Chapter 262: The Life They Gave Him
Chapter 262: The Life They Gave Him
It was not hypnosis itself that made Elias’s body suffer.
The technique worked by giving him a place to fall into. Yvonne’s voice had built the setting around him piece by piece: a black-blue ocean without a surface, water pressing in from every direction, a depth so immense that the idea of escape became meaningless.
For people who feared the deep sea, a short video could be enough. A diver’s light vanishing into darkness. The shadow of something huge moving where it should not be. A view of the seabed so far below that the human mind had nothing to compare it to.
Elias was not watching a video.
In the drugged, half-awake state Yvonne had created, the body believed it was there.
The cold closed over him. Water crushed against his chest. His lungs burned with the certainty that no air remained. The dark was not empty. It crowded him, a vast locked room with no walls he could touch and no direction that promised a way out.
The rational part of Elias knew he was strapped to a chair in a brightly lit room. That knowledge did not help the body. The drug had opened the door for Yvonne’s words, and the body crossed it willingly. Every imagined pressure found a physical answer. His pulse accelerated. His chest labored. The shallow breaths he took through his nose seemed to confirm the lie rather than disprove it.
His face tightened.
Then it twisted in visible distress.
Under the bright examination lights, his skin began to flush. The effect was disturbingly convincing. Even with the white glare washing over him, the color in his cheeks and throat stood out, the body reacting as if he truly were suffocating beneath miles of water.
Karen watched with a kind of reverence.
Yvonne did not.
Her gaze stayed on Elias, clear and cool behind the gold-rimmed glasses. She waited until the tension in his body reached the right point, until every shallow breath looked close to failure.
Then she spoke again.
"A light appears in front of you."
Her voice cut through the imagined water.
"It is gentle. It is warm. It can take you somewhere safe, away from the cold and the dark."
Elias’s arms strained against the restraints.
His body wanted to reach for it. His fingers tried to rise, but the straps held his wrists to the chair. He could not move. He did not understand why he could not move. The dream supplied its own answer: he was too far down, too weak, too surrounded.
Fear crossed his face.
His teeth caught his lip hard enough to split the skin. Then his mouth opened in a reflexive gasp, a drowning motion, as though the ocean had finally rushed in and filled the last space in his lungs.
Yvonne’s expression barely changed.
Only her tone softened.
"Your body is rigid. You cannot move even one finger. But your mind can move."
"Leave the body behind."
"Go into the light."
"You do not need to think. You do not need to remember. Let everything go."
The effect was immediate.
The body in the chair slackened. The distress left his features with impossible speed. His jaw loosened. The flush faded. What had looked like impending death dissolved into a quiet, empty calm.
Karen’s eyes widened.
"You did it," she whispered.
Elias had a different opinion.
He had expected this to be the first stage rather than the end. The simulated drowning had been unpleasant in the way a vivid nightmare was unpleasant, but System Theta had kept the suggestion from reaching what mattered. His real mind had stayed untouched, safely behind the body’s response.
"Honestly," he told the system, "that was kind of relaxing."
[System Theta: You just experienced an induced drowning scenario.]
"Then give it six stars. The ambience was excellent."
Yvonne did not acknowledge Karen’s excitement. She watched Elias for several long seconds, searching for something that did not show in his pulse, his expression, or his eyes.
When she found nothing, she began the final part.
Removing a person’s memories left empty spaces. A mind did not tolerate emptiness for long. It filled the gaps, stitched together explanations, invented bridges between isolated facts. But Serena had not asked Yvonne to simply take things away.
She wanted a replacement.
A life constructed carefully enough that Elias would step into it and call it his own.
"Your parents died in an accident," Yvonne said.
Elias listened with growing interest.
Classic opening.
Apparently even memory theft required dead parents.
"The Blackwoods had been close friends with them. After the accident, they took you in. Serena Blackwood became your older sister."
Elias’s thoughts sharpened.
There it was.
The sister routine.
Serena really had come prepared.
"Later, the Blackwoods took in Liora Voss," Yvonne continued. "You depended on Serena so completely that you feared Liora would take her away from you. You were wary of her. You resented her."
Elias paused.
That was almost funny.
The implanted history had tripped over something real. He had known Serena and Liora were not biological sisters. Their names made that obvious, and the way they dealt with one another had never resembled ordinary sibling affection. Still, he had never cared enough to examine how they had become family.
Now Serena’s little correction came with an answer.
Liora had been brought into the Blackwood home.
And Serena had apparently decided that Elias should inherit Liora’s place in the story.
"Interesting," Elias murmured inside his own mind.
[System Theta: Your inference is plausible.]
"Serena is giving me Liora’s childhood."
[System Theta: The available information strongly supports that possibility.]
Elias almost laughed.
What would Liora think if she learned Serena had taken the shape of her past, dusted it off, and handed it to a man she wanted to keep? More importantly, Serena had made sure that this new Elias would distrust Liora from the beginning.
Careful.
Extremely careful.
Maybe Serena was worried Liora would get too close to him while he was conveniently brainwashed into believing Serena was his family.
Possessive women were exhausting.
Yvonne continued, her voice steady enough to make each sentence sound like a fact the world had always known.
"The three of you grew up together. You relied on one another."
"Serena took care of you."
"You came to love her so deeply that you could not separate your life from hers. Outside the house, you were brother and sister. In private, you were lovers."
Elias’s thoughts went silent for one beat.
Then he smiled internally.
Serena had not merely planted a romance. She had built a role-play scenario into the foundation of his identity.
Bold.
Ridiculous.
Very Serena.
He had no intention of accepting a single word of it, but he could not deny that she had put imagination into the project. Somewhere, probably not far from this room, she had waited while Yvonne fashioned a version of Elias who would wake up loving her with no memory of having chosen otherwise.
One question remained.
What happened to Serena’s own parents in this invented history? The story had started with Elias’s parents dying, then jumped to the three of them depending on each other. Were the Blackwoods gone too? Had Serena simply omitted them because she wanted the household small enough to control?
[System Theta: A suggestion does not require a fully coherent history. The mind supplies missing context on its own.]
"I see."
That was a useful warning.
If this had worked, the new memories would not feel artificial because his mind would be doing part of the work for them. It would create emotional logic, forgotten conversations, ordinary details, years of false history, all in service of making the central lie feel natural.
Fortunately for Elias, System Theta had prevented that process from taking hold.
Yvonne lowered her voice.
"Now your mind can return to your body."
A pause.
"But do not forget who you truly are."
The command settled over the room.
Then she stepped back.
Elias’s eyelids fluttered.
When he opened them, he was no longer beneath the clinical lights.
He lay on a large bed in a dim hotel room.
The layout resembled the suite Giselle had booked. Same careful luxury. Same ocean-colored palette, same expensive furniture placed so that nothing looked out of balance. But this was not Giselle’s room. He knew it instantly. The air smelled different. The curtains were drawn differently. There was a faint scent of roses in the sheets.
Before he could turn his head, Serena leaned into view.
Her face was elegant as ever, but thinner than the last time he had seen her. The strain sat beneath her eyes. She looked as though she had not been sleeping, as though food had become an inconvenience rather than something she remembered to eat.
The moment he woke, Serena exhaled.
The breath touched his face, carrying rose perfume. It was not heavy. It smelled like a rosebud before it opened, soft and warm with something sharp hiding beneath the sweetness.
"You’re awake," Serena said.
Her voice was low.
"Do you feel sick? Does anything hurt?"
Elias looked at her.
He had a better chance to study her now. The careful composure was still there, but it no longer fit as tightly as it used to. She had been waiting for this moment with the kind of fear people felt when they had done something unforgivable and still needed it to work.
One of her hands rested close to the edge of the bed, not touching him. The restraint in that small distance was almost worse than a grasp would have been. Serena wanted an answer, a sign that he recognized her, but she was afraid to ask for it twice. Her eyes searched his face with an urgency she could not conceal.
Silence stretched.
Serena’s expression began to strain.
Elias’s eyes remained blank. He let the quiet continue until the tension in her jaw nearly became visible. Then he wrinkled his nose softly and leaned toward the familiar scent of roses.
When he found it, his face eased.
Safe.
Relieved.
He looked at Serena with softened eyes.
"Big sister," he whispered.