Chapter 6 - MERIDIAN
The files led to one name.
The Meridian Foundation.
Everyone in Illinois knew Meridian.
Hospitals.
Scholarships.
Veterans’ programs.
Rehabilitation centers.
Their chairman, Senator Charles Whitmore, had built a career around public service.
But hidden beneath the charitable accounts were transfers to private clinics, doctors and security contractors.
Then we found the project summary.
Meridian had been developing a behavioral-conditioning system.
Not mind control.
Something subtler.
Trauma.
Drugs.
Isolation.
Repeated suggestions.
False associations.
The objective wasn’t to force a subject to obey.
It was to shape the story the subject believed about himself.
And according to the files, I was Project Mercer.
I felt sick.
The shooting had intensified everything.
My isolation.
My paranoia.
My aggression.
Even the carefully selected doctors and nurses.
My home had become part fortress, part laboratory.
Then Emma found the financial ledger.
At the bottom of one page was a signature.
LUKE MERCER.
I stared at it.
“No.”
Emma said nothing.
“He wouldn’t.”
The basement door exploded inward.
Two armed men entered.
I fired first.
One dropped behind a desk.
The other retreated.
Then Luke walked in.
Slowly.
His hands empty.
I aimed the pistol at his chest.
“You signed it.”
Luke looked at the ledger.
“Yes.”
The word hurt more than the bullet that had taken my legs.
“Why?”
“Because you made me.”
I froze.
“What?”
He stepped closer.
“Two weeks before the shooting, you made me promise that no matter what happened afterward, I would follow your instructions.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I know.”
“You let them experiment on me.”
His eyes filled with something I had never seen there before.
Guilt.
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“By putting a bullet in my spine?”
Luke shook his head.
“I didn’t shoot you.”
“Then who did?”
Before he could answer, a gunshot cracked from the hallway.
Luke jerked.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Emma screamed.
Luke collapsed beside my wheelchair.
I grabbed his wrist.
“Who shot me?”
His breathing came hard.
“Whitmore.”
“Why?”
“Because you found out what Meridian really was.”
He pulled me closer.
“And Danny…”
“What?”
“Your father isn’t dead.”
My entire body went cold.
“My father died twenty years ago.”
Luke shook his head.
May you like
“No.”
Then his eyes closed.
