“Now, the truth about your situation is this - you have a condition Dr. Garrison refers to as Reflexive Neurological Bias. It’s a theoretical medical condition that the company who pays me has been paying Dr. Garrison to research and develop for the last 10 years.”
Not much is known about RNB. Few experts in the field even believe in its existence. In fact, Dr. Garrison has been summarily laughed out of the profession because of his research and his insistence that this condition does in fact exist.”
Quincy broke in. “Then why would your company buy into this theory, if no one else does? Why is the word of this one man so compelling?”
The Colonel nodded approvingly. “An excellent question. With a beautifully simple answer - Dr. Garrison is a brilliant man. But you aren’t wrong - the field of science is full of brilliant men. What makes Garrison special is the irrefutable fact that he is an idealist. Most research doctors seek fame, fortune, publishing credentials. The research is always secondary to the recognition it might bring.”
The Colonel checked his phone one more time, nodding his head in approval, before tucking it away into his jacket pocket. “But Garrison already had all of that. He had the fame - he was widely sought across the globe and had his pick of cases on which to consult, as well as the money that went along with it. Instead, he simply saw a need - lives that could be saved, people that could be healed - and he wanted to fill that need wholeheartedly. The company had been watching him for some time, reading his research, seeing the possible applications. That is why they hired him. Why they gave him the money and autonomy he needed to pursue and develop his theory. And why we are having this conversation right now. Garrison identified you as one of the precious few who developed RNB following a traumatic brain injury. Not every injury results in RNB, you see. Garrison has some ideas on what might contribute to it but he hasn’t been able to isolate a specific contributing factor.”
Quincy sat quietly, watching and listening to the Colonel in a state of skepticism as he continued.
“One of the main difficulties in proving its existence has been how difficult it is to diagnose. It manifests differently in each case. Signs and symptoms are unique to each individual patient and often depend on the severity of the original injury.”
Quincy shook her head. “You’re insisting I have this...RNB...but based on its very definition, I can’t possibly.”
The Colonel glanced over. “How do you mean?”
“You told me RNB develops after some sort of head injury. A very specific type of traumatic brain injury, most likely. But I’ve never had a brain injury. That’s something that can’t be faked. I’m not sure what medical records Dr. Garrison is basing this ‘diagnosis’ off of, or that it’s even legal for him to have medical records without the patient’s permission,” she threw in caustically, “but they can’t be mine. A brain injury isn’t something a girl would forget.”
The Colonel smiled indulgently, which was more than a little disturbing. “You wouldn’t think so, wouldn’t you?”
He signaled and smoothly merged onto an obscure exit ramp, taking the first right into a small, dark parking area. He put the car in park and turned it off. Creepier and creepier. But Quincy didn’t think he had brought her all this way to kill her, not when it would have been easier and less messy to do so before he forced her into his car, so she turned towards him, waiting for him to continue.
“As strange as it may sound, I’m beginning to believe you when you say you don’t remember having a brain injury.”
“That’s not exactly what I said,” she pointed out. “I said I’ve never had one, not that I don’t remember it.”
“Did you know,” the Colonial asked suddenly, “that brain injuries are permanent? The tissue can heal and function can be restored, but the injury will always be there. Always be a part of the brain’s anatomy and chemistry. Isn’t that interesting?”
Quincy herself didn’t find it particularly thrilling. This whole thing had been one intense nightmare. She might believe it really was a nightmare except for one thing - the pain building inside her skull. She had been pushing it down ever since she had climbed in this guy’s car but the more he talked, the louder the noise was becoming. At least it was just one of her normal headaches, if such a thing existed. She should still be able to function. Of all her fears and worries, having a migraine and being incapacitated as her enemies closed in was her worst. But conversely, she found she didn’t want him to stop. Logan answered all of her questions with more questions. At least the Colonel was giving her the answers she was asking for, despite the fact that they were completely off-base.
“Listen,” she began but the Colonel cut her off.
“No. It’s time for you to listen,” he said, pinning her with a look. “Here it is. Eight years ago, you were involved in a hit-and-run accident. There were no witnesses and you were carrying no identification. You spent just over a month in a coma with a traumatic injury to your right temporal lobe, in the region of the thalamus specifically, and when you woke up, you had no memory. Of the incident. Of yourself. Nothing.”
Quincy wanted to interrupt but he was still staring her down, his eyes missing nothing in their penetrating appraisal, watching for some sort of recognition.
“You spent another month in the hospital, spending most of your time with physical therapists for your physical injuries and psychologists for your amnesia. Numerous imaging studies were done that showed a healing brain injury but nothing that should have resulted in long-term memory damage. And then one day, you disappeared.”
He leaned back against the car door, silent and watchful.
“Look,” Quincy tried again. “I don’t know how much clearer I can be. This girl that you’re describing, that you’re looking for, she’s not me. Eight years ago I was,” and here she faltered. But only for a moment. “I wasn’t in a coma, in a hospital with no memory. It just wasn’t me.”
She was surprised to hear how desperate she sounded but she supposed she shouldn’t be. This man had kidnapped her in the middle of the night, had stalked her across America and set a sniper on her, because he thought she was this amnesic girl with a weaponizable brain. This couldn’t be real.
“Then where were you eight years ago?” he asked calmly. “If you can prove to me now that you weren’t comatose in a hospital in Sacramento, then I will let you go.”
Quincy laughed a little hysterically. “How exactly do you expect me to prove that?”
The drum beat in her head was approaching its crescendo but she stubbornly pushed back.
“I have proof,” he said quietly. He took her sudden silence as permission and reached into the back seat for a small tablet. It took him a moment but when he flipped it around towards her, she could see a black and white still, enlarged and slightly grainy.
“Surveillance cameras caught you as you were leaving the hospital. I ran facial recognition on Kara Scott in Boise. And I ran it again off a picture Mr. Auberdeen sent after he made contact.”
She took the tablet and held it closer to her face. She couldn’t look away. Because it was her. It was her, leaving a hospital in some town she didn’t remember ever being in, wearing a hairstyle she didn’t remember having, in a ripped, torn jacket she definitely didn’t remember owning.
“What is this?” she whispered. When she got no response, she looked up. “What IS this?”
“It is exactly what it seems,” the Colonel answered serenely. “This is proof that you are who Dr. Garrison thought you were. Case file number twelve, RNB patient Jane Doe from Sacramento University hospital. Whether you remember or not, this is you.”
The noise in her head, the clanging drum beat that had been building in intensity for the last two hours, died instantly. The absence of it was almost as painful and shocking as the noise itself. Her head suddenly felt empty, like it had too much space to fill, and a wave of dizziness swept over her.
Quincy handed the tablet back to the Colonel and turned away
. She didn’t want to have to look at him and see his absolute certainty. She didn’t want to see anything at the moment. She didn’t understand. That picture, she couldn’t argue with it. She wanted to, but something deep inside of her seemed to acknowledge the truth of it, even if she couldn’t quite admit it to herself yet. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. It was still night but there was just a faint brightening on the horizon to her right. East. So they were traveling west. Quincy could only assume the Colonel was taking her to wherever his company stored these RNB patients the Colonel had been hired to round up.
She spoke without opening her eyes. “How many of us?”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked politely, either misunderstanding or pretending to misunderstand the question.
“How many of these patients have you kidnapped and turned over to the company?” She took in a steadying breath and turned her head to look back at him. “You said I was case file number twelve. I assume that means there are at least that many of us. Am I the last one or are you still looking for others?”
“Ah,” he said. “Another valid question. I’m glad to see the shock of the night hasn’t diminished your reasoning abilities. I can’t say the same for some of the others who’ve sat where you are now.” He glanced at his watch. A very slight tightening of his lips suggesting he was frustrated. They must be waiting on someone, Quincy realized. Someone who was running late.
“When Dr. Garrison left the company, he took as much of his research as he could get away with. The rest, he attempted to destroy. We were able to recover the majority of the patient files he had accumulated. Unfortunately, they have been transcribed from their original into Dr. Garrison’s own shorthand. A very difficult thing, trying to read a doctor’s notes. But slowly we have been piecing together the information. Enough to help identify some of the patients. We have people trying to crack more of the files now and others searching for unknowns who fit the profile Garrison put together.”
The back passenger door of the car jerked open and Quincy jumped. The Colonel, however, merely glanced at his watch again.
“You’re late,” he said quietly.
“Well, I was halfway to Baltimore, wasn’t I?” Brandon snapped back.
“Mind your tongue boy. The girl outsmarted you. Take the lesson and move on.” The Colonel allowed a faint trace of iron in his voice when he spoke, enough to remind everyone in the car who the authority belonged to.
“Miss O’Connell, I believe you know my associate Mr. Auberdeen.” Quincy suppressed the shudder. She could feel him behind her, staring. Seething. He apparently didn’t appreciate being made to look the fool in front of his boss.
“We’ve met,” she said shortly. Having the sniper that tried to kill you sitting in the seat behind you was unnerving, to say the least, but she’d rather kiss the man than let him know he was getting under her skin.
The Colonel put the car in drive and headed back onto the interstate. “Mr. Auberdeen is relatively new to our organization, though he came highly recommended. He’s one of our trackers. When you managed to disappear for the second time, I turned my attention to others on the list. But I assigned your case to Mr. Auberdeen and I must say, despite his rather lackluster performance over the last week, he located you with respectable speed.”
“If he found me so fast, why did it take three months for him to try to take me out?” Quincy asked, more curious than she probably should be.
“Because we needed proof. You fit the profile of patient twelve, but so did several others. And I only identified you in Boise and Chicago because you ran. You disappeared so quickly, and so completely, and that was all the proof I needed.”
“What do you mean by that?” Quincy asked. “Why would running confirm my identity?”
“Because it isn’t the normal response,” he replied. “The normal response would be a complete lack of response. I’m very good at blending in. So the fact that you noticed me, that you sensed the threat I represented, and that you were able to mobilize quickly enough to escape told me everything I needed to know.”
He glanced in the rear view mirror, checking a car that was passing on the left. “I didn’t want you to run again but I did need some sort of reaction.”
“Which is where I came in,” Brandon added blandly from the backseat.
“You didn’t look anything like Kara Scott or Grace Elliott,” the Colonel added, “so we needed something else. Most of the RNB patients we have collected exhibited their abilities on a daily basis. We just had to watch and listen. You, my dear, have been an entirely different story.”
“I watched,” Brandon said. “I watched for weeks. But there was nothing.”
“You didn’t appear to be sensitive to external stimuli,” the Colonel said. “Those are the usual symptoms - sensitivity to loud noise, light, smells. Even being touched. But you didn’t share any of those concerns, at least that we could observe. So we had to get in closer. But how to do that without tipping you off?”
Quincy picked up the story. “So you insert someone into my life in as natural a way as possible. Someone who would blend in.”
She nodded her head, because it all made perfect sense. “He gets a job at the library. Not in the same department, but close enough to be able to watch without seeming out of place. And once that didn’t trip my danger sensors, you had him approach me directly. You know,” she said dryly over her shoulder, “stalking isn’t just a crime. It’s creepy, too.”
Creepy was the word some of the other library employees floated around about Brandon. She never knew if it bothered him but she pulled at that thread, hoping it might reveal a weak spot. If his job was to observe, he would have heard the things the other employees said about him, especially since the gossips didn’t make a secret of it. That he was weird. A loner. A creep.
There was a quiet rage in his voice when he spoke, so apparently she was right. “I don’t get paid to make friends. I get paid to do my job. And my job was you.”
She could practically hear his teeth grinding together. She imagined his face, flushed with anger, and smiled. The Colonel might be unflappable but his employee was not. She could work with that. But the anger was gone almost as quickly as it came and he leaned forward casually, draping his arms over the back of her seat, hands resting near her shoulders.
“You know, this could have all been avoided if you’d just gone out with me,” Brandon said silkily. “A nice dinner. A romantic walk beside the lake. A quick twist.” He mimicked his hands around her neck and gave a quick jerk. He smiled. “And then on to the next target by breakfast.”
It took all she had but she didn’t respond to the threat or the desire in his voice. He might have tried to kill her back in Sheraton, might have even looked forward to it, but the Colonel had made it clear the orders had changed. He was no threat to her right now. No lethal threat, at least.
The Colonel cleared his throat and Brandon leaned back slowly, settling in.
“As I said before, Mr. Auberdeen is rather new to our organization. He’s still a bit wild. Unrestrained. At the moment, I have no desire to kill you Miss O’Connell. You’re worth more to the company alive than dead. But make no mistake.” The Colonel continued to drive, not bothering to look at her. But she could hear the warning in his voice. “I will not risk losing you again. If you attempt to escape, you will be killed. There will be no more chances. Do you understand?”
Quincy turned back to the window. “I understand,” she murmured quietly. And she did understand. Didn’t mean she was going to listen though.
Chapter 46
Auberdeen
Brandon Auberdeen was angry. He came by it very easily, being angry by nature. But this wasn’t the usual anger. This was a slowly burning rage. A fire that crept over him quietly, crawling through his thoughts and sinking deep into his skin. He would not be bested by some nothing of a girl. He leaned forward, draping his arms along the back of the seat in front of him, barely
brushing her neck with his hands. He was careful to stay just out of her line of sight. The fear response increased exponentially when you took sight out of the equation. What one imagines is always far worse than the reality, and Brandon wanted her to imagine the very worst. She had made him look the fool in front of his boss twice now, never mind the Colonel had lost her twice himself.
“You know, this could have all been avoided if you’d just gone out with me,” he said conversationally. “A nice dinner. A romantic walk beside the lake. A quick twist.”
He briefly wrapped his hands around her neck, ghosting over her throat and jaw as he did so. “And then on to the next target by breakfast.”
Brandon was well-aware the deck was stacked against him. The Colonel had never quite taken to him, preferring to use other operatives for important assignments and keeping closer tabs on him than the others. But that hadn’t mattered to Brandon. Every man had to earn his stripes and he knew he would eventually prove his worth. He felt like he had been making good progress, too. He had located the girl, who was working in a library and calling herself Quincy this time. He hadn’t been offended when the Colonel had ordered him to observe but not engage. Reconnaissance was important - know your enemy. The Colonel wanted to be absolutely sure this was case file number twelve, alias Kara Scott, alias Grace Elliot. And she had proven herself with every test Brandon threw at her. He had rather enjoyed that part, to be honest. Yes, he could admit that hurting the woman at the bus station had been extreme but it had also been exceedingly satisfying. And the large payout had been worth the risk in the long run.
Watching the girl snap into ‘brain mode’ had fascinated him. It was part of what had initially convinced him she was his target, in fact. Watching her transform from shell-shocked bystander into blood-soaked hero-of-the-day at the bus station had been almost alluring. Seductive. The violence in him had responded ferociously to the tension in the atmosphere - the blood, the fear, the chaos. He had fully expected his victim to die. He had sliced very cleanly through her jugular, after all. The fact that the girl had managed to save her was testament to how vast her condition really was. How useful it could be.
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