CHAPTER 7 — THE WOMAN IN THE PRISON
CHAPTER 7 — THE WOMAN IN THE PRISON
The revelation shattered everything.
Dr. Anna Sullivan was officially alive.
Officially imprisoned.
Officially unable to have been standing in Riverside Park.
Yet half a dozen officers—including Detective Monroe—had seen the blonde woman with their own eyes.
There were only two possibilities.
Either every witness had imagined her.
Or someone wanted the FBI to believe Anna Sullivan had never left prison.
Agent Reeves made one decision.
"We're going to the prison."
The federal facility sat nearly four hours away.
Concrete walls.
Watchtowers.
Steel gates.
No one escaped from there.
The warden greeted Reeves with visible irritation.
"I've already answered your questions."
"You'll answer them again."
Anna Sullivan was brought into the interview room wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Her wrists were chained.
She looked older than I expected.
But the moment her eyes met mine...
She smiled.
Not with surprise.
With relief.
"Emma."
I stopped breathing.
"You know me?"
"I've been praying you'd survive."
The room went still.
Reeves switched on the recorder.
"Dr. Sullivan, where is Lily?"
Anna looked at the mirror instead of the agents.
"They're listening."
"Who?"
"They always listen."
She finally looked back at me.
"You still don't remember, do you?"
"Remember what?"
"You volunteered."
"No."
"You begged."
I slammed my hand on the table.
"I have never met you!"
Anna's smile faded.
"They erased more than I feared."
She told us a story no one in the room wanted to believe.
Six years earlier, she had worked for a private research foundation secretly funded by several wealthy businessmen.
The official project involved treating severe childhood trauma.
The real project was something far darker.
They wanted to prove memories could be rewritten.
Children became test subjects.
Adults became "anchors."
Each child would be psychologically conditioned to trust only one carefully selected adult if escape ever became possible.
That adult would have no idea.
Their photograph.
Their routines.
Their voice.
Everything was secretly recorded and used during conditioning.
Emma Carter had been chosen as Lily's anchor.
Me.
"But why me?"
Anna answered quietly.
"Because you were kind."
I stared at her.
She continued.
"They watched thousands of people."
"Most ignored crying children."
"Some became angry."
"You stopped."
"When you thought no one was watching."
Suddenly...
I remembered.
A rainy afternoon.
Years ago.
A little girl crying alone outside a hospital.
I'd bought her a stuffed rabbit while security searched for her parents.
The memory had always seemed insignificant.
Anna nodded before I even spoke.
"That was Lily."
"You met for only four minutes."
"But she never forgot your face."
Anna's expression darkened.
"I tried to expose the project."
"What happened?"
"They framed me."
"They staged my death."
"They buried another woman's body under my name."
"And then?"
"I disappeared into a prison no one was supposed to find."
Reeves frowned.
"Who runs the project now?"
Anna looked directly at him.
"The man sitting behind you."
Every head turned.
Standing silently near the interview room door...
Was the prison warden.
He slowly smiled.
Then every light in the room went out.
Emergency alarms screamed through the prison.
Gunfire erupted outside.
Someone had cut the power.
When backup generators activated seconds later...
The interview room was empty.
Anna was gone.
The warden was gone.
Two guards lay unconscious on the floor.
And written across the interview table in black marker were six chilling words.
COME TO THE PLACE IT BEGAN.
Beneath the message...
A single photograph.
May you like
An abandoned medical complex on the edge of the city.
The old neurological clinic that had supposedly burned down four years earlier.
