Page 121 of A Stop in Time
I desperately need to unlock even more of them to determine which memories are actually true. But do I want to know more about myself? About my life? Who am I?
If I’m to believe what I’ve uncovered so far to be true, I’m more of a fucking monster than I could’ve ever imagined.
Bringing my knees to my chest, I bury my face against them and wrap my arms around my legs. Fuck. A violent wave of nausea cinches me at the thought. If I really did all those things because they manipulated my mind…
Ice spreads through my veins, chilling me to the bone. When I reach for the notebook, my fingers fumble in my attempt to lift it from the hollow space. It drops clumsily to the floor by my feet, and I stare at it, my breaths emerging in harsh pants as if I’ve just sprinted five miles.
“Do it.” My near-breathless whisper seems to echo within the closet. “Just open it.”
When I flip open the notebook to where the page the sticky note’s bookmarked, the handwritten entries appear hastily scrawled, as though I’d been in a rush to get the words down.
I’m a killer, and I don’t want to be. But he makes me do it. Says I’m the best he’s ever had.
I’m injected with drugs that mess with my mind. They force me to undergo electrical shock therapy and other things I vaguely remember.
He calls me Mackenzie, but that’s not my first name. I’m Eleanor Mackenzie. US Army Intelligence Analyst. Or I was.
Those scars on the left side of my body are from an attempted escape with an intern who planned to be a whistleblower for the project. When the car crashed and caught on fire, he—Dr. Pinney—let me burn while I was trapped inside.
I reach for my face, my fingers mapping the scarred tissue, and an instantaneous flood of memories bombards me.
I’m in the car, in the back seat while one of the interns mans the wheel. His nervousness is palpable, polluting the air between us, but I know he’s doing this for me. He’s trying to do the right thing.
In the next moment, the vehicle goes airborne, my body becomes weightless, lifting off the seat, only to slam back down as the car tumbles over and over again.
When I attempt to shake off the shocked daze, I realize I’m suspended upside down by my seat belt. My eyes frantically search for the intern’s body, but I don’t see him anywhere.
The bottom of my stomach drops out, and I start to hyperventilate when I notice the large hole in the windshield.
Copious amounts of blood cling to the sharp edges, and even though I know, deep down, there’s little chance that he survived being ejected from the vehicle, I silently pray he will.
But even if he did, he’ll have to also evade being found.
A fire erupts from the engine, the flames climbing through the broken windshield and spreading over the fabric of the front seat. I struggle frantically to unfasten my seat belt, pulling at the buckle and belt, begging for it to loosen, but it won’t budge.
“Help! Help me!” I cry out. The flames climb even closer, and when they advance on me, lighting up my clothing, a wild scream is ripped from me.
“You shouldn’t have tried to escape me.” The man’s voice speaks in a calm way that’s at odds with my shrieking calls for help. “Perhaps you deserve this punishment. This ensures you won’t dare do this ever again.”
“No!” I howl as the scent of my burning flesh stings my nostrils, the pain sending me to a place I recognize. One where nothing hurts me anymore. One where I no longer feel anything—pain or emotion.
His voice sounds as if it’s in an echo chamber. “That’s right. Go there. Very good.”
I shut the door on the agonizing pain, compartmentalizing just as he taught me.
“That’s it. Very good.”
His pleased remark is the last thing I remember before everything goes black.
A fiery sensation ignites along every inch of my scars, and I pinch my eyes closed on a wince. It’s as though my skin is reliving the suffering it endured.
I remind myself there’s no more pain to endure. What’s done is done. Prying open my eyes, I force myself to continue reading.
Something happened to me. When I look in the mirror, my hair and eyes are different. I don’t know what he did to me, but it changed me.
The rest of the page is blank, but when I flip to the next page, I tip my head to the side to peer at the angled writing. Was I in a hurry, afraid I’d get caught?
They don’t know that I can stop time. But I can. Only with my right hand. I think something got damaged on the other side when I was burned. They’ve used different energy techniques on me, and I must’ve mutated somehow.