Chương 9
“Then why don’t I remember you?”
“Because you stopped remembering a lot of the program.”
“Convenient.”
“For them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You were oversight.”
“I wasn’t a neuroscientist.”
“Then what do you know?”
“I know records were altered. I know sessions continued after you withdrew. I know you began having disorientation around specific cues connected to the study. I know doctors disagreed about whether it came from the procedures, your original injury, medication, sleep deprivation, or all of it together.”
Claire looked at him.
There it was.
No miracle technology.
No clean explanation.
Just people doing things to an already injured brain and then arguing about which damage belonged to whom.
“Why don’t I remember you outside the program?”
Daniel’s fingers stopped on the juice carton.
“That’s harder.”
“Try.”
“We were friends.”
“Just friends?”
He looked toward the doorway.
Then back at her.
“For most of it.”
Claire felt the room change.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel rubbed the side of his nose.
It was an oddly normal gesture.
“We slept together twice.”
She stared at him.
He winced.
“That is not how I meant to say that.”
“How did you mean to say it?”
“I don’t know. There probably wasn’t a good version.”
Claire stood.
Pain moved through her ankle.
Daniel put the carton down.
“Claire.”
“Did we have a relationship?”
“No.”
“You hesitated.”
“We tried.”
“When?”
“Before Yemen.”
“For how long?”
“Three months.”
“That sounds like a relationship.”
“It was a bad one.”
She laughed sharply.
“Fantastic.”
“You ended it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was controlling.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“You seem delightful.”
“I’ve improved.”
She turned toward him.
“What else?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Did I love you?”
Daniel’s mouth opened.
He looked away.
Claire felt something cold move through her.
“Answer.”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“People are bad at knowing that when they’re inside it.”
“Did you love me?”
He stared at the blanket.
“That’s not the question you need answered tonight.”
“Maybe I decide what I need.”
“Yes.”
He met her eyes.
“I did.”
Claire sat down again because her legs suddenly felt unreliable.
Neither spoke for a while.
Someone laughed in the corridor.
A corpsman rolled a cart past the doorway.
The ship moved under them with a small change in pitch.
Claire stared at Daniel’s hands.
They were older than the hands in the fragments inside her head.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said.
Daniel swallowed.
“I know.”
“That was cruel.”
“No.”
“It was.”
“It was true.”
He looked at her.
“You don’t owe me the person you used to be.”
Something in Claire’s face tightened.
“That sounds rehearsed.”
“It is.”
“You practiced saying it?”
“For fourteen months.”
She looked away.
Daniel’s voice softened.
“I thought I was going to die down there.”
“Why didn’t they kill you?”
“Leverage.”
“Against who?”
“My father. Me. Maybe you.”
“That is vague.”
“It’s what I have.”
“What did Kane want?”
“To preserve the program.”
“Why?”
“Because by the time he understood what it had become, his career was inside it. His signatures were everywhere. So were other people’s.”
“Who?”
“I’m not giving you names from memory.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been drugged, isolated, sleep-deprived, and told my father buried me. I could ruin someone’s life because I confuse a briefing with an authorization.”
Claire stared at him.
That was the first thing anyone had said that made her trust him.
Not because he claimed certainty.
Because he refused it.
“What happened fourteen months ago?”
“I tried to take evidence outside the compartment.”
“To your father?”
“No.”
Jonathan had probably wounded him long before Kane did.
Claire did not ask.
Daniel continued.
“I contacted an inspector through an indirect channel. Kane intercepted enough of it to know I was moving. They staged the crash.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. There was a real aircraft accident. I was supposed to be aboard. My name was on the manifest. I wasn’t.”
“That convenient?”
“Not for the people who died.”
Claire went still.
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Did Kane cause it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel rubbed his face.
“That’s the part I can’t live with. If he caused it, two people died to make me disappear. If he didn’t, he used their deaths because they happened to give him cover. I don’t know which is worse.”
Claire looked at the floor.
“What happened to you?”
“They moved me among secure sites. Short periods. Different classifications. Nobody below a certain level knew who I was.”
“And then this ship.”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Why?”
“Your exercise.”
Claire looked up.
“What?”
“Kane knew your unit would support the maritime exercise.”
“So he brought me here?”
“He arranged for you to be screened through a medical debrief after the operation.”
“I remember finishing the mission.”
“You finished it.”
“Then what?”
“You saw him.”
“Kane?”
“No.”
Daniel touched the coin.
“Me.”
Claire’s pulse changed.
“You were on deck.”
“In a passage. They were moving me.”
“And I recognized you?”
“Yes.”
“What did I do?”
“You said my name.”
She closed her eyes.
Nothing.
Daniel continued.
“Kane couldn’t risk you reporting it.”
“So he detained me.”
“He called it protective medical observation.”
“That phrase is going to get someone punched.”
“It nearly got me punched.”
“Did I fight?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Daniel smiled faintly.
Claire did not.
“What happened for thirty-six hours?”
“I don’t know all of it.”
“What do you know?”
“You were moved into the old program rooms. They asked what you remembered.”
“And?”
“You remembered more than they expected.”
“Why don’t I now?”
“I don’t know.”
Her breathing became shallow.
Daniel saw it.
“Claire.”
“Don’t.”
“You’re counting.”
She looked at her fingers.
One.
Two.
Three.
Pause.
Her thumb would not move to four.
She forced it.
Four.
A memory hit.
A man in black gloves tightening a strap.
Kane’s voice.
Again.
Who gave you the coin?
Daniel Mercer.
Where is Daniel Mercer?
Dead.
Again.
She stood so fast the chair hit the wall.
Daniel flinched.
Claire backed away.
May you like
“Claire.”
“He made me say you were dead.”
