Sunday Afternoon: Present
The scan takes hours. I must drift off at some point, lulled into unconsciousness by the repetitive whirring of the machines. When I come to, the ache in my chest is the worst it’s been yet. Kyle’s voice whispers in my ears like a warm, gentle breeze. I feel dangerously close to tears, so it’s a good thing the technician hasn’t returned yet. I need time to compose myself.
I also need to figure out what else I’m feeling because something more bothers me. Beneath the sadness lurks something dark and disturbing. It nags me with its unclear importance. I chase the feeling around, but it’s a shadow. Impossible to grasp. Who was that guy under the bridge? How much did I find out about this mysterious group, The Four? Were those two memories related?
Read Harris.
And why is it all making me think of that nonsensical phrase again?
Stiff after the tech releases me from the restraints, I put my uniform on and head to the office down the hall where Malone is waiting. Whatever caused the shadow will come back. Minute by minute, my life is returning. Meanwhile, I have more important things to worry about than some hobby investigation I was doing, even one that involved the traitorous Dr. Wilson.
“Do we know what’s going on?” I ask, taking my seat.
Malone rubs his chin thoughtfully. “I believe so. If I’m correct, this started when your tracker was removed. Have you gotten back the memory of how that happened?”
“Not yet.” I motion toward the scan readings on the table, and Malone signals that I can review them. “So this has nothing to do with me hitting my head?”
“As far as we can tell, no. That’s good because the natural brain is so complex it’s hard to make predictions about it. But in your case, we’re dealing with something we understand. You know how static electricity sometimes interferes with computers, even causes one to restart?”
I nod, continuing to examine my scans. They’re mostly unintelligible to me, but still interesting. So that’s what the implants in my brain look like.
Malone clasps his hands together. “Well, that’s what we think happened to you.”
“Static electricity?”
“Not static electricity per se, but when the tracker was removed, it caused an electrical jolt near your anterior memory storage unit. Here.” He points to the spot on one of the scans, but I don’t see any difference between that implant and the others. “The readings we got off the implant yesterday suggest it experienced an electrical disturbance that shut it down, but it’s slowly coming back online. Today’s tests were to confirm that there was no additional damage that could be causing the unusual readings.”
I blink at him. “So my brain is rebooting.”
“Your natural brain is fine. But the implant responsible for augmenting your long-term memories is rebooting, yes.” He leans toward me, delighted. “Fascinating, isn’t it? Disconcerting for you, I’m sure, but from a scientific perspective this gives us far more insight into how the neural implants interact with normal brain tissue. Have you noticed any patterns in how your memories are coming back? That is, are they coming back? That’s the first question.”
“Yes.” The word rushes out of me as I recall the guarded door and the howl from behind it last night. Let there be no question that I’m getting better. Or getting back online, as it might be.
“Good.” Malone clasps his hands together. “There are some techniques we’ve been refining that could possibly pull the memories out of you if it came to that, but frankly, I’m not sure what they would do to you.”
“Wouldn’t it be the same sort of process as if I downloaded them?”
“I’m afraid not. Crudely put, it’s the difference between a push and a pull. When you download data, you know where you’re taking it from, even if that knowledge is beneath your conscious awareness. If we were to do this, we’d be grabbing in the dark. I fear the process might be damaging, and the data’s likely to come out in an even less useable form than it is when you download. It could take weeks for us to translate it. So let’s keep that option off the table for as long as possible.”
I swallow. Let’s keep that option off the table, period. I don’t need anyone screwing with my already-screwed-up head. And what if they do damage my implants? They’re so deeply connected to my brain at this point that I’m not sure what would happen to me.
“Now,” Malone continues, “have you discovered any patterns in how your memories are returning?”
“No.” I take a long breath because my voice is shaky. “Sometimes I can figure out what triggers one—something someone will say, or a smell—but not always. And sometimes they come back very vivid, almost like I’m reliving an event. Other times, I’ll suddenly realize I know something but have no idea when it came to me.”
“Interesting.” Malone taps his fingers against the table. “I would appreciate it if tonight you would begin a record, going back as far as you can, of how and when each memory returned, and whether you know what triggered it. You’re not having any trouble forming new memories, are you?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Then that shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Nope. Perfect recall—when it works—is great.
“Have any memories specific to your mission returned?” Malone’s voice is casual, but the question clearly gets at the crux of the problem. Much as Malone probably doesn’t want nineteen years of research and training lost on me, the mission must come first. Lives—or a life—is in danger.
I wish I had better news for him. “I remember working on it, but X’s identity…” I shake my head, unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know whether I found it or not.”
There are footsteps outside the door, and Malone stands. I watch his face, trying to determine whether my failure angers him like it does Fitzpatrick, but he wears a mask of patient concern. “I’d like the rest of your focus today to be on getting your memories back and paying attention to patterns in their return. I spoke with Fitzpatrick about it. One will be resuming his role as your guide around the camp.”
He opens the door, and there stands Cole. Nice as it is to get my reprieve from Fitzpatrick extended, a horribly mean part of me wishes Jordan or Summer had been assigned to assist me instead. I long to talk to someone about Kyle and RTC, and my incorrect emotional responses to the AnChlor and the hotel assignment. I think I could do it without revealing my mission, but I can’t do it at all with Cole. He wouldn’t understand why I miss RTC because he never had the urge to GO like Jordan did, and I know what he would say about my reluctance to hurt other students. I don’t need to be reminded that empathy is weakness.
And, well, talking to Cole about Kyle would be impossible for other reasons.
“Am I dismissed then?”
“Free to go. All I ask is that if you do remember anything pertinent about your mission, you let me know at once.”
“Of course.”
Malone leaves the office after us but heads in the opposite direction. Cole and I walk silently until we reach the elevator.
“So how did it go?” he asks.
I grunt. “They ran some kind of imaging scan on me. I fell asleep during it.” He laughs, and I begrudgingly allow a small smile. It fades quickly though. “So where are we going today?”
“I thought first stop should be the mess. Lunch is almost over.”
“Ah. Good plan.” Now that he mentions it, I’m starting to get hungry. And that’s not my only bodily need. I was in the scanner for hours.
Three point eight hours.
I have an internal clock. Convenient. What else do I have that I’ve forgotten about?
“Can we start my tour with the nearest restroom?” I ask Cole.
He leads me there, and when I finish using it, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My face is no longer a stranger’s, and yet it’s startlingly different than I recall. Logically, I know the changes are all internal. Neither my features nor my coloring nor my hair are different.
It’s something about me. Is it my attitude toward this place? Has my time away altered the way I view it?
Something like that. Yet not.
The pain in my neck burns like fire. Hot blood drips down it, contrasting with the cool steel of the knife. I feel so much…so much of everything. I might burst with the intensity. But all I see is gray.
And I’m falling. Spinning.
They’ve killed me. I should have known there would be a trap.
I grasp the sink. The bathroom switches between browns and grays. Noisy and silent. Warm and cool. Past and present.
When I look in the mirror again, it’s just me. Normal. But my heart races. I run my hand over the cut on the back of my neck, and it stings, but the bandage is solid and new. I put a fresh one on this morning. I’m not bleeding again.
Right. Just a memory. Just another one I could have lived without. I straighten my shoulders and meet Cole in the corridor.
“What is it?” he asks. “You look dazed.”
I draw him aside as a line of HYCs march past. Great. I’m barely holding myself together as is, and their eerily similar faces threaten to pull me apart once more. All eight years old, they’re not identical, but several of them are close enough.
Outside the camp, people wrongly believe that clones would look exactly the same. Outside the camp, people believe we don’t clone humans at all.
It’s not that it’s illegal, because it’s not. No one’s bothered to make laws about it yet because no one—so the majority of the public believes—has mastered the technique. Clones would be physiologically and mentally unstable. Or they would be if they were fully human.
HYs are another matter. Our implants can regulate many processes, or so the theory goes. HYCs are an experimental group. None of us are sure how long they’ll last or how well they’ll do, and the bioengineers who created them haven’t shared their theories with the likes of us.
And I’d bet my left foot that the HYCs would be illegal if anyone knew about them.
But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? RedZone black ops goes where the government can’t go. Does what the government can’t officially condone. Gets caught and the government denies all sanctioning of their business. Our business. My business.
RedZone—giving me a headache with every new-old memory.
Cole waves a hand in my face, but I sense he’d rather touch me. “You okay?”
I rub my temples. “Yeah, I’m experiencing memory overload is all. Sometimes it gets hard to tell where I am, or when I am. Everything merges together. And…”
“And?”
I dig my heel into the floor. “And nothing that’s come back so far has been useful.”
“It’s all useful, Sev.”
“No, it’s not. I had a mission, and I failed. At least I think I did. I can’t be sure because I can’t remember.”
Cole takes my arm and walks me outside. The moist, chilly air settles around me. I start to ask where we’re going, but he’s heading in the same direction as last night.
After we clear the buildings, he speaks again. “Don’t beat yourself up about this. You’ll get your memories back, and if you have to return to RTC to finish what you started, you will. You haven’t failed. You had a setback. That’s all.”
“But I think I knew.” The words tumble from my mouth, way out of my control. They surprise me as much as Cole.
He turns his face toward the sky, and a single snowflake lands on his nose. “You probably didn’t find X’s identity yet, otherwise you’d have told Malone. You were supposed to inform him as soon as you uncovered it.”
“I know that, but then I keep thinking—why was I attacked and my tracker removed?” For that matter, why was I sneaking off with Kyle unless he was the one who did it? But I’m not ready to bring that up. “What if I figured out who X is, and before I could report in, someone did this to me? Malone said there were others after the information. What if I screwed up so badly that they got it out of me and…”
Cole moves toward the woods again. The lone snowflake has no companions yet, but I can tell they’re coming. “It doesn’t add up.”
“Nothing adds up. The more I remember, the less I understand. Shouldn’t it be the opposite?”
“Sometimes everything is the most muddled before it can make sense. Come on.”
I follow him down the path. In the daylight, I can see the security cameras hidden among the trees and also small metal boxes outfitted every fifty meters. I wonder what they do but don’t feel like asking. More security—that’s all I need to remember. If I ever knew more.
We emerge from the trees onto the banks of the lake. It’s dull and gray, but darker than the sky. Not frozen yet, but not inviting. This is the lake Fitzpatrick made us freeze in. That memory gives me the chills, and I actually shiver.
Circling around, I search the trees for more cameras.
“There aren’t any pointed here,” Cole says, following my movements. “Go two hundred feet that way and they’ll pick you up, or fifteen feet that way.” He points left and right. “Not every inch of the camp is covered. Just enough inches.”
“That’s why we came here that morning.” I close my eyes, trying to bring the full scene into focus, but I have no images of it. Just knowledge. Just words. They’re true, but the memory is incomplete.
Cole’s whole body seems to brighten. He looks taller. “Do you remember what I told you?”
I’m trembling. Too many emotions fight for control of my body—shame, hope, fear.
Mostly fear.
“You told me you believed in me. That I could do this—the mission.”
“I still do.”
I can’t look at him. I can barely talk, and I fumble for words. “Malone says they have a technique—a way they could pull the memories from me if they need to. But it could damage my brain.”
I don’t know why those are the words I settle on. They have nothing to do with the reason Cole brought me here. But I think it’s because I need an explanation for my fear, one that has nothing to do with the truth.
“That sounds ominous,” Cole says.
“No kidding.” I raise my head at last, hoping I’ve derailed the conversation. Derailed the truth. I can’t stand anything else being out of my control.
Cole scratches his head. “Look at it this way, your mission was to find and protect X. If you found them, and the others looking for X tried to capture them before we could get them out of there, would you risk your life defending them?”
“That goes with the job.”
“Right. So then?” He raises an eyebrow. “How is this different?”
“Yeah, well, when you put it like that, I feel kind of stupid and selfish for worrying. Why do you have to be so much smarter than me?” I punch his chest lightly.
He pretends to punch me back. “That’s why I’m your unit leader. I’m here to talk sense into the rest of you. But you’re not stupid, Sev. You’re just dealing with a lot right now, but you’re going to be okay. Trust me.”
“I always trust you, fearless leader.” It’s true.
“Good.” Then he puts his hand on my cheek and kisses me, just like he did the morning before I left. And like I did that morning, I panic all over again.
Cole’s hand on my face is firm, but I’m not. I’m breaking in two. If he wasn’t holding me up, I’d collapse to the dirt. Sev severed. How fitting.
The taste of his lips is slightly salty but in a pleasant way, and he slides his left arm around me, pulling me close. I can feel every contour of his body against mine, and it feels so good. So right yet so very wrong. I want to press myself closer, and I want to run away.
“I missed you so much while you were gone,” Cole murmurs into my skin. His hand caresses my cheek, and he drapes his kisses lower. Slow but hungry, like he’s holding back because he knows how fragile I am.
He brushes my chin, my throat. I hold my breath.
My eyes close, and every muscle in me tenses with anticipation. I wrap my hands around his shirt, but I can’t do more because I remember pulling off Kyle’s shirt the same way. Lying on his bed, my hands running down his naked back. His lips trailing over my stomach.
My heart pounds with fear and guilt. I love Cole, but not like this. Not like Kyle. Even though my body responds to Cole’s touch in defiance of my heart, it’s wrong. So wrong I could cry because I shouldn’t care about either of them this way. I shouldn’t have kissed either of them.
“We can’t do this.” Gasping, I pull away, hating that Cole’s warmed me from head to feet. Hating that I want him to refuse to let go, to keep kissing me and make me give in. “It’s not right.”
Cole catches his breath, nose pressed to my forehead, dividing my face down the center and pushing open the rift I feel. His exhale hangs in the air between us like smoke. “No, it’s not.”
Then he kisses me again with more urgency. Because he doesn’t understand. And it’s unfair to expect him to when I don’t dare explain.