“We all had the same data, and we all were convinced that this loose end had been severed. We had no reason to suspect Frey had duplicated my therapy and managed to keep it secret. He definitely had my brother fooled. If we thought for a second he had his own supply of gellcaps, we’d have suspected his suicide was staged immediately.”
Desh frowned and shook his head dejectedly. “So déjà vu all over again,” he mumbled. “Only this time, Frey is pulling the strings instead of your brother.”
“This probably explains the attack last year when we were visiting Ross. Frey must have found us, attacked, and then lost us again.”
“Probably,” agreed Desh, carrying rice and shrimp to his mouth with a pair of black lacquered chopsticks.
“There’s no telling how extensive his organization is by now.”
Desh swallowed. “Not,” he said. “That would be my guess. Which is one reason he decided to extend his reach by deploying Jake and his team against us. Strangely enough, when it comes to adding personnel, the good guys have the advantage over the bad guys.”
“What do you mean?”
“Backstabbing sociopaths tend not to be very trusting. Especially when dealing with other backstabbing sociopaths—which is who would be attracted to Frey’s organization. Think of how nervous we are, and we’re the good guys. In an organization built for selfish purposes rather than altruistic ones, all of the power and access to gellcaps would have to be concentrated a the very top. Alan never allowed Putnam to be enhanced. He allowed Frey to be only because he needed more gellcaps.”
“Good point,” said Kira. “And true to form, Frey double-crossed them both and ended up on top.”
Desh nodded. “But we’re better off this time than we were when Alan was pulling the strings,” he added. “At least we have a handle on who we’re up against. No matter how good he is, I should be able to track him down. I’ll get started on that right away.”
“As if you don’t have enough to do,” said Kira.
“It has been a busy few weeks.” He gazed at his wife with an amused expression “It seems that people are either in love with you . . . or want you dead.”
“Look . . . David,” said Kira haltingly, her expression making it clear she was about to change the subject to one she found uncomfortable. “There is something else.”
Desh’s stomach clenched, as if he were a boxer bracing for a body blow. “So the Frey thing wasn’t enough bad news for one meal?”
“David, do you remember when we escaped from Putnam’s safe house?”
“Do I remember?” said Desh in disbelief. “How could I forget? It was the first time I was ever enhanced. Not to mention our lives were on the line. And it was the first time I realized I was in love with you.”
“Do you remember you left me for a few minutes when we were upstairs? To check on the guards you’d knocked out in the basement? You told me you wanted to see if they had any ID.”
His eyes narrowed in thought, looking for all the world as though he were struggling to understand where his wife was going with this. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I remember that too.”
“So what happened when you got down into the basement?”
Desh tilted his head as if he hadn’t heard correctly. “What do you mean? I checked them all to see if they were carrying IDs or anything else that would give us a lead. Then I returned upstairs.”
“That’s all that happened?”
“Yeah, that’s all. Why? What is this about?”
Kira described the video Jake had shown her, with him as the star, which presented a very different take on the events in the safe house basement. At first, Desh listened with a look of horror and shock, but his expression soon changed to one of relief. “Kira, the footage was faked,” he said matter-of-factly. “None of that happened. It’s part of the frame.”
Kira studied her husband for several long seconds. “I thought so too,” she said. “At first.” She shook her head. “But it wasn’t. Jake convinced me of that. So I need you to tell me about this, David,” she continued, her voice failing to hide the hurt she felt. “It’s not pretty, but after all we’ve been through together, I need to know the truth.”
“Kira, this didn’t happen. I’d tell you if it did.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “David, I love you. And enhancement brings out demons. There’s no shame that you couldn’t control them. But I need to know. And I need to be able to trust you.”
Desh shook his head helplessly. “I told you exactly what happened,” he said with a pained expression on his face. “I checked their pockets and returned upstairs.” He paused, and she realized he had never looked more frazzled or vulnerable. “Kira, you mean the world to me. You know that. We trust each other with our lives every day. I’d never lie to you. I’d sooner lie to myself,” he added earnestly.
Kira didn’t respond, but saw her husband’s eyes widen slowly and a thoughtful expression come over his face. “Which is something we should consider,” he said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“What if I did lie to myself? If the video is real, the only explanation is that the enhanced version of me is keeping this memory from normal me. It makes a kind of brutally efficient sense, when you think about it. We had a lot on our minds at the time—to say the least. When I returned to normal, if I knew I had slaughtered helpless men, that I hadn’t been able to control my baser instincts while enhanced, it would have preyed on my mind. At a time I needed total focus the most. My alter ego must have calculated this would slow me down, and that he couldn’t let this happen.”
“You sound like you’re talking about two different people.”
Desh nodded grimly. “Aren’t I?” he said. “You’ve been there. You know the enhanced version of you holds normal you in disdain; that you’re the painfully stupid half of a split personality.”
Kira considered. He was right, of course. “This is true. But my smarter half knows she can only come out and play for very brief periods. Her welfare is tied up with my own. And I have to take a conscious action, swallowing a pill, to invoke her. So I can trust her, because she knows I have ultimate control.” She paused. “But there is no evidence from anyone that their enhanced selves have kept things from their normal selves.”
“Maybe not yet,” said Desh. “But we know it’s well within the capabilities of an enhanced mind,” he pointed out. “You purposely suppressed your memory of your longevity breakthrough.”
There was no question he had a point. But this raised even more troubling possibilities. “So what other activities have you engaged in and forgotten?” she said worriedly. “Which other of your memories might be false?”
“Obviously a question I can’t answer. But every other time I took a gellcap I was in the enhancement room. Not many degrees of freedom there, by design. Constrained in this way, you can’t really take actions that you’d need to forget. This would most likely be relevant only when you’re a free-range sociopath.” He raised his eyebrows. “Like you just were.”
Kira’s eyes left her husband’s as she replayed events in her mind. “My memory tells me I was careful to leave everyone alive. Not that my alter ego wouldn’t have happily killed them all if I would have let her. But when we get back home, let’s investigate this further, just to be sure. If it turns out I killed those men and gave myself false memories, we’ll have to re-evaluate everything we’re doing.”
Desh poked at the remains of his meal, too preoccupied to finish. “We know we’re playing with fire when we use your treatment,” he said. “But the idea that I can’t trust my own memory scares the shit out of me.”