3. The Memory Hunter #2
A faint memory presses at the edge of the room, her laugh, bright and impatient, telling me to stop treating the world like a laboratory hazard label.
I keep my hands flat beside the photograph.
“She never landed in London.”
No one interrupts.
“The airline record was altered. The agency dissolved. The representative never existed under the name she used. Police treated it as adult travel, then voluntary disappearance, then a cold file with polite language and no movement.”
Angus’s expression goes flat. “Meridian.”
“I didn’t know the name then. I found it later. Piece by piece.”
I look down at Thandiwe’s face, at everything Meridian stole and everything I still can’t prove.
“I’ve never found her,” I say, keeping my voice even because the alternative helps no one. “I don’t know where they moved her. I don’t know if she even survived the first year. I don’t know if she remembers her own name.”
Janice’s eyes change at that.
“But I found their methods. Their clinicians. Their drugs. Their arrogance.” I lift my gaze from Thandiwe’s photograph to the screen where Bliss Fontaine’s grey painting waits, two women connected by men who thought identity could be harvested and rewritten.
“And I’ll use what I know to undo what they’ve done. ”
Steve leans forward slightly. “This isn’t only professional for you.”
“No.”
“Can you stay clear?”
It’s the right question. The only question.
I hold his gaze. “I won’t pretend I’m detached. Detached people did this. But I can stay precise.”
Victor watches me for several seconds, then gives one small nod.
I turn Thandiwe’s photograph back toward myself and slide it into its sleeve.
“My sister taught me that a voice can fill a room before anyone understands the words,” I say. “Meridian tried to take that from her. They’re trying to take color from Bliss.”
The photograph disappears into my jacket.
“They chose the wrong things to steal.”
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1515 hours
Victor brings up Bliss Fontaine’s full file, and everyone’s attention shifts to the images.
Her intake photograph appears first. Twenty-eight. French-Canadian. Wild blonde curls falling around her face in a way that looks impossible to tame and probably shouldn’t be. Grey-green eyes. Paint on one finger, visible even in a cropped image, a streak of cobalt caught near the edge of her nail.
Then her work fills the screen.
Color moves across the first canvas like it’s trying to escape the frame.
Crimson, gold, violet, violent blue, all layered with texture so alive the painting seems less made than released.
The next piece is larger, a mixed-media construction of torn paper, wire, resin, and paint, chaotic at first glance, but structured beneath it with the precision of someone who understands exactly how close beauty can stand to disorder without collapsing.
Janice leans forward slightly. “That’s Bliss’s work?”
“Yes,” Victor says. “Before admission.”
He changes the image.
The next canvas is grey.
Not restful grey. Not storm grey or silver or mist over water. Empty grey, flattened and obedient, spread over the canvas in hesitant layers that look like someone painting with permission instead of need.
Another follows. Grey again. Then another.
The same hand made them. I can see it in the pressure, the angle, the way she still knows where negative space belongs. Technique survives even when the self is under assault. That may be the cruelest evidence in the room. They haven’t taken her skill. They’ve taught it to kneel.
My jaw sets before I can stop it.
Steve notices. So does Janice. I don’t correct my face quickly enough.
“You recognize something?” Victor asks.
I keep my attention on the screen. “Yes.”
“From the protocol?”
“No.”
The word comes out quieter than I intend.
I step closer to the display as Victor cycles back to the first painting.
The vivid one. The one built in fire and argument and music.
I know this canvas. Not from a file. Not from an evidence bundle.
From a gallery wall in Montreal three years ago, under warm lights, surrounded by people pretending they understood it because the alternative was admitting it had caught them somewhere unprotected.
“I told you I’d seen her work before,” I say.
Janice looks from the painting to me, her expression shifting as the earlier mention finds context.
“At the Montreal gallery show,” she says.
“Yes. I was there for a conference. A colleague dragged me to the opening because he thought I needed more culture and less hotel coffee.”
A memory surfaces despite my best efforts to keep it clinical. Snow melting along the pavement outside. Wet wool coats. White wine. Laughter and polite observations in French and English. And that painting, blazing from the far wall like it had no interest in being polite.
“Her work was extraordinary.”
Mercy studies the image. “Did you meet her?”
“No.” I pause, and the admission costs more than it should. “I saw her across the room. She was speaking with a woman I assume was her mother. I remember thinking she looked exactly like her paintings. Bright. Untidy. Impossible to dim.”
Now the screen shows grey again.
No one speaks.
I look at the muted canvas, at the careful strokes where color should be, and something in me settles into a shape I know too well. Purpose. Narrower than rage. More useful.
“They didn’t only suppress memory,” I say. “They interrupted relationship. Between Bliss and her work. Bliss and her body. Bliss and every version of herself that knew how to reach for color without asking permission.”
Victor’s voice is quiet. “Can you use the paintings as anchors?”
“Yes. But carefully. Too much too soon could flood the system. We need sequence. Her mother’s account. Images of earlier work. Familiar materials. Controlled exposure.”
“And you can build that?” Steve asks.
I look at the grey canvas one last time.
“Three years ago, I stood in front of that painting and forgot to breathe,” I say. “Now she can’t remember making it.”
The room holds around the words.
I turn back to Victor.
“I will give her back every color they stole.”