The Gift of Remembering

by C. L. Shaffer

  The man plopped into the chair next to her and pointed about the room. “As you can see, we found your little hiding place, but we can’t figure out what is so important about it. I guess Mac Donaldson’s memories didn’t quite give us what we needed. Interestingly, we were able to extract those memories without erasing them from Mac’s mind. We’ve been secretly experimenting with doing that. I suppose we can go back and take another look since he’s still in custody.”

  Irene glanced at him.

  “Yes, we discovered that it was Mac who’d processed Chris. Someone must have tipped Mac off that we’d found out because he closed shop and disappeared. But we eventually sniffed him out. He was in quite a state too—poor soul, hiding in a shabby cabin in the middle of the woods. I think we did him a favor by bringing him in. Being a city boy, he wasn’t much for roughing it.”

  A couple of the men in the room chuckled, and the man from the mill smiled at them, seeming pleased.

  “It appears that Mac erased some of the memories he’d gotten from Chris about your little opposition group. Can you imagine that? But surprisingly, Mac didn’t get it all.” The man patted the side of his head with his fingers. “Seems he purposefully left some traces behind, such as this mansion’s location.

  “Maybe he wanted the option one day to use those small, back-of-the-mind memories to join The Discord and fight us. Like you, Mac apparently had some principles, even if they weren't all too obvious. He was fine with erasing people’s memories when it was done voluntarily, but it seems he drew the line when it was done by force. But, in the end, he just couldn’t bring himself to be the hero he yearned to be, and that brings us back to him giving himself up so easily at the cabin in the woods.”

  The man’s expression of amusement faded. “And that, of course, brings us to Charlie. As you probably know, we couldn’t process him because he’d gotten himself shot trying to escape.” The man leaned into Irene. “But now that you’re here, you can tell us what he and Mac couldn’t.”

  Irene shifted away, and the man smiled as he rested his hand on the arm of his chair, striking it lightly a few times. “I’m sure you’ve guessed that by coming here, you’ve already told us that there is something here, so there’s no point in keeping it a secret. I’ll get it out of you one way or another. And I know you don’t want to be processed again.” He placed his hand on his chest. “If I had my druthers, I'd prefer that you tell me now, so I can keep my conscience clear."

  Irene frowned. “Your conscience?”

  “Ah, she speaks,” he said to the other men and quickly turned back to her. “Yes, my conscience. We all have a job to do, Irene. My job is to squash The Discord. It may surprise you, but I try to do that job in the most humane way I can. You, on the other hand, are going to get people killed—like Jackson and Clara, for example.”

  Irene stared at him, and as she began to comprehend his meaning, she gripped the armrest of her own chair. “Why would you—”

  "No, no, you misunderstand," he responded, patting her hand. “I said you’re going to get them killed. Your Discord would be more likely to kill Jackson and Clara—not us since their son is high up the food chain. And because they literally provide food, The Firsts would never do such a thing, even though Jackson’s story of chivalry was a little difficult to swallow.”

  Irene nearly wanted to cry from either relief or from the emotional roller coaster this man was putting her through, but there was no way she was going to let him see her breakdown.

  “Ah, look who it is,” he said, causing her to glance in the same direction.

  Chris entered the room with a couple of other men who presumably picked him up at the farm.

  “How are you feeling, son?” the man asked as he jumped up from his chair and strolled over to him.

  “I’m fine, sir, except for . . .” Chris paused, seeing Irene in the room.

  “Yes, yes, we know all about the bump on your head. Come in. Come in.” The man gestured at Irene. “You know Irene, of course. Long time, no see. Right?”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Chris said, seemingly unable to catch up to the reality of Irene being recaptured once again so quickly.

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “What can I say? She can’t seem to stay away from us. And you’re right on time too.” The man approached Irene. “She was just about to tell us what’s so special about this place.”

  Irene peered up at the man. “You’re wasting your time.”

  The man swung his hand as if he were about to strike her with the back of it. Chris lunged forward. But the two men nearby quickly restrained him.

  The man from the mill halted his assault, and Chris lowered his gaze, giving the impression he regretted his instinctual reaction.

  “I would never hit a woman,” the man said, moving back toward Chris. He formed his hand into a fist. “But I would strike a man.”

  Irene gasped as the man punched Chris in the gut.

  The man paused. "Do you wonder at her reaction?" he asked Chris, who was now bent over. "I certainly would.”

  The man fixed his eyes on Irene. “Have you ever seen the adverse effects of processing, Irene? No, I guess you wouldn’t have. But you’re a smart woman. I'm sure you've thought that there could be some side effects on those who’ve been processed. And there were, especially at the beginning when The Firsts were doing their experiments. People were going insane, trying to recall what they felt they’d forgotten. It was all very messed up.

  “The Firsts relocation procedures took care of most of that since there’d be less familiar things and people around to trigger one’s memory.” The man leaned down to Irene, placing his hands on both of her armrests. “That was the real reason people were going cuckoo. It wasn’t the processing—it was other people who knew what the processed person had forgotten.” The man straightened and glanced back at Chris.

  Irene's anger grew with each word, but all that came from her mouth was a pitiful plea. She had been able to deal with the knowledge that her husband’s identity was erased from her own mind. But that was only a small portion of memories compared to what had been taken from her husband.

  Her plea appeared to go unnoticed as the man moved back to Chris, who tried to struggle free from the hands of his fellow soldiers. "How did she get away from you so easily?" the man asked Chris, seeming genuinely curious.

  Chris let out a short exhale as if he was still feeling some discomfort from the blow. “I know I messed up, sir,” he said, cringing. “But we have her now, so let’s just get what we need from her.”

  “That’s precisely what I’m doing, sergeant,” the man said, “but thank you for telling me how to do my job. So explain to me how she got away from you—you, a man who is so well trained and experienced in picking up and returning every conceivable combatant, and yet, this woman was able to subvert you. How was that possible? Please enlighten me.”

  Chris hesitated, seeming either embarrassed or concerned. “She stepped on my toe, sir,” he said under his breath.

  “What? I didn’t hear that.”

  Chris repeated his statement, this time louder.

  The man pointed at Chris’s left foot and then at his right. “Which toe?”

  “Stop this,” Irene begged again from her seat.

  Chris kept his attention on the floor, apparently refusing to look the man in the eye. “My left big toe, sir.”

  "Your left big toe," the man mocked as the two soldiers holding Chris laughed. "Oh my, 'how the mighty have fallen.’” The man clasped his hands behind his back. “How exactly does that happen, that a strong man like yourself can be taken down so easily?”

  “Some of my left toe was shot off during the war,” Chris explained as the two men holding onto him grimaced. “It’s never really healed, sir.”

  “Do a lot of people know of your injury?”

  Chris cleared his throat, sounding anxious. “I’m sure you knew, sir, from my file, but other than that, I try to keep it to myself.�
�

  The man motioned at Irene. "So, this woman here—a stranger to you—just so happens to know what you and I and maybe a few other Firsts know?”

  Tears streamed down Irene’s face. “Please, stop.”

  Chris looked at her curiously. “I suppose it was . . . a lucky guess.”

  “A lucky guess? You truly believe that?” the man asked.

  Chris didn’t respond, but to Irene, his expression said it all. He was obviously working out how she, a stranger, could come to possess such knowledge. “Possibly, The Discord found out about my injury,” he finally uttered, still sounding unconvinced.

  “Very unlikely, don’t you think?”

  Chris cast his attention to the floor. “I don’t know how else to explain it, sir.”

  “Well, I do, sergeant.”

  “Please,” Irene said softly.

  This time, the man acknowledged Irene's request, slapped his hands on her armrests once more, and leaned into her personal space. “Then tell me where The Discord is hiding, or I will expose our little secret.”

  Irene swallowed hard, knowing she couldn’t destroy the entire town for the sake of sparing the mind of one man, even if that one man was her husband. But she wouldn't give this man the satisfaction of getting that information out of her willingly. The Fists would need to process her for that information. Her voice shook as she uttered her refusal.

  The man pushed away. “Very well.” He turned his back to everyone. “Get her out of my sight.”

  One of the guards pulled Irene from her chair. She didn’t struggle. She was relieved that the man didn’t say anything about Chris’s true identity. Perhaps he worried that he’d destroy the mind of one of his subordinates. Whatever the reason, it brought Irene some peace. And as she walked by Chris, she was given one last courtesy, a moment’s pause in front of him. She rested her hand on his arm and gazed at his face as if to etch the memory of it in her mind.

  Chapter 14

  An overwhelming feeling surged through Chris as Irene placed her hand on his arm. It was possibly a remnant of enjoyment leftover from that kiss she’d laid on him back at the farm. Whatever the cause, she'd beguiled him and used his weakness to escape. But her trick had been averted. She was now recaptured, and hopefully, he could convince Wallace Cunningham, his commanding officer, that he was still fit for service. Sitting in a chair with a soldier still beside him, he knew it would be a hard sell.

  “Lieutenant Cunningham here,” his commanding officer said into a crackling radio as he put on his dark blue coat.

  "There was a deer, no there was a herd of deer." The voice on the other end sounded faint. "They came out of nowhere. The vehicle—we slid down an embankment—there are two down, and the woman escaped. I'm badly—”

  The lieutenant shouted into the radio, “Come in, come in.” He let the radio drop to his side. He looked at the other men in the room, “Go!” he ordered.

  Chris slowly stood from his chair. “Sir.”

  The lieutenant motioned Chris from the room. “Yes, yes, of course. We need all the help we can get.”

  Chris nodded and rushed to the doorway.

  “Sergeant,” his lieutenant shouted, halting Chris’s progression out the door.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Watch yourself with that woman. If you know what I mean.”

  Chris didn’t look directly at him. “With all due respect, sir, she’s not my type.”

  His lieutenant let out a grumbling laugh and batted Chris away with his hand.

  …

  The vehicle was located about half a mile from Kingston’s residence. Swerving off the road to avoid the herd of deer, as the man on the radio had indicated, the van had gone down a steep bank and ended up in a shallow but swift-moving creek. To Chris’s amazement, only two of the four men had died from the crash. The other two required medical attention, which Jerry, the medic on the team, went into immediate action to provide.

  "See any trace of her?" another man asked, who went by the name of Sims. He chewed his gum roughly and then blew a large pink bubble from his mouth.

  Chris glared at him for a second or two. These mercenary types The Firsts were hiring were anything but professional.

  The bubble popped, and Sims pointed his gun at the mangled van that was half-submerged in the creek. “If I believed in that sort of thing, I’d think this woman had some kind of higher power helping her.”

  Chris knelt to take a closer look at a patch of ground nearby. “If a higher power was helping her, then I guess we’d be on the wrong side of things.”

  Sims chewed his gum noisily in his broad mouth, then stopped. “You believe that?”

  “What?”

  “That we’re on the wrong side?”

  The question and the statement that preceded it were surprising coming from Sims, who seemed to Chris to be about as deep as the shallow creek below them. And Chris wondered if his lieutenant had sent Sims along to test him. He knew Lieutenant Cunningham enjoyed playing head games. “I wouldn’t be here if I thought that,” Chris answered.

  Sims chuckled to himself and strolled away, blowing a few more bubbles from his mouth as he scanned the ground around him.

  Still kneeling, Chris searched as well. About a yard beyond him, he spotted half a footprint embedded in a bit of green moss. He followed the course and saw another and another. Checking to see if Sims was still a distance away, he shouted, “I gotta take a leak.”

  “What do you want? Permission?” Sims scoffed and continued to walk in the opposite direction.

  Chris remained where he was, and when Sims was entirely out of sight, he followed the footprints to the top of the embankment. Occasional droplets of blood accompanied the footsteps, but the person who left them seemed to have set a steady pace. Irene Duncan was injured but perhaps not severely.

  Chris glanced back at the wreckage as he came to the top of the hill. Traversing the edge, he wondered how Irene had escaped such an accident with little injury to herself when everyone else was either badly hurt or deceased.

  Was he on the wrong side? He'd never asked himself that. He had a job to do—that was it. When needed, he took on various guard duties, but for the most part, he escorted people from their homes to the hospital or to headquarters, where they were checked for diseases. Once cleared, they were relocated to better lands. He was to keep the peace as well. And if that meant that some of the people, the more unruly ones, required processing, then that was what needed to be done.

  Why people like Irene and The Discord could not see that, he didn’t know. Surely, the horrors of the war he’d witnessed firsthand would motivate anyone to want to keep the peace by any means possible.

  No, he was on the right side of things. It was just dumb luck that this woman kept averting capture. But this time, it would be different. This time, he would find her and be the one rewarded for it—not some paid-for-hire mercenary like Sims.

  He grinned and continued through the woods. As he did, the same dull headache he'd been experiencing lately began to affect him again. He tried to shake it off as he'd done so many times before. But as he walked, the pain sharpened. He stopped and put his hand to his forehead, feeling as if a blade were slicing through his mind.

  A flash of an image—blurry—accompanied the sensation. It was of a home, of faceless, laughing children not unlike his daughter. A woman stood by a window. She was not facing him. The vision was so real that he outstretched his hand toward her, but before he could touch her, the illusion vanished into blackness.

  He shook his head again and dropped his hand to his side, feeling a little embarrassed for losing control. Was it a vision of the future or some mixed-up memory of the past? He was not sure.

  Possibly, it was from the blow to the head Jackson had given him. More likely, it was a sign he was missing his daughter, Tia.

  Lately, she’d been on his mind a lot, but The Firsts hardly ever granted visitation since it deferred needed resources. Only those who perfo
rmed outstanding work were given such an opportunity. For that reason, finding Irene Duncan was even more critical. When he captured her, his reward would be to go and see Tia. He was sure that would finally put his mind at ease.

  Gaining his composure, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and continued on from the woods to a wide, open weed-infested field. At the far end, he spotted what appeared to be an abandoned, wooden shed. Seeing a trail of slightly matted-down weeds, he followed the path to the building.

  As he came closer, he saw the structure was windowless. If Irene Duncan was inside, his advancement to the door most likely had gone unnoticed.

  From his holster, he pulled out the handgun that Sims had given him in the car on their way to the accident. Bumping the door open slightly with his knuckle, he moved inside. When he took another step, something poked him in the side. “Clever,” he said as his shoulders slumped in defeat. “You took a gun from one of the dead men."

  “And now I’m taking yours—drop it.”

  Chris gripped his gun tighter.

  But Irene dug hers deeper into his side. “Drop . . . it.”

  He grumbled a little but placed his weapon on the dirt.

  Irene circled him and kicked it across the ground. She winced and rushed her left hand to her right side. When she pulled it away, blood coated her palm.

  “You’re hurt.”

  She seemed to force a smile.

  “I could take a look at that for you.”

  Irene took a step away. “Get on your knees and lock your hands behind your head.”

  “O . . . kay, easy there, lady," Chris said, obeying, knowing that the inexperienced could be just as dangerous with a gun as the experienced. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”

  A shot rang out, and he looked back over his shoulder to see sunlight streaming through the hole that the bullet created just inches from his head. "You missed."

  "Believe me, if I meant to kill you, you'd be dead." Irene grinned. “My husband taught me how to use a gun.”