“Cas isn’t really a book kind of person.”
“Well…” Dad ran his hand over the back of his head and sighed. “Just try to give him something he’ll actually stick with.” The burst of wrinkles around his eyes furrowed.
“Is this really about Cas, or is there something else?”
The TV crowd cheered behind us.
“No. It’s nothing.”
“Is Connor coming for a visit?” I asked. He wrestled with the sleeve of crackers, avoiding looking at me. “Dad?”
“Yes. Tomorrow. Him and Riley.”
Connor was head of the Branch, and Riley was his second-in-command. Together they oversaw Dad and the program.
“They want to inspect the group,” Dad went on. “See how they’re progressing.”
“Are they taking the boys this time?”
Though I wanted the boys to be released, the lab, the logs, and the tests had all become my life as much as theirs. Now I didn’t know how I felt about them leaving.
Dad shrugged. “I won’t be privy to that until it’s time.”
“Where would they go?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
I couldn’t picture Sam in the real world, buying a doughnut at a coffee shop, reading a newspaper on a park bench. The others, maybe. Cas was like any other party boy trolling for girls. Nick was the epitome of an asshole jock, with the cockiness and pretty face to match. And Trev once told me that if he ever got out, he’d want to go to school to study English literature.
But Sam…
“Will they ever be released?”
Dad removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Anna. Really. I don’t know.”
I sensed the demise of the conversation and shut up. We finished eating. I did the dishes and wiped down the table, while Dad passed out in the living room. I threw some laundry in the washer.
By that time, it was after eight and dark outside. Upstairs in my room, I flipped through the TV channels and found nothing worth watching. I didn’t have any new books to read. Since most of the chores were done, I decided to sketch something new in my mother’s journal.
I lay on my stomach on the bed and opened to the last sketch I’d done. It was of a girl in the woods, boughs of maple trees hanging heavy with snow. Her silhouette was blurry, fading, curling, like ribbons of smoke. Like she was disappearing with each new gust of wind. Being lost or broken had been a running theme in my sketches for about a year, ever since I’d taken a weekend art class at the community college.
But it wasn’t the class that opened up the new vein of inspiration. It was the conversation I’d had with Trev afterward.
My final review from the instructor said that I possessed raw talent, but that I hadn’t yet tapped into my full potential, that my art was lacking inspiration. I’d gone down to the lab to vent, and Trev, as always, had talked me off the ledge.
“I don’t get it,” I’d said to him, leaning against the brick wall between his room and Cas’s. “Lacking inspiration?” I sighed. “What does that even mean?”
Trev came to the glass and mirrored my slouch so that we stood side by side. “It means you’re only drawing what you see, not what you feel.”
I folded my arms over my chest as I looked at him. “The sketches of my mother have lots of emotion.”
His amber eyes softened. “But you don’t know your mother. You only know what you’ve heard, and that you miss her. What about what you want? Your hopes? Your dreams? What are you passionate about?” He swiveled to face me full-on. “Your instructor was telling you to dig deeper.”
The look on his face transitioned from open understanding to something guarded, as if he was silently prodding me. As if he was holding back what he wanted to say because a frank answer would make it too easy.
I rested my head against the wall and stared at the ceiling, at the pockmarks in the tiles. Trev liked wrapping his advice in complex philosophies. Nothing was ever simple with him.
The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted out of my life. What was I passionate about? The boys. The lab. Dad. Baking. But sketching a pumpkin pie sounded pretty darn boring.
Maybe Trev read the confusion on my face, because he added, “Start with your frustrations. How about that? It’s easier to tap into anger or annoyance.”
When I returned to my room that night, I’d opened my sketchbook and stared at the blank page. What frustrated me? My mother being dead, yes, but I needed something fresh.
And then it came to me: Nick. Nick frustrated me.
Soon, my pencil began to slide across the paper at an alarming pace. As I sketched, I felt it: a fire in my arm, a tingling sensation in my fingertips, like I was bleeding that passion onto the page.
When I was finished, I had one of the best drawings I’d ever done. In it, Nick stood in the middle of a deserted street, bottles broken around him, liquid spilling everywhere while he peered out from the page, a prickly expression on his face. I was so proud of the sketch that I almost considered showing him, but then I realized that he’d probably take offense, or automatically hate it.
I did show Trev, though, the next night. He looked from the sketch to me and nodded his approval. “There you go,” he said in a hushed tone so the others wouldn’t hear, so we could keep the sketch between us. “Continue to draw like that and you’ll turn into the next Vanessa Bell.”
I scoffed, but inside I was beaming. Vanessa Bell was a brilliant painter, one of my favorite artists. She was also the older sister of Virginia Woolf, Trev’s favorite writer. That was the best compliment he could give me.
My sketches changed after that. For the better.
Now I turned to a fresh page and stared and stared and stared. Sometimes it was easy to begin drawing; other times I needed a jump start. I couldn’t always count on Trev to spur me. I grabbed an issue of Traveler magazine from my dresser and flipped through the glossy pages. I stopped on a spread of a quiet Italian village.
I started sketching the buildings, the blush of light from the old street lamps. I added a traditional Italian café with tiny two-seater tables, window boxes dripping with flowers, bikes with baskets, and scalloped awnings.
Before I knew it, I’d sketched myself walking the cobblestone street, Sam next to me. I ran my finger over the lines and the graphite smeared.
I often found myself sketching fantasies like this one, where Sam was no longer locked in the lab and I was no longer tethered to it because of him. With my pencil, I could set us both free.
But I couldn’t help wondering what Sam would want if he could choose his own life. Had he chosen this? Had he wanted to be some kind of perfect soldier, to serve his country?
What did he want now that he couldn’t remember his reasons for being here?
I grabbed the magazine and went downstairs. I tiptoed through the living room and down to the basement so I wouldn’t wake Dad. The lab door slid open when I punched in the code.
It was nearly ten, and the lights in the boys’ rooms were off. I hesitated just past the opening of the hallway. The magazine suddenly felt cumbersome in my hand. I started to turn away.
A light flicked on behind me. I stopped, turned back.
Sam stood at the glass wall, barefoot, shirtless, in his usual loose gray pants. “Hey, Anna,” he said, but the words came out unsure, heavy. His shoulders hung crooked. When I took a step closer, he scratched his jaw, and looked down.
Was Sam… uneasy?
“Hi.”
“Listen. I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
I folded my arms and the magazine crinkled. “It’s no big deal.”
He nodded, then gestured at the magazine. “What is that?”
I held it out, suddenly unsure of my reasons for coming down here. “It’s just… You don’t have any pictures on your wall.”
A frown pulled at the center of his brow. “You came down here to ask about my bare walls?”
“
Yes.” I ran my teeth over my bottom lip, glancing at the other rooms, waiting for the boys to stir, at the same time hoping they wouldn’t. “Why haven’t you hung anything?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t seem like there was any point.”
I inched forward. “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”
His eyes moved from the magazine in my hand up to my face. “What’s this about?”
“Just answer the question.”
I wanted to know everything about Sam. I wanted him to trust me with his secrets. And since he couldn’t remember most of his life before the lab, asking him this was as close as I would get.
“I think I like water.”
“The ocean?”
“It doesn’t matter what kind.”
I held up the magazine. The cover was of a tropical island getaway. “Maybe this?” I flipped through it until I landed on a two-page spread of the ocean. I tore the pages out and put them in the hatch. “Take them.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “To hope.”
He held the pictures up and studied them. After an excruciatingly long moment, he asked, “Do you have tape?”
I fished around in my desk and pulled out a roll of packing tape. I slid it through the hatch.
“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” he asked.
I knew I wanted to do things, see things, but what and where, I didn’t know. I stuck a hand in my jeans pocket. I thought of the Italian village I’d sketched. “Probably somewhere in Europe.”
“Where are we, exactly?”
“You mean… you don’t know?” We never talked about it. I just thought he knew. “Treger Creek, New York. It’s small. An everyone-knows-everyone kind of place.”
“Does it say in my files where I was before here? What state I used to live in?”
I tried to look anywhere but at the bareness of his torso. He had easily seven inches on me, so it was difficult to look him in the eye. “Not in the files I’ve read, but there are others upstairs.”
“Could you look? I think it might help with the memory loss if I knew some details of my life before here.”
I’d tried breaking into the upstairs filing cabinets the previous winter, but Dad had caught me. I’d never seen him as mad as he was then, not even when I broke into the lab. I hadn’t dared try again.
But things were different now. For one, I had permission to be in the lab, which gave me permission to read the files, right? And two… well, Sam was asking me to look.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I can do that.”
“Thanks.” He leveled his shoulders. Any trace of the earlier discomfort had vanished.
I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “Well… I should probably go. We’ll have to finish that chess game later. Tomorrow, maybe?”
“Sure. Good night, Anna.”
“ ’Night.”
I looked back and saw him taping the magazine pages above his desk. I thought of the awkward way he fidgeted when he apologized, and I couldn’t help smiling.
“Oh, by the way,” I said, before I punched in the code to leave, “Connor is coming tomorrow… so… I just thought you should know.”
His expression darkened. “Thanks for the warning. I hate his surprise visits.”
“Me, too.”
The code to get into the lab was 17-25-10. Seventeen was Mom’s birthday; twenty-five was the date of Mom and Dad’s anniversary; and ten was for October, the month they got married. Dad, being predictably predictable, set the code to the filing cabinet in the study as 10-17-25. It took me only four tries to get it right.
When the drawer popped open, the tracks squeaked and I froze, listening. The rest of the house was silent save for the ticking of the clock above Dad’s fireplace.
I found Sam’s files in the second drawer. There were five green legal-sized folders, each of which held smaller manila folders. I pulled out the two farthest back and sat down with them on the leather couch.
Seeing nothing worthwhile in the first folder—just basic logs and charts—I moved on to the second. That’s where I found tiny bits of information about Sam’s life at the start of the program.
There were notes on plain paper in a barely legible handwriting I didn’t recognize:
Sam shows extreme signs of aggression and
defiance to anyone within the program.
And later:
Sam slipped seamlessly into the leader role.
The others allowed him in without hesitation.
Must continue to isolate this characteristic
to replicate in future groups.
I skimmed a few more pages, stopping when something caught my eye.
Sam has escaped us again. Alerts sent to
all the proper channels. Possible aliases—Samuel
Eastlock. Samuel Cavar. Samuel Bentley.
Sam had escaped? Why would he have had to? And more than once?
Apparently his relationship with the Branch stretched further back than I’d thought. Sensing that I was closer to the information Sam wanted, I scanned through the stack of papers, looking for the name of a town, something concrete I could tell him about his life before all this.
Sam and team found at Port. Wiped. OP ALPHA
will soon commence.
Port—Sam had said he liked water. But what was OP ALPHA?
I kept reading, but an hour later, I had made it through two files and really had nothing to show for it except more questions. I’d just gotten up to grab another folder when I heard the couch in the living room creak.
Dad.
I scrambled, straightening the files. I went to the cabinet to replace them, but accidentally opened the third drawer down. An empty file caught my eye, an old label still attached to the outside.
O’BRIEN, it read.
Dad coughed.
I stuffed Sam’s file in the correct drawer and made sure it locked as I closed it. Tiptoeing up the stairs, I made it to the second floor without a sound and finally let out the breath I’d been holding.
Dad never checked on me at night, but still I hurried into my pajamas and climbed into bed. The sheets felt cool to the touch. I lay awake for a while, staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sam’s file.
Why had he needed me to look in the first place? Why hadn’t Dad filled in the blanks for Sam a long time ago?
Unless the Branch wanted to keep something about Sam’s past from him. And if that was the case, I was violating protocol by sharing the details.
I didn’t like going against Dad, but Sam deserved to know about his past, didn’t he?
5
I SET MY ALARM CLOCK FOR SIX THE next morning, thinking I’d sneak into the lab before Dad got up. I must have turned it off without realizing it, though, because I didn’t get up until after eight. By the time I headed downstairs, Dad was already in the lab. I was kind of relieved; I still wasn’t sure how much to tell Sam.
Stomach grumbling, I threw a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. I popped a few ibuprofen and massaged the healing muscle in my back. My lack of sleep the night before hadn’t done me any favors, and my next combat class was just a couple of days away. I’d been in the course for several years, and the instructor was not the type of guy to go easy on me.
Not that I was complaining. I always left the studio feeling strong, agile, and powerful. Sometimes I wished the boys could see me in class—I wanted them to know I was capable of more than just making cookies and filing charts.
As I waited for my toast to finish, I stood at the sink, watching the tree branches sway in the wind. In the distance, a trail of dust billowed behind a line of black Suburbans traveling down our dirt road.
I straightened. Connor. I’d forgotten he was coming today.
I ran back upstairs, threw off my pajamas, and dressed quickly in jeans and a henley. I slipped into a pair of tennis shoes as the trucks pulled into the driveway and parked wherever they could find r
oom. Riley was the first to climb out of his vehicle; behind him came Connor, followed by several agents.
The men shadowed Connor to the side of the house. He didn’t bother knocking before opening the door into the mudroom, and I met him and Riley at the few steps up to the kitchen.
“Morning,” Connor said, flashing me a smile of unnaturally white teeth. Tall and gorgeous, he was charismatic on every level, and often plied me with compliments I knew weren’t true.
I tried to avoid him whenever he came for a check-in because he made my skin crawl, but this visit was different. They’d never shown up with an entourage before. And certainly not dressed like this.
The agents wore black jackets with armored quilting at the shoulders and elbows. The necks of the jackets were high and close-fitting, made tighter by a fastened strap.
Over the jackets they wore thick black vests. Handguns hung from the waists of their black pants, and their hands were hidden in black gloves with plates of rubber on the fingers.
They clustered in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, waiting for further direction. In addition to Connor and Riley, I counted a total of seven men and one woman. Two agents per boy.
None of them made eye contact with me, even when I stared. Were those bulletproof vests? I was suddenly on full alert.
“Come with me.” Connor led his team to the basement. I followed silently at the back, afraid of being caught and sent away.
Riley punched in the entrance code at the lab and the door rushed open. Dad’s voice carried out as he greeted Connor, then Riley.
“Arthur.” Connor clasped Dad by the shoulder. “We got word this morning from OB that we’re ending the project. We’re taking the units.”
Dad said nothing. The agents broke into pairs in front of each cell. Connor and Riley murmured to Dad while Sam stared down the men at his room, fists clenched. I caught Trev’s eyes and saw panic.
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