Wrong Identity

"This is the part where you tell me if you're a runaway or a spy," the man in the canvas jacket said, his voice cutting through Curtis's disorientation. He hadn't moved from the doorframe, and the cigarette was now nothing more than a glowing ember held between calloused fingers. "Because you've got that look. The 'I've seen things that aren't in the brochure' look."

Curtis ignored the question, his mind racing to reconcile the fragmented memories of the river and the limestone caves with the sterile, suffocating reality of the motel room. He looked at the card again. "Elias Thorne". The name felt like a hook in his throat. If Julian was his biological blueprint, then who was Elias? A brother? A father? Or perhaps another synthetic, another iteration of the same tragedy, designed to be discarded once the data was harvested.

"I don't know where I am," Curtis said, his voice stronger now, though still laced with a tremor. He looked around the room, searching for any sign of a struggle, a bag, a clue. There was nothing but a small, stained towel on the floor and a small television that hummed with a low-frequency buzz. "How did I get here? Who brought me in?"

The man finally stepped into the room, the floorboards groaning under his boots. He didn't look like a threat, but his presence was an oppressive weight in the small space. "Found you face-down in the ditch behind the diner. You were shivering so hard I thought you were having a seizure. I'm the night manager here—though 'manager' is a generous term for someone who mostly just makes sure the pipes don't freeze. I dragged you in because the alternative was letting the coyotes have a snack."

Curtis’s gaze drifted back to the plastic card. The edges were worn, the laminate peeling at the corners, suggesting it had been carried in a pocket for years. If he had been found in a ditch, stripped of everything but this card and the clothes on his back, it meant the transition from the glacial river to Oakhaven wasn't a leap, but a long, forgotten crawl. He tried to stand, but the room tilted. The lethargy he’d felt upon waking wasn't just exhaustion; it was a chemical haze, a sedative that felt like it was designed to keep a mind dormant.

"The diner," Curtis whispered. "Which one?"

"The Rusty Spoon," the man replied, leaning back against the wall. "About two hundred yards from where you were lounging in the mud. You had a fever that would have melted a lead pipe, kid. I gave you some aspirin and a glass of water before you passed out. You’ve been out for two days."

Two days. The gap in his memory was a yawning chasm. He searched for the same, visceral feeling of the river’s cold or the smell of the iron-wood forest, but the memories were retreating, becoming distant and academic. He felt a sudden, sharp spike of alarm. If he had been unconscious for forty-eight hours, where were Silas and Mara? Were they in another room? Or were they still out there, fighting through a gorge that now felt like a hallucination?

"Wait," Curtis said, his voice cracking. "The others. There were people with me. A man with a voice like grinding gravel, a woman... they can't have just vanished."

The manager's expression didn't shift; it remained a mask of weary neutrality. He finally dropped the remains of his cigarette into a plastic tray, the sound of a sharp "clink" echoing in the small room. "No one else was in that ditch, son. Just you and a lot of mud. You were talking in your sleep, though. Something about 'the grid' and 'the facility.' Sounded like a man trying to solve a math problem in his head while he was drowning."