"Tell me."
"I can't," she says.
"You can't ever tell me a thing, and you left me to die," I remind her. I'd take a bullet for her. I came with her to Chipley to protect her from Dad, and this is how I'm thanked. I'm not the parent, and yet, I had acted like one for so long to her, always needed to protect her, taking care of parts of our life that fell behind when her work took priority. Her research was her child. She was a good mother, but she let too much get in the way of the life she once wanted. It was like she got tired of having a family and needed something new to give her the thrill she wasn't feeling anymore. Dad didn't help this, but God, what about me? I didn't ask for this shit.
"I didn't choose this," she says again.
"Where the hell are we?" I ask again, demand seething through my words.
"She's waking up!" Peter shouts from the other side of the room.
Mom runs to one of the walls across the room and pulls a hidden drawer out, lined with metal. It looks like a damn morgue hole. It probably is. She pulls out two sandwiches and two bottles of water. She tosses a sandwich and a drink at me and runs to Reese's side, unwrapping the sandwich on the way. "Honey, I need you to eat this."
"Who are you?" Reese groans. She attempts to claw herself away, against the floor, moving away from Mom, so I rush to her side and move Mom out of the way, hoping to ease some of the fear I can assume she feels.
"It's okay," I tell her, running my hand down the side of her face. "Eat the sandwich."
"Where are we, Sin? What is this?"
"I don't know. We're in some underground bunker below Chipley. And that's my mother." Reese's eyes are larger than I've ever seen them. Her thoughts are scattered as is. Between the hallucinations and her memory loss over the past few days, she could hardly make heads or tails out of what was going on before she started passing out.
Reese begins to scream, swatting at Mom’s outstretched hand and me. "Get away from me," she shrieks.
"Phase seven," Mom says to the controllers behind her. "Cell three."
"What are you talking about?" I ask, anger raging through me.
"She needs to be contained."
"No, you aren't doing anything with her. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Peter, John. Please," she says.
"Why are you acting like you're the goddamn leader here?" I seethe.
"Because I am."
