The Treatment (23 page)

*  *  *

After our heart-to-heart, Nurse Kell helps me dress. I’m in a fresh pair of yellow scrubs with fuzzy slipper socks when she calls in the handler. He’s the one from last night, and my anxiety eases slightly, even though I’m not entirely sure why. He could be just as horrible as all the rest.

“Asa,” Nurse Kell calls to him as he pushes in the wheelchair. “Can you bring Sloane to see Dr. Beckett? He’s expecting her.” The handler doesn’t respond, but he does take my hand to help me into the chair, an unusual show of kindness that catches me off guard.

“It’ll all be better soon,” Nurse Kell says as she gently straps down my wrists. Then she steps back, and Asa steers me from the room before I can respond.

The handler is gliding me through the halls once again, like a continuation from last night, but this time our pace is slower. He’s taking his time. There are several patients walking freely, but none of them is Lacey. I look for her, both dreading and needing to see her. To see what’s left of her.

“I want to show you something,” Asa says quietly, pushing the button that opens a set of double doors—ones that don’t lead to the therapy wing. I glance over my shoulder at him, trying to discern why he’d be sneaking me around. He reminds me of Realm, so I don’t argue. We begin down a quiet wing where the white walls fade to a dusty gray.

“Any chance this is the way out?” I ask, trying to lighten the heaviness that’s fallen on his posture. Asa doesn’t look at me, only straight ahead.

“Not exactly.”

My heart thumps hard, and I face front again. My ease is starting to evaporate, quickly replaced with anxiety. Asa’s pace slows as we approach another set of doors. “This is where they keep them,” he murmurs.

“Them?” It’s obvious this part of the hospital isn’t in regular use. It’s quiet—mausoleum quiet—and the air smells lightly of urine. Fear is about to get the best of me and I begin to tug on the restraints, subtly at first, but then more aggressively. I don’t know where he’s taking me. I don’t know what’s happening!

And then suddenly we stop. We’re in a large room—much like the leisure room, but instead of distractions and card games, there are a few scattered wheelchairs with people in gray scrubs. They’re all facing a window, or in one case, facing a black-and-white painting on the wall. Several of them have a white patch over their left eye.

“What’s going on?” I ask in a shaky voice.

“Doctors found that color disturbs them this soon after surgery,” Asa murmurs. “Noise, too. They keep them isolated until their minds are a bit steadier.”

I spin around in the chair, the pressure on my wrists enough to make me wince. “Are you saying these people have been lobotomized?”

Asa nods, meeting my gaze. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Sloane. This is what this facility does. You’re one of the untreatable—this is what’s going to happen to you.”

The world starts to close in on me, and I search the room
once again, trying to make sense of it. Although lobotomy was always a threat, I didn’t know it was definite. I never pictured it like this. I don’t think I believed it could happen to me. “But I’m cooperating,” I say in a small voice. “I’m telling them—”

“They’re extracting the information they need, and then you’ll end up here. They all do.”

I blink and feel a warm tear slip over my cheek and drip onto my thigh. I’m stunned, horrified,
traumatized
by what Asa is showing me. I don’t know what to do. I’m so goddamn afraid, I can’t think.

“You have about a week,” Asa says, “before they’ll bring you down here. The longer you can hold out on the information, the more time you buy yourself. I just wanted you to know the stakes, Sloane.”

A week. I have my life for one more week. How does someone process this information without spiraling into complete madness? What does he expect me to do? I can’t just bust myself out. This is almost like another form of torture.

“Why did you bring me here?” I murmur, staring again at the backs of heads, the slumped shoulders, the empty souls.

“There’s someone here I thought you should see.”

James.
I try and leap from the chair, searching for him, but I am immediately pulled back by the restraints as they bite into my skin.
Please, no. Please.

Asa bends down, his cheek close to mine as he reaches past me, pointing to one chair across the room. From the profile I can see it’s an old man, and I sputter out a relieved cry because
it’s not James. The handler turns, the bristle of his scruff tickling my skin.

“They’ve crushed the rebellion,” he whispers. “But James and Michael Realm got away, and now any hope of ending  The Program lies with you and your friends. I wanted you to know how little time you have left to figure out how.”

James is okay. Oh my God, James got away. But my solace is short-lived as I stare straight ahead at the man in the chair. I recognize him. “Arthur?” I ask, my voice cracking over his name.

Asa stands and pushes me closer to the doctor. I’m in disbelief as I study him, his gray beard, his wrinkled skin. He has a patch over his eye and there’s a thin line of drool from his lip to the chest of his gray scrubs.

I start to cry. “Arthur?” I call again, hoping he’ll just snap out of it and look at me. But he doesn’t react at all. He stares at nothing, seeing nothing. Knowing nothing. Arthur Pritchard is dead and his body is left behind to rot. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” I whimper. “I’m sorry they did this to you.” I flex my fingers as if I can reach out and touch him, but Asa backs the chair away.

“We have to go,” Asa says solemnly. I watch Arthur the entire way to the door, wishing I would have done everything differently. Because what hope do I have now? What hope could I possibly have when The Program has lobotomized its creator?

ASA SAYS NOTHING AS HE
parks my wheelchair in the center of Dr. Beckett’s office, leaving me there alone. My entire body is shaking, horrified by the image of Arthur Pritchard emptied out. He’s no longer a factor in our future. He has none. That’s going to be me in a week unless I figure out what to do.

Is that what happened to Lacey? Was she like Arthur? Is she empty? Fresh tears threaten to brim over, but I sniffle and try to blink them away. My wrists are still tied down, so I won’t have a way to wipe my face before Dr. Beckett arrives. I need a plan. And I need one fast.

The door opens behind me, and I take a deep breath and wait as the doctor comes to the other side of his desk, studying me as he walks. He looks the same as he did before, except now that I know the extent of The Program, I’m truly afraid of him.

“Hello, Sloane,” he says good-naturedly. “How did your talk with Dallas go?”

Dallas. She probably has less time than I do. Who knows, they could have lobotomized her already this morning. “It went well,” I say, offering a pressed-lip smile. “She’s sick, but not beyond your help.”

Dr. Beckett nods to himself, taking a seat as he seems to think over my words. “Is that your expert opinion?”

I don’t like his sarcasm, but I hold back. “I’m not an expert, but I’ve seen depression. I know Dallas wants to live, deep down. I think you can save her.”

“Interesting.” The doctor opens my file again, his pen scratching quickly onto the white papers clipped down. “You seem to have had quite a change of heart since yesterday. What can I attribute this miraculous reversal to?”

“Nurse Kell,” I lie. “She told me why she asked to be my nurse and why she’s part of The Program. What can I say? It resonated.”

Beckett laughs and pushes his papers away from him. “That so? Well, Sloane,” he says, “you’ll excuse me if I don’t buy into your change right away. Authentic or not, we take therapy very seriously and we can’t just accept your word for it. We have to continue, and the way I see it, you have two choices: You can voluntarily give up your memories, or we can take them. Now, I know that neither may seem like a good option, but I promise you—the first one is better.”

He’s right. I might have thought his threat empty, or at least
had some reason to think I could outsmart him, if I hadn’t seen for myself. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of here,” I tell the doctor. “On that you have my word.”

“I’m so very happy to hear that. Because we need your help tracking down Michael Realm.”

“W-what?” I stammer. He can’t expect me to give up Realm—even if I did know where he was, he’s with James. I have to protect them.

“Yes, Michael is a friend of yours from your time in The Program. Actually”—he smiles—“it says here it was a little more serious than that. Seems Mr. Realm has gone off the grid since then, but he’s not really allowed to do that, you see. He’s under contract.”

An icy shiver trickles down my spine. “What do you mean ‘contract’?”

Dr. Beckett seems taken aback. “You don’t know? He didn’t tell you while you were together on the run?” When I don’t answer, partly because I don’t want to admit being with Realm, and partly because I think I know what the doctor is about to say. Somehow—I know.

“Michael Realm is a handler, Sloane. An embedded handler who was assigned to help erase you, and then later, assigned to track you and the rebels down. Only, he must have gotten caught up in your cause, or more likely, gotten sick. We need to find him before he harms himself.”

My lips work, but no words are coming out. Realm is . . . a handler? Realm . . . My eyelids flutter, and I’m on the verge
of fainting as my shoulder hits the metal bar of the wheelchair. Realm helped erase me and then tracked me down for The Program? Is any of that true? Could it be?

Realm ignores James, looking at me with a sort of reverence. “So you’re happy to see me?” he asks, as if he’s scared of the answer.

“Yes. What kind of question is that?”

He smiles, dropping his hand. “Of course,” he repeats. “You didn’t take it.”

My world breaks apart and I begin fighting my restraints. I understand now what Realm meant the first time I saw him after he gave me the pill. At one point I must have known exactly what he was. He thought I remembered that.

“No!” I scream, my skin scoring under the restraints. Tears roll down my cheeks and my throat becomes raw. I start to sob, so betrayed, so hurt. My wrists slide around in the blood as I shred my flesh under the buckle. Dr. Beckett moves around the desk to undo my restraints, and once freed, I make no move other than to cover my face and cry. “Realm,” I say, moaning. “What have you done?”

My best friend helped to destroy who I was. He worked for The Program—he was never my friend. How could he be, when he had inside information on my life? My relationships? I was being manipulated the entire time. And now he’s with James. What is he going to do?

I feel stupid. I feel alone. Dr. Beckett puts his arm around
me in a show of support, and I turn and cry into the crisp collar of his button-up shirt, smearing blood on his sleeves. I wish I could see Michael Realm again. Just so I can kill him.

A dozen other memories want to surface, ones where Realm is kind and caring, always looking out for me. But I growl at the lies of them and push back from Dr. Beckett. He quickly grabs my arms, pinning me down.

“Stay calm,” he says soothingly. But it’s no use. I’m ready to tear him apart. Tear this place apart. “We will catch Michael Realm,” he says, close to my face. “And then you’ll be free of his lies.”

I lift my chin defiantly. “How do I know you’re not the one who’s lying?”

Beckett lets go of my arms and sits in the chair beside me. “Don’t be naive. You already knew, Sloane. Maybe you didn’t want to admit it, but you knew. Michael Realm, your friends in The Program—Shepard, Derek, Tabitha. They’re all part of this, Sloane.”

I stare at him a moment, quickly picking through everyone I’ve ever known, suspicious of every friend I can remember. There’s no way to know the truth anymore. There’s no way to know who or what is real. “And Cas,” I say. “You had Cas, too.”

The doctor shakes his head. “Casanova Gutierrez was merely an informant. He’s not on the payroll. We struck a deal with him—The Treatment in exchange for your freedom. At least he had a noble cause. Unfortunately, when the handlers arrived, it was obvious you’d all been infected. They told me
they had no choice but to take you into custody. Suicide is contagious, after all, and you’re all a high-level threat. We’ve let Mr. Gutierrez go, though. We try to keep our word.”

I ball my hands into fists, bloodstains dotting my scrubs. I don’t believe Dr. Beckett. They never planned to fulfill their bargain, just like they don’t plan to let me go now. Asa confirmed it. I can’t possibly take this all in; no one could. Dr. Beckett is trying to drive me insane, have me submit to The Program. Why? I’m not that special. I’m not worth this much pain and effort. What more do they want from me? They’ve taken
everything  
!

I jump up from the chair and grab the paperweight off Beckett’s desk—a cast-iron brain with its different parts highlighted. I hold it up, and Dr. Beckett slowly rises from his chair, his eyes narrowed as he darts a look from me to the raised paperweight.

“Put it down, Sloane,” he says in a low voice. “I’m going to tell you only once.” The door opens behind him, as if our whole conversation had been monitored from the start. Asa stands there, his face unreadable. And then he silently shakes his head. I feel myself break, crack, and fall apart. I won’t get out this way—not by killing a doctor who can be replaced so easily. It’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than me.

I drop the brain to the floor, where it clanks loudly even through the carpet. Dr. Beckett’s hand shoots out, and I push him back hard enough to make him stumble over the chair and onto the floor. I start to scream, pull my hair, before Asa rushes
over. I’m losing it. I’m totally fucking losing it. Asa pins my arms to my side, locking me in his grip as he holds my body against his, immobilizing me. I continue to yell as Dr. Beckett tries to stand, and I kick out my feet, barely missing him.

Nurse Kell is fumbling with the cap of a syringe, running into the room amid the chaos I’m creating. I have only a moment to meet her concerned eyes before she stabs me in the thigh with a sedative. Soon I’m sliding from Asa’s arms back into the chair, my cries fading into soft whimpers. Nurse Kell kneels beside me, wiping my face as I stare at her helplessly.