The question is rhetorical. I blink as I look at him, saying nothing.
“Notice how she touches the inside of your left arm when she wants you to relax or to listen to what she’s saying? There’s an implant there, too. The doctors program the device to respond to their touch. It sends impulses straight into the primary implant in your brain, controlling your behavior and mood.”
I can’t bring myself to believe it. Riley can’t know about any of this. They must have lied to her, too.
My hands start to shake, and my pulse pounds in my temples. The tightness I feel in my chest makes breathing painful.
“I think we got the poor boy all confused,” Hal says quietly.
“You’re right,” Merle says. “Galen, I know this is a lot of information to absorb all at once, and I know it’s hard to question what you’ve been told, but I swear to you it is the truth.”
I can only shake my head in response.
No. It can’t be true. It’s a mistake. It must be a mistake.
It could be a case of mistaken identity. Maybe I look like a man who volunteered, or maybe I resemble this Galen Braggs person enough to cause confusion. It’s been years since any of these events occurred, and they may just believe me to be this other man.
How could his memories end up in my dreams?
The back of my head starts to throb. None of it makes sense. Riley takes care of me. She’s my doctor, my friend, my lover. She’s the only one who has ever been there for me.
She lied. She took my memories, and she lied to me about it.
The ache in my head intensifies. Bright lights fill my mind, like sparks rising from the flames of a fire on a dark night. Each spark burns my brain.
No. No, no, no…
“No!” I scream and jump off the bed. I shove Merle in the chest, sending him and the chair flying backward. I grab the bed and flip it over as I scream in rage. Hal’s eyes go wide as he backs himself into the corner of the small cell, holding his hands up in front of him.
They’re lying to me. They tortured me to try to get information, and now they’re lying to me to mess with my head.
“Fucking liars!” I scream. I grab the chair Merle had been sitting in and smash it against the wall, barely missing his head as he ducks. “I’ll kill every fucking one of you!”
Blinding pain hits me, and I drop to my knees, hands on my head. It’s similar to when the net fell on me, but when that happened, I felt it all over the outside of my body. This pain comes from within.
Merle and Hal scurry around me and rush toward the door. With the pain in my head affecting my reflexes, I’m not fast enough when I grab for their ankles. They slip by me and slam the door shut with a loud bang.
The pain stops as abruptly as it started.
I jump to my feet and slam my body up against the door.
“Motherfucking liars!” I scream as I beat on the door with my fists. “You’re lying! You’re lying! You’re lying!”
I keep pounding on the door, switching from my hands to my feet, knees, and shoulder. The barrier is too strong—I can’t break through it. My hands and knees are bleeding when I finally collapse in a heap at the foot of the door.
Tears stream down my face. I punch the floor a few times before giving up. I lie on my side and pull my knees up against my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs. My body shakes.
It’s not true. It’s not true.
*****
I wake groggy and alone, still lying on the cement floor.
There isn’t a spot on my body that doesn’t radiate pain. Just rolling over onto my stomach causes me to wince. As I get up on my hands and knees, my legs throb from where the nails punctured me. The electrical burns around the holes feel like they’re eating away at my flesh.
Inside my head, there is only confusion.
I drag myself to the center of the room where the mattress lies on the floor, all helter-skelter, and drop myself onto it. It’s half folded up, and I can only get the top part my body on it, but it’s softer than the floor. I don’t have the energy to fix it.
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the pain in my body, concentrating on it, reveling in it, but it doesn’t help the emotional agony going on inside my head.
I know at least some of what Merle and Hal told me is true. But if any of it is true, then Riley lied to me. If she lied to me about one thing, how could I trust anything she’s told me?
At the same time, I want to see her. I want to smell her and touch her. There is a fundamental need inside of me to be close to her. I know part of it is the physical need that has been chemically induced as a way to control my actions and make me obey her commands, but there’s more to it than that.
Isn’t there?