The Helford Trials (Helford #3)

Chapter Eight

Meade had put his head in his hands when we arrived at the restaurant and he still had yet to lift his head. The white noise of the restaurant patrons behind was almost dizzying, nauseating, because these people didn't know what was out there. They watched the news and they thought that the things they learned about these trials were terrible or great, they either supported or wanted to destroy the people who called for reform over this foreign policy disaster, but they hadn't seen their best friend get shot in the head, they didn't have to watch a building turn to glass-shattering flames while knowing someone they loved was inside.

It was almost worse, to have to look around and know that these people knew the horrors that could be contained in a sleeper cell just inches away.

Lys Asbury had offered an explanation, hurried and shakily, as to the Changelings, telling the story of Helford's dirty little secret, one that they were almost as proud as they were shamed of. The Changelings were spies that took on other people's faces and identities, believing wholly that they are the person they were meant to replace. They were sleeper cells, brainwashed to continue living normally and familiarly to the loved ones of the original body, but they could be triggered to kill with a phrase, just any possible string of words or images that could set them into rampaging murderers.

Sometimes, Changelings worked reconnaissance. Other times, they were the scapegoats.

They picked people with obsessive personalities, also ones with multiple personalities, and set them into the obsession of becoming another person until they just simply are that person. There are no sufficient records-they are ghosts, top secret even to the people with top-secret security clearance.

Helford allowed for more dangerous practices, more sick torment, than we had already originally known, somehow. Maybe that was a big part in what made this so absolutely horrifying.

My father finally looked up from where he had been staring blankly down at his menu, blinking in the light as if surprised to find himself in public, before he sighed heavily, drawing the attention of even Meade, whose head tilted slightly in acknowledgement. "Well, this is thoroughly unanticipated."

"Understatement," I replied dryly, reaching up to rub my temples against an oncoming headache. "This is not going to be easy. There's no real record of how many Changelings are out there, not to mention that we don't know who they are pretending to be. It's going to cause nothing more than chaos once the paranoia sets in. People won't know who to trust."

"This is more than what I thought Helford could be," Meade began, tone tortured. He looked up, and his eyes looked dark, in another nightmarish world. "I thought I knew what they were capable of, but this is taking it too far. This is something more."

I glanced to Valerie, who hadn't yet spoken on the topic, to find her sitting beside me with her eyes closed, facial expression closed off. She looked resigned, almost a little tranquil. My father noticed this at the same time that I did, and my eyebrows went up.

"Valerie?" I asked. "Care to share with the class?"

Valerie took her time responding, so long that the waitress swung by to refill our waters, engaging my father in small talk about if they need anything, their food will be out shortly, I'll be right back. She waited until the woman had disappeared back into the fray before opening her eyes, taking a deep breath as her hand reached for the water glass, fingers nervously stuttering a pattern on the condensation.

"I've seen a lot of cases," Valerie told us slowly, eyes sad. "I've seen a lot of horrible things, really, but sometimes they were so strange or inexplicable that they stood out-multiple personality disorders and schizophrenia, spies who were in crippling crisis over people not understanding who they are, or not thinking that they are who they are. It passed by my office a couple of times, just enough for it to be a little too strange for it to be coincidence. But I knew it wasn't, anyway. My first case, when I was a trainee, was shadowing a psychiatrist in France, brainwashing and ruining this one spy, but I didn't understand what it meant until it was almost too late. I didn't want to believe it was happening. I didn't want to believe that even Helford would be so terrible."