Unforgotten

by Jessica Brody

  I almost laugh. “You can’t just walk right into the street.”

  “Then how do we get to one of the taxicabs?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. But I do know you should wait for one of them to stop first.”

  Kaelen looks deep in thought, probably accessing one of his many brain downloads. In the meantime, I glance around and notice a woman on the other side of the street raising her hand in the air. A yellow car with TAXI written on the side slows and pulls up to the curb.

  I decide it’s worth a try. I step to the edge of the sidewalk and imitate her movements, lifting my hand above my head and waving as the next cluster of cars comes barreling down the street.

  It works.

  A yellow taxi maneuvers away from the rest of the vehicles and slows in front of me. The door opens automatically and I gesture grandly. “I guess that’s how you do it.”

  Kaelen, looking as embarrassed as his statuesque face will allow, avoids eye contact and ducks into the backseat, scooting to the other side. I get in after him, staying as close to the window as I can. The door closes on its own.

  “Where would you like to go?” A friendly female voice emanates from somewhere above our heads. I glance up, searching for the source.

  It’s only then that I realize the front seat—where the driver should be—is completely empty. In fact, there’s not even a seat. Or a steering wheel. There’s just a divider, separating us from a complex instrument panel, and a floor.

  Bewildered, I turn to Kaelen. “Who’s driving the car?”

  Now it’s his turn to look smug. And he does it all too well. Heat flares in my chest.

  “Taxicabs have been self-operating since 2027,” he states knowledgeably. “It was determined to be safer for the general public. And by 2050, all cars will be self-operating, reducing the number of vehicle-related deaths per year to under ten worldwide.”

  “Probably just the ten idiots who walk into the middle of the street,” I mumble under my breath.

  “Where would you like to go?” repeats the friendly female voice, which I now realize is not real, but rather a computer.

  “The intersection of Canal Street and Elizabeth Street,” Kaelen responds.

  “That intersection is located in Chinatown,” the car replies. “Is that correct?”

  Chinatown?

  I look to Kaelen, who responds impassively to the car. “Yes, that is correct.” Ironically, the car sounds more human than he does.

  “Please validate your identity so that I may deduct my fare.”

  I watch Kaelen as he leans back and slips his hand into his pocket, drawing out two peculiar transparent cards. They appear to be made out of paper-thin glass. He locates a small plate with a blinking blue light attached to the divider in front of us and holds both cards up to it, eliciting a faint ding.

  “What are those?” I ask as he places them back in his pocket.

  “People in this time period refer to them as DIP cards,” he explains. “Digital-identification Pass. In the year 2025, the United States government issued a law that all legal citizens must be in possession of a valid card. It is imprinted with information pertaining to the cardholder’s identification, medical records, citizenship status, and other relevant data. It also links directly to the cardholder’s monetary funds. I’ve just used ours to pay for this taxicab fare.”

  “But we don’t live here,” I point out. “How did you get them?”

  “Diotech manufactured two counterfeit cards for me to use while on assignment.”

  He points toward a flat screen embedded in the divider. It flickers to life, displaying a still image of my face alongside Kaelen’s.

  Underneath are two names I’ve never seen before.

  And below that a single word flashes in green: Clear.

  “As far as the scanners are concerned,” he replies. “We do live here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brown and Ms. Connor,” the voice says, and I feel the vehicle pull away from the curb, gliding smoothly down the street. “Your account has been debited. Would you like to watch TV during your journey?”

  Our faces vanish from the screen and a live news report takes their place. I catch sight of the headline scrolling under a grim-looking reporter’s face: Two hundred more lives claimed by white fever. CDC hopeful for a vaccine soon.

  “No,” Kaelen replies to the nonexistent driver, and the screen turns off, fading to black.

  “What is Chinatown?” I ask him.

  “It’s an enclave of the city where several people of Chinese ancestry live and work.”

  Is that what I saw in my memory? Was I in Chinatown?

  I think back to the crowd of people. The beast floating in the sky. The deserted street. The man standing in front of the blue door at the bottom of the stairwell. Apart from having seen it all in my head, none of it feels even remotely familiar. When I remember it, it’s like looking into someone else’s mind.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Are these memories real? Have I actually experienced them before?”

  “No,” Kaelen confirms. “For you, they are artificial memories. But we believe they are based on real events and real people. That is how you will know that you are in the right place at the right time. When we step into Chinatown, everything should look exactly the same as it does in your mind. Except this time it will be real. You will essentially be inserting yourself into the memory.”

  The car stops at a red light.

  “And what happens after that? After we get there?”

  He glances over at me. “That’s up to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Something will most likely trigger another memory. You have to alert me when that happens. It will direct us to the subsequent location. We believe that each memory has been specifically set to activate the next until ultimately delivering you to the final destination.”

  “Which you won’t tell me.”

  “I cannot divulge that information.”

  “Right.” I snort. “But I still don’t understand how you know where to go. I don’t remember seeing anything indicating specific street names. Or Chinatown. Or—”

  “Chinatown was evident,” he interrupts, “from the context. The street corner was deduced from visual reference points that were included in the memory and cross-referenced with historical databases of city maps.”

  “Okay,” I allow, “but how did you know what date to come to? How did you know this all took place in 2032?”

  “I repeat,” he says stiffly, “it’s in the memory.”

  I shake my head. “No, it isn’t. I…” But my voice trails off as I flash back to the strange foreign symbols that were written in the sky and on the fronts of all the stores.

  Chinatown.

  And suddenly it makes sense.

  They aren’t symbols.

  They’re Chinese characters. And I can read them.

  I take another look at the memory. At the vertical writing in the sky. And everything becomes clear.

  They are numbers.

  2

  0

  3

  2

  24

  REALITY

  My mouth falls open just as the friendly female voice comes floating back into the vehicle. “We are approximately two minutes away from your destination.”

  “Why is there a year written in the sky?” I ask Kaelen accusingly, as though he were the one who put it there.

  “Technically, it’s a digital projection,” he replies. “A part of the annual Chinese New Year.”

  “What is the Chinese New Year?”

  Kaelen opens his mouth to answer but it’s the car who speaks first; obviously my question triggered some kind of preprogrammed response.

  “The Chinese New Year is a wonderful occasion,” she replies in her gracious voice. “Honoring the start of a new cycle in the Chinese lunar calendar. There is a large-scale celebration every year. The most popular event is the parade. It begins shortly. I’m sure you wil
l have a lovely time.”

  Celebration.

  Parade.

  “It happens on the same day every year?” I ask. “That’s how you knew to come here today?”

  “Actually, no,” Kaelen admits. “The date varies each year as the Chinese calendar aligns with the Western calendar, but the date—February 11—was easy to calculate once the year was revealed to us.”

  I sigh, grateful to finally understand.

  But still, there’s a disturbing tug in my stomach. Something is not adding up.

  “Wait a minute.” I think aloud, retracing everything that’s happened since I awoke. “You pulled me from that fire and brought me here.”

  Kaelen gazes out his window but I watch the back of his head fall into a terse nod.

  “Because you knew the first memory took place in the year 2032.”

  Another nod.

  “But that would mean,” I deduce, slowly putting the pieces together in my mind, “you must have seen the memory before we got here. Otherwise you wouldn’t know where to go.”

  His posture stiffens, a subtle alert that I’ve discovered something he didn’t want me to discover. He doesn’t turn around.

  “When did you first see this memory?” I demand of him. “When did you first look inside my head?”

  But he doesn’t answer. And suddenly I feel the car pulling to a stop and this time the door on Kaelen’s side swings open.

  “We have arrived at the intersection of Canal and Elizabeth Streets,” the cab announces. “Please watch your step and have a wonderful day.”

  Kaelen hurriedly gets out of the cab and I scoot across the seat to follow after him.

  “Kaelen—” I say, but I’m cut off the moment I step outside and we’re sucked into a massive crowd of people.

  I’m crushed from all four sides as the wall of bodies tightens around us. Tugged this way and that as though we’re trapped inside a wave. Then the noise starts.

  The giant booming.

  But it’s no longer safely contained in my mind, now it’s real. And infinitely louder.

  It echoes in my teeth.

  It vibrates my bones.

  “What is that?” I call out, attempting to cover my ears. No one else seems to be bothered by it.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  Kaelen cringes with each strike, clearly having the same problem that I’m having.

  “Drums!” he calls back over the noise.

  Drums?

  I rack my mind for a definition but come up short. Regardless of what they’re called, they’re deafening.

  And they’re only getting louder. Closer. Faster.

  BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!

  The people around me start to titter and point toward the sky. I look up and see it. The digital projection, as Kaelen called it. The Chinese characters. The year:

  2032.

  The crowd erupts in applause. I keep my gaze skyward as tiny flecks of color start to rain down. Exactly as it was in the memory.

  I catch a yellow one in my hand and study it, noticing that it’s completely harmless—made out of paper.

  “Confetti,” Kaelen shouts over the noise, clearly reading my confusion.

  The drums get louder still and the people start to chant and yell and cheer. And that’s when I see it.

  The black-and-gold-eyed beast.

  Rising in the distance. Floating majestically into the air. Flying toward us.

  I feel the scream bubble up inside me, the fear telling me to run. But when I glance around I’m surprised by everyone else’s reactions. Their faces don’t show fear or trepidation. They show only delight.

  Even the children.

  I look to Kaelen for another explanation, grateful when he has one. “It’s a dragon,” he says over the roar. “It’s made of paper and plastic.”

  Then a smirk flashes over his face. “Don’t worry,” he says, echoing my exact words from the elevator, “it won’t hurt you.”

  Irritation flickers through me and I shoot him a look. But Kaelen doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy pushing his way through the mass of people and gesturing for me to follow.

  “This way!” he calls.

  When we finally break through the last of the bystanders, I see that we’ve reached the opening of a quiet street. With seemingly everyone in the city at the celebration, the street is deserted.

  Just like in my memory.

  I feel a chill of familiarity as we make our way down the sidewalk. I take in each storefront, mentally ticking them off as I compare them to the versions in my mind.

  And suddenly I know exactly what I need to do.

  Where I need to go.

  The same strange pull I felt when I was remembering this place pulls me now. But once again, because the sensation is no longer filtered through my mind—because it’s real and happening to me—it’s so much stronger.

  Kaelen falls in step behind me as I stride purposefully down the street, searching for the narrow metal staircase with the blue door at the bottom.

  I find it half a block away, and just as I suspected, when I peer over the railing, down into the stairwell, I see the old man standing there. Waiting.

  His wispy white beard is exactly as I remembered it.

  His thin, slanted eyes are exactly the same.

  When our eyes meet, as I knew they would, he opens his mouth and in a soft, gentle voice, lilting in his thick Chinese accent, he says, “I help you…”

  And I whisper, “Yes.”

  25

  HELP

  The old man leads us silently through the blue door and into a tiny cramped room that smells like trees mixed with oranges mixed with Mrs. Pattinson’s pigeon pie.

  A gentle chime drifts through the space, repeating and reverberating in several pitches. It immediately puts me at ease.

  To our right, secured to the wall, are rows and rows of shelves, each one housing hundreds of glass bottles with Chinese markings on the sides. I tilt my head to read one, translating it awkwardly as White Wood Ear.

  The wall to our left is covered in various drawings and charts and diagrams that don’t make any sense to me.

  It soon becomes apparent that I help you is probably the only English the old Chinese man knows because once we’re inside, he leads us to a table with four chairs, mumbling, “Please sit down,” in a dialect I can’t identify, but understand nonetheless.

  Kaelen and I lower ourselves into the chairs and the old man sits across from us. He gestures ambiguously to me. “I help you?”

  Kaelen immediately takes control of the situation, leaning forward in his chair and addressing the man in his native tongue. “Do you recognize this girl?” he asks.

  The old man shakes his head and then adds, “Pretty.”

  I look to Kaelen as if to say, What now?

  Because the truth is, I have no idea what to do now. The memory ended with me walking down those steps. Kaelen said I would know the trigger when I saw it. That it would immediately activate the next memory, but so far I have felt or seen nothing unusual.

  “I help you,” the man repeats in English.

  Confused, I look to Kaelen, who shrugs and nods.

  “Yes,” I say in the man’s language. “You help me. Please.”

  He extends his arms and reaches across the table to me. I glance down warily at his hands. They’re chapped and wrinkled. He wiggles his fingers at me, as though he expects me to touch them.

  I look to Kaelen again and he signals for me to do it.

  My heart is starting to beat faster, my stomach is starting to churn. But eventually I obey, slowly pushing my own hands forward, my fingers hovering inches above his.

  He reaches up and grabs both wrists, one in either hand, causing me to jump. Then he flips my hands over, revealing my black mark. I’m terrified that he’s going to say something about it, ask me what it is, but he doesn’t. He just places his fingers firmly against my veins and closes his eyes.

  He seems to fall into a
deep sleep. As though he’s been deactivated. I glance over at Kaelen, whose gaze is firmly locked on the old man’s hands.

  The man starts to hum softly to himself.

  “Your blood,” he says. “It is strong.”

  I stay silent, letting him continue.

  “Very strong,” he says. “Like warrior.”

  He goes quiet again, his face twisting in concentration. The wrinkles around his eyes and forehead deepen. Stretch. A tremor seems to pass through him, beginning at his hands and working its way down, through his torso. His body is trembling and I’m not sure what to do. Is he dying?

  And then, abruptly, his eyes snap open. They are wide. Full of fear.

  “No,” he starts to mumble. “No. It isn’t right. It isn’t right.”

  He drops my hands against the table with a thud and backs away. His chair scrapes loudly against the wood floor as he scrambles to push it farther and farther back, until he hits the wall of the confined space and is forced to stop.

  All the while, he never takes his eyes off me. “It shouldn’t be,” he says in a petrified voice. “You shouldn’t be.”

  I have no idea what’s going on or what he’s talking about. But he’s completely terrifying me. I want to get out of here. I don’t want to stay in this room with this crazy man any longer.

  I push my chair back as well and start to rise to my feet, but just like that early morning on the Pattinsons’ farm, something forces me back down. Shoving at my shoulders. Dragging me toward the ground.

  I collapse into my seat as a bolt of hot searing pain rips into my skull. Tearing at my brain. Shooting out of my eyes. I moan in agony, thrusting my body forward, sinking my head between my knees. I cradle it in my hands, squeezing my temples, trying to push out the throbbing. It’s unbearable. My head is going to explode.

  “Sera.” I hear Kaelen’s voice but it feels like it’s coming from centuries away. “Sera, what’s happening?”

  Another spear slices from ear to ear, penetrating everything in between. I let out a cry of anguish. It’s like something is inside my brain, desperate to get out. Pushing. Shoving. Cutting.

  What is happening to me?

  The room spins. I shut my eyes tight but I’m still rotating.