Unchanged

by Jessica Brody

  “Connecting to your vitals now,” Sevan says.

  I’ve always liked Sevan. Despite the nature of his job—invading people’s minds—he’s nice to me. He tells me what he’s doing as he’s doing it. After all this time, I don’t need each step of the process explained to me. I know his computer is linking to the signal transmitted from the nanosensors that live in my bloodstream, sending data and information to his system about my physical condition.

  But it’s reassuring to hear him say it anyway.

  I lean back and wait for him to inject me with the serum that will send me into a dreamless sleep and steal hours from my life. It will only seem like a few seconds to me. I will wake up in this chair feeling groggy and disoriented. And there’s always a chance that some of my memories will be gone when I do.

  Like the night before we left the compound. When I woke up in Sevan’s lab with hours missing from my day. I knew I had seen something. Something I wasn’t supposed to see. And now I’ll never know what it was.

  The same thing could very well happen tonight.

  It’s impossible for every single memory in our brains to be reviewed by a human being, so the scans are programmed to look for abnormalities. Thoughts and memories that vary from the everyday routine of our lives. They’re usually accompanied by nanosensor reports of elevated body temperatures, augmented heartbeats, strained breathing.

  All the things that will surely expose me for the deviant I still am.

  “Okay, looks like we’re ready.” Sevan glances one last time at his screen and then picks up the injector. He offers me a smile before placing it against my neck. Even though I know he doesn’t mean it to be, it’s the most menacing gesture I’ve ever seen. “See you in a few hours.”

  I feel the pressure of the injector against my skin and a moment later everything grows heavy as my brain shuts down and the familiar wave of darkness consumes my consciousness.

  By now I am used to the sensation of being taken. Of falling into shadows.

  But today, I am terrified. Not of the black curtain itself. But of what I will find waiting for me when it’s finally lifted.

  31

  PARADOX

  When I come to, light is already breaking outside the window. It must be early morning. I was out for the entire night—more than eight hours. Much longer than my usual scans. That can’t be a good sign.

  I peer drowsily around the room. Sevan is at his monitor, furiously typing code into the keyboard. A faint beeping alerts him to my consciousness and he turns and smiles.

  “Welcome back.”

  I attempt to blink the bleariness away but it doesn’t want to let go.

  I do what I always do when I wake up from a scan. I try to focus on the last thing I remember before losing consciousness. It comes to me easily today. I remember the fear.

  My eyes dart back to Sevan, who has resumed typing, his eyes focused, his mouth slightly ajar. It’s strange. He doesn’t look like he’s just witnessed a major infraction. The cuffs around my wrists release and I flex my fingers.

  I’m afraid to move. To stand up. Terrified that the worst has not yet arrived, and I want to be sitting down when it does. But after a moment, Sevan lifts his gaze from his screen and regards me with an inquisitive expression. “You’re free to go,” he reminds me. As if I haven’t done this numerous times in the past year.

  I try to speak but only air comes out.

  “Do you feel all right?” He frowns at his screen. “Your stress levels are a bit high, but it’s probably just anxiety from the tour. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

  “I’m okay,” I finally manage to say.

  He flashes me a goofy smile. “Good.” Then, when I still don’t move, he asks, “Was there something else?”

  “The scan,” I begin warily. “It went … smoothly?”

  He spins back to his coding keyboard. “Yup. All clear. See you next time.”

  All clear?

  That can’t be right. There was nothing about the last few days that would warrant an all-clear status.

  Is there something wrong with the equipment? Was it damaged during travel? Did Sevan not read the output correctly?

  The memory of the cube drive should have jumped out at him like a fish in the desert. As well as the boy’s face in the Feed footage. There’s no way those recall patterns looked anything like my normal day-to-day routine.

  Perhaps he’s lying. Perhaps the infraction is so big, he’s been ordered not to discuss it with me. Which would mean any minute now I’ll receive a ping from Dr. A asking to see me. Or worse, one of Director Raze’s lackeys will be waiting outside the door to personally “escort” me to Dr. A’s suite.

  I rise unsteadily from the chair. “Thank you, Sevan.”

  He looks up long enough to give me a wave. It’s an unusually slow movement. Like he’s tracing the sun’s arc with his fingertips. On the palm of his hand I notice he has a nanotat. I find that odd because I don’t remember ever seeing it before. Also, because Sevan doesn’t seem like the kind of person to get one. Nanotats are normally imprinted by artistic types. Sevan always struck me as more rational and scientific.

  The design is fitting for him, though. It’s a scrolling line of code. It must be Revisual+, the language of memories, because I can’t read it. I’ve never received an upload for a computer language before. To me, it just looks like an indecipherable sequence of gibberish.

  “Goodbye,” I say, mimicking his strange, slow wave. Maybe it’s some kind of Coder salute.

  He repeats the gesture and I’m debating whether I should as well when I notice the nanotat on his hand change. It’s only for a flicker of an instant. Not long enough for any Normate eye to catch, but I can see the shift. If Kaelen were here, he would as well.

  For a sliver of a second, the palm of his hand is no longer decorated with streaming lines of code, but rather an unadorned image.

  A red crescent moon.

  When I blink, though, it’s gone. Replaced by the same repeating progression of numbers and symbols. Mesmerized, I take a step forward, watching his palm. I wait for it to change again, but it never does. He soon lowers it to his lap.

  “I like your nanotat,” I say, feeling unexpectedly brave. “Is it new?”

  He flips his palm up and runs his fingertips over the animated text. “It is. I thought I’d give it a try. See what all the hype is about.”

  “What does it mean?” I meet his eye, probing him for truth with my gaze. “The code?”

  “It’s stupid actually. A Coder’s paradox. It’s the memory of a Coder programming his own memory. Basically a circular reference. It goes around and around forever. Like looking into a mirror within a mirror.”

  “An infinite loop.”

  “Exactly.” He flashes me an unassuming smile and I swear I see the reflection of a thousand secrets dancing in his eyes. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

  I nod and slip out of the room. Once in the hallway, I press my back against the wall and suck in large gulps of air, willing my heart to stop galloping in my chest before its frantic activity shows up on someone’s Slate.

  I don’t know what just happened back there. I don’t know why my perfidious memories didn’t set off warning alarms from here all the way back to the compound.

  But I do know, whatever it is, Sevan is in on it.

  32

  RUPTURED

  When our hovercopter arrives at the local Feed station in Miami the next morning, Director Raze receives orders to touch down on the grass in front of the station, as opposed to the roof where we usually land.

  “Not a chance,” Raze says into his earplant, glaring out the window at the throngs of people below us. “Patch me through to the streamwork manager.”

  Kaelen and I sit in the row of seats behind him, our hands tightly clasped together, staring out opposite windows. I turn to watch Raze as he waits for a connection.

  “This is Director Raze, head of Diotech Security. There is no
way we are landing in the middle of that mayhem.”

  He pauses, listening. A moment later, he bangs his fist against the window.

  “What’s going on?” Crest asks. She’s seated in the last row of the hover, behind Kaelen and me.

  “Their roof pad is under construction. They say it’s impossible to land up there.”

  I gaze down at the swarm of bodies and my throat tightens.

  “Agent Thatch.” Raze initiates contact with his second-in-command, who’s riding in the hover behind us with Dane and Dr. A. “We’re being forced to land out front. Contact the private security detail. Tell them we want a protected path cleared from the front lawn to the entrance. Synthoglass barricades. No one can get through. Is that understood?” Raze pushes back against his headrest and sighs. “What a glitching mess.”

  We’re forced to circle for thirty minutes while the sea below is parted by a group of uniformed guards and large plates of synthoglass are set up to create a secure pathway for us.

  As we wait, Crest fiddles with my hair, pulling out pins from my swept-back bangs and reinserting them. I don’t think my hair actually needs work, it’s just her way of expending nervous energy. None of us are excited about having to wade through that chaos down there.

  After she secures the last pin and leans back in her seat, I feel a light tapping on the inside of my hand. I look down to see Kaelen’s fingertips moving in rapid succession, typing out our secret code against my palm.

  CAN WE TALK?

  So this is it. We’re finally going to address what happened back in Los Angeles. Right here, hovering five hundred feet above a swarming Miami Feed station.

  I take a breath and drum out a response.

  YES.

  He turns to me and speaks in hushed Hindi. I almost want to laugh at how unnecessary his whispers are. It’s not like anyone in this hover can understand Hindi.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

  “Nahīṁ,” I say, accessing the dense, melodic language. “I handled it horribly.”

  Kaelen shakes his head, appearing frustrated. He runs his fingers through his glossy hair. “I sometimes forget that I’m competing with someone else.”

  This takes me by surprise. “What? No. You aren’t competing with anyone.”

  “I’m competing with your past.”

  We both know who he’s referring to. We don’t have to say his name. Even though it bounces through my brain like an echo in eternity.

  Lyzender.

  Lyzender.

  Lyzender.

  “My past is gone,” I assure him. “It’s literally in the past.”

  “Then why are you so scared to be with me?”

  I bite my lip. “I’m not scared.”

  “What is it then?”

  I want to scream that I don’t know. That I can’t put it into words. That I’ve tried to explain it to myself but it refuses to make sense.

  I’m grateful when Raze interrupts us, barking orders about what will happen when we get to the ground. I feel my stomach drop as the hover begins to make its descent.

  “Can we finish this later?” I whisper in English.

  Kaelen nods but won’t meet my eyes.

  We land in the center of the cleared pathway and my heart squeezes as I take the first step down the hover’s staircase. The crowds are barricaded behind the high walls of soundproof glass but their voices rise over the top, infiltrating my space. Some are screaming for our attention, wanting us to face them so they can grab a good capture. Some are screaming for us to go back to where we came from, or worse, to hell, where we belong.

  Uniformed guards are lined up along the blockade to protect the seams between the glass panels. Kaelen takes my hand as we start the terrifying journey through the parted crowd. Director Raze walks alongside Kaelen, Crest, and me, while Agent Thatch escorts Dr. A and Dane, who have just stepped out of their hover.

  We’re nearly to the door of the station when I hear the cracking sound. My gaze flicks toward the noise and I watch in horror as an industrial MagTractor backs up, revs its engine, and comes crashing through a gap between two of the synthoglass panels.

  Kaelen pushes me aside, out of harm’s way, and Director Raze does the same to him. A man—a farmer based on the way he’s dressed—jumps out of the tractor. He hurls insults at us as he stalks in my direction. I stand, sick and paralyzed with fear.

  Everything that comes next appears to be happening in slow motion. I can see the drastic shift in Kaelen’s face. I can almost hear it. The snap. The creature breaking free from its shackles.

  In a split second, the man is on his back, cowering while Kaelen sits astride him, striking his face with his closed fists. His hands move so fast, they blur through the air. The only sight I fully register is the splatter of blood that sprays with every punch.

  The rage hollows out his eyes. In that moment, he looks exactly as Pastor Peder described us: like a soulless monster.

  It takes five security guards to pull Kaelen off the man. The first two who try are thrown back immediately, tumbling through the air and crashing with a sickening crunch against the synthoglass on either side of us.

  When they finally manage to untangle him from the man’s pulverized face, Kaelen is covered in the farmer’s blood.

  We’re ushered toward the building. Kaelen is breathing hard. Not from the effort of the fight, but from the storm raging inside him. He’s still thrashing and growling as he’s hurried inside the Feed station by Director Raze and his men.

  I stop just short of the door, long enough to take in the pandemonium that has erupted in our wake. The guards are having a difficult time keeping everyone back. People are pushing to get closer, to steal a peek.

  Last time they erased memories to hide the truth about Kaelen.

  They won’t be able to do that this time.

  There are too many people. Too many Slates. Too many witnesses.

  Through the mesh of the bodies, I manage to catch a glimpse of the man who attacked us—who never even got close enough to breathe in my direction before Kaelen intercepted him. His face is completely disfigured. His eyes are swollen shut. His nose sits blood-spattered and crooked above his busted lips. The skin of his cheek is peeled back, barely hanging on.

  My heart stops when I realize he’s not moving.

  Something screeches and scrapes inside my ears. A panic so loud it blocks out all other sounds.

  I step slowly away from the growing unrest. My feet stumbling over each other. I hit a hard surface. When I turn around, I see it’s the door to the station. It’s been closed on me. In all this commotion, they don’t even realize I’m still outside.

  Suddenly, warm breath tickles the nape of my neck. A large hand wraps around my stomach, yanking me back hard. I scream but no one can hear it above the turmoil.

  My reflexes are slow, dampened by the spiral of shock I’m spinning in. By the time I even think to fight back, the sizzle of a Modifier stings my skin and I wilt into the arms of a stranger.

  PART 3

  THE UNRAVELING

  33

  CLEANSED

  In the darkness of my mind, I remember my birth. Emerging from the thick, gelatinous fluid of the womb. Opening my eyes to the world.

  The face I saw before me was Rio’s.

  Not the empty shell of a person who now roams the compound. A strong, vibrant man with bright eyes and a smile that made me feel like I was home. Even before I understood the concept of home.

  He slapped me on the back and told me to breathe.

  I remember the oxygen. That first sip of air. It was sweet honey to my lungs.

  A MedBot came to clean me. It cleared the fluid from my nose. It washed the residue from my skin. It combed the tangles from my long, damp hair.

  Then there were tests. So many tests. Injectors pressed against my skin. Blood drawn from my veins. “Perfect,” was the word I kept hearing. “Absolutely perfect.”

  I was so very tir
ed. Somehow Rio knew. He put me in a bed and told me to sleep.

  I drifted off to the sound of him sobbing quietly.

  “You’re here,” he kept saying, over and over again. “You’re finally here.”

  * * *

  I awake to voices.

  Frenetic movement all around me.

  Two pairs of eyes floating above, like stars in a black sky.

  The darkness comes and goes. I’m injected with something that makes my limbs feel sluggish and then my eyes grow too heavy to open again.

  I can’t move. I can’t speak.

  Even if I could, the only name I would call out would be Kaelen’s. What will happen to him now? Now that the world has seen what he can do? I used to think I was the flawed one. I was the one who ran away. But I’m starting to wonder if we’re both inherently defective.

  “Make it fast,” a woman says. “It won’t take long for them to notice she’s gone.”

  I hear the sound of strained breathing. A man. His voice is vaguely familiar but I’m too disoriented to place it. “He killed him. He wasn’t supposed to kill him. I didn’t think he would—”

  The woman barks a response, harsh and impatient. “Graw was prepared to die for the cause. He knew the risks.”

  Are they talking about the farmer? The one who Kaelen beat senseless?

  Is he really dead?

  My mind flashes back to those two helpless paparazzi on the hyperloop platform and my stomach starts to cave in on itself. I want to vomit but even my gag reflexes are paralyzed.

  The air moves around me. The flurry of hands working.

  I feel a pinch in my leg, just above my knee. My skin catches fire. It burns like an inferno inside my veins. But I can’t cry out. My mouth is frozen. My tongue is so numb, it may as well have been cut out.

  Something beeps near my head. It starts out loud and cacophonous. Like a chorus of tiny chirping insects. But as the unbearable pain travels through me, spreading like wild flames, the song starts to die down. One by one, the beeping insects are killed off.