Specimen(53)

“If I were going to poison you, I would just inject it in your arm,” he says as he drags the chair closer to me and sits. “Come on, you need a little strength back.”

His words make sense.

Inside the foil is a flour tortilla wrapped around slices of meat and cheese. There are even small pieces of fresh lettuce inside. I take a small bite of it and start to chew. The taste and texture are amazing—delicious in their simplicity. The taste is also familiar though I have no memory of ever eating anything outside of the liquid nutrition Riley provided for me. Swallowing is difficult, and the act of chewing feels almost unnatural.

“Satisfying, isn’t it?” The older man smiles at me. “There’s nothing quite like eating actual food, is there?”

I don’t respond though I do agree with him. The tortilla is a little dry, but the moisture in the lettuce makes up for the staleness. Its crunching sound fills my ears, triggering some memory deep inside of me, but I can’t quite reach it.

“Maybe those liquid diets give you the nutrients you need, but it just isn’t the same. We grow the lettuce hydroponically, right here in this building. Sorry the tortillas aren’t all that fresh. There’s been a shortage.”

I finish the wrap and drink half the bottle of water. My throat feels a little better though everything else aches. I look down and see bandages around my ankles. When I shift my weight, I can feel other bandages on my thighs, upper arms, and chest.

“I’ve been rude,” he says. “I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Merle. Back in the day, I was a history professor at one of the finest universities in Carson City. Now I assist where I can, mostly with the development of alternative growing techniques but also with this division of the CA war effort.”

He watches my face, but I only stare at the bottle in my hands. I have nothing to say to him.

“Do you know your name?” he asks. He waits a moment before giving up on getting an answer. “You don’t have to speak. I’m not going to ask you a lot of questions. Frankly, I probably know more about you than you do.”

I glance at him. I’m wary, to say the least. The whole good cop, bad cop scenario is all too obvious, even if my implants aren’t functioning right.

“Don’t believe me, huh?” He chuckles and leans forward with his elbows on his knees.

For a long moment, he just looks at me. I finish the water and keep holding the bottle, turning it slowly in my hands. I watch the leftover droplets as they slide around on the inside.

I could reach out and break his neck. Despite how sore I am, I’m sure I could kill him before he has a chance to react. What I don’t see is any advantage in the act. Others would follow him, and even if I killed them all, I would still be in a cell. Filling the cell with dead bodies won’t make it less confining.

Merle lets out a sigh. I glance at him, and he begins to speak.

“You were born Galen Michael Braggs,” he says. “Your mother was Bethany Clayborn-Braggs. She passed away when you were six years old—a heart disorder of some kind. You, your father, Michael Jason Braggs, and your sister, Amelia Jane, lived on a farm in the Carson Alliance territories.”

For a second, I think my heart actually stops beating. Amelia. I know the name. In my soul, I know it’s the name of my sister. I stare at Merle. He must see the shock in my eyes because he nods knowingly.

“You know some of this,” he says.

It’s not a question, and I don’t answer it as if it were. He doesn’t seem to require a response anyway.

“Not everything you’ve been told should be taken as truth,” he says. “You were brought to Mills for a specific reason, and they’d tell you anything to encourage your cooperation.”

I narrow my eyes at him. Most of the information I’ve received came directly from Riley. She wouldn’t lie to me.

She took your memories.

I ignore the thought.

“I know you have no reason to trust me,” Merle says, “but can I tell you the story anyway? I don’t get much of a chance to teach history anymore.”

His smile is genuine, but I keep my guard up. He leans back in the chair, crosses one leg over his knee, and starts his tale.

“I won’t go into the whole comet thing,” he says. “No one is disputing what started all of this. It simply comes back to one primary conflict: food becoming scarce very quickly and what should be done about it. The technical and health industries wished to focus on alternate food sources, and the education and agriculture industries wanted to restore the land and get back to their roots, so to speak.”

He pauses and rubs his chin with two fingers as he looks me in the eye.