by Mike McCrary
“That brain magnet pathway shit?”
“Transcranial magnetic stimulation. TCMS. I can’t speak to what the CIA did exactly, but using the data we had from you, all of those processes performed in the right order, in the right way, can create an intentional, purposeful dissociative identity.”
“Custom-built split personality.”
“The science is dense, but yes, something like that.”
Murphy’s eyes glaze. Retreating into himself as the information floods his brain. One singular question swims to the surface.
“Who am I split with?”
Peyton looks away.
Murphy slams his hands down on the table. Loud. Hard. Their glasses jump, bouncing a splatter of whiskey onto the table. Murphy playfully bounces his eyebrows then places a finger to his head, raising his thumb like a gun.
“Who the hell is in here?”
Thompson stands up from the bar placing one hand on the sidearm inside his jacket.
Dr. Peyton motions for him to stand down. She’s got this—hopefully.
Murphy snaps his fingers, bringing her attention back to their chat.
“Got to be someone.” He thumps his thumbs on the table in a quick drumbeat. “I don’t remember much about myself, or much of anything actually. But there are times where I can almost hear how different my thoughts are.” Murphy’s eyes shift to Thompson then back to her. “Who’s joined this little skull party of mine? Seems like a really nice guy.”
Murphy sees her hand move to her tablet.
As the tips of her fingers glide along the glass, his emotions tilt. A shift in what’s living under his skin. Accessible anger replaced by resident fear. Confidence overrun by a stampede of question and doubt. He locks his fingers tightly in front of him to control the shaking.
His eyes are full.
Open wide.
Mr. Nice Guy is now speaking for Murphy.
“I can’t remember anything, Dr. Peyton. Nothing. Nothing about my life, family, friends…” His chin quivers. He clears his throat. “Most of time I’m terrified. Terrified of the world. Of, well, of me honestly.” Murphy gathers himself, sits up straight. “Please. Tell me something.”
“I… We…” She starts, then stops. Thinks. Then starts again. “I’m sorry, I am, but there are things I can’t share. Not right now. They’re unproductive. Harmful to you even.”
“I have the right.” Murphy feels himself tilt the other way again.
Shoving Mr. Nice Guy aside.
Murphy locks eyes. Tired of the bullshit.
Peyton watches him turn. She reaches for the tablet.
“Stop.” Murphy’s tone cuts like an ice-cold blade. “Whatever you’re about to do, do not. As you’ve clearly stated, part of me has progressive views on violence.”
Peyton pulls her hand back from the screen.
“Your mind is a work in progress. There’s psychologic trauma you haven’t been allowed to deal with.” She gestures to her tablet. “I use this device to attempt to even out the chemical reactions in your brain. As we test you, I make updates, tweaks here and there as your new neural pathways reconcile. The mix with you is tricky. The balancing act is difficult, to say the least. We tried to do this all at once before, just last week, and we nearly fried your brain.”
“Sorry to be so difficult to work with.” His hands press harder and harder into the table.
“Our process takes time. Time we haven’t been allowed. Events have forced us to where we are now. You understand? You’ve had no chance to heal. Our recovery schedule was negated. Obliterated. No opportunity for us to study results.”
“You treated my brain like a truck stop bathroom, then you pitch me some lofty bullshit about saving society via a science fair project. Now, you’re threatening to light up my brain if I don’t fix the fucked-up shit you never should have fucked up in the first place.”
She bites the inside of her cheek. Concern mounting. She looks to her tablet.
“Murphy, I’m sorry this has happened to you. But I need you to try and understand.”
“Need you to eat shit.”
“The treatments need a chance to run their course. The changes in you will stabilize. Your thoughts, your memory will eventually even out.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Days, weeks, maybe months.”
“Or never.”
Peyton stares at him blankly. No response to give.
Murphy’s shoulders inch up. It’s as if he’s watching himself engaged in this insane conversation. It’s impossible to hear you’re mixing minds with anyone, let alone with a killer absent of remorse.
Dr. Peyton’s hands wrap tightly around her whiskey glass. Her jaw sets. Her eyes dance.
It hits Murphy like a freight train.
“You heard them. The questions? The answers I gave?”
“I was in the room, for all of it.”
“Are you…” Murphy’s voice breaks, already knowing the answer. “Are you scared of me?”
“Murphy…” She takes a drink. “You terrify me.”
Murphy, without thinking, reaches out to hold her shaking hand. Looking to comfort himself as much as her. Peyton pulls her hand back fast, as if his fingers were on fire. Her face is frozen in fear. Murphy raises his hands off the table, leans back showing he meant no harm.
He hates the look in her eyes.
The intense fear she’s experiencing.
He wants to explain that he’s not what they think he is. Even if he knows…
She should be afraid.
They have forced his poisoned mind onto others. Men and women have been forever removed from normal lives, altered to be like Murphy.
A killer.
A mass murderer.
Images of the violence he’s waged stream inside his mind. The street in New York. The searing urge to let bodies drop in front of the bar’s door. All of it plays out like a movie ripping at 3x speed.
Something else occurs to him. The few memories he’s been able to see. The lifeless bodies, the blood at the house by the water. The gun in his hand. The stillness, the calm he displayed standing among the dead. The older woman screaming. All vivid as hell.
Excruciating to know you are that kind of monster.
Then, with the same level of clarity, there’s a single snap of happiness. A memory that glows, provides a smile to his broken, beaten mind. The single scene of the man and woman at the bar rushes back to him like a stampede.
“I lied. I do remember.” Murphy leans forward on the table. “Nothing much. Usually when I’m asleep, but sometimes not.”
“Okay.” She leans in. Energized by the possibility of his words. “Like what?”
“Feels like memories, but… off. Fuzzy. There’s two, I think. One feels like it’s me, but there’s one that’s different.” He cracks a small smile. “I’m a spectator. Watching other people. There’s a man and a woman at a bar. They’re laughing, really enjoying each other, you know? It’s only a few seconds or so, but it’s so clear. Alive.”
“Oh my God.” Dr. Peyton’s face drops.
He’s hit on something. Murphy has her complete attention.
She wants to know everything going on in his splintered mind. She has just as many—maybe more—questions as he does.
He is her life’s work.
A living, breathing embodiment of everything she’s worked and sacrificed to achieve. This is his chance. His currency. He has something to trade to get answers by leveraging her passion. He returns to the big question that still picks at him.
“Whose life did you feed into me?”
“Murphy—”
“Who?”
“I can’t.”
“Okay.” He takes a sip, then places his palms flat on the table. “I’m not telling you a damn thing about my broken brain.”
Peyton’s fingers tap a nervous rhythm on the table. Her head nods ever so slightly. Murphy imagines her knee working overtime under the table. Up and do
wn like a jackhammer. It’s killing her. She has so many things she wants to know, and all she has to do is talk.
“You give.” Murphy leans in. “I give.”
Peyton wilts. Her shoulders drop.
“An ordinary guy in an unfortunate situation.”
A spike of anger jolts Murphy. He cocks his head.
Peyton holds up a hand, asking for a moment. She exhales big.
“He was a fit for what we needed. Unfortunately, he was brought in moments before he passed away. We were able to map his strongest thoughts before he died.”
“Wow. You’re right, Dr. Peyton. You are a good person.” Murphy leans back. “You snatched a person’s dying thoughts right out of his head, didn’t you?”
“There was nothing we could do for him. His injuries were too severe. He indicated that he wanted his body to be used for—”
“I… He checked a box on his driver’s license so you backdoored that into—”
“Do you want to know or not?”
Murphy stares back at her, then nods a yes.
“We analyzed emails, texts, social media posts, pictures, videos. The music he liked, favorite movies and books. Purchasing habits and patterns. There were dozens of voicemails we found. Analyzed where he grew up, where he went to school, jobs he’s had. Everything we could find about his family. All of it was used to create an artificial, yet extremely accurate, depiction of a person. We fed that data into our advanced quant models. Then, our algorithms linked together a psychological mock-up that filled in any gaps.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Murphy takes a beat. Takes a drink. “You stitched together a human being? A reconstructed personality you force-fed into me?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“Look. We can take turns punching each other in the face, but—”
“Was he a good person?” Heart sinks even asking the question. Murphy can feel Mr. Nice Guy inside his head. “Is he better than me?”
“He was. That was the whole point of this project. Healthy minds helping unhealthy.”
Murphy looks away. Her directness cuts him to the bone.
“He is you. In a way.”
“Mr. Nice Guy have a name?”
“I can’t tell you. Only further complicates your thoughts. Creates more separation.”
“What happened to him?”
“Car accident. Drunk driver.”
A vision of a spinning, flipping car flashes in Murphy’s mind. The terror. The sounds. The pain. He remains stone-faced, staring at her from across the table. Not wanting to give her anything.
“That’s all I can say. Probably said way too much.” Dr. Peyton thinks of taking another drink but pushes the glass away from her.
Murphy absorbs the weight of the conversation.
Dr. Peyton raises her eyebrows, waiting for her turn to ask questions. Murphy holds the moment. His only moment of power in this world. He fights the urge to ask more. Hates it, but he realizes he might have to accept this as progress—for now.
He nods for her to have her turn.
“That night, the first one, at the dingy motel,” she asks, “did you see things?”
“Yeah, saw some big bastards trying to kill me.”
“Okay.” Huge smile. There’s a vibrating excitement in her eyes as she taps feverishly on her tablet. “Okay. What does my face look like?”
“What? What the hell are you—” His expression drops.
Dr. Peyton’s face morphs into that of a demon. Eyes that burn white. Skin turns the color of the darkest red wine, then bubbles as if cooking on the bone. Similar to what he saw that night.
“What did you do?”
“There.” She points to his devil tat. “Surgical implant. Through that I can control various chemicals inside your mind. Don’t remove it, by the way. You’ll bleed out in like forty-two seconds.”
Murphy fumbles for the right question as her face fades back into its normal state.
“Nobody chased you that night,” she says. “You were hallucinating. That was the first test. A safer test to create a baseline for us to work from. You didn’t actually hurt anyone, but that’s not the point. You reacted purely on impulse. Your impulses are to kill first, talk later.”
“Okay.” An odd sense of relief. Then… “So wait, the bar was real?”
“It was. You didn’t almost kill anybody there, so that was progress. Like I said, balance is tricky with you. We appreciate your violence, but only measured and when appropriate,” she says as if talking to herself but looking directly him. “Did one night feel different from the other?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s different each time.” Murphy's mind swims. “Everything becomes heightened. Like riding an escalator going up so fast it’s hard to process. Headed to a place you don’t want to go. Other times, it’s not like that at all. It feels—I don’t know—liberating?”
“We done?” A pissed off Thompson now stands by the table. “We need to move.”
“This is fascinating. Truly.” Peyton's eyes dance. “There’s so much to learn. His mind is viewing memories as a third party—”
“Wonderful.” Thompson motions for the check. “Lady Brubaker is in play.”
“Shit.” All color drains from Peyton's face.
“Who?” Murphy asks.
“We have to go now.” Peyton grabs her tablet, rushing out from the booth.
Murphy’s fingers press into the table, still seeking that illusive calm in the storm.
“Murphy?” Thompson does some piss-poor jazz hands. “Happy hour is over.”
Chapter 13
“Here’s what we have.”
Dr. Peyton reaches back, handing Murphy a tablet encased in a synthetic, everything-proof cover. Thompson cuts through the traffic clutter with a casual focus. Driving at a rate of speed reserved for people who know laws do not apply. The city races by the tinted glass in a gray smear of architecture and people.
Dr. Peyton rides shotgun, with Murphy bouncing and swaying in the back seat. He grips the oh shit handle, his gun next to him about an inch from his thigh. The SUV smells like government. Murphy can feel the bureaucracy coat his skin.
It’s too clean. Too beige. Too little to like or enjoy.
What the agency would consider luxury, Murphy thinks.
“Before we get to that, another thing’s puzzling me.” Murphy clears his throat. “Why the hell do I bleed from my eyes?”
Peyton turns around. “Is that happening?”
“Love for it to stop.”
“Okay.” She thinks. “That’s haemolacria. It should subside soon. Don’t worry. It’s a side effect. Usually seen with brain tumors or—”
“Gutting my mind?”
“Something like that.”
“Can we get back to the problem at hand?” Thompson cuts in. “That would be wonderful.”
“Please, sugar bear,” Murphy says. “Contribute.”
“There’s a woman they call Lady Brubaker.” Thompson punches the pedal down, checking the mirrors constantly. “We think she’s the leader.”
“She is the leader,” Peyton corrects him. “Watch the security video we pulled from the escape.”
“Not much to learn there. Only nightmares in the making.” Thompson lays down the horn, jerks the wheel hard, then jams on the gas. “Hell, take a look. You’ll see.”
Murphy looks to Dr. Peyton. She only offers a stare in return. He takes a deep breath, thinking that whatever is beyond the glass screen is the beginning, or the end, of his life.
Whatever his life may mean.
Murphy taps the fat white arrow.
The screen lights up an ultra-clear 5K video shot from a raised security camera. So clear it doesn’t look like real life. It overlooks what could best be described as a garden-variety lab. Off-white walls with a concrete floor littered with gleaming steel tables and chairs. There’s a small grouping of men and women in light blue lab
coats with their hands raised. They are backing up toward a closed door behind them.
Their eyes are focused dead ahead.
Two of them hold guns in unsteady hands. Not comfortable with the weapons they hold, but still have them pointed at a threat just out of the camera’s eye.
Hard to make out what’s being said. A jumbled chaos of sound, difficult to single out words. Hard to parse any tangible sentence. The city sounds from outside the SUV aren’t helping either. Regardless, there’s no question their screaming is born from fear. Pleading for this to stop. For mercy. Their expressions are hard. Faces red. Their heads turn back and forth toward the door. Panicked looks traded between them. One has his hand on the door handle behind him. Moving slow as if not to be noticed. Noticed by whoever is generating all this fear just out of the camera’s view.
Someone moves into frame.
Shoved is more accurate.
There’s a man being held with a knife to his throat. The face of the person holding the knife is still offscreen, but the hand is small. The arm is thin, but muscular and covered in tattoos. There’s sudden silence. Noise ends. Everyone stops screaming, standing motionless, waiting.
A single voice screams out, “No!”
Several look away.
The man’s throat is cut. He falls forward to the tile floor with red spilling out from him.
A woman steps into frame.
A woman with raven hair highlighted with tips kissed with purple. She stands over the body holding a bloody knife then turns, looking up directly into the security camera. Staring at the audience she knows is watching or will be soon enough. She holds her piercing gaze, as if staring out from the glass of the tablet.
