Alone in my bedroom, I shook myself free of the vision and stared at the ceiling, my teeth chattering. Latham. Kinnari. Would they make it to safety? When would the horror I’d seen come to pass? Was there time to stop it?
I disappeared instantly into gushi to search for news about the concert. At first there was nothing but soon a journalist in New York issued a report about an unspecified disturbance at the Hendris concert in Chicago and said military forces were on the scene. I stayed awake all night waiting for another update, debating with myself about whether I should wake my parents.
Finally, the morning Dailies were broadcast and with them, the awful news that a new plague had been unleashed in Chicago last night and that the entire state was under quarantine. I thought it must have been another virus by the terrorists and I was jumping up from the kitchen table, on my way to tell my father my worries about Latham, when Latham himself stumbled into the kitchen, his skin damp and his eyes wild. I turned to run towards him and he threw out his hands in front of him and jumped back. “Don’t come near me, Freya,” he cried. “They …” His tongue was crashing over his words. “They were fucking crazy, like rabid animals. I’m not … I’m already not right. I shouldn’t have come back here.”
I cursed my vision for being too late. What was the point of having second sight if it couldn’t keep my brother safe?
“I saw it on the Dailies,” I told him. “How did you get away? Where’s Kinnari?”
“Back with her family now. You know me; I have friends in high places. We managed to get out okay. She’s in a little better shape than me but not much.” Latham smiled but it only made his face look manic and sick. He motioned for me to move away and then lurched forward. “I have to get to my room. Get some things and … get away from here. I’m … just … so tired.”
Latham’s body jerked like he was about to fall and I stepped forward to help him.
“Stay back!” he snarled.
I stopped dead, letting him pass.
“Go to school,” Latham instructed in an eerily strangled voice. “You’ll make them more suspicious if you stick around.”
I slipped into a kind of partial denial then, I think. I went to school where I had to scale a rock wall in gym class and listen to Elennede bait one of our more sensitive teachers, my mind constantly flitting back to Latham. He’ll be fine, I told myself over and over. Not like the people in Denver. Whatever he’d been infected with couldn’t have been as bad, otherwise Latham wouldn’t have still been on his feet so many hours later.
Then midafternoon gushi was unblocked so that the school could receive another Dailies update. The school hardly ever unblocked gushi and everyone was immediately afraid. My fellow students listened raptly as we were informed that the origin of the new plague had been uncovered and was not the direct result of terrorist actions as was first thought.
For years the DefRos have been using the biological weapon P-47 to help defend the U.N.A.’s border with Mexico. The weapon was intended to temporarily blind and weaken those attempting illegal entry into the U.N.A. It acted as a paralyzing agent so that the illegals could be scooped up by trucks and then dumped back on their side of the border.
Now it appeared that two biological weapons, P-47 and Mossegrim (first used by the terrorists in the late 2040s but tweaked by them many times since), had converged, through direct infection, to form a brand-new threat the Dailies referred to as Toxo. While Mossegrim, even in its newer strains, could usually be cured if it was treated within forty-eight hours thanks to the ingenuity of U.N.A. scientists and the strength of our Bio-net, there was currently no cure for Toxo. Experts theorized that a small group of people who had at one point in their lives been exposed to P-47 had also recently been infected with one of the newest strains of Mossegrim. Their infection had reached a critical stage during the Hendris concert where it was now known that many more people had been infected by Toxo via blood or saliva.
The Dailies continued to explain that initial Toxo symptoms resembled the common cold. Soon fever would set in and the infected would begin to emit an odor. In later stages they would act erratically and aggressively and finally they would become blind and rabid, attacking everyone they encountered. They would remain in this hostile, feral state for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time until, it was theorized, they would die of dehydration, having lost the instinct to nourish themselves. The update closed on a quote by Mark Twain: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
No one could concentrate after the Dailies and our teachers tried to assure us that the scientists would win in the end, that they always had and there was no reason to think that this time would be any different. My left eye wouldn’t stop twitching and I couldn’t get enough oxygen. I had to dig my nails sharply into my sides to remind my lungs what they were supposed to be doing. The action reminded me of how the infected boy had relentlessly torn into the girl from the Hendris concert crowd.
Was she dead now or was she infected like Latham? How long did my brother have?
As soon as I got home I sprinted up to his room. My mother was standing in the hallway, watching him through the open door. I heard Latham howling before I reached her and froze in the hallway.
There were tears in my mother’s eyes. She said, “Don’t look at him, Freya.”
But I couldn’t help myself. I crept towards her and stared across the force field keeping my brother penned inside his bedroom. Latham stared back at me, snarling. He gnashed his teeth and lunged for me, the force field bouncing him backwards across the chair positioned in the middle of his room. His nose was crooked and bloody when he looked up again and he surged towards us a second time.
My mother clamped her fingers around my wrist and guided me along the hallway. “Was he in Chicago last night?” she asked, sounding a million miles away.
I nodded and fought the urge to storm back towards his room. Where had my brother gone? The real Latham had to be in there somewhere, lurking beyond reach of the infection.
My father arrived home shortly. I was sent to my room for the night, a precautionary force field activated there for my protection, but later I heard a scientist friend of my father’s in the hall. They must have contacted him to discuss Latham. My parents let him into my room before he left and he administered a scan that showed I was clear of infection. He sounded relieved and told me that my parents were clear too.
Next, my mother came to speak to me. She said they were waiting to see if a cure would be announced and, like my teachers, she assured me that there would likely be one soon.
I believed her, despite what had happened to Joanna, despite all the arguments we’d had over the years and despite the man I’d seen her kissing in the street. My mother loved Latham. She would do what was best for him. Protect him with everything she had.
I went to sleep believing that.
When I woke up I was still in lockdown and our domestic, Ro, had left breakfast for me. I had to watch the Dailies from my bedroom. U.N.A. president Caroline Ortega was holding a live press conference. She announced that the virulent nature of Toxo made it a real threat to national security. According to her, tens of thousands of people in Illinois had already been infected and there was not yet a cure in sight. She stressed that although the search for a cure was well under way everyone was advised to stay indoors and avoid contact with other humans. SecRo patrols would instantly be tripled and the U.N.A. was temporarily under martial law.
Then the worst news came. The president declared that Toxo posed a unique threat and required a uniquely firm response. If we weren’t careful, Toxo plague could overcome the nation. To avoid this scenario all infected were to be immediately euthanized. This would prevent further spread of the virus. Anyone who’d been infected was urged to do their civic duty and turn themselves in. The SecRos would then escort them to a local SecRos holding facility where they would be painlessly euthanized. Those who did not turn themselves in would be considered
at large and when apprehended by SecRos would be killed on the spot.
I threw my mouth open and started screaming frantically for my parents. I needed to know they wouldn’t let the SecRos take Latham, no matter what the president had said. My father was a powerful man with powerful allies. He didn’t have to publicly flout the rules, just keep Latham under lockdown until a cure was discovered.
It was hours before my father came to my door and told me that he was having Latham moved to a secure facility, not for termination but for everyone’s safety, including his own. He said they had to keep Latham’s body nourished until the scientists could come up with a cure. I was on the verge of crossing over into hysteria, rocking back and forth as I paced in front of the doorway, and my dad kept saying, “Look at me, look at me, Freya. I’m not lying to you.”
I peered into his eyes and did what I could to quiet my mind and read Latham’s future. I saw the SecRos taking him and saw him, like my father had said, safe, sleeping in a strange bed with sheets as white as sunny-day clouds.
“Freya,” my dad said, “he’s going to be all right. They’re going to do everything they can for him. The biologists are working around the clock. We just need to keep him alive in the meantime.”
My father explained that I was to remain in my room, where I would be safest, while they did the transfer. He said he hoped it would be accomplished soon but that SecRo units were in short supply because of the emergency.
I don’t know what time it was when they took Latham but rain was pelting my window when I had my next vision. The future I’d foreseen earlier had changed. In my mind, Latham lay lifeless with two SecRos standing over him. In death his face was peaceful, unlike the last time I’d seen him.
I leapt to my feet, my body feeling that it didn’t belong to me. Then I was bolting towards my bedroom door scratching at the wood and screaming for Latham. The very fact that I was having the vision meant it hadn’t come to pass yet. Latham was still alive. There was a chance I could save him. I shouted for my brother’s life, scraped my fingers raw.
The SecRos came for me and my mother. Evacuation.
The Toxo was blasting through the population like wildfire. The U.N.A. might fall.
The final memory I have of my life before is a SecRo injecting something into my arm. Good night, Latham. Goodbye. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I will never forget you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I choke on my tears and wake up in 1985 screaming.
EIGHTEEN
I don’t know how I got here. The SecRos took us … and the next I knew I was in Sydney, Australia, in a time long before, waiting to catch a flight up to Toronto with my mother and Olivia. I don’t need Doctor Byrne or any other expert to explain to me that my New Zealand memories—Olivia steering the boat in Kawakawa Bay, me necking with Shane in the backseat of his car, the sermon at my father’s funeral—they’re all false. A wipe and cover job. I was never that girl swimming on her father’s back in Valencia.
Latham’s dead. I’ll never see him again.
Loss ricochets through me, a gaping bitter emptiness that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. All I have left of my brother is his memory. Thousands of them. They flash behind my eyes as I sit up in Lou Bianchi’s lounge chair, pressing my palms against my eyes to stop the tears. Latham was always there for me, ready to listen or try to make me laugh. He was there till the very end, struggling against the sickness inside him that wanted to hurt me.
Meanwhile Lou’s murmuring, in his at-one-with-the-universe voice, that when he snaps his fingers I’ll be wide awake and feel perfectly calm and refreshed.
“I am awake,” I tell him. “I’m awake. I’m fine.” I stop crying, as if on cue, because I don’t want to freak him out. “Look, you need to do this for my friend upstairs. We’re from the same place. He doesn’t remember.” The urgency in my tone probably sounds like mental illness. “I won’t say anything to him about … you know, anything I saw to influence him before you take him back. Please, just try.”
I rocket up from the chair before Lou can refuse and race to the waiting room where Garren’s sitting back in his seat with his head resting against the wall. “What is it?” Garren asks, tensing at the sight of my wet eyes.
I feel Lou behind me. I swivel to glance back at him before replying, “You won’t believe me if I tell you. Go with him and see for yourself.”
Lou’s lips are cemented together and his features have taken on an air of resentment. He must think I’m faking, trying to play a trick on him. “This isn’t a joke,” I tell Lou. “Look, we’ll pay for another session. What can it hurt?”
Lou checks his watch. A sigh of irritation escapes from between his lips. “I have another client due in twenty minutes.”
Garren’s shaking his head, his hands cupping his elbows. “What’re you doing, Freya? This wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Just a few minutes,” I plead. “You need to see what I’ve seen.”
“Yeah, a few minutes and another fucking forty-five dollars that we can’t spare.” Garren’s eyes shoot over to Lou. “Sorry, no offense to you.”
“None taken.” Lou allows his head to roll back on his shoulders as he stares at the wall behind Garren and then shifts his focus to the collection of beat-up bags resting on his hardwood floor. Lou’s eyes flicker and he sighs again, this time resignedly. “Look, if you do want to do it I’ll give you a few minutes for free but it really should be what you want to do and not what your friend here wants.”
Garren glares at me like he regrets ever walking through Lou’s front door and logically I know Garren’s the same person I used to stare at in the hallways, the one who rescued me that day at his sister’s party when I couldn’t tolerate another minute with my mom, but I can’t push the two separate versions of him together in my head and make them one.
“If it’s really for free …,” Garren qualifies at last.
Lou nods. “Just this once. And I don’t have long. Let’s go.”
I take Garren’s place in the waiting room, sitting among our things. My brain’s overheating with sixteen years’ worth of memories. Real ones. My father isn’t dead—he hasn’t even been born yet. He’s the same man from my false memories but he’s alive back in 2063 … unless they couldn’t find a cure for the plague in time. It’s possible that the U.N.A. could’ve fallen by now if the scientists couldn’t stop the Toxo.
Elennede. My father. All the teachers and students from school. Are they dead and gone like Latham?
I used to think the emptiness inside me was for my father but now I know it was for my brother and I know, too, that I was wrong to hate my mother. The stress that came with my father’s position warped her. The last five weeks have shown me what she would’ve been like under different circumstances. Kinder and warmer with only a hint of the anger she was capable of appearing on the surface.
Latham saw her more objectively than I did; she wasn’t entirely blameless but everything wasn’t solely her fault. My father was wrong too but it’s not his fault that Latham’s dead either. The entire world was wrong and I’m glad my mom doesn’t remember the way we used to fight back then and that she doesn’t have to remember losing Latham.
By now, maybe Henry’s convinced her that I have a drug problem and have run away to live on the street. I’m sorry that my absence will cause her pain but it’s better this way. She’ll have a chance for happiness in 1985.
Seventy-eight years. How did they do it? Countless things people couldn’t imagine in 1985 are possible seventy-eight years from now, but time travel isn’t one of them.
I’m so lost in thought that I have no idea how long Garren’s been gone when he trudges towards me and snaps up two of the bags from my feet without a word. He’s out the front door in a flash, leaving me to run after him.
Outside I spread my fingers gently across his back as we walk on together. He must be devastated about Kinnari. From so many years away I still feel that I failed
her and my brother. I should’ve seen the threat before it was too late. The little ability that I have is practically useless.
Garren whips around to look at me. “I don’t know what you expected but that was a complete waste of time. He didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know.”
“What?” How can that be?
Garren thumps his carry-on bag. “He gave me your tape. You want to tell me what’s on it?”
It’s begun to snow and it makes it difficult to look at him head-on; I can’t stop blinking for long enough to focus.
“You said I needed to see it,” he reminds me. “We stayed for this.”
He needs to know, of course, and I stare at the flecks of white gathering on the sidewalk, wishing there was someone else to tell him. There’s no good or easy way to explain any of the things I remember and I begin blurting them out in between gulps of air. Garren doesn’t stop walking and doesn’t look at me. He waits until I’ve come to the very end of the story and then he draws one of his hands across his forehead and says, “You need help.” He adjusts the carry-on bag so that the strap sits higher on his shoulder. “I know everything’s fucked up and there’s this crazy thing with our dads and Henry. I don’t know what that’s about—what the story is behind it—but it’s sure as hell not this.” He points at the sidewalk under our feet.
“You just let this guy trick you into some kind of false memory,” he continues, “but it’s … it’s off-the-charts crazy, what you’re saying. You need to snap out of it and get real in a hurry.”
I knew that’s exactly what he’d think but I can’t let him brush our pasts aside. They’re who we are. “It sounds crazy but it’s the truth. This is why I recognized you—I knew you back there. My brother and your sister were—”
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