“It’s similar to metal, actually. It separates physical memory from emotional memory.” He shook his wrist. “Helps quite a bit with objectivity.”
So that’s why he acted so over-the-top. He may have started this plan because he cared about people, but he’d resorted to faking it for the crowd. His life had no more emotional connection. Sounded like a good path to ruthlessness.
“What did you do with her?” I asked. “The real Liza Woods, what happened to her?”
“She’s of no concern.” His tone was close to snapping. “I thought by working together in secret, combining our knowledge . . . but then she stole the Links from that first poor girl. Idiot woman, thinking she could learn anything from Links alone. She got justice.”
“Seeing as you continued the Link thefts,” I retorted, “what do you think you deserve?”
“My subjects were volunteers,” he said, calm again. “The resulting Link thefts were unfortunate, but they’re temporary.”
My stolen memories—and the stolen memories of me—were not temporary.
Matthews continued, his tone dark. “I didn’t destroy the Links, the way that woman did.”
Destroyed Links. Oh, Jacie. She would never have her life back.
Ahead, the white walls of Happenings shone against a backdrop of red cliffs. The grass around it had been ripped apart; red dirt smeared the sidewalks. In the twilight, the shadows of rioters stretched, throwing contorted puppets on Happenings’ walls. People beat at the building, beat at each other, and beat at police. Hundreds of them, both Populace and Mementi.
The shadows twisted into screaming faces streaked with dirt, tears, and blood. They bolted toward us. A group of Populace converged on someone squirming on the ground. A Mementi cop raised her Taser in one hand and lashed out with her club. So much for calming the riots.
Matthews jerked forward in his seat. “What the . . . ?”
Jackson had already synced his Sidewinder to the car speakers. The call connected. “Who’s stationed at Happenings?” Jackson asked. “It’s a disaster over here.”
“The mayor ordered we clear the streets,” snapped a voice on the other end. “We had to pull most of the cops from Happenings to do it. Now the nutters are converging on Happenings again.”
Jackson slammed a fist on the console. “So call the National Guard in!”
“We did. Won’t be here for at least an hour.”
“Then send the patrols back this way!”
“We’re handling it, Jackson. This isn’t your area. But if you can manage to spare a few precious moments, we could possibly use a bit more help.”
The line went dead. Jackson let out a breath that sounded remarkably like a growl.
Outside, Kinley’s youngest sister Rissa dodged around a palm tree. Blonde hair tangled over her terrified face. I raised my cuffed hands to the window. Behind her, a Populace man pulled his arm back, ready to throw.
“Rissa!” I screamed.
A rock hit her in the back. She arched, arms flinging out, and fell to the ground. The man behind her vanished into the crowd. Rissa pulled herself up, sobbing, and rushed away.
“She’s okay,” Kalan whispered in my ear, his hand on my arm.
“I thought you said the riots were over,” Matthews yelled at Jackson. “We can’t accomplish anything with this chaos.”
“What do you want me to do, Drake?” Jackson barked as we sped around the rear of Happenings. “I’m only a detective, I can’t command—”
Thump. I jumped. A woman banged on my window, battering it wildly with both fists. I slid closer to Kalan. People converged on the car, and Jackson was forced to slow down.
We edged through the crowd. Chanting roared around us. A rock crashed into my window. A rush of tingling panic jumpstarted my heart. They’d kill us before we even left the car. The tingling spread. The feet of a thousand ants, burrowing between layers of skin and muscle.
A vise squeezed my chest. Crushing. They’d crush us. Clubs cracking my bones and fingers gouging my eyeballs and rocks smashing my skull. Exactly what they did outside right now to each other. Sounds from a horror movie surrounded me. The dull thump of wood against flesh, the rolling crunch of someone thrown into the car, a muffled crack that could be a baton or a head splintering.
I scrambled away from the door. There was nowhere to go. There was only noise and noise and noise I couldn’t get away from. It collapsed my lungs and rang in my head and—
Panic attack. Not again.
I knew now why the fear came. One small moment, one single time that someone I loved had terrified me. But knowing about that moment wasn’t the same as remembering it. It didn’t set me free. I hadn’t been robbed of the pain—just of the healing. I’d be trapped forever, trapped with fists pounding on the glass, trapped with fear clawing at my neck. I gasped, rocking back and forth. Had to move, had to move.
“Gena?” Kalan’s voice. Strained.
Another person struck the glass, struck at me, vibrations shaking me.
“Gena, you’re hurting my hands.”
I stared at Kalan’s cuffed hands holding both of mine. When had that happened? I tried to let him go. My fingers only peeled back so far. Like I didn’t have control. The fear always had control, and I wanted to scream because this was her fault. She’d paralyzed me with fear, taken my ability to make choices just like Dad.
I raised my head, stopping my rocking. Ready to tell someone. “She hit me.”
Kalan sat up straight. “Who?”
Pounding on the glass. Matthews shouted something. I squeezed my eyes shut and started rocking again.
“Grandma. I don’t remember. My parents took the memory.”
Kalan was silent. His fingers twitched in mine.
“I want to hate her.” It made me so angry that I couldn’t hate her. That I had so many happy memories of her. That I never had a chance to make more memories with her. “I never had a chance to hate her and then find a way to love her again.”
Kalan licked his lips. “Do you think you could have?”
I froze in my rocking. Sat up, slowly. Grandma had had a life of horror and trauma. She’d tried to move past it. Changed—but not enough. What if she’d had another chance? What if I could have worked through my fear and anger, and she could have, too? We could have changed, both of us together.
Grandma was gone, and so was any possibility of making new memories. That was the opportunity I’d had stolen from me. That was where the healing could have come. In changing our relationship again. In forgiveness.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I could have.”
Two thumps sounded on the window next to me. I ripped my hands from Kalan’s and rammed my fists against the glass. A startled face outside the tinted window jerked back. He was just like Grandma. Just like all of us. Stuck in memories of the past, forgetting that memories can’t change, but people can.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “You can stop this!”
The car inched forward, away from the stunned man outside. Matthews and Jackson argued and growled from the front seat, but I sat back and focused on the sound of my breathing. Steady. Even. For the first time, I hadn’t just beaten back my fear. I had faced it. I had faced her with a truth I’d finally allowed myself to admit. Memories shaped who we had been, but we chose who we wanted to be now.
And I was taking that choice back.
Hesitantly, Kalan touched my gloved hand. “Are you all right?”
I curled my gloved fingers around his. “Yes.”
Even if the panic came back another day, in this moment, I was okay.
“Get us in the garage,” Matthews snarled to Jackson.
A line of armed private guards came into view ahead of us, patrolling the driveway to Happenings. The car sped up again as the mob fell behind. I sat forward, eyeing the building. One victory today wasn’t enough. I didn’t know if I could pull off another. But at least now I knew I had the strength to try.
“Where are the res
t of those riot police?” Matthews swiveled his head around like he might be able to spot them on the march.
Jackson clicked a button. A transparent GPS map appeared on the windshield. “The first unit is two blocks out, the others are.”
“Get the rest of Happenings security out there,” Matthews said, thumbing at the line of guards as we passed them. “We’ve got a private force of fifty inside and outside. That ought to be enough to help keep these people off our grounds.”
“They’re not riot police, they’re hired security. It could make things worse if—”
“Just do it.” Matthews ruffled his hair in a Liza-like gesture, his face red and flustered.
Jackson called in the order as we screeched into the garage.
Matthews wasted no time. He yanked me out of the car. In my post-panic haze, I stumbled to the cement. Kalan was thrown out beside me. The garage door shut behind us, slicing off the fading daylight.
Jackson nudged us to our feet. He strolled behind us like we ambled through a park, but his calculated steps were the prowl of a predator protecting its catch. We approached the metal door leading to the building, and Matthews sighed. In the dim calm of the garage, he seemed to have regained his chipper attitude.
“Oh, dear. Give me a moment.”
From the inside of his jacket, he pulled out a syringe. I spied three more tucked in his pocket. Liza Woods’ DNA, fizzing inside a Chameleon treatment. Matthews rolled back his sleeve.
“Jackson, lock them together. I don’t want them to run.” He plunged the needle into his forearm and depressed the plunger.
The skin around the injection began to boil.
My handcuffs jangled and pulled at my wrists. Matthews braced himself against the concrete wall, his skin reddening and bubbling like lava. A fissure opened along his cheek and blood oozed out. Acid burned in my throat. Don’t look away. My memory was evidence. If I could get it out of here.
So I focused on Matthews, my eyes watering at the slithery sound of flesh shifting and popping. He let out a strangled sound between a cough and a cry. He sank to the ground.
“A few more minutes, please,” he said in a higher, throatier voice. Liza Woods now sat on the curb in Matthews’ suit, blood trickling from the cut cheek to the white collar. “Still haven’t got the vocal cords right. Have to have the fellows work on it some more. Some water, please, Jackson.”
With a weak arm, he accepted a water bottle and sipped. No wonder he’d spread rumors about Liza being sick. The darker skin and brown eyes didn’t cut it up close. Now that I knew, I could see him beneath her skin. He was too tall—that explained his slouch as Liza. The business suit emphasized his masculine shape.
Still, not a bad resemblance, all things considered. Matthews’ words about vocal cords confirmed my suspicions that his version of Chameleon DNA changed muscle structure and cartilage. Completely disgusting.
Finally, Liza/Matthews stood. She—he—dabbed at his bleeding cheek with a handkerchief and frowned.
“I told you to cut back,” Jackson said. “Your skin’s getting too weak.”
Matthews brushed at his neck with gloved hands, sending a puff of dust into the air. “Always better when I can have a quick rinse after a change. So much dead skin.”
He removed a glove and pressed his Liza-DNA-imprinted hand to the lock next to the door. It beeped. Jackson separated my and Kalan’s handcuffs, and we followed Matthews through a dark hallway. Another door, another beep. Matthews swept his Liza-hand in a grand gesture.
No way was I going in there willingly. My knees trembled, and I locked them, ready to bolt. There had to be a way out. Something that would take me anywhere but that room.
“Oh, come now, no need to be difficult. We’re already past the point of no return.” Matthews grabbed my arm and shoved me inside.
The door closed. Trapped. My fingers drummed my thigh until I wanted to laugh hysterically because finger drumming was going to do me a crap-load of good now.
“Always knew it would be the basement,” Kalan said.
Get a grip, Gena. Focus on the facts to drown out the fear. My eyes swept the room. It didn’t look anything like a basement. More like the lab Ren had taken me through upstairs. White tile from floor to ceiling, rows of computers and medical equipment, lab tables lining the walls. No windows. No doors except the one we’d just come through, which Jackson now guarded.
And four people in hospital beds at the center of the room.
I wanted to cringe away from them, but I knew my responsibility. I was a witness for these people, whether I got out of here or not.
Blaire. She looked so much like I remembered. And so different at the same time. She’d chopped her hair short, like Ren’s. Had they done it together, friends going out for a spa night before one of them became an experiment and the other a thief?
A yellow tube ran into her nose. Small sections of brown hair had been shaved away, her head dotted with wireless electrodes. Machines pulsed around her. I wondered where the information from her brain was transmitted, and if the scientists working on it had any idea where it came from.
I took in each of the other victims. Rory, Trae, and Braxton. They looked eerily similar with their tubes and wires and pale blue blankets. Like variations on a cloned theme.
Matthews pulled off his gloves and laid them on a table, like he was coming home. He beamed at the limp bodies. “My faithful subjects. It’s thanks to them that I discovered how our brains connect to our Links. It made the wireless SLS possible. Quite brave and amazing individuals, really.” He turned that bright smile on me. “You’re brave yourself, Gena. I think you’ll fit in well.”
I dragged my eyes from Trae, the only unknown face in the room. Valeria’s lost fiancé.
Kalan’s fists clenched in his handcuffs. “You let her go before. Why keep her now?”
“I’d always planned to bring her back,” Matthews snapped. “Her Populace connections complicated matters.”
Kalan snorted. “You people always underestimate us, don’t you?”
“Not anymore.” He smoothed his Liza-black hair out of his face. “You’ve provided me with a golden opportunity. The other Populace subject was simply a control. But now, with another of you . . . it’s a chance to find out how Mementi went from you—to us.”
Kalan’s eyebrows contracted. For the first time, he looked afraid.
No. No way would he turn Kalan into a slug on a table. Or worse, a repetition of the first generation, of the Link theft victims. It was still a death sentence, just preceded by years of agony.
Plan A. Get Matthews talking so I could plot a way out of here.
“So that’s what this is about?” I said. “Research?”
Kalan’s eyes darted toward me. I brushed his shoulder with mine.
“Not research. The future.” His voice droned as if delivering a memorized speech. “We’ve finally found a way to secure our memories, using the SLS merging. And the fade-out ramifications . . . do you know how important it is to forget things? To let time dull memory, so we don’t have to bear the full weight of every moment? If we can keep detailed backups, but dim the memories we actually wear . . . there’s so much mental and emotional damage we can prevent. That we can heal.”
“How noble,” Kalan said. “I’m sure it’s also helpful that you can ‘fade’ any memories people might have of you murdering Liza Woods, and keeping four people as lab rats in your basement.”
Matthews sighed. “Kalan, your mind is depressingly mundane. I’d have thought Gena would be discerning enough to choose her companions more wisely.”
Jackson stood behind us with arms crossed behind his back. Blocking the only obvious exit. Maybe air ducts? Did that even work outside the movies? I needed more time.
“You’re such a liar,” I said. “This all started because you killed someone, and tried to cover your tracks.”
I didn’t see any air ducts, either.
“I had to protect the research,”
Matthews snapped. “That meant keeping it hidden. I did this for the Mementi.”
“Liar.”
Matthews paused, hands on the bed. His stare chilled me. Kalan lifted his bound hands to my shoulder.
Matthews reached into a cabinet on the wall, pulling out a vial. “Consider yourself lucky to be part of history.”
He filled a syringe from the vial. No doubt something to knock us out. This was it. No way out. Kalan’s hand squeezed my shoulder, his handcuffs bumping my shoulder blade.
Trembling shudders constricted my chest. I set my feet in a defensive stance and raised my hands as fists. Matthews paused, wary.
“Drake.”
Jackson’s voice startled me. He stepped past me and Kalan and spoke to Matthews in a low voice.
“I thought we were erasing their memories. You’re not serious about putting them under?”
Matthews straightened into a commanding posture. “You know what we could learn from them. The boy, especially.”
“He’s Populace.”
“Exactly. He could be the key to everything we don’t understand about our origins.”
Jackson hesitated. “You’ll break his mind. Like the first generation.”
Like my grandmother. Like his mother. I held my breath.
Matthews tapped the syringe. “You knew when we started this that your personal feelings have no bearing here.”
“My personal feelings are the reason I agreed to help,” Jackson said. “These two aren’t volunteering. This is wrong.”
Kalan tugged at my shirt. The door! Jackson had left the door unguarded. I dragged a foot backward along the tiled floor, easing toward the exit.
Matthews fingered the lapel of his jacket, stained with the blood from his cut cheek. “We do what we have to do. The project is too important.”
Jackson clenched his fists by his sides. “No. This was not in the cards. They’re kids.”
Kalan and I backed closer to the door. Without warning, Matthews elbowed Jackson hard in the gut. Jackson doubled over and Matthews sprinted forward.
Kalan stepped in front of me, crouching. Syringe out, Matthews raced toward us.
I needed that syringe.
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 27
