Chapter 10 - THE MAN I THOUGHT BETRAYED ME
I moved before I thought.
My wheelchair slammed into a stainless-steel table.
Whitmore’s first shot went wide.
I fired.
He dropped behind a console.
Alarms erupted.
Guards poured into the corridor.
Then another gun cracked from behind us.
Luke appeared.
Pale.
Bleeding through a bandage.
Alive.
He tossed me a second weapon.
“Still think I betrayed you?”
“Ask me later.”
For the first time in two years, we fought on the same side without suspicion between us.
Federal agents stormed the lower floors minutes later.
Daniel had been working with a task force for years.
Luke had secretly been feeding them evidence.
The signature on the Meridian authorization?
Mine.
Luke had signed only as witness.
The medical records he accessed before the shooting?
At my request.
Every apparent betrayal had been part of the contingency I designed before allowing Meridian to alter my memory.
Almost every betrayal.
Whitmore escaped through an emergency stairwell.
We found him on the roof.
Police helicopters circled above.
He stood at the edge.
“You think this changes anything?” he shouted.
“You built your empire through fear. Meridian merely showed you what you already were.”
For once, I didn’t deny it.
“You’re right.”
He looked surprised.
“I hurt people before Meridian.”
Emma stood several feet behind me.
Luke beside her.
I lowered my weapon.
“That’s why you were able to manipulate me. You took things I already hated about myself and turned them into a cage.”
Whitmore laughed.
“You’ll never know which memories are real.”
“Maybe not.”
I looked at Emma.
“But I know what I choose now.”
Federal agents moved in.
Whitmore was arrested.
Not executed.
Not conveniently silenced.
Alive.
Talking.
Within forty-eight hours, Meridian’s servers were seized.
Doctors were arrested.
Officials resigned.
Judges were suspended.
Sarah surrendered voluntarily and agreed to testify.
Thomas entered protective custody.
Luke spent weeks in the hospital.
And I returned to the estate believing the nightmare was finally over.
Six months later, I could move two toes.
Emma still brought me coffee.
I had started believing in mornings again.
Then an unknown number sent me a photograph.
My father.
Sitting at a table.
Luke beside him.
Taken that same day.
A message followed:
YOU WERE NEVER MERIDIAN’S FINAL SUBJECT.
Then another.
May you like
EMMA WAS.
And suddenly, everything we thought we had solved began falling apart again.
