Preston Child - The Fountain of Youth

“Nothing, yet. You were telling me about your sister; that you’d buried her in a library,” Dr. Helberg pressed the point of his pen upon the blank line of the notes he kept on his lap, waiting to jot down Purdue’s response. He wanted to examine Purdue’s recognition patterns after the number sequence. It was all part, literally, of deciphering the numerical structures that activated the subconscious commands in Purdue’s brain.

“Oh,” Purdue shrugged carelessly, covering up the ugly truth with good acting. “Maybe believing I was inebriated actually transpired in my ramblings. A kind of psychological placebo effect, if you will.”

“That’s a good hypothesis, David,” the doctor smiled, impressed at the notion.

Much as the thought of a contemporary Nazi organization brainwashing powerful financiers appalled him, Dr. Helberg could not help but yield some admiration for the genius behind Klaus Kemper’s mental safe lock. The combinations alone were almost impossible to record, let alone how they were programmed into Dave Purdue’s head to make him believe that he had, in fact, buried his sister alive. Of course, the good doctor could never admit to it out loud, but Dr. Helberg wished that he could have memorized such a treasury of number combinations to control the minds of others.

What Purdue also hid was the disturbing twinge he felt at the thought of what had just transpired. Now that he had awoken inside being awake, it dawned on him that he could very well be experiencing yet another dimension of reality and not even be aware of it. For all he knew, he was probably still under Reactor 4, running in the dark with Kemper’s numbers reprogramming his brain. On the other hand, it had been some time since he’d experienced that familiar involuntary servitude, so maybe this was the real reality after all.

“You are doing exceptionally well, David,” Dr. Helberg remarked as he ticked off some check boxes on the clipboard he’d retrieved from his case. “I’d venture to say that your problem might well be resolved by next session. The fact that you have exhibited signs of articulate reasoning during these so-called commands says it all. I think the reversal should be completed by Thursday.” The jovial doctor smiled as he signed off on the session and released Purdue from his mild restraints to the chair.

“Dr. Helberg, would you do me a favor and drop a line to Albert for me?” Purdue implored, rubbing his wrists to alleviate the chafing.

“Sure,” he replied. “Albert…”

“Albert Ashton, a friend of mine. I need him to bring me my Halifax 552, but not the 4788. Okay?” Purdue impressed on the doctor.

“Okay, I’ll tell him,” he told Purdue somewhat absent-mindedly and packed up his stuff.

“You don’t know Albert, do you, doctor?” Purdue said victoriously. “Because, with the number sequence I just gave you, you’d have been compelled to run to the window and check who was following you.”

Perplexed, Dr. Helberg stared at Purdue. “What on earth do you mean? Of course I know Albert Ashton. He was…a patient.”

“And, oddly enough, you already have the means to override numeric mind control after you investigated the files on Sam Cleave’s previous malady, proving that you are not only a charlatan, but one with a dangerous agenda at that,” Purdue revealed, taking careful note of the man’s facial expression.

The man was trying too hard to appear indifferent, and Purdue noticed that he was dipping his right hand into the case while maintaining eye contact, a blatant betrayal of attempted misdirection. Purdue knew what that meant. He leapt forward to grab the gun that emerged in the fake doctor’s hand. Moments later the tall patient and the impostor clashed, falling to the ground in a struggle for the Colt six shooter between their bodies.

The doctor’s case tipped over and spilled its contents onto the polished floor where the men were grappling wildly. Pastel folders with various names and notes were strewn in disarray next to Purdue and his assailant. Moments later, two thundering shots clapped and blood spattered brightly on the pale colors of the medical files.

Orderlies came rushing into David Purdue’s room at the Sinclair Medical Facility, examining the corners of the room to check for more attackers. But they soon found that it had been just the one. His body was limp and heavy, smothering the barely conscious Purdue underneath.

“Get him off! Get him off!” the head nurse shouted to the men. “Mr. Purdue? Mr. Purdue, can you hear me?” He sank to his knees beside Purdue to check his vitals, knees in the blood on the floor.

“Mr. Mills, aren’t you disturbing a crime scene or something?” a fresh employee asked from the vicinity of the cupboard where the impostor’s case had been sitting before the scuffle.

“Why don’t you just do as you’re told until I’ve determined if there even is a crime scene? By the looks of these two unconscious, but breathing individuals, it is safe to assume there has been no murder committed, Harold,” the veteran medical technician sneered at the rookie. “Yet.”

“Yes, sir. What about the weapon, sir?” he dared ask Mr. Mills after his reprimand.

Mills winced irately, but kept his cool. “I’ll take care of it, Harold. You just help Jimmy lift Dr. Helberg onto the gurney so that we can get them both to Hopkins Memorial as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jeremy Mills surveyed the scene swiftly. He’d had to wait for the police to arrive and stood guard over the room in the meantime. Even without a death, this was a case of attempted murder, or grievous bodily harm in the very least. But Dr. Helberg had to receive immediate medical care due to a gunshot wound to the abdomen and a flesh wound that had ripped through his left oblique. Purdue had been knocked unconscious just as the shot went off when his head had slammed against the cabinet corner during the altercation.

Mills had no idea why this had happened, even less of an idea which of the two men were at fault. Naturally, one would assume that the patient was the instigator, but patients did not keep guns in their rooms, which put the suspicion squarely on the psychologist.

But what disturbed everyone on the staff a few hours later, was that the CCTV footage of the session had not been recorded at all. The oddity was that the security control room had the cameras running at all hours of the day and night, yet during this particular session, the camera had been disabled.

“Pity we don’t have a camera in the actual security control room,” Mills noted when the police asked for access to the section.

“That is rather ironic, don’t you reckon?” the head investigating officer asked snidely. “Where are the patients now?”

“Only one registered patient. David Purdue, Lieutenant,” the security officer clarified. “The other is a therapist.”

The lieutenant looked at his black book, biting his pen between his teeth as he paged for what he was looking for. “But my information says that Dr. Helberg died a few months ago in a shooting at his practice for which his receptionist was responsible. Therefore, this therapist could not have been the real Dr. Helberg.”

At this point the acting administrative head, Melissa Argyle, entered the security room. Her blond hair was visible from under the edge of her knitted beret and lashed out in a halo about her shoulders. Rolling over her fingers was a shiny gilded pen that looked expensive to the investigators.

“We used to have a camera in here too, but it was fried during the last thunderstorm. The company that installed that one was supposed to show up three days ago to install a new one,” she explained.