19. Olly #2
Well, that was genuinely unexpected. “Wall in my head? Do you mean like, the song from the West End play?”
Dr. Bell smiled at me, nice and slow, revealing what I would swear were extra-pointy incisors.
“I’m not trying to be flippant, Dr. Bell. Really. I just don’t completely understand what you mean.”
She put down the pen and picked up her pipe, giving it a generous inhale.
“But you do know what I could mean, don’t you?
I can see those song lyrics floating around in your mind, in those spots where there are the smallest of leaks.
That wall’s blocking not only us but also yourself.
You are robbing all of us the opportunity to learn from you if only we can access your mind directly, so I can ascertain what impact our methods with children have on the adult. ”
So I had a psychic wall in my head, blocking out people, including myself, from seeing all the way inside my mind with complete clarity.
To me, that sounded like a fortress surrounding my deepest self, and I wanted to keep those walls thick and high, no matter how hard she tried to drug me into letting them slip.
I could feel her, right now, pushing at the wall in my head, like she was taking a mental sledgehammer to it.
When I focused, I could keep her out. But when I tried to counterattack?
Oh, she was good. So strong, my attack on her mental shield was like me trying to dent titanium with a feather.
I considered the type of thoughts that she either let through on purpose or were just background noise, and I realized I didn’t want to be inside her head.
I wanted as far away from that evil soup as possible.
Dr. Bell might not be the leader of The Organization, but she had to be top tier, and a potentially deadly Asset in its arsenal with her sadistic tendencies.
I felt a ripple inside me, this time definitely not Bea, but one of my sea creatures.
It made a noise of triumph as my ‘blue whale’ passed close to the surface and left me with a surprising cache of information.
I remembered now more of how The Organization handled its children, how we were like a warped kind of school.
There were some live-in kids, and then there were those of us who were dropped off in the morning and picked up just before suppertime, basically the same as real school, except no weekends off.
We got to sleep at home, but that was pretty much it.
Something rather odd happened when I was thinking of us being like a paramilitary group in training: I thought of the scene in Star Wars when Darth Vader uses The Force to suffocate someone.
I swear, it was almost like it was implanted in there to trigger specific memories.
We used to suffocate or drown mice in our school building.
If you were labelled a sensitive child, that was, and had broken a rule.
Couldn’t stomach it? Then you had to pick another child who was just as, if not more, empathetic than you, and make them do your dirty work while you watched.
It was a great way to keep us from forming strong bonds with each other.
I was shaking that off when up popped a scene from when I was six, in an honesty circle, they called it.
Now this was bizarre because this wasn’t a wanted memory I was recalling, this was like someone had slipped into my mind and was showing me a reel from my life.
Dr. Bell, of course, who was just staring at me, and I was just staring at her, were really having some kind of psychic faceoff.
And I lost because the reel played. She smiled just enough to show those teeth again, and poised her pen over the portfolio.
So the honesty circle. Really, it was so we’d snitch on each other, and whoever brought in the best intel got the best meal that night.
Corey said that sweet, compassionate Paula had made a little nest for one of the mice in her room, and was keeping it as a pet.
The next time we saw Paula, a few days later, her eyes were sunken in, her arms trembled, and she asked Corey if his cheeseburger had been worth it while she reached out and lit him on fire.
I ran to Paula, grabbed her, and held her in my arms against the wall, able to see in my mind every second of her being made to hand over the mouse to Dr. Bell.
Every human survived—Corey, a telekinetic, was a valuable Asset, and even at his young age he was able to move the flames off his body and onto the rug—but the whole thing was terrorizing.
What. The. Fuck. I knew this was a real memory, but I also knew I would never have thought about it again for the rest of my life, unprompted.
Why did she want me to remember this shit?
Was it just an experiment for her, to weaken my shields enough to see if she could prompt a twenty-three-year-old memory?