“After the first invasion, your father refused to hand over the crops to the Mills Conglomerate. They hung him in the public square to make an example of him, and you were left to care for the farm and your sister alone.”
My heart begins to race. Could he be telling the truth? I have nothing to go on save the few memories from dreams I can’t confirm. He definitely has my attention now.
Merle continues.
“After your father’s death, you and your sister were allowed back to the land your family had farmed for generations, now under the control of the Mills Conglomerate. You were forced to sign a loyalty oath to Mills, just like all the other farming families. You agreed to farm what they told you to farm, and in return, they said you would be protected from further harm.”
“You were nineteen years old,” Merle says. “Amelia was fifteen. It was a bad year for crops, and Mills didn’t have the resources to keep the farms they had taken over on their feet. Some of them, like yours, were designated failures, and the military was sent in to relocate the families. Your farm was overtaken by the Mills military.”
I narrow my eyes and lean back against the wall, arms crossed. I tap the empty plastic bottle against my arm and stare at him. I know what he’s trying to do. He wants me to sympathize with his cause—switch sides and work for Carson.
Not a fucking chance.
“You don’t believe me.” Merle nods slowly, his lips pursed. “I can show you all the records, Galen, but you probably won’t believe them either. They don’t have any details about exactly what happened that day, but I know someone who does, someone you might listen to. If Errol does his job right, you might even remember him.”
As if on cue, the door opens.
I know the man immediately—I’ve seen him in my dreams so many times. He’s a little older, a little greyer, but it’s definitely the same face. His head bobs slightly as he look at me—an involuntary nodding caused by some genetic ailment.
“Hal,” I say softly. “Your name is Hal.”
“I thought ya said he wasn’t gonna remember nothin’.” Hal chuckles as he sits beside me on the cot and clasps his shaky hand on my shoulder. “It’s been way too long, Galen, my boy.”
“It appears that some of Galen’s memories are returning to him without our efforts.”
“No kiddin’?” Hal turns to me, and his smile is all too familiar.
“You were there, on the farm.”
“I was yer neighbor, Galen. Yer father and I were close since we were kids.”
“You know what really happened?” I ask. “What happened to my sister?”
“I do,” he says. “Heard it from yer own mouth years ago. Are ya sure ya want to know?”
“Yes.”
He nods and takes a deep breath.
“Crops were failin’ left ‘n right. The ground was just too rough, and we didn’t have enough water to go ‘round. Mills started sending in soldiers, as if that would make any difference.”
He looks to Merle, but Merle only gives him a slight nod of encouragement.
“They were rough men,” Hal says. “Mebbe they thought they were just lettin’ off steam, but it got out of hand. They started goin’ house-to-house, farm-to-farm, slappin’ folks around. You knew they were comin’ closer to your place.”
He pauses and wipes the back of his hand across his brow.
“Ya didn’t give me the details,” he says quietly. “Frankly, I’m grateful not to know. I only know that when they got to your place, a couple of the soldiers got hold of your sister.”
Pressure rises in my chest, and my eyes begin to burn. My fingers tighten around the empty plastic bottle in my hand, crushing it. Hal continues in a soft voice.
“She was raped and killed right there in yer own barn. A week later, ya ended up in a military barracks with a shotgun. Ya shot dead the two men who had done that to yer sister.”
The dreams I’ve had for months fall together. Everything makes sense now—my fear for my sister, the tanks, the sound of her screaming for my help, my inability to do anything about what was happening to her, images of bodies as I held a gun—it all makes perfect sense.
I drop my head into my hands, trying to force back the tears with my palms.
“You remember some of this, don’t you?” Merle reaches a hand out, and I flinch. He sits back in the chair and nods. “The implant Errol said was malfunctioning—I bet it’s allowed some of your memories to leak through. What else do you remember?”
I don’t answer him, and he doesn’t push me.
“Do you want to know, Galen?” Merle asks. “Shall I tell you how you ended up where you are now? Do you want to know how you really got to the Mills facility?”
I swallow hard. I’m not sure I want to know any more, but I say nothing, and Merle keeps talking.
“You were tried and convicted of the murder of those two soldiers,” he says. “I don’t think you were even trying to deny anything, and they weren’t too interested in what happened to your sister or your need for revenge. It didn’t matter; they had a confessed murderer right there in front of them—a young, strong male right there in their hands. Your punishment was to become one of the specimens.”
Chapter 15
My head is spinning.
I can’t process the information I’ve been given. I don’t want to believe a word of it, but Hal’s story fits perfectly with my dreams. Was I forced into this project as a punishment for a crime and not as a volunteer as Riley told me I was? I don’t care if I am guilty of murder. Even the details of my sister’s demise are unfathomable to me right now. There’s only one thought replaying over and over again in my head.
Riley lied to me.
If another comet were to fall on this prison cell right now, my world wouldn’t be any more tumultuous.
If Riley lied about me being a volunteer, what else is untrue? Did the Mills Conglomerate actually start the war? Was I forced into servitude of that same corporation after my father was murdered? Who really killed Riley’s father? Had he truly been assassinated? Could I trust any of the political propaganda forced into my head?
“What about the doctors at the facility?” I ask.
“What about them?” Merle replies.
“Do they know where we came from? Do they know we were all prisoners?”
“I couldn’t tell you that.” He shakes his head slowly. “It’s hard to say what information is shared and what isn’t.”
She said I volunteered.
Could Riley have known the entire time? Could she have done what she did to me, knowing how I had really come to be there?
“I know this will be hard for you to believe,” Merle says. “You’re programmed to believe her, to trust her. You’ve probably had little interaction with anyone else. Have you noticed how quickly she can calm you down when you get upset?”
The question is rhetorical. I blink as I look at him, saying nothing.
“Notice how she touches the inside of your left arm when she wants you to relax or to listen to what she’s saying? There’s an implant there, too. The doctors program the device to respond to their touch. It sends impulses straight into the primary implant in your brain, controlling your behavior and mood.”
I can’t bring myself to believe it. Riley can’t know about any of this. They must have lied to her, too.
My hands start to shake, and my pulse pounds in my temples. The tightness I feel in my chest makes breathing painful.
“I think we got the poor boy all confused,” Hal says quietly.
“You’re right,” Merle says. “Galen, I know this is a lot of information to absorb all at once, and I know it’s hard to question what you’ve been told, but I swear to you it is the truth.”
I can only shake my head in response.
No. It can’t be true. It’s a mistake. It must be a mistake.
It could be a case of mistaken identity. Maybe I look like a man who volunteered, or maybe I resemble this Galen Braggs per
son enough to cause confusion. It’s been years since any of these events occurred, and they may just believe me to be this other man.
How could his memories end up in my dreams?
The back of my head starts to throb. None of it makes sense. Riley takes care of me. She’s my doctor, my friend, my lover. She’s the only one who has ever been there for me.
She lied. She took my memories, and she lied to me about it.
The ache in my head intensifies. Bright lights fill my mind, like sparks rising from the flames of a fire on a dark night. Each spark burns my brain.
No. No, no, no…
“No!” I scream and jump off the bed. I shove Merle in the chest, sending him and the chair flying backward. I grab the bed and flip it over as I scream in rage. Hal’s eyes go wide as he backs himself into the corner of the small cell, holding his hands up in front of him.
They’re lying to me. They tortured me to try to get information, and now they’re lying to me to mess with my head.
“Fucking liars!” I scream. I grab the chair Merle had been sitting in and smash it against the wall, barely missing his head as he ducks. “I’ll kill every fucking one of you!”
Blinding pain hits me, and I drop to my knees, hands on my head. It’s similar to when the net fell on me, but when that happened, I felt it all over the outside of my body. This pain comes from within.
Merle and Hal scurry around me and rush toward the door. With the pain in my head affecting my reflexes, I’m not fast enough when I grab for their ankles. They slip by me and slam the door shut with a loud bang.
The pain stops as abruptly as it started.
I jump to my feet and slam my body up against the door.
“Motherfucking liars!” I scream as I beat on the door with my fists. “You’re lying! You’re lying! You’re lying!”
I keep pounding on the door, switching from my hands to my feet, knees, and shoulder. The barrier is too strong—I can’t break through it. My hands and knees are bleeding when I finally collapse in a heap at the foot of the door.
Tears stream down my face. I punch the floor a few times before giving up. I lie on my side and pull my knees up against my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs. My body shakes.
It’s not true. It’s not true.
*****
I wake groggy and alone, still lying on the cement floor.
There isn’t a spot on my body that doesn’t radiate pain. Just rolling over onto my stomach causes me to wince. As I get up on my hands and knees, my legs throb from where the nails punctured me. The electrical burns around the holes feel like they’re eating away at my flesh.
Inside my head, there is only confusion.
I drag myself to the center of the room where the mattress lies on the floor, all helter-skelter, and drop myself onto it. It’s half folded up, and I can only get the top part my body on it, but it’s softer than the floor. I don’t have the energy to fix it.
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the pain in my body, concentrating on it, reveling in it, but it doesn’t help the emotional agony going on inside my head.
I know at least some of what Merle and Hal told me is true. But if any of it is true, then Riley lied to me. If she lied to me about one thing, how could I trust anything she’s told me?
At the same time, I want to see her. I want to smell her and touch her. There is a fundamental need inside of me to be close to her. I know part of it is the physical need that has been chemically induced as a way to control my actions and make me obey her commands, but there’s more to it than that.
Isn’t there?
For months she has been my doctor, my lover, my constant companion. She has cared for me and has given me everything I need. She has stayed with me when I’ve needed her to. She has held me when the treatments got bad.
She did that to me. She caused the pain.
It doesn’t matter. What she’s done to me makes no difference because I have no one else. Even though I have no idea where I am or how far I am from her, the image of her face in my mind is a beacon, calling me to her. I have to get back to her. Riley will sort all this out. She will allay my fears and convince me everything is right with the world.
“Good morning, Galen.” Merle comes in with a new, unbroken chair in his hand as well as a new canvas bag. He places the chair next to my head, sits down, and hands me another wrap and bottle of water. “How did you sleep?”
I stare up at him, wondering if he’s just going to pretend the mayhem around us isn’t there and ignore the fact that I had wanted to kill him a few hours ago. If I hadn’t been deterred by whatever they did to me, I would have killed them both.
“Galen, will you talk to me?”
The murderous rage from before doesn’t have a hold of me at the moment, but I have no interest in exchanging pleasantries with my captor. I remain silent as I pull the wrap out of the bag and start to chew.
The motion makes my jaw and head ache. I only take a few bites before placing the rest back in the bag.
“I would like to talk to you some more,” Merle says, trying to encourage me. “I know yesterday was difficult, but I hope you’ve considered some of what you were told.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” I shake my head and twist open the top of the water bottle.
“You might,” he says. “There are some things I really need to know, and it will be in your own best interest to tell me.”
I doubt it.
“How about you answer my questions?” I place the bottle on the floor and lean back against the skewed mattress, arms crossed.
“If I can.”
“What did you hit me with?” I ask. “When the convoy stopped, and the troops came out, something hit me in the neck.”
“A tracking device,” he tells me. “Errol designed it so it wouldn’t be detected by your implants. It allowed us to both follow you and trigger your implant to encourage you to go back to investigate—leave your companions.”
“What about the net that was dropped on me?”
“Another device designed to interfere with the function of your implants.”
I think about it for a moment. I understood Errol Spat’s importance as a technology expert on the implants, but I hadn’t realized how dangerous he could be to us before now.
“I was hit with something similar when you were here before.”
“Yes.” Merle presses his lips together. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the device in your neck. It delivers similar impulses straight into your primary implant. There was a concern you may become violent, which was obviously a correct assumption.”
I rub at the device on my neck, just below my right ear. I can get my fingernail up against the edge of it, but I can’t bring myself to try to pull it out. Something inside my head stops me.
“Why did you target me? Why not one of the other specimens?”
“We knew you were special,” Merle says. “Our intelligence informed us that one of the specimens from Project Mindstorm was different—that someone had inadvisably allowed Dr. Grace to use her altered formula. We knew you were the most dangerous of the lot.”
I wonder why he considers her treatments inadvisable, but I don’t ask for clarification.
“And that made you want to capture me?”
“You presented the greatest potential for information,” Merle says. “You can offer us insight into the other specimens, but they can’t offer us insight into you.”
“I don’t have any insight.”
“You do,” he says with a raise of his eyebrows. “You may not realize it, but it’s there—inside your head. You could access it.”
“If you can screw with my implants so much, why can’t you just take the information out of my head?”
“I asked Errol the same thing. He says the implants are built to recognize such an attempt and will completely scramble themselves in the event any unauthorized person were to try to access the information. It’s a safety measure for a situ
ation just like this one. If you are captured, the implants detect the situation and monitor for any type of infiltration. If detected, the implant would scramble itself.”
“What happens to me then?”
“I assume that would kill you.”
I don’t know if I believe him or not. Either way, I have no interest in providing this man with information. Even if some of what he has told me is true, I don’t trust him or his motives.
“What are you going to do with me?” I ask.
“That rather depends on you,” he says.
“I’m not giving you any information.”
“I’ve gathered that.” Merle sits back and sighs. “It’s my hope to help you understand the reality of what is going on between Mills and Carson, what Project Mindstorm is really about, and how you fit in. If you understood, maybe you would change your mind.”
I consider this only for a moment. I know in my head and heart it will never happen. Even if she lied to me, I’d never betray Riley. In turn, that means not betraying her allegiances.
My stomach feels queasy. The taste of the wrap lingers in the back of my throat, and though I’m sure it’s no different than the one I ate before, it’s not sitting well with me. I drink some of the water, but it doesn’t help.
“You’re exhausted,” Merle says. “I know Anna wanted to come in and check your bandages. She’s concerned you may feel some adverse effects as the drugs leave your system. I’m going to have her visit you for a while. We can talk more later.”
Merle goes to the door but doesn’t leave. He calls in two men. They don’t speak, but they feel familiar to me. I narrow my eyes as Merle directs me to stand so the two men can put the cot back together again. I do as he says, stumbling slightly as I try to stand. My vision dances with black spots as the nausea increases.
I swallow, feeling the burn of bile in my throat. I take a deep breath, and I realize the men aren’t familiar by sight, but they are by scent.
They tortured me.
I tense and watch them closely as they place the mat back on the cot and pick up the broken chair. One of them glares at me as he heads for the door, and I lurch at him, punching him in the face and tackling him to the floor.