by Mike Chen
But that was before a possible answer stared him in the face. Zoe sought this out. He never did. Except neither of them had ever had a chance to actually know more.
That was the catch, wasn’t it?
He could still watch it, maybe even get a clue about how he’d wound up on the roof with Zoe. And the past still didn’t have to matter. Those two ideas could coexist. If it was too damn devastating for him, there was always the whole memory removal thing. He was, after all, the Mind Robber.
The thumbnail loaded to a full-screen image, a static camera that framed his face just off-center. His features showed the inverse of today: close-cropped buzz cut instead of a longer fop and a thick stubble instead of clean-shaven. The eyes too. They carried a different feeling from what he saw these days. Heavy. Unfocused. A little lower, the thin crooked line between lips seemed unfamiliar, and lower still, the slouched shoulders told their own story.
“Tell us why you’re here,” a voice said off camera.
“I’m here, well...” Still an English accent. “I mean, why else do people get help? You know? I’ve made my money. My products have come to market, been bought by bigger companies, turned into commodities. That’s not a reason to come to rehab. No, you fuck up your life enough, the lives of people around you. I drank too much. But that was only a symptom. And it’s either they say stop or you say stop.”
“That’s why you’re here? You said stop?”
Video Jamie looked down and bit on his bottom lip. Five or six seconds passed, the only noise the hiss from the microphone.
“No. He did. And when I didn’t listen, he left.”
“We hear that a lot. Choosing to get help can be an essential step in reuniting couples after alcohol fractures their relationship—”
“There’s no reuniting.” In the video, Jamie’s mouth and brow finally matched the look in his eyes. “Francisco’s gone. When he makes a decision like that, it’s final. I get it. He gave me enough chances. I mean, if someone wrecked what I wrecked, I don’t know if I’d give them a second chance. Or a fifth chance or whatever.”
“You blame yourself?”
“Well, someone was too hungover to make it to the adoption interview. I’ll give you one guess who that was. Look, I’m a bullshitter at heart. It’s how I got everything. I can’t code, I can’t debug, I can’t do any of that. But I can convince anyone that anything is a great idea. Even myself.”
“I see.”
“If I ever need a reminder, I have this.” On the screen, Jamie held up a bandaged hand. “My last bender. Fell through a glass coffee table. When your husband leaves you and you slice up your hand, that’s kind of like rock bottom, isn’t it?”
In the office, Jamie matched the on-screen pose, hand held up. Except there was no bandage in the present, just a scar that cut deeper than he’d thought.
“Well, Frazer, we want to help. We have one of the highest success rates in the country. Our methodology is holistic—mind, body and spirit. Past, present and future. Your pain isn’t about the drinking or what you call ‘bullshitting’ or work. It’s what those do for you. But the thing is, once you identify that, heal it, get your mind and body and heart healthy, you’d be surprised at how strong you can be. Maybe your husband will like that version of you. More importantly, maybe you’ll like that version of you.”
“Maybe.”
“So, what are your goals?”
“Me? At this point, I’d like to just disappear. Not bother anyone. Not make a fuss. Just—” on-screen Jamie shook his head and took in a long draw of air “—be.”
“We’ll do our best. Oh, and I’m required to tell you that we do offer a unique new treatment protocol for the most extreme circumstances. It’s experimental and completely voluntary. Sometimes people need something more, and that’s what this is. Honestly, it is privately funded and proprietary, so even I don’t know the specifics. But if you’re interested, I will let Dr. Kaftan know.”
Kaftan.
From behind Jamie, Dr. Waterfield groaned, and rather than sitting motionless, her hands moved to her stomach. The phone rang again, and that seemed to trigger little bits of consciousness, prompting her to go from blank stupor to gradual awakening. Jamie closed the video, then skimmed through the files, jumping ahead months.
Thumbnails of faces came and went, names that meant nothing, the same categorizations over and over: discharged, completed and variations on that, but only a handful mentioned reconditioning. Jamie clicked on a random one, a woman named Susan. He scanned the information as fast as he could, but everything here seemed to match expectations with a rehab facility: her sister held an intervention. She put grad school on hold. She had talked through sexual abuse from a neighbor at age thirteen, which she’d previously hidden from her family. She got physically healthy. She understood the how and why of everything, who she hurt and the impact of her choices. And she left. The column for Current Status noted a courtesy check-in with a thank-you note sent from her three months ago, and that she was happy and sober and finishing her graduate degree.
No indication that she’d gained extraordinary abilities.
Dr. Waterfield grumbled again, except now she started to blink.
Jamie closed the profile, then skimmed the list again, a last gasp for any further information.
Then he saw it.
The face was hers. The hair, the eyes, everything was exactly the same.
Even the name. The name was exactly what he expected: Zoe Wong.
Zoe’s her real name.
This was everything Zoe sought. This was her path to whatever sense of peace she needed, and for him too. Except his came in the form of a lot of money and a plane ticket elsewhere.
“Where...what?”
Jamie turned on his heel. Dr. Waterfield stared at him—or really, more through him. Jamie remembered the way he’d felt after he lifted his own memory, the strange sense of floating back into his own body, aware but not really.
A knock rapped against the door. “Dr. Waterfield?”
“Where am...who are...”
“Dr. Waterfield? Your patient is waiting.”
He double-clicked the profile and it exploded on-screen.
“Dr. Waterfield?”
The doorknob turned.
Dr. Waterfield groaned again.
Jamie let the screen be and scurried into the corner as the door swung open. “Hey, you all—” The words stopped midsentence.
Jamie put his hands down from the brain-stun.
Dr. Waterfield had turned her attention to the newcomer, though her focus still floated. More voices came from the hallway and Dr. Waterfield’s phone rang again. Jamie put one shoulder under the newcomer’s arm and yanked, though his legs stayed put, leaving Jamie to awkwardly bend him at the waist. He stepped behind, pushing his legs like an exoskeleton until he had enough clearance to shut the door. His fingers flew up, ready to do their surgery; he dove into Dr. Waterfield’s mind and plucked out the last ten minutes or so, everything between greeting Jamie and the moment he sat down. Between that and the brain-stun, he figured she’d felt like she’d spun around too fast—or she just woke up from a bender. Probably somewhere in between.
Jamie dashed back to the computer to learn Zoe’s past, but it was frozen behind stock images of tranquil scenes: a bluebird on a branch, an ocean at sunset, the earth from space. Jamie punched the enter key, and a log-in came up, the images still cycling behind them.
But he needed a password.
Jamie dove back into Dr. Waterfield’s memories, but she hadn’t looked at the keys when typing in her password. The audio fragments of her mind didn’t help; logging in had been autopilot for her. “Damn it,” Jamie said before looking around the room and typing anything that might have been an appropriate password until the log-in box turned red.
You have exceeded the maximu
m number of log-in attempts. Please contact the Help Desk to unlock your system.
Shit.
A name would have to be good enough. He told himself that, but it didn’t feel good enough, just like knowing he’d been on the rooftop didn’t feel good enough without the why.
The desk chair squeaked as Jamie shuffled Dr. Waterfield out of her doctor coat. He put it on himself, the too-tight shoulders draping over him like a spandex, though he wasn’t feeling particularly costume-worthy at the moment. He adjusted it at the lapels, making sure it sat the least awkward way possible before finally leaving.
As Jamie closed the door behind him, Dr. Waterfield’s phone rang one more time. He ignored it and hustled to the elevator, arms crossed to hide her badge. All around, staff passed by, coming and going to different doors, different hallways. He scanned around him, pinpointing all the possible areas of cross traffic and security cameras.
He needed the fastest, safest route out of there.
15
SUNSETS WERE PRETTY FROM the top of a moving vehicle.
The sky had turned to a blend of oranges and purples by the time they pulled into...wherever it was they were. Somewhere a good hour or so outside of San Delgado, somewhere where cell phone signals were nonexistent.
Of course, that might have had more to do with Zoe using the world’s cheapest provider rather than any sort of secret jamming tech. She’d stayed on her back the entire time, fingers wrapped around the roof racks for stability, her body only shifting with braking or turning. She wasn’t sure if anyone even noticed that, hey, a woman clung onto the top of that van. With her hair under a hat and an effort to stay as flat as possible in her “all black but not Throwing Star” garb, she may have just looked like a piece of rumpled debris at a glance.
By the time they’d escaped city limits, traffic lessened with every passing mile, an eight-lane highway whittling gradually to a two-lane road. Zoe had no memory of ever doing a scout program, but she knew enough about sunrises and sunsets to know that they’d headed mostly east.
And that there was pretty much nothing else around.
The van paused at the gate, and Zoe heard low-key identification chatter before it pushed forward. A quick look ahead showed a parking lot with a mix of everyday passenger vehicles and unmarked vans similar to the one she rode on. Air slapped against Zoe’s cheeks when she leaped off, and jagged ridges of bark dug into her palms as she clung to a tree and watched the van roll out of view.
Shadows had already begun descending around her, and she surveyed the scene. One main entrance was at the front, probably with all sorts of badge-protected doors and live security. A few floors up, the heat signatures of two people came through on a balcony, though their casual posture suggested it was simply people taking a break.
The building itself looked like a combination of an old refinery and an abandoned hospital. A tower stood, surrounded by stacks blowing out steam, and in front of that lay smaller structures, all with scattered lights creating an industrial constellation in front of her.
What was this place? And why would a rehab facility be associated with it? Zoe checked her phone again, and though she didn’t get any signal, she at least was able to take some photos.
The van pulled into a small loading dock almost directly beneath her. Its occupants stepped out, one with the gait of calm professionalism and the other with glances of nervousness. They opened the back double doors, and a few click noises later, a gurney rolled out.
On it, a prone man, gray straps crossing the olive hue of his barrel chest. A breathing mask covered his face and an IV was embedded into his right arm, a bag of fluid attached to a hook next to him. The duo rolled the gurney, one person in the front and one person in the back, only to stop and punch in an intercom. “Retrieval team two-three-three with a live specimen for Project E.”
Specimen?
Was she once a specimen too?
“Understood. Someone will be down to bring the specimen in.”
The van’s duo engaged in small talk, oblivious to her presence. Sports, local restaurants, the sort of typical discussion coworkers had—except this was over the body of some prone individual, at some remote facility that had layers of security measures to protect it.
Through the building, faint heat signatures started to track—a single person leading, flanked by two others on each side. The leader walked with a steady cadence, a coolness so strong it felt like a beacon through the concrete and metal.
At the balcony, the duo appeared to be finishing up—the thunk-thunk of a trash lid opening combined with the scuffing of a shoe sole putting out a cigarette.
The front entrance or the balcony? One had all sorts of people coming and going, possibly armed and at least on alert. The other was two people finishing a break.
Path of least resistance.
Tree branches shook as Zoe propelled herself off them and over a second layer of barbed wire fencing to catch the left side of the main tower, a structure that seemed to have six or seven floors. Her hands found holds, rigid and angular: vents, pipes, awnings, shingles, helping her scamper up and around the balcony with spiderlike ease. She was up above the small landing when her foot slipped and a chunk of loose concrete kicked free, landing in between the two men.
These guys weren’t guards. Scientists, maybe, or technicians or something. Regardless, as Zoe dropped, she told herself to not hurt them too bad. If only she had Jamie here to stun them, remove their memories. Instead, one roundhouse kick clipped the first in the jaw, while the second withstood an open palm to the nose. Both collapsed, the second man’s nose bleeding enough to create a small pool next to the extinguished cigarette. She grabbed the ID badges from both of them, then buzzed herself in.
Messier than she would have liked. But sometimes a blunt instrument got the job done.
* * *
Harsh fluorescent lighting filled the space, and the hallways were devoid of any corporate niceties. No artwork hung on the walls, just signs identifying wings and doors, along with the occasional screen cycling through reminders to lock up desks when leaving for the night and security schedules. She wandered, her thermal vision and heightened hearing allowing her to stay out of the way, though where she headed remained undecided. She went with the logic of the higher the floor, the more important it was, and within the walls she’d found that her distant heat sensing had much better range than peeking in from the outside, probably due to the layers of insulation, piping and concrete keeping out the elements.
On her way up the final flight of stairs, a color caught her eye. She blinked, thinking it was a flicker of something else, maybe even dust in her eye from the industrial air. But as her boots echoed down the cavern of the stairwell, it grew in intensity step by step.
A deep, burning red. Like someone had painted the color of blood in her eye. By the time she exited the stairwell, it might as well have been a spotlight. She marched silently, using that image as her compass, and every ten feet or so, the lights flickered—not the buzzing of dying fluorescent bulbs, but a systematic on and off with rapid frequency, as if someone had hacked into the wiring and set it to switch at rapid intervals.
The halls eventually funneled into a longer hallway, doors on either side. And at the end, another door, but one with a blacked out window and what looked like extra security. Through the end door, the red heat signature intensified.
Only one way to go.
She stepped carefully, marveling how this hallway mirrored what she’d seen in Psych Ward Takeover: the faded paint, the clipboards hanging on the walls, the occasional cart of deactivated medical devices. That movie ended with a guy wrapped in gauze terrorizing a pretty blonde night-shift nurse in a too-short skirt.
This would be different. Zoe’s tensed body and extraordinary strength would make sure of that.
The door buzzed as it accepted her badge, letting her in
to a new space—a brightly lit small hallway, the only thing of note being the heavy door at the end and the digital clock above it, large blue digits tinting the color of the space.
No other doors. No guards. But one glance showed something much more important.
It had clues. The view synced into her recovered memories. Sliced and fragmented, but still a mirror image to what she’d seen, from the layout to the lighting. Those existed as fragments in her mind, but being in this space cranked her recall, pieces falling into place. What this place was, she didn’t know, but it was important. It was involved.
She pushed the images aside, past and present melding into one before she turned to the oversize hunk of metal at the end of the hall.
The door was smooth and completely flat outside of pockmarks worn by time and usage. No knob offered entry. Instead, a small black panel with a tiny blue light sat adjacent to the door.
And a security camera above.
Zoe considered punching it out, but the element of surprise was probably gone by now. Or maybe no one noticed. She was, after all, still standing there.
A quiet-but-harsh buzz played when she tried the first badge. But the second one received a simple beep, and three deep thunk noises came from the door, followed by a click and a motor sound. A hydraulic released and the door swung inward.
She stepped in, a light from ahead causing her eyes to adjust to the contrast between bright and dim. Farther in, lamps glowed—not the cheap fluorescents of the hallways, but bright and warm, making it easy to take in the array of panels and buttons and screens. Above the controls and monitors sat a large window separating this observation room from what looked like a lab space. Beeps and boops fired off at regular rhythms, and the volume of instrumentation overwhelmed her hearing. Trails of wires and cables snaked into the space beyond the window, traversing from above into hanging tendrils that ultimately terminated into a capsule that glowed red.
No. That wasn’t it.
