The wall screen has changed. I’m now staring at a three-dimensional projection of a life-size woman who appears to be standing in the middle of the room. Next to her is a large clear container filled with tiny white balls that have numbers printed on the side.
“What is this?” I ask.
“It’s the Magnum Ball Lotto.”
I watch as the balls in the container start to jumble and hop and dance until one of them is blown into a tube at the top and rolls all the way down to the base. The woman standing in the living room picks it up and reads the number aloud. She continues to do this until seven numbers have been read.
Cody, who has been standing directly in front of her, slouches and swipes his fingertip across the glass coffee table, causing the small white-and-orange square to minimize into the corner.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t win,” he says dejectedly.
I lean forward and drag the digital lotto ticket back into the center of the coffee table. “How does it work?”
“Switch to game mode,” he commands the wall screen. Then he sinks back into the couch and scoops up his controller again. “Twice a week they pick seven random numbers. If your numbers match, you win the jackpot. It was up to $1.1 billion this week.”
“How many numbers are there in total?”
“Eighty-five.”
“But,” I protest, “the chance that you would have the same seven numbers as the ones randomly selected from eighty-five options is one in 200 million.”
Cody rolls his eyes. “That’s right. I forgot, you’re a walking calculator.”
I stare down at the numbers on his ticket.
They seem familiar somehow. But I can’t remember why.
“Why did you select these numbers?” I ask.
Cody sighs and unpauses the game. But I don’t pick up my controller. He continues playing without me. “They just feel lucky to me. Someday I’m convinced they’ll win.”
And suddenly I know where I’ve seen them before. These are the exact numbers that were displayed on the lotto ticket I found this morning. With last week’s date on it.
“Do you play the same combination of numbers every time?”
His gaze is still intently locked on an aircraft carrier that his avatar just boarded. “Yeah.”
“How long have you been doing that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably since I was old enough to play.”
“And when was that?”
He sounds irritated by my constant questioning. “Eighteen. Now will you please get back in the game? I can’t defeat these guys on my own.”
But I don’t touch my controller. “You’ve been playing these exact numbers for fourteen years?”
“Yeah,” he repeats, distractedly.
This jump-starts my heart. “Why these numbers?”
“Like I said, they just feel lucky. Call it a hunch.”
A hunch.
“Cody,” I say, grabbing the controller from his hand.
“Hey!” he protests, but I ignore him and drop it onto the couch.
“Where did you get these numbers?”
He leans back with a scowl. “I don’t know. They’ve always just been in my head.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kaelen materialize in the dining room. My time is up. But I raise my hand in the air, signaling him to give me a second.
I’m onto something. I know it. “For how long?” I press Cody.
He opens his mouth to answer but suddenly nothing comes out except a strange, mouse-like squeak.
“Cody?” I prompt.
“I…” He stumbles, jumping slightly when he, too, notices that Kaelen has arrived. I snap my fingers in front of his face, keeping him focused.
“How long have these numbers just been in your head?”
Cody rubs his hands on his pants, leaving behind a sweaty streak. “I … don’t know.”
I nod. “You do know.”
His eyes drift upward and to the left as he struggles to remember. “I…” He tries a third time.
“Think,” I command him. “Think hard.”
“I … guess since”—his eyes close—“I was about thirteen.”
47
SUBMERGED
I’m out of my seat, running into the kitchen before Cody even opens his eyes again. I tap on the glass countertop, bringing it out of its hibernation.
“Numbers,” I tell Kaelen, who is by my side in a flash. “She left the final clue in a sequence of numbers.”
With a swoop of his hand, Kaelen clears the clutter of virtual pictures, documents, and videos in front of us and opens a blank white tableau. I grab a pen device, just like the one in Cody’s lab, from a holster on the refrigerator door and scribble down the numbers Cody plays twice a week in the lottery.
“Are you sure about this?” Kaelen asks, tilting his head to read what I’ve written.
“Maxxer knows my brain is designed to pick up patterns. It only makes sense that she would try to speak to me in numbers.”
I study the sequence, immediately noticing they are listed in ascending order. “Cody!” I call back toward the living room. “Is this the order you remember them in?”
Silence follows and I lean around the corner of the kitchen wall to see that Cody is still sitting on the couch staring into space, looking dazed.
“Cody?” I repeat.
“No.” I hear his quiet mumble. And then, “The lotto machine puts them in that order when it prints the ticket.”
“So what order do you remember them in?”
He doesn’t reply for a minute. I think he’s gone into shock. Nineteen years of his life he’s been carrying this around. Never knowing what it was. Never understanding why. Never expecting that eventually a girl would appear out of thin air, claiming to be from another century, asking him about a series of seemingly insignificant numbers in his mind, telling him that they mean something. That they lead to something.
I guess I can’t fault him for feeling just the slightest bit stupefied.
But finally, he speaks. His voice faint. Trancelike. He lists the numbers one by one, pausing for long stretches of time between them. As though reciting each digit robs him of every ounce of energy he has left and he has to wait until he can replenish before starting again.
I erase the original string and transcribe each one as he announces it, until I have a new sequence staring back at me.
I let out a small gasp and cover my mouth.
“What?” Kaelen asks, his eyes scouring the digits.
“The password. On Cody’s computer. It’s the same sequence. I watched him input it earlier today. And in the memory…”
“He was inputting an unseen password into a computer,” Kaelen finishes the thought as we arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously.
“That was supposed to be the trigger,” I deduce, feeling more confident than ever. “The password. It’s why I felt drawn to it in the memory. The sequence is telling me where and when to go next.”
Kaelen and I both stare at it, our eyes focused, our lips pressed together. Concentrating. Searching for an indication of time and place.
I circle the 32. “This has to be the year.”
“You don’t know that,” Kaelen disagrees. “Any of those numbers could indicate a year.”
I shake my head. “Why suddenly send me to a whole different year? She wanted me here. Every clue has been in this year.”
“Maybe because he’s here,” Kaelen suggests, glancing back at Cody, who still hasn’t moved.
But I refute him again. “He’s in a lot of years. There’s a reason she sent me to 2032. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Okay,” Kaelen concedes. “What about the other numbers?”
I study the sequence. “If 32 is the year,” I say, pointing to it, “then it’s only logical the two numbers before it are also part of the date.”
“7 12 32,” Kaelen reads aloud.
“Ju
ly 12, 2032.” Excitement is boiling up inside me. And even though I know we have different motivations—even though I know once he acquires what he’s been sent for he won’t hesitate to rip me away from Zen—I feel a kind of bond forming between us. The connection of a shared goal. A common ground.
I glance at Kaelen out of the corner of my eye and for a split second our gazes connect. That energy exchange starts. That pull. He flashes me the smallest of smiles.
But the expression itself isn’t what surprises me. It’s the emotion behind it.
It feels genuine.
Real.
Not programmed.
I blink and focus back on the countertop.
“If that’s the date,” Kaelen speculates, “then the next two figures must be the time.”
With a flick of his fingers, he pulls the 21 and the 15 out of the sequence and places them above the original string.
21:15.
“9:15 in the evening.”
We both study the last two numbers: 77 and 78.
“When I was with Maxxer I received a message from Alixter,” I point out. “It was a pair of two-digit numbers, like this.”
“GPS coordinates?” Kaelen suggests.
I nod. “That’s what I’m thinking. She knows I would recognize them because I followed them once before. And if that’s the case, then she’s telling me to go to this location”—I point to the last two numbers—“on this date”—I indicate the first two numbers—“at this exact time.” I point to the middle sequence.
Kaelen is one step ahead of me, tapping an icon at the bottom of the counter. A huge map of New York spreads across the glass, taking up every inch of the surface.
He drags the coordinates into a search box above the map.
Immediately the map morphs and we’re flying over terrain, heading east, through the streets of New York City, off the edge of a bridge, and into the sea. We travel over miles and miles of ocean, veering up. We cross more land. I catch sight of labels on the map.
Ireland.
Norway.
Sweden.
Russia.
The terrain has turned snowy white. And still we travel upward. Into a swatch of crystal-blue water teeming with massive chunks of ice. The map identifies it as the Kara Sea.
And then suddenly it stops. A small, blinking orange dot indicates that we’ve arrived at the location of the coordinates.
Near the top of the world.
In the middle of nowhere.
“Where is that?” I ask, tilting my head to try to find a landmass nearby. An island. Even, perhaps, something floating in the water. But there doesn’t seem to be anything around for miles.
Of course, I think. Where would you go if you never wanted to be found? What location would ensure that anyone who tried to transesse there without an exact date and time would die?
“She’s on the water?” Kaelen says, squinting at the map.
I shake my head, remembering the lesson I learned the last time I followed GPS coordinates: they’re two dimensional. They only track left and right. Not up and down.
“No,” I say with certainty, tapping the blinking orange dot. “She’s under it.”
48
UNSHAKEN
The lamps have all been turned off in the guest room. The only light emanates from Cody’s computer and the various monitors surrounding Zen’s bed. I’ve asked for five minutes alone and, surprisingly, Kaelen has granted it.
He and Cody wait in the living room. When I left, Cody had gone back to playing a game—a different one this time. Clearly something more modern because for the past five minutes, life-size three-dimensional street fighters have been battling each other in the middle of the living room. They look so real, I don’t know how you can tell the difference between the game and reality.
Maybe you can’t.
Maybe this is all a game.
A game about a sixteen-year-old girl with golden-brown hair and purple eyes who can lift heavy objects, run like the wind, speak every language, mentally calculate like a computer. Who is beautiful and strong. Who was created by science to be perfect but whose life is far from it.
In this level, she is forced to find a cure to save the boy she loves while being tormented by the company who made her. If she is to survive and move on, she must find the missing scientist, the only one who knows how to save her soul mate, all the while trying to fight the strange, inexplicable, and completely unfounded attraction she feels for the agent who was sent to apprehend her.
And then, when it’s over, regardless of whether I succeed or fail, I’ll simply switch off the console and go back to my real life. Whatever that may be.
If only …
I close the door quietly behind me. I can still hear the sounds of death and avatars falling in the next room from Cody’s game. I try to block it out. To focus everything I have left on the boy in front of me.
The one who found me brainwashed and helpless on the other side of that concrete wall. The one who convinced me that everything I knew, everything I ever knew, was a lie. The one who risked everything to take me away from it all.
The one who saved me.
And now it’s my turn to save him.
I pull a chair up to the side of the bed and sit down. Zen’s eyes are closed. His chest rises and falls in an uneven rhythm.
“Zen,” I begin. But it quickly occurs to me that I don’t know what to say. I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. With Kaelen. I’ll be going to find Maxxer. Going to find the cure.
But I don’t really want to explain all that to him. For one, I’m not sure he can even hear me. But mostly because, if I somehow can’t return, I don’t want that to be the last thing I ever said to him.
The truth of the matter is, I can’t be sure that I’ll ever come back here.
Although he’s never said it outright, I’m confident that Kaelen’s mission wasn’t just to get the cure from Maxxer and then leave me to go on my way and live out my life with Zen. He has his own motives. His own plan outside the one we’ve created together.
And I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to outsmart him. Outmaneuver him.
“I’m like you … Only better.”
So what do I say to Zen now? How can I possibly describe what I’m feeling?
I’m scared isn’t enough.
I’m sorry isn’t enough.
Even I love you doesn’t seem like enough.
And goodbye will only make me lose my nerve to go.
My time alone with him is running out and I fear that I may have to leave him with only silence.
But somehow, from somewhere inside me, the answer comes. I know what I have to say. The only thing I can say.
Although they are borrowed words and stolen letters, the meaning—the soul—belongs to me.
I press my lips together to keep myself from shuddering as I slowly reach out and press two fingers to the center of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. My throat is constricting. Tears are burning my eyes. But I manage to recite the entire poem—our poem—in a clear, unbroken voice.
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
I hear the creak of a footstep on the other side of the door. Kaelen coming to tell me that my time is up. I expect the door to open but, surpr
isingly, it remains closed, allowing me a few more private seconds with Zen.
I bend down close to his ear and whisper, “I am not shaken.”
Then I place my lips to his, feeling the fire of his fever burning me. Feeling the lingering threads of his life reach out to me. Entangle me. Weave together with mine. Creating something that can never be duplicated.
I invite it in, finding solace in the heat. The energy. Letting it spread through me. I commit it to memory. Not knowing how long his lips will stay warm. Not knowing how far away I will be if they cool forever.
Miles?
Months?
Years?
Decades?
Regardless of what happens next, this is what I want to take with me. This is what I want to remember. And even if they win, even if I never return, even if they bring me back and destroy my identity and wipe my mind completely clean, this is what I will always have.
This is what will remain unforgotten.
49
MEANING
I step out into the hallway and close the door behind me. When I reach the living room, Cody looks up from his game. “How is he?”
I shrug. “The same.”
He pauses the game. “I’ll go check on his fluids and get a download of his vitals.”
Cody passes me on the way to the guest room. I stop him right as he’s about to disappear behind the door. “Cody?”
Cody looks at me. “Yeah?”
“If I don’t come back,” I say, my gaze flickering momentarily to Kaelen. “If something happens,” I amend, “take care of him. However you can.”
Cody holds my gaze for a moment, offering me silent agreement, before slipping behind the door. “Good luck” is the last thing he says to me.
Unforgotten Page 23
