Mindwalker (37 page)

“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.”

“We
treated
them.”

“You expect me to believe that? After everything I've seen?”

“Do you know much about those children, Lain? They
were all orphans. They'd suffered severe abuse and trauma, and the resulting psychological damage was beyond anything that medication or Conditioning could repair. The treatments were new, and our methods were less sophisticated than they are now. Some risk was inevitable. But the knowledge we gained from those early treatments was invaluable. The profession of neural modification therapy—Mindwalkers, like you and me—would not exist otherwise.”

Vertigo rolls over me.

Early memory modification treatments. Of course. I remember those scars in Steven's brain: primitive and clumsy, but still unmistakable in their purpose. Those experimental treatments paved the way for the Mindgate, for IFEN's shiny new therapy, for Ian, for me. The adult volunteers Father worked with afterward simply fine-tuned the technology. The real research had already been done.

I think about Lizzie's blank stare, and Ian's words flash through my head:
There's only so many times you can modify a person's memories before his brain turns to mush.
I start to tremble.

“They needed help,” he says, his voice neutral and matter-of-fact, “and we needed to test a new therapy. That's how all progress happens.”

I shake my head fiercely. “Then why did you hide it? Why didn't you use adult volunteers?”

He hesitates. “Children make better subjects. Their brains are more malleable, more resilient. We knew that the younger our patients, the better our chance of success.”

My nails dig into my palms. Of course. But the public wouldn't condone experiments on children, so he simply took them. Discreetly abducting them from state orphanages,
probably paying off the caretakers to keep them quiet. Children without homes, without families. Ones who wouldn't be missed.

“We weighed the potential good against the potential harm,” he continues in that maddeningly calm tone, “as all scientists must do when pioneering a new treatment. Your father understood the necessity as well as I did.”

“No.” I shake my head again. “My father wouldn't have participated in something like this. You must have forced him. You—”

“I didn't force him into anything. He knew what he was getting into. He just couldn't handle the emotional strain. Afterward, he burdened himself with pointless, masochistic guilt and refused treatment until his mind collapsed. His death was tragic, particularly because it was so very preventable. It didn't need to happen that way. Had he simply agreed to Conditioning and moved on, he would still be with us today.” For an instant, regret softens his features. “His weakness was in being unable to see past his own moral squeamishness to the larger picture. After all, we achieved our goal. Steven Bent was the first truly successful memory modification ever performed. He completely forgot his early childhood—which was, I assure you, horrific. He grew up in an underfunded and poorly monitored facility, where he was starved and routinely abused by caretakers and fellow wards alike. By age eight, he was already suicidal.”

A bitter knot forms in my throat. It's hard to believe, at times, that the universe can be so cruel—that an innocent soul can be subjected to so much sorrow and injustice in a single
lifetime. “So you removed his original pain and gave him new pain.”

“The sacrifices were, of course, regrettable. But we did not act out of cruelty. We took measures to ensure the children did not suffer unnecessarily.”

He dares to make excuses, even now. The blood pounds behind my eyes. A red rage is swelling inside me, and if it doesn't escape somehow, I'm going to explode. “Then why didn't you just erase Steven's memories of what happened at St. Mary's?” I squeeze the words between clenched teeth. “Why would you make him think he'd been kidnapped by a sadistic killer?”

He winces, as if I've brought up an embarrassing faux pas he committed at some social event. “That was … an unfortunate necessity. People were asking questions about those missing children, more questions than we expected. We needed an explanation for their disappearance. So I invented Emmett Pike. All his data—photographs, fingerprints, DNA, the autopsy report—is fabricated. He's nothing but information in a database. Obviously, we needed Steven to maintain our cover story as well. So we used a mixture of Conditioning, drugs, and hypnosis to tweak the visual and auditory details of his experiences at St. Mary's while keeping the emotional core of the memories.”

I feel sick. I wonder how Dr. Swan would react if I threw up on his pristine white suit. “I'm surprised you didn't just kill him, along with the others.”

“Kill a child in cold blood?” He looks offended. “What do you take me for?”

I almost laugh, but I have a feeling if I tried, it would come out as a scream.

Dr. Swan leans back in his chair, shoulders sagging. “I don't expect you to agree with what we did. You're still young, after all. Too young to understand. But regardless, what's done is done. The past can't be changed.”

“But you can take responsibility for what you did.”

“I
am
taking responsibility, by ensuring that their sacrifice is not in vain. Exposing the truth won't do any good at this point. In fact, it might do considerable harm. Think about it. If the public finds out what happened at St. Mary's, there will be outrage. People will turn against Mindwalkers, against IFEN. Against us. There'll be riots. Perhaps even another war.”

In a flash, I remember the documentaries of the pre-Republic days—the limp bodies on stretchers, covered with red-and-black burns from explosions, the chemical attacks that left people blinded and choking on their own blood. “You can't know that,” I say, but my voice falters.

“You've studied psychology,” he says patiently. “You understand how people think. They don't see outcomes. They don't see numbers and facts. They think in terms of narratives, of opposing teams. Heroes and villains. If they find out about the experiments, we will become the villains, and people will embrace the anarchy that came before us. Those six children are already dead. Nothing can save them now. Our focus should be on helping the living. Surely, we can agree on that much.”