Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 06

Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 06

The interrogation room was all fluorescent glare, flat and white, nowhere to hide.

They separated Mom and Dad for questioning.

At first, Dad was still grasping for a version of this that wasn’t as bad as it looked.

“Officers, they’re just kids. They didn’t know what they were doing.”

Dad couldn’t look anyone in the eye. His voice was barely there.

“They’re too smart for their own good. They don’t have normal social instincts. But they didn’t mean to kill her. They didn’t.”

The door opened. A young officer stepped in.

“Captain, we found something in a safe in Silas’s room. Some kind of research log.”

He dropped a thick black notebook onto the table.

The cover was labeled in precise, clinical handwriting.

“Physiological and Psychological Responses of Low-IQ Subjects Under Extreme Conditions.”

Mitchell opened it. With every page, his face darkened.

“Just kids?”

He tossed a photocopy across the table. It landed in front of Dad.

“Read it. Does that look like the work of ‘just kids’ to you? These aren’t children. They’re adults.”

Dad picked up the pages. His hands were trembling.

Every experiment they’d ever run on me was documented in detail.

“September 3, Blackwood warehouse, spatial perception trial. Subject exhibited dehydration shock at hour fourteen. Estimated tolerance ceiling: eighteen hours.”

“October 12, emotional threshold trial. Upon destruction of subject’s diploma, observed trembling and pupil dilation. No aggressive response. Confirms learned helplessness.”

Dad’s breathing went ragged. The pages shook so badly he could barely read them.

Mitchell turned to the last page and tapped the bloodstained entry.

“November 5, saline substitution. Subject showed respiratory distress at minute five. Cyanosis at minute twelve. Cessation of struggle at minute twenty.”

The conclusion read: Placebo effect invalid. Low-IQ subjects cannot override physiological failure through the psychosomatic model.

“Twenty minutes…”

Dad stared at those numbers and saw it: his daughter, alone on the floor, counting down her final breaths.

He raised his hands and struck his own face.

A sharp, echoing crack.

Then another.

And another.

Both hands, back and forth, over and over, until blood ran from the corners of his mouth and his teeth felt loose.

Next door, they’d shown Mom the same pages.

She didn’t scream. Didn’t hit anything. She just stared at the ceiling while the tears silently streamed down her face.

Every time I’d come to her hurt, begging, she heard her own answers again.

“Silas and Beatrice are gifted. You need to be patient with them.”

“They’re doing it for science. Would it kill you to just meet them halfway?”

The saline didn’t kill me.

They did, every time they looked away, every time they handed those two another excuse.

Mitchell looked at the two of them, tenured professors, pillars of academia, and didn’t bother hiding his disgust.

“You two had every advantage. Education. Resources. Expertise.”

He leaned forward.

“And you raised two psychopaths.”

I hovered in the corner of the room, watching them fall apart.

I thought I’d feel something, satisfaction, maybe. I didn’t. Just exhaustion so deep it had no bottom.

Apologies to a corpse don’t mean a thing.

By the next day, the story had gone viral.

GENIUS SIBLINGS USED OWN SISTER AS TEST SUBJECT: it shot to the top of every trending list in a matter of hours.

The academic world imploded.

Their university released a statement overnight. Dad was stripped of his professorship. Mom lost her research position.

Gross negligence and ethical misconduct. That was the official language.

Outside the station, crowds and camera crews packed the sidewalk.

The same brilliance the media had fawned over was now the thing the whole country wanted to tear apart.

“Murderers!”

“Psychopaths!”

Camera flashes blinded them, and fists pounded against the cruiser’s windows.