Never Forgotten

by Stacey Nash

  “It’ll free up more time for us to research—”

  “No, it will take away time I should be spending with Dad. I won’t let anything interfere with the little time I have with him and this . . . this sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would. He needs me. Maybe you can train these—”

  Beau clears his throat. “Sorry, Will. You’re too valuable on the field. You won’t be in on the training.”

  Halle-freaking-lujah. No wait . . . Will’s important on the field, but I’m not? No way am I swallowing that crap. The anger building inside me is about to explode, red and hot and argh! “And I’m not valuable?”

  Beau takes a deep breath. “You are more valuable than almost any other person, Mae. No one else has seen the Collective from the inside and—”

  “Except Jax.”

  Beau sighs. “Yes, except Jax. I’m not asking—”

  “You want us both to—”

  “Be quiet for two bloody minutes, and listen to me. I’m not asking you to teach these people how to fight. I’m asking you to teach them what they’re fighting.”

  Freaking hell. Jax is indispensable too. Apparently I’m no better than little Levi.

  “Teach them about the Collective?” Lilly says.

  Beau leans back, slinging an arm over the back of his daughter’s chair. “Yes, about the Collective. I don’t want these newbs going in with any false ideas. They need to know what they’re getting involved in and they need knowledge of how it all works—tech and whatnot—to make them better able to help. They already know the bare basics, but—”

  I blow out a long breath. “Isn’t Jax better suited to that? He knows the Collective better than anybody.”

  “He can’t do it.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  No way in hell would he put up with this. Beau responds with one of his looks that feel like an order. Training people is a waste of my time. Heck, I don’t even want to run missions, or be in the fight. What I want is to track down my mother. More than anything else, I need to go back for her and hopefully it’s not too late. Like when she was dragged out of Manvyke’s office with a stoic expression, Bia’s bony fingers curled around her arms. It was too late then; Jax, pulled me past the door under the stairs—the place Bia would have erased her memory.

  A shiver creeps down my spine.

  No matter what state she’s in when we find her, it’s beyond important that we bring her to safety. Hopefully someone like Cynnie and Xane noticed her absence and went looking. We’ve got to get to her soon. The constant attacks just aren’t allowing the time though. Maybe teaching these recruits will mean less hours on the clock, which could give me a sliver of free time to save her. That would be a sliver more than I have now.

  “Okay. All right. I’ll do it.”

  Beau’s gaze levels with mine. “I’m not asking you sit out the fight forever.” He leans his elbows on the table and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lilly can help you.”

  “Sure,” she says, without even a protest.

  A smug smile stretches across Will’s face. Traitor.

  ***

  This place has more rooms than Swiss cheese has holes. Sleeping areas fill the third floor, and the ground is all living; kitchen, dining, common, headquarters—as Beau and Charlie call the office. The port room, weapons room and whatever take up the entire second floor. But boy, it’s easy to get lost. Even worse than the farm was at first.

  Now, five of us sit around a table in a second-floor room: Lilly to my left, and the woman from breakfast, a guy a little older than us, maybe twenty or so, and an older man. The two men look angry. Hopefully it’s not directed at being stuck in a classroom—because that’s exactly what this feels like—with me and Lil as the teachers.

  I swallow the ball of nerves in my throat and make eye contact with the woman, whose mousy hair needs a good brush.

  “You all know that the Collective are responsible for many of the attacks we’ve seen recently. What you may not know is they are a secret society hell-bent on keeping advanced technology under wraps. They believe that it will corrupt society and ultimately cause its downfall. But on top of that, they also believe that humans need guidance. That we are incapable of peace and prosperity, and as such they need to steer society in the right direction. They use their advanced technology to do that.”

  “To put it bluntly,” Lilly chimes in, “they’re all-controlling tyrants on an inflated ego kick.”

  “Well, not exactly.” I glance at my friend. “Mostly they think they’re doing the right thing.”

  “Why are we learning this drivel?” the older guy asks. “I just want to fight them. I want to get out there and make them pay. My wife—my wife—” his voice breaks “—she was killed in that bombing.”

  “It’s important.” I catch his eye; try to hold it. “This knowledge will help you stop them for good. Not just kill a couple of agents in one lousy battle. We need to stop the war, the oppression, and for that we need to know them better than they know us.”

  It’s not just them though. The bigger battle is with Manvyke, rather than the Collective, but these people don’t need to know that.

  “So why’ve I never heard of them before then, hey? Tell me that.”

  Lilly clears her throat. “Umm, secret means not public.”

  “Something that huge can’t be secret.”

  This guy just doesn’t get it. “That explosion you were in. If you hadn’t been brought here, what would have happened?”

  “I’d have gone to hospital then gone home. Shit, I dunno. Could’ve ended up anywhere.”

  The other two examine the peeling paint, the dust-filled lampshades.

  “I mean what would have you have thought was the cause?”

  “Terrorists.” He doesn’t even miss a beat. “Or maybe a psychopath, an activist group or something.”

  “Right, because a bunch of other things like this have happened before, haven’t they?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “What if I told you all those disasters—wars, terrorist attacks, mad gunmen—were the Collective?”

  “But why?”

  “Because they need to start a war, end a war; who knows what their exact reasons were.”

  The three refugees snap their focus back to me. Maybe this hour won’t be so long after all.

  ***

  “I’m over this,” I say to Lilly as we walk out of the room. “Is your dad ever proactive? I mean, I feel like all we ever do is react to the Collective. We never preempt and strike first. It’s just so . . . useless. We’ll be stuck in the same cycle forever.”

  Our strides match as we walk down the hall and she weighs me up with a look. “What are you saying?”

  “We can’t just leave my mother there as Manvyke’s plaything . . .” I swallow. The way he called her Annie, and made eyes at her, doesn’t sit right with me. “I don’t think she was ever with the Collective of her own accord.”

  A shine bursts into her eyes, an excitement that I haven’t seen since Garrett. “Will’s going to flip.”

  “Will’s going to have to deal.”

  “What makes you say she didn’t choose to be there? She seems pretty resourceful, with all she did to help you and Jax. Surely if she wanted to leave she would have.” Lilly pauses to scratch her cheek, her expression thoughtful, and I get the feeling she’s choosing her words wisely. “She could have left at any time in the past ten years.”

  She doesn’t say it, but the question hangs in the air between us. Did my mother choose them over us? Maybe she didn’t want a family. Maybe she didn’t love Dad and me at all. A lump springs into my throat and I swallow against it.

  “I don’t know, Lil, but I have to find out. Besides, what if she needs help and I don’t do anything. I’ve been sitting quiet all this time, waiting on Beau, but recently it’s like there’s a knife twisting in my stomach with each new attack.”

  Lilly stops mid-stride, her foot poised at the edge of
the stairs, seriousness surrounding her very stance.

  “We’d better talk to the boys, then.”

  Asking for Jax’s help is a great idea; it might actually make him come around to talking to me again. Regardless of that though, I’ve never run a mission without him. It’d be weird to start now. And Will, if I don’t share this with him, I can kiss our friendship—and whatever else is between us—goodbye.

  Lilly turns back the other way, and heads straight to the port room.

  We enter to Will sitting around with the rest of our crew, all of them sprawled out like it’s been a quiet shift, which is good. Slumped on the floor with his back against the wall and one knee pulled up, acting as a prop for his elbow, Will twists a port band around his fingers. He sees us right away. “How’d it go?”

  “All right, I guess. Boring.”

  Lilly slides down the wall, landing beside him. “What about here?”

  “Boring, too. Nothing much has happened, but I guess that’s good.”

  I cross my legs, sitting grade school style on Will’s other side. With only two other people in the room, this crew is far too small with us gone. Jax isn’t here either and the others—neither of them Sam or Evan—leave Will as the best on this shift.

  “Sam needs to do some shuffling, this crew’s too light.”

  Will looks around like he hadn’t noticed. “It is small, now.”

  I scoot in closer to him and lower my voice. “I’m going back.”

  “What?” He snaps around to face me. “Mae, that’s dangerous. You can’t stroll into Collective territory. They all know your face. You’re probably a wanted person or something.”

  “Told you he’d flip,” Lilly coos.

  “I’m not flipping out.” He glances at the other two crew members—a couple about Sam’s age—watching us intently from the other side of the room, then nods toward the door. “Hall. Now. Lilly, let me know if there’s a call.”

  “Sure.” She takes the port bands from his outstretched hand, then leans her forehead on her knees. If only I could rewind the last few months, and undo everything that lead to Garrett’s death. Heck, I wish I could rewind the past ten years and have both my parents back.

  Will climbs to his feet and holds his hand out. I grab it and he pulls me up, but doesn’t let go when I’m standing. Instead, he pushes his fingers through mine touching our palms together. It’s kind of comforting, so I don’t let go even though I should as he leads me out of the port room and tugs the door closed behind us.

  The hall stretches away on both sides, long and dim and empty. Will squeezes my hand. “I know how important this is for you,” he says, “but you can’t go rushing in recklessly. What if . . .” his gaze slips away from mine.

  I’m tired of everyone tiptoeing around it. “What if she doesn’t want to be rescued? Well, we’ll jump that snag when we get to it, but she won’t harm me. She risked so much to help Jax and me. She cares, Will. I know she does.”

  His free hand slips around my waist and he pulls me closer. It feels good—I’ve been so alone lately, with none of our usual hugs or banter. No contact at all. I lean into him, inhaling his smell; that familiar, safe scent that’s Will. Will who’s always understood me, always was my best friend. I close my eyes and the heaviness in my chest consumes me, weighing me down with memories.

  “Anamae,” Mommy scolded, “don’t play with that. It’s not a toy.”

  I placed the glowing thing on the bench. It was so pretty and I’d never seen anything like it. I shouldn’t have brought it down here though, should have played with it upstairs instead. But when I found the ‘thing’, I wanted to show her. Mommy snatched it up, moved her fingers over its flat front and frowned. She climbed the stairs into the attic, mumbling with each step. Why couldn’t I look at it? Maybe it was a gift for Daddy if she was hiding it in the attic. I snuck up the stairs behind her. The attic was Mom’s room—the place she hid things. Like Christmas presents and pretty glowing things, old treasures Daddy called junk and sometimes even jewelry. But never the flower necklace, that one she never took off. Ever. It hung around her neck right now all beautiful-like.

  I stopped three stairs from the top. Shuffles and the sound of her feet scuffing the bare floorboards didn’t hide her voice.

  “I will never do that. Why can’t he just let me go?” She sounded sad or maybe angry. That made me feel sad too.

  A loud thunk made me jump so high I nearly fell off the step. Then she was right in front of me, staring down at me and I reached out to cuddle her.

  “This attic is out of bounds, Anamae. Do you hear me? You are not allowed up here.”

  I flinched again, not used to being shouted at. I nodded quietly and tiptoed downstairs.

  My chest heaves at the memory from the year before she vanished. That screen-thing—so much like the Collective’s school slates—must have been just that, a way for her to keep in touch with them. What if Will’s right? What if she never wanted a family, never wanted to leave the Collective, never even wanted me. My stomach roils up a storm and I take a shaky breath.

  Will pumps my hand with his. “I’m not stupid enough to think you won’t do this just because I think it’s a bad idea. Let me catch some sleep and we’ll figure it out, okay?”

  I wind my arms around his waist, taking another deep breath for comfort. We will figure it out. We have to. He squeezes me tighter and his lips press against my forehead in a reassuring gesture. Will’s right. Closing my eyes, I rest my head on his chest, until he pulls away.

  “Okay, tomorrow.”

  It feels good to know we’re a team.

  Chapter Five

  Jax

  I round the corner to Mae and Will all over each other.

  My breath lodges in my throat as I stare at her fingers woven between his, his palm pressed into the curve of her back. I gave her the damn space she wanted, but this . . . I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t have hoped she’d choose me. Not when there’s no way I can compete with the history they share.

  Focusing on Ace loping along at my side, I walk right past them as if they’re not there. The damn door squeaks when I open it to enter the room. Fan-fucking-tastic, they’ll know I saw them. I reach for the wall, slamming my palm against it and close my eyes.

  “Jax?” Lilly hedges.

  Ace nudges my knee. I drag my eyelids open and she’s sitting on the floor right below me. Her face turned up, her forehead wrinkled. Need to pull my shit together.

  “Happy Friday,” I say. “Let’s hope the Collective feel like playing today.”

  Lilly’s brows squish together and her mouth thins. “You all right?”

  “Fine.” I pull on the biggest smile I can muster, and push myself off the wall now the room seems more stable. With only B crew here, it looks like I’m the first of my shift to arrive. Great, I’m stuck until shift change is over.

  The door sweeps open, Ace yaps, and damn my head wants to turn toward it. But I won’t. Not when it’s them. And it is; the shift of energy in the room gives them away. Almost like a magnetic force, pulling me to her even though I’d rather not look up to see either one of them. I focus on the floor to fight the urge; on the chipped skirting boards, the paint flecked and peeling. They sure could use a fresh layer of paint.

  “Where have you been anyway?” Lilly asks. Thank small mercies for small talk.

  “A-shift.”

  “Oh,” Mae whispers.

  If I wasn’t tuned into her voice, I never would’ve heard it.

  “Why?” Lilly asks.

  For once, the smartass remark slips out of my grasp.

  “Right,” Sam booms, a second before he powers through the door. “Report.”

  I turn around, slowly.

  “Not a single thing for the entire shift,” Will says. “No alarms, not even a blip.”

  Except for your make-out session, that’s pretty report worthy, dontcha think?

  The lights flicker overhead. One of the fluorescent
globes must be on the way out. The constant on-off blurs my vision and my head takes up a regular pound. Rubbing my temples, I push my way through the thick air to the other side of the room where I tug on a protect-it, ready to start my shift. Ace nudges my leg again with his nose, probably wants to go for a run. Not now, boy.

  “Good,” Sam says. “Maybe they’re backing off.”

  “Doubt it.” No one hears me, and that’s what I intended.

  Sam strides across the room, straight to the laptop, and scans the open map. “Okay, B-shift you’re off. Rest up, because I doubt this lapse will last.”

  Lilly tosses a pair of port bands and I snatch them out of the air, then shove them and my hands in my pockets. She meets my eyes for a split second and walks past, bumping my shoulder with hers. “Stay safe.”

  “I’m always safe.”

  I turn around to lean against the wall. While I wasn’t paying attention more people must have filed in. Hannah and the other girl hover around Sam, as do as the rest of A-shift—a dozen of us in total. B have taken off already, all except Mae who pauses near the door, her long hair loose around her shoulders in the way she never wears it on shift. A soft frame around her face, it’s exactly like when she’s asleep. Our gazes collide and her fingers wrap around her forget-me-not pendant. Her teeth catch her red bottom lip, all puffy as if she’s bitten right through it. Her usual jeans have a worn patch on the thigh showing an inch of creamy skin. She’s pretty damn sexy.

  From the other side of the door, Will appears, placing a hand on her arm, his touch so gentle it turns my stomach to rock again. Yeah, asshat, you did that to her lips. She glances away before I do and says something to him, then gives him a small smile. Lately, she doesn’t smile often enough.

  Will cuts a glare in my direction, then leaves with Lilly. Whatever. I pull the port band out of my pocket and twist it between my fingers. It’s funny, the color is supposed to be skin-tone, but it’s only really skin-tone on someone with pale skin—like Mae. My thumb glides over the smooth node on the inside. Porting’s the worst, it’d be better if we had transports. Almost the same speed, but none of the I’m-gonna-hurl stomach drop.