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“You need to be more open with your sons about your condition. They get worried.”
“They shouldn’t. I’m fine,” she replies stubbornly.
“Why am I here? What do you want from me?” I ask her.
She ignores my questions. “You and Raphael are… I didn’t expectthat. You’re good with him. He’s very protective of you, but you don’t let him go overboard. And my other sons like you.”
I snort, thinking about Gabe and Uri’s suspicious questioning and Rague’s confusing behavior. Not to mention Rami’s endless teasing. But maybe that’s just him being himself, seeing as he does it with everybody.
“Please. Raph had to threaten them at the table.”
“My kids are skeptical by nature. They don’t trust strangers. But trust me when I say you’re already one foot in.” She smiles smugly, like she arranged all this, and it’s all going according to plan. Maybe my crime-filled brain is affecting my view on the matter a little. And more suspicious thoughts cross my mind. “The first time we met at the cafeteria… Was that a coincidence?”
I read the answer in the wince scrunching her face.Fuck. Me.What the hell is actually going on?
“Why, Meg? Why did you befriend me? What could you possibly want?” I ask, feeling betrayal and confusion hit me equally in the chest.
“Michael, I just wanted to get to know you.”
“Why? And give me a straight answer, or I’ll leave right now.” My orgasmic buzz is long gone, crushed by… all of this!
She’s not answering, so I’m about to take a step toward the door when she finally admits, “Because you are one of my kids.”
My breath gets stuck in my lungs. Her words echo on repeat inside my head.
“W-what?” My legs give way, and I drop onto the armchair with enough force to push a swish of air from the cushion. “One of your kids?” I can’t stop blinking; things in front of me look suddenly blurry. Dark, puzzling images shuffle in front of my eyes. And I can’t seem to stop them.
“Breathe, Michael. In and out.” Meg’s voice is closer now. When I turn, she’s standing near my armchair, a glass of amber liquid in her hand. We inverted positions. How much time has passed? And where did my head go? I grab the shiny glass and take an eager sip. The burn of the alcohol grounds me somehow.
“Talk,” I whisper with a raspy voice, my eyes fixed on the gold pen laying on the desk.
“Twenty years ago, Linda was working for a top secret agency. They ordered her to find two scientists who went rogue and were believed to be experimenting on children. Their sick idea was to create assassins without any kind of emotions. No regret, empathy, or any kind of doubts, and they thought kids’ minds were easier molded than adults’. We don’t know if they kidnapped or bribed people, because the kids they experimented on all came from various foster programs. And were all problematic kids, showing psychotic traits.”
“Psychotic traits?” I hadpsychotic traits?“I don’t understand.”
“Clearly, you’re not a psychopath. I’m talking about twenty years ago. It was a very new study, which was ahead of its time. Those scientists didn’t seem to care that sometimes children show psychopathic tendencies that fade when they grow up. Out of all of you, only Raphael is a true psychopath. I found that out when I was called to make sense of the files the scientists wrote on each kid. Very detailed files.” Her voice ends in a whispered breath.
I felt like puking. She must be mistaken.
“I was also there to evaluate the kids and see, after what they suffered, if they could manage to have ordinary lives—whatever that means. It was hard to decide, since those kids were treated solely like test subjects. They didn’t even have names, only numbers.”
Two.
“The burn on Raph’s wrist,” I grit out. The same anger I felt when I learned about it makes me tighten my hold on the empty liquor glass.
“You were Subject One, Michael.”
I turn to face her, my eyes wide as the ocean, frantically checking for some kind of doubt or deception on her face. She’s just staring back at me, her gaze open and filled with sorrow. Regret.
I shake my head in disbelief, but something deep inside is telling me it’s true. Still, I cannot accept it. It just can’t be.
“Wait, I don’t have a burn.” I turn my wrist up and look at the pale smooth skin.
“They marked the other kids after you… left. You were, as they wrote, a failure. You didn’t respond as they hoped. And when they tried to get rid of you…you escaped.” Meg moves behind her desk and, after a minute, comes back holding a file. It’s a police report dated twenty years ago. “Sheriff Caldwell found you on the edge of a dirt road, not far from the compound where you were all held.” There is a thorough description of how the sheriff found a little blond boy covered in blood. When I turn the page, a picture of me as a child stares back at me. I look skinny and disheveled. I’m wearing a big blue T-shirt with the Granville police logo on it, and my eyes seem sad and filled with fear.
“The sheriff got so attached to you since he and his wife lost their son years before that…”
“They adopted me,” I finish for her.
