CHAPTER EIGHT
Lane
“What…the…?”
Everybody stood stone-still; Mrs. Sinclair had a knife clasped tightly in her hands and stared across at her husband with a look way creepier than I would’ve predicted to ever see on her face. Meanwhile, Dr. Noah was giving his wife a look of complete confusion. He was standing in the ruins of a plant, lowering his head to sift the dirt from his hair and moving his brown work shoes from the shattered clay pot that I’d seen flying only a few moments before. I didn’t see why she’d been aiming for him. By the look on his face I’d say he was just as clueless.
It took me a second, but I spotted Jordan hiding behind one of the kitchen chairs. She was the kind of person who ran straight into shoot-offs and house fires, so I wasn’t all that surprised that she crept out to take the knife from her aunt’s hand. “Lina,” she murmured. “It’s okay. You’re just confused.”
“No I’m not!” she snarled, only clenching the knife tighter and holding it protectively to the other side. Flying plants and twisted secret plots I could deal with, but when a Sinclair had a knife, it was time to worry. Mrs. Sinclair was a known crazy case; as nice as she was, she definitely spaced now and then. She’d never gone totally nuts like this, but it was bound to happen. Her daughter Arie couldn’t be trusted with any kitchen utensil; damn, she’d set the kitchen on fire twice, and had dropped one too many sharp objects onto my feet before to ever be trusted again. Dr. Noah Sinclair would’ve seemed like a potential candidate, if he wasn’t known for his carrot-cutting catastrophe that had apparently led to the loss of his left ring finger. Even Jordan seemed more qualified to hold it, especially since whatever was going down seemed to be between the two hubbies. Still, I was pretty quick to snag the knife from Mrs. Sinclair before it went flying in the same general direction as the house’s foliage. My stomach did a back-flip and belly-flop as I lunged for it; I hadn’t had a lot to drink, but it was enough to make me want to hurl.
Jordan was looking at her aunt warily. “Aunt Carolina, it’s okay, it’s just--”
“No!” Her aunt pulled away, her expression apologetic for only a second before it returned to hostility. She turned to Dr. Noah with an accusing expression. “Tell the truth.”
“What truth?” he asked patiently, refocusing the thin-wire glasses on his face. They were crooked now, and slid down his nose. He scratched the back of his head uncomfortably.
I shot a look towards Jordan, who gave me an impatient fill-you-in-later look and refocused on the Sinclair’s conversation.
“You know what truth I mean,” she growled. “Tell me about me, Noah. Where am I from? Where was I born and raised? Who are my parents? Why don’t we ever see them, or any other family?”
His eyebrows furrowed as his eyes closed almost painfully, one of his hands running down his face. “I’ve told you, love, your parents are dead. You were raised by your aunt in Chicago, but she’s dead too. She died in from consumption two years before your amnesia. She was the only family you had.”
I was surprised that Jordan’s attitude had changed. Now her arms were crossed over her baggy Green Day t-shirt, eyes narrowed suspiciously, back pressed more towards the wall. For a second she met my gaze, but whatever clue I was supposed to be getting was completely lost in translation.
Suddenly, Mrs. Sinclair’s expression wasn’t mad – it was even scarier. She was desperate. One hand reached to stroke back a length of her long brown hair, wiping a tear from her eye too. “You’re lying.”
“No. I’m not. You know I’m not.”
“I’ve known you for thirteen years, Noah,” she decided. “I know when you’re lying.”
It took a second, but then it hit me. There was a harsh implication in thirteen years; Arie was fourteen. It Dr. Sinclair was telling the truth, they’d been together for an entire year before they were even expecting Arie. Clearly it had hit him with the same impression. Her next words were almost eerie: “Who am I really, Noah?”
How long were we standing in the hallway? It seemed long enough for Dr. Noah to have died and decomposed into the dirt mound at his feet, for Mrs. Sinclair to have gained wrinkles and gray hair, or at least long enough for Jordan to have burst after holding in her hyperactive habits of feet-tapping and hand-clenching. Still, nobody moved.
Finally for one of the first times since I’d arrived I spoke up. Obviously the drinks were still clouding my head, but the most coherent thing I could come up with was, “Well, can’t we just tell her and get this over with?”
Jordan snapped towards me so fast it was a shock that her neck didn’t break.
I shrugged.
She gave me a look of disgust, but seemed way more ingested in what was going on. She turned to Dr. Noah and covered up whatever faux pas I’d apparently made. “What he means is, Lane and I already know,” Jordan prodded forcefully. “You might as well tell her, or we’ll do it for you.”
Dr. Noah nodded. “Okay. Let’s all sit down though; this will take a lot of explaining.”
We all passed glances to each other, but finally seemed to silently agree. We headed towards the living room, Noah taking his usual place on the recliner, with Mrs. Sinclair taking her place on the sofa where the coffee table spanned between them. She sat with her knees up a little cautiously beside her, but looked more willing to cut throats than he did. Jordan sat next to her, and I sat on the sofa’s arm. Her nose cringed. “You smell like alcohol,” she whispered harshly.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled back. I wish her expression didn’t make me feel so guilty.
Finally, it was time to soak in what was going on. Dr. Noah rubbed his hands together. “It started around thirteen years ago…
“Dr. Peter Parson was a head MERCY member working to improve on certain projects. His newest one was something he only let me in on; we’d been friends for so long, and now he knew about my secret.” He stared at Mrs. Sinclair, who had hardly blinked this entire time as she stared off into space. “So he figured it was time to let me in on his.
“Pete had been using a back room of the research center for his own side projects. One was working with the connections between certain brain cells, hacking into those and essentially altering thought. He was only working with animals so far, but using his dog Einstein he could do virtually anything. He taught him to comprehend human speech, to obey any command he threw at hm. It was amazing.
“But it was expensive for having no backers. He knew his project would be widely rejected by everything from animal fanatics to obsessive humanists and religious maniacs. Even I wasn’t completely bought to the idea of messing with minds, even for the better. But then he gave me an offer.
“Keep in mind that I was only twenty. So when he told me that he could alter minds, thoughts and emotions, even memories, I said, ‘Well I have a project for you.’
“I’d fallen head over heels with a girl named Sophia Robbins.” He nodded towards his wife, who still refused to look at him. “A baker’s daughter who worked miserably in her dad’s shop. She was a great cook, better than her dad, but she was utterly miserable. Anyone who met her could tell. Sophia Robbins, after being abused by her previous boyfriend, was mean and bitter and hated life, just wanted to get out of it.
“So one day I came around closing time, when she was alone. I talked to her for a while, said I’d come to her shop a million times. She said she’d seen me before.
“And that’s when we carried out the plan. I gave her a piece of candy that secretly carried a hybridized little drug that makes you fall asleep almost instantaneously.” He pulled out a golden-wrapped piece of caramel. “Even now, I keep a few hints of emotion-soothing serum in a lot of these. You said they were your favorite.”
Jordan intervened. “Wait, wait, wait, you drugged those candies that we’ve all been eating for as long as I can remember?”
“Don’t worry. They aren’t harmful, just relaxing.”
He took his crooked glasses from his pocket and tried to re-bend the metal. “Anyway. I brought her to MERCY, and the rest was up to Parson. Unfortunately, she woke up sooner than expected.
“She might’ve escaped, if she hadn’t tipped over the tray of medical supplies that was next her. But she did. We gave her surgery and drugs that erased her memory, and refilled what gaps were missing with a complete new life. You were born in North Carolina, the reason we gave you your name. Parson’s project was a complete success…almost.
“Now and then, Lina, you still have flashbacks of remote memories of your past. Occasionally you return for a second to the mind of Sophia Robbins. But most of the time, you remain your happier self as Carolina Sinclair. You think of yourself as her, as my wife, as Arie’s mother…”
She closed her eyes, taking in a harsh sigh that stopped everyone else from breathing. “So what happens now?”
That was a good question that nobody had an answer to. We knew that the further this went the more drama we would uncover. MERCY did have secrets.
We all did. Even me.
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And, like I said, Green Day is fairly modern. People haven't been dying of TB in developed countries for a long, long time. So what time period is this in?
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