by M. Van
My eyes shot open again, and I wasn’t in the cavern anymore. I was lying in a Hymag box, but I couldn’t tell if we were moving. The pain I had felt before had retreated, leaving a dull hum of discomfort in its wake. I was sure drugs had helped in creating the sensation. I saw Saera and Harp, although their faces were kind of blurry. The sight of Harp reminded me of what he had said before: “Make sure the bioprinter is available.” The word became a repetitive mantra inside my head, and I didn’t like the way it forced my stomach into knots.
Images of a strange-looking tube entered my brain, but I couldn’t tell if these were memories or a dream. The thing resembled something from the history files stuck in my head. In the olden days, they would stick the dead in a coffin and bury them in the ground—and I lay inside.
The glass shell of the tube made it possible for me to see the men and women wearing protective suits as they bustled around the room. Hard white light fell on me from the ceiling. I blinked to see similar tubes standing on both sides of mine, but only the left one was also occupied.
The man inside it lay still as robotic arms poked and prodded his body. As I watched the machines working, it reminded me of how lasers could graft a tattoo into the skin, except instead of adding ink, this thing seemed to be adding muscle and skin tissue. The man’s mouth stood up in a contorted manner, baring teeth as if stuck in a scream, but I couldn’t hear him. His eyes were open wide, and tears slid down his temple.
As fear started to rise inside me, my tube started to hum. I wanted to get up, crawl out of this torture device, and run until I got home, but all I could do was watch the lid slide over me until it locked into place. Lights flashed, and the humming got louder, while the robotic arms hovered over me. My heart pounded in my chest like a wild animal demanding a way out. I couldn’t breathe, and darkness edged around my vision. I welcomed these signs that I was about to pass out. At least then I wouldn’t feel the pain, and after I would wake up, I wouldn’t remember what had happened. I wouldn’t remember that I had chosen to do this and that it had been the biggest mistake I had ever made. I should have listened to Reece, and I should have told Saera the truth. All I wanted was to go home.
The moment my eyes shot open, I realized it had all been a dream. The men and women in protective suits were gone, and so was the bright light. The room was dimly lit, which was fine by me. My vision was blurry from the tears filling my eyes. I blinked and felt a trail of drops roll down my temple, and it reminded me of the man in the tube. I shuddered at the thought.
Even with my vision blurred, I searched the room as much as I could, and found Saera sitting in a chair next to the bed I was lying on. I blinked to check that it was really her, and then tried to speak before I realized my throat felt as dry as the wastelands outside the dome.
The hoarse sound I made was enough to draw Saera’s attention. She pulled her chair closer so our faces were inches apart, and she wiped a strand of hair from my forehead.
“They gave you something to relax your muscles,” she said in a low voice as she reached for a cup and held it to my mouth. Cool water eased some of the dryness from my throat.
“How did we do?” I asked in a raspy voice. Saera shrugged in a noncommittal way.
“Not sure,” she said, “Kyran said he got the data out, but after we’d gotten you back to the base, everything went so fast. Doc said he couldn’t help you there, and so we rushed you back to Subterra. We’ve only been here for about an hour.”
I tried to move, but nothing seemed to work. The drugs must have also kept the pain away, because I didn’t feel much of anything, except for discomfort in my throat and the tears rolling down my cheek.
“Where is here?” I asked as my eyes roamed the sparse, little room.
“One of the primary medical facilities back home where the doctor works when he isn’t patching up us rebels in the hideout underneath Umbras.”
“The others,” I said and swallowed. The feeling in my throat had improved with the help of the water, but it didn’t seem wise to say too much. Saera smiled and pointed a thumb over her shoulder toward the door.
“They’re all sitting in the hall waiting to get you home.”
The smile didn’t hold up for long, and she shifted in her seat before she realized she was still holding the cup of water in her hand, and she placed it on the table beside the bed. Our eyes met for a moment, and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it.
“What?” I asked. She looked at a spot on the wall behind me for a moment as if she needed to find the courage to say what she wanted to say, and then she cleared her throat.
“It’s that thing stuck in your head. It’s kind of dislodged. They are preparing to remove it,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. A sense of dread rushed through me, and it felt as if someone had sat down on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
Saera placed a hand on my chin and directed my gaze to hers.
“You’ll be fine,” she said. The conviction in her voice made me feel better, but it didn’t erase the lingering nightmare of lying in that tube and Harp’s words.
Behind Saera, a door opened, and as if on cue, Harp stepped into the room. He stood tall as ever as he crossed the floor with his hands behind his back. As he approached the bed, I thought he looked older. The touches of gray hair streaking his temples seemed more notable, although the lighting in the room might have had something to do with it.
Saera stood from her chair to face him.
“What is taking so long?” she asked, sounding bewildered.
“They’re ready for her,” Harp replied as he directed his gaze toward the door and nodded. The door opened and two figures wearing masks walked in. At first, they reminded me of the men and women wearing protective suits, but then I noticed the balding doctor’s protruding belly. It was comforting to know that there was someone behind that mask that I had met. The doctor and his companion took up positions at the front and rear of my bed, and I felt the jolt as the bed was set in motion.
Saera stayed by my side as they rolled me from one room to the next. The contrast between the two rooms was huge. Screens covered the walls, showing all kinds of colorful images. Desks were full of different sorts of devices and computers running the screens. Bright lights filled my eyes, and I closed them. I opened them again when I felt the bed come to a halt, but as I did, I wished I hadn’t.
A long, circular glass tube filled my vision. The doctors who had pushed my bed stood there, pressing buttons and activating lights on the machine. My heart jumped into overdrive, drumming a warning signal inside my chest. The glass lid slid backward in an invitation for its next victim. More alarms went off in my head as the balding doctor moved around the tube and stood at the head of my bed. They couldn’t seriously consider putting me in there. Fear took control of my body, sending tremors up and down my limbs.
“Wait…” I managed to say, but any other words remained stuck in my throat as I tried to catch my breath.
Saera stepped closer—worry written across her face. She placed a hand on my shoulder and spoke my name in a calming voice. I ignored her, my gaze set on the glass coffin. They couldn’t expect me to go in there, because I wouldn’t survive it. Every primal instinct in my body fired to life, trying to get it to move.
“No!” I said and tried to scream when my limbs wouldn’t budge, but all that exited my mouth was a frustrated groan. Somewhere at my side, a machine started to beep at an irregular and frantic rhythm.
People scrambled around me, but I had only eyes for the tube that I was sure was going to kill me, until a face blocked my view.
A young boy stood by my side, watching me with curious eyes. As our gazes locked, his mouth lifted into a generous smile. The sight of him made me gasp. Besides his generous smile, his dark eyes held a sense of wonder that I didn’t even know existed in this world. As if the answer to every question ever asked resided inside this boy’s mind.
At my side, the beeping sound se
ttled into a steady beat, and I felt the fear fade into the background. The boy looked up and nodded at Harp, who I hadn’t even noticed standing behind him.
“Can she handle it if they remove the device?” Saera asked. I barely made out her whispered words, but the boy’s smile grew wider as he turned to face her. He nodded, and Saera responded with a tentative smile of her own.
Then the boy returned his attention to me. It felt as if I knew the kid, and some memory buried deep inside my mind would probably confirm it, but at this point, I couldn’t find it. The boy placed a hand on my chest. Even through the fabric of the sheets, I felt the heat seeping through my skin and into my bones. All my nerves seemed to calm at once and pulled me into a deep sleep.
Chapter twenty-eight
Maece
I awoke in a dark room, but I instantly knew where I was. Mostly it was the familiar smells of the blanket and pillow that betrayed my location. They had taken me home a few hours after the procedure that had been an apparent success.
I must have been out of it because I don’t remember much after shouting at my doctor. All I knew was that I had to get out of that medical facility with one of those bioprinters so near. I wasn’t going to spend one more minute inside that place. The irrational fear that they’d place me inside that coffin again without my consent had made me lash out at the poor man. A hazy memory of Reece and Riffy dragging me from my room was all that was left after that.
As I lay in my own bed, I inhaled, deeply drawing in the scents through my nose. It fired the synapses in my brain, sending tiny pinpricks running up and down my scalp. The device in the back of my head was gone, and now my brain had reclaimed the memories that had eluded me for so long.
As if they resembled a living, breathing entity, those memories murmured with a soft hum in the back of my head, ready to step forward if needed. That single inhalation of familiar scents brought everything back—everything I wanted to know, needed to know, or should have remembered filled my head. I had come home in every sense of the word.
I opened my eyes to scan the room. A grimy teddy bear sitting on the bedside table raised a smile to my lips. My old dresser stood propped against the wall along with a couple of stone figurines on top that had remained where I had left them two years ago, and a washbasin hung on another wall. A small figure sitting in the middle of my room caught my attention, and I sat up. As the blanket slid from my body, I realized I wasn’t wearing any clothes, and I pulled fabric up over my chest.
The young boy sitting in the middle of my room, who I now remembered by name as Spiro, had his eyes closed, and it didn’t appear as if he had peeked. He was the same kid who had stood by my bed before they had stuck me inside that bioprinter. It was as if the information I needed sat stored inside a filing cabinet, and I only needed to open a drawer to fetch it in order to recognize one of my closest friends.
Blue light edged inside the room through the window from a streetlight outside. It created a blue halo as it fell over the child-like shape sitting on the ground in the middle of the room. With his bald head and round face, Spiro looked almost angelic in the blue light. He sat with his legs crossed and his back straight while his hands rested on his knees.
As I watched him, I sensed his calmness reaching out around him and felt its tingle on my skin. He didn’t even open his eyes as he spoke, “It is said that it is not polite to stare.”
“Yet you have never said it,” I replied. A smile grew on the boy’s face, and I felt his joy fill the room.
“It is good to have you back,” Spiro said.
“It’s good to be back,” I replied. Although I didn’t feel entirely sure about it, I added something else. “It is good to see you.”
Spiro had been the reason for me to infiltrate the Tenebrae Enforcer Department in the first place. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but now I wasn’t so sure. He had convinced me that there wouldn’t be any other way, and Harp had agreed with him. At the time, I didn’t understand why Harp was so adamant to send me on this mission or why Spiro had chosen me. There wasn’t anything special about me, but after Spiro had expressed that the situation was even direr than I could imagine, I had relented. It seemed he had been right all along.
Like Saera and me, Spiro had been one of the kids Harp had rescued from the power plants. But unlike us, Spiro had a neuro-device implanted in the back of his head from when he was a baby. Touching that Hymag line might have rendered the device useless, but it still sat lodged in the back of his head.
At first glance, he still resembled that twelve-year-old kid, but when interacting with him, the way he spoke and the knowledge he held, a person immediately knew he was different.
“You’re feeling better now your memories have returned,” Spiro said.
Even though it wasn’t a question, I replied, “I am.”
He considered it a form of politeness to engage in normal conversation even though he had no need for it. That device lodged in the back of his head hadn’t just screwed with his internal systems—after an electro-magnetic shock had disabled the device, the change had enhanced him. Disabling the device resulted in his synapses firing at inhuman speeds inside his brain, using his neurons for efficient, lightning-fast communication not only within his own head but also with the minds of others. He knew what I would say before I had even thought of voicing it.
His eyes opened and caught mine. The blue light coming from outside enhanced the color of his eyes and almost made them sparkle even though he peered at me through narrow slits. Spiro’s Asian heritage had blessed him with a face that reminded me of a porcelain doll.
I felt his mind reach out to me, and even though he had been doing it for as long as I had known him, it felt strange to me now. As if somehow the connection had been deepened.
You know more than most, but not all. It’ll take time, and I’ll help you along the path.
Spiro’s words echoed inside my head, though his mouth hadn’t moved. It was as if Harp was talking to me over the communications channel.
“The fog clouding your mind will soon lift,” he said aloud. “It will take effort for it not to overwhelm you.”
This had been the risk from the start. Spiro had predicted as much. His gift had given him the ability to see, understand, and do more with his brain than any other human had ever managed.
I had always suspected he had the ability to see into the future, although he had never admitted it. Considering this now would force me to withdraw that conclusion. It wasn’t as much as seeing into the future as predicting it by ways of a complicated equation that involved the past, present, and logical reasoning.
He knew what ArtRep was up to, but his present being would never allow his physical form to be violated by another neuron device ever again. To retrieve the information the Subterran government wanted about the threat that ArtRep posed, he needed Sulos’s plan, and his condition wouldn’t allow him to do this on his own. That was why he had approached Harp and how I had gotten involved.
From the start, Spiro had informed me of the risks. He had explained about the memory loss and that he felt confident it could be reversed. To his credit, he had never promised that my memories would return, and although that had scared me at the time, I’d respected his honesty. He would have never asked me to do this if he hadn’t thought it necessary.
I trusted Spiro’s judgment—still did and that’s why I had to take the risk. I had to find a way to figure out ArtRep’s endgame, and getting our hands on enforcers gear had seemed the only way, even if it meant my brain could fry or my memories were lost forever. Too many people had died working at those plants or enforcing the law, and now the fate of the entire planet hung in the balance. At least we had figured out their plans, and now it was up to us to do something about it.
Spiro lifted from his seat on the ground in an almost snakelike motion.
“Your sister would like to see you,” he said, “but you will have to be patient. It will take tim
e for her to understand.”
It wasn’t hard to read between the lines what he meant, and he didn’t need to project it inside my head. By doing what we had, Spiro, Harp, and I had lied to her, but mostly me. It had been my idea to fake my death.
The only way for us to have had any kind of hope to breach the ArtRep systems was to get our hands on enforcer technology. Only with the heads-up would our tech guys be able to extract the information we needed. If we hadn’t, we still wouldn’t have known what Sulos was up to. I had known it could take years for my mind to adjust to the neuron device, let alone being able to resist it. Our early projections had been at least five years, and I wanted Saera and the others to be able to move on with their lives. I didn’t want them to worry about their crazy friend and sister who might or might not survive.
Fortunately, I had been lucky enough that Harp had met Kyran. Without him and his tinkering from within TED’s systems, I would probably still be sitting in that chair inside Memory Junction.
“Saera,” I said. The word left my mouth in close to whispered silence. My stomach turned at the thought of having to explain what I had done. She still thought I had been caught by accident or some stupidity on my part.
Mere seconds later, I heard footfalls in the hallway outside the room. I glanced at Spiro, and he read my concerns either from my face or from the words forming inside my head.
“Pain can be a companion of truth,” he said, “as can trust, honor, and love.”
I shook my head at his vague remark that once would have cracked me up, but now Spiro’s strange way of expressing himself seemed to make more sense to me.
A moment later Saera appeared in the doorway. Spiro took a slight bow and turned. He stopped to rest a hand on Saera’s arm. She looked down at him and nodded at the smile he offered.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “Your sister is in no danger of starting to talk like a fortune cookie.” Saera grinned at Spiro’s reply to the question that hadn’t been asked but for sure had lingered in her thoughts.
