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I ignore her and continue running. Why does she so desperately want me to join her?
I see the statue in the distance and breathe a sigh of relief. Where there’s a statue at 12pm, then there’s a crowd, and where there’s a crowd, there is safety. As I run closer, I take it all back. Either it isn’t Sunday or something very bad has happened. The statue is in a four-way cross, and I can see the soldiers coming up front. Besides them, the place is completely abandoned, just like the photocopy room.
Tyler gives me a sceptical side glance. “I thought it was Sunday?” I told him questioningly, hoping he will forgive my lame excuse.
“It is,” he says, and I stop running. What have these crazy people done to the place? I quickly check my watch and it tells me the time is 12:04. Where is everyone?
I stop running and turn to look at the curious lady. The more I look at her, the more familiar she becomes. She is probably one of the head soldiers that has just been invited to dinner sometime, nobody important. But then why does she want me? Why not my dad?
I try to convince myself, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t find myself satisfied with that answer. “Fine. You’ve caught us. Please don’t take Tyler to the Cuffs.” I beg, hoping that she is working with my father, and this is all a trick. “Just let Mr. Albert Cunningham, my father, punish me, not Tyler. It was my idea to run.” I stand forward and slowly put my hands out in front of Tyler. I want to make the signal clear; ‘if you want Tyler, you go through me. And to go through me, you go through my father.’
“Come, little Jasper, I’m not going to take you to your father.” I look at her in confusion. If she’s not working for my father, then who is she with? And what does she want with me? “Now I’m going to ask you one last time, my boy, come with me and give me the file. I don’t want to hurt you.” She speaks. I turn around for a split second to look at Tyler and something smacks me on the head. I fall to the ground, watching Tyler crumple next to me.
So much for not wanting to hurt me.
“Who are you?” I say, my voice croaky and hardly audible. I am kneeling, a forceful grip pulling my hands behind my back. I really wish they would have chosen a different place to kill me. I really don’t want my last memory to be myself kneeling by the statue that I completely loathed.
The lady smiles a cruel, completely vile smile, “I am Annabelle, supreme leader of the Black OPP’s. I am here to destroy your father, and to do that, I need his most prized possession…you.”
Chapter 12 - Emerson Clarke
The floor of Albert Cunningham’s office is excruciatingly uncomfortable to lie on. I try to sit up and compose myself, as if by getting up and brushing myself off, I could pretend my nightmare never happened. But a lady who I assume is a nurse in a white uniform is standing over me, and, as soon as I try to get up, she commands me to lay back down.
“Do you know what’s happening to me?” I ask her as she places a hand against my forehead. My head feels like it is being hit by an asteroid over and over. I have had plenty of side-effects from the nightmares before, but this is certainly the worst headache I’ve had for a while.
“Don’t worry,” her voice sounds familiar, like I knew her a long time ago. But then again, doesn’t everyone here remind me of something that I can’t quite remember?
“Oh, don’t worry dear. It is just some side-effects of the brainwashing that you had a few years back. Don’t you remember?” she laughs, like she thinks it is really funny that I have been brainwashed and can’t remember half of my life. And when I do remember something, I get major dizzy spells afterwards. This confirms my suspicions.
Albert Cunningham really brainwashed me. How dare he take away my memories like he owns the rights to them.
I stand up and push her away, “Brainwashing?” I ask, pointing an accusing finger at the nurse, who jolts back at my outburst. In my peripheral vision, I can see Albert’s murderous eyes observing the situation carefully. I know I won’t get any useful information out of him, so my eyes remain carefully trained on the lady.
“Were you not aware of this?” She tries to look innocent, but it’s so fake it only makes me angrier. I remember her now. She is the lady who gave me a glass of water one day and told me to drink. She said that it would reenergise me after one of my hard times in the Cuffs. Three days later, I woke up in my small room in Beast Eye thinking that I’d been out looking for my dad the past year and having no idea why I was having constant nightmares of a random girl.
“You-I know you-” I start accusingly, grabbing her by the collar. What type of person would drug a young child by telling them it was a glass of water? I remember her long, blonde hair that flowed out of the room as I screamed for her not to do this, not to leave me alone. I trusted her. I drank the water because I thought that she was there to help me. I didn’t want her to leave me alone, but I drank the water because I thought that she was just a caring nurse who wanted me to get better. This is why you can never trust people who act like they care.
“Helga,” Mr. Cunningham yells. “We do not openly tell our patients confidential information,” he calms down and looks at me with fake sincerity. “Don’t worry Emerson, you’re not that special. It’s just an emergency protocol. It happens to all our patients when we release them.”
I flinch at the way he calls me a patient, like I am some kind of disease that he needs to fix. “What do you mean everyone? You just brainwash people for the fun of it? All those people with their own lives and their own memories and you just went and completely took their LIVES from them. Did you ASK them? Did they WANT to be brainwashed?” Anger rages within me; an emotion I am so acquainted with that it is easy to slip into. Who does he think he is? I glance at Travis. His back is against the wall, trying to get as far away from the conversation as possible.
“Emerson, please understand that the patients in Calveron are insane. We keep them here with society’s absolute best intentions and when we release them-”
“Are you calling me crazy? ME? I’m not the one who likes to murder people, segregate people from society, tear apart families, and brainwash people all in the name of ‘peace’.” In my anger, I have cornered Albert, and I’m standing so close to him that I’m sure he can see the steam exploding out of me. He is a lot taller than me, but that doesn’t intimidate me. I can see it in his eyes; he is nervous of what I am going to say. The things that I know. He is nervous that I have discovered the real truth.
“Please,” I continue sarcastically, “we all know that you are just trying to save the useless society of people that are brainwashed into obeying every single thing that you say. They don’t need your ‘best intentions’, you’ve already kicked out anyone who can think for themselves.”
“Emerson!” Albert slams his fist against the wall, “How dare you even suggest that?” I don’t flinch. He can’t scare me. I won’t let him. We stay silent for a few moments while Albert takes a couple of deep breaths and composes himself. “When we release our patients from Calveron, we need to erase their memory of the place and any events that include us so that they don’t go talking about things they shouldn’t. You however-” he pauses for a moment, and I decide to continue for him.
“You brainwashed me, yet somehow I can still remember some things. You threw me back to Beast Eye not knowing that the serum didn’t work properly. You were thinking that you’d finally gotten rid of me, and that I would just think that I was out, trying to find my dad for a whole YEAR after he left. And I’m guessing that you threw me out because I didn’t give you the information that you wanted. Or more to the point, I didn’t actually know what you wanted,” I know that my assumptions are right when Travis bows his head, and Albert gives me a false look of sympathy.
“We never wanted it to happen. We had to inject you because your mother, being the smart woman she is, injected you with an anti-serum when you were very small, so that if we injected you, it wouldn’t work properly. In fact, her anti-serum was so strong, that any serum won’t work on you for long. We had to inject you with something stronger, and that barely did the trick. That’s why you only see glimpses of your time here and not everything. That’s why, I assume, you are already starting to remember parts of your past from the memory serum you just injected yourself with a couple of days ago.” He keeps rambling, and I conveniently ‘forgot’ to keep listening. He sounds genuine and I want to put this behind me, but I just can’t. I mean, why would he bother telling me the truth, when he could have gained so much by keeping it from me?
He’s right though, about my memory coming back. I don’t remember everything, but I remember my family. My family before they left me. And now I am starting to remember parts of my new family. The family that has raised me, the Kings and the gang that I am a part of.
Mason, Aubrey, Crusoe, Hayden.
Their names are just blurs in my mind, but I know they’re out there; I know that I need to escape and find them.
