The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,88
I said, it didn’t occur to me.’ He came back into the lounge, bearing a cloth. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks. Damn, I shouldn’t have sat down first, should I?’ She stood and rubbed the dirt off her trousers, then turned to wipe away the marks she had left on the chair.
‘Leave it,’ said Adam. She looked at him, questioning. ‘Maybe this place could use some disorder.’
‘I still have to sit somewhere,’ she pointed out.
He gestured at the couch. ‘Over here.’
‘Okay.’ She took a place on it. He sat beside her. ‘I suppose the question that has to be asked is: what do you remember about your past? If you think back, what’s the first thing that you can specifically recall?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He stared at the wall, but not in the blank way Bianca had seen in the Cube. He was making a genuine effort to probe his memory. ‘I remember the first time I went into the Bullpen at STS, for sure.’
‘Who else was there?’
‘Roger, Kiddrick, Martin, Tony . . . some of the support staff too. Holly Jo, Levon, Kyle, a few more. There weren’t many other people there, though. The project was suspended after Tony took medical leave – they were only just gearing back up to operational status.’
‘When was this?’
‘About seven months ago. After I’d recovered from the surgery to put in the PERSONA implants. Then I had five months of testing and training to make sure everything was okay, and after that we started warm-up missions. Low-level intelligence-gathering, to bring the team up to speed.’
‘So what do you remember before that? Do you know how you actually joined the project?’
Another long moment of deep thought. ‘No,’ he finally said.
‘Not at all? Roger told me that you volunteered for it.’
‘I volunteered?’
‘You didn’t even know that?’
‘Looks that way.’ A resigned shrug. ‘But I remember . . . I’m not sure what, actually. Bits and pieces. They must have been after the operation, because I was in a hospital. Kiddrick was there, and Roger. Tony, Harper . . . I think John Baxter, maybe?’
‘But coming into the Bullpen is the first thing you definitely remember?’
‘Yeah. Before that . . .’ He shook his head.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Bianca. ‘It seems as if they deliberately affected your memory as some sort of conditioning for the PERSONA process. But they didn’t do that to Tony. Unless they thought it would stop . . .’ She paused, remembering that Tony had asked her to keep the details of his breakdown to herself, and not knowing how much Adam knew. ‘Maybe they thought it would make the process work better.’
He frowned deeply. ‘But why would I volunteer to have literally everything I knew about my past erased? Your memories make you who you are, so if you take them away, what’s left?’ He noticed her reflective expression. ‘What?’
‘It’s funny – I said pretty much exactly that about the reason I went into Alzheimer’s research.’
‘So you’re saying I’ve gotten artificial Alzheimer’s?’ He let out a sardonic huff. ‘Maybe you were right – maybe I don’t have a personality, because it got wiped.’
‘That’s not true,’ she told him firmly. ‘What I’ve seen of you in the past hour proves that. The real Adam Gray is definitely in there.’
‘It still doesn’t explain why I’d agree to go through with it. Unless . . .’
Whatever thought had occurred to him was clearly not one he liked. ‘Unless what?’ she asked.
‘Unless there was something I didn’t want to remember. But that would mean there was something that . . . that I couldn’t face up to. And that would make me a coward.’
She put a hand on his arm. ‘No. No, it wouldn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Besides, you don’t even know what might have happened.’
‘I guess not. Although . . .’
‘Do you remember something else?’
‘I don’t know. It’s . . .’ He seemed troubled, even worried. ‘Okay. I have this recurring dream. Only I don’t know how much of it actually is a dream.’
‘You think it might be a memory?’
‘I don’t know. Some of it can’t be real, though.’
‘Why?’
He took a deep breath, working up the resolve to reveal some great secret. ‘All right. I haven’t told anyone this before.’
‘It’ll be just between us,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’ Another long breath. ‘Okay. It’s always the same – I’m in a street somewhere, but I don’t know where. Something bad’s happened – there are people running and screaming all around me. Then I see a body on the ground.’