Project Pandora

by Aden Polydoros

  “Are you going to muzzle me, too?” he asked sarcastically as Dimitri secured the last strap in place and pulled a machine on a wheeled base from the assortment of other objects. “Isn’t this just overkill?”

  Dimitri ignored him and went about assembling a polygraph and portable EEG machine that he retrieved from one of the crates.

  Hades tested the wrist strap as Dimitri wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm. If he were to ram himself against the chair, positioning his hand just right, he might be able to dislocate his thumb joint and slide his hand free at the cost of pain and decreased mobility. More likely, he would tip the chair over and shatter half the bones in his hand, crippling himself.

  He took a deep, steady breath, feeling the tension leave his body. Electrodes on his head, chest, and arms monitored his vital signs and brain activity.

  As he exhaled, he told himself not to feel. Feel nothing and think nothing. All memories were fabrications. Elizabeth Hawthorne did not exist.

  The thought calmed him. That’s right, she wasn’t real, and neither was the white-haired man watching from the doorway.

  “Where were you tonight?” Dimitri asked, examining the laptop screen.

  “I drove for a while,” he said. “I stopped for gas. I have the receipt to prove it. I can’t remember what happened after that.”

  “Are you telling me that you had a fugue again?”

  “You’re the psychiatrist. I don’t know what to call it. I was here, then I was elsewhere. I think I went back into the tank.”

  Dimitri narrowed his eyes. “Next question, have you ever made contact with Elizabeth Hawthorne?”

  “No, sir,” he said, though it struck him as curious that Dimitri knew about Elizabeth. The news from the dance must have reached him somehow.

  What Dimitri saw on the screen must have displeased him, because his eyes narrowed further and his lips curled back in a snarl. “Do you know who Elizabeth Hawthorne is?”

  “No.”

  “Did you attend Manderley Preparatory Academy’s Halloween dance tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Have you made contact with Subject Nine of Subset A?”

  “No.”

  “I knew it!” Dimitri said, and Hades realized he had slipped up somehow. “You’re a conniving little liar. You were with her tonight.”

  Hades didn’t reply. Subject Nine of Subset A. Could she truly be Elizabeth, and if so, why didn’t he recognize her?

  “How much have you remembered?”

  He said nothing.

  “So, the pet dog has begun to bare its teeth at its owner. Your silence won’t benefit you. Do you want to go back to being A-02, just a number? Nothing at all?”

  “I honestly don’t care,” he said. Now that Dimitri knew about Elizabeth, it was all over anyway. If he would never be allowed to see her again, who cared what he was called?

  “I don’t have time for this,” Dimitri said. “First B-10, now you. Elizabeth Hawthorne, you care about her, don’t you?”

  Hades maintained his calm breathing, allowing her name to roll off him like blood off a rain poncho. “I don’t know who you are talking about, Doctor.”

  “Oh, don’t bullshit me. I already know you made contact with her. I’ve seen your texts to her. I just need to know if you did it while conscious. Now, answer the question. Do you care about her?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I feel alive when I’m with her.”

  “That’s called love, and it staggers me that you are still capable of feeling such an emotion. Does the thought of hurting her excite you?”

  “I want to protect her.”

  “Yes, I think tonight’s events made that rather apparent,” Dimitri said drily. “You almost killed a kid, do you know that?”

  “If you hurt her, I’ll destroy you.”

  “You’re really not in the position to be making threats, Hades, but you’ll be glad to know that I have no intention of hurting her. She is a valuable asset to the organization. She’s one of Pandora’s, you know?”

  He had been able to infer that from the interrogation, but even when Dimitri outright said it, he didn’t feel particularly surprised. Maybe he had known all along that Elizabeth was different from everyone else around her.

  “She’s the senator’s biological daughter, but she isn’t Elizabeth Hawthorne. Elizabeth Hawthorne died two years ago, in an act of excessive teenage stupidity. Fortunately, twins look alike, even if they’re fraternal.” Dimitri turned his attention to the laptop screen and began typing into the keyboard. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

  “You learned what you wanted. Untie me.”

  Dimitri carried the laptop around to Hades’s side of the table and set it next to him. After scrolling through the documents tab, Dimitri brought up a video file.

  “This video was taken back at the Academy,” Dimitri said, and he pressed the play button. “Shortly before you came into my care.”

  The laptop screen showed a young woman sitting on a backless stool, her hands on the desktop in front of her. Her resemblance to Elizabeth Hawthorne was uncanny. The only notable differences, aside from age and hairstyle, were subtle, like the beauty mark under one eye and the shape of her lips and nose.

  “Please begin,” a man’s deep, accented voice said from the video. Hades recognized it in an instant and felt his nails sink into the arms of the chair. Charles Warren. The Leader.

  “Before I tell you, I need you to promise me that you won’t hurt Two,” the girl said.

  “For the record, you mean Subject Two of Subset A?” the Mr. Warren on the video asked.

  “Yes. What he did, what he wants to do, it’s all because of me. So please, tell me you won’t hurt him.”

  “If his behavior warrants disciplinary action, I will take your cooperation into consideration when determining his punishment.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise you that I will be lenient, Nine. At worst, he will receive a few taps of the switch. Gentle. He will not scar.”

  Staring at the screen, Hades’s calm facade began to crack. Sweat broke out on his back, and his mouth went dry. The longer he heard the two of them talk, the closer he felt to remembering something terrifying.

  “Turn it off,” he said, straining against the straps around his wrists. “I’m done. Turn it off. I don’t want to see this.”

  “We’re not done yet,” Dimitri said.

  “I said turn it off,” Hades said.

  He will not scar.

  “Does it upset you to know that she betrayed you?” Dimitri asked. “She’s the whole reason you’re here now. I’d like to know, do you still feel the need to protect her?”

  Hades didn’t answer, just stared at the laptop.

  The girl on the screen fidgeted in her seat, shifting around as if she couldn’t get comfortable. Her eyes wandered this way and that but never stared directly into the camera. She nibbled on her lip, just the way Elizabeth Hawthorne did when she was hungry.

  “Two’s upset that I’m going away,” Nine said. “He wants to leave with me. Tonight.”

  “I see. Desertion is a serious matter indeed. Go on.”

  “He said he stole a gun from the armory,” Nine said and bit her lip. She combed a hand through her short flaxen hair, then stroked her earlobe. “I don’t know what exactly he plans to do, but he has a plan, I think. He told me to meet him in front of the dumpsters after lights out.”

  “Mmm. Why did you bring this information to me?”

  “I’m loyal.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat the truth, Nine.”

  “Two’s so stubborn sometimes,” Nine said, hanging her head. “He doesn’t know his own limits, and he thinks he can beat everything like it’s a game. I don’t think he realizes what leaving means. He just sees it as a challenge that he can conquer.”

  “Thank you, Nine,” Warren said. “I value your honesty.”

  A low, anguished moan tore from Hades’s
lips, and all the strength rushed out of his body. He stared at the laptop screen, slack-jawed and trembling.

  The scars on his back tingled and burned. He wanted to reach behind himself and scratch at the lines of waxy tissue, digging in his nails until he bled. Then maybe this terrible, indescribable weight on his chest would lighten, and the boulder in his throat would fall away, and he would feel nothing, like it should be.

  “Are you listening to me?” Dimitri asked, and Hades blinked to find the man standing beside him.

  “Yes.”

  “Really? What was I saying, then?”

  Hades decided it would be better to remain silent than tell him that he hadn’t heard a single word.

  “Maybe it’s time for another session in the tank,” Dimitri said.

  “No.”

  “It seems you’ve begun regressing.”

  “I’m not going in there,” Hades said, clenching his hands into fists. His nails bit into his palms. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Dimitri or Mr. Warren.

  “I think eight hours will be a fair start.”

  Hades felt the sudden urge to bolt, but his body betrayed him, tied down and paralyzed. “No. I’ll be good. I don’t need it.”

  Eight hours.

  Eight hours meant a catheter and an infusion pump. It meant cracked lips and drugs whose names he didn’t know and waking to find a part of himself missing. Dead. Cut out from him in that darkness.

  “I’ll behave,” Hades said, voice cracking. “Don’t make me go back in there.”

  Dimitri removed the blood pressure cuff and electrodes but not the straps. Hades realized that this had been Dimitri’s plan all along. The interrogation had only been a ruse. That bastard!

  “Untie me,” Hades snarled, bucking against the restraints. “I’m not going in there. Goddammit, untie me, Dimitri! You bastard, untie me!”

  Ignoring him, Dimitri bent down and released the lever that locked the chair’s wheels in place. As Dimitri pushed the chair forward, Mr. Warren stepped out of the doorway to allow them to pass.

  Hades howled in inarticulate rage at the sight of Warren’s smirk. He wrenched at the straps until they cut into his skin, to no avail.

  Dimitri pushed him down the hall. As they passed an open door, Hades caught a brief glimpse of an unconscious boy tied to the bed inside. For a disorienting moment, Hades thought he was looking in at his own past self, until he realized the boy had lighter hair than him. Warren must have brought Dimitri another subject to program.

  Dimitri opened the door at the end of the hall and wheeled Hades inside.

  Against the backdrop of floor-to-ceiling tile, the sensory deprivation tank waited like a goliath’s coffin. At the sight of the tank, his rage shriveled into the purest terror, and his struggles intensified.

  “D-don’t do this. Don’t make me go in there. P-please, don’t make me go in there. I’ll be good, sir. I-I won’t see her again. I promise.”

  “Shut up, Hades,” Dimitri said drily.

  Dimitri parked the chair next to the tank’s hatch, washed his hands at the sink, and went to the metal cabinet along the adjacent wall. As he rifled through the drawers, Hades wrenched against the straps. Savage growls erupted from his bared teeth, and he kicked his heels against the chair’s metal leg rest in an attempt to loosen the bonds. He writhed until the straps dug into him. He even tried tipping the chair over, at the risk of busting his skull open on the side of the tank.

  He would rather die than go back in there.

  From the top shelf, Dimitri took out the IV infusion pump, which was modified to attach to a bracket built into the interior wall of the sensory deprivation tank. From the shelf below that, he retrieved hypodermic needles, IV tubing, a urinary catheter, and several bags of saline solution.

  Although the sensory deprivation tank was filled with hundreds of gallons of water, it was treated with more than one thousand pounds of Epsom salt, making the water undrinkable. As well, once Hades entered the tank, he would be in no condition to perform basic tasks like drinking and eating. The saline would prevent him from becoming dehydrated and act as a vehicle for nutrients and drugs.

  For the longer sessions that numbered in days, a mild hypnotic was administered through the infusion pump at a set time. The drug induced a brief sleep, and when he awoke again, the nutrient-enrichened saline sacks would be replaced, the catheter bag emptied, and the infusion pump’s chamber refilled. Usually, an enema would be administered while he was in that state, to clear out any waste and prevent him from soiling the tank water in a drug-induced stupor.

  The longest Hades had spent in the tank was nine days, or so he had been told. Most of the time, there was no sense of time. He had learned very quickly that even eight hours in the tank could feel like eternal damnation.

  As he continued to kick at the chair, Dimitri set the items on the top of the cabinet then began sorting through the injection bottles contained in another cabinet. He took out one drug, reconsidered, and exchanged it for another.

  LSD, DMT, and ketamine were just a few of the drugs in Dimitri’s arsenal. While the majority were injectable, some were taken orally. Hades recalled several instances where, after refusing to swallow the liquid, a feeding tube had been utilized.

  He had never thought he would be here again.

  Dimitri returned to his side, carrying a tray that contained a pair of surgical gloves, sealed alcohol swabs, a tourniquet, and a syringe filled with clear liquid.

  He knew from experience that the drug in the hypodermic would only be a precursor, a tranquilizer to calm him down long enough for Dimitri to prep the infusion pump and put him in the tank. The dissociatives and hallucinogens would come later, administered through the infusion pump at set intervals.

  “I’ll never forgive you for this,” he growled as Dimitri set the tray on the nearby bench.

  “If you say so,” Dimitri said indifferently, putting on the gloves. “You can bark all you want, but you’ll serve the Project until the end, and we both know it.”

  Dimitri pulled back the sleeve of Hades’s shirt and wrapped the tourniquet around his upper left arm. A vein bulged in the crook of his elbow. The skin there was stippled with small scars from numerous past injections.

  The sharp fumes of antiseptic solution stung his nose as Dimitri wiped down his skin with an alcohol swab. His breath hissed through his teeth in short, rapid gasps. Although he felt a sudden urge to scream and beg, he could only whimper weakly through a throat constricted by panic.

  “This wouldn’t be necessary if you had just obeyed in the first place.” Dimitri slid the hypodermic needle under Hades’s skin, then released the tourniquet.

  As the syringe’s contents flowed into his vein, dread swooped down like an eagle upon him. There was no escaping this. It had already begun.

  “This is happening to someone else,” Hades whispered, feeling the liquid sink into him.

  Normally, hearing his own voice assured him that he was still alive, but he felt only misery, fear, and hatred now.

  “This is happening to someone else.”

  At the second repetition, a sense of calmness washed over him like a soothing touch. When he looked down at his body, he sensed it belonged to someone apart from himself.

  It didn’t matter what happened to this carcass anymore. The real him would be elsewhere.

  Someone else, he thought as the drug took him. I want to be someone else.

  Case Notes 24:

  Apollo

  After leaving Shannon’s neighborhood, Tyler set up camp in a twenty-four-hour internet café, at a desk in the back of the building. He passed the time by drinking coffee, doing research online using one of the café’s ancient PCs, and contemplating how he had gotten into this exact situation.

  The fact that his foster parents might be involved in this did not surprise him. They had always struck him as the kind of people whose greed motivated their every decision.

  However, it was also possible that t
he catalyst had occurred sometime before them. His memories of his childhood were blurred, just smoky images. Until now, he had thought everyone’s memories were the same, but wasn’t it possible that something horrible had happened to him to make him forget?

  No, that was going too far back. More likely, his encounter with Zeus had been recent, within the last year.

  The last year.

  Thinking back, that time was just a blur, too. At the beginning of the fall semester, Tyler had transferred from a different school—and now, suddenly, he realized he couldn’t remember the name of the school. He couldn’t remember what his previous foster home had looked like or the names and faces of his friends, let alone his previous foster parents.

  That’s impossible, Tyler thought, staring into his coffee cup. You don’t just forget those things.

  If the brainwashing process involved psychological trauma of some kind, was it possible that he could have repressed not only his memories of the event itself but also of his entire childhood?

  Suddenly, Tyler recalled what Hades had said after approaching Shannon and him at the Woodley Park Station exit.

  Who ever said that’s your name, Apollo?

  At the time, the question had struck him as odd, but so had everything else about the boy. Now, he was forced to confront an even more frightening possibility.

  What if Tyler Bennett wasn’t his real name? What if he had never come from the foster system in the first place?

  The thought chilled him, and he pushed it out of his head before he could linger on it further.

  After finishing his coffee, he ordered a refill and a pumpkin spice croissant. The pastry tasted like cardboard to him, and the coffee burned away at his stomach like acid, but eating distracted him from the issue at hand.

  Still, even stuffing his face wasn’t enough to keep him from thinking about Shannon. He couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to her, but at least she was at a friend’s house. She would be safe for tonight, and first thing tomorrow morning, he could go back to her home and get the phone from her. It would probably be the last time he spoke to her, but he preferred to say good-bye than put her in further danger.