“I remember seeing him before.” I focus on the screen as both Riley and Kane stop at the table near the computer.
“Welcome home,” Kane says with a smile. He takes a small version of a tablet and pokes the screen. “Specimen seven-two-eight-nine. You’ve been activated in the system as his controlling doctor.”
“So I should be all set?”
“He’s all yours.” Kane smiles again. “The drug treatments are set to your specifications.”
“Thank you.”
“The dose is really high.”
“I’m aware of that. I plan on comparing his progress to the other specimens at various stages of training for the tech team to observe and compare. Shweta Rahul is in charge of one, Dr. McCall the other. The specimens will form a three-man team once their training is complete.”
“McCall, huh?”
“Yes, she’s going to be a big factor in this division, and before you ask, no, we don’t get along.”
“I could tell that from the last meeting.”
“We’ve been rivals for some time, but it isn’t going to impact my work.” It’s clear from Riley’s tone that she thinks McCall’s work will be affected.
Kane laughs.
“Well, she is on the nepotism plan,” he says. “Her mother is Colonel Mills’ best friend or something. She worked on the original specimen trials, too. She perfected the FOG.”
“The FOG?”
“That’s our pet name for Furioquel-gamma, the drug Doctor Mills designed.”
“Oh, she perfected it, did she?”
“You don’t agree?”
“Not even going there.” Riley rolls her eyes dramatically. “She worked on subjects from the very beginning, right? When criminals were used?”
“She did.” Kane nods his head once and taps at the tablet. “The criminal studies, while successful in methodology, ultimately failed. The first batch of volunteers were even a bigger mess. The specimens were too attached to their personal lives to be effective. Using memory wipes was her brainchild. Since then, we’ve had a much higher success rate.”
“But we’ve already lost eleven from this group.”
“What’s your clearance?”
“Green.”
“You’ll need to talk to the colonel about upping your clearance for any details on that.”
They move to the bed and stand over me. Riley reaches out and places her hand on my shoulder. She examines everything about me as I lie there, secured with bindings around my ankles, wrists, shoulders, and hips. She tilts her head as she strokes the inside of my arm.
“The limb implants were changed to your specifications,” Kane says.
“Good. I’ll need the additional control.”
“I hope it’s enough.” Kane walks to the other side of the bed. “He’s a well-built guy—good looking, too. Not too huge like a bodybuilder but nicely muscled arms and legs. His hair looks like it’s filling out around the scar, too.”
“Are you coveting my specimen, Terry?”
“I might envy your job just a little.” Kane grins and shrugs. “Do you know where he came from?”
“Just another volunteer,” Riley says. “You have to wonder what kind of person is willing to give up his life like this though.”
“I have no idea,” Kane replies. “The information isn’t included in the file. It’s not really relevant. If they’re here, they’re here. He isn’t going to remember a thing, so what difference does it make?”
“None, I suppose. I just wish there was a little more info in his file. It would be good to know what kind of natural tendencies he has.”
“Hopefully nothing that will compromise your success,” Kane replies. “He’s strong, though, so that should make him well suited as a soldier.”
“Will he have any memories of his past life at all? Any tendencies?”
“Unlikely,” Kane says. “We target specific memories first, then go after any other learned behaviors. There may be some basic personality traits dictated by hormonal levels and specific neurotransmitters. I suppose it’s all about nature versus nurture.”
“With the increased testosterone levels in the specimens, even if they are already elevated, we should have good results. They build muscle faster and tend to keep that violent edge.”
“That’s not all that’s going to be elevated.” Kane chuckles.
“How have other doctors compensated for increased sex drive?” Riley turns to Kane and looks at him closely, but Kane just raises an eyebrow at her.
“I don’t plan on taking advantage of my specimen,” she says.
“Not usually a first-day question,” Kane says with another broad smile. “I think I like you. There are ways. In fact, it’s budgeted in the project.”
Riley stands still for a moment, staring at him with confusion in her eyes. She blinks a few times, and she appears to be processing what Kane said.
“We bring the specimens prostitutes?”
“You got it, doc.” Kane’s confirmation results in a frown on Riley’s face. He smiles again. “They don’t complain.”
They chat for another minute before Kane leaves, and Riley is left alone with me. Before I look at the screen again, I glance at Riley, and she’s staring at the floor.
“This is when you wake up for the first time,” she says quietly.
I look back to the screen.
Riley engages with the computer for a moment before approaching my body again, sitting herself in the rolling chair beside the bed. She activates the recorder on her tablet and speaks into it as she takes my vitals.
“Specimen seven-two-eight-nine: Caucasian male, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters long, weighing eighty-nine kilograms. Vital signs normal; temperature thirty-six degrees centigrade, blood pressure one-twenty over seventy-six.”
She pulls out a vial marked Furioquel-gamma and inserts a needle into the solution.
“Administering first round of FOG.” She taps the needle to bring the air to the top, expels a slight amount of the liquid concoction, and slowly feeds it into the IV tube.
I see my hand clench and then release, spreading my fingers out wide before relaxing them again. My eyes open, and I look at my arm, pausing for a moment at the IV needle, and then gaze at the woman beside me.
“Where am I?” I hear myself ask.
She stares at me for a moment.
“You were very aware,” Riley says softly. “You shouldn’t have been so cognizant so quickly. I knew there was something wrong immediately. It was too early for you to be asking rational questions.”
“Can you tell me your name?” Riley in the video asks softly.
My throat bobs as I swallow before answering her.
“I…I’m not sure.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Galen.” My head rolls toward her. “Galen Braggs. Am I still locked up?”
I don’t miss the shocked expression on Riley’s face.
“Don’t you worry, Galen,” she says quietly. “I’m going to take care of you, all right?”
“Am I sick?”
“You’re going to be fine.” Riley smiles down and takes out another syringe. She injects it into the IV, and I watch as my body slumps back on the bed.
She stands, her expression concerned, and walks over to the computer.
“Terry,” she says, “I need you back here. Get the other techs. There’s a problems with these implants. Hopefully, we’ll still be able to use this specimen.”
Riley stops the video.
“I nearly had you voided,” she tells me without meeting my eyes. “It was Terry who convinced me he could fix the implants, and you wouldn’t have to be destroyed. It took seven surgeries before you finally woke up without memories. At least, I thought you had.”
“Things kept changing,” I tell her. “I remembered shaving the night before, but then I suddenly had a beard. I’d wake up with shorter hair than I had the day before. I had the feeling my dr
eams were the key to that. When I stopped telling you about them, I stopped losing time. I don’t remember what’s on this video though. The first time I remember waking up, I was alone in the lab.”
“That was the fourth time. I miscalculated when you would regain consciousness after surgery. If I had been there, you wouldn’t have been so frightened.”
“And perhaps less destructive.”
“True.” Riley offers me a wry smile. “The video was the only time you knew your name right away. I remember now that you asked about being locked up. At the time, I thought…well, I’m not sure what I thought. I was so shocked you remembered your name that I didn’t take what you said into account. If I had asked then, questioned you, I might have known the truth, but I didn’t. Even so, when you told me later what you were dreaming about, I should have looked into it more.”
As quickly and easily as my partially electronic brain computes battle tactics, infiltration, and escape routes, I can’t seem to pull all this information about Riley’s prior knowledge together enough to make sense of it. I want to believe everything she says. I need to believe it, but there is a bubble of mistrust deep in my gut, and I don’t know how to reconcile it.
“Is this the worst of it?” I ask. “You heard me ask if I was still locked up and didn’t look into it?”
“I was focused on getting my first specimen working, using my new techniques,” she says. “I was more concerned about that than anything else at the time.”
“What about now?”
“Now…now I don’t know what to do.”
“You helped me escape. You took me out of the facility and helped me steal a helicopter. What position does that put you in now?”
“I have no idea,” she says. “I don’t care about that anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I only care about you.”
I’m her specimen, her life’s work. Her very best lab rat.
I bite my tongue. For the moment, it doesn’t make any difference. Before long, someone is going to be looking for me, and I can’t allow myself to be captured.
“It’s not safe here,” I say.
“At some point,” Riley says, “they’re going to realize the helicopter never made it to Highland Hospital. We can’t stay here much longer.”
I begin to gather information from my mind. I need to make sure I am not returned to the Mills Medical Center, and that means going on the run. The helicopter is too close to the cabin, and I am bound to be discovered if I remain here.
“You stay here,” I tell her. “I’ll go.”
“I’m just as guilty as you are,” she says with a shake of her head. “More so because you still follow my lead.”
“You can tell them I took you hostage,” I say. “No one has to know you had a hand in it. You can tell them the failure in my implants caused you to lose control, and I forced you to take me here. I’ll leave.”
“And go where?”
“I don’t know. I can figure that out later.”
“You aren’t going to get far without air transport,” she says. “And if you try to fly over the wall, they’re going to shoot you down.”
Fly the helicopter at maximum altitude. Use the codes provided during the last mission when approaching the wall. Claim systems malfunction to stall, and plan on parachuting out just before they attack. I can be over the wall and in a Carson-controlled area when I drop.
“I’ll be fine,” I tell her.
“You aren’t leaving without me.”
“You can’t go.” I’m not about to risk her life as well. My plan is solid, but there are always unknown variables. I’m confident I can escape with little harm, but Riley is a whole other matter.
“Think about it, Galen.” Riley grabs both of my hands. “If you leave, how long will you be able to continue without the drugs and without me? You don’t even have to guess. You were away from me for seventeen days, and you were near death.”
She’s correct, of course. What can I accomplish in seventeen days? How long had I been a prisoner before I could no longer function properly, and how much of that was exacerbated by the torture they put me through?
I don’t know what to do.
“I don’t want you to…to throw your life away, your career.”
“Do you really think I could go on working there after all this?” she asks. “I told you it didn’t matter anymore, and I meant that. I can’t stay, not with what I know now. The callous attitude some of them have toward all of you bothered me from the beginning. Yes, you’re all test subjects, but you’re also human beings.”
“I understand,” I say quietly. “I’m your creation. You were right about changing the treatments, and I’m the living proof of that.”
“No!” Riley places her hand on my cheek and stares into my eyes. “That’s not it at all! Don’t you see?”
“See what?” I don’t understand her strong reaction.
Riley closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before looking at me again. As she speaks, her voice trembles.
“I love you, Galen.”
I stand there, stunned into silence.
My feelings for Riley have always been strong, with drugs or without. They’ve been a focal point of my existence since I was changed. I never bothered to give those feelings a name, and I’d never considered how she might feel about me. My assumption had always been that I am only work to her—her masterpiece. She can’t possibly feel that way about me.
“Wha-what?” I’m already convincing myself I misunderstood.
“I love you, Galen,” she says again. “I’m in love with you. It isn’t supposed to happen, but I am.”
“You are?” I’m dumbfounded. I’m also exalted. “Really?”
Riley tilts her head and raises her eyebrows. I realize I have a ridiculous grin on my face. I don’t know what to say, so I just grab her and kiss her hard. I coil her up in my arms and hold her as tightly as I can as I try to express how I feel about her with actions because words aren’t good enough.
I need to be inside her. I need to make her scream out my name. My real name.
Without breaking the kiss, I consider the furniture in the room and decide on the couch. There’s probably a bedroom with a proper bed in it behind one of the doors, but I can’t wait that long. I pick her up in my arms and carry her to the living area, stopping at the couch before she pushes back, shaking her head.
“As much as I’d like to take this further as well as make up for last night, we don’t have time now.”
I close my eyes and try to rein myself in. I don’t like it, but I know she’s right. I nod and relax my grip on her but don’t let her go. My thoughts and emotions are churning inside of me, but I have to find focus.
If Riley comes with me, I have to be more careful. I can’t allow her to be harmed. I look down at her, and tears are falling from her eyes. She reaches up and wraps her arms around my neck.
“God, Galen,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry for everything I did! Maybe…maybe I should have just let you go in the beginning, but I couldn’t.”
Let me go. She means have me killed.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because you were never a lab rat to me.” She strokes the side of my face. “I knew you were the specimen I wanted as soon as I saw you. The more time I spent with you, the more…attached I became.”
I think about how drawn I was to her from the beginning. As soon as I saw her, I wanted her, needed to be close to her. Is she saying she felt the same way?
“How much of that has to do with the drugs you take?” I ask.
“None,” she says. “That’s all a one-way street.”
“Maybe it was never the drugs,” I say, and Riley looks at me quizzically. I hold her to my chest and kiss the top of her head. “The word isn’t adequate, but I love you, too. It’s not the drugs or anything else. It’s just you. I love you.”
I want to hold her right here in my arms forever, but the clock inside m
y head is ticking. I break our embrace and look her in the eye.
“Are my implants really malfunctioning?”
“Yes.” Riley leads me back to the kitchen and clicks around on the computer screen. She frowns in frustration. “I can’t access that side of the network from here, but the diagnostics from the tech show that there is a fundamental flaw in the appliance.”
“The fence that holds back my memories.”
“Fence?”
“That’s how Errol Spat described it.”
“The techs didn’t say anything that specific,” Riley says. “Dr. McCall was trying to convince everyone that it had to do with my diversion from the originally prescribed treatment, but I don’t think that’s it. If there’s a problem with the memory block, and there obviously is, that was there from the beginning.”
“A technical flaw in the primary implant.”
“Exactly.”
“But if that part has failed, have other parts failed as well?”
“I’m not a tech,” she says. “There are a lot of things about the implants I don’t understand; it’s just not my part of the job.”
“Spat said something similar. He knows the tech, but isn’t a doctor. Do you think together you could fix it without me forgetting who I am?”
“I don’t know.” Riley furrows her brow. “There really isn’t a way to find out without returning to the medical center.”
“There might be.”
“What?”
“There’s more you should know.”
As quickly as I can, I tell her everything I left out of the debriefing. I tell her about Hal and about the details of my past divulged to me. I tell her about Errol Spat saying the implant barriers that were supposed to keep my memories out had failed and how everything about my past flooded my head at once. By the time I pause, Riley looks like her head is spinning, but there’s one last thing she needs to know.
“Riley, there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“Something Anna Jarvis said to me.”
“What?”
“She said it wasn’t Peter Hudson who ordered your father killed.”
Riley’s eyes go wide. She takes a step back and drops onto one of the kitchen chairs, staring at me.
“Who was it?”