That was news to Numair. “You mean you could have forced memories to the surface faster? You took all those years intentionally?”
“Didn’t you hear the part where I said or risk damaging your psyche and sanity?”
“You actually think I have anything inside my head that could be damaged?”
“As my mentor and slave driver, I would have said your head is made of solid steel. But as your doctor, I’ve touched a few deeply hidden and relatively softer spots. The consistency of rock, granted, but under enough pressure even steel can snap and rock can be pulverized.”
“Where is this leading exactly?”
“You remember—no pun intended—the key memory that was the basis of your investigations into your origins?”
He remembered nothing more. Once the memory had exploded in his mind, he’d felt as if he’d been reliving it. It had been so real he’d almost drowned before Antonio had pulled him out of the hypnotic state.
That memory was of him on a yacht with his father when men, who looked like monsters in his memories, had boarded them. His father had been struck unconscious then thrown overboard. Numair had no doubt he’d drowned immediately. Then the men had tossed him after his father.
He should have drowned, too. And he’d always remembered the sensations of drowning, what had spawned an unreasoning hatred of swimming, even as he’d been forced to excel in it. More probing had unearthed memories of swimming lessons since he’d been born. Investigations had revealed he’d managed to swim to shore in Turkey, where he’d been taken to an orphanage. Over a year later, an Organization recruiter had taken him. And his real ordeal had begun.
Analyzing the history of the whole region at the time, he’d found out that his father had been Hisham Aal Ghaanem, the then Crown Prince of Saraya. And he’d been his father’s heir. He’d concluded that his father’s assassination had been orchestrated by his brother, Saraya’s current king, Hassan. Getting rid of him, too, had spared his uncle from being only regent until he came of age.
“I’d like to revisit that memory.”
Antonio’s demand ended his musings. “Why?”
“Humor me.”
“No.”
“Just no?”
“Yes, as long as you won’t give me a reason beside wanting to strap me down and poke around in my head again.”
“As if I want to poke around that dungeon you call a head. It’s filled with rotting corpses and dismembered remains.”
“As if your head isn’t.”
“It’s my head, so I have to live with it. Infesting it with the contents of your far more nightmarish skull is up there in my priorities with contracting an incurable STD.” Numair started to growl, and Antonio raised his voice, drowning his. “But I feel there are more fragments still stuck in there, like shrapnel. I’m worried if they surface on their own they’d cause uncharted damage. Before you scoff, just imagine yourself with the balance that keeps you precariously on the side of the angels shattered. With your power and intellect, you’d be a full-blown monster. So I’m really worried about the world here.”
Numair hated to admit it, but in The Organization, he’d seen the kind of widespread mayhem caused by those who’d been irrevocably damaged by his kind of life—even when they were nowhere near his caliber.
He exhaled. “What memories could be more damaging than remembering my father’s murder and my own near drowning?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve been reviewing the videos and notes of our last sessions, and I’m convinced what you now know isn’t the whole story.”
“It’s the relevant part of it.”
“Why are you being so pigheaded? I thought you want to find everything about your past.”
“I know enough.”
It was Antonio’s turn to exhale in exasperation. “As long as you understand you’re ignoring my medical recommendation. And you run the risk of having those memories resurface and tear through whatever is keeping you from going berserk.”
“I understand. Anything else?”
Antonio’s huff was self-deprecating. “I should have implanted a posthypnotic suggestion in that impenetrable skull of yours when I had the chance.”
“But you didn’t.” He infused his voice with the older brother’s and leader’s criticism his brothers had grown up with. “I always said your moral afflictions stop you from maximizing your opportunities.”
“Yeah.” Antonio sounded vexed, then he suddenly brightened. “But I can always hit you with a tranq dart and have my way with you.”