She gently handed Amy the book back and shooed her off the bed.
“You might not sleep, but some of us still need to get an hour or two,” she reminded her. “Why don’t you sneak back to your room and enjoy the book for tonight. We can talk about it more in the morning.”
Amy was happy enough to comply. When a captor removed everything beloved from a prisoner’s life and then reintroduced something small, the result was usually magnified. It was nothing but an interrogation technique. Claire would have to be even more on guard. She wouldn’t make the mistake of falling for one of their tricks, no matter what they dangled in front of her.
Chapter 10
Claire
The minutes ticked by, agonizing in their slowness. The women sat motionless, one there by choice, the other not.
Dr. Cans sat calmly in her chair facing Claire, both seats pulled to the middle of the room and arranged so as to create a false sense of comradery and empathy, elbow propped on the armrest, chin in hand. She’d arranged her office with calculation, Claire decided. The heavy oak desk that took up a large portion of the back wall served as the physical manifestation of the barrier that existed between her and her targets. Their prospective roles in life were barrier enough. One day, maybe even one day soon, Dr. Cans might wish she was behind that desk, if for no other reason than the false sense of security it provided. But today was not that day, and Claire was not that patient.
Dr. Cans, to her credit, returned Claire’s gaze stare for stare. She hadn’t had a chance to talk with Miguel yet. She’d be interested to know how his first session with the doctor had gone. He’d met with her this morning and she was sure he’d told her anything she’d wanted to know, so desperate was he to escape the imaginary effects of the brain injury he’d sustained so long ago.
Claire wasn’t Miguel. She wasn’t going to offer anything of help. Still, it would have been nice to know what tact the new doctor was planning to take and Miguel could have told her that.
“In a game of chicken,” Dr. Cans said suddenly, breaking the heavy silence, “I would beat both Andre and Amy without even trying. Do you know why?”
Claire didn’t answer. She continued to look the doctor in the eye, silently stating her rebuff.
Dr. Cans smiled. “It’s because they have no patience. No patience and no control. You, Claire, have an abundance of both.”
As Claire had yet to speak to the woman, she supposed it was a valid point.
“Oh, I’m sure there’s some psychological method I could use to draw you out, but really, what’s the point of that?” The pen in her hand began moving, drawing random circles and lines on the notepad in her lap. “If you don’t want to cooperate, there’s nothing I can do to persuade you.”
Claire narrowed her eyes. She’d already been through two psychologists in this place. Neither of them had thought cooperation was unnecessary.
“But we do have to meet together every other day, so we might as well make the best of it.”
She snapped the notebook closed over the pen and tossed it onto the desk behind her. “Coffee?” she asked, rising gracefully to her feet and turning towards the battered coffee service at the sideboard.
“Can’t live without it myself,” she said as the steam began to rise into the air. “Don’t care for it being overly sweet but still,” she reached into the small refrigerator tucked under the service, “a little sweet cream goes a long way.”
She finished pouring two cups and offered one to Claire. “Milk or sugar?” she asked.
“Both.” Claire might not be interested in cooperating but if she was being offered actual coffee instead of the sludge the common room served, she would take it. Like she’d told Andre earlier, she could always spit it on the doctor’s shoes if she decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Dr. Cans settled back into her own chair and looked at Claire as she took a sip of her own coffee. “That’s better. Now then.” She crossed her legs, those ridiculously thin heels front and center. “Since we have to be here anyway, why don’t we at least make small talk. Sitting in silence for an hour without something to do is such a waste.”
Claire let her eyes wander the room while she took her own drink. She didn’t really want to sit in silence for an hour either. It would make a seemingly endless day even longer. But she didn’t want the doctor to pick the topic. She thought of Amy and her impromptu visit the night before as her eyes landed on the doctor’s wall of books.
“You enjoy reading, I see,” she remarked, setting her cup back into the saucer Dr. Cans had handed her.
“I do,” the doctor acknowledged. “I enjoy all kinds of books, as you can see from my collection.” She gestured around her nonchalantly. “It’s a trait I seem to share with a certain late night visitor.”
Claire stiffened at the allusion to Amy’s after-curfew adventures.
“Not to worry,” she went on, reading Claire’s reaction. “I don’t mind. She wasn’t trying to cause trouble, so I don’t see anything wrong with a little late night wandering. Not if it helps pass the time when you can’t sleep.”
She took another sip of her coffee. “Long nights, you know.”
“What would you know about long nights?” Claire asked. She was predisposed to disbelieve everything that came out of the doctor’s mouth but even if she wasn’t, the thought of this elegant, white collar debutante knowing anything about missing sleep was laughable. Amy could tell her a few things about it, certainly. Claire could too. But she’d rather hear what Dr. Cans considered “long nights.”
The doctor smiled mildly. “Starting new jobs can be hard,” she said vaguely. “And this company has high standards. I want to make sure I’m caught up.”
“High standards?” Claire parroted. She shook her head pityingly. “A company with high standards would toss you out on your fancy heels for being behind the curve. This company, well, this company will never let you go.”
The women locked eyes, steely cynicism slowly giving way before bemused confidence.
“Do you think I don’t know what I signed on for?” the doctor asked, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a look of pitying condescension. “The company offered me a generous compensation package. In exchange for living onsite and tending to the fragile psyches of their volatile experiments-in-training, I receive free health care from the campus clinic and a sizable paycheck.”
Dr. Cans stood and moved to the bar at the back of the room, refilling her coffee mug. Without turning to look at Claire, she continued. “What does it say about the company, do you think, that retirement wasn’t included in the package?”
She finished doctoring her coffee and sank back into the chair. She took a sip. “A dark thought, I know. I don’t think the younger recruits have even considered what that might mean, but I’m older. I’ve seen a bit more of what the world has to offer.
She shook her head. “I’m under no illusions. I’ve been allowed access to the company’s most highly-guarded project. That’s not something I’ll be walking away from.”
Well. The other psychologists had never been that blunt before. After that encouraging thought, the silence seemed to take on a life of its own. Perfectly content to close the door on that disturbing conversation, Dr. Cans sat politely, waiting to see if Claire would lob another topic. But Claire couldn’t think of anything else to say. Dr. Cans’ last remark had momentarily drained her of fight.
I’ve been allowed access to the company’s most highly-guarded project. That’s not something I’ll be walking away from.
It sounded suspiciously like something the whisper in her head might murmur in the dead of night, as she lay unblinking on her mattress.
Claire had always suspected that the doctors who had left them had not left willingly or happily, but she hadn’t allowed herself to imagine exactly what that meant. Dr. Cans’ implication was much darker than she had imagined. And if the scientists involved in whatever this was wasn’t allowed to walk away, how much worse
was it for them? Experiments-in-training, the doctor had called them. What did that mean?
Claire brought her hands up to scrub at her eyes. She was exhausted and sitting motionless, and watching Dr. Cans watch her wasn’t helping. But Dr. Cans seemed tired too. Claire knew that none of the prisoners were easy, even at the best of times. And being forcefully taken from their families and from their lives did not qualify as the best of times. If they could just know why, maybe they wouldn’t be so difficult. Maybe they could give this place what they wanted.
Why were they taken? Why were they being held in some facility that no one ever walked away from. What did “experiments-in-training” mean? But despite the weariness on the doctor’s face, carefully tucked behind three cups of coffee and dim lighting, Claire knew she wasn’t going to tell her.
The timer on the doctor’s desk chirped, invading the silence, welcome to both. Claire shot to her feet.
“And so ends our first riveting hour of silence,” she said.
“I’m pleased with how our session went today,” Dr. Cans said, standing as well, all evidence of weakness tucked out of sight. “You should be proud.”
“Really?” Claire scoffed. “This was good for you?”
“You spoke,” Dr. Cans replied, allowing one side of her mouth to pull up into a wry smile, “which was more than I expected.”
There was a soft knock at the door and she called out a welcome. Barnes, the skittish young man built like a bean pole who’d been assigned to assist the doctor, cracked the door and peeked inside.
“We’re finished, Barnes,” Dr. Cans said. “Will you please escort Claire back to the common room?”
Barnes flinched and Claire shook her head at Dr. Cans, who barely suppressed an eye roll. Maybe Andre could snap Barnes like a twig, but that was no reason to be jumpy around the rest of them. Never let the enemy know you’re rattled.
“Bring Amy when you come back please,” Dr. Cans instructed briskly in what Claire fancied was her annoyed voice.
Barnes swallowed convulsively and opened the door wider, allowing Claire to glide slowly from the room without a backward glance. She put all of her considerable stage prowess into it, too. One didn’t always need size and strength to be intimidating. Poise could work wonders on an enemy.
She smiled at the victory, small though it may be, as Barnes flinched out of her way.
Chapter 11
Dr. Cans
When the door clicked shut behind her nervous, twitchy assistant escorting Claire from the room, Dr. Cans dropped the facade. She allowed her ramrod posture to fold and she slumped down in the chair, dropping her head back against the support to stare up at the ceiling.
The staff knew why the patients were here. They knew what was being studied. They knew the patients were suspected of having enhanced capabilities. That could all be very frightening, sure. What they did know wasn’t as frightening as what they didn’t, which was what those abilities were and what they could accomplish.
That was why she was here, of course. But the unknown always inspired fear. In the absence of fact, people relied on imagination, which was always more fantastic than reality. Was this what she could expect from all of them? Miguel was the only patient here voluntarily; the rest had been forcibly removed from their lives and the people in them and fed what they considered a laughable story about brain damage and unusual symptoms. They were expected to believe that the company was here to help? She didn’t think so.
She didn’t blame them for being uncooperative. She didn’t blame them for not buying the party line. Why should they? Hearing that an old injury had resulted in abilities that, while not humanly impossible, were humanly improbable wasn’t exactly an easy pill to swallow. Most of them stopped listening after the word abilities. Abilities were things from comic books and blockbusters. Not average, everyday life.
Speaking of pills, it wouldn’t kill her to pop a couple more. She had a slow burn of a headache coming on and it was probably best to try to get out in front of it. She sighed, bringing her hands up to scrub at her eyes, mindless of the damage done to her painstakingly applied makeup. If only there were a pill for this mess.
She was exhausted. She hadn’t been sleeping well and sitting motionless, watching Claire watch her, hadn’t helped in the slightest. It was true the company had offered her a generous compensation package for her time and expertise. In exchange for living onsite and tending to the fragile psyches of their volatile experiments-in-training, she received health care at the campus clinic and a sizable paycheck, just like she’d told Claire. But what good was money when she wasn’t allowed to spend it? When you’re completely cut off from the outside world, what was the point of being paid well for your services?
There was no point. Which was why she was currently sinking her entire paycheck into an untraceable investment account based out of Oregon. In her situation, one might never know when a large sum of untraceable money would come in handy.
There was a knock on the door and Dr. Cans pushed herself back up into position, quickly wiping her eyes to eliminate any smudges or signs of weariness. The patients were like coyotes. Any sign of weakness and they would attack.
Barnes pushed the door open at her summons and ushered her next patient into the room.
Amy from Poughkeepsie was every bit as difficult as Claire, just in a different way. More direct. Amy Madison was an average, everyday soccer mom, snatched from beside her own mini-van at her five-year old son’s soccer game just over a year ago and now, months later, she was still as furious and frantic as she had been the day she was brought in. Maybe more so.
It had been simple enough to learn the fate of the abandoned child, but if Dr. Cans had thought answering the woman’s questions about her son’s safety would buy her some goodwill, she’d been sadly mistaken. Knowing her son had been found and returned to the safety of his father’s care had only seemed to strengthen the mama bear’s resolve to escape. Because escape was the only option on the table. Dr. Cans wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t be allowed to walk away. And now the patients knew it too. They represented millions of dollars in medical research and investment. They were more valuable dead and on a dissection table than alive and outside the loving oversight of Nathan Anderson and his weaponizable life goals.
So they railed and they steamed or, like Andre, kept their rage tightly bottled, waiting until the day it could no longer be suppressed and it came ripping out like lava from an erupting volcano. But none of them plotted. No, that had been beaten out of them long ago. Anger, rage, even the passive lack of cooperation were all tolerated. Escape attempts, though, resulted in nothing but dead bodies. For the patients and their families. Nothing ensured resignation like threatening a loved one. And the company employed the kinds of people who had no problem carrying out those kinds of orders. She knew this full well.
Dr. Cans schooled her features. There could be no subjective emotions here. Her assistant stepped aside at her nod and Amy Madison slouched into the room, wary and restless as a caged wolf. Barnes disappeared back to the safety of the reception area, closing the door quietly behind him. She half-wished she could join him.
Dr. Cans gestured to the chair across from her. “Good morning, Amy,” she said pleasantly. “Won’t you sit down?”
Amy did not sit down. Instead, she prowled the room like a cat, skittish, eyes taking in the area around her. Dr. Cans watched her roam, taking note of her movements, watching as she ran her hands haphazardly across the rows of books lining the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, books she had helped shelve just the night before, and picked at the sparse artwork on the walls.
“I’m not going to talk,” she said suddenly, not bothering to turn and look at Dr. Cans.
“That’s okay,” Dr. Cans answered. “This is your time. We can spend it however you’d like.”
Amy laughed at that, a sharp, brittle sound that clapped around the room like a gunshot.
“Sure,” she said. “My time.” She
paused with her hand on one of Dr. Cans’ classic editions.
“Why do you have this?” she asked suddenly, pulling the first edition Jane Austen off the shelf. Dr. Cans had noted Amy’s interest in the classic novels last night, and again after Jane Eyre had wandered off her shelf.
“It’s one of my favorites,” Dr. Cans answered simply, waiting to see where Amy would take it. She looked at it a moment more before pushing it roughly back between the other novels on that particular shelf.
“The other doctors only had self help books,” she said in disdain. “Be Your Own Man and Focus for Dummies.”
“How far did those books get you?” Dr. Cans asked.
Amy finally turned and looked at her. “Here with you.”
Dr. Cans didn’t respond other than to gently motion for her to sit again. This time Amy gave in, sinking gingerly into the chair. She was on edge. Suspicious. Whereas Claire displayed no emotion at all, Amy wore her paranoia and bitterness like a blanket wrapped around her. It was her armor.
They were silent for a minute, Dr. Cans shuffling pages in her notebook as though there was something to read on them and Amy slouching in her chair, arms crossed, watching. When there were no more pages left to turn, Dr. Cans tapped them neatly and tucked them into the back of the book. She rested her pen on top and folded her hands across it all. Then she looked at Amy.
“Do you like Jane Austen, Amy?”
Amy blinked, clearly not expecting the question.
“Do I like Jane Austen?” she repeated. “What kind of question is that?”
“An easy one, I hope,” Dr. Cans said. “A natural one.” She nodded towards the bookshelf behind Amy, the one holding her classics. “You touched them all but you only picked up Pride and Prejudice.”
“It’s not her best,” Amy said, shrugging as though it didn’t matter.
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