happen so we can help Sam." Alia looked at him with guilt-filled eyes. "He's going to kill him," she said quietly. "My father is going to kill Freddie. And then I'm going to kill my father." The two looked at each other intensely. ---------------------------------------- Told you you'd have to wait until next week. Part 5 will be soon. Katherine