Undiscovered

by Jessica Brody

  She did.

  The DigiLens popped out, and I caught it, repeating the process on the other side. I removed my own and returned them to the case in my pocket.

  “Those places are real?” she asked, peering at our somber surroundings. I hoped she was seeing them as I had come to see them: not a place to stay. A place to leave.

  “Yes. Very real.”

  “And they are located on the other side of this wall?”

  I nodded. “A little farther than that. But essentially, yes. Would you like to go there with me?”

  She looked at the house behind her, then she looked at the wall in front of her.

  Then she looked at me.

  I held my breath until my lungs threatened to pop.

  I could feel the fear radiating off of her, irritating my skin. Their brainwashing was strong. It was the only way they could keep her here. And, even though I hated the thought of it, I needed to use the same tactic to get her out.

  “You’re not safe here, Seraphina,” I said. “They will keep erasing your memories, manipulating your mind. I don’t know why you’re here or what their ultimate plans for you are, but I don’t want to wait around to find out. I have to protect you. I need to protect you. But I can’t do it in here. They watch everything. They monitor everything. They know everything. But outside these walls, they can’t touch you anymore.”

  Once again, she made the slow circle with her gaze.

  House, wall, me.

  “My father—” she began to say.

  I stopped her before she could go down that road. “Your father doesn’t love you. There’s no way he can. Not if he keeps you locked up in here like a lab rat. Like a science experiment. That’s not what normal fathers do. Sera, you have to believe me. You have to trust me.”

  I watched her breath grow heavy. I watched her mind spin. The way it did when she was searching for a definition she doesn’t have.

  “Sera, please.”

  I held out my hand. She stared at my fingers like she could see every skin cell, every atom. And who knows, maybe she could.

  “When you came here today, I didn’t remember you,” she whispered.

  “Yes. They erased me from your memory.”

  “But I knew you. Somehow I knew you.” Her mouth twisted as she tried to form the right words. “I can’t explain it. I…felt it.”

  She brought her fingers to her lips, touching them curiously.

  It had been three nights since I’d kissed her right here in this yard. I knew that memory was long gone for her, but it was as though she were searching for it now. Trying so desperately to grasp something that was only a shadow now.

  The blood in my veins sang. “I kissed you,” I told her.

  “Kiss,” she said, an echo of the first time I taught her that word.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” she said but her voice was heavy with doubt. “No.” She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know.”

  In one step I was next to her. I closed my arms around her and pulled her into me. “It’s okay. I know it’s a lot to take in at once. I’m sorry.”

  She collapsed into me and I held her. It felt so good to hold her. But I also knew we were running out of time. There was a window and it was small.

  “Seraphina,” I murmured into her hair. “There are some things they can’t take away from you. Parts of you that they’ll never have access to. No matter how advanced their technology gets. No matter how many times they scan your brain. Those are the parts that I love. That’s what you have to cling to.” I placed my hands on her shoulders and stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, forcing her eyes to connect with mine. “You need to come with me.”

  She turned away, casting her gaze to the ground. Like she couldn’t look at me.

  “If I go with you,” she said softly, causing my whole body to tighten, “will you kiss me again?”

  Everything released at once. My breath, my muscles, my heart.

  I moved toward her again. Not with urgency this time. But with all the patience in the world. I placed my palm flat against her cheek, memorizing the shape of her face and the softness of her skin for the thousandth time. She closed her eyes.

  I’d like to think she was attempting to memorize me, too.

  I prayed it was the last time she’d ever have to do it.

  “Every day,” I promised her, and then I brought my lips to hers.

  12: Escape

  Seraphina didn’t need to scale the wall. She cleared it in a single running leap, sailing over the crest as gracefully as the hawk in our digital projection. I’d already seen her do impossible things, and this was further evidence that she was more than human. That they had turned her into something else. Something that might have frightened me at one point before. But now I just wanted to be with her. To protect her.

  I had this distinct feeling that everything I’d ever done—every system I’d ever hacked, every fingerprint I’d ever lifted, every gadget I’d ever built—was all leading up to this moment.

  When she landed softly on the other side, we started to run. In the open space, she was faster than anything I’d ever seen. She surged ahead of me countless times and turned back, confusion etched into her flawless features. She couldn’t understand why I was so much slower.

  She didn’t even know her own abilities.

  I wasn’t surprised. Why would they tell her? Why would they let her know that she had the power to destroy them with a flick of her finger?

  As I struggled to keep up, I made a vow to myself. If anything went wrong, I would let her go. I would urge her to keep running. I would let myself be caught if it meant she was able to escape.

  I would put her first. Always.

  They could never hurt me the way they’d already hurt her. The way they would continue to hurt her. If she stayed.

  We reached the northwest gate ten minutes later. I fell to my belly and signaled Sera to do the same. I was drenched in sweat and panting for breath. Sera looked the same as she had when we’d left, no outward signs of fatigue or exertion.

  I was in awe of her.

  I wanted to kiss her again. Kiss her until I couldn’t breathe.

  But I reminded myself that now was not the time. There would be plenty of time for kissing when we were safe.

  When she was safe.

  “Sera,” I whispered as softly as I could, knowing she could hear me even if I were a mile away. “This is important. No matter what happens out there, if I tell you to run away from me, you have to do it. You can’t hesitate. You have to go. Do you understand that?”

  Her mouth tugged into a frown, and she started to protest.

  “No,” I said, stopping her. “Tell me you understand. I can’t help you unless you understand this. If I say run, you run. You don’t look back. You don’t wait for me.”

  “What if I get lost?”

  “I will find you,” I swore to her. “No matter where you end up, no matter how long it takes, I will find you.”

  Finally she nodded.

  I pulled my slate from my pocket and unrolled it. Klo had been able to grant me two hours of undetected access to the Intelligence Command Center systems. Director Raze’s top-notch security system. A loop, Klo had called it. His finest work yet. The hack created a circular reference so if anyone tried to follow the breach, it would just lead them around in a dizzying circle.

  I hadn’t told him what it was for, and he hadn’t asked.

  I think on some level he knew I wouldn’t have answered truthfully anyway.

  I would miss Klo. I would miss all of them. Even Xaria. But it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for her.

  The security logs listed the scheduled departure of a transport van in three minutes. Most likely it had come to deliver lab supplies to the various sectors in the compound. I couldn’t care less what the van was carrying as long as it was leaving.

  I checked the clock on my slate—2:13—and glanced out at the mai
n road that led through the compound. I could see the van drifting back toward the gate.

  I knew everything would have to be perfectly timed for the rest of this plan to work.

  I opened up a new panel on my slate, punched in a code, and hovered my finger over the small green Initiate button.

  The van stopped at the gate, and the agent exited the security booth. Per the usual protocol, the van’s back door swung open and the agent pointed a sensor inside, searching for anything breathing, or with a Diotech asset chip stored inside.

  When the sweep came back clean, the agent returned to the booth.

  I jammed my finger down on the Initiate button and a thunderous BOOM! echoed from the nearby Medical Sector, followed by smoke that slipped into the air like a slithering snake.

  After countless Freedom Fighters’ missions on this compound, I’d learned the secret to getting past Director’s Raze’s task force.

  Distraction.

  This one was harmless. Just a vapor bomb I’d set the night before. But it was enough to draw attention.

  I watched the guard glance up from his screen and peer inquisitively toward the building, knowing he was not allowed to leave his post.

  A few taps on my slate would solve that problem.

  I opened another panel and accessed the alert system. I sent the orders to the screens inside the security booth. A moment later, every armed guard in the sector was running toward the Medical Sector.

  As soon as the posts were abandoned, I sent the signal to scramble the feeds from the forty DigiCams installed around the gate and the twenty additional HoverCams reported to be in the area.

  I rolled up the slate, pocketed it, and looked to Seraphina. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  And we ran. We managed to squeeze through the back door of the delivery van as it was sliding shut. Seraphina landed gracefully in a crouch; I smashed into a shelving unit and knocked a few boxes of supplies onto the floor in the process.

  I pulled my slate back out and transmitted the signal to open the gate.

  The van started to move. I crept cautiously toward the front instrument panel, seeing the van’s destination flash onto a screen as the driverless vehicle turned left out of the compound and the satellite system guided it toward its next delivery drop.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed onto the floor next to Sera. I reached for her hand and held it tightly in mine.

  We rode in silence for a good twenty minutes before I had the courage to speak.

  “It’s okay,” I said, more to myself than to her. “It’s all over now.”

  But she wouldn’t look at me. She was staring down at the inside of her left wrist, running her fingertip across the small black tattoo. She winced and pulled her hand back sharply, as though it had bitten her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, worry distorting my voice. “What happened?”

  “My scar,” she said dazedly, still staring at it. “It … tickled.”

  “Tickled?” I repeated. I was about to ask her to clarify what she meant when I realized we were no longer moving. The vehicle had glided to an imperceptible halt.

  Panicked, I looked to Sera, whose eyes glowed in the dim light of the van. I stood up, leaning forward to get a view of the instrument panel, hoping it might provide me a clue as to why we’d stopped. But the monitors were dark. Shut off. Overridden.

  A moment later the door of the van slid open and Director Raze stood there, his steel gray eyes scanning the interior. I watched them land on Seraphina, and his lips coiled into a smile.

  “Well, well,” he said coldly, “going for a little joy ride, are we?”

  I did the first thing that came to mind. I jumped toward him, throwing the full weight of my body into his chest. He grunted and fell back against the hard concrete of the road.

  “RUN!” I screamed to Sera, and like a beam of light, she burst out of the truck.

  But she didn’t get far.

  The sizzle of a Mutation Laser made my stomach roll as I watched her body wilt to the ground. A wide-eyed, dark-haired agent caught her just before she hit. He looked veritably surprised by the entire exchange, staring bewilderedly at her for a long moment.

  “No!” I screamed, struggling to jump to my feet. I ran toward the agent, but I was intercepted by a wall of muscle. Three large men stepped into my path, blocking me. These were not agents-in-training. These were the real deal.

  The dark-haired agent scooped Sera into his arms and turned, walking back to a waiting hovercopter that was parked nearby.

  I writhed and kicked and screamed against my guards. “Let go of me!”

  I heard a voice behind me. “Get back here, you punk!” It was Director Raze. He had recovered from my attack and was marching toward me. “I swear I will end you. I will take every precious memory from your brain, every useful function. I will leave you nothing more than a glitching vegetable.”

  Raze was angry. As he should be. I’d been wreaking havoc on his compound for a long time. And I’m sure he was sick to death of me.

  Well, the feeling was mutual.

  He continued to stalk toward me. The three guards held me in place. I braced myself for the inevitable blow.

  But it never came.

  “Director Raze!” shouted another voice. I turned to see Dr. Havin Rio approaching from the hovercopter. My eyes narrowed in accusation.

  What the glitch was he doing here?

  He also looked pissed off. But he seemed to be doing a better job hiding it than Raze. “Stand down, right now,” Rio commanded. “That’s an order. I will handle the boy.”

  “Wipe him!” Raze yelled. “Wipe his puny, spastic brain!”

  “I said stand down, Director,” Rio thundered. “Transport the girl back to the lab. I will take care of Lyzender.”

  Raze exhaled like a bull. “Protocol?” he asked, his jaw rigid.

  “Full restoration,” Rio replied. “I don’t want her to remember any of this.”

  “No!” I cried out, whipping my head toward Sera, who was being lowered into the backseat of the hovercopter. Again, I tried in vain to get past the guards. “Don’t you touch her!”

  I saw her body flinching. Like tiny spasms. She was starting to wake up from the effects of the Mutie Laser.

  Her eyes opened and her head lolled to the side. When she saw Dr. Rio, her entire face shifted. Like someone had erased a shadow that had been cast over her exquisite features. “Dad,” she said dreamily. “I’m sorry. I…”

  Dad?

  This was the man she called her father?

  This was the person who worked late nights and took her on fake trips to the beach and brainwashed her?

  Rio’s face softened upon hearing her voice. He turned and went to her, pushing her hair away from her face. Seeing him touch her made me want to throw up.

  “It’s okay,” he told her, his voice more soothing and human than I’d ever heard it. “It’s going to be fine. Take her back to the cottage. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  “You son of a bitch!” I shouted at him, thrashing against my captors. “I should have known you were behind this. I should have known. You are diabolical. You deserve to rot in hell!”

  Rio walked calmly toward me, his shiny shoes clacking on the pavement. “Lyzender.”

  I wet my tongue and spat into his face. I wished I had more than just saliva to spew at him. I wished I could spit rocks. Boulders. Fire.

  He closed his eyes for a brief moment before wiping it away. “Why don’t you come with me? I think we have a lot to talk about.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!” I shot back.

  “Well, I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?” He jerked his head toward one of the guards detaining me. I felt the cold prick of metal against the base of my skull, stealing away my will to fight.

  13: Capabilities

  I woke up strapped to a large chair. My arms and legs were restrained. I struggled, but it was no use. I gl
anced around at the digital projection of a peaceful ocean sunset. So real, I could almost smell the sea breeze. But, of course, I knew it was fake.

  Something beautiful to hide the ugliness.

  That’s what Diotech is all about.

  I recognized this chair. It was the one they secured people in right before they recoded their memories. Panicked, I tried to remember how I got there.

  We ran away. We tried to escape. We failed.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief. At least they hadn’t taken that memory.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I fought again, quickly realizing it was pointless. The restraints were too strong.

  “What do you want?” I screamed into the serene sunset. If I was here, in this chair, that meant there was someone on the other side of this illusion, watching me through the one-sided screen. “Get in here and face me, you glitching cowards!”

  In an instant the landscape around me vanished, flickering into the dull black hue of the powered-down screen. A door opened to my left and Dr. Rio sauntered in, pulling a chair behind him. He placed it directly across from me and sat down.

  My whole body tensed at the sight of him.

  He was the one.

  The one behind Sera’s project. The one who had been keeping her locked up in that house like an animal. I wanted to leap out of the chair and tear his skin off with my teeth. But I forced myself to remain very still, watching him with distrustful eyes.

  “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Lyzender,” he said. “I’ll do my best to answer them as completely as I can. But you must understand that most of what you’ll want to know is light-years beyond your clearance level.”

  “I don’t have a clearance level,” I muttered.

  “Exactly.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “It’s not a scar from when she was a baby,” Rio said, referencing the mark on Sera’s wrist and the fabricated story she had told me. Obviously he’d seen the memory of that day.

  “What is it then?”