Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“Do tell, darling. I’m on the edge of my seat.”
“Well.” I relax a little. “Of course, you know what happened to Locke.” Her smile tightens a little. “Yep. He took it once. Once, Patricia. And he was caught up in it for… what was it?” My eyes roll up as I pretend to think. “Decades?” I whistle. “Twenty years. Talk about a freak show, right?”
“We changed the formula immediately.”
“Oh, I’m aware. Mercer told me all about the change in formula. But this?” I hold up the pill case. “This pill, Patricia? It’s the original formula.”
“Is this your threat, Nova? You’re going to what? Force it down my throat?”
“I wish.” I almost giggle these words out. “I would love. Like love, love, love to shove this entire pill case down your throat. And then I’d laugh my ass off as we gave you your new life. Hmm. What kind of life would that be?”
She scowls. “I thought you were getting to the point?”
“Oh, I am. You see, as much as I would like to choke you with this pill and steal your life the way you stole mine, I don’t need to do that.”
I do one of those dramatic pauses.
“Are you going to tell me? Or should I guess?”
“Let me ask you something.”
“Ask away, dear.” She’s just as smarmy as her daughter. It’s so gross.
“Have you done any more trials?”
“No. You were the last.”
“Awesome. I’m honored.”
“You were a fine lab rat.”
“But here’s the thing. That recipe, or protocol, or manufacturing instructions you have for your cool new fantasy drug?” Yep. She sees where I’m going. Because her smarmy smile falls into a tight line. ‘That’s right. It’s the one that fucks people up the first time out.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, Patricia. I’m absolutely not. Think about it. You gave Mercer all the power.” It’s weird calling him by that name, since it’s her name too. But I can’t call him Silas. “Mercer, Patricia. A genius. But not just a genius. A genius with a dark side.”
I let out a long breath as her eyes dart back and forth, watching me. Wondering if I’m telling the truth.
I am.
I one-hundred-percent am.
“Let me tell you something now, Nova.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear it. Do go on.”
“You will never know what’s true and what’s not. Your mind is… ruined. Let me give you an example. Think back now. That last trial when you were talking with Mercer on your first night. The two of you were discussing your dissertation work and you called him a compartmentalized person.”
I get a sick feeling in my gut. But Mercer’s voice is here, calming me. It doesn’t matter, he’s telling me. And I believe him. Because he is the strongest of us all.
“Do you remember how Mercer reacted? Hmm? Do you know where you got that word? You said it was from your first research project. And Mercer was adamant that it wasn’t. Because he didn’t remember. And the reason he didn’t remember was because that was your project in a scenario the year before. We changed it.”
She waits for me to say something. But I stay quiet, even without Mercer’s voice in my head giving me tips.
“It leaked through. Do you have any idea how many different versions of this drug you’ve taken to get the proper formulation? And maybe Locke only did take it once, but it messed him up for good, didn’t it? And Mercer. Don’t get me started. He’s taken far more versions than you have. They don’t know what’s going on. They make things up. So the only one of them you can trust, if that’s what you want to call it, is Travis Olsen. Because he wasn’t even good enough to use in an experimental drug trial. Ironic, isn’t it? The only man you can trust now, is the very man who sold you to me, darling.”
I know she’s right. We’ve talked about this.
“You should be thanking me.”
“For what?” I scoff.
“For setting you free. For giving you all that money. At the very least, you can thank me for the child. Mercer’s child.”
And this… this sets me off. So I go in for the kill.
“You used me in illegal scientific brainwashing experiments, Patricia.”
She purses her lips when I use this word.
But it’s an accurate word.
That first night in the last trial, when Mercer and I were talking about the project in his office, he asked me a question. “What are we doing here?”
And I gave him some answers. Satisfactory answers.
But not the real answer.
Because brainwashing is the real answer.
The Institute is a real place. They can fuck up our memories all they want and call it just another fantasy, but that’s the lie. That island is real. I’m sure it’s been vacated by now. I’m sure every one of those buildings are empty.
But the Institute is a real place and they did real experiments on desperate people. There is some kind of military connection. Maybe FBI or CIA—fill in the blank with your favorite three-letter government organization—and they pulled our strings like puppets just to see if they could wipe us out and put someone else in our brains instead.