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  He could do this. He had to remember. This was much too important. His life depended on him knowing the keyword and the name of his alternate personality. So far, he’d accumulated five separate personalities. This was his sixth. And as long as he played along with his superiors, he was safe.

  I have to do this.

  The chill seeped into his bones, making him shake. The tremors started off small—easy enough to tolerate. But he knew what was coming. He took deep breaths, counting to ten before he slowly exhaled. This simple exercise, he’d learned, warded off the nausea until the end.

  An image flashed in his mind. He tried to focus on it, but it quickly blurred back into the recesses of his repressed memories. Not yet. It’d be a little longer. He gripped the sides of the cool porcelain toilet. Within a half hour, it would be over. The wait wouldn’t be long. Another minute or two and it’d start.

  His teeth began to chatter even as he willed off the increasing cold. A slight amount of bile rose up in his throat. He took a deep breath. 1, 2, 3, 4.... Behind him, the doctor wrapped a warm blanket over his shoulders, and his nausea receded. He exhaled. The reprieve was temporary, but he was glad for it.

  He waited there in the silent room for a minute when the first clear image opened in his mind. The tall blond woman stood over him. She smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. It was the smile a predator gave its prey before it struck.

  “It’s always nice to see you, Devon,” she whispered into his ear. Her hand traveled up his leg until it reached his inner thigh.

  He struggled to get away, but he was frozen to the table. Not again. He didn’t want to go through this again!

  The scene faded, and Devon’s eyes flew open. He was staring into the empty toilet bowl and shaking all over, despite the blanket or the fact that the doctor turned the heating lamp on. So cold. Nothing could conquer the icy sensation pumping through his veins.

  A sharp pain under his fingernails made him grit his teeth. He closed his eyes again, and this time, he was strapped to a chair. Two men sat on either side of him. They took turns digging razors under his nails. He screamed and tried to wiggle his way out of the chair but couldn’t.

  Once again, his focus returned to the toilet in front of him as the feeling of nausea increased. That meant the flashes of memory would be coming faster. He clung to the rim of the toilet, his body on the edge of convulsing. The doctor came near with a syringe, but he shook his head and let the repressed memories surface.

  He hung by his wrists in a room that made him shiver. His stomach growled and his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. How long he’d been there was anybody’s guess, but his arms were numb and he’d long since lost the battle to hold off on urinating. He groaned. He wanted to pass out but couldn’t, not with the IV they’d hooked him up to in order to keep him conscious.

  Rodents scampered across the floor and tickled his bare feet. He struggled to touch the floor, to steady himself so he wouldn’t swing whenever they ran into him. But his toes merely brushed the surface of the rough wood. A snake hissed and slithered around his ankle. They had snakes here? This time when he shivered, it was from fear. He hated those things more than any of the rodents in the room.

  Then another memory flashed in his mind, and he was strapped to a board and shoved under water. By instinct he held his breath. Exhaustion fought with his need to struggle. He was weak. So weak he could hardly move, and his wrists and fingernails were sore. He was still hungry but had long since given up on the idea of food. How he wanted to go to sleep, to ease the duress his body had been under for the past couple days. His lungs began to burn, and just when he was about to inhale the water, they brought him out. He gasped the warm air. Before he had time to see who was handling him, they thrust him back into the water and the process repeated itself.

  Bile rose up in his throat and his eyes flew open. He was back in his house, staring at the clear water of the toilet. Even as he trembled, he held onto the rim, his fingers still tender and his wrists rubbed raw from the rope. It all had come back to him, and he remembered that moment his personality split in half—when he reached the point where he couldn’t take it anymore.

  Luke. The blond woman named him Luke. That was his new identity. And the code phrase was level 6 reinforcement.

  What did that mean? What was he supposed to do when he heard that?

  He gritted his teeth and cried out as the acute pain traveled the length of his back where they had implanted him with that thing—that living creature the doctor had removed from him. His body jerked forward.

  “That’s it,” the doctor said, getting ready to stick him with the needle.

  “No! I need to remember!” Devon screamed as vomit rose up in his throat. Almost there. One more piece to the puzzle and this whole ordeal would be over.

  The doctor slowly stepped back.

  Level 6 reinforcement. For what?

  The blond woman returned in another memory. She held a needle in front of him and smiled, her eyes turning black and a trace of her horns projecting from her forehead. “The leader’s mark. You will inject this DNA into those who resist the mark.”

  The final memory in place, Devon released the vomit into the toilet. As soon as he emptied his stomach, he sat back.

  The doctor inserted the needle into Devon’s arm. His stomach soon settled and the chills left in quick succession. The doctor helped him up. Thankful to have the experience behind him, Devon leaned on the other man as he lumbered to his bed. As soon as he collapsed on the mattress, his eyelids grew heavy.

  “I want to take that thing they put in you and see exactly what it is,” the doctor told him.

  Devon nodded, too tired to fully comprehend what the man said.

  The doctor pulled the sheet and blanket up to his neck.

  Devon was barely aware of the doctor leaving his house. A peaceful numbing sensation swept over him, and after the pain he went through, he just wanted to enjoy this moment. His breathing grew slower. He felt sleep coming swiftly. His last thought, before he finally dozed off was what the blond meant by the leader, but he knew he’d find that one out soon enough.

  the calm is always followed by a storm...

  Novella #3:

  The Leader

  Coming October 2010

  Table of Contents

  The Watchers