Before I go on, there is an important sort of mile marker in my life at this point. Although I'm getting into the part where Chuck and I first crossed paths, that isn't the mile marker to which I'm referring, at least not in retrospect as this has been so far. This is the part, from August 2007 until January of 2012, where I've since relearned if you will, or re-remembered, as opposed to a straightforward chronological regression in my mind, like anyone else's life would be.
That same magnificent piece of computer and intelligence engineering, designed by Chuck's father, perfected by Chuck's father to work in a brain just like Chuck's, that worked almost perfectly in my husband (and still does to this day, over ten years after he downloaded what was the final version in possession of the United States government,) damaged me severely after I downloaded it in January of 2012.
It's a long and complicated story, which I promise I will eventually get to, but it's important to explain this here in my life chronology because this is the point to which my memory regressed when the Intersect damaged my brain. It's safe for me to explain, as you may have surmised by my modern day recollections interspersed herein, almost all of my memory returned. Not chronologically, not even quickly, but it did. Lucky for me, I remembered the important things first. Other things filled in along the way. Chuck's sister, Ellie, a neurologist, estimated that 96 percent of my memories of my life with Chuck returned within one year of the ill-fated download.
Every now and again, something will come up that I don't remember at all. Silly things, random things…mostly mission-specific things that come up in conversation. For instance, I don't remember being in Dubai. Chuck, Casey and I were there in 2010. I remember the entire episode with Manoosh and Chuck having to burn him. I even remember the scene when Chuck shot Manoosh with a tranquilizer gun at the weapon convention. But landing in Dubai, what the scenery looked like, how it felt to be in Dubai…it's not there. Also a few other mismatched things. Chuck says I get this look…whenever they're talking about something that I should remember that I don't…confused and upset looking. I have to admit, it bothers me that I have missing pieces of my life, even though almost all of it has returned. In a way, it's a loss of control, something that is not in my power no matter what I do. I've struggled to accept it, and I think that I have, mostly with Chuck's help.
In his usual sweet and loving way, he will just say in those situations that he remembers it all…every minute of the time we've been together. He'll remember for both of us when my memory is lacking. He even jokes when he's senile and can't remember either that we'll have something more in common.
Morgan Grimes, who also had his memory damaged in a similar but far less comprehensive way than I did, lost random bits of his life as far back as his childhood. Again, what he thought was unimportant…like movies he'd watched, things like that. He still doesn't remember those now, over 12 years later. I think, as strange as it is, he still has more holes in his memory than I do now, even though I forgot that I ever knew Chuck, that I loved him, that I was married to him…it makes me cringe to just say it.
The relevance of me saying this? Only that I never thought any of my childhood memories were affected. Honestly? I have almost no way of knowing. Sure, the random interactions I've had with my father since that Intersect incident seem to corroborate, as in, he never reminisced about anything that I didn't immediately recall during the conversation. The stuff where my father wasn't there? I don't know. It's scary to think that. Worse because anyone who could have corroborated that time period is dead—Sam, Bryce, and Graham. Carina is still alive, but the nature of those interactions made them difficult to remember the first time through, so I don't chalk up any haziness to anything other than our drunken and/or drugged youth. I don't feel like I have holes, for whatever that is worth.
Morgan's memory loss was random, and not noticed by us until it was almost too late, but caught way before it progressed as far as mine did. Chuck never had any proof of this, but he believed, based on the parts that I do remember about the missing days after Quinn kidnapped me in Japan and when I woke up unawares in the Maison23 in Burbank, Quinn had somehow found a way for Intersect flashes to erase specific memories, that is, memories of him. He was an integral part of my life for that entire time, so the amount of memories Quinn had to remove were extensive. For his plan to work, I couldn't forget that I was a spy…or any of my spy training. All of it was too clean, too deliberate. There were some things Quinn could never have known from just studying us from afar like he did in his jealous, raging insanity. For instance, like our names carved into the frame of that house Chuck found for me.
Or…the mission that Graham sent me on with Kieran Ryker while Bryce was missing. The mission that upturned my life…and forced the two wires of Chuck's and my life to cross. But, I know the holes started here, in August of 2007, because I also told Chuck the entire story of my mission in Hungary after we were married, and he remembered more than I did originally when I thought about this time. I remember it all now, for the most part. The hardest thing is not knowing what I don't remember, since I share the memories with no one else. I try to keep it in perspective. For the life I led before Chuck was truly another life, and I was reborn into a new one after he changed everything. It matters less to me that I don't remember things from then. And what I don't remember of that new life is inside Chuck, readily available to me at any time. It's the best I could have hoped for, considering how badly all of that could have gone, had Chuck not stuck with me the way he did.
That all being said, let's start again in Graham's office when I returned from Mexico. I was hoping for an update and an explanation. Graham almost pretended like Bryce didn't exist, never even once mentioning his name in that initial conversation. I was already in turmoil, and Graham completely upended my life at that moment. I fought him, argued with him, until I got him to at least mention Bryce. But it wasn't until he almost threw me out of his office.
On the plane, I was struggling with a whirlwind of emotion. I started out worried, concerned something awful had happened to Bryce. Our lives were dangerous, and just because he said it was a personal matter didn't mean it didn't have something to do with an old mission or something similar. It was the lie that kept sticking in my craw. He said Graham knew about it. Graham knew no such thing. I didn't trust Graham as far as I could throw him…but he was genuinely surprised when I called him from Mexico. I read people very well. He was forcing that bland monotone…but he was shocked, caught off guard. He took longer to answer me, the thoughts not coalescing solidly in his brain because he was dealing with his disbelief and alarm, thinking two steps ahead of the current time to try and figure out what and why. Oh, I knew him better than he ever knew I did, so secure in the fact that he gave no tells, when I saw them all.
I rebelled at the idea of him assigning me a handler. I was a seasoned agent who had been working in the field for over five years! Why on Earth would I need a handler? I asked him straight up if he thought I had been compromised, or if he thought my job performance needed evaluation after our time in Mexico. He tried to appeal to my ego in reply.
Agent Ryker was ensconced in a difficult mission and he had requested assistance from Graham. He needed someone with experience with assassinations. I thought it was very strange overall. If Ryker's mission involved killing someone, per his orders, why was he asking for me, like I was some hired gun at the CIA? He knows you're the best. That was what Graham said. He was sincere, at least he was when he said it. Graham really thought that about me. It didn't give me pleasure…thinking the thing I was best at, the thing I was renowned for, was killing other people. That secret number had gone up far beyond that initial 13 from before I met Bryce. My time with Bryce overlapped with the time I started to lose track of how many people I'd killed. More than 20, less than 50. It sounds unbelievably cold and callous, and it was, but it had to be. If it moved away from that, even for a second, it was all of their faces on my bedroom ceiling in the dark, haunting me and screaming in my dreams.
Graham did so many things that left me questioning, left me with questions I never got answers to because he died before I could find that out. My red test…orders to kill Chuck…Bryce's orders…and this assignment to be technically Kieran Ryker's asset.
In that heated argument that went round and round, Graham basically got me to agree to go to Hungary to meet up with Ryker by answering what he could about Bryce. What he told me left me cold inside.
Graham told me he had multiple teams in the field searching for Bryce. He was considered a rogue agent. Other than that, he had no information, no leads, no idea at all what he was doing or why. The oddest thing of all was his lack of questions to me. I was Bryce's partner. The fact that Graham, for all his concern over Bryce's defiance and disappearance, didn't question me made me concerned. I later learned why. Standard procedure for the CIA it seemed, but something I had almost forgotten.
Before I could be cleared to go on the mission, Ryker had demanded proof that I was still loyal to the CIA. I was drugged and relocated to an undisclosed location to be interrogated under truth serum–the kind that was impervious to my trained resistance. I remember Graham's office…and then waking up in a gray cement-walled, windowless room, tied to a chair with a needle in my arm.
I wasn't physically tortured. But that type of interrogation is as close to psychological torture that there is. My only saving grace was that the interrogator was some neutral, generic CIA scientist who knew nothing about me. Graham would have asked me about Bryce and our relationship…god only knows what Ryker would have asked now that I know everything about his motivations. Even that anonymous questioner, her voice a deliberate sing-song, meant to mesmerize me in my heightened state, left me shaken. There is no greater loss of control than not being able to control what it is you say, how you respond. I told her not just facts, but my feelings, things I would never tell another soul, not even Bryce. She took what I wanted to keep hidden inside my own head and forced it out through my own mouth in my own voice against my own will. It was a complete violation…like my mind being raped. But I was CIA…and it was par for the course, something I had signed up for when I traded one hopeless life for another.
When she finished with me, she blindfolded me and I was whisked away. I was processed through the main office at Langley and sent home. I had two days before I was due to leave for Hungary to rendezvous with my new handler.
I stood in the shower for almost an hour, letting the hot water wash over me, like it could rinse all my anxiety and anger and confusion down the drain. The water had run cold, and still I stood there…waiting to feel better. I curled up on my bed, telling myself I needed to sleep, but I couldn't turn off the bedside lamp, as if I was a young child afraid of the dark. I was alone again. It felt like an iron claw pinching around my heart as the words echoed in my head. Had Bryce known what they would do to me in Washington when he just took off? Obviously, none of that mattered to him. I didn't matter to him. How had I ever convinced myself, even for a moment, that I had?
I don't know if it was the residual drug still in my system, my sleeplessness, or my anguish…but something inside me broke. Like a glass with a fine crack bursting apart at the force of a stream of water. I started crying, unbelievably deep, heavy sobs that felt like they were coming from my soul. It was every tear I had kept buried inside, bottled up so no one could see, pouring out of my eyes…25 years worth in a matter of an hour. I was blinded by tears, unable to breathe out of my nose, my head pounding like I was being hit on the temple with a hammer.
I jumped out of bed and started pacing. It was desperation, nothing else. If I had a balcony available this time, I really think it could have been possible that I could have convinced myself to jump…just end it all. I could hear that voice, over and over, telling me how easy it would be to just end it, stop it from hurting…stop…all of this. Out of this despair, I had just one thought. It was bizarre, like a bolt of lightning out of the dark.
I wanted to talk to my mother.
I couldn't even remember the last time I found comfort at my own mother's hands, probably from a time before I was able to recall specifically, when I was younger than five. I hadn't thought of her for years, in fact tried as hard as I could to not think of her, putting her out of my mind as a part of my past that was forever closed to me. But, I was a spy. If she was somewhere, if she was still alive, I should be able to find her.
My God, what if she had died, and I didn't know? That thought was brutal. I told myself that somehow my father would have gotten word…but then, I hadn't heard from him in years either. Would they have notified me if my father had died in prison? I was his next of kin…but he had been worried that the authorities would arrest me for my part in our crimes. It was that spiraling despair that egged me on. I took out my computer and started searching for my mother. Emma Burtman. I also checked her maiden name, Emma Randall, thinking she may have changed it back after she and my father had divorced.
It took about an hour. One hour. I had an address and a phone number. She lived in Riverside, California. I seemed to remember, far back in my memory, about a cousin, her only living relative after her parents had died, who lived in or near Riverside. She must have moved out of Idaho where we lived when I was very small and eventually made her way to California.
I sat with my phone in my hand, her number on the screen without pressing the dial button, for almost another hour. What would I say? What could I say? I couldn't tell her everything, damn, I wasn't sure if I could tell her anything. I was an undercover CIA agent. We just didn't go back and visit our parents on weekends or whatever. We lived the life we did without ties of any kind, including family. But I was a ship, taking on water and sinking, and she was my lifeboat. I kept telling myself that just hearing her voice again would ground me, pull me out of those dark, swirling waters.
It was the middle of the night! But then, I was in Washington. She was in California, three hours earlier than my current time. It was late there, very late evening, but not sleep-disruptive, imposition late. My hands shook as I held the phone. Finally, I just closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the button.
It rang five times. I felt both relieved and disappointed at the same time. Relieved because it gave me an internal excuse…disappointed because I was at the end of my rope and she was my only hope. The moment I went to pull the phone down to hang up, I heard her answer.
"Hello?" She sounded tired, like I had woken her.
The sound of her voice encapsulated me…something I hadn't believed I remembered perfectly, but now knew for sure. How could I have ever thought I wouldn't remember her voice? The same voice that had sung me to sleep when I was a baby, when I was scared of the dark or when I had hurt myself. All of the good things, the best things, in the tiniest part of my life that was normal, were in my head in her voice. My eyes overflowed with tears. I didn't know what to say, but no matter, I was incapable of making any sound at all, let alone words. My throat ached and I couldn't swallow.
"Hello? Who is this?" she asked, more alert, a little stridently. I wondered why she didn't just hang up, considering the number was unfamiliar and it was interrupting her night's sleep.
"Mom?" I whispered painfully.
I heard her gasp. "Samantha?" she choked out, her voice tight like she was strangling.
"Mom…" I repeated, forgetting for a moment that my name to her would still be Samantha. She had no idea about Katie or Rebecca or Jenny or Sarah. The little girl, the Samantha inside me, cried into the phone, unable to say anything else.
The torrent of words that my mother bombarded me with next are still a jumble. I was crying too hard; she was talking too quickly. All her words ran together into one long sentence, all delivered with one breath. WhereareyouHowdidyoufindmeWhat'sbeenhappeningtoyouHowhaveyoubeenWhatareyoudoingWhataboutyourfatherIlookedandlookedandspenteverynickelIhadtotryandfindyouandInevercouldI'vebeenlookingforyouforalmost20years…I missed you so much. I love you.
Those were unmistakable, stressed and emphatic and perfectly understandable. With two sentences, she made everything alright. Being a mother myself now, I know why that is. It's what mother's do. We love our children no matter what, with every fiber of our being. At 25, childless, loveless, I couldn't understand that feeling, only that I felt safe enough to tell her more than I had ever thought I would.
It came out in pretty much the same kind of torrent, all my words while she listened without interrupting. I told her what I had done with my father, moving all over the country and swindling people and stealing money to survive. I asked her if she knew he had been arrested and was serving a ten year sentence. She didn't. I could hear the change in her breathing when she realized what that meant for my life…that I was alone in the world at 17. I told her about the CIA, what I could, without specifics. She was upset, mostly because she was worried. As a mother, I know why she would have been. The thought of any harm coming to your children is a thousand times worse than anything imaginable happening to yourself. In the end, I told her that recent events, non-specifically, had left me in a bad situation that I didn't know how to handle and I felt like my life was coming apart.
She offered me refuge. She told me I could come home and be with her. That I didn't need to be alone and living this dangerous life anymore. I told her I appreciated it, but it wasn't that simple. I couldn't just walk away like I was a bagger at the supermarket. She still offered refuge, telling me she worried about me, and wanted me to be safe. She took my number and then told me I could call her at any time I needed to talk to her. That she was there for me…that she was sorry for being apart from me for so long.
She accepted that my name wasn't Samantha any longer. She put me in her phone as Sarah. Sarah was who I was, someone she honestly didn't know at all. But someone she still loved purely and deeply…because she was my mother.
I hung up the phone and fell asleep and didn't wake up again until the sun rose in the morning.
I left late that same night on an overnight flight from Dulles to Budapest. There were instructions for me at the airport. I checked into my hotel, then checked my gear that was always supplied at location. It was a frighteningly large and powerful cache of weapons, complete with body armor. What was this mission about? Why did I have so little information?
The answer to that question was even more frightening.