Chapter Fourteen: The Weight of Secrets
Felicia sat in the dim light of her motel room, the CIA file still open on her laptop, its words echoing in her mind like a riddle she couldn't quite solve. She felt the gravity of her discovery settle into her bones—she was important, not just as a target, not just as a survivor, but as a key to something far bigger than herself. The President wanted this file. Her tormentor had clearance that even the Commander-in-Chief didn't possess. The question of why was a storm she could barely see through, but for the first time in years, Felicia felt a sliver of certainty: she mattered.
She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing, but her thoughts wouldn't slow down. The file had mentioned brainwashing, Soviet techniques, and a vault of secrets that had shaped the fate of nations. It was more than history—it was a living shadow, stretching from the day Kennedy was killed to the present moment, reaching for her.
Felicia's hands hovered over the keyboard. She wanted to dig deeper, to pull up every file linked to the document number, every scrap of metadata, every related report. But she hesitated. She knew that every keystroke, every search, was being watched. Her tormentor's reach was everywhere—military, CIA, NSA, even the White House. If she dug too fast, too deep, she might trigger alarms she couldn't even imagine.
Instead, she turned her attention to the details she already had. She copied the document number—CIA-RDP75-00001R000100050048-0—and ran it through every open-source database she could access. Most of the results were dead ends, redacted summaries and "sanitized" versions that told her nothing new. But one obscure site, a dusty corner of the internet frequented by amateur historians and conspiracy theorists, yielded a thread.
The thread was titled: "The 25 Boxes: What's Still Hidden in the National Archives?" The author speculated about the sealed files, focusing on the ones related to psychological operations and mind control. There were rumors of a "list"—not just of agents or defectors, but of civilians, ordinary people who had been swept up in government experiments without their knowledge. The list, the author claimed, was referenced in a memo from 1968, but its contents had never been revealed.
Felicia's heart skipped. Was she on that list? Was her family? Was this why her tormentor had fixated on her, why her life had been manipulated and erased? The idea was terrifying, but it also made a strange kind of sense. She thought of her grandmother's coded letters, the strange visitors to Meta Street, the way her own memories seemed to shimmer and shift when she tried to recall certain events.
She scrolled further, finding a post from someone who claimed to have seen a partial index of the sealed boxes. The user mentioned a "Project Gateway" and "MK Ultra Subsection 14," both tied to the same vault as the Kennedy files. The post was old, the account long since deleted, but Felicia copied every word into her notebook. She knew from experience that even the wildest rumors sometimes hid a kernel of truth.
A sudden noise outside her window jolted her from her research. She froze, listening to the muffled voices, the crunch of gravel underfoot. Her tormentor had always preferred to haunt her from a distance, using technology and proxies, but she knew he could send someone in person if he wanted to. She quickly closed her laptop and stashed it under the mattress, grabbing her bag and moving to the bathroom, where she could lock the door and listen through the thin wall.
The voices faded, and Felicia let out a shaky breath. She splashed cold water on her face, staring at her reflection. She looked tired, haunted, but there was a new fire in her eyes. She was important. She was the evidence. And now she knew it.
She pulled out her phone and tried once more to send a message to the only journalist she still trusted, a woman named Dana who had once written about government overreach. The message was simple:
"If anything happens to me, look for the sealed Kennedy files. Project Gateway. MK Ultra Subsection 14. I'm not crazy. I'm the evidence."
She hit send, not expecting it to go through. The phone buzzed with a "Message Failed" notification almost instantly. She sighed and deleted her history, then tucked the phone away. She was used to being blocked, used to being silenced. But she refused to stop trying.
The night deepened. Felicia sat on the edge of the bathtub, notebook in hand, and let her mind wander. She thought of her tormentor, the man with clearance above the President, the man who had orchestrated her erasure. What did he want? Was it about the Kennedy file, or was that just a piece of a much larger puzzle? Was he trying to protect the secret, or was he planning to use it for his own ends?
She remembered the way he had taunted her through the static, his voice oily and smug. "You're special, Felicia. You're the one who got away. The one they couldn't break. That makes you dangerous. That makes you mine."
Felicia shivered. She wondered if he was watching her now, if he could see her through the camera on her phone, hear her thoughts through the device in her body. She wondered if he was the reason the President couldn't access the file, if he was the gatekeeper to secrets that could change the course of history.
She flipped back through her notebook, searching for patterns. The Kennedy assassination, Soviet brainwashing, Project Gateway, MK Ultra—each thread led back to the same locked room in the National Archives, the same 25 boxes no one outside the government had ever seen. And somewhere in those boxes, she was sure, was the answer to why she had been targeted, why her life had been shattered.
But for now, the questions would have to wait. Felicia was exhausted, her mind buzzing with possibilities and fears. She closed her notebook and curled up on the bathroom floor, using her bag as a pillow. She listened to the hum of the city outside, the distant sirens and laughter, and let herself drift into a restless sleep.
In her dreams, she stood before a vault, its black combination lock gleaming in the darkness. She reached out, her fingers trembling, but just as she touched the dial, a voice whispered in her ear:
"Not yet. You're not ready. But you will be."
Felicia woke with a start, heart pounding. The motel room was silent, the darkness heavy. She didn't have all the answers, not yet. But she knew this much: she was important. She was the evidence. And she would keep searching, no matter how many doors were slammed in her face, no matter how many secrets tried to bury her.
She was not alone. She was not crazy. She was the key.
And somewhere, in the shadows, the truth waited—just out of reach, but closer than ever before.