Chapter 1: Dr. Watts' Account

"Neil, get your ass up! We've got a patient!"

Neil gave a start at the sound of Eva's decidedly impatient voice coming from the doorway of his office, jerking himself out of the bored, late-afternoon dozing he'd been drifting in and out of for the last fifteen minutes.

Eva didn't wait for a reply before continuing. "The boss just texted me about a Roland Stewart who lives way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. I predict an all-nighter just because it'll take us hours to even find the guy's house." She huffed. "We'd better get paid good for this—I hate having to work all night."

"Well, the sooner we get to it, the sooner it'll be over, yeah?" Neil said, standing up from his chair and privately wondering who (literally?) peed in Eva's tea this morning.

"Whatever. Meet me at the company car in thirty seconds or less." With that said, Eva turned around, her long black hair swinging behind her, and went down the hall. "And don't forget the briefcase, damn it!"

"Sure thing, Eva," Neil answered, even though she was already too far away to hear him.


After about four hours of driving, Neil and Eva finally made it to the patient's house, a small, one-story bungalow on the outskirts of a little town. Eva marched up to the porch and sharply knocked on the front door, Neil trailing behind her with the heavy briefcase full of their equipment in hand.

"Hello," a woman in her early thirties said in a soft, lilting voice after opening the door. "I'm Dr. Lucinda Hartley. You must be from Sigmund Corp."

"Yes, we are," Neil told her. "I'm—"

"Dr. Rosalene," Eva butted in, "and the guy sweating next to me is Dr. What's-His-Face."

"She means Dr. Watts," Neil quickly corrected. He gave Dr. Hartley a slight smile and a swift, discreet look-over, not failing to notice how beautiful she was. The medical doctor was tall, willowy, and olive-skinned, her eyes were a deep shade of brown, and her long, dark brown hair—almost the color of coffee—was pulled back into a bun.

"It's nice to meet you," Dr. Hartley said, smiling back at Neil. "Very nice."

Eva's gaze darted from Neil to Dr. Hartley; she looked about as indignant as a housewife who just found out that all her favorite trashy soap operas had been cancelled. "Well, if you're done with the...pleasantries," she said with a barely restrained edge in her voice, "do you mind if we go inside and see the dying old fossil who lives here?"

Dr. Hartley nodded, not fazed by Eva's hostility in the least. "Of course. Follow me."

She led Neil and Eva inside the house. They went through the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, and a hallway before reaching Roland Stewart's bedroom. The eighty-eight-year-old man was hooked up to an IV and lying unconscious in his bed. An ECG machine beeped steadily on the nearby night table.

Minutes passed as Neil and Eva got the memory machine up and running. "At least it looks like he's still breathing," he heard her mutter as she put one of the helmets on Roland's head. "If he croaks before we can get started, I'm demanding extra pay for all the time we wasted."

"What can you tell us about the patient?" Neil asked Dr. Hartley, choosing to ignore Eva's grumbling.

"Roland was the manager of the local pizzeria for almost forty years before he retired," Dr. Hartley answered. "His wife Donna died eight years ago, and his son Peter lives nearby with his family. Roland's last wish is to become a film star."

"Just how much time do we even have?" Eva wanted to know. "Because right now, Mr. One Foot in the Grave here looks like a stiff breeze will do him in."

A worried expression crossed Dr. Hartley's pretty face. "If you're very lucky, I'd say about twelve hours at most. Currently, his vitals are about as good as they're going to get, but I'm afraid Roland's condition isn't the most stable. I almost lost him twice before you came here."

"Twelve hours is more than enough time," Neil assured her with a confident grin. "He'll be dying happy before you know it."

Dr. Hartley paused, considering his words. "Well, it's good to hear you're optimistic about this, Neil."


"She didn't know your first name, idiot!" Eva snapped irritably, clenching her bedspread in tight fists. She'd forced herself to bite her tongue from the moment Neil started talking like she'd been some cranky shrew, but him claiming that Dr. Hartley had called him by his first name could not go without rebuttal.

"Oh, sorry; did I touch a nerve?" Neil teased, looking about as smug as someone with a bruised face could be.

Eva gave him a venomous glare. "Of course not; now continue."

"As you wish." Neil lowered his icepack from his face, the self-satisfied smile fading. "Anyway, we got into the machine, and we were still in Roland's most recent memories when we ran into problems."


Neil and Eva were in the middle of watching the elderly Roland sit at his desk in the study and listen to an audiobook of Bram Stoker's Dracula when the scene faded out slightly, only to revert to its original visibility less than a second later.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Eva was shaking her head furiously. "I did not drag myself to the freakin' boondocks for this!"

"Eva, calm down." But the words were barely out of Neil's mouth when the scene temporarily faded out again, and this time it took a bit more than a second for it to return to normal.

"Don't tell me to calm down, Neil Watts!" Eva yelled (Neil flinched at the volume), turning her wrath on him as though their patient's declining condition was all his fault. "I spent four hours sitting in that damn car with nothing to eat or drink and I swear to God, if Roland dies before we can get him on the big screen, I'm going to the boss and telling him he has to pay us extra for the rest of our natural lives!"

As Eva ranted, Roland's memory continued to briefly fade out, and the time it took to go back to normal was a little longer each time: a second and ten milliseconds, a second and fifteen milliseconds, a second and twenty milliseconds.

Before Neil could say anything to try to get his partner to simmer down, Dr. Hartley's voice was heard over the memory machine's communication system.

"Dr. Watts, Dr. Rosalene, we have a situation."

"Yeah, we can tell from our end, too," Neil said. "Roland's been destabilized."

"I'm doing what I can to re-stabilize him, but that's not our only problem. Peter's here, and he's not happy that his father hired Sigmund Corp. I've told him that it was Roland's choice to have this procedure done, but Peter keeps demanding you leave. Can one of you come back and reason with him?"

"I'll do it," Eva decided immediately, sounding much calmer now. She turned to Neil. "You stay here and get the memory links."

"Wait, Eva, I think—" Neil began.

"You. Stay. Here." And with that, Eva vanished from the memory.

"...I think maybe I ought to talk to him," Neil finished to himself, "just in case things get violent." He could only hope that Eva wouldn't be gone for too long.

With the memory still momentarily fading out every so often, Neil gathered the memory links needed to power the memento, Roland's record player. Luckily, the objects containing the memory links—the bulletin board, the lamp, an old day planner, stationary, and unsurprisingly, a hardback copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula—were easy enough to find. What was less easy, though, was waiting for Eva to return. After all, anti-Sigmund people weren't often known for being the most reasonable sort; for all Neil knew, Eva could have a black eye and a broken nose by now, or even be unconscious.

He was in the middle of debating the pros and cons of leaving Roland's memories to check on Eva, or at least call her, when he heard her voice through the communication system.

"Did you get the memory links?" she asked without preamble.

"I did," he replied. "What's going on out there? Everything okay?"

"You wish. Peter's insisting we leave his dad alone. Quite angrily, might I add. But I'll be back as soon as—" Eva suddenly cut herself off with a pained cry, and Neil heard a thud in the background.

"Eva? Eva?!" For a second, Neil was rooted to the spot, but in the next instant, he was getting out of Roland's increasingly unstable memory. He came back to the real world in time to see Dr. Hartley frantically adjusting Roland's IV drip...and Eva lying in a heap on the carpet with a middle-aged man—obviously Peter—looming over her.

Son of a bitch! was Neil's only thought in that moment. The next thing he knew, he was lunging at Peter, tackling him to the floor, and punching him in the face over and over again. It wasn't long before Peter was swinging his own fists, and Neil yelped when the older man's knuckles collided with his face.

Through the blood pounding in his ears, Neil dimly heard Eva screaming as the scuffle went on. Dr. Hartley might have been shouting, too. But that didn't matter. All that mattered was making sure Peter couldn't lay another finger on Eva, and if Neil had to break his face, then by God, he'd do it.

He didn't know how long he spent whaling on the older man, but eventually, Neil's blows knocked Peter out. He had barely enough time to take in the bruises on Peter's face when Eva pulled him off the man.

"What the hell did you just do?!" she demanded.

"Oh, no!" Dr. Hartley exclaimed before Neil could answer. And no wonder—a long, harsh beep was sounding from the ECG, and on the screen was a straight line.

Roland Stewart was dead.

All Neil could do was wordlessly stare at the ECG as it continued blaring.


"And that," Neil concluded, "is exactly what happened."

"Are you out of your mind?!" Eva burst out, jumping to her feet. "That's what you're going to write in your report?!"

Neil's brow furrowed. "I'm going to write that I leapt to your defense when Peter attacked you and that Roland—who already wasn't looking too hot, by the way—died despite Dr. Hartley's best efforts to buy us more time. What's so wrong about it?"

"How about the part where you make me look like a total harpy?"

"Hey, you're the one who wanted to know what I'm gonna tell the boss. Now you know."

"That is not what happened at all and you know it!"

"Well, Eva, it's a good thing I said you had to tell me what you're going to write in your report. So, what do you think happened?"

"Oh, I'll tell you exactly what happened." Eva took a deep, calming breath before continuing. "This afternoon, I went to your office to tell you about our new patient."