Nichols sighed and held his hands behind his back. “Peter, everything I told you before was true. About your true identity. About your training and failure to follow through with the mission in Afghanistan. About the scrubbing and imprinting. It all really happened. And Dr. Ambling was a large part of that. She and I fought to keep you active. We knew we could recycle you, use your skills again, but in a better way, a more productive way. We only needed time.” He paused, sighed again. “And that’s exactly what we did. It all worked brilliantly. Dr. Ambling and her team did a remarkable job with you. You are the future of America’s fighting force. An army of perfect soldiers, bred to protect our nation at all costs. What we accomplished with you will someday be the basis for curing post-traumatic stress disorder among our combat veterans. It will be used in the training of future soldiers. It will change the way wars are fought and won. Our wars. Our victories.”
Ambling cleared her throat. “You were not an easy subject, Mr. Ryan. Your mental abilities are beyond that of the average soldier, beyond that of the average man. You are remarkably resilient. But it was that resilience that ultimately worked in our favor.”
“Peter,” Nichols said, “all that’s transpired in the past two days—” he glanced at Ambling—“was a test. The home invasion, Amy Cantori, the scenario at the motel. It was all carefully choreographed and scripted to test every facet of your training.”
Heat climbed up Peter’s neck and face. “But what about the men I killed?”
Nichols looked at the floor. “Yes, well, sacrifices had to be made. Those deaths were all too real. Those men knew, though, what they were getting into. They knew the risks. They also knew they were part of something much larger than themselves. Their deaths were not in vain. This project, Centralia, will change America’s standing in the world forever. And like I said, it will also serve as the foundational research in many medical breakthroughs. Not just PTSD but treatments for so many psychological disorders. The possibilities are limitless. And you were at the genesis of it all. You are the father of everything.”
“I’m Frankenstein’s monster,” Peter said.
Nichols unclasped his hands and let his arms hang at his sides. “I know this is difficult to accept and process. We’re going to give you time to come to terms with it. If anything I’ve said is false or misrepresents our work, I would hope Dr. Ambling would have spoken up.”
Ambling glanced at Nichols and smiled. “I have nothing to add.”
“Now,” Nichols said. “Your questions.”
Peter had only one. “Where are Karen and Lilly?”
Nichols again looked at Ambling. When he brought his eyes back to Peter, there was sadness in them. Whether it was genuine or not Peter couldn’t tell. If the man was a liar and a con artist, he was a remarkably accomplished one. “Peter, this has been a sticking point throughout your training. Your attachment to them was beyond what we anticipated. But eventually we were able to rectify the situation and found a suitable workaround. In the end . . . Well, your wife and daughter are dead. The car accident was real. We didn’t fabricate that; we didn’t need to.”
“April led me to them. She said they were my wife and daughter. I saw them get in the chopper.”
“That, too, was choreographed.” Nichols tilted his head back and narrowed his eyes. “You had your doubts about them, didn’t you? And rightfully so. The woman and child you saw were actors. Nora and Maddy. You must accept that Karen and Lilly are gone.”
Again the heat was there, radiating up Peter’s neck and setting his cheeks on fire. He was overcome with anger. “Did you kill them? Did you arrange for the accident? Fabricate the circumstance so it was timed perfectly? Was that all part of your carefully choreographed plan?”
Nichols began to speak, but Ambling put her hand on his arm to silence him. “Peter, from the beginning we determined that your family was off-limits. Everything we did to you was with your permission. You don’t remember it because we had to scrub it from your memory, but it was all with your consent. Never, not once, did we tamper with your wife or daughter. Our research may be controversial, but we do have ethics. I’m not about to throw a twenty-year career away by being a party to murder.”
“Thank you, Dr. Ambling,” Nichols said. Then, to Peter, “Any other questions?”
“How long have I been in here?”
“Two days.”
“Was I shot?”
“Tranquilized.”
Peter shook his head. It was too much to process, too much to accept. He couldn’t trust Nichols—he knew that—and Ambling didn’t seem to be worthy of his faith either. But what was reality? How much of what they told him was real and where were the lies?
In his heart he felt Karen and Lilly were still alive, that they were out there somewhere, but gone was the certainty. The memories of their funeral, though spotty, were all too real. Conflicting visions of his past waged a contentious turf war in his head. If he couldn’t even trust his own memories, then what could he trust? Peter’s brain scrambled to latch on to something solid when everything seemed to be subliming before him, evaporating into thin air.
“Peter, some of Dr. Ambling’s assistants will be by later to get you out of here. They’ll take you to a secure location, where you’ll be placed in a dark room. It’s only temporary and will allow your brain to clear the fog and reset itself. This is for your good.”
Nichols and Ambling excused themselves and left the room, closing the door behind them. Peter thought about trying to escape, but what was the point now?
Instead he closed his eyes and found himself battling an urge he could never remember having before. He felt he needed to pray, that he should pray, that it was the natural and right thing to do. But he couldn’t; he didn’t want to. He knew he had at one time, that prayer came naturally to him and was a source of power. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did know it. Things were different now, though. The world was different; he was different. Maybe even God was different.
But still the urging nagged him, poked at him, prodded him. So he prayed. He pleaded with God to show him the truth, to not let it all end like this. He told God there needed to be more; Karen and Lilly needed to be alive. Please let them be alive.
Surprisingly, the words came easy, but he didn’t know if they were sincere or not. And as he feared, his prayers seemed to go unheard, unable to get past the ceiling of the hospital. Whether God was intentionally ignoring him or Peter had lost all privileges with the Almighty, he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was alone. And suddenly despair, like an untimely and unwanted visitor, crowded into his room, climbed into his bed.
Was there any hope of ever finding Karen and Lilly? Were they even alive? Maybe Nichols was finally telling him the truth. Maybe they really were dead. Maybe all the trouble he’d gone through, all the lives he’d taken, all the danger he’d faced and tragedy he’d avoided, was in vain. Maybe it was all for a smoke cloud of hope. . . . It was all for nothing.
He’d been hooded and escorted by vehicle to an unknown building in an unknown location. He was placed in a room that couldn’t have been more than ten by ten, just big enough to accommodate a cot and latrine. Darkness as black as octopus ink surrounded him, forming long tendrils of despair that wrapped around his limbs, torso, and neck and found their way into every orifice, penetrating to his soul, bringing a lightlessness that breathed and felt and thought.
But Peter didn’t care anymore.
In fact, he welcomed the darkness, even embraced it. It offered him the solitude he needed, the protection from his own senses. It took him to a place where there were no more lies, no more stories, no more conflicting memories, a place where there was just darkness. And yet at the same time, it tormented him terribly, loomed everywhere and over everything, threatening to overshadow every last memory he had, whether real or not. All Peter had now was his mind, as fractured and fragmented as it might be, and he didn’t want to lose it too.
Day after day h
e’d sit on his cot and relive the events in his home that morning the men came, the morning he shot and killed all three of them. He’d run through every event—and every senseless death—that followed: Amy, the Oceanview, Ronnie, Habit, Centralia.
Day after day he relived what memories he still had of Karen and Lilly. He focused on the details of their personalities, their lives, wondering what had been real and what had been fabricated as part of his imprinting. What had he really experienced, and what had he only imagined? Worst of all was that he couldn’t even picture them in his mind without second-guessing what he saw.
And day after day he rehashed the words as they circled through his head.
“Remember your training, Patrick? Huh? It’ll come back to you. It always does.”
“You don’t remember yet. You will. Give it time.”
“Things aren’t what they seem. They’re not what you think.”
“What’s not what I think, Amy? What do you mean?”
“This. You. Me. Everything. We need to find Abernathy. It’s—”
Peter flinched at the sound of the shot echoing through his head. The memory of it still startled him. The way Amy’s head had snapped back, the way her body had slouched and slumped to the pavement, still twisted his stomach.
“Things aren’t what they seem. They’re not what you think.”
When the darkness entered and tyrannized his world, the dreams of the house ceased, replaced by that dream of falling. Always falling but never hitting bottom. And always coming face-to-face with Nichols. Night after night he fell; he groped at the air; he fought to avoid Nichols’s grinning face. And every time he’d awaken when Nichols drew his gun, aimed, and fired.
Nichols’s “few days” had turned into what seemed like weeks. Hopelessness, with its featureless face and formless figure had emerged from the darkness and wrapped its smooth, chalky hands around Peter’s mind, around his heart, squeezing out what little faith was left. Day and night meant nothing to him anymore. His biological clock no longer functioned properly. He’d sleep in spurts with no concept of how long he’d slept or how long he’d stayed awake. At times he’d awaken on the concrete floor and think he was on the wall, stuck there like a fly. He’d feel the air for the cot only to find it just feet from him.
His movements now felt sluggish, as if gravity’s pull had increased in the darkened room, tugging at him with greater force, straining his muscles.
His thoughts had also turned dark. He tried to remember Karen and Lilly, but their image was fading in his mind like an old photograph exposed to the sunlight for too long. His memories, false or actual, were slowly being replaced by thoughts of death and a myriad of interesting ways he could quicken it. He’d be better off dead.
And still the dreams of falling continued. But the feeling encompassed so much more than just his dreams now. Even in his waking hours he’d suddenly feel as though he were falling and clutch at the floor and walls to steady himself.
His body wasted; his muscles atrophied. His legs wobbled as if they were jointless when he stood. The tasteless food they fed him was not enough to nourish a child, let alone a grown man.
He knew what they were doing, that they were breaking him all over again. This was part of the scrubbing process. Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe they’d locked him away in this dungeon and forgotten about him. And this was where he’d slowly fade away and die alone. Of all the exotic ways he’d come up with to welcome death, oddly, starvation was not one of them.
But there was a moment when things changed for Peter. Whether it was day or night he did not know, did not care. He was awake, lying on the floor, arms and legs outstretched, contemplating death and how easily he might accept it, when he suddenly had the compulsion to pray. As before, he didn’t know where the urge came from. He’d had no inclination to talk to God since that day in the hospital when he’d pleaded with him and received no acknowledgment. His begging had gone unanswered, his pleas unnoticed. God was silent. But now the yearning to speak with the Almighty was very real. A need. He needed to pray. At first he resisted it as he had last time, fought it as if it were not just a waste of time but an adversary seeking to rob him of his last sliver of sanity. God could not reach him in the pit. Peter was too far gone, too resolved to his own hopeless death, too given to the darkness that now infused every fiber and cell of his body.
But still the urging persisted.
For an undetermined yet lengthy period of time, it went on and Peter resisted, used his remaining ounces of resolve to combat it. And though the pressure to pray tormented him, he was thankful for it because it gave him something to think about, something to focus on.
But over time his willpower faded and the persistent voice inside him grew louder and louder until he could block it out no longer. He had to give in; he had to surrender. There was no fight left in him. Finally he dropped to his knees on the concrete floor, covered his face with both hands, and prayed. It was not an earth-shattering prayer of celestial proportions. It was not anything you’d hear in a church from the pulpit. It was not anything you’d read in a book, nothing that would get a host of angels excited. But it was a prayer. And this time, he knew it was sincere. It felt right, familiar, like a glove that had been stretched and molded to fit only his hand.
When he had uttered the last word, Peter lowered himself to the floor, prostrate, limbs splayed. Oddly, peace surrounded him in the darkness of the pit. The thoughts of death had not been banished, his wounds had not been instantly healed, but for the first time since lying in that hospital, he felt a spark of hope.
Eventually he fell asleep on the floor and awakened inside the house.
The second-floor hallway loomed like a hotel’s endless corridor. What a relief it was to see light again. For a moment, Peter basked in the sunlight of this dreamworld, until the third room beckoned him, pulled him in as if it had some magnetic power. Keeping his hand on the wall to steady himself, Peter walked the hallway and stopped in front of the third room. The door stood open, waiting. Before, when he’d looked into this room, it had been furnished with one bed—the bed he’d had in his childhood room—a dresser, a desk, and a collection of objects one would acquire in the military. A footlocker, helmets, a flak jacket, uniforms folded neatly on the bed. There were no weapons. This was the room where Peter would usually find Karen, sitting on the edge of the bed looking like she wanted to tell him something, like she needed to tell him something.
Now, though, the room’s decor had changed. It was set up to appear identical to Lilly’s bedroom. The same bed and pink bedspread. Same light-green shag area rug. Same dresser and lamp. The shades were pulled to cover the windows and not allow in any light. Only one thing remained out of place. In the far corner, between the bed and wall, stood the floor lamp with the C on the shade.
Peter entered the room and reached for the lamp on the dresser. He clicked it on and noticed the Mickey Mouse watch next to it. He picked it up and rubbed its face with his thumb.
Replacing the watch, he crossed the room to the floor lamp and ran his hand over the glass shade and traced the C with his finger. Why had this lamp affected him so much that it now appeared in every room of this dream house?
He heard a shuffling in the hallway behind him. Peter turned and faced the doorway. More movement in the hallway drew him out of the room.
Lilly was there—his Lilly, as he remembered her, wearing the last outfit he’d seen her in: pink capris and a white T-shirt with a red-and-pink floral design on it. Her hair hung loosely around her shoulders. She was no more than ten feet away, facing the door of the fourth room. The locked door.
Peter wanted to run to her and scoop her into his arms. He wanted to hug her and bury his face in her hair, breathe in the fresh scent and never let go, never leave her again. But she was a mirage, a sleep-induced figment, as much a counterfeit as any three-dollar bill, and he wasn’t sure he could trust this version of his daughter.
So instead he stayed where he was and said, “Lilly, what are you doing?”
Still turned away so he couldn’t see her face, she put her hands in her pockets and shrugged. The image was so much like her. The way her shoulders lifted and dropped, her posture. It was all Lilly to a tee. His mind had remembered so many details that made his sweet girl unique.
Peter knelt. He didn’t know why but he felt compelled to, like it was just the right thing to do when you saw your daughter after so long and so much.
“Lilly, baby, please turn around and look at Daddy.”
Slowly, as if to move too fast would cause her to lose her balance and fall, Lilly turned. She was the girl from the bunker, the girl that had hugged him so tight and stirred him so deeply.
Was this still Lilly? She was only an actress—Maddy.
The girl smiled at him, a genuine smile that went all the way to her eyes. Peter wanted to push away, though, to move back down the hall. He wanted to wake up. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t move and couldn’t stir himself to awaken.
The girl took a step toward him.
“Stop,” Peter said. “You’re not—”
“I am Lilly, Daddy,” the girl said. “You have to remember.”
That was what the woman had said right before she left Peter in the tunnel to go to her daughter, who had been taken by the agency. “You have to remember.”
“Remember what?”
The girl’s smile disappeared and was replaced by a pouty frown. “Me. Mommy. You have to remember.”
“You’re the girl from the—”
“I’m Lilly. You saw what they did to me.” Her eyes teared and reddened.
The monitor, the electric shocks. The poor girl had been through so much and now Peter was rejecting her. He couldn’t. Even if she wasn’t who she thought she was. Maybe they’d brainwashed her too. Scrubbed and imprinted her mind.
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