“The brainwashing.” Now I sound just as robotic, just as emotionless as Wes. “You don’t need to break me because you’ll kill my grandfather if I disobey you.”
“Very good! You are a smart one, aren’t you?” His expression darkens. “Your second option: You can refuse, and we will kill you and your grandfather. Because I’m a fair man, I’ll let the rest of your family live.”
I suck in a breath.
“As a recruit, your main objective will be to stop the nuclear war in twenty fifty. There’s nobility in that, Lydia. Don’t forget that the Project was created to help people. You could be a part of it.”
He smiles at me. It almost looks kind. “I’m giving you something that none of the other recruits have gotten. I’m giving you a choice. You can join us and help save our world, or you and your grandfather can die.”
“That’s not much of a choice,” I whisper.
“And yet it is one.” He leans in toward me. “So what do you decide?”
CHAPTER 21
The hallway is freezing. I cross my arms over my chest for warmth. It is always cold in here, or maybe that bitter chill is coming from somewhere inside of me. I can’t tell anymore.
I’m still in 1989; I’ve been at the Center for over a month now. At least I think so—it’s easy to lose track of time in this dark, windowless place. The new recruits are housed in the western wing, hundreds of feet below the ground. Every morning we are woken at dawn and sent to training. First, hand-to-hand combat, then karate, then languages, then world history, then wilderness survival. This is only the second stage, they tell us. It will take a year of study and physical conditioning before most of us are ready to start training with the TM.
We’re given just enough food to stay alive, and we sleep on bunk beds in a large, open room. There are no blankets or sheets on the beds; too many recruits have tried to kill themselves with them in the past.
No one speaks to anyone else; we learned that lesson quickly enough. All of the kids here are younger than me, and they have already completed the first round of training: the brainwashing stage. Their vacant eyes are unnerving to look at.
So far General Walker has kept his word, and they have not tried to torture me emotionally, to brainwash all my memories away. At least, they haven’t done it in the obvious ways. But I don’t know how else to describe these endless days. My head hurts from the minute historical facts they pump into it. My arms and legs are bruised from the hours I spend in the fitness center. I try to eat, but the food tastes like paper. I can’t sleep. All I hear are the muffled sounds of children crying into their bare mattresses.
I thought that I was alone when I came back from 1944, to a new life where no one knew the real me. But I didn’t know the meaning of alone then. This is what it’s like to truly be alone. To be completely lost in your own mind.
There are still unanswered questions about what happened that I mull over, unable to explain away. Who is the Resister, and what is his rebellion? How did my grandfather find that list? Was I always destined to be a recruit, even before I went back in time to 1944?
Is Wes really dying, or was he lying about that too?
But there’s no point in thinking about questions I will most likely never answer.
There’s a lot I try not to think about these days. Like how long it will take for my body to start deteriorating too. Will I make the same choice that Seventeen did? I want to say no, but after only a month down here, I’m not sure what I would do. Not anymore.
I mostly try not to think about those people I left behind. Mary and Lucas, who are married and happy in the past. Dean, working as a doorman, with no idea who he really is. LJ, maybe even now being tortured at the Facility in Montauk. My grandfather, shivering in a cell somewhere, probably still drugged. My parents, Hannah, and Grant, never knowing why I disappeared.
And then there’s Wes.
Sometimes, when I’m blocking a kick during karate, I’ll get a flash of his face in my mind and I’ll wonder if he’s in these underground tunnels somewhere. Maybe in the housing area where the recruits stay, or even here, watching me train. There are times when I even feel his gaze on me, but I fight against my instinct to turn around and look for him. Instead I jab my elbow into my training partner’s throat and listen to them gurgle as they fall to the ground.
It turns out it’s easier than you’d think for love to turn into hate.
Because I hate Wes. More than I’ve ever hated anyone.
The soldier in charge of my training, First Lieutenant Andrews, informed me that he’s expediting the process for me, that he’s eager to get me out and into the field. Unlike the other recruits, I’m given small freedoms. Like taking a message from one training soldier to another, and being allowed to walk alone through out-of-the-way, unguarded hallways.
They are not worried about me running away because they know the threat to my grandfather’s life keeps me tethered here. And it turns out that Wes was right, at least about one thing. There’s no place left to run away to.
I pass a glass door, and I catch a brief glimpse of my reflection. I have been trying to avoid mirrors, afraid of the
