Everything, I thought. Everything will come back. That’s all that mattered. I didn’t care how much pain there was. I’d take the pain. I just wanted to remember my life.
Now my gaze lit on the steel chest standing against one wall. There was a tray on the chest that hadn’t been there before. There was a plastic bottle filled with water on the tray. There was a sandwich on a paper plate wrapped in plastic. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was.
I let go of the chair and moved unsteadily across the small Panic Room toward the chest. When I reached it, I saw there was a 3 x 5 index card lying between the water bottle and the sandwich. There was a note written in block letters on the card.
The note said: Eat. Drink. Build up your strength. You’re going to need it.
There was no signature, just a doodled symbol, a hastily drawn stick-figure house-a square with a triangle roof on top and an X filling up the square.
I picked up the water bottle. It was one of those bottles with the built-in straws. I sipped at it gratefully. It was a shock when the cold water first hit my stomach, but then I felt the cold flooding through me, clearing my head, strengthening my body. I felt steadier almost at once.
I picked up the sandwich plate and carried it back to the metal chair. I unwrapped it. Turkey and cheese. I took a bite. It tasted good, but when it went down, there was a moment when I thought it would come right back up again. Then the moment passed, the food settled, my stomach settled. I felt hungry. I ate the rest of the sandwich quickly, lifting the water bottle in between bites.
As my body felt stronger, as my mind cleared, I thought about what had happened. I tried to figure out my situation. Waterman had been honest with me. He’d said he was going to give me a drug that caused me pain and brought my memory back and that’s what he’d done. It made me think maybe the rest of what he’d said might be true as well.
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… We have to be sure you’re still on our side…
The good guys…
As I took the last bite of the sandwich, I lifted my eyes to look at the wall, at the space on the wall where the secret door had been. I remembered more of what Waterman had said.
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… 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.
I realized I had to talk to Waterman. If I couldn’t remember what had happened with him in that car, then maybe he could explain it to me. In any case, I had to convince him that I was still on his side, that I was still one of the good guys, that if I could help him fight the Homelanders, I would do it, no matter what it took.
I set the paper plate down on the floor next to the water bottle. I stood up, my body stiff, but much stronger now. I moved to the space in the wall where the secret door was. I lifted my hand to knock…
Before I could, I was startled by a pounding that hit the wall from the other side. It was loud. It seemed to shake the room. It sounded as if someone was hammering his fist against the wall, just a little ways off to my left. I froze where I was, my hand lifted.
The pounding came again, moving now, coming toward me. Boom, boom, boom. As if the person was probing along the wall, trying to find an opening. Maybe trying to find the secret door into the Panic Room.
Who was it? Were they looking for me? Did they know I was here?
The pounding got closer and closer until finally it was directly opposite me. It was coming right through the wall across from me. Whoever was pounding was standing just a few inches from where I was standing with only the wall-and the invisible door-between us.
I stood frozen where I was. Waiting. Would he find me?
But the pounding continued moving along the wall. It went past me and on into the corner. There, finally, it ended.
All this time, I had stood rooted to the floor with my hand lifted, stopped in that moment when I’d been about to knock, about to call Waterman for help.
Now I lowered my hand. Whoever that was pounding on the wall, I felt pretty sure it wasn’t Waterman.
Slowly, breaking free of my frozen surprise, I moved back to the wall. I pressed my ear against it. I listened.
The wall was thick. Very thick. The Panic Room had been built as a hiding place, not to be discovered. That made it hard to hear anything on the other side. There were voices-low, deep male voices-but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I pressed more tightly against the wall. I held my breath, straining to hear.
There was more conversation, dim, distant, wordless. I stood there, frustrated, unable to make out any of it.
Then an angry shout. For about two seconds, maybe three, the furious voice reached me clearly. It was a deep, hollow voice screaming in a language I didn’t understand. Arabic, it sounded like.
The moment I heard it, the moment I heard that voice, my head snapped back away from the wall. A thrill of fear flared inside me. The voice faded from my hearing as I staggered back a step from the wall. I stared at the space. My mouth had gone dry. My legs felt weak.
I remembered that voice! Somehow, from somewhere. I knew the man who was speaking. I tried to picture his face, tried to call up his name, but I couldn’t. It was just beyond the edge of my memory, a shadowy presence in the deeper darkness of the year I had forgotten.
Still-still-I knew him. I was sure of it. And I knew something else too: I knew he was a killer. Tough, vicious, wicked to the bone.
I could not recall his face or his name, but I knew this for certain: he was one of the Homelanders.
They were here.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Waylon I stood there, frozen. I didn’t even breathe. A thousand thoughts flashed through my head in a second.
Waterman’s words: The Homelanders are close. Very close… It’s only a matter of time before they find this place and strike and try to kill us all.
Had they done it? Had they broken in? Had they gotten Waterman and his friends? Or had he escaped? Where was he?
I knew I had to do something, had to move. It was like forcing myself to break free from a block of ice. But I did it. I made myself step forward, step back to the wall again. I made myself press my ear against the wall.
Once again, I heard that voice-now that I recognized it, I could distinguish it even though I couldn’t hear the words. Again, the face of that vicious killer seemed to rise up out of the darkness of my memory- come close to the surface-then sink back down again into obscurity.
Then-startling-another shout-another voice-this one speaking English: “There’s no one else in here either!”
The killer answered him with a shouted curse.
The other man shouted in English again: “There must be another way out.”
Then a third man shouted: “Waylon! No one here either. Maybe they snuck him out before we showed up.”
The killer-obviously their leader-shouted out another stream of Arabic.
I felt suddenly hollow inside. Hollow and weak and unsteady. I knew it was me they were looking for. And I knew that name too. The killer’s name: Waylon. This was something I did remember clearly, something that had happened when I woke up strapped to that metal chair with the Homelander goons working me over.
There had been voices outside the door. There had been a man with an American name but a thick accent: Waylon. He had been coming from the Homelanders’ leader, a man who called himself Prince. He had given the order to my torturers: