A beat of silence passed.
Dr. Loveless: “I could cut it in half. I believe she’ll be able to journey with less now that’s she been before. Her determination will carry her farther than most drugs could. It’s all a mind game at this point.”
Zoe: “A mind game that could kill her.”
Seeley: “In my experience, that is the only kind.”
More silence.
Dr. Loveless: “Are we finished then?” She didn’t wait for a response. Her feet were already moving back toward me. She stepped through the thick white sheet and strode toward me, Seeley a few steps behind her.
Zoe stepped into view but stayed back, her face darkened by worry. Don’t give up on me, I wanted to say, but instead I just held her eyes and hoped her face would soften. It didn’t. I swallowed my own fear as I listened to her heart pounding inside her chest. I could stop, I thought, heed her warning.
Dr. Loveless held out a single blue pill, and I leaned back against the table. “Anchor yourself here,” she said. “The key is to remember what is real and what isn’t. You are in control.”
I nodded at the doctor, then stole a final glance at Zoe. She was scratching her arms, a tic I’d noticed her doing when she was afraid or nervous. I could stop, I thought again as I took the blue pill.
But not yet.
TWENTY
“THE PRESIDENT IS getting antsy,” Hammon said.
Seeley exhaled and watched his breath smoke from his lips into the freezing winter air. The world was dark in the early morning hours, the house behind him deep in slumber.
“We need more time, sir,” he said into the phone. “She’s close to a breakthrough.”
“Are you sure?”
“Nothing about this is sure.”
“That isn’t good enough, Agent. The commander in chief and the army’s chief of staff are breathing down my neck. They want to pull the girl in.”
“If they do that, we lose all hope of recovering her memories, sir.”
“We don’t know that for sure. Gina herself said memory recovery is unpredictable. Maybe being here will remind the girl of who she was created to be, and she’ll do as told.”
“It’s too risky,” Seeley said.
“Your concern is noted, but I’m afraid this call outranks you.”
“I just need a couple more days. Please, sir, we’re close.”
“Based on what evidence?”
Seeley said nothing. It was more a feeling than anything, but he couldn’t say that. Hammon sighed, and Seeley let the silence stand as he waited for the director to consider.
“I’ll see how long I can hold them off, but I’m promising nothing,” Hammon finally replied.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me, Seeley, just get it done.”
The line went dead, and Seeley tapped the phone off. He glanced back toward the house and cursed. The battle that had started waging in his chest returned. One side demanded he continue forward cold, the other reminded him of the Lucy he knew and how Zoe warmed him more each time they interacted. The division was building.
He knew how this would end if they were successful. What it would mean for Zoe, and he struggled to swallow it. And watching Lucy remember the tiny pieces of what they had done to her was only strengthening his conflicting emotions.
He needed to get control of himself. Do what needed to be done. And fast, or he’d lose all control of this situation. What he was doing to them was cruel, but it was nothing compared to what the army would do. He was protecting them from that, he told himself as he walked back to the house, trying to leave his mounting guilt out in the cold.
ZOE FOLLOWED LUCY as she stormed out of the barn. Seeley moved to follow, and Zoe raised her hands, signaling for him to stay. It would be better if she went after Lucy alone.
The sun was setting on another day, and warm pinks with brushes of orange filled the sky above the mountains. It had been two days since they’d journeyed to the farm. Two days of Lucy subjecting her mind to torture and her body to danger. She couldn’t get out of the box. No matter what she tried, she got stuck, drowning behind thick glass, a victim to the pain of the same group of memories she couldn’t free herself from.
A dozen times she tried, and each time the results ended the same way. With each failed attempt Lucy sank deeper into herself. Determined to beat the first level. But something was holding her back, something she couldn’t identify or conquer.
She was hardly sleeping, though she needed the rest in order to recover. Both nights her cries had woken them all, as her memories found her dreams and turned them to nightmares. Zoe wasn’t sleeping either. Lucy wouldn’t talk to her anymore. She wouldn’t talk to any of them. Some instinctual lever had been pulled, and the sweet, naïve girl was being replaced with someone else.
Maybe someone she had always been.
“Lucy,” Zoe said as the girl strode away from the barn and another failed attempt. Zoe had to push her legs hard to keep up. “Lucy, please stop.”
Lucy whirled around, her face shadowed in frustration. “I’m so weak,” she hissed. “I should be able to do this. To get out of that box!”
“Should? You say that like it’s a normal skill.”
“I’m not normal,” Lucy bit back.
Zoe held her tongue. No, she wasn’t.
Lucy growled and grasped the sides of her head. “I need to be better.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do, otherwise I’ll never remember.”
“Maybe you don’t need to remember.”
Lucy sighed, and a bit of light chased out the darkness in her eyes. Tears started to collect there, and Zoe’s heart broke.
“But Agent Seeley said—”
“Forget Seeley,” Zoe said. “We can leave right now if you want. Grab our stuff and go. We can head back to Tomac’s, he can get us new identities, and we’ll go wherever you want.”
“They’ll come for us,” Lucy whispered. Her tears dotted her cheeks, and the hardness of failure eased as the sweet girl Zoe knew began to return.
“I’ve been running most of my life,” Zoe said. “And you’re really fast.”
Lucy gave a soft chuckle and sniffed back her tears.
“Just you and me,” Zoe continued, “and we’ll leave all of this behind us.”
“I would like that.”
“Me too.”
Lucy’s small smile faded, and she shook her head. Zoe already knew what the girl was going to say.
“But you can’t,” Zoe said.
“I just want the truth.” Lucy grunted at the sky. “But this isn’t working.”
Zoe knew from her own experience with RMT that it wasn’t a sure science. So many factors influenced the outcome. It had been used on her as a way to recall her fractured childhood after she and Stephen had been taken from their mother. After the authorities decided their stories about what had happened in the mountain community where they’d been raised weren’t true. That their minds had fabricated an elaborate story to cope with their trauma.
Dr. Holbert had been convinced that if he could take Zoe back through her memories, she’d remember what had really happened and be able to deal with it. He’d done the same with Stephen.