Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
She needs to hear this from him.
I’m sure Olsen has been filling her head up with shit since she left. I know this to be true, especially since he lives so close and is a permanent fixture in her life. He thinks he knows things, but he doesn’t.
I mean, come on. Olsen was a prisoner when I found him. Does he really think we would let someone like him in on what we were really up to?
No. We wouldn’t.
We didn’t.
CHAPTER SEVEN - NOVA
FIVE YEARS AGO
My confusion makes Mercer laugh. “Which part of what I just said deserves that look?”
“Well…” I huff. “What do you mean, I’ll be the twenty-eighth project coordinator? I’m only here for a year—”
He cuts me off with a hand in the air. “Come on, Nova.” And again with this Nova stuff. Why give me the stupid name of Ryan if he’s not going to use it? “You don’t really think you’ll be leaving in a year, do you?”
“I don’t know. It’s my first day, Mercer. I have no idea what’s coming. I have no idea if I’ll enjoy this or not.”
His eyebrow goes up. And now that I think about it, this is a habit that several people on this island seem to do regularly. “Enjoy this? What’s joy have to do with it?”
He doesn’t say this jokingly, either. He’s serious.
“Isn’t joy the goal?”
He nearly guffaws. “Is it?”
I put up one hand. “OK. Just… I feel like we’re talking about two different things here.”
“Good.”
“Good? How is that good?”
He smiles and holds up the folder. “Do you want to see a case? Or would you rather call it a night?”
“I came here to work.”
“So you’ve said.”
“So give me the file.” He hands it over and I place it on my knees and open it up. He scoots his chair closer, close enough for me catch a whiff of his cologne. It’s subtle, but there. Woodsy and dark. I start reading out loud. “‘Clarence B. Hopkins. Age—’”
“Just get to the good stuff. You can read the details later.” Mercer points further down the page. “Here. Read this part.”
“‘Rape fanta—’” I stop and look up at Mercer.
“Triggers, Nova?”
“Um?” I look back down at the file, then up at Mercer. “Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting that.”
“Oh, it gets much worse. His is a fantasy. The others… some of them—”
I interrupt him. “What is my part in this fantasy?”
“Nothing, really. You’re just watching the MRI video and making connections.”
“But I’ll have to know what’s happening, right? I don’t understand how I’ll know how to map this.”
Mercer shifts a little and I know what he’s going to say before the words come out of his mouth. “They narrate everything. When they are on the drug, they’re… semi-conscious. But we can ask questions and they can answer. So we take notes. We map it out in a different way. Like a story. Actually, it is a story. It’s like we’re cheap erotica most of the time. And then we triple the dosage, put them in the MRI machine, and we read it back to them. This is when they really experience the… well… experience. This is when it becomes real. This is when we create new memories.” He shrugs. “And then… that’s it. This is their new reality.”
There are so many red flags going off in my head, it’s not even funny. Aside from being borderline unethical, this cannot be legal.
But I’m here. By invitation. I’ve been invited into an inner circle. And while I’m not really an inner circle kind of girl—I never wanted to be a cheerleader, or a sorority sister, or actually belong to anything, now that I think about it, until now—I want this.
I mean, I don’t want to cross lines in my professional life, but I might want to walk that edge the way I do in my personal life. And I can’t navigate that edge if I don’t get straight answers from him. So I ask straight questions. “What kind of science is this, Mercer? And who are these people? Murderers? Rapists?”
“No. We didn’t accept anyone with a violent history. Most of them are thieves. And liars, of course. But some of them are white collar. Same thing, really. Thieves and liars. But they do it to corporations, not people.”
“Here’s where you’re losing me. How did we go from a vacation memory to a rape fantasy?”
“Right. The study definitely took a turn for the weird. But that’s the interesting part of it, I think.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so confused. What is the goal here? Twenty-seven people have been working on this? This?” I shudder a little. “Really? Vacations and fetish fantasies?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that. And it’s not even about vacations, or fantasies, for that matter. That’s just the carrot, Nova.”
“To get them to agree to this?”