Page 37 of The Tower

I hug myself, desperate to run back to bed. Instead, I lift my chin. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Grimm and Dr. Chen exchange a glance. “It isn’t good,” Grimm says.

“Perhaps we should sit,” Dr. Chen suggests.

But I don’t want to sit. I just want to know. I want to hear every horrible thing, because once you understand the nightmare, that’s when you stop having it.

Except that’s not really true. I know better than most that nightmares never really end.

So I walk with them to the kitchen table and sit, then look from Grimm beside me to Dr. Chen across the oval tabletop.

“Well?”

Grimm shifts to look at me more directly. “The medications your father’s been giving you for anxiety and agoraphobia—they’re not legitimate pharmaceutical compounds.”

Bile rises in my throat. I don’t want to hear any of this. And how the hell can he know so much about my meds, anyway?

At the same time, I believe him. This is my father we’re talking about.

I sit up straighter as I look at Dr. Chen. “Have they—have they damaged me?”

Her smile is almost maternal, and I fight the urge to go cry in her arms the way I imagine I used to with my mother. And the way I still do now with Lydia in the towers of Elysium.

“No damage,” Dr. Chen assures me. “But they have affected you. Based on your symptoms and my review of footage from your public appearances over the last few years, I believe you’ve been administered a cocktail of benzodiazepines, memory suppressants, and mood stabilizers, not to mention a number of experimental drugs, most likely to enhance dependency.”

I look between the two of them, not understanding.

“To keep you controlled and docile,” Dr. Chen says softly.

“No, no.” I shake my head. “Dr. Linden would never do that.”

“He’s not,” Grimm says. “You have a legitimate prescription. But you take what your father gives you instead.”

I stand and start pacing. “That’s … That’s insane.” But even as I say it, pieces begin falling into place. The foggy thinking. The missing memories.

My stomach churns. I don’t want to believe this. I don’t. I want to close my eyes and sleep for a hundred years. I want to shout that the Grimm family is our enemy and that I know this is just a ploy, and it won’t work. I won’t let it work.

I want to race out of this room and back to reality.

Except I do believe them.

More than that, I’m not even sure I know what reality is anymore.

“Sasha?”

I look up at Dr. Chen, mentally clinging to her soft voice and kind face.

“Why would he do that?” I finally ask.

“Control,” Grimm says, the word sharp and certain. “Your father needs to control everything in his orbit. You most of all.”

“I’d like to perform a basic physical examination and take blood samples,” Dr. Chen says. “The sooner we can identify what’s in your system, the better we can manage your withdrawal and document what’s been done to you.”

“Withdrawal?”

“When did you last take your meds?”

“This is day three. I didn’t take them the morning of the photo shoot.”