All three guards were suffering the effects of the pepper spray now, coughing, wheezing, clawing at their eyes. It was only then that Peter noticed his own eyes burning and nose running. Ignoring the pain, he quickly handcuffed the three men together, both at the wrists and ankles, forming an interlaced mess of arms and legs. He crossed the room to the door and cracked it open. A woman stood there as if the sudden burst of violence had telepathically drawn her to the room. She was young, blonde, and dressed in a neatly pressed navy-blue pantsuit and white blouse. “Come with me,” she said.
Peter hesitated, unsure if he should trust her. He held one of the Glocks in his hand and had tucked the other two into the waist of his pants. He raised the gun and pointed it at the woman.
She looked at the gun but didn’t seem alarmed. Then, as if she’d peered inside his head and seen the question there, she said, “I’m on your side.”
Whether or not he could trust her, Peter decided he’d take the risk at this point. He slipped out the door and closed and locked it behind him.
“Quickly—this way,” the woman said. She hurried down the hall with the confidence of someone who had traveled these corridors many times. It was like the other halls Peter had seen in the underground bunker. Concrete, lights every fifty feet or so, electrical wiring and plumbing running along the ceiling. Vents at even intervals with the lights.
They passed a couple rooms until finally, at a solid brown door, the woman stopped. “In here.” She placed her thumb over a fingerprint scanner, the door unlocked, and she pushed it open.
Once they were in the room and the door shut behind them, Peter pushed the woman against the wall and pointed the gun at her. “Who are you? Why are you helping me?”
Lips parted, muscles tight in her neck, she shifted her eyes from the gun to Peter. “You mind getting that thing out of my face first?”
“Actually, I do,” Peter said. He suddenly felt he’d been led into a trap.
The woman forced a smile and glanced at the barrel of the gun again. “You have a gun and I don’t. You have me by at least fifty, sixty pounds. And you’re some kind of karate ninja guy. I don’t see how I pose much of a threat to you. Not nearly enough to warrant a gun in the face.”
Peter released his grip on her and lowered his gun. “Who are you?”
“I’m April. I’m a counselor here.”
“Did you work on me? Were you part of brainwashing me?”
April shook her head. “No. Not my department. I work with other kinds of subjects.”
Peter looked around. They were in some sort of control room. Television monitors with blank screens lined one wall. Against an adjoining wall were three desks, empty. The other two walls were bare. “What is this place?”
“It’s a monitoring station. One of many. This one is rarely used.”
Peter nodded toward the door. “Won’t they be looking for me?”
“They already are. But they won’t look here. This is a red room, off-limits to everyone but techs and counselors like me. The only way you could gain access to this room was if you were a counselor.”
“Or have a counselor helping you,” Peter said.
April smiled, genuinely this time. “Exactly.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you helping me?”
April walked over to the wall of monitors and sat at a computer. She punched the keys on the keyboard, and one of the monitors sprang to life. On it was the image of a small boy in a room just like the one in which Peter had been held. Concrete everything except for one metal chair. The kid couldn’t have been more than ten. He had thick brown hair and a face full of freckles. He sat slumped in the chair until a woman entered, carrying a box. It was April.
“This is a recording from yesterday,” April said.
“What is this?”
“Just watch.”
On the monitor April said, “Good morning, Tyler. How was your night?”
Tyler shrugged.
“Well, how’s your morning going so far? Did you enjoy your breakfast?”
Again, only a shrug.
April set the box on the floor in front of Tyler and squatted next to him. “Are you ready to get started?”
Tyler did nothing. He stared at the floor, his mouth tight and jaw tense.
“We have something new for you today.” April opened the box and pulled out a small birdcage containing one finch.
Tyler stiffened and shook his head.
“What’s he doing?” Peter asked. “Why does he look so frightened?”
April said nothing.
On-screen, April placed her hand on Tyler’s shoulder. “You have to, Tyler. You know what they’ll do if you don’t. Do what you have to do and your mother will be fine.”
Peter’s muscles tensed. Something about this was wrong.
Seated on the chair, Tyler squirmed and shook his head. He moaned and whimpered.
“Tyler,” April said. “You must. You have to.”
Tears spilled from Tyler’s eyes and tracked down his cheeks. He ran a hand over his face, wiping them away. Then he fell to his knees in front of the cage. The bird flapped its wings furiously but got nowhere.
“That’s it, Tyler. That’s a good boy. Just do it and it’ll be over.”
Tyler lifted a shaking hand and placed it on the cage. The bird flapped and flitted, screeched. Tyler focused on the bird and clenched his jaw. The camera zoomed in on the cage. Suddenly the bird burst into flames and fell to the bottom of the cage.
Tyler yanked his hand away and began to sob.
April rubbed his back. “There you go. Now it’s over. You did it and it’s over.”
April tapped a button and paused the image on the screen. She turned to Peter. “That’s not what I signed up for here.”
“What is it? How did he do that?”
“The Centralia Project is about more than training soldiers. There’s another branch, experimental but gaining a lot of traction.”
Peter pointed at the monitor. “That?”
April nodded. “That. They found that training children was a lot easier than training adults. Less baggage. More pliable minds. More willingness to comply. Easier to coerce.”
Peter stared at the monitor. Nichols had called it the glaring flaw in the Centralia Project: “Too old. Too much past. Too much baggage.”
“Kids are easy pickings,” Peter said.
“Something like that.”
“But what did that kid do? Tyler. How did he do that?”
“They look for children with extraordinary abilities and then hone those abilities, perfect them to be used for military purposes.”
“Yeah, but what he just did—”
“Pyrokinesis. It’s not a trick. There are documented cases. And you just saw it. Seeing is believing, right? These military types, they see this and begin to think large-scale.”
He had seen it; there was no denying that. “So they kidnap kids and weaponize them?”
“Well, the weaponizing part will come later, when they’re adults. But they’ll be raised here, in Centralia, and that will be their purpose in life.”
Peter wanted to smash the monitor’s screen. “That’s sick. They’re treated like lab animals.”
April dropped her eyes to her hands. “Like I said, it’s not what I signed up for when I took this job.”
“Does the name Abernathy mean anything to you?”
April’s eyes widened. “Haven’t heard that name for a while.”
“Why? Who is he?”
She shrugged. “Not sure, really. Every now and then someone around here will mention him. He’s like some kind of enigma or something. Just disappeared one day and no one knows where he went. Rumor is that the brass had him—”
“Discontinued?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
April turned to the computer and tapped more keys. “Look, there’s another reason I brought you here.” But before th
e monitor sprang to life, she looked back at Peter. There was sadness in her eyes. “Your daughter is here, in Centralia.”
A tingling started in Peter’s scalp and ran down the back of his neck like someone had poured cold water over him. “Lilly? She’s here?”
“And your wife.”
“Karen?”
“It’s how they get the children to do what they want them to do.”
“With threats to harm their mothers?”
“Like I said, with the right motivators, children are quick to comply.”
Again the anger was there. Peter’s face flushed and his breathing quickened. “Where’s Lilly? Let me see her.”
April turned to the keyboard and tapped one key. The monitor flickered to life. It was another concrete room like the others. In the middle of the room was a metal chair and on the chair sat a young girl. Next to the girl was a cart that contained a blue box. Wires extended from the box and connected to the girl with electrodes placed at even intervals over her arms and legs.
Peter stepped closer to the monitor and shook his head. “No. That’s wrong.”
April remained quiet as the scene played out. A red indicator lit on the box and the girl twitched. The camera zoomed in on the box. On the top was a meter measuring voltage; the needle steadily climbed. The camera zoomed out again. The girl twitched but did not cry out. And though her muscles tensed as tight as strained ropes, her face remained calm.
“That’s not right,” Peter said.
April put a hand on his arm, but Peter pulled away. “No. That’s wrong.” He looked at April. “That’s not Lilly.”
“It is Lilly. It’s your daughter.”
“No.” Peter grabbed his head with both hands and studied the scenario unfolding on the monitor again. The girl had blonde hair; his Lilly had dark-brown hair, like Karen. And the girl in the chair looked nothing like Karen; his Lilly was the perfect image of her mother. “That’s not her.”
“It is, Peter.”
Peter felt the same anger again climbing up his chest, that wolverine with claws and teeth, scratching at his mind. “I know what my daughter looks like and that’s not her.”
April pushed back her chair and stood.
Peter took a step away from April and lifted the gun to aim at her. He couldn’t trust her, couldn’t trust any of them. This was a trick, had to be. She’d lured him into this room to trap him, to mess more with his mind—as if they hadn’t muddled it enough already.
April backpedaled to the wall and lifted her hands. Fear widened her eyes. No longer did she look like the venomous villain Peter had imagined just moments ago. “Whoa, listen; I can explain.”
But Peter kept the gun on her. On the screen, in the concrete room, the girl took the electrical current like no human should be able to. The meter’s needle hovered around a hundred volts, but she remained calm. It was an incredible sight. “Who are you? Who is that girl?”
“My name is April LaBarrie. I’m a counselor here, like I told you. And that girl, Peter, is your daughter. It’s Lilly.”
April moved slowly to the computer desk and tapped a few keys; the image on the screen froze. She enlarged the girl’s face so it took up most of the screen.
“Look at her,” April said. “Look at her face. Look into her eyes. You have to remember. Do you see how she resembles you?”
Peter studied the girl’s face. It wasn’t Lilly, at least not the Lilly he remembered. But he’d already learned that what he knew, or thought he knew, wasn’t necessarily reality. He found himself wanting to believe April. “Okay. I’ll play along. Convince me.”
April shifted her eyes from the gun to the monitor to Peter. “It’s all part of the imprinting they did on you. They intended to bring you back into the project to be part of these kids’ training, but there was always the possibility you’d see footage like this, so they changed the image of them. To change their names, their whole identities, would mess too much with something you had such an emotional attachment to, but they changed the way your brain remembered them to make sure you’d never recognize them.”
Peter lowered the gun. “How can they do that?”
“What is your past other than a series of memories? Without memories, nothing exists in your past. You have no history. Change the memories, change the past. Change the past, change the present. They scrubbed your mind of all images of Karen and Lilly and replaced them with the images they wanted you to remember.”
Peter stared at the screen as he scrolled over this new line of thinking. He understood what April was getting at, but she was wrong on some crucial points. He had a past. Maybe he didn’t know which past he could trust, but one of them was empirically real, beyond the scope of his own perceptions. And more than that, there were some truths that Peter had encountered over the past couple days that transcended facts and evidence and whatever mixed-up stories people had tried to feed him. His love for Lilly and Karen. The verse in the Bible in his dream. And now, as he stared at the still image of the girl on the monitor, he realized another truth that had been buried deep: he’d had some faith they tried to scrub out of him. They’d tried to take him away from God, but God just wouldn’t let go.
The girl on the screen looked into the camera as if she knew he would be looking at her at this exact moment with the image frozen and her eyes studying his, pleading for him to remember her. But the girl was not his Lilly. As much as he wanted her to be his daughter, as much as he longed for his memories to be wrong, he simply could not bring himself to accept that they were. There was such a strong emotional attachment to how he remembered Karen and Lilly. How could that possibly be wrong as well? “Images of another woman and another child. But why?”
“Their work on Lilly and the other children took higher priority than their work with you. Once you were released into society again, they couldn’t have you clinging to Karen and Lilly, so they made you believe they died in a car accident.” She glanced at the monitor. “And they told Karen and Lilly you died in action, a hero.”
“But Nichols said they never really existed, that they were fabricated to give me an anchor in each of the realities created for me.”
April frowned. “Nichols is a liar, then. Another reason to not like that man.”
“So how do I know if anything else he told me is true or not?”
April walked to the door. “Follow me. You can’t trust your memories. Don’t trust them. Whatever you think is true may or may not be. Your reality has been so tampered with that you can’t know for sure that anything is real. But seeing is believing, right?”
“You know where they are?”
She cracked the door and peeked out into the hall. “All clear,” she said to Peter.
He followed her, gun raised, senses alert. The corridor was empty, quiet as a tomb full of dead men who kept the best secrets. In fact, though, it was too quiet. Something wasn’t right. They should have guards swarming the tunnels looking for him.
April led him to the end of the corridor and down another tunnel that branched to the left. This one had no doors but stretched no more than fifty feet to a T junction. They turned right and stopped in front of a door.
April looked at the door, then at Peter. “This is it, Peter. Karen and Lilly are in that room.”
The door was protected by a fingerprint scanner like the others. With his mouth suddenly as dry as sand, Peter motioned toward the scanner. “You gonna open it?”
April hesitated. She suddenly appeared very nervous. Her eyes shifted side to side, and she wrung her hands.
“April,” Peter said. His intuition screamed at him, sounded an alarm, and warned him away. “Open the door.”
He should run, get out of there, but not without Karen and Lilly. His desire for the truth continued to push him forward. And his desire to find his wife and daughter overrode every tactical instinct screaming at him.
“April, please, do it. Open it.”
She looked to her left, down the empty cor
ridor, then placed her thumb on the scanner. The lock clicked and Peter pushed open the door.
The room was furnished like a cheap motel. A little table and two chairs, a double bed. On the bed sat a woman. Brown shoulder-length hair, slender figure, attractive. Next to her sat a girl, the girl from the monitor.
Peter stepped into the room, confused. The woman’s mouth hung open like she’d stopped talking mid-word. Tears quickly pooled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. The girl next to her slid off the bed and, still holding her mother’s hand, smiled widely. She too began crying.
Peter couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The woman stood and approached him, her mouth still open, eyes still leaking tears. When she stood before him, she let go of the girl and lifted a trembling hand to Peter’s face.
“Is it really you?” she said. Her voice was weak and tight. She appeared to be doing all she could to restrain sobs that wanted to burst out of her like water breaching a dam.
Still Peter said nothing.
The woman looked deeply into Peter’s eyes, studied them as if determining for herself if he was who she thought he was.
In her eyes Peter saw love and kindness and a deep sadness that shocked him. But they weren’t the eyes of his wife. At least he didn’t think they were. But standing there before the woman, she peering so deeply into his soul, he lost his handle on his memory and found it too difficult to conjure an image of the Karen he knew and loved in his mind.
They stood there like that for what seemed way too much time, the woman’s hand on Peter’s face, his heart thumping in his ears. He realized the girl had been clutching him, her arms around his waist. The weight of her against him was familiar but surely not unlike the hug of any child.
But still, there was something about this woman and child, something—
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