Even so, I’d dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt to make sure no one saw him. I had no idea what Magnum and the zealot Fanny would make of him wandering my epidermis, and I had no intention of finding out.
Though my friends and I were firmly inside the lab, Fanny stood watch with several of her sentinels, as if we’d shimmy out the shoebox-sized windows and make a run for it. Even if we did manage some miraculous escape from the heavily monitored lab, Magnum and his staff of loony goons were making it all too clear there was nowhere we could go that they wouldn’t retrieve us from.
Once again, I sat atop a stool at Jude’s workstation, only this time Lynne stood beside him as he dutifully checked my vitals. Lynne leaned against the counter, very much in the way of Jude’s keyboard, which he needed to input my results. When she crossed her arms and ankles, settling in, I realized she was deliberately blocking the nearest camera along the ceiling line.
Jude didn’t even glance at her, proceeding with my examination as if nothing were amiss, showing me once again how very good at acting the two of them were. No wonder none of us had suspected a single thing over the years. They were so smooth; they were like superspies.
When Jude leaned in to examine my face, actually measuring the breadth and height of my features—merely for show, I hoped—he spoke softly and without moving his lips, making him sound like a ventriloquist. Still, it was far from the weirdest thing that had happened to me so far today.
“Don’t react to me speaking,” he said in that very bizarre, stilted way. “They can’t know I’m talking to you when they can’t hear.”
“Mmmm-hmmmm,” I hummed without moving my lips.
He shone a light across my eyeballs next. “Things are about to get worse. Magnum’s worried about something big. He’s moving the timeline up.”
“Timeline of what?” I asked. Unlike him, I hadn’t practiced ventriloquism. I sounded like a toddler with a lisp and no good handle on consonants. But he got the message.
“Not sure. Think someone maybe found out what he’s doing.”
“This is taking too long,” Lynne complained, picking up the blood pressure cuff and telling Jude, “Trade places.”
Jude huffed at her in annoyance but did as she asked, likewise positioning himself to block the view from the nearest camera. He pretended to reach for a pen, using the movement to ensure Fanny and the soldiers remained by the door.
Smooth operators indeed. My faux parents would have me fooled if I were Fanny.
Lynne bent over the blood pressure cuff, allowing the sheet of her loose hair to obscure much of her face. Even staring at her mouth, I didn’t see it so much as twitch when she said, “No time. Need to help.”
What the fuck? Had they taken ventriloquism classes while I was at school? Dudes were freaking pros.
“Restore your memories while you still can. Okay with you?” she asked.
What,nowthey were asking for consent? That was fresh—and also appreciated.
I nibbled at my bottom lip. I had a metric shit-ton of questions about that, and I couldn’t ask a single one without possibly giving away what they were doing. But I couldn’t just sayyeswithout knowing more either. Were these potentially missing memories what Brady’s nightmares had been all about?
Think, Joss, think.
“Can I ask some questions about some of the upcoming experiments I’m guessing you’ll be doing on me?” I asked in a normal voice.
Lynne met my stare, her eyes sharp. She understood what I was asking. “Sure, honey,” she said, also normal, for our surveillance. “Anything I’m allowed to tell you, I’ll be happy to.”
“Well,” I fumbled. “I actually have no idea what you guys are planning on doing to us. What are the possible risks and side effects of some of these procedures?”
“Oh,” Lynne said with a smile that conveyed:I’m harmless and I’m here to help. I had to swallow a snort. “All of what we do here is cutting-edge and exploratory. No one else in the entire world’s doing what we’re doing. But this team’s truly the very best and the most capable of doing any of this, including Jackie, who is absolutely a top expert on the brain.” She paused so that last point would linger and settle in.
Brady and Layla’s pretend mom was indeed supposed to be the foremost expert not just on the brain, but on its memory functions in particular. Whatever process Lynne and Jude were offering up to restore the memories they’d stolen from me originated with Jackie. Did that mean the same offer was being made to my friends?
I glanced at them, spread out across the lab, and noticed nothing beyond the expected examination from their faux parents.
Lynne pressed a stethoscope to my chest beneath my shirt. With her face so close to mine, she continued for our audience.
“Everything has an intrinsic risk because this is an entirely new, unexplored part of science, which is what makes it so incredibly exciting. But I promise you, we’ve done absolutely everything within our power to minimize any possible risk or side effect of every single procedure we’ll ever perform. Plus, thanks to Magnum’s funding, we have every possible piece of state-of-the-art equipment we could need.”
Jude piped up: “We promise, honey, we’d never recommend a procedure or test for you if we didn’t truly, with all our hearts, believe it was the best path for you and the others.”
He sure was throwing around this “all our hearts” shit a lot lately.
Softly, reverting to ventriloquist-speak, Lynne added, “It’s gonna be rough. A lot of info coming in for you all at once.” She moved the stethoscope around my chest, her hand beneath my shirt. “But this may be our only chance. And you need to know, if you’re going to fight back.”
