The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled

by Amanda Valentino

Annie McLean’s file followed the same format as Max’s. She’d undergone approximately the same number of treatments as Max, but different ones. Under “Talents,” her file listed: Language Acquisition, Grammatical Logic and Understanding, Empathic Communication, Analytical Listening, and Disguise. Her report card read:

  C33-3496 continues to use her keen understanding of languages and communication to build a feeling of community among study subjects and to develop her sense of mission. Pursuant to 3496’s mastery of Swahili, she was introduced to Urdu and several forms of Maori dialects which she has mastered in a time frame shorter than anticipated. During the last three months, after sessions with an acting coach, she was brought off-site and was able to penetrate receptions at the Thai, Iranian, and Swedish embassies, where she was able to extract dummy codes hidden by friendly operatives before the party had ended. As always during these off-site visits, subject was informed that all other humans she encountered were project employees or actors hired for this exercise. See note on file C33-2990 as to continued development of personal relationship.

  “Look up Brittney Bragg,” Nia suggested. “What special skills did she have that led her to become an anchorwoman?”

  “Do you know her number?” Hal asked. “They’re organized by number.”

  “C33-4750,” Callie said.

  “You just happen to have memorized it?” Hal asked.

  “I kind of do that with numbers,” she said.

  “Okay, here she is.” Hal had the file in front of him. “Whoa, she had a lot of surgeries and enhancements.”

  “That would explain some things.” Nia was reading over Hal’s shoulder. “What’s this Genome Reconstruction thing, do you think?”

  Hal flipped through the file, paging through the summaries of all the different procedures, tests, and monitoring. “There,” Nia said when he passed it. He paged back and read out loud.

  Genome Reconstruction Therapy

  On November 6, 1978; January 23, 1979; May 14, 1979; July 8, 1979; and June 7, 1980; Dr. John Joy pioneered the technique of Genome Reconstruction Therapy. Juvenile subject C33-4750 was injected with genetic material from human adult subjects while simultaneously undergoing plastic surgery. Genetic material was extracted from human adults with 90% recognition rates for “beautiful,” “lovely,” “fun,” “attractive,” “charming” in studies conducted in Nielsen-ratings households between October 1976 and July 1977. Nose, chin, cheek, mouth, and eye shape as well as other nonfacial physical features were targeted, with genetic material as well as images of presentation in childhood pictures of models used as sources. 4750 was physically modified and genetically enhanced at ages seven, eight, and nine over the period of time the surgeries and gene therapies were completed.

  “Is that saying what I think it’s saying?” said Hal.

  “That they took photographs of models when they were kids, and cut up Brittney to look like those models as kids, then injected her with the models’ genetic materials so she’d grow up to look like them too?”

  “That’s horrible,” Callie breathed.

  “Read her talents,” I said, wondering how all that plastic surgery would have affected someone that young.

  Hal flipped to the front of Brittney’s file. Under talents, it listed: N/A.

  “N/A,” Nia read out loud. “Non-applicable.”

  “Look at her write-up,” Callie said, and all of our eyes scanned down the summary page of her file.

  C33-4570 continues to struggle with issues of inferiority, low self-esteem, and self-hatred. With others, 4570 is aggressive, quick to anger. As her treatments have been restricted to alteration of her exterior features, her brain development lags greatly behind the others. Dr. Ellen Schwartzman, a psychiatrist specializing in anorexia nervosa, was consulted after 4570 stopped eating between penultimate and ultimate treatments. After eight weeks treating 4750, Dr. Schwartzman violated her confidentiality agreement and attempted to abduct 4750 (see file #25-B). Dr. Schwartzman was removed and Dr. Joy attempted to address subject’s depression and anorexia through behavioral modification therapy, based on a demerit discipline system and days of solitary confinement. Subject has responded.

  “Plastic surgery on a little kid—that’s so creepy,” Callie said. “I wonder what happened to Dr. Schwartzman?”

  We collectively shuddered. But we had to keep going.

  “There was another kid listed in Max’s file,” Nia said. “The one they said he was well matched with. What kid is that?”

  Again, Callie remembered the number. “C33-1780,” she said.

  Hal found the file, opened it, closed it, and then handed it straight to me. “You might want to read this one yourself,” he said. The name in the file was “George.”

  Chapter 8

  C33-1780—George—Dad—had undergone many treatments, therapies, tests, and surgeries. It was strange to read what I knew to be the essential facts of my dad’s character written out as “Talents,” but here they were: Support of Others, Consistency, Strength, Endurance, Affability, Getting Along in a Group. His write-up read as follows:

  C33-1780 was designed to be fighter-follower soldier prototype to work in conjunction with C33-2990, the fighter-leader prototype. As expected, 1780 and 2990 have created the kind of bond that would underscore a band-of-brothers commitment on the battlefield or in covert or POW military contexts. Typical of the “number two” personality 1780 exemplifies, he is an important force in the social fabric of the subjects, providing a sounding board for others as they react to the invigorating and inspirational 2990. Recent experiments in training the tone-deaf 1780 in music to attempt to enhance his inherent empathetic abilities has failed. No enhanced auditory capacity, such as that displayed in C33-3496, was established.

  Breathe. It took me a second to lift my eyes from the page. That was my dad. Tone deaf, but a great listener. Someone everyone felt they could talk to. Happy to let other people call the shots, and always there for you. He never, ever gave up. I was trying not to cry before I closed the folder. I almost succeeded.

  “How can I find my mom in here?” Nia said. “Callie, do you remember—”

  But just then, Hal put a finger to his lips. “We’ve got to move now,” he whispered urgently. “Two guards are in the dormitory, heading this way.”

  “Which way do we go?” Callie asked, her eyes wide in panic.

  Hal stopped for a moment, then pointed to the end of the room, farthest from the door we’d come through on our way in. “There’re stairs there,” he said—this was when having a psychic on the team was a real asset. “Let’s go.”

  Trying to be quiet, we ran through the creepy hospital room and through a set of unlocked double doors. We flew down the set of stairs that, as promised, were on the other side of the doors. I was just thinking about what a genius Hal was becoming with his hunches and premonitions saving our butts time after time, when the four of us skidded to a halt at the bottom of the steps. I guess the bright lights coming up the stairs should have tipped us off, but we weren’t thinking. And now we were completely in for it.

  Because, while upstairs, we’d just been wandering around a deserted lab and human-experiment chamber that had been defunct for twenty years, now we were in the basement, standing inside a fully operational laboratory.

  I guess it should have occurred to us—what with the guards and all—that this facility might still be active. But we’d been so focused on the past that what we saw in front of us was a complete and utter surprise.

  The room was enormous—it must have been as big as all the rooms upstairs put together. It was so huge we couldn’t see the end of it beyond the hospital beds, lab stations, metal hoods that looked like huge versions of the one over the stove in our kitchen, lots of shiny equipment that I had no idea how to name, except to note that some of it was the size of a small car. Computers were humming, readouts were flashing, machines were beeping. Men and women in white lab coats were poring over folders, piping things into bu
bbling test tubes, and sitting on tall stools pulled up to computer stations clustered around a set of monitors in the center of the room. Shockingly, no one happened to notice us in the two seconds we were standing there before Hal did a one-eighty on one shoe and dragged us into a room with a glass door marked REFRIGERATION.

  It was good that he found a way for us to hide so quickly. But note to self: You can only spend about seventy-eight seconds in a refrigerated chamber before you begin to turn into a human popsicle. It was freezing and dark. There was enough light coming through the glass door to make out that there were racks filled with miniature test tubes, each one covered with a rubber seal. It was Nia who realized what the glass vials were.

  “We have a situation here,” Nia said, pulling her hand away. “A blood situation.”

  She was right. The vials here were just like the ones Callie and Hal had found in the Braggs’ secret home office. Except now we knew what the coded C33 numbers affixed to each vial meant. I know we should have concentrated on getting out of there…but blood? There was just too much of it to ignore.

  “And look at this,” said Hal. He touched a screen on the wall and activated a computer, which at first touch seemed to control the temperature of the room. As soon as it turned on, we saw a readout for current temperature, a temperature log, and statistics about humidity and barometric pressure. But then, when Hal clicked DATA we saw the same database we’d been looking at on the Bennett computer just the day before.

  Except now, when Hal clicked on a person’s name, he was connected only to a status on their blood collection.

  “Okay, this is all fascinating,” Callie said. “But what’s the plan for getting out of here?”

  “Maybe we just run?” Hal said.

  “We were pretty darn lucky not to be seen the first time,” Callie said. “Hal, can you try to see if anyone’s coming?”

  “Let’s all hold hands to give him more power,” Nia suggested. Hal and Callie must have picked up her hands right away, because in a second she was looking around. “Zoe,” Nia said. That was when the other three noticed I wasn’t with them.

  “Where’d she go?” Callie said.

  They couldn’t see me because I was in the back of the room, blending into the shadows. I was squinting at the racks of blood vials. I’d managed to find the one where my dad’s blood, Vial C33-1780 was stored.

  You see, when we’d first stepped into this room, I’d had a thought. I’d always hated how we’d left my dad’s body behind in California. I wished I’d seen him laid out in a funeral home. Or at least had an urn of ashes to scatter. Anything at all.

  But now, I had something. Maybe it was a little creepy, but I didn’t care.

  My fingers closed around the vial of my father’s blood. I reached for the pendant Amanda had given me and rubbed it between my fingers to soothe myself for a moment. I squeezed it and thought hard about my dad, trying to remember the exact color of his eyes, the little crinkles in the corners of his smile, the sound of his laugh, how his shirt smelled when I hugged him . . . I could suddenly feel him all around me, and the tears started to come. I looked at the pendant in the dim light, and it came to me. Tears, blood, it’s all the same. I realized I could slip the vial right into the pendant. A perfect fit. Had she somehow known that I would find his blood at some point? I felt weird taking it, but knowing the vial fit into the pendant made me feel better. This place had stolen my dad’s childhood. And then they’d stolen his life. All I wanted to do was to get him out of there.

  I stepped out of the dark and showed myself to my friends.

  Callie had one arm hooked through Hal’s. I took four steps toward them and grabbed his other elbow. Nia locked arms with me. And we waited for Hal to see.

  Only nothing came. I was watching him, wondering how I would know what he was thinking. I believe he would have shifted. His face would have changed. Something.

  But he was perfectly still.

  What finally broke the silence was the buzzing of Hal’s phone. “Sorry,” he mumbled like he’d been caught getting a text in class.

  Nia let go of Callie’s and my arms. “Do you want to check it?” she asked sarcastically.

  Almost as a reflex, Hal said, “What if it’s important?” glancing at the screen.

  Nia rolled her eyes.

  But the second Hal read the text, his face wrinkled and then it opened up. Before he even said a word, I knew we’d been offered a lifeline.

  He showed us the text. I didn’t recognize the number.

  44355512123 17:48:22 1K

  GET OUT NOW. GUARDS CHANGING SHIFT

  IN 60 SECONDS. CAR WAITING.

  I closed my eyes, trying to find a window when everyone working in the lab would be looking the other way. And I got it. I whispered “Now,” opened the door, and we hustled silently through the lab, staring straight ahead. Up the stairs we went, fast as we could without running, though somehow, by the time we got up to the hospital ward, our pace had accelerated to an all-out sprint. We made it out the dormitory door, down the hall, into the ordinary classroom, through the window and then, still managing to duck around the corners of buildings and behind trees, we made it to the gate, around the garage, into the woods, and out to the road.

  It wasn’t until we were leaning against a brick wall, waiting for a guard to turn his head that Hal caught his breath enough to say, “Isn’t someone going to ask me who sent the text?”

  “It wasn’t Amanda?” Callie asked.

  “She was my guess too,” Nia answered.

  “No,” said Hal. “Believe it or not, it came from my dad.”

  It’s hard to imagine a moment where the sight of Hal’s mom’s minivan complete with its MY HONOR ROLL STUDENT CAN KICK YOUR HONOR ROLL STUDENT’S BUTT wouldn’t be completely mortifying for Hal.

  This was the moment.

  The sliding door slid open and we piled in. He started pulling away before the door had closed. The van was fast and Mr. Bennett pushed it to its limit, taking corners on two wheels and running red lights without even blinking an eye. Who knew?

  “Dad, what are you doing here?” Hal said.

  Mr. Bennett’s face was pale and drawn and he looked nothing like the calm man we’d seen yesterday reading the paper and relaxing on the patio. “Are you kids all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Hal. “We’re all fine. But I don’t get it—how did you know where we were?” You could literally see his brain straining to reconcile everything we’d just seen at the pharmaceutical college with the current reality: his dad, the minivan, the text. “Am I—” Hal started. “Am I in trouble?”

  “You’re not in trouble,” Mr. Bennett said, laughing in spite of the tension. “You guys—all of you—you’re brilliant, is what you are.”

  “Come again?” Hal said.

  “I’ll explain in a minute,” said Mr. Bennett, and he pursed his lips like he was about to begin. He did a massive screeching U-turn in the middle of the intersection of Astoria and Miller and took us back toward the college for a quarter mile, then turned left, driving in silence now to a destination he did not name.

  Chapter 9

  “Brewster’s?” Hal said, when we pulled into the parking lot of Orion’s best ice cream place. They make all their own flavors—sometimes they don’t even have the standard chocolate and vanilla—and I think they even invented the dirt sundae.

  “Get sundaes,” Mr. Bennett said. “Or whatever you want. It’s the least I can do. And then we can talk.”

  I hadn’t thought I could eat, but once I had a peppermint sundae with hot fudge sauce and crumbled cookies in front of me, I realized I was ravenous. I was about a third of the way through it when Mr. Bennett, carefully licking his single-scoop mocha cone, started to talk.

  “Look,” he said. “I—we—I think I speak for all your parents. We’re worried sick. When you became friends with Amanda, when she disappeared, when you found each other . . . I’ve been watching you.”


  “Wait, wait, wait,” Hal said, holding up his hand. “You know about Amanda?”

  “I’ve been working with Roger Thornhill,” Mr. Bennett explained, “for years. The work I’m doing is the reason our family moved to Orion—ahead of Thornhill, actually. My particular set of skills—do you guys know about this yet? How Dr. Joy looked for kids, even toddlers, with certain innate talents and then used training and genetic therapies to enhance them?”

  None of us were quite ready to answer this question. If Mr. Bennett was working with Thornhill, and was watching us…if he knew all about Dr. Joy . . . why hadn’t he stopped us? Why had he let us do all those dangerous things? There were so many times when we could have been hurt.

  “It’s a little shocking, isn’t it, that your parents would knowingly let you partake in any of this,” Mr. Bennett said, obviously understanding from our silence that he would need to backtrack. “What responsible parent—hey, what somewhat negligent parent—would ever allow his kid to walk into the kind of danger you have been exposed to?”

  “The question did just cross my mind,” Hal said sourly.

  “As well it should,” Mr. Bennett went on. “And all I can tell you is that I am more worried than I ever imagined I could bear to be. But I am also impressed. I’ve been astounded, actually, by the things you four have been able to achieve. And now it is important that I give you whatever information I can to help you. Because Thornhill is convinced—and I believe he is right—that you four are the only ones who can help Amanda, and Amanda is the only one who can help us all.”

  I looked at Hal, staring dumbstruck at his dad. Callie’s mouth hung open as well. Only Nia was able to calmly ingest the news. She was all business now. “Okay, then,” she said, leaning forward. “You were telling us about Dr. Joy’s therapies. We read some of the files inside. And we know that you were in there. What happened to you?”

  “As you know, I was one of those kids. Dr. Joy wanted to turn my brain into a computer. As much as was possible, he expanded my capacity to store data and to analyze it.”