Disclaimer: The Tomorrow People belongs to Roger Damon Price, Thames/Tetra, Nickelodeon, etc. All Souls belongs to, well, I'm not entirely sure. I suppose UPN and various others. The only thing I get out of this is a certain degree of satisfaction...though I'm not entirely sure why.
Author's Note: Well, you were probably wondering when someone was going to do this. I managed to crossover The Tomorrow People and All Souls. (Joey is played by Cristian Tessier, in case you were wondering.) The result isn't pretty, to say the very least. This is an alternate universe of the worst kind, one that I really don't care to continue, as I suspect that it may be taxing on my sanity. If however, anyone feels inclined to work with this idea, please say so.
Thanks: to Anne, for pointing out various fuzzy points and typos.
Warnings: Well, as I've said, this is really, really weird, and mighty creepy. One might go so far as to say that this story contains something akin to character death.
Summary: So, you ask, who exactly is Joey, anyway? Well, if you want his opinion, that's a very good question.
Joey was a deep sleeper. Out like a light the second his head hit the pillow, and then dead to the world for the next several hours. He woke up easily as well. He couldn't recall the last time that he'd needed an alarm clock. It was all automatic.
Considering this, it was odd that he never felt very refreshed upon waking. He was always left with a nagging feeling that he'd remembered something, done something, known something, but then forgotten the moment his eyes opened. It was very strange, and occasionally depressing, but he'd grown used to it. After all, it had been like this for as long as he could remember.
Which, admittedly, was only a few years.
Joey couldn't recall when he'd first started working at All Souls, or when he'd first moved into his dingy little apartment, in which he spent very little time. It wasn't that he could remember things back to a certain point, and then everything was blank. Rather, it was as though the days began to run together after a while. He'd noticed this even since he'd been working at All Souls. Life just decayed into a collection of dull, gray, undefined nothing at the back of his mind after a while.
This too was something that he was accustomed to. It was simply the ways things were, and it had never really bothered him. Until recently. Until Dr. Grace had shown up and the goings on at All Souls had become even more bizarre than before.
Joey had a well-established sense of self-preservation. Some would go as far as to call him paranoid, and had, in fact, done just that on several occasions. On some level he supposed that he acted as he did in order to create balance for those moments when something inside of him demanded action of the least surreptitious sort.
He'd been having one of said moments when he first met Dr. Grace. Since then there'd been no turning back, though he'd certainly done his best. No matter how many times he told the older man that he was on his own, that there was no way he'd involve himself any further, he knew that he would always return to offer his assistance. He was involved now, more than he'd ever been in the past, and that something inside of himself wouldn't leave him alone anymore. It wanted him to help these people . . . to help Dr. Grace help them a€“ and there was no ignoring it.
And so things were different. The monotony, the daily routine. . . it was all changing. And All Souls wasn't happy with these changes. Joey had always known that there was something beyond just bricks and mortar to the building. Every day he'd gone about his job, dimly aware of a presence aside from his own, even when there was no one there but himself. However, it wasn't until very recently that All Souls had been anything but tolerant of him. Now when he awoke each day, it was with something akin to terror; the prospect of returning to the gleaming spaces, the high-vaulted ceilings, and the death loomed threateningly just ahead.
But he continued to go anyway, knowing that he couldn't do anything else. It wasn't just Dr. Grace that was keeping him there. There was another reason, too, even though he didn't know what it was. But it had always been there, and he couldn't do anything about it. He was quite sure that he would be with All Souls until he died and, in all likelihood, after that as well.
Despite all this, he still slept soundly. Never woke up in the middle of the night, neither because of hunger, the need to relieve himself, nor even the dreams that he knew he had. And the dreams were changing, also. He knew that too. Sometimes he thought he remember them. Maybe he did. But then they'd be gone again. People that he had known-- or thought he'd known-- would be there with him, and then he would be alone again.
But even that had been different recently. The nagging feeling was growing stronger, and the loss of his memories occasionally bothered him now because he was more aware of them. Faces that he glimpsed in his dreams would appear before him. Briefly he'd be able to study the tall, thin boy with the long hair, or the dark, pretty girl with braids, or a younger girl, eyes green and sparkling with mischief, an awkward boy, a few years younger than himself, and another girl, with an ironic twist to her lips. There were others, too, who he'd see, and then they'd all be gone. Sometimes he'd remember them later for a moment, sometimes not. But it was changing, and he knew that, felt it. He was slowly unraveling, becoming someone else, and he was scared-- terrified really-- by this loss of self, though at the same time he accepted it calmly, just as he did everything else in his life.
Then the breaking point came. He was working a late shift, as he tended to do, and the hospital was mostly empty. He'd found a room where he could be by himself to review patient files while he slowly worked his way through a small pile of junk food from the vending machines. There wasn't actually a trigger of any sort. He wasn't doing anything unusual when it happened. It was simply something that had been building, pressing against a dam in his mind, bits of it occasionally leaking through.
And the dam burst.
Megabyte fell to his knees, mouth open in a silent scream, eyes squeezed shut and hands clapped over his ears, trying to block out the noise that he knew came from inside his mind. There were so many voices. All Souls was full of them. The rage, sorrow, and most of all the terror of the dead and damned rang in his ears. They couldn't leave this hospital. No more than he could. Nevertheless they screamed, begged anyone who would listen to release them, demanded that he do something.
He fought past them, pushed them out of his way as though he was swimming through a crowd of them. They beat relentlessly at his mind even as he tried to move beyond. He wasn't equipped to deal with the dead. This was, after all, the reason why he'd blocked them out to begin with. There was nothing he could do for them.
So he searched for the living.
Diving deeper into the sea of voices and souls, he was able to find them, faint, but there. Beneath the hospital. They were nearly dead themselves. Their souls and minds lingered in bodies that could hardly be called alive, as desperate for release as the damned, though their prisons were made of flesh, rather than whatever it was that bound the dead to All Souls.
They called out to him as he moved past. He couldn't help them either, though. And they weren't his concern anyway. His body shuddered, lying prone and sweating on the cold floor of the hospital room, even as his mind quested further. They were still there, and he had to find them.
There. Nearly as faint as the others, but they knew him, and he knew them, and they found each other. 'I'm so sorry,' he told them. 'So sorry.' Adam, Ami, Jade, Kevin, Lisa. 'I can't. I'm trying, but I can't, I'm sorry. So sorry.'
They were different now. All Souls had changed them, as it changed everyone. They spoke at once, overlapping, begging for his help. They wanted release. Their minds were in agony, so weak now that they couldn't shut the voices out as he could.
They called for him as one. Long cries of horror, despair, and madness.
And he shut them out. Began rebuilding the dam, bit by bit. "I'm sorry," he said, aloud this time. "I'm here," he assured them, though he didn't know if they could hear. "I'll stay here, but I can't be with you." He struggled against the continuing onslaught of the dead and living as he worked to replace the shattered walls within his mind.
He'd forced his friends out when he first came to All Souls. Had cut them off along with the voices that otherwise taxed his sanity as much as they now did his theirs. Another shudder ran through his body. "I'm trying to help," he whispered. "I won't leave until I do."
And with that, the final block was set back in place.
"I'm sorry," breathed Joey. The sound of his own voice startled him. Sorry for what? He got to his feet slowly, confused. Had he been talking to someone? Had someone been here with him?
And then the confusion faded. He picked up the candy bar he'd been eating and began gnawing on the end. A moment later he didn't remember dropping it. By the time he sat down on his chair again, he'd forgotten that he'd fallen from it.
Joey brushed a few stray crumbs from the file lying on the desk in front of him as he continued to read.
END
Well, I hope that made *some* degree of sense. Comments, criticisms, death threats? Send 'em along.