Arden: Here
I lean against the beige siding of Sebastian’s house as I text and force my leg to stop rattling in tune to my heartbeat. It’s just Sebastian. And this is not about kissing him. We need to keep each other safe.
His reply comes a moment later.
Sebastian: Oh cool. Mom just got in the shower.
A few moments later the sliding glass door opens into the kitchen and he presses a finger to his lips. I kick off my stilettos and toss them onto the soft grass of his backyard.
Inside, I take each step with the methodical precision of a surgeon. The fluffy carpet muffles my footsteps, so the only thing audible is the pounding of my heart. We reach Sebastian’s room without his mom’s door flying open.
Sebastian closes the door with a faint snick, allowing me to exhale. “She’s working the overnight shift at the hospital.” He checks his watch. “Twenty minutes until she leaves.”
I bite my lip. “Sorry, I know I’m early. I just—” Couldn’t wait another minute to see him.
A wide grin stretches his cheeks. “I was hoping you’d be early.”
I tell him the news about the admin console, and his face falls.
We both stand there for a moment in silence, stewing over how royally screwed this makes us.
“I learned some stuff too,” he says after a moment. “Apparently, I have a dad? I just assumed he was dead until he called tonight to tell me he heard about my medical miracle and promised to fly me out to visit this summer.”
Hearing the word dad lodges a bullet in my throat. I can’t hide the emotion from seeping into my voice. “Wow. Where does he live?”
“Seattle, which is apparently where I’m from. My mom moved out here with me when I got into MVH and the divorce followed shortly after.”
I sink onto the bed, nodding in a daze. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugs and plops down next to me. “I have no memories of him. No connection to him. Nothing except this one conversation and a million questions.”
I place a hand on his knee. “We’re going to get answers.”
“What if—” He swallows hard. “What if I don’t want them?”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to know who did this to us and all that. But—I’m starting to wonder if there are things I’m better off not remembering. Arden, I was dying, for crying out loud, and my dad didn’t even bother to talk to me!” He squeezes his eyes shut. “On the phone today, he apologized profusely for not calling me the last few weeks.” His shoulders rattle and his hands ball into fists. “I only have this one conversation now stored in my mind.” He meets my gaze head-on. “I’m not sure I want to taint it with anything else.”
He said the same thing to me earlier today, right before his memory of that moment was deleted while mine stayed intact, though I can’t remember what prompted him to say it. It’s the absolute opposite of my stance on this. I want all the knowledge back, everything I’ve lost, but I admire that he can feel complete without all the pieces of him that are missing. “Maybe you can make that choice, then. When we find your memories, you can opt not to download them. But we at least need to keep moving forward so you can make that choice. Instead of it being made for you.”
“What do we do?” he asks.
“We—” I bury my head in my hands. “Oh God. I don’t even know. We’re out of options.”
“Not all options.” He drums his fingers on the table. “What if we break into the new server room?”
“We don’t know where it…” My words drop off. Within seconds, I remote access my mother’s computer in her office. It takes me a few minutes of perusing through her folders and files, but I pull up the work order for the new data center located only twenty minutes away. “I know where.” I point at the address on the screen. “But we need to plan how to get inside. It’s not like MVH. I don’t know it well enough to be able to break all the rules, plus we’re never going to be able to sneak in.”
Sebastian glances at the clock. “It’s too late to go there tonight anyway without raising alarms. That gives us approximately twelve hours to formulate a plan if we want to get there first thing in the morning.”
I shake my head. “Not first thing. I want to talk to Teddy during first period since we didn’t get a chance to talk to him today.”
Sebastian nods. “We can go after that.”
I bite my lip. “I can try to hack in and put us on the security list, but—” I shake my head. It’s too risky to try to hack anything. Data centers are built with the specific purpose of boosting security and keeping out hackers. I have no doubt I’d be able to get through their barriers eventually, but who knows what traps I’ll trigger trying to do it. They might be onto me before I even hit enter.
No, we need to do this the old-fashioned way. Sans computers.
“Let’s think about who might already be on the approved security list. Your mother.” He ticks off a finger. “Probably the Ethics Committee folks. Do we know who they are?”
“Yeah, they’re board members from the investment firm that funds the various prototypes Varga Industries puts out. Mostly middle-aged men in stuffy suits plus a woman or two for diversity.”
“Do you think there’s a chance any of them are behind this whole thing?”
I shrug. “There’s always a chance, but they normally stay pretty high level when it comes to this stuff, so I doubt the motivation’s there. It’s in their best interest for our project to be successful.”
He purses his lips. “Okay, do we know anyone else that might have access?”
My eyes widen as the plan starts to form in my mind. “We don’t need anyone else. All we need is Zoey, actually.”
He raises a brow. “I don’t think she’ll be on the list.”
“She won’t be. But we don’t need her to be. All we need is her holographic makeup skills.”
To bypass whatever security protocols are in place at the new data center, I simply need to look like one of the only people the center would allow inside. Thankfully, I already share my mother’s clothing size and bone structure: nose too thin, cheekbones too high, face pointed at the chin but rounded upward like a heart. A hair twist will hide my long locks compared with my mother’s sleek bob. And Zoey’s skills with holographic makeup will cover the rest, adding the necessary tweaks to make me appear older, more severe, and more serious.
More legit.
It’s flimsy at best, risky at worst, but it’ll have to do.
“Sebastian, I’m leaving!” his mom calls from downstairs. “Call if there’s an emergency.”
We both pause and wait for the slam of the front door, the rev of her car engine, the safety that comes with the squeal of her tires as she backs out of the driveway.
“I know we have a plan of action now for tomorrow.” He grabs his phone off the end table. “But we still need one for tonight. I’ve been thinking about this.” He gestures to the writing on his back.
“About the partial nudity we’re about to engage in?” I decide to lighten the mood with a little gutter humor. It at least puts a smile back on his face.
His cheeks turn bright pink. “No. I mean, yes.” He rakes his hand through his hair. “I mean, how to prevent data loss.”
I purse my lips. “Suuuure. That was the part at the forefront of your mind.”
He turns partially away from me to hide the way his blush deepens. “We should take photos, as discussed earlier. And then print them out.”
I nod along with him. “Good idea.” This way, if someone hacks into our phones and deletes the images, we’ll have analog backups.
He flips the lock on his room, an added precaution.
I scramble out of my clothes and try not to blush myself as he whirls around me, snapping photos of my bare back, my legs, stomach, the parts of me I’ve already exposed and let him cover with his deepest secrets. My nerves dissipate, and I relish the way he drinks me in, careful to capture every hidden message decoded on my skin. We sit there in only our underwear, waiting for the photos to print out, the tension escaping from our shoulders with each warm sheet of paper. When the last one prints, he leads me to the bathroom and keeps guard outside the door.
I set my binary necklace on the bathroom counter, a true sign of trust. The hot water scalds my skin, blurring the words I spent today desperately trying to hide. I close my eyes and savor the normalcy for just a moment, where my skin is just skin and my entire world doesn’t unravel with each second that passes.
I take my time drying off and then sliding on the fresh clothes I brought: a tee that’s just a tad too loose and polka-dot pants that are way too loose. At least I had the foresight not to bring my retainer. I finally look human again instead of an understudy for Bride of Frankenstein. We pass in the hallway like two ships in the night, and I wait in his room while he scrubs the past away too.
His hair drips onto the carpet when he returns, wearing only pants, his chest bare, ready for me to rewrite it all on his torso.
I run out of room on his back as I painstakingly transcribe every word that seems to belong here now. I was wrong before when I thought that I was returning to my skin when I washed this all away. This is what feels right. He lets out a shudder when I ask him to flip over so I can continue writing on his chest to capture yesterday’s knowledge and the new info gleaned in the last few hours. His muscles clench and he lets out a laugh from the way my hair must tickle him.
I start to cap the marker, but he lifts his hand. “Wait. I think we should try to put the stuff we’ve learned in chronological order.” He sits up and holds out his hand for the pen. “If you don’t mind, it might be easier if I try. I’ve been thinking about this.”
We switch places and I lie down on the bed, my head cradled in his pillow, my chest puffing in and out. He stretches out my arm and draws a long black line from the top of my shoulder down to my wrist. I hold my breath to stop from giggling at the ticklish sensation.
I tap the inside of my elbow. “I still need to write stuff there.”
“I’ll put it all on your back after. I’ll write really small, promise.” He slashes smaller black lines that break away from the main line on my arm, pointing upward and downward. He leans over my torso, his hot breath making me squirm, as he writes a few words beneath the lines nearest to my shoulder. He works his way down, adding details below each jagged line. He leaves a few spots open and squints at the whole picture before filling those in too.
When he caps the pen and leans back, I lift my arm up and read from left to right, shoulder to wrist:
HiveMind app developed
S diagnosed with cancer
S came in 2nd place in National Science Competition
Started at MVH
Began working on thesis project
Started dating?
S and A continue working on project
S has six months to live
S’s Duplicell procedure
S cured
S no memories/A’s memories deleted
Projects due
Press conference
“You’re missing some things.” I point to the space between S has six months to live and Duplicell procedure. “Here it should say: excessive making out.”
I expect him to laugh. Instead, his expression pinches.
I ask him to include a few more items: marking the escalation of security from the installation of the retina scanner, the failed attempt by the Ethics Committee to spruce up security, and the servers being moved to an off-site location. I even include the info about Brandon being fired and the admin console going missing.
And then I add one more. One that kills me to write.
My dad’s death. Slotted between Began working on thesis project and S has six months to live. I’m not sure if we started dating before or after my dad died or if he ever had the chance to get to know the guy I’m learning more about every passing second.
I lift my shirt over my head, wearing only my bra, and flip over onto my stomach. I get lost in the way he transcribes all the missing info onto my skin. The ticklish sensation gives way to pure bliss. He manages to cram all the info that had been spread everywhere earlier into the space between my shoulder blades. When he finishes, he grabs a shirt from his drawer, and I put mine back on.
I teeter on the edge of the bed. My hands wait in my lap, but that feels unnatural, so I stretch them behind me. My arms shake too much like that. I give up and crawl under the covers.
Sebastian slides in and my nerves amp. We both stare up at the spinning ceiling fan, two bodies lying next to each other, not touching except for a few atoms at the elbow. Glowing stars on his ceiling promise a whole universe ahead of us. He smells of hair gel and musky cologne, as though he replenished both on the sly before he slipped in beside me.
I flip on my side to face him. “What are you thinking about?”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “That I’m afraid.”
That stops me in my tracks.
“I’m afraid I’m still dying. Maybe the doctors made a mistake or your brother doesn’t know the real side effects.” His eyelashes flutter over his eyes. “And the only thing that could actually save me is our damn project.”
My throat burns, thick and heavy. Water swells behind my eyes, droplets piling on top of one another to form a tsunami. Pressure increases until I roll over to face his wall and shove my fist into my mouth to muffle the inevitable. Tears leak, but I let them pool in the crevice between my cheek and the pillow. Because I’m afraid I’ve failed him too. “And I’m scared I can’t save you.”
He wraps an arm around my stomach, offering me the comfort I’m too weak to ask for. I’m finally close enough to experience him in real time. I need to touch him, not with a pen but with my fingers. I want to memorize the contours of his skin so this time if I lose my mind, I won’t forget. I shiver in response to his warm breath on my neck, goose bumps dimpling my skin.
Turning, I lean into him, hovering above his lips for a moment in case this is moving too fast for him. But he brings his mouth up to meet mine, and that’s all the permission I need. I yank him toward me, and the kiss intensifies. He kisses me like he needs to catch up to all the time we’ve lost.
We kiss until we’re breathless. Until only this moment matters, not anything that came before or anything that will come next.
My whole body itches with the need to continue, to knot my fingers in his hair and never let go. But he pulls away, and presses a gentle kiss on the top of my forehead before his eyes slip closed.
You only get to fall in love for the first time once. But we’ve been given another chance.