Immediately, Jackie shook her head. “There’s not enough time today. We—”
Brady stepped forward. “Mom, make it happen. This hypnotherapy to feel better about the process will help us too.”
When Jackie hesitated, he added, “I know you can make it happen.”
Jackie winced but then jerked her head at the other adults. “I need a headset for each of them that can be jacked in, and audio jack splitters. Mark, there are some in my bottom drawer.”
As the adults hurried out the door to fetch the required items, Jackie told my friends. “There isn’t time to get you properly set up—we don’t want you to be late for your classes. So if you still want to do this, lie down on the floor and position your heads close to the sound system so you can be plugged in.”
Griffin stalked over to lie right beneath my bed so he could reach me if he needed to, and the others plopped down beside him.
“Who’s gonna have our backs though?” I asked them.
Jackie was the one who answered. “Us. We’re going to have your backs. No one’s going to hurt you while you’re under.” She was so ferocious about it that I actually believed her.
Besides, our choices were, yet again: A: shit. B: shittier. C: royal shitstorm. And D: all of the above.
As the adults rushed back in with the supplies, so did Tracy.
“What the hell’s going on here?” she demanded.
As one, the adults visibly calmed for her benefit—fucking masters of illusion they were.
Jackie smiled beatifically at Tracy. “I’m doing a group hypnotherapy session to help ease the trauma of Magnum having the subject apprehended in front of them. I’m not sure if you’re aware, Tracy, but Joss was also hit by that beam. She slept for three days after, and they’re all a bit shaken from the experience. I’m going to smooth things over for them and, while I’m at it, also smooth the path for future experiences that have the potential to be traumatic for them. Give them more coping abilities for what’s to come, so to speak.”
Jackie sounded like an infomercial. Calm, collected, and convincing.
Tracy peered at the scene with suspicion. “I’m going to call Magnum.”
Jackie’s beatific smile barely faltered as it spread across her face. “Of course. I’m sure he’ll be happy to learn what we’re doing here.”
The very instant Tracy prowled off to tattle, Marisa closed the door and locked it.
Jackie lined her face up directly over mine on the bed, as if she might be about to kiss me on the cheek. She breathed, “I have to delete the explanation the second you hear it. You’re going in right now. Keep your eyes shut at all times.”
Then, before I could so much as squeak in reply, her voice, pitched to be soothing, rang out through the headphones.
“When I altered your early memories, I didn’t delete them. I simply built a pathway that bypassed them and then constructed other memories along that bridge to replace the ones you no longer accessed. What I’m going to do now is delete the bypass. What will remain are your original true memories of your early childhood, before we got you out of the lab and went into hiding with you. Since time is of the essence and we want this process to stick, I’ll be injecting you with a drug I developed that makes you susceptible to suggestion and will rapidly lull you into a theta state. Don’t resist the process. It will be painless, though it will likely still be shocking as you adjust to the reality that we’ve kept hidden from you all these years. Be gentle with yourselves afterward. It’s a big adjustment. Now, let’s begin.”
I felt the cool wipe of what I guessed was an alcohol swab, then the prick of a needle.
Within moments, I felt my breath deepen, my muscles relax, and then I knew nothing at all.
21
More Hyde than Jekyll
Awareness swooped in, and it took several groggy, disoriented moments to recall where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.
Right. Hypnosis.
Kind of, anyway. Whatever it was, the process would be Jackie’s modified version of it.
Was it over already? I didn’t feel any different, but I guessed that was the point. The adjustments happened in the unconscious mind.
When I attempted to open my eyes, my lashes rubbed against soft, slick fabric. One of the pretend-parents must have found an eye mask for me after the process started. My arms rested beside me on the med bed beneath a warm blanket. I was so cozy I didn’t want to move.
“You think that disrupted the process?” my dad whispered softly yet insistently.
