by AJ Steiger
“Lain …”
I wrap my arms around him. Slowly, he returns the hug. I comb my fingers through his soft hair, slide a hand beneath his coat, and stroke his back. I can feel the bumps of his spine through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. I wish I knew what to say to him. I feel so young, so lost. We both are.
At last, he straightens, wiping his eyes. “Those two guys,” he says. “The doctors …”
“One of them was Dr. Swan,” I say, my voice hardening. “I’m certain.” The first two times Steven took Lucid, the memories were fuzzy, but this time I got a good look at their faces. There’s no doubt.
“And the other?”
I close my eyes. Deep down, I already realized the truth, but I didn’t want to accept it. Even now, I can’t understand why the good man I knew would get mixed up in something like this. I don’t want to say the words, because that will make it real. But I have no choice. “My father.”
Silence descends on us.
“I’m sorry,” Steven says at last, very softly.
My father was partially responsible for his kidnapping and torture, and he’s sorry for me. I want to laugh. Or cry. But I can’t let myself fall apart. If I start to cry now, I don’t know if I’ll ever stop. I try to console myself with the knowledge that Father treated Steven with some kindness, at least—he let him out of his cell, took him to see Lizzie—but still, he was there. He was part of it. “Never mind,” I say, with a lightness I don’t feel. “We have other things to worry about right now.” I look again at the empty rooms, the crow-filled rafters. “This doesn’t look anything like the place in your memories. How could it have decayed this much in ten years?”
His expression goes hazy and distant, turning inward. He walks toward the statue of the robed figure.
“Steven?” He doesn’t answer. I shoulder the pack, pick up the flashlights, and follow, leaving the Gate behind.
As we near the base of the pedestal, I sweep the flashlight beam over the statue, the blank face with its slack mouth and upturned eyes. White crow droppings streak the gray robes.
“It’s underground,” Steven says.
“What?”
“The real St. Mary’s. It’s hidden underground.” His voice seems to be coming from far away. “The passageway is under this statue. When they brought us here, they—” He stops. His hand drifts to his temple, and he shakes his head. “Shit. How did they do it?”
I look at the statue again—at its hands, outstretched and cupped, as if offering something invisible—and I notice that the right hand has a hairline crack around the wrist. It’s jointed, like the wrist of a marionette. My pulse spikes. “Look.” I point.
His breath catches.
Before I can say anything else, Steven grabs the stone hand and twists. It bends upward with a faint creak. For a few seconds, nothing happens. Then a low, rumbling grind fills the air—a sound like ancient gears turning—and the statue’s pedestal ponderously slides to one side, revealing a square opening about six by six feet. A set of wide stone steps leads down into darkness.
We stand motionless at the top of the opening, staring down. I shine my flashlight inside, but it doesn’t penetrate very far; the gloom swallows up the thin yellow beam.
Steven grips my hand. His palm is hot and slick with sweat.
“You know,” I say, “we don’t have to go down there.”
His pulse drums in his throat. “I need to see it.”
I give his hand a squeeze. “Whatever happens,” I say softly, “I’ll be here.”
His grip tightens.
We descend.
Ten steps. Then twenty. The square of light above us grows smaller and dimmer. Eventually, I stop counting. There are too many steps.
Darkness presses in around us. The only sound, aside from our footsteps, is our rapid breathing. At last, we come to the bottom but even with the flashlights, I can’t see much of anything—at least, not more than a few square feet at a time. Curling yellowed tiles cover the floor, and the walls are rough plaster.
“Listen,” Steven whispers, his voice very loud in the silence. “Do you hear that?”
I listen, and I do hear it—a low hum, so faint it’s more vibration than sound.
I tuck my flashlight under one arm and reach out, fumbling in the darkness. There’s a wall. My fingertips slide along the plaster until I encounter smooth plastic. “I found a light switch,” I say. “I’m going to try it.”
I don’t really expect it to work. Why would it? But it’s worth a shot.
I flick the switch, and bright light floods the hall. My eyelids slam shut, then open a crack. I wait for my eyes to adjust before opening them fully. The light isn’t as bright as it first seemed. In fact, the fluorescent tubes overhead are dim. They illuminate a long and narrow hallway lined with doors. Faded tiles stretch on and on.
Steven’s breathing quickens.
“Steven?”
He wrenches his hand from mine, bows his head, and clutches it, shaking so hard his teeth chatter. “I remember,” he gasps. “Oh God. I—this place—I remember the smell.” He presses his hands to his nose and mouth.
I hug him tight. He clings to me, shuddering. “Breathe,” I urge.
Gradually, his breathing slows. When he straightens, his expression is calmer. He’s still pale, but there’s a glint of determination in his eyes, and in his posture—back straight, fists clenched at his sides. “I’m okay.” He gulps. “It just … hit me all at once.”
A chill slides through me. “You remember everything?”
His lips tremble, and he presses them together. “I remember enough.”
Gently, I lay a hand on his arm. I want to ask more, but I’m afraid to. Already, he looks like he’s holding himself together through sheer force of will.
“Let’s keep going,” he mutters.
We resume walking. All the doors are closed, but they have small, barred windows. I shine my flashlight into each. Empty rooms—bed frames and the occasional desk or file cabinet—and one filled with what appears to be lab equipment, lots of it. I linger outside the door, passing the flashlight beam over a huge microscope. An array of sharp tools glitters on a tray. There are poster-sized photos plastered over the walls, displaying delicate webs of stained tissue. Neurons. Brain scans as well, rows and rows of them lining the back wall—ghostly grayish white shapes, like Rorschach blots.
“How can this place possibly have electricity?” Steven asks.
“There must be a generator,” I say. “A small one. I don’t think it’s connected to the one in town. It’s too far.”
There’s something else. Something feels wrong, but it takes me a moment to place it. There’s no dust, no cobwebs. The place is empty, yet it looks like it’s still in use.
Steven stops in front of a door. His face is dead white, his forehead and upper lip glistening with sweat. “This was my room,” he says quietly.
Behind the door is another barren room containing nothing but a bed frame. We step inside, holding our breath. There are crayon drawings scrawled on the wall—faded, like someone tried to scrub them away and didn’t quite succeed. I see a tiny figure inside a cage, gripping the bars, a tear on its cheek. A few feet away are two crudely drawn figures in lab coats with grinning wolf heads, one of them holding a saw. Between them is a small person strapped to a table. The top of its head has been removed.
Steven lets out a high-pitched, jagged laugh. The sound sends chills down my spine. “Oh boy,” he says. “This brings back memories.”
“Steven … what …”
“They gave me crayons. Then they took them away because they didn’t like the things I was drawing.”
I think about the white room, the bloody scalpels, Steven immobilized and helpless on a surgical table. The doctors were holding up pictures, I remember, asking him questions. As I stare at the drawings, something clicks, and my insides turn cold. Brain surgery. “What did they do to you?” I whisper.
“Good question.�
��
If they were performing necessary and accepted medical procedures, they wouldn’t have done it in secret, or modified Steven’s memories. Whatever happened here, it was highly illegal.
We retreat from the room and keep walking. At last, we reach the end of the hall and the final door. Unlike the others, which are plain wood, this one is metal and divided down the middle. There’s a panel next to it—a biometric scanner, probably. If there’s anything to find, it will be in here. I start to reach out toward the panel, then stop.
“Will it even open for us?” Steven asks.
“My father was one of the men who worked here,” I reply. “My handprints are the same as his—just smaller. It might open for me.”
“Hang on.” He draws the ND from his pocket and thumbs it to the highest setting. He raises it, pointing it at the door. “Go ahead.”
I place a hand on the panel. It flashes green, and the metal door slides open to reveal a small room. The floor is white-tiled, the walls are a cool eggshell, and the whole room glows with soft white lighting that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. There’s a simple glass table with a pair of slim white chairs and a coffin-sized black refrigerator standing in one corner. No other furnishings. No one inside.
Cautiously, I step in. Steven enters behind me, still holding the ND, looking warily around. Slowly, he lowers the weapon.
The doors slide shut behind us, and I give a start.
“It’s okay,” Steven says. “We’re not locked in. There’s another panel inside.” He points to it.
Still, I don’t like the feeling of being trapped, and suddenly, I’m desperate to get out of this underground hell, out of this building, out of this whole country. “Let’s take a quick look and then head back to the car,” I mutter.
“Yeah.”
The refrigerator hums faintly. I swallow, cross the room, open it a crack, and peek inside.
Six brains float in jars of formaldehyde, pale and forlorn-looking in the yellowish liquid. The blood drains from my face. I quickly shut the door.
“What?” Steven says, walking toward me. “What’s in there?”
I’m not squeamish about brains. I’ve handled and dissected a few in my neuroanatomy courses. But something about these brains, here, now, is deeply unsettling. Maybe it’s the size. They’re smaller than usual. Children’s brains. There was one detail I always remembered from Emmett Pike’s case, one thing that haunted me. Their heads were never found.
Oh God.
“I don’t know if you want to see this,” I say.
“Open it.”
I take a slow breath and open the refrigerator door. Each jar is labeled with a name. Daniel, Katherine, Louis, Robert, Shawna. Elizabeth.
Lizzie.
I press a hand to my mouth, and my vision goes blurry. Slowly, I shut the refrigerator and lean against the wall, struggling to breathe past the weight in my chest. When I close my eyes, the forlorn-looking little brains float up behind my eyelids like six withered balloons. Dr. Swan is responsible for this. He must be. What kind of sick person keeps a refrigerator filled with dead children’s brains? Does he come here and talk to them? Fondle them?
I think about the lab equipment in the other room, the curious lack of dust. Someone still uses that lab. I have a sudden feeling that if I were to examine it more closely, I’d find slides containing slices of preserved tissue from these very brains. Oh God. The pieces are all coming together.
“Why?” Steven whispers.
I open my eyes. “They experimented on them.” My voice sounds empty, disconnected, like it belongs to someone else. “That’s what all that neurosurgery was about. They were conducting illegal experiments.” But for what?
Steven stands motionless. “Let’s get out of this fucking place,” he says flatly.
I nod, feeling nauseous. We turn toward the doors. I place a hand on the panel, and they slide open. I start to step forward—and freeze.
Two men stand in the hall, wearing gray suits and shades and aiming weapons at us.
Steven’s eyes widen. He raises his ND, but he’s not fast enough. There’s a sharp crack, and Steven goes down. The ND falls from his hand. I scream his name as he hits the floor and lies motionless, facedown.
No time to think. I make a dive for the ND, but a black-shoed foot kicks it away. A shadow falls over me. Panting, I look up.
“No worries,” the man says. “Just a sedative … and this time, we calculated the dosage to take his tolerance into account. He’ll wake up in a few hours. No harm will come to him as long as you cooperate.” He holds out a set of handcuffs while his taller, bulkier partner keeps the tranquilizer gun trained on me.
I don’t move.
“Just a precaution, you understand.” The man smiles, blandly and pleasantly. In a flash, I recognize his forgettable face—the guard from Greenborough High School. He works for IFEN? Was he stationed there specifically to watch me?
There’s no way I can make a run for it. Even if it were possible, I can’t leave Steven. Teeth gritted, I hold out my hands, and the cuffs snap shut around my wrists.
One of the men—the larger one—handcuffs Steven, then picks him up and slings him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Steven is already starting to stir, groaning faintly. As the men lead me down the hall and up the stairs, I try to catch his gaze, but his eyes remain closed.
My mind races. Did they follow us? Or maybe they were already lurking in the area, watching, waiting for us to corner ourselves. Maybe Dr. Swan knew we’d be drawn here, to St. Mary’s, like mice to a baited trap.
We should have headed straight for the border.
Two small gray helicopters wait outside, in the courtyard. The men load Steven into one and prod me toward another. “Steven!” I cry out instinctively. I try to run toward his helicopter, knowing it’s futile. My guard grabs me by the shirt collar and drags me back. I watch as the helicopter lifts into the sky and disappears above the treetops.
“Go on,” he says, pointing his gun at me.
There’s no choice. I sit in the back of the remaining helicopter, in a black leather seat. My guard straps me in, leaving my handcuffs on, then climbs into the cockpit. The engine rumbles to life, and the helicopter lifts into the air, whirring like a giant insect. I stare out the window at the scenery below, the patches of velvety dark forest and rippling golden fields.
For a while, the only sound is the helicopter’s rumbling drone. Though I’ve never felt less like sleeping, the fatigue and the monotony of the long ride drag me down into a troubled doze. I dream about twisted corridors, bloody scalpels, and screams.
I wake when I realize we’re on the ground, on a landing pad near the edge of the city. The skyscrapers of Aura loom in the distance. My guard escorts me to a sleek gray car with tinted windows, and I climb in. At this point, resistance seems like a token gesture.
There’s a short drive. I sit in the backseat, still handcuffed, until he parks the car. When I look out the window, I’m not surprised to see we’re in front of IFEN headquarters. The sun is setting, tinting the sky blood-red. The guard leads me across the parking lot and into the lobby, which is eerily quiet and empty. He prods me into an elevator, and I watch the numbers light up as we ascend. There’s a soft ding when we reach the top floor. The elevator opens to reveal the door to Dr. Swan’s office.
“Where is Steven?” I ask, not really expecting an answer.
“You’ll see him when it’s time.” He nods toward the door.
Slowly, I open it. He shuts the door behind me, and a lock clicks. Dr. Swan sits at his desk, smiling. The red light of sunset pours in through the window, illuminating the room and coloring its oyster-white walls pink. “Hello, Lain.” His voice is mild and pleasant, as if we’re at a dinner party together. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Dr. Swan.
The man who practically raised me after Father’s death, the man I’ve known since I was five years old, is responsible for all this. He’
s the one who locked Steven in a padded room and left him there alone.
For a moment, I imagine myself charging across the room, lunging over the desk, and wrapping my hands around his throat. Except I can’t—my hands are still restrained. Even if I could, I doubt it would accomplish anything.
He rises to his feet and approaches. I flinch as he leans closer, but he only pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks my cuffs. They fall to the floor. Still, I remain standing rigidly in place, fearing a trap.
“Sit,” he urges. “We have a lot to talk about.”
I don’t sit. “What’s the point of talking? You’re planning to erase my memories, aren’t you?”
He returns to his chair. “I’d prefer not to do that.”
“Then why did you send that woman after us? That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he says, “though that was a hasty and ill-advised decision on my part, I will admit. When I learned you’d fled the city, I lost my temper.”
“Lost your temper,” I repeat, incredulous.
“Well, I’m only human.” A pause. “Of course, it might be better if you had your memories erased. Better for you. But it would also complicate things. Neural modification is not foolproof, after all—it leaves scars, and traces of the original memories sometimes linger. I would prefer to have your full, conscious cooperation. Regardless, precautions will be taken to ensure that you don’t tell anyone what I’m about to reveal to you. But I want you to hear me out. You’re a rational person. Even if you hate me for what I did, I trust that once I explain everything, you’ll understand the necessity of keeping this from the public.”
I very much doubt that, but I bite my tongue. If I can convince him I’m willing to keep my mouth shut, maybe I can get out of this with my mind intact.
“Before I begin, do you have any questions?” he asks, as if he’s teaching a class.
“Yes. How do you live with yourself?”
His expression doesn’t waver. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb. I know what you did. You kidnapped those children. You experimented on them.”
