Chapter 11
There's a dream he keeps on having. He can remember everything clearly except for the damn words, scrubbed out hastily & messily, his mind trying to not let him see it.
Sweats underneath the thin blanket, despite it being something like 60 degrees in the room as the wintee draft came in.
He remembers the dream though. And that's another punishment he'll take to try and remember the words.
----
Before Siberia, he was kept in Russia (that part still blurry, red upon red upon red, if he thinks hard enough, his heart hurts for some reason he still can't think of).
Karpov was just a Major at the time, and the head of program was someone he...can't recall either.
The mind wiping was never required before, his memory already scrambled from the fall.
The strangest sensation, he thinks, is remembering that you can't remember. You automatically become a ghost in your own dream, a witness to what you couldn't recall.
That changed after the Brooklyn mission. 1950.
"Target neutralized."
"[Well done, Soldier.]"
He watched himself, dismantling the gun.
[Proceed to retrieval point.]"
He's watched it nearly half a dozen times now, can remember exactly what happened.
He put his hand to his forehead, a headache he's had since he got here, suddenly getting worse.
"I can get by on my own."
Squeezes his eyes shut, trying to make it stop.
"Don't do anything stupid 'til I get back."
There's a barrage of images, and a feeling.
This isn't right.
The voice that's been fighting since 1945. 'This isn't right. You don't belong here. Remember.'
He went on the run after that.
Chicago to Brooklyn and back.
He was searching for something that wasn't there, but inside the landmine of his head.
They eventually found him in a halfway house. Became the kind of story all paranoid sentients recall.
He sat in a cuffed chair.
"Where is he?" He struggled, knowing that voice.
A sigh at the doorway. "...Sergeant Barnes." Zola came into the room, a bowler's hat on and a clipboard.
He didn't fight. That bothers him every time he's stuck in this dream. He just sat there, listening to him.
"I hear, you have been recalling your memories."
Too weak. Physically and mentally spent.
"....Your time in Brooklyn."
He should have fought.
"....Yes. We kept it from you because I figured it did not matter anymore. Like your friend, you became a different person after I gave you my improved version of Herr Schmidt's formula."
Feels himself sweat in reality, and the dream.
"So....we will remind you of this." Looked at his clipboard. "Dr. Faustus did inform me how, gratefully." Zola smiled. "We will remind you."