Chapter Thirty-Eight
Caius
G uilt consumes me.
I gave Dad the answer he wanted. By choosing Calista, I’m choosing him —asking for his help.
That means abandoning Romy.
For now.
What he doesn’t realize is that when I can physically move on my own, and once I have my sister in my grasp, I’m going to do everything in my power to get Romy back too.
“There you go,” Dad says, once he’s helped settle me into a wheelchair the nurse brought in. “I’ll take you to her.”
Is she here?
In this hospital?
Am I even in a hospital?
Dad begins pushing my wheelchair. The nurse opens the door to assist in our exit. As soon as we emerge from my room, I’m hit with a cold sense of familiarity. I claw at memories, but the drugs in my veins are making things murky.
I know this place.
I’m eager to see Calista. And yet, Dad seems to be pushing me in slow motion. The haze in my mind keeps me from fully grasping onto reality.
Who am I?
Caius Crowne.
Why do I feel as though I’m fifteen years old again, a slave to a torturous life I want no part of?
We pass by room after room, all the doors closed, until we come to one that’s open.
Is this it?
Do I finally get to hold my sister in my arms?
Will I even recognize her?
Doubtful. My brain has always been muddled when it comes to Calista. It’s like I can’t recall her features at all. I have no memories of our childhood together. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed her or made her up in my head.
The doll.
Right, the doll. I remembered the doll as clear as day. It was the same doll I found on the table at the coffee shop. How long ago was that? Yesterday? Last week? I have no concept of time or how long I’ve been held captive in this place.
Calista is real.
Dad pushes me into a room where a young girl sleeps soundly on a bed, hooked to machines that are monitoring her vitals.
It’s not Calista.
It’s Kaitlyn.
Calista can’t be Kaitlyn because too much time has passed. The numbers don’t compute.
“Kaitlyn’s surgery went well,” Dad says, patting my shoulder. “I thought you’d want that reassurance since she’s along the way.”
He’s right. Relief floods through me at seeing her.
“Surgery for what?”
“Nothing to worry yourself about right now,” he says. “Let’s go see your sister.”
My heart races in my chest, eager to get to the next leg of our journey. He pushes my wheelchair until we come to a crossroads of hallways. Doc Junior and Seth . I don’t understand why he’s been meddling in my life, teasing me about Calista. None of this makes sense.
Doc Junior points and then Dad begins pushing me in that direction down another hallway. We enter a dark room. I feel like my chest is going to explode in anticipation.
“The three of us should be able to get him in there,” Doc Junior says from behind us.
The light turns on, revealing a room, and in it is a chair with a strange contraption attached to the headrest. It faces the wall.
Nowhere in this room is Calista.
Have I been tricked?
Why?
I attempt to lift myself out of the chair, but whatever shit they’ve given me has made my muscles practically useless. My snarls and curses are my only form of resistance as Doc Junior, Seth, and Dad manhandle me from the wheelchair to the chair in the room.
“Stop,” I hiss. “What are you doing?”
They’re efficient in strapping my ankles and wrists. Then they brace my head into the contraption, locking it into place. Despite my furious name calling and threats, Doc Junior and Seth quickly attach a multitude of leads to my chest, neck, and head.
What are their plans?
“You lied,” I say to Dad, who’s staying out of my line of sight. “I fucking hate you, Orion .”
“I haven’t lied, Son,” Dad states coolly. “I’m going to show you what you asked for.”
Something clicks and then a video projects onto the wall. It shows a lobby or common area where several children of all ages are sitting in chairs. A few adults huddle together as if speaking in private.
A sudden flash of clarity burns hot inside my head. I know this place. I’ve been there. In fact…
A boy with dark hair and a stiff posture, no more than fifteen years old, stands near a set of doors. His arms are by his sides, hands fisted in anger. Despite his standoffish appearance, I can practically feel his pain.
I know his pain because the boy is me.
The video is the grainy quality of a security camera, but I recognize the furniture, decor, and linoleum—the same linoleum beneath me now.
I’m here.
I’m back at that place. The place that made me crazy and then tried to cure the insanity they created. Dad saved me and put me through his own methods to “fix” me.
The boy, me, stares at something just out of view. He’s angry, disgusted, frightened. My gut twists at the memory.
I went through so much abuse from…
Another blank inside my mind.
I’d been so eager to block it out, I played right into Dad’s efforts to make me forget.
What am I looking at in the video?
Then two people come into view.
A man, a monster, my doctor and guardian until Dad rescued me.
And her.
My sister. Calista.
Her blond hair has been braided neatly into two pigtails. The doll she had is now in his hand and she doesn’t seem pleased about it.
The face of the girl—my sister—is wrong, right? It’s the same face as the girl in the picture I’d found sitting on my hotel bed. They’re not just connected, they are the same.
How?
I blink several times to see if I can clear away the confusion of what I am seeing. If my hands were free, I’d rub at my eyes until a girl who looks like me comes into view. This one I’m watching doesn’t have dark hair like me and my biological parents.
They approach me in the video. His voice is soft but clear, directly being fed to my ears by a speaker attached to the contraption.
“I’ll take good care of Calista.”
He looks at the doll in his hand when he says it. He’s not speaking to me in that moment. He’s speaking to the girl.
How can that be?
Then he speaks to me in the video. “You’re being adopted, kiddo. I’ve done all I can do.”
Even as a grown man, hearing him say “kiddo” undoes me. My skin crawls and flashes of his mental torture starts assaulting me against my will. It takes everything in me to focus on the video and not my horrible memories.
The two of them walk away and disappear through a door. In the video, I stare after them, unmoving.
And then Dad appears with Ted.
I know the rest from here. He adopts me, takes me to his lodge, uses CUP programming to alter my mind to the point I don’t recognize it and question my past, and then brings me into the fold of his dark, twisted world as a partner in it—an heir to an evil empire.
The video stops and then I hear a voice behind me that chills me to my soul.
“So lovely to see you back here, kiddo. We have a second chance to fix you.”
I know the voice. The voice is the man from the video. My tormentor. The one who took her and did God only knows what.
He steps into my line of sight and my brain takes several seconds to catch up. The vague man from my memories isn’t some scary guy. No, he has a charming smile and a face that makes people want to follow him.
He’s the President of the United States, after all.
Dr. Huxley.
Hatred at myself consumes me. How could I fall victim to Dad’s programming and let him conveniently wipe Huxley from my mind? They must’ve all felt pleased as fuck when I was at the event, meeting President Huxley, and having no idea that he was a man whom I hated with every fiber of my being.
The betrayal I feel is sickening.
Huxley is a monster. He was cruel in his effort to “treat” me. I’d been a devastated kid who’d lost his parents. Huxley took me in and used me as a science experiment. He thought all his fucked-up methods could fix me—heal me of my debilitating grief.
I was too headstrong, though.
Mentally fought him every step of the way.
He wanted to break me, but I wouldn’t let him.
So rather than admitting defeat, he let Dad adopt me. I was forced to endure new psychological warfare against my fragile mind. This time, headway was made. I think, deep down, I just wanted to feel safe and loved. I allowed myself to be manipulated.
I have to get out of here.
“You were a failure,” Huxley says, cocking his head to the side. “I worked so hard on you.”
Rage and hurt are a firestorm inside of me, but I’m unable to do anything about it. I’m back to the source of my torture.
“But look at what you’ve become,” he continues. “CUP did wonders for you when I couldn’t. It truly is remarkable.”
Memories flood back, whipping me over and over again, each lash more painful than the last. No wonder I kept this shit locked up tight. It fucking hurts.
My mind drifts to my parents. They’d been killed in a car accident. It crushed me. I’d even tried to swallow every damn pill in the house to escape the pain of losing them. All my efforts were for naught. After many failed foster homes, boys’ homes, and group homes, where I fought for my life and dignity, I’d ended up in this psychopath’s steely clutches, which was a thousand times worse than anything I could’ve dreamed of before.
“From what your father tells me,” Huxley says, frowning, “you’ve been slipping. All because of that girl of yours.” He bends over so that his face is inches from mine. “Lucky for you, kiddo, my son and his friend have come up with incredible technology. No longer will we have to rely on our previous methods of rewiring someone’s brain. Stem Lock is going to change everything for you.”
I close my eyes so I don’t have to look at him, but then my neck is shot with a bolt of electricity that makes me cry out in pain. What the actual fuck?
“Pay attention,” Doc Junior says from nearby. “No sleeping.”
I want to kill that motherfucker.
“You know, it was disheartening to me when I’d learned you’d fixated on that doll,” Huxley says sadly. “It just goes to show you were broken and beyond what I could do to fix you.”
He continues speaking, but I can’t focus on his words. I’m too busy connecting the rest of the dots in this horrible scene.
“I’ll take good care of Calista.”
He’d been speaking to the girl in the video about the doll. Calista was the doll’s name, not the girl’s. He used the doll to lure her into his torture chamber where he no doubt did his best to scramble her mind.
My gut clenches painfully.
I’ve been searching for something that’s been right in front of my fucking face.
I know who the girl is.
Not family, but a figment of my imagination that tried to put together pieces that didn’t fit in an effort not to forget the girl who I knew was going to suffer the same fate I had. I wanted to save her like I couldn’t save myself.
The girl isn’t my sister.
The girl is Romy.