“And Subject Ten was left to rot,” John said bitterly.
“Why risk more lives when it was easier to just leave her there?” Walsh shrugged.
Goddess. The man didn’t care. A girl he’d tortured had been sealed in and abandoned when her existence became too inconvenient to him, and he just…didn’t care.
John’s fist curled. “You’re a monster.”
“Oh please,” Walsh said. “Enough with the dramatics. Next question: what is your sexuality?”
John snapped to his feet. “Go to hell.”
“I said enough with the dramatics.” Walsh’s thin mouth pressed into an even thinner line of disapproval. “Some things are innate to us—inborn. I doubt I’ll ever be able to compare your results with Subject Fifteen, but it would be an excellent data point if your sexuality and gender identity differed from his despite the rewriting of memories.”
“Fine.” John sat down. He felt as though he’d been running a race. “I’m gay.” But then he caught himself, because though he’d only dated cis and trans men before, Gray was genderless. “Strike that, I’m bi. Men and nonbinary people, if that makes a difference to your ‘data point.’”
“Thank you.” Walsh made his note. “To answer your question about how your memory erasure happened…well, as we didn’t have the opportunity to study you more closely, I don’t have as many specifics as I would like. The simple answer is that we believed Fifteen was an empath. We were wrong. Much like your rougarou, he was a telepath.”
No wonder Walsh hadn’t disputed John’s claim that he’d met a telepath. He already knew they were real. “And what, you forced him to rewrite our brains?”
“Of course not.” Walsh glanced at the clock, as though John were an appointment running over-long. “I will give this one to you for free as well. My understanding is that whatever happened was voluntary. Fifteen used the power of the NHE inside him to boost his telepathy to the point where he could rewrite your memories. You, my dear exorcist, then removed the NHEs from Fifteen, Twenty-One, Nine, and finally yourself, leaving the one in Ten.”
The torn up piece of paper with EXORCISE US written on it. Had John and the others submitted to voluntarily having their brains rewritten, and the sign been a reminder that would cut through whatever confusion and fog that process created? If so, it had worked. So long as the NHE was in him, he would have been able to exorcise the others without a circle, before forcing the demon out of himself.
But why would they have done any of it to begin with?
To get out of the study. To put an end to their torment. That was the only possible answer.
“One last exchange for today, I think,” Walsh said. “My family will be here early tomorrow morning, and I still have things to prepare.” He leaned forward, a gleam in his eye. “It’s clear from this conversation that we have a great deal to offer one another. The results could never be published during my lifetime due to legal reasons, but…would you consider working with me? I could rearrange some grant money to pay you. We could continue the study together.”
John jerked back in instinctive horror. “No!”
“You’d be able to eject your possessor at any time.”
“I said no!” John rose to his feet, waves of revulsion and anger tangling his nerves. “What is wrong with you? You tortured me, and now you have the gall to want me to voluntarily go through it all over again?”
“It would hardly be the same,” Walsh objected. “Operation Mephisto had funding, for one thing. This would be a few sessions in a lab, one-on-one. You’d be responsible for keeping up the drug regimen at home.”
Funding. John had let himself get so wrapped up in what had happened to him, to the other kids, he’d almost forgotten to ask the most important question. “Operation Mephisto sounds governmental. Who paid for you to abuse children? The CIA? Was this some outgrowth of MKULTRA?”
“I suppose the CIA would have been interested in the results,” Walsh mused. His cold eyes met John’s, and he smiled. “But so far as I’m aware, they weren’t involved. No, the agency who underwrote the Center, who bought our equipment and signed my paycheck, was SPECTR.”
Six
Gray emerges, tilting his head back and smelling the wind. Night is beside him in an instant, detectable only by his scent and the glow of his eyes.
The fifolet has passed through recently, perhaps within minutes. If they are lucky, it will still be nearby, and they can eat it and go home.
The trail beckons them across the road, toward the swamp. The ragged remains of its latest victim hang from a tree, the flesh of his torso peeled away to reveal the rib cage. Several of the ribs have been violently removed. Blood pools on the ground, dripping slowly from the remains of the corpse.
“God,” Caleb says, horrified. “If we’d just been a little earlier…fuck, if the line at the outfitters hadn’t been so long, we would have gotten here in time to save him. Damn it!”
But it was, and it is too late to change things, Gray pointed out. At least once we catch the fifolet, it will never kill again.
“Right. Let’s go get the fucker.”
The trail of the fifolet heads deeper into the swamp, along a bayou. They return to the vehicle and remove the canoe, before putting on the waders.
“We look stupid,” Caleb says in disgust. “I’m glad no one else is here to see this fashion disaster.”
It is better than losing our boots to the mud.
“Marginally.”
Gray carries the canoe easily with one hand, leaving Night to bring the paddles. As they pass the remains of the mortal, Caleb stirs uneasily. “I’d like to call the death in, but that would take too long. I just hope no poor bastard stops to look around before we can get back.”
Once the canoe is in the water, they paddle as silently as they are able. Many of Gray’s former hosts have traveled in such a fashion, as it seems have Night’s, given he knows how to handle the paddle without making a splash. The bayou passes beneath the interstate and crosses a human-made canal, but the trail of the fifolet draws them further up the bayou rather than down the canal. Deeper into the swamp.
Soon the noise of the interstate is behind them, its light fading to nothing. The swamp is almost as dark tonight as it was when he walked here so long ago, before the coming of electric lights and noisy machines. Cypress trees close in around the bayou, their knees protruding from the water, spanish moss hanging from their branches like hair. Dead trees, fallen and half-sunk into the mud below, threaten to damage the canoe if not spotted quickly enough. The more solid patches of ground offer places for animals to congregate: deer stare warily from the trees, and a cluster of raccoons on the shore stop and watch the canoe go by.
At least here they don’t have to worry about screaming humans. They do not even have to worry about John—at least, not about his immediate safety. For just this little while, there is only the hunt, simple and pure. No past, no future, only the eternal now, each moment a world unto itself.
Caleb slips into attunement with him, for once letting go of mortal busyness and simply existing. Their senses are sharp, following the fifolet, but their minds are calm as a still lake.