She tilted her head, confused. “I don’t want anything.”
“Everyone wants something. There’s always that one thing that will make your life better. When you lie in bed at night, what do you feel is missing?”
She still didn’t follow me. “Nothing is missing.”
“Then you’re lucky,” I mumbled, sounding more bitter than I intended.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s okay,” I said, holding my palm up close to her perfect pink lips. “I’ll make a wish. “You just blow.”
She did.
I closed my eyes as the warm, sweet air from her mouth brushed against my lips. For one perfect second I could taste her and I caught the briefest glimpse of what it would be like to kiss her.
My hands trembled to reach for her. To touch skin. Run fingers through hair. Memorize the shape of her cheekbone.
But I held myself back.
It was too much. Too soon. For her. For me. For these concrete walls that seemed to hold her in.
I glanced up at them, questions piling up in my brain.
Who is this girl?
Why is she locked up out here?
How will I ever get enough of her?
“Does anyone else live here with you?” I asked, pointing to the house.
She stood up, turning to look at the house. I couldn’t see her face when she answered. “My father.”
This wasn’t the response I expected. “Your father?”
“He will be back soon.” Her gaze clicked toward the steel gate built into the concrete wall. “You should not be here when he does.”
I started to panic. At the thought of being caught. At the thought of having to answer to someone who locked his daughter in a house in the middle of a maximum security research compound. But mostly at the thought of leaving. My heart constricted when I considered the possibility that I might never see her again. That this hypnotizing girl was destined to live in the back corners of my memory, fading more and more each day like the metallic sheen on a new hovercopter.
And then she said, “Will you come back?”
And my heart swelled back to full size, kept on swelling until it was inflated and ready to pop.
“Is that what you want?”
She thought for a moment. It felt like an eternity. “Yes. That is a thing that will make my life better.”
I grinned like an idiot. “Then, yes,” I promised her. “I will come back tomorrow.”
And for the rest of the day, for the entire walk home and the long, empty night that spanned ahead of me, that promise glinted like a beacon. Illuminating my way in the dark. Making every other light source look dim in comparison.
6: Return
“Tell me again what we’re doing,” Klo demanded for the fifth time. I’d been walking through an abandoned field in the Agricultural Sector for the past twenty minutes, my gaze cast downward, my mind lost in thought.
“We’re not doing anything,” I corrected. “I’m looking for dandelions. You insisted on coming along.”
“Dandelions? Why dandelions?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t about to tell Klo or any of my friends what had happened yesterday. If Seraphina lived in a place not even marked on the compound maps, then clearly she was some kind of Diotech secret. And I intended to keep her my secret as well.
“I think they’re … beautiful.”
Klo nearly choked on his spit. “You think they’re beautiful? Are you kidding me right now?” I heard his footsteps crunch to a halt behind me. “Wait a minute. Is this for Xaria? Are you two finally glitching?”
I rolled my eyes. “Flux, no. I told you, I’m not interested in Xaria.”
“You should tell Rustin, then. He’s been spazzing after her for months.”
“He can have her,” I muttered.
“Then what is this for?” His footsteps started up again.
“I just like them.”
“They’re weeds.”
“They’re survivors.”
“I’m sorry. Survivors? Man, what kind of experimental pharmas did you steal from the Medical Sector? And more important, when are you going to start sharing them?”
I turned around to give him an exasperated look. He smiled wickedly back at me.
That’s when, out of the corner of my eye, my gaze landed on something white.
Excitedly, I pushed past Klo and bent down. I plucked the dandelion as close to the root as I could, careful not to shake it in the process. I sealed it in a clear vacuum tube that I’d “borrowed” from one of the aerospace labs and kept walking.
“They tried to eradicate them,” I explained, “but they failed. Somehow they just keep growing and popping up, despite Diotech’s efforts.” I smiled. “I admire their determination.”
“Okaaaay.”
“Like I said, you didn’t have to come.
“No, no,” he insisted. “It’s fine. I’ll help you find your … survivors. Whatever makes you happy.”
* * *
By the time I left Klo in the Residential Sector thirty minutes later, I had gathered four dandelions. I wished I’d been able to find more, but I figured four was enough. Plus, I couldn’t wait any longer to see her again.
She wasn’t outside when I scaled the wall, and when I knocked on the front door no one answered.
“Sera?” I called, praying that her father didn’t burst through the door and stun me with a Modifier or worse, a Mutie Laser.
A moment later, the door opened a sliver and I saw her vibrant violet eye peer through the crack.
“Who are you?” She sounded small and afraid, very unlike the girl I left yesterday.
“Seraphina,” I said, hearing a pleading quality to my voice that I barely recognized. “It’s me. Lyzender. I was here yesterday.”
The door opened a tad wider and I felt my insides start to untangle.
Until…
“No, you weren’t,” she proclaimed, and the door was slammed shut again.
What?
My stomach twisted. Had I imagined the whole thing? Was I going insane? I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what I had missed. What had happened.
I knocked again. “Sera, please. Don’t you remember me?”
“No. I don’t. Please leave.”
The world started to implode around me. Like an uncontrolled demolition. Bam, bam, bam, bam, BAM!
I turned away, feeling dejected and lost. Then I remembered the tube in my pocket. I spun back and pounded on the door again. “Dandelions!” I shouted, half desperate, half terrified. “I found more dandelions. Remember? They’re more beautiful than any other plant. They’re fragile. You wish on them.”
There was a long silence. Too long. And still no answer came.
How could she not at least remember the dandelions? She seemed so entranced by them.
It was like the entire day never even happened…
The thought nearly knocked me to the ground.
I staggered back, stumbling through the yard, until my feet bumped into something hard. A bench.
I collapsed onto it.
Like the day never even happened.
No. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. To a helpless, innocent girl?
Why?
Memory alterations were for security breaches, for people who saw things they weren’t supposed to see. Did things they weren’t supposed to do.
She didn’t do anything.
She didn’t see anything.
Except me.
The realization exploded painfully in my brain. I leaned forward and buried my face in my hands. It was my fault. It was all my fault. I’m the one who bypassed the VersaScreens. I’m the one who scaled the wall.
I broke in.
And she paid the price.
Or at least her memories did.
They must have taken the whole day. Every reference of me. Every word. Every smile. Every miniscule ounce of her trust that I earned.
To my surprise, when I
looked up again, she was there.
Not close. But there. Standing on the porch, peering at me from behind a pillar.
Talk about déjà vu.
“Who are you?” she asked timidly.
I knew right then that I should have run far away from here. I should have leapt that wall and never looked back. If my mere presence was a danger to her, was the reason they wiped her memories, then I shouldn’t be here.
“I’m no one,” I said as I stood up. I walked slowly toward the wall, preparing to climb it, preparing to spend the rest of my life with an empty hole in my chest.
And then she spoke again.
“Don’t go.”
I turned and sucked in a breath. The mere vision of her was haunting and soothing and melodic and torrential.
“It’s not safe out there,” she told me.
It’s not safe in here, I wanted to argue.
“I live out there,” I told her instead. “I can assure you it’s safe.”
She shook her head decisively. “It’s not safe out there.”
The blank repetition of her statement made me shiver.
I dug my fingernails into my palms. “Who told you that?”
But my voice was too forceful. My teeth too clenched. I regretted my frustration the instant I saw her recoil.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, taking a deep breath. “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on here.”
“I live here.”
I sighed. “Yes. You live here. But do you ever leave here?”
She nodded. “My father takes me outside the walls. But I have to go with him. Otherwise it’s not safe.”
I fought to keep control of my voice, my breathing. It wasn’t her that was aggravating me. It was whoever had been doing this to her. Whoever had been confiscating everything she knew, rummaging around in her brain for loose thoughts like one rummages around a messy drawer.
“Where does your father take you?” I asked.
“Today he took me to the beach.”
Ice formed in my veins. “The beach.”
Her face flashed nostalgic. “Yes. We went this morning.”
“It’s impossible.” I murmured it so softly, I didn’t think anyone could hear. But she did. She heard everything.
“Why is it impossible?”
“There are no beaches around here. We live in the middle of the desert.”
“You’re not correct,” she argued. “I went there. With my friends. We played in the ocean.”
My eyes closed. My heart slowed. My anger became very clear and focused.
That’s when I knew that I couldn’t walk away. That I would never be able to walk away.
Something bad was happening here. Worse than I’d imagined. Not only were they taking memories out, they were also clearly putting memories in.
And there was only one reason to do that.
The very reason the Memory Coders have a job in the first place.
To hide things.
“Why did you say you were here yesterday?” she asked, crashing into my thoughts.
“Because I was.”
She tilted her head, her recollection of the previous day obviously failing to match my account of it.
“I don’t remember that.”
I nodded. “That’s because someone made you unremember.”
This still didn’t compute. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I want to know. I will keep coming back here until I know.”
“Is that why you’re here now?”
A faint smile worked its way across my lips. “I’m here now because you asked me to come.” I dug out the tube from my pocket. “And because I wanted to bring you these.”
Her eyes zeroed in on the four dandelions contained inside, suspended in air, like a moment trapped in time. She took a step forward, then another. I kept my hand as steady as I could, but everything started to tremble as she came closer.
She reached out and took the tube from me, holding it up to eye level.
“What are they?”
“Dandelions,” I said, feeling an overwhelming sadness to be having this same conversation all over again.
“I’ve never seen them before.”
I almost had to laugh. I almost had to argue. But instead I just said, “I know.”
Through the clear glass of the tube, I saw her mouth curve into a beatific smile. “I think they’re beautiful.”
I waited for her to look at me, for her to lower the tube and for her eyes to meet mine. And then I repeated my answer. “I know.”
7: Protection
For the next few weeks, everything in my life faded into background noise. Like someone had painted a blurry halo around my life, and Seraphina was in the center. The only thing in focus.
I was determined to answer the questions that were crowding into my head on a daily basis, fighting for priority.
Who is she?
Why are they hiding her?
Why are they erasing her memories of me?
But each time I felt as though I was getting closer to an answer, a hundred more questions would pile on top of the others. I was drowning in my own inquisition. In my own need to know her and know about her.
Seraphina wasn’t any help. Her vocabulary and knowledge of the world were too limited. I quickly determined they were hand-selecting what she knew. What she remembered. What made sense to her.
And almost every time I went to see her, I had to start over.
I had to regain her trust.
I fell in love with her a little bit more each day. And yet, nearly every time I climbed over that wall, she didn’t know my name.
But I kept going. I kept introducing myself. I kept telling her the same stories over and over again. Teaching her the same words, answering the same questions, giving the same explanations.
“What is that?” was her favorite question to ask.
“It’s my DigiSlate,” I told her one afternoon as we were sitting on the grass outside her house. She was ten feet away from me, but it was still early. I had started analyzing her movements, her patterns. On a good day, she moved within reach of me in less than an hour. On a really good day, I got to touch her hand.
But nothing more.
And I never tried.
I was afraid of her reaction. Afraid of my reaction. Afraid if I touched her face, or hair, or lips, I may never recover. I may never be able to handle the crushing feeling I’d surely get the next day when she once again looked at me as though she didn’t know me.
Every day, she inched closer to me. Every day, I fought the urge to pull her into my lap, press my cheek against hers, inhale her scent.
I protected myself.
Every day.
“What does it do?” she asked, fingering the ultrathin device that I had unrolled in front of her. It was the fifth time she’d seen my slate. And the fifth time I’d explained its function.
“It does everything,” I told her. “Anything you want.”
I waited for the fascination to light up her face. I had memorized that light.
“You can read stories on it,” I suggested.
She didn’t understand. She never did. So I showed her. I scrolled through the various texts I’d downloaded for her. Yesterday she’d read about world history—now it was all gone. The day before that, she’d read a series of classic fairy tales—those had been erased, too.
Today, I had brought her poetry.
I loved watching her read. She devoured words faster than I devoured air. It was one of the many abilities I had discovered over the past month. And it was my favorite one. Even though I knew it was the most pointless.
What good is the ability to rapidly consume information if it will only be stolen from you hours later?
That didn’t matter, though. Reading made her happy. So I brought her things to read.
But today, she didn’t look happy. She absorbed an entire book of poetry in a few minutes and looked up at me with tortured ey
es.
I smiled. “Read it aloud. I’ll help you.”
I leaned in close to glance over her shoulder at the title of the poem.
“Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare.
To my surprise, she didn’t recoil from my proximity. My face was inches from her face. Her long, shimmering hair tickled the tops of my ears. I tried not to focus on the fact that we were breathing the same air.
I closed my eyes to regain strength and then finally pulled away, leaning back onto my hands. Away from her magnetic pulse and intoxicating scent.
I knew not to push it. Never to push it.
It was my silent vow to her.
She had to come to me.
I had to let her.
“’Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,’” she read the first lines and then looked to me for an explanation. “How can minds be married?”
I shook my head. “Poetry is different from normal text. You can’t read it literally. You have to dig deeper and search for a meaning.”
She bit her lip thoughtfully.
“It’s saying that if two people really love each other, they should be together.”
She squinted at me. “Why isn’t it written like that?”
I laughed. “Because then it wouldn’t be as fun to read, I suppose. What’s the next sentence?”
“’Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’” She looked up at me again. “What does that mean?”
I felt my mouth go dry. “It means,” I began uneasily, “that love doesn’t change given the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
I reached out and gently removed the slate from her hand. She let me.
“Unfavorable circumstances.” I cleared my throat uneasily. “You know what? Let’s find you something else to read.”
“But I enjoyed that,” she argued, her mouth falling into an irresistible pout.
“You did? Why?”
She thought for a moment. “It’s like a puzzle.”
“I guess it is.”
“Don’t you like puzzles?”
I turned my head and glanced at the wall. The sun was starting to set. I would have to leave soon. “Some puzzles are better than others.”
We sat in silence for a long time. And then I felt her move next to me. Close enough that our arms were touching. I turned my head and she was right there. Her eyes were piercing giant holes in me.
Undiscovered Page 3
