Centralia (23 page)

The corridor led to a staircase that spiraled upward like a corkscrew and emerged inside a closet in the abandoned school.

If Nichols had Karen and Lilly
 
—
Peter’s
Karen and Lilly
 
—then Peter was losing ground on them every precious second. “Where to?”

April opened the closet door, which led to the gymnasium. It was early evening and the sun was low in the sky, casting dirty, burnt light through the clouded windows of the gym. The fissure in the floor was still at the far end, waiting like an open mouth ready to swallow some unsuspecting urban explorer or at the very least douse him or her with a dose of its hallucinogenic breath. They moved quickly across the gym floor and into the hallway.

“There’s a safe house,” April said. “A farm just outside the town limits. He would have taken them there. It’s where the chopper lands.”

A chopper. He was going to fly them out of Centralia. “And where would he go then?”

April stopped at the double doors that led out of the gym, turned, and glanced at Peter. “No telling.”

If Nichols got them on a chopper, he could whisk them away to a military installation anywhere in the world, and the chances were very strong that Peter would never see them again. Whether they were really
his
Karen and Lilly he wasn’t certain. But he had to get to them, had to find out the truth. “We need to find them first, before the chopper comes.”

April pushed through the doors. “Follow me.”

Outside the school, April led him across the property and into the woods. Trees stretched their limbs overhead, blocking out much of what little light was left. Underbrush littered the ground as though it had been planted there for the one purpose of making their journey slow and tedious.

April pushed a low-hanging branch out of the way and, slightly out of breath, said, “There’s a tunnel from the bunker that goes directly to the farmhouse, but we were at the wrong end to access it.” She turned and looked at Peter. “They’ve had a big head start.”

Peter stopped and listened. In the distance the sound of blades chopping at the air grew closer. “We need to move,” he said. He pressed past April and broke into a run. Branches slapped at his chest; thorns tore at his arms. He had no idea how far he was from the farm, but the growing sound of the chopper’s rotor told him he needed to make better time than he was.

The helicopter grew ever closer and louder until it passed
overhead. The sound produced by its whirring blades was not unlike the spinning knives of a blender. Peter saw it through the forest’s canopy
 
—a dark-gray Black Hawk, flying low, just higher than the treetops. It moved ahead of him. He pushed on, pumping his arms and willing his legs to go faster.

Peter glanced behind him but could no longer see April through the tangle of underbrush. He wondered if she was still following him or if she’d taken the opportunity to escape. Regardless, he needed to get to the safe house before Nichols boarded that chopper with Karen and Lilly.

Finally he saw the forest’s banded tree line and the muted light of evening on the other side. The Black Hawk’s concussive beating of air was still loud. It was landing. As he drew nearer, he saw the chopper touch down fifty or so yards from a two-story German-style brick farmhouse.

At the tree line he broke from the woods and found himself in a field of ankle-high grass, taking fire. Five gunmen poured from the house, all carrying automatic weapons and firing them in his direction. Rounds hit the ground, bit through grass, kicked up dirt. Bullets whizzed by his head like bees caught in a tornado. Peter nearly fell. Hunched over, he ducked back into the safety of the woods and behind the protection of its stately residents.

From where he stood, he had a good look at the house and watched helplessly as Nichols emerged with a woman and small girl. Peter was at least a hundred fifty yards away and couldn’t get a good look at their faces, but he could tell by their gait and the way they moved that it was the mother and daughter April had led him to in the bunker. They ducked as they approached the chopper, and a gunman prodded them along.

Peter fired at the men near the house and dropped one of them.
As the remaining gunman on the house’s porch returned fire, the group moved as a unit closer to the chopper. Karen and Lilly boarded, then Nichols. The other gunman left the house and joined the group in the chopper. Peter held his fire; he didn’t want an errant bullet to strike either the mother or the daughter.

When all were on the chopper and the door closed, Peter burst from the woods as if pushed out by an explosion and ran in a full sprint across the field. But he was too late. The Black Hawk wobbled, teetered, and lifted off the ground, its blades cleaving the air like a scythe.

Peter pushed harder though there was now no hope of rescue. If this was Karen and Lilly, they would be carried away and he’d have no idea where to begin to look for them. Tears sprang to his eyes and blurred his vision. The ground seemed to undulate beneath him as if the moorings of the earth’s crust had been loosed and its tectonic plates become like jelly.

The chopper lifted into the air, turned and tilted, and flew off.

As Peter reached the site from where the chopper had lifted, something hit him high in the back of the right shoulder and bit like a hornet’s sting. The force of it spun him to the side and knocked him to the ground. His shoulder throbbed. He tried to move his arm, but it wouldn’t cooperate.

He rolled to his back and suddenly grew very dizzy. The ground moved, rose and fell like the waves of an open ocean. The sky swirled and spun. Darkness crept in, first around the edges of his field of view and then closer to the center. Eventually the darkness consumed everything, and all that was left was a feeling of falling, falling.

Falling.

Down, down he dropped; head over heels he tumbled into a bottomless, ethereal tunnel like Alice into her rabbit hole. His stomach churned; his head spun. He groped at the air, kicked at the emptiness. Twisted and writhed. But nothing would slow his descent into the abyss of darkness.

Then something appeared above him. It too was falling but quicker than he was, closing the gap between them. An object or a person, he couldn’t tell. As it came into view, he realized it was another person, facedown, arms and legs extended like a skydiver, wind pushing back the facial features.

As the image grew closer, he could tell it was a man; then closer still and he saw who it was. Nichols. He was laughing. A deep, red-faced, fun-house laugh. He fell to within fifteen feet of Peter
and hovered there, laughing, mocking. Peter was the source of his amusement.

Peter was about to say something, to ask Nichols what had him so amused, when the older man drew a gun and without hesitating, pointed and fired at Peter.

Peter’s eyes snapped open and tried to focus, but his surroundings were nothing more than a blur, a collage of straight lines and bulbous figures and varying shades of gray. His head still spun, and that feeling of weightlessness was still in his gut, but he was not falling. He was in a room, in a bed, secure on solid ground. White walls, white ceiling. But not concrete. Sheetrock walls, tile ceiling. A television perched in one corner, fastened to the wall by metal brackets, facing the bed. A large window covered with partially open vertical blinds took up most of the wall to his left. Sunlight filtered in and dusted the room in a soft glow.

It was a hospital room, and he had an IV running from a pump beside the bed to his right arm. The pump clicked rhythmically.

Peter lifted his right hand and combed his fingers through his hair, felt his face. He had at least a day’s worth of stubble covering his jaw. He rubbed his temples and strained his mind to think, but it was like trying to squeeze water from a dry sponge. He couldn’t remember what had happened.

Slowly the memories returned. The tunnels, the bunker. Centralia. April. Their escape. The farmhouse. Karen and Lilly. He remembered the chopper, remembered it lifting off with Karen and Lilly on board, but that was it. How had he gotten here?

Like the surge and flow of a tidal wave following an impressive ebb, a great feeling of desperation overcame him. Panic, almost. He had to find Karen and Lilly, but he had no idea where Nichols had taken them. They were as lost as two pleating pins in a world full of
haystacks. They had no doubt seen him running after the chopper. What must they think? Did they believe he was dead? April had said they’d been told he was dead once before.

Peter sat up in bed and reached for the IV, but before he could yank it from his hand, the door to the room opened and in walked a man. Nichols. He had a woman with him. The two of them crossed the room without saying a word and stood at the foot of the bed.

Peter sat back, tense, hands balled into fists. “Where am
 
—?”

Nichols held up a hand. “No questions yet. Let me explain fully, and then you can ask all the questions you want. You’ll get your answers.”

Peter nodded. He’d go along with Nichols for now.

“Peter, this is Dr. Ambling. She’s been a part of your training from the beginning. She’s a graduate of Stanford, PhD in psychology, ten years in clinical practice and as many in research. She specializes in memory manipulation and replacement.”

Ambling clasped her hands in front of her and dipped her chin at Peter. She was an attractive woman, midforties, brown hair and glasses. She wore a brown dress suit and white blouse. She looked like a middle school librarian.

“I brought her here to corroborate everything I’m about to tell you. No more games. No more lies.”

Peter wanted to trust Nichols. The man had that air of respectability about him that was common to politicians and other government officials. Making it that much harder to tell which ones were sharks. He couldn’t help but think Nichols was a predator as well and capable of any trickery or lying to feed his ego. Besides, the man had already lied to him, tricked him, manipulated him. He hadn’t earned any trust.

Nichols sighed and held his hands behind his back. “Peter, everything I told you before was true. About your true identity. About your training and failure to follow through with the mission in Afghanistan. About the scrubbing and imprinting. It all really happened. And Dr. Ambling was a large part of that. She and I fought to keep you active. We knew we could recycle you, use your skills again, but in a better way, a more productive way. We only needed time.” He paused, sighed again. “And that’s exactly what we did. It all worked brilliantly. Dr. Ambling and her team did a remarkable job with you. You are the future of America’s fighting force. An army of perfect soldiers, bred to protect our nation at all costs. What we accomplished with you will someday be the basis for curing post-traumatic stress disorder among our combat veterans. It will be used in the training of future soldiers. It will change the way wars are fought and won. Our wars. Our victories.”

Ambling cleared her throat. “You were not an easy subject, Mr. Ryan. Your mental abilities are beyond that of the average soldier, beyond that of the average man. You are remarkably resilient. But it was that resilience that ultimately worked in our favor.”

“Peter,” Nichols said, “all that’s transpired in the past two days
 
—” he glanced at Ambling
 
—“was a test. The home invasion, Amy Cantori, the scenario at the motel. It was all carefully choreographed and scripted to test every facet of your training.”

Heat climbed up Peter’s neck and face. “But what about the men I killed?”

Nichols looked at the floor. “Yes, well, sacrifices had to be made. Those deaths were all too real. Those men knew, though, what they were getting into. They knew the risks. They also knew they were part of something much larger than themselves. Their deaths
were not in vain. This project, Centralia, will change America’s standing in the world forever. And like I said, it will also serve as the foundational research in many medical breakthroughs. Not just PTSD but treatments for so many psychological disorders. The possibilities are limitless. And you were at the genesis of it all. You are the father of everything.”

“I’m Frankenstein’s monster,” Peter said.

Nichols unclasped his hands and let his arms hang at his sides. “I know this is difficult to accept and process. We’re going to give you time to come to terms with it. If anything I’ve said is false or misrepresents our work, I would hope Dr. Ambling would have spoken up.”

Ambling glanced at Nichols and smiled. “I have nothing to add.”

“Now,” Nichols said. “Your questions.”

Peter had only one. “Where are Karen and Lilly?”

Nichols again looked at Ambling. When he brought his eyes back to Peter, there was sadness in them. Whether it was genuine or not Peter couldn’t tell. If the man was a liar and a con artist, he was a remarkably accomplished one. “Peter, this has been a sticking point throughout your training. Your attachment to them was beyond what we anticipated. But eventually we were able to rectify the situation and found a suitable workaround. In the end . . . Well, your wife and daughter are dead. The car accident was real. We didn’t fabricate that; we didn’t need to.”

“April led me to them. She said they were my wife and daughter. I saw them get in the chopper.”

“That, too, was choreographed.” Nichols tilted his head back and narrowed his eyes. “You had your doubts about them, didn’t you? And rightfully so. The woman and child you saw were actors. Nora and Maddy. You must accept that Karen and Lilly are gone.”

Again the heat was there, radiating up Peter’s neck and setting his cheeks on fire. He was overcome with anger. “Did you kill them? Did you arrange for the accident? Fabricate the circumstance so it was timed perfectly? Was that all part of your carefully choreographed plan?”

Nichols began to speak, but Ambling put her hand on his arm to silence him. “Peter, from the beginning we determined that your family was off-limits. Everything we did to you was with your permission. You don’t remember it because we had to scrub it from your memory, but it was all with your consent. Never, not once, did we tamper with your wife or daughter. Our research may be controversial, but we do have ethics. I’m not about to throw a twenty-year career away by being a party to murder.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ambling,” Nichols said. Then, to Peter, “Any other questions?”

“How long have I been in here?”

“Two days.”

“Was I shot?”

“Tranquilized.”

Peter shook his head. It was too much to process, too much to accept. He couldn’t trust Nichols
 
—he knew that
 
—and Ambling didn’t seem to be worthy of his faith either. But what was reality? How much of what they told him was real and where were the lies?

In his heart he felt Karen and Lilly were still alive, that they were out there somewhere, but gone was the certainty. The memories of their funeral, though spotty, were all too real. Conflicting visions of his past waged a contentious turf war in his head. If he couldn’t even trust his own memories, then what could he trust? Peter’s brain scrambled to latch on to something
solid when everything seemed to be subliming before him, evaporating into thin air.

“Peter, some of Dr. Ambling’s assistants will be by later to get you out of here. They’ll take you to a secure location, where you’ll be placed in a dark room. It’s only temporary and will allow your brain to clear the fog and reset itself. This is for your good.”

Nichols and Ambling excused themselves and left the room, closing the door behind them. Peter thought about trying to escape, but what was the point now?

Instead he closed his eyes and found himself battling an urge he could never remember having before. He felt he needed to pray, that he should pray, that it was the natural and right thing to do. But he couldn’t; he didn’t want to. He knew he had at one time, that prayer came naturally to him and was a source of power. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did know it. Things were different now, though. The world was different;
he
was different. Maybe even God was different.

But still the urging nagged him, poked at him, prodded him. So he prayed. He pleaded with God to show him the truth, to not let it all end like this. He told God there needed to be more; Karen and Lilly needed to be alive.
Please let them be alive.

Surprisingly, the words came easy, but he didn’t know if they were sincere or not. And as he feared, his prayers seemed to go unheard, unable to get past the ceiling of the hospital. Whether God was intentionally ignoring him or Peter had lost all privileges with the Almighty, he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was alone. And suddenly despair, like an untimely and unwanted visitor, crowded into his room, climbed into his bed.

Was there any hope of ever finding Karen and Lilly? Were they even alive? Maybe Nichols was finally telling him the truth. Maybe
they really were dead. Maybe all the trouble he’d gone through, all the lives he’d taken, all the danger he’d faced and tragedy he’d avoided, was in vain. Maybe it was all for a smoke cloud of hope. . . . It was all for nothing.