Dead Girl in 2A (ARC)

by Carter Wilson

  “Jesus,” he says. “What the hell happened up there?”

  I guess no one reported a gunshot, at least not yet. I try to think of something to say. My career is hinged on finding the right words, but now I come up empty.

  Elle, likewise, remains silent.

  We pass the guard, push out the front door. The chill of the air feels like a morphine injection.

  Elle and I make it to her car, where I collapse in the passenger seat.

  “Hospital?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “Walgreens.”

  Then I take out my phone and power it on.

  “Jake, what are you doing?”

  “What?” I reply. “They already found us.” I thumb to my call history, then dial the Hotel Jerome again. The same hotel operator from before answers in an exceedingly chipper voice, and once again I ask for Clara’s room number.

  It rings. Once, twice.

  I expect it to go to a message or bounce back to the front desk.

  Then, an answer.

  My heart skips a beat. Clara.

  “Yes?”

  Not Clara. A man’s voice. But not just any man.

  A man I know.

  “Landis?”

  Forty-Nine

  “You got out,” I say. My last image of Landis was his calm face as I locked him inside the white room with Cason’s corpse.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Where’s Clara?” I ask.

  “She’s fine, Jake.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s with Eaton. They’re having a discussion.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” I say.

  “Why would we do that?”

  Blood from my wound drips onto the smooth leather car seat.

  “Because your hired gun just shot me.”

  “What?”

  “Eaton’s apartment. We were there. So was your thug. He shot me in the leg.”

  “How hurt are you?”

  Elle jolts the car out into traffic, sending a fresh wave of pain through me.

  “I’ll live.”

  “He wasn’t authorized to do that. He was just supposed to bring you in. But you killed his nephew, so that might be the reason he acted as he did.”

  I almost say I didn’t know that was his nephew. But what does it matter? I still would have pulled the trigger.

  “Where’s Markus?” he asks.

  “Who?”

  “The man who shot you. Where is he now?”

  “I have no fucking idea. We clubbed him and ran away.”

  This quiets Landis for a beat.

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “I’ll contact him and tell him to back off,” Landis says. “Are you going to the hospital?”

  There are two holes in my leg. Blood oozes, but doesn’t spurt.

  “I’m guessing you’re going to tell me not to.”

  He sighs, then pauses. When he speaks again, Landis’s tone is different. It’s not the steely monotone from before. “Jake, I think you should get up here as soon as you can. Eaton is more unsettled than I realized.”

  “Unsettled?”

  “Just get up here, Jake. Hotel Jerome, Aspen. We’re in suite 417. We’ll all talk, and things will make more sense. But come as soon as you can. We’ll make sure you get medical attention.”

  “What’s Eaton doing with Clara right now?” I ask.

  “He’s interrogating her, Jake. She remembers.”

  Clara’s voice from her message echoes in my mind.

  I remember, Jake.

  The last thing Landis says before disconnecting the call is, “We all still have a chance, Jake.”

  I have no idea what he means.

  Fifty

  I fill Elle in on my conversation as we drive to the nearest drugstore. Once there, Elle stops and runs in. As I wait in the car, the pain blossoms. I’ve never even had stitches, and now there are two holes in my leg. Holes. I’m afraid to look, but I have to deal with this.

  She comes out a few minutes later, a stuffed plastic bag in her hand. She gets in, hands me the bag, and we drive around to an empty part of the lot before she pulls into a space and turns off the car.

  “How do we do this?” I ask.

  “You know as much as I do. I bought a ton of bandages, gauze, rubbing alcohol.”

  I look in the bag and see everything. I’m thinking about where to even begin, and then I realize it starts with needing my pants out of the way.

  I unbutton my jeans. “This is by far the least pleasant reason I’ve ever taken off my pants in a car.”

  She manages a laugh. I bleed.

  Shoes off, pants off, and it’s awful. Bloodstains streak past my knee, down my calf and ankle. My once-gray sock is black and soggy. I take that off as well. I see the hole in the front of my leg, off to the side, a few inches above the knee. Blood continues to bubble from it, a volcano showing the first signs of activity. It’s small, maybe a half inch, but I nearly vomit thinking I could just stick my index finger right into it, probably down to the second knuckle.

  This is not good.

  “Can you run in and get me some socks and paper towels?”

  “Sure.” She bolts out, probably very happy to be out of the car.

  I look down at my wound and think, I can do this. The momentum builds in me, the welling belief I can take care of my problems, no matter how great. I ride this wave of confidence long enough to open my car door and stick my bare and bloodied right leg out into the parking lot. Without pausing to reconsider, I open the bottle of rubbing alcohol and pour half of it directly onto my wound.

  Blinding pain ravages me. My leg is on fire, and it’s all I can do to keep from screaming. The pain is quickly paired with instant nausea, and my sheer fear of puking onto the wound keeps everything down, at least for the moment.

  Breathe through it.

  Elle’s back. She comes up to my side of the car and suppresses a gag. “Can…can I help?”

  “Give me a towel.”

  She unwraps, unrolls. Hands me a clump of paper-towel sheets.

  I wipe off my leg the best I can. The paper clump turns a fierce red.

  “How does it feel?”

  “Like being speared with a white-hot iron,” I say. Rising out of the car just a few inches, I put a little weight on my leg, testing it. It throbs, but I can bear the weight. “I think the wound is far enough to one side that it didn’t do too much damage. Didn’t hit bone. Maybe not even much muscle.”

  “You need a doctor.”

  “I can just wrap it up for now.”

  I go back through the bag, find the gauze and tape. With a swift motion, I wipe the oozing blood a last time and then press a wad of gauze over both holes in my skin.

  “Here,” I say, pressing down hard. A fresh wave of pain roils me. “Wrap tape around this while I hold.”

  Elle takes the tape, then inhales deeply. I don’t think she even exhales as she quickly wraps it around me. Five loops, tight enough to threaten my circulation. At first I think it needs to be relaxed, but then figure it’s also serving as a tourniquet, which is probably what I need.

  “Think that will keep the blood inside you?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”

  I look up and see a woman a couple hundred feet away walking to her car in the lot. She glances over and holds her gaze for a few seconds. I can’t make out the expression on her face, but I can imagine.

  “We need to get moving,” I say, eyeing the woman. What would I do if I saw this scene? Would I call the police, or just go about my day? When I look at the wad of bloody paper towels on the ground, I decide I might just call the police.

  I grab the wet clumps of paper, lean
back into my seat, and shut the door. Elle circles back around and gets in the driver’s seat, then starts the car. As we leave the lot, I wiggle back into my pants, which are now unpleasantly cold with my blood. But at least fresh socks warm my feet.

  “So, Aspen?” she asks. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? That could get infected fast. I’m here to help you, not—”

  “Aspen.”

  She sighs. “Going to be at least a couple of hours. Maybe you should get some rest.”

  I look through the bag and see Elle thought to buy some Advil and water. I immediately wash four pills down, then look at the dashboard clock. Just after one in the afternoon. I do the math. Landis must have gotten out of that room very quickly if he called me from Aspen. Most likely Cason’s body is still in that vacant office building, unless Landis has another minion he was able to summon to clean everything up.

  I lean back in my seat, hoping the Advil kicks in soon.

  “I need to figure out where we’re going,” she says. Elle swipes the screen of her iPhone. “What’s the name of the hotel again?”

  “Jerome,” I say. “Hotel Jerome.”

  She navigates through city streets and finally reaches the on-ramp for Interstate 70, heading west. The sky is darker over the distant mountains, building with dense, gray clouds. We merge into the freeway traffic, silence between us, each of us lost in likely similar thoughts. Wondering what happens when we get where we’re going.

  After a few miles we begin a slow incline, which gradually becomes steeper as we start making our way into the mountains. Exhaustion pulls at me but I’m not yet ready to sleep, so I grab the pile of papers we stole from Eaton’s apartment. There was something in particular I wanted to read.

  I thumb through the pages until I find it.

  There. The letter.

  It begins Dear Landis.

  Fifty-One

  December 6, 2016

  Dear Landis,

  You don’t know me now, but you once did. You were a child, and I was your teacher.

  My terminal illness has given me the courage to locate you and send this. I’m ashamed it has taken me so long. I owe you more.

  I took away your mind when you were six, Landis. I didn’t feel I had a choice. We had a protocol to follow in the event of an emergency, and I erred on the side of caution. I drugged you. All of you. That drug was experimental back then, still is now. Its purpose was to block the memories of traumatic events so the subject can have a normal life. But you weren’t supposed to have a normal life. You were supposed to be extraordinary. Each and every one of you. I am sorry if that is not the case.

  As I said, I was your teacher in a school you once attended. A teacher, researcher, lab technician. The only adults were myself and the headmasters, William and Catherine Müller. They were your parents, Landis. I wonder what, if anything, you’ve been told of them. Did you know your parents worked for a time in the Department of Defense? That’s where I met them. Did you know your father was a chemist by training and your mother a psychologist? I suspect not.

  I loved your father. Silently, never sharing my feelings, never wanting to be the “other woman.” He died never knowing how I felt. That’s its own special kind of death, I suppose. That’s a story for another life.—j

  I have much to say, but even more not to. My goal isn’t to cause pain; rather it is, as it always has been, to teach. I want to teach you to remember, Landis, because every child deserves to know their parents. I want you to see your father’s beautiful smile. Feel your mother’s warm embrace. I want you to remember because I took those memories away, and for that I am weighed down with regret.

  Your parents created an experimental school, a school known to almost no one outside the small government department responsible for its funding. The school’s enrollment was small and specific. Only orphans, and then only those with little to no other family. The school was year-round, and we all lived together in an isolated pocket of nature, as it was important we didn’t have outsiders interrupting or questioning our work.

  I felt privileged to be a part of the work, to be a part of the lives of you six children. To see what you could become. You were just ordinary kids when you came to the program, unremarkable. Lumps of clay waiting to become art.

  Your parents learned things in their time at the Department of Defense, and what they learned they thought could be modified to teach children to become exceptional. Everyone has limitless potential, Landis, yet few ever tap into even a fraction of their own. Your parents created a system to expand young minds. That system became a school. Your parents named it Arete Academy for good reason. Arête means a sharp mountain ridge, well fitting for the school’s location. But it’s also an ancient Greek word meaning “living up to one’s full potential.” A perfect term.

  The teaching was highly unconventional, and your ability to learn was influenced by a drug your father developed. This drug was based on scopolamine, a centuries-old chemical extracted from the flower of the South American borrachero tree. In very small doses, scopolamine is used to treat motion sickness and nausea. But in concentrated form, the drug is known for its ability to completely remove free will from those who take it, making them dangerously susceptible to suggestion. A side effect is memory loss.

  Your father’s work was a byproduct of some of the darker government programs from the Cold War. All you need to do is research MK-Ultra to see its origins. William was interested in the benefits of the research. It was his theory that the same brain centers that controlled aggression also represented emotion, potential, and aptitude, and thus the compounds developed for the Department of Defense could be modified for a better purpose. Rather than creating super soldiers, William was intent on activating natural talent and potential. He hoped his research would lead to the formation of a private company, which he and your mother would lead. I think he deeply regretted his complicity in some of his earlier government work, and this research would be his ability to help move society in a powerful and positive direction.

  William believed he found the answer in scopolamine, or at least a modified version he created that boosted the positive properties while suppressing the negative ones. The drug he created enhanced all your receptors, opening you to expanded thinking while heightening your emotions. For most of you, memory loss was not a problem, and in fact you showed deeper levels of intelligence, more ability to process and retain information, and an increase in recall.

  Another integral part of the teaching program was the use of suggestive imagery. Your mother’s specific field of study was the functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception. In short, one’s “mind’s eye,” or how you perceived your own reality, could be greatly influenced by external visual stimulus. The impact of mental imagery could greatly influence a number of high-level cognitive functions, including one’s ability to store and retrieve memories, emotional intelligence, and empathy.

  She designed a series of textbooks, each titled The Responsibility of Death. After each of you had taken a series of personality tests, she crafted a book specific to each student. She referred to the drawings in the books as algorithms, saying they were designed to trigger emotional responses in the targeted child. The one common thread in all the stories was death. While the most critical part of the books themselves was the visual and spatial representation of the imagery, the concepts of aging, death, and dying were somehow necessary elements meant to complement the drug. Your mother told me that, in tandem, these elements would help unlock natural ambition and drive in you, all stemming from a place of deep emotion and empathy.

  And then there was the pool, the third part of the program. I admit not understanding or enjoying the work with the children in the pool. But your parents insisted it was an integral part of the process. Once a week, each student was taken to the pool and had to stay submerged, eventually working up to two fu
ll minutes. You had to learn to overcome fear, push past the idea of death. Welcome it, even. You all struggled at first, but eventually grew to master it. Combined with the books and the drugs, your time in the pool resulted in breakthroughs, reaching another plane. Self-actualization. I could see it in you, at least most of you students. Your ability to learn expanded exponentially. Your communication as a community, your levels of profound group awareness. If someone got hurt, it seemed you all felt the pain. It was working.

  Then something terrible happened. I’m sorry to tell you this, Landis, but one of the students killed your parents. Killed them, then set fire to their house, a fire that quickly spread to other buildings on the small campus. It’s my belief the student who did this had an adverse reaction to the learning methods. Perhaps a reaction to the chemicals. Something snapped. I won’t tell you who did it, because I don’t think, truly, they should be blamed.

  The drug I used to wipe your memories was another derivative of scopolamine, but much closer to its original chemical composition than the special version crafted by your father. In fact, the two drugs were closely related but have very different effects. The version I gave you created complete suggestibility while also erasing memories, and this drug was to be used in only two circumstances. One, in the event any student was determined unreceptive to our teaching methods, and only as a last resort in the case they were removed from the program. And two, in the case of an emergency. The murder of your parents created an emergency situation. The school had to be abandoned, both physically and in memory, and none of you were allowed to remember your time there. It was considered too much of a risk.

  I hate myself for what I did, and seek only the slightest comfort knowing I didn’t kill anyone.

  After I administered the drug, a man from the government came in and took over, placing you very quietly back into homes with new parents who were all told well-crafted lies about your pasts. The school was abandoned and, for all I know, forgotten about. I’ve never returned.

  You simply grew up, Landis. Unaware, and likely unexceptional.