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)
I sit because if I don’t, I might collapse. My heart is beating so fast inside my chest, I might faint, or have a heart attack, or just flat-out die.
There is a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. Mercer pops the cork and fills my glass. I don’t drink it. If I drink that champagne, I will barf.
The applause dies slowly. Then finally, thankfully, stops.
The room becomes a flurry of hushed whispers and then Patricia Mercer begins to speak.
“Welcome,” she says, still beaming that smile. Like she just won the lottery. “Welcome, everyone. We are here tonight to celebrate the most astounding success in the history of pharmaceuticals.”
I almost throw up.
“We are making history tonight, friends. History. And from this moment on, because of this one success, the world will never be the same.”
The thunderous applause begins anew.
Mercer reaches for my hand. Tries to squeeze it.
But I pull it out of his grip.
Because I know what’s going on here.
I know.
Patricia keeps talking. I tune it all out. I can’t hear anyway. There is blood pounding in my head and it drowns out all the speech and relegates it to nothing but a distant warble.
The lights dim and the screen lights up.
A movie, of sorts.
My movie.
The real story of Nova Ryanzski.
Born to a drug addict.
Father killed himself after serving in Afghanistan.
Orphaned at age six.
Foster care.
Trailer parks.
And then the grand escape with her accomplice, Travis Olsen.
Murderer at age seventeen.
They show me. Videos of me. My court hearings, my interviews.
I am a wild, ruthless teenager with ratty hair and no meat on her bones.
I scream, and swear, and curse people.
I throw tantrums. I throw threats. I throw other things. Staplers in an office. An office I recognize as Mercer’s on the island.
I am… mentally ill, I think.
Completely insane.
At first, there is a detachment. An inability to reconcile the psycho woman on the screen with this woman I feel I am now.
But then it all starts coming back.
Mercer did recruit me, but it wasn’t outside a dissertation room.
It was outside a prison after he got my life sentence deferred so I could attend the rehabilitation program on the island.
That was seven years ago.
I’ve been on that island for seven. Years.
They got me through Travis.
He turned on me after I left him at the scene of a robbery. I let him take the fall and he made a deal with the Institute to test their new drug. Not used the way Mercer explained it, for fantasies and vacations, but to erase the anger and urges of criminals and give them a different perspective.
To change them.
Everything about them.
The core of who these criminals were was altered at the neurological level using drugs.
I watch the screen as this is explained. I watch the interview Olsen—Travis—did with Locke. I watch him ask for his favor in return. To have me killed for leaving him behind.
Travis Olsen gave me up to save himself.
Well, I can’t blame him for that.
I actually don’t blame him for that.
None of this is Travis’s fault.
This fault belongs to Mercer and Locke.
Because instead of killing me, they just… stole me.
They stole my past, they stole my present, they stole my future.
They changed me into this… into… Ryan.
I was a guinea pig.
I was a lab rat.
These rich fucks came to me at my hour of desperate need and offered me a chance to be their guinea pig. Their rat.
“Your history for your life, Nova.” That’s what Mercer said to me that day he picked me up outside of prison. “A better life. Any life you wish to have can be yours. People would kill for a second chance like this.”
A pun, maybe. Since I am a literal murderer.
The presentation goes into great detail. All the failures that came before this night. Me doing this same clinical trial for seven years, until this one finally took.
They have been messing with my head, drugging me up with fantasies and pretenses, and running me through a maze like a rat for seven. Fucking. Years.
I listen to it.
All of it.
And I’m not angry.
I’m seething with rage.
They stole my life.
And I don’t care that this life is much better. Easier, and filled with riches beyond my imagination.
They erased my history.
I earned that history.
It’s mine.
They have no idea who I am.
They have no idea what I went through before Mercer ‘rescued me.’
And I’ve had enough.
When the screen blanks out, and the lights come back on, and Patricia Mercer is once again up there, clapping and pronouncing me the very first fully rehabilitated murderer in the history of humanity—I smile back at her.
I raise my glass of champagne up in the air and toast her. “Here’s to fresh starts and new beginnings.” And I throw it in Mercer’s face.
Then I place both hands on the table, stand up, turn around, and walk out.