IEC had won a Defense Department contract for the design, testing and installation of a state-of-the-art electronic sensor net for safeguarding the installation. But I never knew much about what went on at Tau Nine-One. My security clearance only permitted involvement with peripheral elements.
What I do know is that one of their projects, rumored to be the most secret of them all, involved seven orphaned babies. It was an experiment of some sort, ostensibly done under the strictest medical guidelines, and with the babies subjected to nothing harmful. The children were roughly the same age, all born within a few months of one another.
The experiment ended abruptly when they were eighteen months old. It was rumored that ethical considerations surfaced in Washington – better late than never – and the project terminated. The seven orphans were put up for adoption.
You were one of those babies. That’s how your mother and I were afforded the opportunity to become your parents. We’d always wanted another child, but after Darlene’s birth, your mother could no longer conceive.
After my work at Tau Nine-One and at some other West Coast job sites, we returned to Pennsylvania. Shortly after coming back, I accepted a transfer to IEC’s New Hampshire office and we moved north.
Because of the unusual nature of how we came to adopt you, your mother and I made the decision to pass you off as our natural offspring. Since we didn’t have many close living relatives and hadn’t seen most of our friends back east in years, the fiction held up. We soon had reason to be glad we’d taken this step.
Although the experiment on the babies supposedly was finished, I learned that you were being discreetly monitored, presumably by Tau Nine-One researchers. Someone was secretly accessing your medical records from our family physician, as well as your test scores, grades, and behavioral profiles from elementary school. The monitoring went on for a number of years. As far as I could ascertain, it ceased when you were about ten.
We thought that was the end of it. But then you turned twelve and your weird ability appeared. Your mother and I became quite frightened by those manifestations, not so much by the chunkies themselves but by the fact that, in all likelihood, they somehow were related to what had been done to you at Tau Nine-One. Although we have no proof this, it seems reasonable to assume a connection.
We feared that if the government learned what you could do, they’d take you away from us. We couldn’t bear the thought of that, which is the main reason we encouraged you to keep the manifestations to yourself and never talk about them with anyone outside the family, and why we kept up the fiction that you were our natural child.
Once you get past the initial shock of these revelations, you may find yourself wanting to delve into your past. If you do, please be extremely careful. The people who run Tau Nine-One belong to a very secretive part of our government. Making direct inquiries likely would uncover little information and could draw unwanted attention.
Your mother and I never felt responsible for what was done to you in the first eighteen months of your life. That was beyond our control. But we are responsible for everything that happened afterwards, including hiding these truths from you for so long.
But please know that when we first set eyes on you, smiling and giggling in a playpen, we fell instantly in love. In all these years that love has never wavered. You brought us a joy that made our lives more meaningful than we ever could have dreamed. We can only hope and pray that you’ll remember the good times you had with us and find a way to get through all this.
Love,
Dad
Aiden returned the letter to his pocket and gazed through the Acela’s spacious window. The train was cruising through the seaside town of New London, Connecticut, home to a naval base. The conning tower of a docked submarine was visible in the distance. He had a hunch the sub was preparing to head out to sea, maybe for a descent into uncharted depths.
EIGHT
Leah was on a sleepover at a friend’s house when Aiden returned late Friday evening. That was just as well. There was no good reason for a seven year-old to be in the house for the screaming match about to ensue.
“How’d it go?” Darlene asked. She was in her pajamas, nestled on the living room sofa reading a nursing magazine.
“Fuck you.”
All the venom he’d accumulated during the return train ride poured into those words.
“What happened?” Her voice was softer than usual. It was good to hear her not sounding all haughty and superior for once.
“You’re going to play innocent with me, huh?”
“Aiden, please just tell me.”
He threw the letter in her lap. She began reading. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and paced back and forth in front of her.
She finished and gazed up at him with sad eyes. “I’m sorry you had to learn this way.”
“So you admit you knew.”
“About Tau Nine-One, about you being adopted, yeah. Dad and Mom swore me to secrecy. They said they weren’t going to tell you until you were an adult. But I swear to you, I didn’t know anything about this letter or the safe.”
“What about the estate attorney? He never told you?”
“Mr Devereux was an old man. I think he was suffering from mild dementia. He died a couple months after Mom and Dad. Somehow, the existence of the safe and the letter must have slipped through the cracks.”
“OK, I’ll buy that. But why the hell didn’t you tell me I was a goddamn orphan?”
“Oh, God. Aiden I wanted to! So many times. But you always seemed to have so many other problems in your life. I thought that learning all this would make things even worse for you.”
She got up from the sofa and moved toward him. She spread her arms, intending to envelop him in a hug.
“Keep the hell away from me!”
A hurt look crossed her face. Aiden didn’t care. Her voice fell to a whisper. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find out more about this Tau Nine-One. I figure Dr Jarek is a good place to start.”
“You think he knows about the experiment?”
“If something was done to me and those other babies that caused us to develop weird psychic powers, he might have been in the loop.”
Darlene nodded. “What about your birth mother?”
“What about her?”
“Are you going to try to find out more about her?”
“What’s the point? She’s been dead three decades.”
“You could have distant relatives living out there in Montana.”
“If I do they don’t mean shit to me!”
Darlene pinned her gaze to him. He knew she wanted him to keep talking, let his anger out so they could get past it. It was his sister’s tried-and-true way of dealing with him.
But Aiden didn’t bite. He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Out for a drink. And tomorrow morning, I’m driving down to DC.”
He opened the front door. An instant before he stepped outside and slammed it shut, he yelled back:
“And I’m not replacing your goddamn toaster!”
NINE
U-OPS had no public face and few people knew of the agency’s existence. Passersby to the upscale Georgetown row home assumed the brass sign – Dr Abelicus Jarek – signified a traditional psychiatric practice.