The truth of the matter

CHAPTER FIVE

The Panic Room I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. No way I wanted to go through that door, to go into that place. But I was surrounded. There was no getting out of it.

I walked into the Panic Room.

It was a small, square, stark space. Looked like a prison cell. Four white walls, a metal chest against one wall, a cot against another, a metal toilet, a metal sink, a metal chair in the center of the floor.

I didn’t like the metal chair especially. Just the sight of it sent a new pulse of fear through me. It reminded me of how all this had started. I’d gone to bed one night and awakened strapped to a metal chair just like that one. Two Homelander goons had been torturing me. There were so many memories I wished I could get back, but that was one memory I wished I could get rid of forever.

Waterman and Dodger Jim came into the room behind me. Dodger Jim made a motion with his hand, and the electric door swung shut, becoming an invisible part of the wall again. I felt light-headed in the small space, helpless to stop what was happening.

Waterman stood to my right. Dodger Jim was to my left, holding the gun on me.

“This is the way it is, Charlie,” Waterman said. There was no tone, no emotion to his voice at all now. “We’re going to handcuff you to that chair…”

The fear flared higher. “Why? What for? Who are you people?” I said.

“Shut up,” said Dodger Jim.

“Either you can just sit down and let us do it, or we can do it by force,” said Waterman. “Whichever you choose, the result is going to be the same.”

I took a deep breath. I nodded, as if I agreed with him. And the fact was: I knew he was probably right. But I didn’t care whether he was right or not. There was just no way on this planet I was going to let them handcuff me to that chair without a fight. Once I was there, it was over. Once they had me cuffed, I had no chance at all.

“Look,” I said, “if you have something to ask me, why don’t you just ask? I have nothing to hide.”

“We have to be sure,” said Waterman. “Get in the chair, Charlie.”

I put my hands up as if to surrender. “Okay,” I said.

Then I pivoted, fast, and sent a snapping roundhouse kick at Dodger Jim’s gun hand.

The gun went flying-and then Waterman was on me. He was big, fast, tough-and a real fighter. I tried to chop at his throat, but he blocked it hard and got my arm in a lock. He got his foot behind me and, as he hit me in the chest with his hand, his foot came swinging back and swept my feet out from under me.

I flew backward, landing hard on the floor. I gave a loud “Oof!” as the wind rushed out of me. In the next instant, Waterman was on top of me, his hand clutching my throat, squeezing off the airway. I couldn’t breathe. The world went watery in front of my eyes.

The next thing I knew, Waterman and Dodger Jim were dragging me to my feet. They hurled me into the chair, hard. Dodger Jim punched me in the jaw. It felt like getting hit by a brick.

My head flew back, and my mind seemed to fall away from the world like falling down a well.

“Knock it off,” I heard Waterman say from a distance.

“I told him what would happen if he tried me again,” said Dodger Jim.

My head slumped forward. I was only half-conscious as they held my arms against the arms of the metal chair and snapped the handcuffs around my wrists.

The two men stood back, breathing hard. I looked up at them from the chair, helpless.

Dodger Jim shook his head angrily, rubbing the spot on his wrist where I’d kicked him. “You’re a tough little monkey, kid,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”

The door in the wall buzzed and opened. The crow-faced woman came in. My eyes went wide in terror as I saw she was carrying a syringe.

That woke me up. I jolted back in the chair as if there was some chance of getting away from her. I struggled against the handcuffs, trying uselessly to get free.

Waterman stood in front of me. “Listen to me, Charlie,” he said. “Listen. You have to listen. We’re not your enemies, so help me.”

It was a long moment before I could still my panic and stop trying to break through the handcuffs.

“We have to do this,” Waterman said. “We have no choice. The Homelanders are close. Very close. They’ve hacked some of our files. We don’t know how many. We don’t know how much they know. But they know about me. They’ve been watching me for weeks. It’s only a matter of time before they find this place and strike and try to kill us all. We want to help you, but we have to be sure you’re still on our side and there’s only one way to do that. You’ve been out of touch for too long. You might have gone over. The loss of memory… everything… it might all be a fake, or there might be permanent damage that makes you a liability. We just can’t trust you until we know for sure.”

“Who are you?” I said hoarsely. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“We’re the good guys, Charlie. If liberty is better than slavery, like you said-if the people who work for liberty are the good guys-then we’re the good guys, though we can’t always be as good as we might like. The Islamo-fascists don’t believe in freedom at all, Charlie, believe me. They want everyone to think the same thing, to do what they’re told. They hate our country, our liberty, our Constitution. Our whole way of life. And the Americans who’ve joined them, who’ve kidded themselves into thinking they’re no worse than us, that one philosophy is no better than another, are self-hating fools. They’re your enemies, Charlie.”

“If you’re on my side, why are you doing this to me?” I shouted at him, struggling against the handcuffs again.

“I’m sorry, but we have to be sure where you stand,” Waterman said. He nodded at the crow-faced woman with the syringe. She stepped toward the chair as I struggled to get away from her.

“The Homelanders are going to attack this country, Charlie,” Waterman said. “They’re going to hit us soon, hard, and from the inside. The people in this bunker are some of the only people left who can stop them. If they get to us, then we’ve got no chance. We can’t risk the possibility that you’re their agent.”

The crow-faced woman nodded at Dodger Jim. He came forward and grabbed my left arm, rolling up my sleeve to bare the vein for the needle. He was grinning.

“You’re not gonna like this, kid,” he said with vengeance gleaming in his eyes. “It hurts like crazy.”

“Listen to me, Charlie,” said Waterman. “If we haven’t lost you, you’re our best hope. If we have, you’re our worst enemy. We have to know which it is.”

Dodger Jim held my arm. The crow-faced woman lifted the syringe and squirted a drop or two of clear fluid from the needle.

“We’re going to give you something that will make you remember,” said Waterman. “I wish I could say it was going to be painless, but it’s not. I wish I could say it was going to be instantaneous, but it’s going to take time. Still, in the end, everything that has happened will come back to you. And then you’ll know who you are. And then we’ll be able to know too.”

Now the crow-faced woman lowered the needle to my arm.

I felt as if I had come full circle. Months ago, I had woken up strapped to a chair with a Homelander thug about to inject me with a fluid that they threatened would drive me into agonies and finally kill me. Now, after running and fighting and trying everything I knew to escape, I was back again in the same place, in the same predicament. Only this time, the injection was coming from the good guys-or so they said, at least. This time, the people doing it wanted to save this country instead of destroy it, wanted to defend liberty instead of exterminating it. This time, the torture wasn’t a threat, it was a promise: there would be agony, yes, but instead of killing me, it would give me my memory back, give me my life back. I would remember at last how I had gotten here, what I was doing, who I was.

The crow-faced woman pressed the point of the needle against my arm.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Wait!”

She hesitated.

I looked up at Waterman. “This is going to give me my memory back?” I asked him.

He nodded. “It will.”

“I’ll remember everything? Everything that’s happened?”

“It’ll take time, but eventually yes, you will.”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. This was what I wanted, after all. This was why I had come all this way, searching for Waterman in the first place. If it was going to be painful, well, then, it was going to be painful. That was just the way it was. I was going to have to live with it.

“Give me a second,” I said.

Waterman thought about it. Then he nodded at the crow-faced woman. She straightened, taking the syringe away from my arm.

I closed my eyes. Help me, I prayed. Help me to be strong. Help me not to be afraid. Help me to do what you want me to do. And whatever happens, stay with me.

I opened my eyes. I looked at Waterman. He looked down at me grimly.

“Do it,” I said.

The woman drove the needle into my arm.