Pawn (The Pawn Duet #2) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,26

just desensitized to the teachings, and over time, it’s the same as witnessing violence every day and the gunshots just stopped being scary?

But knowing that Papa was a founding member, was there even an experiment at all or was that part of his lie? Do the notes and findings he spoke about writing even exist? And if they do exist, where would I find them? He had an office here at The Reich, next to Darius’s in a large outer building behind the warehouse. Maybe, if I could break in and find them, I could answer a lot of questions behind his reasoning for any of this because being a founder of a racist hate group doesn’t make logical sense and my dad was nothing if not logical.

Or did I never really know him at all?

I’m standing in the cafeteria/gym area that serves as the Reich’s meeting room. Percy is beside me while Darius stands behind a pulpit on the small stage, preaching to his followers. A twisted deacon spewing lies that his followers are eating up like eager mice feasting on dumpster scraps.

I tune out his voice and focus on my feet. Usually, I listen and observe and make mental notes to write in my notebook, the one I hide below the false bottom of my dresser drawer, at a later time, but today, my heart can’t take it.

It isn’t until the meeting is over that I finally tune in. The crowd chants loudly after Darius with their hands in the air, the Nazi salute. The slogans aren’t even original. They’re derived from the Ku Klux Klan. Even their brand of racism isn’t original.

Make America white again! The purity, the power! From blood and bone! Love it or leave it! America first! White pride!

I’m disgusted with myself when it’s all over, feeling dirty for even being in the same room as the words that fill it. I feel something else, too, something I’ve never felt before because I’ve always thought of myself as one of the good guys, in this for the science of it all, but the feeling tugs at my heart, and when I stand to leave the room, I stop and take a deep breath. Guilt. What I’m feeling is pure guilt.

“Michaela,” Darius calls over to me.

“Yeah?” I ask, turning around.

“Your next assignment is recruitment. Bring someone to the barbecue tomorrow.”

I swallow hard. “No problem,” I answer confidently while I’m screaming on the inside. It’s bad enough that I’ve sat idly by and allowed this hatred to continue for the sake of knowledge, but now I’m being forced to drag another poor soul into this hell?

Remember your sister.

“Good. Make sure that you do,” Darius says, sounding very much like a warning. He leaves the safety of his pulpit and heads out the back door toward his office.

When the crowd clears, I wait until the last person is gone and then step out into the empty hallway to do a mental self-check. It’s something that victims of brainwashing are taught to do after they experience something that might trigger feelings that aren’t their own or bring back memories of their experience under the thumb of those manipulating them. It’s part of the deprogramming process, but I’ve always used it in order to avoid the actual programming.

How am I feeling?

Well, I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me. I feel like a failure. I feel like Darius’s popularity and that of the Reich is flourishing while I’m falling, mid-flail with my arms spinning in the air in a pointless attempt to keep myself from crashing ass-first to the ground.

I feel like for someone who knows so much, it turns out that I know nothing at all.

Like what I’ve been focusing on, the science of it all, doesn’t matter anymore. But what does?

Love matters.

My sister matters.

Pike matters.

I look around the now empty room and take in the walls that house all the lies that make up what the Fourth Reich stands for.

It’s funny, you know, if you can find humor in racism and what not, that from a psychology standpoint, most people join groups like this not to join a community of shared values. They adapt the values of the group in which they perceive they will find acceptance. While the group itself, by its very definition, is anti-acceptance.

Back at the university, there is a word we had for these people.

Idiots.

I find myself in a long, narrow hallway covered with framed photos, plaques, and other