I had no idea what to expect. I was in a small room with only one entrance, and someone was about to come in. They could be the ally that I assumed I had somehow acquired, or it could be one of the falcons coming to kill me. I could only guess what would happen when the person came in the door. I looked around for something to protect myself from my visitor, and there wasn't much. The best I could find in the few seconds that I had was grabbing a pen in one hand and a pencil in the other and holding them in my fists defensively. The door swung fully open with a surprisingly silent swing, and I could see an old man looking at me from the entrance. The man was wearing a surprising number of layers of clothing. It seemed like each one had a good number of rips and stains, but the look suited him somehow. It was as if he had been living this life long enough to have adapted into this person.

  I stared at him while he stared at me. I was still crouched in the corner with my crude version of weapons in my hands. We stayed there for a long enough time that I started noticing what was outside the door behind him. I could see the sky outside the door was dark, which made me realize I had no idea what time it was. There was what looked like the tops of trees, silhouetted by the city's light pollution.

  When I looked back at the old man, he was not looking at me with such a surprised look on his face; he looked a bit more thoughtful than before. I felt like I was picking up far more from his facial expressions than I have done anytime in my life until now.

  There was a whole conversation happening in my head as I watched the slight movements of his lips and eyes as he looked at me. I had no idea if I was just making things up, but it seemed like he was saying.

  “Wow, this is a surprise. I have not seen him react like this before when seeing me. I can tell something is different about him. I knew there was something happening with this kid, and this finally proves me right.”

  In the end, I was so confident about what I was reading on his face that I lowered my hands and let the drawing instruments fall to the ground. He seemed to come to a similar conclusion around the same time because he finally said something to me.

  “Hey buddy, I hope I am not expecting too much in hoping that you can understand me. I have been hoping to talk to you for almost a year now. Are you doing alright?

  I did not understand why he thought I would not be able to understand him. I might not have gotten to go to school as much as I was hoping, but I did not think that made me stupid.

  “Yeah, I can understand you. I am not really sure what is happening. I guess I am ok, but I am just confused about most things at this point. Do you know what is happening, or how I got here?”

  I would have been able to sense the relief on his face even before, but I was still a bit confused about why he had not been able to talk to me before.

  “I can understand why you might be confused about where you are. You had a lot of brain damage from something before we first met, and that caused you to not be able to remember anything from the point of the brain damage onward. I am happy to see that you are getting better.”

  I was struggling with this conversation. He was telling me things I had already figured out, yet he left me with more questions about what he was saying.

  “What do you mean, I am getting better? How do you know I am getting better? How does someone get better from brain damage?”

  The old man finally stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. It seemed like he was never a fan of being exposed to the outside when he could do anything to help it. He walked the couple of steps he needed to get to the opposite wall from me and slowly lowered himself on top of one of the piles of drawings I had yet to go through. I was going to object, but he still had a lot of information I wanted. Deciding not to derail the conversation with my concerns about the drawings, I waited for him to start talking again.

  “It surprised me how articulate you are. I had expected you to speak like a child once you could speak again. I will try to answer all of your questions, so give me a second to collect my thoughts.”

  The old man readjusted his position on the pictures for a second. It seemed like comfort was a big issue as you got older.

  “I know that you are better for a few reasons. The first and most obvious is that you no longer have a gaping hole in your face anymore. Healing an eye is not something the human body can do without assistance. The second reason I know this is that the last time I saw you, three days ago, you couldn't understand a single word I said. You also would just spout gibberish anytime you tried to speak to me. The third and final thing that convinced me that you were feeling better is that I saw a bullet on the ground over near the entrance to our shared sleeping cave. It is flattened as if it were already shot into something.

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  When you combine all three of these things, it gives me a good idea that I was right about my guesses for why the Falcons are after you. I have been guessing for a while that you stole something incredibly valuable from the Falcons right before you got your brain damage. I think you actually have The Infinity System in your body. This would solve so many mysteries that seem to be surrounding you.”

  I was not sure what he was talking about. I could remember all the way until Domingo had taken out his gun. I did not get The Ininity System installed anytime before that. I did remember Domingo talking about The Infinity System in his monologue. I had no idea what to think about it being installed on me. It was supposed to be only for the super-rich. I was about as far away from being super rich as it was possible to be. I did not know if I even owned anything anymore.

  “I don’t remember ever getting the Infinity system installed.”

  “That is not a surprise, a lot of people lose memories from right before brain damage. It is really similar to the fact that you were not able to create new memories. You see, there is a section of the temporal lobe within your brain called the hippocampus. This section of the brain is responsible for converting short-term memories into long-term memories for later recall. Back when I was a lecturer at Sinaloa, this was one of my favorite topics to cover.

  There are actually two different forms of memory that your brain can process. The first one is long-term memory; this is technically supposed to last your entire life, but there are various mechanisms that can be implemented to prevent easy recall of these memories. Enough about that, though. I need to stay on topic. These long-term memories are created only from some of the information your brain processes. A larger chunk of information is discarded before it even gets to that point. This information is still being processed by your brain, but it is not permanent information.”

  I did not know if all of this information was especially vital to me at that very instant, but I figured I should pay attention, considering it sounded like he had a deep understanding of brain damage, and that was apparently what I had.

  “Here, I can see your confusion. Let me try giving you an example of how this functions within your brain. I will give you a list of 8 numbers, then I need you to start from 459 and subtract 7 from the number each time. The numbers are 4,8,6,2,4,9,9,2. Now repeat them back to me.”

  “4,8,6,2,4,9,9,2”

  “Now start counting down by 7 from 459. Anytime now…”

  I was the best at math in my class when I was in school, but that was so long ago. I don’t ever remember learning how to count by 7s. I had only learned about normal subtraction. Not even in the hundreds. I don’t know if I was smart enough to learn what the old man was teaching.

  “I don’t know how to do that. I only learned a bit of subtraction, then I was put in Time Out and could not go to school anymore.”

  The old man looked confused for a second. I guess he did not know about Time Out.

  “Wait, your parents put you in a time-out and would not let you attend school because of that. I did not realize that parents took time-outs so seriously nowadays. I just remember it being a way to put your child in the corner so they would calm down for a few minutes.”

  I had what seemed like a profound insight at this moment. We might have been able to talk to each other for the first time ever, but it did not mean that we were communicating properly.

  “Maybe we need to start over. I feel like we need to talk about a few things to really understand each other.

  Hello, my name is Jaun. I was taken from my home by the Falcons when I was 6 and held by the Falcons in a prison made for children called Time Out for years. The last day of my life, I remember before today was being taken out of Time Out and brought to an incredibly tall building. I was then brought to Domingo, where he talked a bunch about me being his nemesis, then he shot me in the head.”

  I turned to the old man, hoping that he might reciprocate. He looked like he wanted to say a number of things, but he held himself back somewhat.

  “I thought I had it bad. Wow, kid, that is rough. Well Fuck, I guess we are doing this.

  My name is Vic. I used to be a psychology professor at a university. I grew bored with the academic life after some time, so I left it behind. At that point, I chose to pursue a lesser-respected but far more interesting passion of mine: hypnosis. I grew incredibly skilled at it until I was considered one of the best in the world. For some reason, the Falcons brought me into their sights. After harassing me and ruining my practice, they took everything from me and left me here alive but with no respect. No matter what I did, no one would hire me or help me. I had been blacklisted by them, and they now run this city. You can’t do anything if they're out to get you. I just wish I had never heard of the Falcons or Domingo.

  It doesn't matter what I do anymore; they want me in the streets so they can laugh and point, so that is where I am. I saw a glimmer of hope when I met you because taking something away that they want is the last thing I could do to hurt them. I just wanted them to feel even a fraction of my pain.”

  It did not require my newfound skill at reading facial expressions to realize that Vic was not telling me the whole story. He glossed over the reason for the Falcons' interest in him with just a few words, but it could not have been nothing.

  I decided to let it go for now; he would tell me when he felt like it. Pushing would likely only cause him to shut down. I needed information and an ally more than I needed to know that missing piece of his backstory.