by S. Harrison
“Well, I’m glad you’re safe,” I say, changing the subject for her sake.
Bit grins at me. “Oh, I’m so happy that you’re back, Finn. Brody has totally been following me around and bringing me cups of cocoa for no reason. Oh, and he also fabricated these clothes for me. Look, this t-shirt has Einstein printed on it. Because I’m smart, he said. He’s so weird.” Bit rolls her eyes as if she’s annoyed, but I see a hint of a smile flicker on the edge of her lip.
Brody and Bettina? She’s right; that is weird. Bit is way too good for that dim-witted jock. Never in a million years would I ever have imagined that he would be the one to make her smile like that, but it seems like Brody has been a welcome distraction for her, so I can’t help smiling as well.
Bit’s gaze drops to my left hand. She grabs it and squeezes the palm, then my fingers. She turns my hand over, rubs the back of it with her thumb, and with a look of complete fascination whispers, “Incredible.”
I frown, confused by her strange behavior at first, but then, out of nowhere, images begin to pulse behind my eyes. It’s almost like blurry watercolor snippets of Infinity’s memories are fluttering out of the dark into a dim spotlight in my mind. The courtyard and the crumbling buildings, the flames, red eyes glowing in dark smoke, trying to run, falling, the hellish piercing screech of a rail gun, the splintering wood and the crash of a fallen tree . . . then blood dripping from a ragged stump at the end of her arm. My arm.
I gasp and stare down at it. “My hand—” I murmur.
“You remember,” Bit says, looking into my eyes with amazement.
I hold my hand up in front of my face and glare at it. I clutch it into a fist, then open it again, trying my best to comprehend the impossibility of it.
“That really happened?” I ask.
Bit nods emphatically. “When we brought you down here, you were in a bad way, Finn. I honestly don’t know how you survived. Both your legs and five of your ribs were broken, your ankle was twisted backward, and your left hand . . . it was . . . it was gone. But within an hour you were completely healed, and your hand—” Bit stares in wide-eyed wonder as I wiggle my fingers, and she chuckles like a little kid. “You grew another one.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “What . . . what am I?” I whisper.
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me,” says Bit. “I tried to get some answers out of Dr. Pierce and Mr. Brogan, but they said they wouldn’t discuss it until you were awake.”
“I’ll tell you what you are!” shouts a voice from across the room. I look over Bit’s shoulder to see Brent Fairchild’s scowling face. “You’re a freak!”
Two of my classmates, Margaux and Brody, step around the corner behind him. Brody smiles and nods at me, but Margaux is looking me up and down with a mixed expression of wariness and suspicion.
Jonah turns toward them. “Maybe you three should leave us alone. I think Finn needs a little time to process this.”
“I think all of you should leave,” I say, glaring at Jonah.
“I think someone wants to be alone with her girlfriend,” Brent says snidely.
“You better watch your mouth, Brent,” I seethe.
“Or what?”
“Or you’ll be watching my fist pummel all the pretty teeth from that mouth.”
Brent looks at Jonah and jabs his finger at me. “Did you hear that? She threatened me. She’s dangerous. She’s the reason all of us are trapped down here like rats. She is the reason everyone up there is dead.”
A shiver runs through me as Brent’s words stab me like a knife, and for a reason I can’t explain, I feel a growing nausea churning in my gut.
“Go back in the other room please,” says Jonah.
“All of you get out of here!” I bark at them. “Especially you!” I grunt at Jonah. “It makes me sick to my stomach just looking at you.”
“But, Finn . . . ,” coos Jonah.
“GET OUT!”
Everyone flinches at my booming outburst, even Bit, and for the briefest instant I see a glimmer of fear flash through her eyes. I look around at the faces in the room and I see anger, pity, mistrust, and unease in every direction. Suddenly I’m hit with a terrible realization.
Maybe Brent was right.
I just brutally attacked Jonah. Yes, he’s done terrible, unspeakable things to me, but I honestly believe that if I had remembered them before today, all I would’ve done is broken down and cried. After that there would’ve been screaming and swearing for hours on end, I’m sure, but Jonah raised me, and I’m not a violent person. I can’t imagine that I ever would’ve physically assaulted him.
But now, I’m different. And I can feel it. The instant I saw him . . . I wanted to kill him. And that’s exactly what I tried to do. I don’t know whether the enormity of everything that’s happened is pushing me toward the edge or whether I just need time to get it all straight in my head, but right now I feel like a coiled spring is wound around my guts and my temper is a quivering trip wire that could snap at any second.
What is wrong with me?
I take a deep breath and try to calm down. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “It’s all just so . . . confusing.”
Bit smiles and takes my hand. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
I nod sheepishly.
“You can have a hot shower; I’ll bring you something else to wear, and the food printer down here makes a half-decent roast beef sandwich.”
“That’s a very good idea. But I’d like to check her over first,” says another voice. I look toward the thin, white-bearded old man in the lab coat who has walked into the room behind Margaux, Brent, and Brody. He sidles around them and, with a black leather medical bag clutched in one hand, walks over to me and Bit. “Chairs. Bring us some chairs,” he orders.
Brody immediately snaps into action and wheels a worn office-style chair toward Dr. Pierce, as Bit jogs into the room that I woke up in and quickly returns with a wooden stool for me.
Dr. Pierce and I both take a seat. “Leave us,” he grunts.
Brody gives me a coy smile as he disappears around the corner, and Brent and Margaux are still eyeing me with disdain as they slowly turn to follow him.
“I’d like to stay, if that’s OK with you, Finn?” says Jonah.
Dr. Pierce raises his eyebrows at me, and I shake my head.
“Sorry, Major, out you go,” says Dr. Pierce.
Jonah’s sad eyes look toward the floor, and he nods, defeated. “We can talk later, Finn,” he says before slowly turning away and walking out of sight around the corner.
Bit smiles reassuringly and turns to leave, but I grab her wrist.
“No, please. I’d like you to stay.”
Bit gives me a gentle smile. She upturns a nearby plastic crate and sits down beside me.
The man I knew from my childhood at Blackstone Manor as Graham the groundskeeper puts the black bag at his feet, opens it up, and rifles through it. “I told you to fetch me as soon as she woke up, girly,” he says to Bit as he retrieves a penlight and a stethoscope from the bag.
“I only left her for five minutes,” she protests.
“Hmmm,” grumbles Dr. Pierce as he glares at her through the wire-frame spectacles perched on the end of his scarlet-pointed nose. “It’s just as well sound carries through this concrete cave like a megaphone,” he says as he clicks the light on and shines it in my eyes.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Like the world is against me,” I reply, squinting in the light.
“No pain anywhere? Full movement restored?” he asks, ignoring my snide remark.
“I’m fine,” I reply dryly as he clicks the penlight off.
He hooks the stethoscope into his ears and presses the other end to the gown over my chest. “What do you remember?” he asks.
I take a second to think. Rapid flashes of memory scroll through my mind, but it’s like I’m seeing them through frosted glass. “I know what happened,” I reply. “I saw it all, but .
. . it comes and goes.”
“I suspected that might be a possible scenario,” he says. “You and Infinity have two very different sets of brain wave patterns. While you were unconscious your brain was constantly alternating between the two. I’m afraid the overlap might make remembering specific details a little difficult for a while.”
“When will it clear?” I ask.
Dr. Pierce shakes his head. “I’m not sure, my dear. Your situation is unique; my predictions of the behavior of your complex neural landscape are still largely based on theory and conjecture. Until thirty minutes ago, I wasn’t even sure which personality would be dominant when you woke up.”
“Well here I am,” I murmur.
“Yes, and I’m glad that you are, but I have to be honest, Finn. I was very much hoping to be talking to Infinity right now.”
“Dr. Pierce!” Bit blurts out, clearly offended by his blunt comment.
“Why?” I ask, more than a little offended, too.
“I didn’t mean to sound so callous,” says Dr. Pierce. “But I don’t think I have to remind you that there are three giant war robots waiting for us out there, and Infinity has skills and abilities that would greatly increase our chances of getting out of here alive.”
“We don’t need Infinity,” growls Bit. “We’ll survive if we all work together.”
“For all our sakes I hope you’re right, girly,” Dr. Pierce says as he packs the penlight and stethoscope away. “In any case, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got, so after you’ve freshened yourself up and had something to eat, come to the main laboratory. I’d like to bring you up to speed concerning our escape plan, among other things.”
“Other things?” I ask.
Dr. Pierce stands, and his expression darkens. “Yes, Finn. I think it’s time that you learned the truth . . . about everything.”
CHAPTER TWO
Dr. Pierce disappears around the corner, leaving Bit and me alone. I take a moment for his words to sink in. When we first arrived at Blackstone Technologies, all I wanted was answers. Dr. Pierce may be willing to tell me the truth, but if the truth is even half as screwed up as I expect it to be, then I’m not sure I’m ready to hear it. Everything that I’ve discovered so far has been like fuel thrown on a fire that’s burning me alive. I’m still trying to accept the fact that I’m a ruthless killer with a split personality who can grow new limbs like a freakin’ salamander. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that seems like quite a lot for a girl to wrap her head around in just one day.
“The showers are just down the hall. C’mon, I’ll take you.” Bit gets to her feet and makes her way across the room. I push off my seat and follow her around the corner to an open door. It’s like the kind you might see in a submarine, thick and made of metal, with one of those big wheels in the center instead of a door handle. I step through behind Bit into a narrow, low-ceilinged, beige-painted concrete passageway. Bright fluorescent tube lights suspended from rods jut down from a tangle of pipes and wires that run along the entire length.
I shuffle down the passage, staring absentmindedly at the floor, feeling numb and shell-shocked. I try to concentrate on clearing the fuzz from my memory of the past few hours. It’s all in there; I can feel it, but right now it’s nothing more than a scattered mishmash of flickering images and grainy fragments of emotion. It’s like a blurry moving jigsaw puzzle, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Bit obviously feels the annoyance emanating from me because she glances over her shoulder, gives me an encouraging smile, and tries to fill the uncomfortable silence with small talk.
“Dr. Pierce said this place is part of an underground base built during the Eurasian War,” she says. “Some of it was modernized and converted for use when the facility was built over it, but some sections, like this one, are pretty much untouched except for some plumbing and electrical that’s been routed through it to the buildings above. Apparently Richard Blackstone is some kind of history nut, so a lot of the rooms are exactly like they were during the war, with all the old equipment and stuff still in them.”
Bit is trying to sound like her normal self, but she’s not very convincing. I can hear the underlying tremor of worry in her voice. I certainly know how she feels, and if giving me a little history lesson helps her deal with this messed-up situation in any way, then I’m certainly not going to stop her. In fact I welcome it.
She disappears through an open door on the right, and I duck through behind her into a small tiled room. There are three shower cubicles lining the adjacent wall, beneath a large extractor fan. There’s a stainless-steel sink bolted under a mirror to my left, and pushed up against the opposite wall is a small antique table with a stack of white towels folded on it.
“Dr. Pierce works up in the facility during the week,” Bit says as she hands me a towel. “But from the meager amount of info I was able to wheedle out of him, I discovered that he’s spent nearly two years bringing equipment down and setting up a secret lab in what used to be the base’s infirmary. Now he pretty much lives here, working on, as he calls it, his personal project.”
I step into a shower cubicle and draw the curtain behind me. “What do you think he’s doing down here?”
“I don’t know,” says Bit. “He grows seedlings. That seems pretty innocent. But you only have a secret lab if you don’t want anyone to find out what you’re up to.”
I pull my hospital gown off over my head and sling it and the towel over the curtain rail. I twist the taps; hot water sprays onto the top of my head, and I let out a long, breathy sigh. It feels heavenly.
“I’ll get you some clothes. I’ll be back in a minute,” Bit says from the other side of the curtain. I don’t bother answering; I just close my eyes, let the water hit my face, and try to block out the world.
That lasts for all of five minutes before my thoughts resume their relentless nagging.
How the hell did all of this happen? Everything has spun out of control. When I think about how much my life has changed since yesterday, it feels like a ton of bricks has been tied to my ankle and it’s dragging me to the bottom of a deep, dark lake. And the worst part is, it’s taking everyone around me down, too.
I pick up a bar of soap from the recessed dish in the cubicle wall and scrub it against my body. As the bubbly lather runs down my leg, I look at my feet. Bit said one of them was twisted backward. Now they’re both fine. And five broken ribs? I press my fingertips into my side. I should hardly be able to breathe, and yet now they’re completely healed—they’re not even tender. There isn’t a scratch on me, and the strangest thing is I’m not really surprised at all. I feel like I’ve known I can heal like this for a long time. In fact, I saw it in a memory once; I’m sure of it. I fell off my bike and broke my arm when I was younger, and I fixed the bone back together just by willing it.
At least I think I did. That memory is pretty fuzzy, too. I run the soap over my hair, down my neck, and as I scrub my shoulder, an image flickers behind my eyes.
I was shot.
Right through my shoulder and my stomach, too, and my leg. I remember my blood speckling the ground. I was trying to escape from someone, and after I was shot I healed the bullet wounds. Did that happen? I’m not completely sure.
Trying to hold on to these memories is like drinking from a leaking cup. I only barely get a taste before they drain away, back into the dark pool of my subconscious. I don’t even remember who shot me or why they did it, but I think I remember the new kid at school being there, watching from a distance. Ryan . . . that was his name. Maybe he saw what happened? I’ll have to ask him about it later.
Frowning, I plunk the soap back in the dish, shut the water off, and pull the towel from the rail. I dry myself, wrap the towel around me, and pull back the shower curtain. Lying on the antique table are my bra and underwear, a black hooded long-sleeve top, a pair of gray jeans, balled-up socks, and a pair of green sneakers with white stripes on the sides. Bit must have left them for me. I get dressed and then walk t
o the mirror. The steamed-over surface not only tells me that I spent more time in the shower than I thought but in the same instance mocks the haze in my mind with the faded colors of my own blurry reflection. I wipe a clear streak across the mirror with the palm of my hand, and the girl I see looking back at me somehow looks different than I remember.
I can’t quite place it, but I can’t shake the feeling that something is missing.
I touch my face and study my eyes. Maybe it’s the dim light in here, but they seem darker than before. I look at the reflection of my left hand against my cheek, the hand that grew back after being severed from my wrist. I inspect it closely, studying it with a morbid curiosity. Healing cuts and broken bones is one thing, but full appendage regeneration? That is surprising. I always felt that I was different, but that is a whole new level. It’s like I’m a completely different species. Who am I really? For the past month I’ve been reliving my life inside my dreams every night. But now I know that some of those memories belonged to someone else, someone who’s been hiding in a dark corner of my mind. In the past few hours Infinity has made herself known to me and everything has changed, but that new discovery begs the question that scares me to my very core . . . maybe I’ve been the intruder trapped inside her mind all along? Finn or Infinity?
Who is the real me?
When I was tied to that bed, I broke those restraints easily, so I’m incredibly strong. I can see in the dark just by thinking about it; I remember being able to do that. My favorite food is a big, juicy cheeseburger; I can heal wounds faster than it’s humanly possible, and I know a shortcut through the cafeteria to the science wing when I’m late for class. I’m excellent at mathematics; I can speak Russian, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Arabic, and two dialects of Chinese fluently; and I’ve killed sixty-eight people, nine of them with my bare hands. I love the feeling of the wind in my hair when I’m horseback riding around the shores of Blackstone Lake, my favorite childhood toy was a stuffed unicorn, and I’ve only kissed one boy in my entire life. I know all of these things because they are who I am. I’m the girl who can turn pain into bells with my mind. I giggle out loud and touch my hand to my lips, and all of a sudden I can actually hear the bells ringing, softly chiming in the distance of my consciousness. I smile at the girl in the mirror. Her smile curls into a sneer, and blood trickles from the reflection of her mouth as she whispers three chilling words. “Let . . . meee . . . out.”
