Chapter 3

"You know I thought you would recognise me just like mom did," said Charlie Leeford, "But looks like you are only concerned about her. Then and now."

Harvey tried to lift himself in the bed. A man in his forties was sitting by the bed on a stool. He was wearing a top hat. This man was talking to him like a dearest friend.

"I thought it would be cruel to test my parents if they loved me. I must say I am disappointed it turned out this way after taking so long to find and jog your memory. You must be confused with those dreams. You see I've continued your research after you left me. It was because of the solution you were put in. It makes the serotonin around your pons in the brain go haywire. And pons is the one that stops you from acting out your dream. I am sure you would be disappointed in your son if you had remembered the past. But don't worry, I will make you. Or rather mom will take care of it. See you later then, bye."

Charlie left the room. A few minutes later, Louise came into the room along with some people that seemed to be like a medical team. They tightly held his limbs and started applying static on his chest. They continued this for several hours. Harvey screamed in pain. It was like he was hit at the back of his head with a club.

"You can go now, I am sure it worked. He will wake up after some time" Louise told the team.

Harvey opened his eyes and was about to say something when Louise interrupted.

"We can save your questions for later. Right now there is something we must do" said Louise.

"What is it? Hey how did you manage to activate my memory?" asked Harvey.

"Stroup is windpipe. You added Stroope to your name. Only an idiot like you would do something like that. So I activated the nanobot cluster in your windpipe. In my case, it got naturally activated when my brain fully matured at 25. Anyway I said save the questions for later, didn't I?" replied Louise and continued, " I think our son is up to something"

"What does Charlie want? Is that why he went through all the trouble to find us? " asked Harvey.

"Yeah, I think so. But I don't exactly know what he wants, we will just ask him" said Louise.

"Do you think he will tell you just because you asked? " said Harvey.

"I hope so. Do you think he has forgiven us?" replied Louise in a sad voice.

"He sure looks older than us now, but I don't think he has forgiven us. He said he continued my research. Did he think he can transfer his memory to another body? Does that mean he is dying? "

"Poor Charlie. It was convenient for us to just leave him behind and escape. But I don't know how he grew up. We are really bad parents." replied Louise.

They enter Charlie's office escorted by Louise's roommate.

"Looks like you've managed to remember it all. Let's get straight to the point. No hard feelings about you leaving me. Your friend, uncle Dean took care of me and guided towards your research about neuroanatomy. Gee, I look older than you now. Uncle had a dream where people can reach the fruit of immortality. Which is where you come in. You two have already succeeded and managed to put your memories into new bodies" Charlie explained calmly.

"See I didn't even have to ask him," Louise told Harvey.

"So how did you two meet again?" asked Charlie.

"The nanobot cluster we created gets activated once our brains have matured fully. I understood what happened and found him out. It was easy with that peculiar name Stroope" replied Louise.

"I see. It is good to see you together after all these years. I think I was twelve or thirteen when you left me. Anyway that doesn't matter now. Uncle Dean too died a few years ago. But I am here to continue his dream"

Louise's roommate suddenly came into the office. She was pulling something out of her pocket. Harvey sensed something was wrong and tried to grab her hand. But ultimately, he failed to stop her and the bullet went straight through Charlie's head. She put a few bullets in Harvey and Louise so that they won't be able to move.

"I've already told our leader about this. This was supposed to happen to Dean, not our son " shouted Harvey.

"Your son made the mistake of following Dean. Our secrets weren't supposed to be known to humans. You've already done enough damage to our species when you got caught by the British during the second world war. Besides, why do you even keep calling that human orphan your son? See where that brought you now. Even all these years, he didn't figure it out that humans aren't capable of what we can. Your fool of a son thought he can simply attain immortality."

Louise was still looking at the dead body of Charlie. Her eyes were filled with tears.

"But he didn't even know that we aren't human. Why did you have to kill him? " cried Louise.

"Consider it as a price for deserting your own species. I could've killed you both when I found you but I wanted to make sure about Charlie's intentions. We store our memory in the spine and extract it. Then we turn ourselves into babies and get our spine placed when our brain matures again. Surely, humans won't be capable of that. You should've at least told your human son about all this. Then maybe, he wouldn't have followed Dean to discover our secrets and died. But either way you are going to die. I'm not the one who is going to kill you. I will just take you to a desert in this Oman and bury there."

"So you were the one who placed the pen drive there " exclaimed Harvey.

"Yes. OM is the country code for Oman. I thought if I failed to catch you, you would follow us here to Oman using that pen drive. Anyway, nice to meet you and goodbye"

Two more shots were heard.

The couple were buried in the sand along with the secret.

The End