I stared straight into my father’s dark, defensive eyes. “You took more than memories from me. You killed me in little pieces. You destroyed the person I could have been. But you know what? I’m creating someone else in that girl’s place, and you won’t ever know who she is. Because I’m never going to let you.”
Then I swung my leg up, flexible and strong, and kicked the Shared Link System to the floor. It landed hard with a shatter of electronic parts.
Dad cried out, reaching for me. I picked up the desk chair and smashed it into the machine. Splinters of wood grazed my face. Their pricks on my skin, piercing and real, released the pain inside me like a bursting dam. I screamed and slammed the broken chair pieces on the SLS again. The plastic case cracked. One more time, and pieces scattered across the floor.
“Gena!” Dad howled.
I opened my fingers. Splintered wood clattered to the floor. Let Dad grieve for his machine. I’d grieve for my lost moments. Elsewhere.
Before I stepped out the door, I knelt in front of my mother. “Mom.”
She cried so hard she could barely talk. “. . . sorry . . .”
Until I heard the word, I didn’t know how badly I’d wanted it.
I rested a hand on her cheek, touching her for the first time since that long-ago day on the swings. “Thank you. For the apology.”
Her tears soaked through my glove, wetting my fingertips.
I pulled away and circled down the stairs. On my way out the front door, the cheerful ding of the security system bid me farewell.
22
With weary steps I loiter on . . .
My prospect and horizon gone.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam XXXVIII
I thought about going to Cora’s, but our combined emotional instability had apocalyptic potential. Then I debated going to Kalan’s. Except I chickened out. I couldn’t handle a boy my heart claimed to know that my head didn’t.
Which left Ren. Oh, the irony.
At least I knew she hadn’t been stealing my memories. She wouldn’t take them now, if she’d left me alone all along. Probably.
I knocked at her apartment and shivered in the night that had drained of warmth. Ren opened the door looking bedraggled and sleepless. And mad. I’d prepared a tirade on my walk over, but I was too tired for it now.
“I know you’re the Link thief,” I said, my eyes resting on her bare toes.
She squawked in outrage.
“I also know you weren’t the one stealing my memories.”
“What?” Now she sounded confused.
“It was Dad.”
Her toes curled and she let me in. I sank onto her bed.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice as cold as the night. “You have a habit of creating facts out of assumptions.”
“He admitted it.”
A beat of silence. “That evil, evil . . . Why?”
“Kalan. The Populace boy.” I was too emotionally exhausted to point out that she stole memories too, so she might want to reserve judgment. “Can I stay here tonight?”
She trudged to a closet and pulled out some extra blankets.
“Why did you do it, Ren?”
She threw the blankets at my head and burrowed into her covers, facing the wall.
I spent most of the night not sleeping on the floor by her bed.
We rose with the sun the next morning. Ren let me shower first. Numbness consumed me as I stood under the spray. I cupped my hands, letting them fill with water that overflowed and trickled over my fingertips.
Light lanced through the window, turning the falling drops into slivers of rainbow that pierced my open hands. I closed my eyes and let the streams fall on my face.
Grandma Piper. Funny, loving, temperamental Grandma Piper. Her temper had flared when I so much as dropped a cup. Apologies had always followed, but still. If something so small set her off, what happened when she got truly upset? My empty stomach roiled. She’d been the one I could always run to, the one I was certain would always love me no matter what.
Did she love me even while she was hitting me?
I wanted to rid myself of the contamination of her dark side. She’d had so much pain in her life, and I’d always known she had scars. It made sense, it totally made sense that she could never overcome her past.
What does making sense have to do with it? She hit you.
I clenched shaking fists and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t think about Grandma. Wouldn’t think about her. Those memories tasted sour like lemon drops after all the sugar had been sucked away.
Dad had learned not to be violent like Grandma, but violence wasn’t the only way to cause pain.
I trembled under the shower spray. The few memories he hadn’t taken of Kalan twisted my heart. The honey of his eyes and the glint of his smile. The warmth of his hand sliding from mine. The bouncy ball. For a moment, I was back in the costume closet with that ball. Watching the swirling path of the glitter, remembering the agony in his face and realizing how well he knew me. A silent scream rose from my gut and clawed at my throat. My fingers convulsed over my Links.
I don’t want it. If I can’t have it all I don’t want any. I don’t want it don’t want it don’t want to lose it . . .
My knees gave way and thumped against the porcelain bottom of the tub. How could Dad say he loved me when he’d hurt me so much? The scream I’d tried to hold in came out as a half-sob, muffled by closed lips. I wanted to hate him. I did hate him. There was a power in it, an ability to tune out the hurt so I could hate instead, and I clung to that power. I gasped, inhaling water, coughing and gagging. A soft knock sounded from the door.
“You okay in there?” Ren asked from the other side.
I spit and wiped my wet arm across my mouth. “No. But I’m not drowning either.”
Water pattered against the tub.
“Okay. I left some clothes by the door and made some coffee.”
“Thanks.”
I knelt in the tub until I could take normal, even breaths without having to force them. The invisible hand that wrenched my insides eased its grip. I needed the time-honored Mementi technique that was as close as we could come to forgetting—distraction. Coffee was distraction. Finding out why Ren stole lives was distraction.
I joined Ren in the kitchen-slash-living-room a few minutes later, wearing her jeans and gloves. She sat at the table nibbling buttered toast. A pre-filled mug waited for me on the table.
“You got another chair,” I noted, remembering images of her apartment from Kalan’s Memo.
She spun her coffee cup in circles. “A friend was moving. She gave it to me.”
“I’m surprised Happenings doesn’t pay well enough for two chairs.”
“In their hierarchy, being Mementi means nothing. I don’t have a college degree yet, so I’m only a lab assistant. And no, it doesn’t exactly pay for luxuries.”
Two chairs was a luxury? I swirled a sip of coffee around with my tongue, letting the warmth fill my entire mouth before I swallowed.
“So you’re the Link thief.”
She pressed her palms to her eyes. “Do we really have to do this?”
“At least I’m not yelling.”
Her hands dropped to wrap around her coffee mug. “How did you find out?”
If I wanted honesty from her, I’d have to give some back. “I found the memory of what happened the night Cora lost her Link. I’d stored it in Kalan.”
She choked and set her mug down. “You stored it in Kalan? In a person?”
“Well, I didn’t have a lot of choices,” I said. “Knowing it was you, I must have figured you’d come after that memory. Why didn’t you?”
“I did,” she admitted. “I ran home and watched you go inside. You weren’t freaking out anymore, weren’t even hurrying like you knew I’d be after you. It was obvious you didn’t remember what you’d seen, so I traced your route, thinking you’d stored it somewhere. I was right, I guess.”
&nb
sp; My lips twitched in a half-smile that faded. “Why, Ren?”
“Because Ascalon has gotten nowhere in the last fifty years on memory backups. We have to have live subjects. Happenings is the only place willing to go that far. And we need that far. We have nothing to protect our memories.”
She scratched crumbs off the crust of her toast. “Rory, Trae, Blaire, and I all sent a project request to Liza, volunteering as live subjects so we could study how Mementi brains work. We decided I should stay on the outside, to have a Mementi mind working on the project.” Ren snorted. “Not that I actually got to work on Liza’s new pet project. I heard she even came into the lab after hours, as if she knew enough about the science to understand anything. I never met her, but I ended up as nothing more than her gofer.”
“And that extended to stealing Links?”
“The experiment is only temporary,” Ren growled. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The three others told people stories about why they’d be gone, thinking it’d be enough to keep people off their trail for a few months. Trae was the Populace control subject, and it was easier for him—he just pretended he was transferring to a different branch. Everybody bought it. Except his fiancée, I guess.”
Valeria. She would’ve seen through faked emails or whatever Liza had concocted.
“Blaire’s mom didn’t buy it, either,” Ren continued. “She was the first one. She came to me to find out why she couldn’t get a hold of Blaire, then started badgering Liza.”
“And what, the CEO added to your job description? Steal Miranda’s Links to shut her up? Not the most brilliant plan.”
“Liza’s not exactly a criminal mastermind. She panicked. She called me up one day and asked me to . . . keep Miranda’s Links safe for a while.”
“And you just said, ‘sure, why not?’”
“You think it was that easy?” Ren snapped. “If I’d said no, Liza made it very clear I’d become another comatose test subject, and she’d have someone else take care of Miranda’s memories. I was the only Mementi left on the outside of this. The only one who would actually keep Miranda’s memories safe. Liza just wanted me because I had easy access to Miranda, but then the other families came asking questions. Liza said if I didn’t take their Links too, she’d wipe my memory and turn me into the cops as the Link thief.”
Her eyes shifted to her desk. I knew that if I opened one of those drawers, I’d find the missing lives of everyone in the hospital. I’d find Cora’s missing two years.
“What about Jacie Moran?” I asked. “She was the first victim, not Miranda.”
“I don’t have hers.” She shook her head. “Somebody else must have taken them. Maybe that’s where Liza got the idea.”
“What was the point of this project, anyway?”
“We wanted to understand how it works. How we work. Liza thought if she could induce a comatose state in a few of us, then Link us into an SLS connected to monitoring equipment, she could study how we store and retrieve memories.”
“Why a coma?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be more effective to do it when people are awake?”
“Wow. And here I thought you were all anti-Happenings.”
“I don’t condone the method. But the project sounds worthwhile.”
“Finally willing to express an opinion, huh?”
I suppressed a growl. “Why a coma, Ren?”
“We did several weeks’ worth of conscious studies too. But Liza wanted to see what happened when the brain was in a constant dream state. When it accessed the memories without any conscious purpose. She thought it would give us a better indication of how the neurons and peripheral nerves were connected. Maybe even see where the chain of command originated in the brain.”
I couldn’t help it. I was fascinated. “And did you figure it out?”
Ren hesitated. “I think so. But all the project files are confidential. I’m only a lab assistant, and the other scientists only give me basic updates to forward on to Liza. She just calls or texts me if she needs something, but she doesn’t tell me much.”
I pushed my mug away from me, the fascination fading. So much sacrifice for knowledge Ren didn’t even have.
“And you kept doing her dirty work while she was too sick to get out of bed? That’s what you were doing the night you stole Cora’s Links, wasn’t it.”
Ren took her plate to the sink. “The project was almost over, okay? One other person had volunteered to go under. So Liza asked me to do another job, preemptive this time. I followed the guy out of the Low-G, and you and Cora came around and saw me.”
“What happened to the guy? I never heard of any other thefts.”
Ren’s shoulders heaved, her back still to me. “I panicked and dropped the Links. I chased after you and Cora. To explain things. But Cora was so . . . Cora. When I caught up to her, I . . .”
“What?” I demanded. “Knocked her out and took the Link with her most recent memories?”
“I didn’t want her to lose everything.” Her voice sounded weak, pitiful. “Not Cora. And not you, either. I didn’t think of siphoning, it would’ve made things easier on her—”
I slammed my coffee cup on the table. “Made things easier on her? Would you still have taken her memory—taken my memory—if you had to go back and do it again?”
Ren turned, her face crumpled. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t know what I meant. I didn’t want things to go like this, I just wanted to help people. Help the Mementi grow.”
She stared at her hands, clad in sheer red gloves, like she didn’t recognize them as her own.
I sighed. “So what happened with the guy you were supposed to hit that night?”
“No idea. Probably just thought he’d passed out drunk. Liza was furious. Braxton still went under, though. He told his brother he was going on a business trip.” She slumped against the counter. “I’m so tired of this.”
“You know what you have to do,” I said. “If you turn yourself in and explain all of this, the cops can arrest Liza.” And Jackson, while they were at it.
“Turn myself in? Do you have any idea what they’d do to me?”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to those people you stole from?”
She closed her eyes. “It’s only temporary. I can fix them.”
“I don’t know if they can be fixed. They’ve gone crazy, Ren, or they’re going crazy. It’s happening to Cora, even to me a little. Getting their Links back may not solve that.”
Miranda’s heartbroken face flickered in my mind. I second-guessed my opinion that Liza’s project was worthwhile. Could the good that might come from it justify what had been done?
“We can’t go to the police,” Ren said.
“Why?”
“Because Liza fired me yesterday.”
Oh, the horror. “So?”
“She emailed me digital ‘evidence’ memories she’d gathered that pinned everything on me if I exposed the project.” Ren’s nose twitched. “I’ve got no clue how she did it. Even with my memories as counter evidence, she’s got a cop friend at the station. I’ll go to jail and she’ll keep experimenting. I’ve heard she’s testing some kind of new SLS—”
“What?” A horrible churning started in my stomach.
“It’s a rumor,” Ren said. “But I bet she figured out how to do it after all her experiments on the Mementi.”
A new SLS. Like Dad’s. Using technology that mimicked brainwaves.
“Ren, that’s how Dad did it,” I whispered. “He didn’t just siphon my memories away, he deleted them with an SLS. He said it was a prototype. I think he got it from work.”
“He deleted them?” Ren said. “They’re gone?”
I focused on the swirling wood grain of the tabletop.
“But how would Happenings get that SLS?” Ren said. “If Dad got it from Ascalon . . . you don’t think . . . he stole it?”
I shrugged to hide the anger that tightened my shoulders. I didn’t even know my father any more.
“But Dad hates Happenings. He’d never even talk to Liza, let alone sell company tech to her.” She paused. “I take that back. I wouldn’t put anything past Dad anymore.”
I wouldn’t put anything past Liza Woods with an all-powerful SLS. “If she has something like that, if she can erase memories from a distance . . . Ren, we have to stop her.”
“Because that’s going to be so easy.”
Ren sank into her chair. In her face was the same regret I’d seen in Mom’s eyes, but not in Dad’s. Funny. I’d always thought she was more like Dad—always right, with no room for regrets.
The desk that held the missing Links hunkered against the wall. Maybe Ren was right. It’s not like we could march in with blazing guns and take Liza down. If I wanted, I could quit now. I’d found who stole my memories, and who had stolen everyone else’s. I’d never get mine back, but we could return the Links to Cora and the others. I could claim I’d finished what I started.
I could wimp out.
But other people could lose their memories the way I lost mine, without realizing it. Liza Woods had the tech to do it. I’d found the thief, now I had to stop the thief. Somehow.
My heart chided me gently. Someone else had been with me through everything. Kalan could help us. I hunched forward, trying to minimize the hole in my heart. I’d lost him three times, and I wasn’t keen on going for round four. I didn’t know him anymore. Despite the longing inside me, I wanted to keep it that way. Walking straight into Happenings sounded easier than talking to Kalan again.
Walking straight into Happenings . . .
“Ren,” I said, “how many people know you were fired?”
23
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief . . .
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam XI
Ren and I walked to Happenings through empty, quiet streets. Not the silence of a city still waking up. It was a tense, shifting kind of quiet, like a thief in the shadows. Goose bumps prickled my arms.
I stopped mid-step as we approached the square in front of Happenings. People had gathered already, both Populace and Mementi. They stood on opposite sides of the bedraggled grass, the pond in the middle acting as a dividing line.
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 21
