Mothers are supposed to look out for you. They’re supposed to lift up the car you’re trapped under without any consideration of the weight. They’re the person who brings you chicken noodle soup when you’re sick and waits up all night when you sneak out, just to make sure you get home in one piece.
They’re not supposed to stab you in the back.
My fingers curl into tight fists. My legs itch to march over to my house and confront her right now. Make her look me in my eye and betray me to my face.
But I can’t risk it.
Not after seeing the way Zoey wielded a chemical weapon in our faces just to stop us from fucking this up for her. No, I need time to think, assess, plan. Figure out how to stop Zoey and my mother and then rescue Sebastian.
I slide a key into a generic motel room a few towns away. Emotion clogs my throat at the memory of what happened last time I was in a motel room, when Sebastian and I bonded while we wrote our secrets across each other’s skin. Holy isotopes, I miss him so much and it’s only been an hour.
But that thought propels me forward, makes me stronger. I plop down on the bed, open the admin laptop, and use my mother’s eye to unlock the retina scanner. The laptop boots up with a little chime that startles me.
When I click on HiveMind, I’m automatically logged in to the admin account. I take a deep breath and then navigate to the host server access option in the admin control panel. A new window pops open with a folder hierarchy structure of account authentication details and memories. Before I do anything else, I take another backup of both my and Sebastian’s minds in case my mother gives Zoey access to the other admin console.
Once the backups are complete and our memories are safe once again, I find the hidden folder containing my encrypted memories, except this time it’s not hidden, because I can view everything with the admin tools. When I navigate to it, I’m transported to a totally different interface with a fancy Theseus logo at the top. I can easily toggle between HiveMind and Theseus from the plug-in panel.
When I dig deeper into the interface, there’s a whole lot more open to me. It’s not just my folder accessible via the admin folder but many others I couldn’t see before, likely because of access controls that prevented me from seeing anyone else’s account info. Nearly every student in the school has a folder in here thanks to Zoey’s memory games, but two particular ones stick out to me besides my own: Bash Cuomo. And my dad.
My heart bleeds out of my chest and I sink deeper into the bed with a new heaviness. All that’s left of my dad is right here. Right in front of me.
I inhale a shaky breath and force myself to keep moving. I click on my own account, and my chest aches at all the memories there for the taking. I know I could transfer them one by one via HiveMind but that would take days. I don’t have that kind of time. I need to get Theseus working and transfer them all together.
I tap my fingers against the white bedspread. HiveMind restricts more than one memory transfer at a time … So maybe the issue is with HiveMind, not Theseus.
I straighten. Holy isotopes. If Theseus is a plug-in for HiveMind as it appears to be, then the firewalls and security protocols the Ethics Committee installed are probably blocking the plug-in from working the way it should.
I confirm this theory by checking the number of code lines associated with Theseus. 56,320. The exact number of lines I found changed overnight a few days ago. TransferEmos, TransferFrags, and TransferSpecial must all be commands for Theseus: Transferring emotions, memory fragments, and special for everything else associated with a personality. In theory, if I disconnect myself from HiveMind and connect to Theseus directly, it should work properly.
Switching back to HiveMind, I highlight my folder in the authentication and select Deactivate. Deactivating the account will wipe all data that’s stored on the server. It’ll be as if the account never existed. The confirmation window pops up, and the abrupt ding sound makes me flinch. Are you sure you want to deactivate this account?
I get up and pace the room, doing a lap around the queen-sized bed. Yes or no. If I’m wrong and this isn’t how to make Theseus work, then I risk losing everything. But if I’m right, I can get it all back.
I straighten my shoulders and sit back on the bed with gusto. I click yes.
My name disappears from the HiveMind user list and all the files in my folders flicker out of existence, one by one. But the memories still remain in my mind because I’m no longer synced.
This account has been deactivated.
Tension eases from my shoulders. My feet remain steady when I walk and my head buzzes with clarity. I’m me again, just me. But I still feel incomplete, missing half of myself, like I’ve chopped off my hair and my brush stops too soon when I run it through the strands.
When I navigate back to Theseus, there are new controls available on my account that weren’t there before when it was acting as a plug-in on my account: a handy Decrypt All button as well as a Transfer All button. My body tenses as I press each button in turn.
I sink to the carpet and clutch the sides of my head as the memories return with the force of a tsunami, knocking the wind out of me. My vision goes black and then the memories march through my mind in reverse order. They come so fast and fierce I barely have time to latch onto snippets before the next overtakes me. I cry out in pain as I pick up the phone and listen to Teddy’s voice: “Arden, he’s gone. He died in my arms. Oh God. What do I do?” A moment later, I’m back at the Hypnotist’s office that same night, trying to fool myself into relaxing under his guidance. I’d just come from dinner with Bash and he was acting weird. Lethargic. Slurring his words. Complaining of chest pains. I needed to escape my own mind while he met up with Teddy for a routine test, if only for a few minutes, if only so I didn’t have to face the reality of him leaving me forever.
A week before, the two of us placing our joined hands on a mouse and together adjusting the controls on Theseus to lock out users when accessing the plug-in through HiveMind just in case anyone tried to bypass Bash’s decision.
The day before that, Bash sneaking into my bedroom window in the middle of the night. “I don’t want to live in a fake body with a fake life.” I squeezed his hand. “I won’t ever be able to love another version of you anyway,” I promised.
Losing my virginity, not on Valentine’s Day like my retrieved memory indicated but four months prior, the two of us curling up in his twin bed and finding a way to block his death sentence from our minds.
Falling in love in every way possible, each day bringing me renewed joy just to be with him. I loved him. I loved him so much.
Oh, it hurts to lose him. Sobs rip from my throat. I’ll never be able to hold him again or kiss him. He’s so different from Sebastian, wild and carefree compared with Sebastian’s calm and composed view on life. I’ll never feel the rush of Bash’s leaping out of a lab chair and spinning me into a waltz to the music blasting from his phone speaker. I’ll never clutch his hand wishing I could take away his pain while doctors poked needles into his arm. I’ll never be with him again.
Our first kiss, the way I pushed him against the wall one night while working on our project and never let him go.
Bash, my sweet Bash.
And oh God, it goes back even further. Memories of my dad I didn’t even know I was missing return, ones my mom carefully archived long before Zoey came into the picture. She must have done this to keep me focused, stop me from mourning. The way I broke down when the funeral director lifted the casket for one last peek at his body before it was lowered into the ground forever. Bursting into tears in front of the funeral director and cursing him out in my intense grief. Crawling beside his body in the hospice and curling against him one last time, his skin already cold. Barging into Teddy’s basement morgue and begging him to get his project in working order because my dad had just been moved to hospice care.
Emotions rattle through me, morphing from pain to love to grief to terror as each new memory clangs through my body. When they finally subside, I’m on all fours, panting, my hair slicked with sweat. The memories remain, forever implanted now. It feels like I’m cheating on Sebastian with all these feelings bouncing around in my chest for a guy who no longer exists.
Bash is gone. And I didn’t even get to say good-bye.
But I can get him back. I don’t have to lose him.
I scramble to my feet and tilt the laptop toward me, my heart pumping wildly. There, right there, are all of Bash’s memories. His entire personality. Him.
The idea is so tempting that my skin prickles. If I press the buttons, Sebastian will be overwritten, replaced forever. He won’t even know he’s gone. He only existed for a few days, but Bash was my entire world for years. Bash will forgive me for going against his dying wish. I know he will. I know him better than I know myself. When he decided not to live, the cancer had already metastasized to his brain. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He worked for four years on this project. This is what he wanted. To be with me forever.
With every beat of my heart, I can only think about one thing: Bash, the love of my life. Gone forever.
But I can save him.
This is how I save lives.
Except … then I’d lose Sebastian forever. Sebastian, with his Google search brain and his fierce loyalty. Sebastian, who was there for me the last few days, standing shoulder to shoulder with me, my equal. What I lacked, he had, a balance I could never find with Bash, where our strengths often clashed against each other rather than complementing each other. Sebastian, who I fell in love with far faster and more deeply than I ever thought possible.
Sebastian or Bash. My future or my past. Who I want to be versus who I’ve been.
I can’t lose either of them. I can’t choose who lives and who dies.
But I have to.
I have to make this choice before my mother makes it for me.