"Let's take a walk," I told John. We stepped out of my office; I locked the door and we descended the stairs out into the autumn night. Strolling through Glenwood's campus at night was a nostalgic favorite.

A huge grin broke out in John's face. "I always feel such a relief walking out to the warmth after I've been chilled indoors, breathing fresh air. It's like I've expanded my being, relieved of all restriction. He looked at me. "My life since college has felt so exposed, abrasive, like I have cracks in my teeth, and I feel all the temperatures in the air when it rushes in when I breathe. Maybe it's this terrible tinnitus I got from years of working with heavy machinery - I'm just barely tuning it out most of the times."

"I have tinnitus too," I said, cupping a hand over my ear. "I thought it was from all the years listening to audio from my shows with headphones, and I needed to let my ears rest."

"Maybe we're tuned in to a deeper frequency of the world's suffering, and our tinnitus gets louder because the suffering gets worse." John said.

I smiled. "That's how Freddy used to talk. Spreading of meaning, cosmic consciousness."

"Schizophrenia, I know," John said. We were the only ones on the main campus thoroughfare, lit by amber streetlights. He asked, "Your Dad counseled Freddy when we were in school. Do you think he put him into Project Monarch? That mind control program was his baby."

I took a seat on one of the benches in front of the library, and John sat next to me. It was always easier for me to talk when I didn't have to look directly at someone, especially a guy. I said, "Did my father lock Freddy in a room, give him a bunch of drugs, beatings, and rewards? Did Freddy turn into an assassin, to be reactivated whenever the Project chose to? It sounds absurd and bizarre, but we know that guys like Freddy turn up everywhere. They're on the news, they get arrested, and then they disappear under mysterious circumstances. They suicide in jail."

John said, "I've known so many men like your father, Inquisitors and Controllers. We're just livestock to them. They can kill hundreds and feel nothing. They raise the children to become murder soldiers too. Desensitized, amused, stimulated by violence and pain. 'Blood makes the grass grow;' it could be painted on the Kindergarten walls."

Turning to John, I asked, "Do I think my father set Freddy up? Sure, I can believe it. But any orders from Prokect Monarch are top secret. Quinn actually shredded all my father's files earlier this year. She said it was because they're getting up to the condo. My father, even if he was completely transparent, can't remember enough of what he did and didn't do. Maybe it's unknowable."

"I think you know more than you remember," John said slowly. "You were your father's first test subjects, right? You and your brothers."

I trembled all over as he said this. "You're right," I said. "We were his lab rats. The other night when I saw him, he referred to my little brother Carter as my 'substitute.' I'm still creeped out by it."

John leaned back on the bench. "You wouldn't be able to remember much, because memory blocks are part of the training. But those blocks can be undone."

"Who would know how to open them up?" I asked, my heart pounding.

"Marianna would, but I don't know if we can trust her, she works for the government." John said. "Think about this, though: how many killers did your father send into the world, before he lost his cognitive capacities? What happened to all them?"

"They would be out of control," I said. "Chaos would reign. They could kill randomly, or someone else might take them over."

"Someone like your stepmom, Quinn?" He asked.