“My original design functioned as an external backup for one Alzheimer’s patient’s brain at a time. It differentiates between healthy and unhealthy brain cells and reassigns neural pathways accordingly. Theoretically, it could be used to restore the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient as it existed at the time when we’d first downloaded their brain patterns.”
“If two years pass from the day you did your ‘download,’” she said snidely, drawing air-quotes around her last word, “the patient loses two years’ worth of memories.”
“Which is a lot better than losing thirty or forty years. But I never got the chance to test the upload procedure. The McGavins subverted my design . . . turned it into a fountain of youth, for their own personal gain.”
“Fountain of youth?”
He nodded. “Like I told you earlier, I got into an accident. A hit and run when I was on my bicycle. I was hit from behind, and they never caught the driver. I remember getting loaded into an ambulance and knowing that I had massive internal injuries. Next thing I knew, I woke up in this body in the brain-trauma unit at ABTC, with Ethan as my physician. I started to put everything together. That my device could also be used to reassign healthy neural pathways in brain-trauma victims. That Ethan was getting too old to perform brain surgery; his hands were starting to tremble uncontrollably. That Jennifer McGavin was obsessed with her looks and with staying young. Even though she’s at least twenty years younger than her husband.”
“You think this pair of world-renowned neurologists were strictly focused on a way to extend their own lives?”
“Eternal youth is the ultimate power grab,” Jake replied with a shrug. “And I’m sure Ethan wanted to test the device to make sure that, when he gets the chance, he can shift the contents of his genius brain into an ordinary brain within the perfect young body. One with no baggage. A young, nice-looking John Doe, awakening from a coma at the McGavins’ closely controlled trauma center.”
Ellie felt a little ill. “Why me, of all people?”
“They needed to test if the procedure would work on a woman with an extraordinary IQ like Jennifer McGavin’s. Someone who couldn’t be traced to ABTC. You’re a liability to them. The McGavins can’t afford to have you on the loose, free to tell others about your actual life history, including how you once interviewed at ABTC—the place where brain-trauma patients periodically emerge from comas with wild stories of being someone else—only to die a week or two later.”
“Nobody believes that I’m Ellie Montgomery. They aren’t going to believe a thing I say about ABTC.”
“The McGavins won’t be willing to take the chance that somebody will listen. If the McGavins discover you exist, they’ll send out their goon again to silence you. I’m sure he’s already looking for me.”
“They don’t know you did this to me?”
He shook his head. “Nobody knows. At first, when I was pretending to be a functional moron, I overheard them talking about using you as their next test case on a Jane Doe. Then I pretended to be slowly regaining my cognitive abilities by being allowed access to my office at ABTC.”
“So that they’d keep you alive and keep running tests on you.”
“Also so that I could save you. They’d have killed you in Jane Doe’s body! Once I was admitted to the brain-trauma wing, I was able to investigate its track records. Six former patients emerged from their comas for a brief time. For less than a week. After extensive tests by one or both McGavins, the patients mysteriously reverted to their comatose state, then died.”
“But that doesn’t justify—”
“So I downloaded Jane Doe’s memories onto a duplicate. When your device was returned to the lab, I pulled a switcheroo. By all appearances, that particular device simply malfunctioned. In reality, all the McGavins were doing was loading Jane Doe’s memories right back into her brain.”
“And then, you sneaked into Alexis’s room and loaded my memories into her brain. Which means you killed Alexis Bixby!”
“No, I didn’t. She killed herself!” Jake rose. “I did the best I could. You’re still in high school. You can go on from here and reclaim your life.”
“You could have stopped them by leaking this story to the cable news channels! It’s the kind of wacked-out, crazy-ass story that cable-news producers salivate over!”
“I already explained that! It took me a week just to be able to get out of bed. I still had no access to the outside world. I convinced the McGavins that I was too stupid to be a threat. They told the staff that I was a harmless patient who’d deluded himself into thinking I was Dr. Jake Greyland. That gave me only enough freedom to pull this off and save your life. I managed to escape a couple of weeks ago and have been hiding out and rehabbing myself ever since. If it weren’t for me, you’d have awoken two weeks ago in ABTC, and, by now, you’d be in an unmarked grave. At least this way you have a shot.”
“And Alexis has none.”
“She was suicidal. She wasted her shot! My device can’t regenerate brain cells, only reassign them, so even if she emerged from her coma, she’d probably have had severe brain damage.”
“You said ‘probably.’ In other words, you don’t know for certain how well she’d have recovered. You had no right to play God like that—to save my life at her expense. Meanwhile, I was simply minding my own business, talking to my dad. Now I’m living in Alexis’s body. You turned me into an accomplice in her murder!”
“She wasn’t murdered! She was comatose, and—”
“You’re either lying to me or to yourself! You did this because you didn’t want to be alone! You made a bride of Frankenstein for yourself!”
“No,” he insisted again, shaking his head. “I saved your life, using the only means I had available to me. And now I’m going to save Jane Doe’s life, and countless other patient victims at ABTC. By exposing what Ethan and Jennifer McGavin are doing.”
“I hate you!”
“I know. You’ve made that clear. But I’m the only person on the planet who knows what you’re going through.”
“Yeah. I’m going through hell on earth. Thanks to you.”
He shoved a small piece of paper into her hand. “Here’s my number. If you need anything, give me a call.”
Chapter 10
That night Ellie got very little sleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jake and the Alzheimer’s and Brain Trauma Center. It was impossible for her to continue life in Alexis’s body now that she knew the freakish reasons she was still alive.
Ironically, last May, when she’d returned from her interview in D.C. annoyed that it had been such a wasted trip, her parents had urged her to put it behind her. Now she ran every last detail of the interview through her head on a continuous loop, trying to analyze how such an insignificant incident could have proven to be so catastrophic seven months later.
She remembered Jake in his actual body. He’d had curly light-brown hair and a weak chin, and his shoulders were so narrow that his white coat looked oversized. Then again, his blue eyes were startlingly bright and clear, and he had an adorable smile. Ellie had been immediately drawn to him—for about ten seconds. That was how long it took for him to introduce himself, shake her hand, and glance at the top few lines of her resume. Then his smile faded, and so did her attraction to him.
“You’re still in high school?” he’d asked as if he’d just learned that she was a prison inmate.
“I’m a junior, yes. I’ve got four weeks left till summer break.”
“The internship starts in two weeks and lasts for twelve weeks. You’ll have missed a sixth of it. Didn’t anyone here tell you that the internship program is for college juniors?”
Ellie bristled. “No, and I asked specifically in my initial email if, as a high school junior, I was eligible. This morning, the woman at the front desk handed me an exam that took me forty minutes to complete, and then—”
“You completed ABTC’s applicants’ exam in forty minutes?”
“Yes
. And then I was brought here to your office. I can probably arrange to take my finals two weeks early.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Montgomery. There’s been some kind of a mistake. You’re not old enough to—”
“You’re discriminating against me because I’m too young?” she’d interrupted, frustrated that she’d wasted a five-hour round-trip on the train, only to have someone her age decide at a glance that she was too young.
“Look, Elony, I’m only twenty myself. I’m the last person who should be accused of ageism. But my research internship is designed for college students. Period.”
A woman’s voice had come over the intercom. “Interview her, Jake.”
Jake clicked his tongue before pressing the button for the speaker. “Dr. McGavin, according to your own company policy, she should never have been asked here to interview.”
Moments later, Jennifer McGavin had appeared in person, strolling through the office door. Ellie had felt a little awe-struck; the woman was in her fifties and was even more impressive-looking than her PR photos on the website. She had a staggering list of professional achievements. Ellie was flattered to think that a doctor of such stature cared one iota about whether or not ABTC hired her as a summer intern. “Pardon the interruption. Mr. Greyland? A word?”
He’d risen and left with her, but returned a couple of minutes later, his lips set in a crooked half smile that Ellie felt indicated deep annoyance.
Without saying another word, he’d sat down at his desk and read her resume and her application. “Ellie,” he’d said, apparently having noticed that she’d listed “Ellie” as her preferred name, “you’re too young and inexperienced. I have to consider cohesiveness of the research team as a whole. I can’t take seven juniors from Princeton, Georgetown, Harvard . . . and throw in one high-school kid. We’re not talking about some summer job that happens to pay better than McDonald’s. This research project of mine represents a major breakthrough for Alzheimer’s patients.”
“But I passed a girl in the hallway who couldn’t possibly be more than fifteen or sixteen!”
“We also hire teens from local high schools to administer simple memory tests. The problem is—you’re not from a local high school. You can’t just bop over here for a couple of hours after school.”
She’d excused herself and left, irritated by Greyland’s condescension, frustrated that Dr. McGavin’s assistant had informed her weeks ago that she’d gotten the okay to apply for the job.
She’d stood outside the ABTC building for a minute, just trying to shore up her flagging spirits. Jake had followed her out. To her amazement, he said to her, “Look, Ellie. I should have told all of the assistants here that we can only hire college students. I’m sorry you wasted your trip.”
“I’ll deal with it,” she muttered.
He gave her his card. “Get in touch about the internship in another three years. I’ll make an exception and hire you after your sophomore year.” He flashed that handsome smile of his and shook her hand, which he held for a second or two longer than the social norm. “Take care.”
Now as she looked back on it, the meager clues seemed to support Jake’s story—that he’d been in the dark, and Dr. Jennifer McGavin had hand selected her as a future human guinea pig.
#
At school the next afternoon, Ellie sat in her Honors-Studies Drawing class, feeling anything but deserving of “honors.” The teacher, Mr. Wells, was looking over her shoulder as she tried in vain to erase the crooked charcoal line she’d drawn to represent an eyebrow in her self-portrait. Of all possible assignments on this day, the fact that she and her dozen select classmates were actually sitting there with mirrors on their easels and drawing their own faces struck Ellie as cruel and unusual punishment. She could now see the concern in her teacher’s eyes reflected in that mirror as he examined her inept portrait.
“Alexis?” he asked her quietly. “What’s going on? It’s as if you’ve never drawn a face before.”
“That’s exactly how it feels to me.”
“Is it your motor skills? Your vision? Are you just having a bad day?”
“I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. I have no memory of having taken an art class since I was in fifth grade.”
“Your amnesia has caused you to forget how to draw?”
“Apparently.”
“That’s so . . . strange. Your other teachers have said you’re completely on top of your game. And yet, in my class, where you’ve always been an A-plus student, you’re suddenly flailing.”
He flipped back a page in her drawing pad. He stared at her rejected drawings from the start of the class. “This is just . . .” He flipped back another sheet and stopped at a self-portrait that Alexis had done, with a ghost-like drawing of Alexis’s older sister behind her. In the drawing, Sarah was smiling; Alexis looked devastated.
“It’s appalling. I know. I’m trying my best, but I can’t begin to match those earlier drawings. I don’t see that reversing anytime soon.”
Mr. Wells glanced at the girl at the easel next to hers, who was blatantly eavesdropping. He jerked his chin at his desk in the back of the art room, and Ellie followed him. This setting was only marginally more private, but he pulled over two chairs and, as they sat down, he said quietly, “I don’t know what to tell you, Alexis. We’re a week and a half into the new semester. You haven’t done any work prior to . . . to Thanksgiving that I can use to balance out your grade and allow me to pass you. You’re going to need the credits from this class to keep yourself on track to graduate next year.”
Ellie grimaced. Jake had tried to assure her that she could get her life back. She wasn’t going to get into Stanford. She wasn’t even going to graduate high school on time.
“There’s always summer school, I suppose. Or you can transfer into some other type of class. I can’t put you into an entry-level art class, though. You’ve already aced them.”
Ellie rubbed her forehead, frustrated, thinking it’d be a dead giveaway to ask if she could take any AP classes in advanced calculus, history, physics, French, or a debate class, or music. Mr. Wells was now staring at a spot on her forehead. “I just smudged up my forehead with charcoal soot, didn’t I?”
He handed her a tissue. “Have you taken health class yet?”
“Health class?” So I can learn about venereal disease? And contraceptives? And hygiene? And this is the life that Jake Greyland thinks I should be grateful to him for giving me?!
“There’s also a cooking class.”
“I’m not feeling well. Can I be excused?”
“I’ll write you a hall pass.” He handed her a pink slip.
Miserable, Ellie walked down the empty hall. Peter and Savannah rounded the corner, holding hands. “Hey, Alexis,” Peter said, grinning.
“Hey,” she said.
Savannah was glaring at her, but managed to say in a sicky sweet voice, “Hi, Ellie. Love that sweater on you!”
“Hi. Love yours, too.” Which wouldn’t seem quite so phony if either of us was actually wearing a sweater, she added in silence.
It was the last straw. She wasn’t capable of biding her time for a year and a half, trying to make friends with people who thought she was a skinny artist they’d known for half their lives. Furthermore, she couldn’t trust that someone who couldn’t even tail her across a small, snow-covered park was going to bring her father’s killer to justice.
Ellie emptied out her locker, threw on her coat, and headed out the nearest exit. With an hour to kill, she decided to round the building, then head for the pizzeria. She grabbed Jake’s number from the pocket of her coat and dialed. “Hello?” he said.
Even the sound of his voice made her grit her teeth. “Jake, it’s Ellie.”
“Hi. Are you okay?”
“No. Not even close. You’ve got to come get me. Tonight. Midnight at the park where I wacked you upside the head.”
“Why do you want me to—”
“I don’t want you t
o come get me. I don’t want to ever see you again. But we’re going to have to team up.”
“Team up for what?”
“You’re going to need help to bring down ABTC. I need to make sure that the McGavins are brought to justice for killing my dad.”
“No, Ellie! It’s dangerous. I’m not going to let you get involved.”
Ellie snorted. “Yeah, you are. Because you told me you’d help me, and this is the only way I can heal—to work toward putting my father’s murderers behind bars. And to prevent them from killing again. You need someone on the inside to feed you information. Everyone there knows what you look like. They don’t know me from Adam. They don’t even know I exist.”
“Which is precisely how we need to keep it!”
“No, I’m going to enroll in a high school in Washington and get myself hired as one of those ‘local high school students’ you told me about last May. The McGavins are arrogant assholes who won’t waste half a second worrying that I pose any kind of threat to them.”
She waited for Jake’s reply, but quickly grew impatient.
“We both know I’m right. It isn’t like you’ve got the option of choosing between me and the National Guard to help you. Pick me up at midnight. Or don’t. I’ll find my own transportation to D.C.”
“I’ll be there. But I’m going to pull you out of ABTC if we get even the slightest hint that they’re catching onto us.”
“Deal,” she said. Behind her, the bell was ringing. Fiona would be going to their seventh-period Composition class.
She hung up and dialed Fiona’s number, who answered with a breezy, “Hi, Allie.”
Ellie was already feeling so terrible at the idea of having to say goodbye to her only friend that she shut her eyes. “Hi, Fiona. I’m cutting class. Can I come over after school? We need to talk.”
Chapter 11
“Is something wrong with your pork chop, sweetie?” Alexis’s mother asked at dinner that night.
The Body Shifters (Book 1 Body Shifters Trilogy): A Novel (The Body Shifters Trilogy) Page 7
