Joshua had agreed to wait for his dad to come and help him prepare to go into Thea’s mind, but after he got everything ready, he didn’t wait. He had no way of knowing how long Thea’s mind could tolerate being trapped with no way out, so he began the process of shutting down his body. He entered a state of deep meditation, and as he did, his heart rate and bodily functions slowed down to hibernation mode. He couldn’t maintain this mode of shutdown forever, and he understood why his dad was worried.
When he was younger, he had gone into shutdown and left his body behind for two days. At one point, Josh had unwittingly broken the link between his body and spirit, and he had died. He’d been under for several minutes, with his dad frantically doing everything he could to save his son. Even though Josh had later explained what had happened to his father, Andrew Bronson had insisted that if Josh ever decided to go jaunting about without his body again, that he wait for his dad to be present.
He’d gone in search of his mother, and when he found her, he had tried for two days to heal her brain and bring her back. She’d tried to commit suicide, but had only succeeded in putting herself in a persistent vegetative state. He’d managed to make contact with the part of her mind that was still aware and functioning, but she’d been in a coma for years by that point. She had been alone and cut off from the outside world with nothing but her own guilt for company.
Andy had come home to find his young son in a coma, and had immediately called an ambulance and had him admitted to the hospital where he worked as a doctor. Josh had been unresponsive to the outside world for two days, but had remained stable. Then he had smiled, taken a deep breath, and his heart had stopped. Andy was in the room when it happened, and he had immediately begun CPR. They fought to bring Josh back for thirty minutes. Just as the other doctors in the room had given up, his heart had started pumping again, he’d begun breathing on his own, and within a few seconds, he was awake and alert, looking around at all the people in the room and asking for food.
Josh would never forget how defeated he’d felt when he returned to his body. He’d tried unsuccessfully to get his mother to fight, to come back to him, and live, but she’d given in to the guilt she felt for giving him up to the Mod program, no amount of coaxing could convince her that the little boy she’d given to Monsters could forgive her.
She’d believed him dead, because they had told her he didn’t survive the program. Josh could access a few of her memories, and he could see her holding a dead infant, believing that she was holding her son.
Josh tried to convince her that he had survived, that he wasn't the infant she'd held. For a while, it seemed like she believed him, but then she became convinced that her dead son had somehow come to visit her in her prison and he was punishing her for what she had done. She had rejected him, been terrified of him in fact, and he had finally stopped trying to pull her out of the abyss.
Even at age ten, he knew that the merciful thing was to help her let go of her body and go on to whatever afterlife existed.
He waited, projected himself a man, and went back one last time. She saw him as the man he’d imagined himself, and wasn’t afraid. He led her to a door, telling her that she was free, that she had paid the penance for what she had done, and she was now allowed to go on to the other side.
She cried and hugged him, asked him if Josh was waiting on the other side and Joshua had lied and said he was. He told her that all of the victims of the Company were waiting for her, that they needed someone to take care of them, and since she knew about their special needs and abilities, she would be the perfect surrogate until they moved on to what came next.
She changed then. Given a mission to take care of the helpless victims of the Company, she found the strength to open the door and pass from this life into the next.
Joshua caught a glimpse of the light and love on the other side. He had just stepped through the doorway to join his mother, when a man, much like the one Josh had projected to his mom, came took his hand. The man had taken Josh into another bright room, one with a pool of water in the center of it.
They walked to the pool, and Josh could see his dad, standing over his body, trying to revive him. His dad was crying, doing CPR, yelling for somebody to bring a fucking crash cart. The man placed a hand on Joshua’s shoulder.
“You still have work, son. You have to go back, but not just for your dad.”
The picture changed, and he saw Thea. She was having a slumber party with three friends. They seemed to be playing some kind of game. Thea would close her eyes, and all three friends would start writing furiously in notebooks. When she would open her eyes, they would compare papers. All three had written the exact same thing on their papers.
They laughed hysterically, and the next girl closed her eyes, beginning the process again. After they opened their eyes and compared, only Thea had written exactly what the other girl had sent. The other two could get pieces of the thought, images that were part of what the sender had tried to communicate, but Thea was by far the best at it.
“Are they all like me then?”
“Yes, but only Thea is as strong as you. The others will have a part later, but you must watch for Thea, and when she comes to you, tell her the truth about where she came from. You must protect her, Josh, because when the company realizes how strong she is, that they can’t control her, they will try to kill her, as they will you, if they find out you survived. You must help her conceal her true power, her strength, until the time is right. You have knowledge about your origins that she doesn’t yet have. A couple who do only what Michael Critchlow and the Company tell them has fostered her. She knows nothing of the Program, and has no idea what lies in store for her in Hopeton. You must wait for her and help her stay alive. Do you understand?”
“No, but I’m guessing I will when the time is right, right?”
The man laughed then, and patted Josh on the shoulder.
“Very good, Joshua. Now, let’s get you back where you belong. I know you won’t disappoint us.”
Josh had thought of a million questions to ask the man, but had known he probably wouldn’t get the answers he wanted. The man had patted him on the shoulder one last time, and Joshua had woken up in the hospital.
