Unforgotten

by Jessica Brody

  “I can’t,” I whisper hoarsely, trying not to throw up from the dizziness. “I can’t do it.”

  And suddenly I understand what Alixter meant when he said scramble. Kaelen warned me his mind would be incomprehensible but I never expected this. It’s pure chaos. I’ll never be able to find anything in here. And certainly not before our tracking devices grow back, or the med bot returns.

  “Sera,” Kaelen urges. “You have to try.”

  I cringe and dive back into the disorder, allowing myself to be swept up in the churning of faces and landscapes and mathematical equations. As the imagery whirls by, I try to catch a single memory and hold on to it long enough to see it and possibly classify it.

  But no matter how hard I try, nothing works.

  I glance down at my wrist. The bleeding has stopped. A thin scab has already started to form.

  I want to cry in frustration. I have to find it! I have to figure out what Rio did with those other two doses.

  But that’s like trying to find one droplet of water in a stormy ocean. I’m sorting through a lifetime of memories here. Memories that have been completely muddled by Alixter’s Modifier.

  I reach out and grab Rio’s hand, holding it tightly. “Rio,” I plead. “Can you hear me? Does any part of you know that I’m even here? It’s me, Sera. Please. I need your help. I need to find the two doses of the repressor that Maxxer left you. You have to remember what you did with them.”

  I stare at his lifeless face, frozen in time. His unblinking eyes. His slightly agape mouth.

  I get no response.

  I think back to the memory of the night Rio gave me the transession gene. The night I asked him to erase all my memories and give me a fresh start.

  I remember the way he looked at me. With such sadness in his eyes. Such remorse.

  “I’m sorry about everything. Everything I did to you,” he said to me.

  And then I called him something. Something I’ve never been able to call anyone. And I never will.

  “Dad,” I whisper aloud now, tears streaming down my cheeks. “He’s going to die. I can’t let that happen. I love him. Please help me.”

  Something happens then. For just a moment, the briefest flit of a moment, the disorderly bustle of memories slows to a stop. As though someone turned off the power that was fueling them. The earsplitting noise mutes into a hushed garble.

  “Look!” Kaelen whispers.

  I lift my gaze to see Rio’s eyes flutter closed and then open again. Just once.

  “I think he can hear you!” Kaelen adds.

  A single moving picture rises to the surface. Floats upward, through the chaos, through the wreckage of his mind, and lingers in front of me.

  It’s a picture of a girl. A young girl. She looks to be about the same age as Jane. Maybe five or six.

  She jumps up and down giddily on a springy bed. Laughing and kicking the air between each bounce.

  A deep voice booms out, frightening her. I recognize it immediately as Rio’s. “I hope you’re not jumping on the bed again,” it warns.

  The little girl immediately falls to her knees and clambers under the covers. Giggling quietly to herself. She looks innocently at the open doorway. At Rio. Her big brown eyes shining.

  “No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” She sings the familiar tune. The one he taught her. It’s her favorite.

  His heart melts. And despite his earlier warning tone, he can’t stay mad.

  “It’s way past your bedtime,” Rio says. Softly. Tenderly.

  “One story,” the girl bargains.

  Rio relents with a sigh. He can’t say no to her. He never could.

  “Fine,” he says. “Which one?”

  She flashes him a look that he knows all too well. He translates it as Don’t be silly.

  “Of course,” he answers, and he pulls a worn, tattered green book from a table near the bed.

  As he brings it over to her, the title flashes into view.

  The Giving Tree.

  He sits down on the bed and the little girl snuggles up close to him, entwining her little body in his arm. He flips open the book and begins to read aloud.

  “Once there was a tree…” He turns the page.

  “Can I turn?” she asks hopefully.

  “Okay,” he allows. “But remember, you have to be very careful. This book is older than I am.”

  “That’s old,” she says wisely.

  He tickles her, pretending to be angry.

  Her giggles echo around the pink bedroom, louder than they should. Until everything fades into white and her joyful high-pitched laughter is all I can hear.

  The raucous, deafening noise returns an instant later, banging into my head. Followed quickly by the chaotic swirl of images.

  I open my eyes and stare at Rio, wondering who that girl was. Wondering how much about this man I don’t know. Probably everything.

  There’s a tugging familiarity about her.

  Not as though I knew her, but as though I knew of her. One level removed from my recognition. Like a memory of a memory. A dream of a dream.

  “What?” Kaelen asks, breaking into my thoughts. “What did you see?”

  But his voice is muffled through all the noise in my head. I pull my gaze away from Rio and look at Kaelen. His face is swimming. I can’t seem to focus on it. I blink again and again but reality is no match for the anarchy that’s playing in my mind, echoing off Rio’s ruined brain.

  “Disconnect me,” I tell him, cringing against the bombardment.

  “But…” he argues.

  “Just do it,” I tell him.

  Reluctantly he taps the plastic screen and gradually the noise fades into nothing. I breathe a sigh of relief, relishing the silence. It takes me a moment to steady myself. I feel like I’ve been rotating in circles at two hundred miles per hour.

  I hold my head in my hands and take deep breaths. When the room finally stops spinning and my surroundings start to make sense, I release my hands and look up again. Kaelen’s bright aquamarine eyes settle into focus.

  “I know,” I tell him quietly.

  “You know what?”

  I rise to my feet. “I know where he hid the last two doses.”

  63

  HOME

  The house feels different in person. In the memories that Zen stole for me, it felt larger somehow. More spacious. It’s actually quite small and somewhat cramped.

  It has a warm energy about it, though.

  Somehow I always thought that it would feel cold and isolated. Like the prison cell where I spent too many long nights in 1609. As prison cells go, I suppose this one isn’t terrible.

  I appreciate that Rio attempted to make it nice for me. Homey.

  I guess he felt it was the least he could do.

  I know we’re running out of time. The scab on my arm is already healing. I stare down at a small speck of black peeking through the corner of the wound. My skin is growing back. My DNA is doing its job. Re-creating the tracking device.

  In a matter of minutes, the satellites will scan me.

  An alert message will appear on someone’s screen. In someone’s head. On someone’s radar. And it will all be over. Alixter will know that I’m here.

  But I need to do this.

  I walk slowly from room to room, grazing my fingertips over the walls, the wood paneling, every square inch of the furniture. Committing it to memory all over again.

  I need them to be real. The memories I have of this place where I lived. Where I slept. Where I fell in love.

  I need them to be mine.

  Not stolen. Not triggered. Not transferred from a glowing green cube. But mine. Made in the moment. And stored directly in my head.

  “Sera,” Kaelen warns from somewhere behind me, “we don’t have time for this. My tracker is already 25 percent healed.”

  I ignore him and keep walking. Down the hallway, turning the knob on the first door.

  A bedroom. My bedroom.

&n
bsp; I don’t know how I know but I do. It just feels like mine.

  The furnishings are sparse, reminding me of our quarters at the Pattinsons’ house. There’s a bed, a nightstand, a desk, a chair, and two lamps. A picture frame hangs above the bed, the image cycling through several different landscapes. Sunrises. Meadows. Seashores.

  There’s a window in one of the other walls. It looks into the yard. Green grass surrounded by the high concrete wall that Zen used to climb when he would come see me.

  The comforter on the bed is a light lavender. I wonder if I picked it out. Or requested it. Was it my favorite color? Because of my eyes?

  Or was I not given a choice in that either?

  “Sera!” Kaelen calls from the doorway. “We need to move. NOW. Where is the antidote?”

  With a sigh, I stand up and walk out of the bedroom, glancing back longingly. Part of me doesn’t want to leave. Part of me wants to curl up on that bed and wait. Wait until Zen comes back. Wait until he climbs over that wall again. Wait until my life becomes simple once more.

  But I know that can never happen.

  I close the door and continue back up the hallway until I reach the living room. Kaelen stands in the middle, looking terribly out of place. He doesn’t belong in this house. He doesn’t belong in these memories.

  This house is mine. Mine and Zen’s. Mine and Rio’s.

  But he’s here anyway. Reminding me of why we came. Why we risked everything to be here.

  I snap to attention and make my way to the bookshelf on the far back wall of the room. I scan the titles rapidly, running my finger along the spines.

  “Why are there so many?” Kaelen asks.

  “Rio used to collect them.”

  “Are you looking for one in particular?”

  “Yes. The Giving Tree.” I don’t look up. “I remember seeing it in one of my memories of this place. It was on the bookshelf behind me when I was sitting on that couch.”

  “Why do you think that it has anything to do with this?”

  I decide not to tell Kaelen about the little girl in the memory. For some reason, it feels like a betrayal of Rio’s trust. Like he shared that memory with me and only me. And I have a feeling if that one memory was capable of rising above all that messy chaos, then it was significant to him.

  She was significant to him.

  And if he wants to keep it a secret, then I will help him do that.

  So instead, I just reply vaguely, “It was important to Rio.”

  Kaelen appears next to me and starts scanning the collection. There are over two hundred books on this shelf. My finger grazes past A Wrinkle in Time, the book I was reading when I first met Zen, and my heart flip-flops.

  I glance down at my wrist. The thin black line is 50 percent complete.

  I force my eyes to move faster, whizzing past the titles until finally they flicker upon the familiar faded green spine. The white letters.

  The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.

  I carefully pull it out and flip it open. I fan through every single page, taking in the text in a matter of seconds. Absorbing the story. Realizing instantly how very meaningful it is.

  A tree who gave everything she had to the boy she loved.

  Her apples, her branches, her leaves, her trunk, her shade.

  Until there was almost nothing left for her to give.

  I turn the final page, and there, in shallow compartments carved into the thick board of the book’s back cover, are two tiny vials of sparkling, clear liquid.

  Without speaking a word, I carefully remove each one and close the book, placing it back on the shelf.

  Kaelen hurries over and stares in amazement at the two bottles of salvation in my hand.

  “I can’t believe how much trouble we’ve gone through just to find that,” he remarks.

  I nod, releasing a small chuckle.

  It is amazing how much power these two vials hold. Zen is sick. Dying. And this, this tiny thing in my hand, no more than few drops, is the only thing that will save him.

  “What are you going to do with the other one?” Kaelen asks, leaning over and gazing into my hands.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. I guess I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “Save it in case of emergencies, I suppose.”

  “I’m rather insulted that you wouldn’t think to give it to me.”

  The voice comes from behind me, causing me to jump. The vials slip from my fingers and plummet toward the ground. Kaelen moves fast. Faster than I’ve ever seen him move before. His hands are extended in front of him, cradling the tiny bottles before they even hit.

  When I turn around I already know who I’ll see.

  His voice is ingrained in my memory. Burned into my skin. The fire may not have been able to leave a lasting scar, but his voice? His voice will stay with me forever.

  He greets me with a cold, snakelike smile. “Welcome home, Sera.”

  64

  PAIRED

  Dr. Jans Alixter sits in a chair that, similar to Rio’s hospital bed, hovers just above the floor. Like it’s floating magically in the air. I immediately notice how frail he looks. His skin is yellow and sallow. His eyes are sunken in. The same dark purple hues I saw on Zen’s face shadow his as well.

  And that’s when I realize what the chair is for. He can’t stand on his own. He’s too ill.

  “Alixter,” I breathe out his name, feeling the pure hatred on my tongue as it passes.

  He’s flanked on either side by two burly-looking guards. I don’t recognize any of them as the men who came to find me in 2013. But then again, if they had the transession gene in them, they’re probably sick, too. Maybe even dead.

  “I see you’ve located what we’ve been looking for,” Alixter says, grinning at me and gesturing toward the two vials, which are still protectively cradled in Kaelen’s hands.

  I look at Kaelen, who is back on his feet. But for some reason, he won’t meet my gaze.

  “Kaelen.” Alixter turns his attention toward him. “Thank you for bringing back our little lost merchandise here.”

  He remains silent but his head bows in the slightest of nods.

  “He didn’t bring me back,” I argue. “I came here willingly.”

  “Are you quite sure about that?” Alixter counters, breaking into a ragged cough. One of his guards hands him a handkerchief. He wipes his mouth and the white cloth comes back speckled with blood.

  “After all,” Alixter continues, clearing his throat, “you’re here. With the antidote. Just as I commanded.”

  The truth is, I’m not sure. Not about anything.

  How did Alixter know we were here? Our tracking devices haven’t completely re-formed. Did Kaelen somehow get a message to him?

  I turn to Kaelen and stretch out my hand. “Kaelen,” I say gently, “please give me the vials.”

  But he doesn’t move. He seems to be frozen. As though his body has stopped working completely.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I lie, glaring spitefully at Alixter. “He doesn’t follow your orders anymore. He follows his own.” I peer back at Kaelen, standing inches from me. “Right?”

  But again, he doesn’t answer.

  Alixter feigns pity. “Awww … that’s cute. Did you really think your charms would work on him like they did on poor Zen? You don’t actually think I would let that happen, do you? That I wouldn’t protect against that sort of thing when I had him created? Do you really think I’m that stupid, Sera?” Alixter makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “Well, that’s just offensive.”

  “Kaelen,” I urge one more time, pronouncing his name gently, compassionately. I take a slow, cautious step toward him. He flinches and instinctively retreats. Like I’m some kind of dangerous criminal. Like he’s actually afraid of me. I freeze. My heart is pounding.

  This can’t be happening.

  I refuse to believe that this was just another manipulation. I refuse to believe that he tricked me.

  I know him. I felt him.
We felt each other. We shared something.

  He changed.

  I saw it in his eyes. I saw the shift. I simply can’t bring myself to accept that it was all a lie. All part of an act. Part of his programming.

  Alixter lets out a throaty, sinister laugh that sends a thousand tiny ripples down my back. “See, that’s just priceless,” he says, wheezing.

  He pushes a flat button on the arm of his chair and it starts to glide smoothly toward us. I retreat, my back hitting the bookshelf.

  “Kaelen,” Alixter says in an authoritative tone, “congratulations. You’ve successfully completed your mission. I knew I could count on you. Now hand over the antidote.”

  He reaches out, palm up, and waits.

  I wait, too, my breath caught in my chest.

  I watch Kaelen. His face twitches ever so subtly. The sign of that same internal battle being waged.

  “Kaelen.” I repeat his name. “Remember the submarine. Remember the kiss. Remember how that felt. Hold on to that. That is real. Whatever sensation you’re experiencing right now, whatever power he holds over you, it’s fake. Please, Kaelen. Just give me the vials.”

  His face flinches again but he still won’t look at me. His gaze is locked on Alixter, who’s smirking smugly.

  “Come on,” Alixter coaxes. “Hand them over. This is an essential part of your mission.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Kaelen. Give them to me.”

  Kaelen’s foot rises, taking an indecisive step. I can’t tell which way he’s headed. Which side is going to win.

  But as soon as his foot lands, I know I’ve lost.

  He’s headed directly toward Alixter. Away from me.

  “NO!” I scream. I launch myself toward Kaelen, letting my legs carry me as fast as they were built to go. I land on top of his shoulder, but he easily shoves me off with a flick of his arm, sending me flying across the room. I hit the bookshelf hard, feeling it slam into my back. Several of Rio’s precious antiques come pouring off the shelf, piling on top of me on the floor.

  I look up to see Kaelen gently placing the vials in Alixter’s outstretched hand.