Chapter 14 - The Fourteenth Chair
We returned to the original Project Sable images.
Every photograph showed thirteen children.
But Mercer was right.
There were always fourteen chairs.
One empty chair stood at the end of each row.
Sometimes it was partly hidden by a doctor.
Sometimes it faced away from the camera.
But it was always there.
Vanessa enlarged one image.
A small hand was visible beneath the table near the empty chair.
“There was another child,” she said.
“Why remove them from the records?”
“Maybe they weren’t a patient.”
I remembered a voice from my dreams.
A child counting backward.
Not Dr. Vale.
A child.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
I closed my eyes.
The white room returned.
Emily was strapped to a chair.
Vanessa sat behind the glass.
I stood beside a boy with dark hair.
He looked like me.
Not similar.
Identical.
The memory struck with such force that I fell from my chair.
Vanessa rushed toward me.
“What did you see?”
“A boy.”
“Who?”
“My twin.”
My mother confirmed it when we confronted her.
She broke down before I finished describing him.
“His name was David.”
“Why wasn’t he in any record?”
“Adrian kept him secret.”
“Why?”
“Because David responded perfectly to the treatment.”
“What does that mean?”
“He could remember what they wanted him to remember and forget what they wanted him to forget.”
“A controlled memory.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“Richard believed he died in the fire.”
“And you?”
“I saw a body.”
“Was it identified?”
“No.”
Another hidden child.
Another false death.
Another life erased.
“Was David Subject 13?” Vanessa asked.
My mother shook her head.
“No. David had no number.”
“The fourteenth chair,” I said.
“He was not part of the trial. He was the control.”
A control subject.
A child used as a standard against which the others were measured.
“What did he become?” I asked.
My mother looked terrified.
“Whatever Adrian trained him to become.”
Detective Bennett traced Robert Mercer’s final call to Westbridge Reservoir.
We traveled there under heavy police protection.
The reservoir covered the ruins of Meridian House beneath seventy feet of water. Divers located a sealed entrance in the foundation basement.
The door contained no conventional lock.
Instead, it had a panel with thirteen lights.
When I touched it, a sequence of images flashed across the screen.
A bird.
A red door.
A woman holding an umbrella.
A broken watch.
Memories.
I spoke the first numbers that entered my mind.
“Seven. Three. Eleven. Two. Thirteen.”
Five lights turned green.
Vanessa placed her hand on the panel.
She whispered coordinates she did not consciously understand.
The remaining lights turned green.
The chamber opened.
Inside were waterproof cases containing research files, patient records, video tapes, and samples of the original Sable compound.
There was enough evidence to expose the entire program.
Enough to prosecute corporations, doctors, and officials.
Enough to change history.
At the center of the chamber stood a computer terminal protected from water and decay.
Its screen turned on as we entered.
A recorded image of Adrian Vale appeared.
He looked older than in the photographs but very much alive.
“Daniel,” he said, “if you are watching this, then the emotional barriers have failed.”
The message had been recorded, but he seemed to look directly at me.
“You will be told that Project Sable was an atrocity. They will show you dead children, broken families, and damaged minds. All of that is true.”
He paused.
“But they will not tell you what Sable prevented.”
Images appeared behind him.
Bombed buildings.
Military operations.
Political assassinations.
“This program was not created to erase trauma. It was created to contain a memory capable of starting a war.”
“What memory?” Vanessa whispered.
Vale continued.
“Fourteen children witnessed an event at Meridian House. Only one understood what it meant.”
A photograph filled the screen.
David.
My twin.
“David remembers everything,” Vale said.
“And when he finds you, do not believe a word he says.”
The screen went dark.
Then a live video feed appeared.
My mother’s hospital room.
Her bed was empty.
May you like
On the wall, written in black ink, were six words.
DAVID CAME TO TAKE HER HOME.
