Chapter 7 - MY DEAD FATHER
Emma pushed my wheelchair through a tunnel beneath the estate I had never known existed.
At the far end, an old sedan waited.
A gray-haired man stepped out.
Scar across his jaw.
Thin face.
Eyes exactly like mine.
Daniel Mercer.
My father.
Alive.
For twenty years, I had believed he died in a car accident.
There had been a coffin.
No body.
No answers.
“You let me believe you were dead.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
Daniel looked at Emma.
“Thomas Carter tried too.”
She stepped forward.
“My father?”
“Thomas discovered what Meridian was becoming.”
“Is he alive?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Yes.”
Emma covered her mouth.
“He’s been hidden inside Meridian’s medical network for years.”
“Why?”
“Because Whitmore needed someone who understood the conditioning system better than anyone alive.”
I looked at my father.
“You knew?”
“Parts.”
“Was I really an experiment?”
“Yes.”
The answer nearly crushed me.
Then Daniel added:
“But not in the way you think.”
Before I could ask more, headlights appeared behind us.
We had been followed.
Daniel climbed behind the wheel.
“Meridian headquarters. Downtown.”
“You expect me to walk into the building of the people who destroyed me?”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“I expect you to finish what you started.”
That sentence stayed in my head all the way to Chicago.
Meridian headquarters rose sixty floors over the city.
Glass.
Steel.
Respectability.
Emma and I entered through the underground garage while Daniel remained outside contacting someone he refused to identify.
The elevator doors opened.
Senator Charles Whitmore stood alone.
He looked older than he did on television.
Calmer too.
“Danny Mercer.”
I pointed my pistol.
“You know who I am.”
Whitmore smiled faintly.
“I’ve known you since you were twenty-two.”
“You destroyed my life.”
“No.”
His eyes settled on me.
“You volunteered.”
Emma stared at him.
“What?”
Whitmore pressed the basement button.
The elevator descended.
“You’ve been asking the wrong question, Danny.”
“What question should I be asking?”
The doors opened onto a hidden laboratory.
Whitmore stepped out.
“Not who did this to you.”
May you like
He turned.
“But why you asked us to do it.”
