Code Name: Camelot (Noah Wolf #1)(18)
“Like a charm,” Allison said. “Fasting helps the drug work better, so it can slow your heart down to almost nothing. We needed the prison doctors to call for the ambulance. However, you’ve actually been out cold for almost thirty hours. Your death has already been certified, and your body has already been shipped back to the prison for burial. Fingerprint records have all been changed, dental records, everything; the body they got looks so much like you that even you might believe you’re dead, if you saw it.”
“I doubt it,” Noah replied, still grinning. “I tend to disbelieve things that are obviously not true, and since I’m sitting here, well…So, what’s next?”
She took a deep breath and let her smile relax a bit, even though it stayed in place. “Next is your initial training. We have a facility set up here in Colorado where you’ll be instructed in new styles and techniques of martial arts, various new weapons, and lots of other super-spy-type stuff, and some of the most intense physical training you’ve ever experienced.”
“Sounds cool,” Noah said. “I’ve been involved in martial arts since I was eight years old. My grandfather thought it would be a good idea, something to help me focus my ‘anger and other emotions.’ I enjoyed it, because it had so much structure to it.”
Allison watched him coolly. “I know,” she said. “I also know that it was one of the things that caused your grandparents to send you back to the foster homes. They said you became violent and too intense, that you scared them.”
He shrugged. “This man showed up at our house one day and started screaming at my grandmother,” he said. “I thought he was threatening her, so I ran into the room and attacked. Turned out he wasn’t actually screaming at her, he was a friend of theirs who was crying because his wife left him. That was the one that actually set them off, but it seemed like the more I got into the martial arts classes, the faster my reactions became. My instructor said I was a natural, but my grandmother thought there was something weird about me, because I was always working out anytime I didn’t have something else to do.”
“And what did your grandfather say?”
Noah chuckled. “He put me in the martial arts classes because he’d been a marine, years before. He naturally thought that being able to defend yourself was a skill every man should have, so he wanted me to be able to do so. He thought it was hilarious, though, six months into my training, when I began beating my instructor. Needless to say, he and I were not in the same weight class, so when he agreed to spar with me, it was more of a gag than anything else. Kinda surprised him when I began winning our little matches. Grandpa thought it was funny.”
“What made him become scared of you?”
“A lot of the guys in my class were into lifting weights, so I talked him into buying me a weight bench. I started working out every day, and it really made me feel good, so Grandpa decided he’d work out with me, make it sort of an ‘us guys’ kind of thing. We were both benching about a hundred, hundred and ten pounds when we started, but a month later, I could press two twenty, and he was only up to about one forty. That was when Grandma started saying I was weird and unnatural, and he started pulling back from me. It was only a month or so later when he told me they’d have to put me back in foster care because of health problems.”
Allison nodded. “Noah, you claim to have no emotions, and everything in your psych profile says that’s completely true. Did you feel anything during that time? Any rejection, any sadness?”
Noah shook his head. “No. Like everything else in my life, I looked at it logically. It was obvious to me that he was lying about health problems, because he hadn’t even been to see a doctor. Since he was lying, that meant he had other reasons for not wanting me living there anymore, and those reasons could only lead to them feeling resentment if they had to keep putting up with me. I told him it was okay, and that I would pray for him to get better, and I think that took away some of his guilt. For me, it just meant a change of scenery.”
“Just another transition,” Allison said. “You were sent to a foster home in the city where your grandparents lived, at first, but then you got transferred back to the one they took you out of. How did that happen?”
“You know, Ms. Peterson, all of this is in the memoir you had me write for you,” Noah said. “It was lying on my table, did you get it?”
“We got it,” Allison said with a grin. “I’ve even skimmed through it, but I haven’t had the chance to read it in detail. That’s why I’m asking you questions directly. How did you get yourself back to your original foster home?”
Noah grinned. “If I was going to be in the foster system, I wanted to be back around my friends, and back with the caseworker that I knew and trusted. The one they gave me that time was a man, and he had a mean streak as wide as he was. Seemed like no matter what his kids asked of him, he would do everything he could to make sure they didn’t get what they wanted. One of the first things he did was take away my weight bench; he said I couldn’t have it because it would make other kids jealous.” He shrugged. “I cut school one day, and called Ms. Gamble, my original caseworker. I said this guy was making me uncomfortable, with the way he looked at me. Two days later, she got an order from the court to transfer me back to Mrs. Connors’ house, and back to my few real friends.”