Chapter 7 - THE MEMORY GIDEON NEVER QUESTIONED
Gideon had always remembered Owen’s death in fragments sharpened by guilt. A
snow-covered road in Montana. A call from a state trooper. A truck sliding through a
guardrail. An empty beer bottle recovered from the cab. Gideon had been in Arizona
at the time, working a security contract he had taken after an argument with his
brother. Their last conversation had ended with Owen accusing him of caring more
about broken strangers than his own family. Gideon had carried those words for
twelve years because they were the last ones he believed Owen ever said to him.
Now, in a buried laboratory built to fracture memory, Gideon watched a file claim
that he had been in Nevada three days before Owen’s crash.
“That’s wrong,”
he said.
Eleanor
said nothing.
Agent Chen ordered a forensic technician to clone the visible data before the system
wiped. The file opened slowly. Security footage appeared.
A younger Gideon walked
down a Helix corridor.
He
looked drugged.
Two men guided
him by the arms.
One of
them was Daniel.
Gideon’s knees
nearly gave out.
“No.”
Eleanor stared at the
video. “I remember this wing.”
“Tell me
it’s fake.”
“I
can’t.”
“Tell
me.”
“I
can’t.”
Rage came fast because terror would have been worse. Gideon grabbed the edge of the
console. “I was never here.”
The footage changed
angles. Owen appeared next.
Alive.
Bruised.
Arguing with someone
outside the camera frame.
The audio was damaged,
but one sentence survived.
“You don’t get to
erase what we found.”
Gideon stepped back
as if struck.
Chen paused
the video.
“What did you and your brother
do twelve years ago?” she asked.
“Nothing. We rode. Worked security.
Took construction jobs. Stayed broke.”
“Did Owen
ever mention Helix?”
“No.”
“Did he investigate
anyone connected to it?”
“No.”
Then Gideon remembered something so small he had ignored it for years. Owen carried
a camera everywhere. Cheap digital thing with a cracked screen. In the month before
his death, he had become paranoid about backing up photographs. He said he had seen
something at a medical transport depot outside Reno. Gideon had laughed and told him
to stop turning every locked door into a conspiracy.
Eleanor covered
her face.
“What?”
Gideon demanded.
“The
transport depot.”
“You
know it.”
“We used third-party medical
carriers. Daniel managed the contracts.”
The room
seemed to tilt.
Gideon looked at the frozen
image of his younger self.
“Why don’t I
remember being here?”
No
one answered.
They did
not need to.
Daniel appeared again on the monitor,
this time recorded rather than live.
“If you are watching this, Gideon, then Mother has survived long enough to make you
curious.”
Gideon’s hands
curled into fists.
“You were never random,” Daniel continued. “That was the most amusing part. Twelve
years ago your brother photographed a transfer team moving test subjects at a truck
depot. You helped him confront the men responsible. We detained you both.”
Eleanor whispered,
“Oh God.”
“Owen resisted treatment,” Daniel
said. “You did not.”
Gideon lunged toward the screen
though there was nothing to hit.
The recording continued. “We suppressed your memory of the facility and replaced the
final week before Owen’s death with a simpler story. A family argument. A missed
call. A road accident.”
“What happened to
him?” Gideon shouted.
Daniel could
not hear.
But the
answer came anyway.
“Owen
escaped.”
Gideon
froze.
“He made it into Montana with evidence. We intercepted him before he reached a
journalist. The crash was arranged.”
Gideon stared at the
screen until his vision blurred.
For twelve years, he had
blamed himself for being absent.
The truth
was worse.
He had
been there.
He had
tried to help.
And someone had stolen
even that from him.
Eleanor stepped
toward him. “Gideon—”
“Don’t.”
She
stopped.
“You knew this
could happen to people.”
“Yes.”
“You built
the method.”
“Yes.”
“You
sold it.”
Her voice
broke. “Yes.”
He wanted to hate her cleanly. It would have been easier. But he remembered her in
the diner, soaked and terrified, asking a stranger to pretend he was family because
real family had become a weapon. He remembered the patients in the glass room. He
remembered Helen telling her mother not to hide from the part that made people hate
her.
Gideon
turned away.
Chen’s technician found another file embedded in the Owen archive: a location marker
and a timestamp scheduled for dawn.
“What is
it?” Chen asked.
The tech
enlarged a map.
A private airstrip south
of the mining property.
“Daniel’s extraction,”
Chen said.
Eleanor shook her
head. “No. Too obvious.”
“Unless he wants
us to think that.”
“He
does.”
Gideon looked
at the map.
Then he noticed
the airstrip name.
ROURKE
FIELD SERVICES.
His father’s
old company.
Closed eighteen
years ago.
Daniel had
chosen it deliberately.
“He wants me
there,” Gideon said.
Chen’s answer was immediate.
“Then you’re not going.”
Gideon turned to her. “You heard his call. You saw the file. He has spent twelve
years believing I’m a loose end he already tied off.”
“That makes
you emotionally compromised.”
“Yes.”
“And useful
as bait.”
“Yes.”
Chen hated that he
had said it first.
Eleanor stepped between them. “There is
another reason he chose that field.”
Everyone looked
at her.
“My husband financed Helix’s first mobile lab using Rourke Field Services as a
pass-through vendor.”
Gideon
stared.
“My
father?”
“Possibly
without knowing.”
“Possibly?”
“I
don’t remember.”
He
almost shouted.
Then Eleanor added, “But
I remember the airfield.”
Her face
went pale.
“There’s a bunker
beneath Hangar Three.”
Chen checked
the tactical map.
“The property records
show no bunker.”
“Of course
they don’t.”
Gideon looked
at the clock.
Dawn was
ninety minutes away.
Chen began
issuing deployment orders.
As they prepared to leave,
Eleanor caught Gideon by the arm.
“I am
sorry about Owen.”
He looked
at her.
“I know sorry
is too small.”
“It
is.”
She
nodded.
Then Gideon
pulled free.
“But small
doesn’t mean worthless.”
For the first time,
she looked close to collapsing.
He walked
toward the elevator.
Behind him,
Eleanor followed.
Neither of them knew whether they were heading toward Daniel, the truth, or another
manufactured memory.
May you like
But this time Gideon
intended to remember every second.
