Chapter 7 - The MemoryI stared at him.
"Me?"
Dad nodded.
"Halcyon believed you could be useful."
"How?"
"You have unusually strong facial memory."
I laughed.
"You dragged me across the country because I remember faces?"
"Not just faces."
He handed me a folder.
Inside were photographs.
Hundreds.
People I didn't recognize.
Yet somehow...
I remembered them.
A man standing near our house when I was twelve.
A woman at Mom's funeral.
A doctor in a hallway.
A black sedan parked outside school.
I had seen them.
All of them.
I just hadn't known they mattered.
Maya watched me.
"Your makeup work made the difference."
I frowned.
"How?"
"You trained yourself to notice tiny details."
Scars.
Skin texture.
Facial asymmetry.
Expressions.
Changes.
"You remember faces better than almost anyone we've ever met."
Jake added, "Halcyon used you as an experiment when you were younger."
My chest tightened.
"What experiment?"
Dad didn't speak.
Jake did.
"You were given medication."
I felt the floor disappear beneath me.
"What?"
"When you were thirteen."
I remembered being sick.
Dizzy.
Sleeping for sixteen hours.
Dad saying I had the flu.
"They were testing whether trauma could strengthen visual memory."
I looked at Dad.
"You let them experiment on me."
"I didn't know what they were doing."
"You said you investigated them."
"Not then."
I backed away.
Maya placed a hand on my shoulder.
"There's more."
She showed me a recording.
My mother appeared on screen.
She looked tired.
Older.
But alive.
"If you're watching this, Evan, they will have told you enough to make you hate your father."
She paused.
"That's okay."
My throat tightened.
"He deserves some of it."
Dad closed his eyes.
Mom continued.
"But there is something he did for you that no one else could."
She looked directly into the camera.
"He erased you."
I stared at the screen.
"I what?"
"He erased your identity from Halcyon's system."
"For ten years, you were invisible."
"That was why your father pushed you away."
"That was why he broke your heart."
"Because he needed them to believe you had no value."
The recording ended.
I sat down.
Jake crouched beside me.
"I wanted to tell you."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because Mom made me promise."
"Why?"
He looked at me.
"Because she knew if you remembered everything, they would come for you."
"What did I forget?"
Jake's face went white.
"The night she disappeared."
A loud metallic crash echoed outside the train.
Someone had boarded the rear carriage.
Maya raised her weapon.
Jake pulled me behind him.
A figure stepped from the darkness.
Dr. Vale.
May you like
He smiled.
"Thank you for bringing the mirror to me."
