The Never List

crossed the room in two strides and waved the images an inch from Adele’s face.
    “Can’t you see what this means?” she screamed. “Do I have to spell it out for you? There weren’t any CIA documents, Adele. This wasn’t noble academic work. Jack was running his own mind control experiments. Using torture. On these girls.” She paused. “And on us .”
    In disgust, Tracy threw the photos onto the floor in front of Adele. No one spoke—we only listened to the sound of their sliding across the wood. Then Tracy stepped back and looked hard at Adele, her voice calmer now. “It looks like Jack wanted to turn you into a very different kind of protégé than you thought.”
    Adele stared at the photos scattered at her feet. She bent down,picked one up, and examined the writing on the back. Here it was, her life’s work, based on a maniac’s experiments on abducted girls. And worse, this maniac might have been slowly making her party to his machinations. Grooming her to be one of them, to engage in some horrific study, a magnum opus of torture and degradation.
    “I think I … I think I need to be alone for a few minutes,” Adele said. She turned slowly and walked like a zombie out of the room, staring straight ahead.
    “Should we let her go?” Tracy said after it became clear Adele wasn’t coming right back.
    “Yes, she’s in shock. And she knows she was duped. She thought she was the great manipulator, but it turns out she was the manipulated one. She is another victim of Jack’s. A different kind, but still.” I paused, taking a breath. “So I think, for now, we should let her have some alone time.”
    Tracy looked back down at the notebooks. “Well, I could probably use some alone time myself. Or ten more years of therapy. Or a giant slug of vodka.”
    She bent over the photos spread on the floor, picking one up here and there, tracing the images with her finger. “So,” she began, her voice barely audible, “were we just part of these … these experiments too?”
    I sat down next to her, picking up a photo, this one of a brunette with the frizzy curls of a cheap home permanent, her eyes staring warily into the camera lens. Subject S-5. From the nineteen eighties I guessed.
    Christine had returned to the window seat. Ray was pacing back and forth, wringing his hands. We were all shaken to the core.
    “Are these the other fifty-four girls from Jim’s list? Could any of them still be alive? If so, are they on the run with Noah Philben right this very second?” I asked.
    Tracy shook her head slowly. “I wonder if Noah is a ‘serious scholar,’ too.”
    “Somehow I don’t think so,” I replied, absently stacking the photos back into piles. “Seems to me that Jack liked torture and Noah liked making money. They figured out a way to do both. And now that Jack can’t be hands-on, I’m sure he loves hearing the stories of this sick world he set in motion. And probably still controls.
    “Or maybe Sylvia is in control,” I said, thinking about our situation. “After all, she set this trap for us. Maybe she’s his proxy now.”
    “Like you were, Sarah?” Tracy said quietly.
    I jerked my head around to face her, “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, look at how you betrayed us. You were practically in Sylvia’s shoes. There but for the grace of God—”
    “I was nothing like Sylvia. How dare you say that?”
    Tracy stood up and walked over to me. She was close enough to know I would be uncomfortable. I hated my body at that moment for shrinking back from her. “Sarah, have you been brainwashed to forget? Do you not remember what it was like those last months in the cellar? When you … when you … went to the other side. ”
    I shook my head. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”
    “Really? You didn’t? Well, then how do you explain the fact that you’d moved upstairs at that point? How do you explain that when one of us would be tied down on the rack, you stayed right there, in the room, helping him, handing him his tools and instruments, smiling ? I guess his techniques worked on you, after all.” Tracy was shouting at me now.
    My thoughts began racing, fragments of memories, disjointed scenes, reappearing in my mind. I shook my head, as if that might wipe away the images her words had put there. I shook harder and closed my eyes. I bit my lip hard to try to stop the tears I felt forming in my eyes. I didn’t want to lose control right now. I wanted to be strong.
    I pulled myself