Maddie gave her a sad smile. “Well, I’m not here to hurt you,” Maddie offered. “Anyway,” she turned to the rest of us, “whoever this Dr. Bates was, he must have been a psychopath. Do you remember what he did to you?”
“It was a program,” I explained. “Training us to fight.”
“To endure,” Billy said.
I nodded. “To let the worst take us.”
“What do you mean by that?” Maddie asked. “Was he preparing you for something?”
“To fight for my sister,” I said. I couldn’t talk about it too much or I would see her face. Those visions would come flooding back, memories that I preferred to keep buried. And I hated seeing her like that, rotting in the woods alone.
Because it wasn’t a memory. It was a nightmare. Nothing more. Another way for Dr. Bates to manipulate me.
“My daughter,” Billy said.
“My mom,” Jane said.
The three of us looked back and forth between each other. We were all searching for someone, and they were all women too.
“So, what? I know your sister is missing,” Maddie said, making eyes with me. She turned to Billy and Jane. “But what about your daughter and your mom?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said. “She’s gone.”
Jane wouldn’t answer. All she could do was nod.
“You two don’t have criminal backgrounds,” Maddie said to Billy and me. “So unless you were sneaky about it, there’s no reason for you to know the Adlers.” Maddie then turned to Jane. “Not so sure about you, though.” Maddie shrugged. “We need your name to know more.”
I knew how to help Jane find her memories, but Wil and I had agreed that using the trigger word wasn’t wise. It was hard enough having Billy and me activated.
I tried to think of why the Adlers would be compelled to kill our family when none of us had any connection to them.
But that was it; there wasn’t any reason.
The ringing pulsed between my ears, shooting to the bridge of my nose.
“Skyline Shift!” I shouted quickly. The ringing stopped. Billy’s eyes lit up. Maddie pulled back from the table. “Did you go to the Skyline Shift?” I asked. “That’s where you know Dr. Bates, right?”
“He recruited me shortly after my daughter went missing,” Billy said hesitantly, “saying he knew the answers about where she was.”
My heart sank. “Did you ever find her?”
She shook her head. “There was an emergency. I had to start the final task early.”
Maybe Dr. Bates had known that I was captured by the Adlers, and knew that they had to send more soldiers. How many women would he send?
“What do you remember about the Skyline Shift?” Maddie asked.
“They taught us that we had to take down the enemies,” I said.
“The enemies?” Maddie asked. She flicked her chin to the doorway, where the three brothers were waiting on the other side. “Just them, or others too?”
“Just them,” Billy said.
Jane looked up, glancing at the window in the door. “Who are they?”
“No one,” I answered.
Tell her, the voice said.She deserves to know.She has a right to know.Let her make her own decision.
