21. Sneak Peek Of Brainwashing Bliss #3
“So, they don’t need to hold someone forever,” she says. “They only need to hold them long enough.”
Matthias gives a small nod. “Long enough to make resistance feel unreliable. Long enough to make escape feel irrational. Long enough to make a victim accept a new version of reality because the old one no longer feels accessible.”
Dr. Tran's expression is grim. “By that stage, even a successful rescue isn't the end of the work. Recovery becomes rebuilding a person's trust in their own mind.”
The silence that follows is heavier than any of us expected.
I look at the clinical notes on the screen and think about every locked door we’ve broken open since Destiny. Every chain, every guard, every perimeter fence. Those were brutal, but at least they were visible.
This is different.
This is a cage built inside the mind.
***
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1000 hours
Jan doesn’t move beside me, but I feel the change in her before I see it.
Her hand has gone still on top of her notebook, pen resting between her fingers without making another mark.
Across the table, Dr. Josh leans forward slightly, his attention moving between the screen and Jan with the quiet focus of a man who knows when clinical information has stopped being theoretical.
Matthias remains on the monitor, composed and steady, but something in his expression has shifted since Jan asked her question. Less professor now. More witness.
“What you’re describing,” Dr. Josh says, “isn’t only chemical interference.
It’s coercive control supported by neurobiological disruption.
Isolation, repetition, authority dependence, reward-and-punishment cycles, all intensified by medication.
The drugs make the mind more vulnerable, but the environment tells it what to accept. ”
Jan swallows once, her gaze fixed on Bliss Fontaine’s photograph. I slide my hand under the table and rest it lightly on her knee.
She doesn’t look at me. Her hand covers mine anyway.
Matthias watches the small movement through the camera, then lowers his gaze briefly to the file in front of him.
“My sister was taken by Meridian ten years ago,” he says.
The room changes again, not loudly. No one shifts dramatically or asks the obvious question. We’ve all heard enough missing-woman stories to understand what ten years usually means.
“Her name was Thandiwe,” Matthias continues. “Twenty-five. A singer. Brilliant, stubborn, impossible to rush, and far too trusting of anyone who claimed to admire her voice.”
His voice stays even, but the restraint costs him. I can see it in the careful placement of each word.
“I never found her. But I found traces of what they did. Medical procurement records. Pseudonymous research papers. Former staff who thought they were speaking off the record. Victims with fragmented recall and identical symptom clusters across different countries.”
Victor’s eyes sharpen. “You’ve been tracking the method.”
“For a decade,” Matthias says. “The compounds, the conditioning structure, the recovery patterns, and the damage. Meridian didn’t invent the science. They refined the application.”
Janice’s fingers tighten over mine.
Dr. Josh sits back slightly. “Can the damage be reversed?”
“Some of it,” Matthias says. “Memory isn’t a file that can simply be restored. But suppressed pathways can be strengthened. Associations can return. Identity can rebuild around surviving anchors.”
“Anchors?” Mercy asks.
“Names. Art. Music. Touch. Smell. Familiar language. Anything connected to the self before the conditioning took hold.”
Bliss’s grey canvas fills the screen again.
Matthias looks at it, and his composure thins enough to show something raw beneath it.
“I know her work,” he says.
Victor’s attention sharpens. “You knew Bliss Fontaine?”
“Not personally. I attended one of her gallery shows in Montreal three years ago. Her paintings were impossible to walk past.”
His gaze stays on the grey canvas. “Seeing this is like watching someone put ash over a fire.”
For several seconds, he doesn’t seem to notice anyone else in the room.
“I know how to begin undoing what they’ve done,” he says. “But not from here. I need access to the medication schedule, therapy protocols, observation notes, and Bliss herself.”
Victor’s jaw sets. “You’re asking to go inside.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not tactical.”
“No.”
“You’re not trained for extraction.”
“No.”
“Then why would I put you in that facility?”
Matthias lifts his eyes to the camera. “Because Dr. Strauss will never let an operative near his work. But he’ll welcome a neuroscientist who knows how to flatter his vanity and speak his language.”
A thin silence follows.
Then Matthias adds, quieter, “And because if you send anyone else in first, Bliss may not remember enough of herself to leave with them.”
***
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1030 hours
Victor doesn’t answer straight away.
He studies Matthias through the screen, then shifts his attention to Dr. Josh. No one has to explain the question. If Matthias goes inside, he’s not walking into a normal infiltration. He’s walking into a facility designed to make people doubt their own minds.
Dr. Josh removes his glasses and sets them on the table. “He’s right about Strauss. A man running this kind of program won’t show his work to security staff, donors, or consultants. He’ll show it to someone he believes can understand it, admire it, and validate it.”
Janice’s hand stays over mine under the table. Her face is steady now, but I know what steady costs her when the case cuts this deep.
“And Bliss?” she asks.
Dr. Josh looks at the grey painting on the screen. “She may not respond to a standard rescue the way the others did. If her sense of reality has been disrupted badly enough, strangers breaking in could look like a threat, not rescue.”
Jax swears under his breath.
Cole leans back, jaw hard. “So even if we reach her, she might fight us?”
“She might,” Matthias says. “Or freeze. Or obey whoever has conditioned her voice recognition and authority response. That’s why I need to get close first.”
I look at the faces around the table. Angus, Jax, Cole, Crew, Mercy, Liberty, Serenity, Faith, Grayson, Felicity, Dr. Tran, Jan. Every one of them has seen Meridian take something different from someone. Freedom. Names. Documents. Companies. Bodies. Families. Futures.
This is different.
This is the theft beneath all the other thefts.
A person can be freed from a locked room. Records can be restored. Money can be followed. Evidence can be recovered. But a woman who’s been taught not to trust her own memory is trapped in a place we can’t breach with bolt cutters or bullets.
Meridian has found a way to turn a mind into a holding cell.
Victor’s voice is quiet. “Marcus Webb confirmed something during this morning’s interview.”
Everyone looks his way.
“Strauss rarely leaves the clinical wing, and he doesn’t invite investors or corporate executives into it. But he does meet with researchers. People he believes are capable of understanding his work.”
Victor turns to Matthias. “That makes you our way in.”
“We need a plan that gets Matthias inside without exposing HAVEN,” I say.
“We build him a professional trail,” Felicity says immediately. “Conference history, research credentials, references. Enough for Strauss to believe he’s being approached by someone useful.”
Grayson nods beside her. “I can make the digital history boring, which is harder than making it impressive, by the way.”
A few mouths twitch, but no one laughs.
Faith opens her laptop. “I’ll build the funding and institutional backstory.”
Mercy makes a note. “I’ll pull anything public on Bliss, especially interviews about her work before the fire. If memories are anchors, we need to know what mattered to her.”
Jan looks at Matthias. “And I’ll review every medication detail with you before you go in.”
I take in the room, the shift already happening. Shock turning into structure. Horror turning into work.
Every mission until now has been about getting women out. This one is about making sure there’s still someone to come home.
I look up at Bliss Fontaine’s photograph, at the woman surrounded by color, then the woman standing in grey.
Victor’s laptop chimes.
He glances down, his expression hardening.
“Colette Fontaine just forwarded an institute update.”
The room stills.
“Bliss has been removed from creative integration.”
Jan looks up. “Why?”
Victor’s eyes stay on the screen.
“They’ve transferred her to restricted observation.”
Silence settles over the room.
They're changing something.
Or they've seen something.
Either way, time just got shorter.
I look back at Bliss Fontaine's photograph, at the woman surrounded by color, then the woman standing in grey.
"We go in," I say. "And we bring her back. All of her."
***