Remember Me

by Stacey Nash

“Look at me,” he says.

  Closing my eyes and drawing a deep breath, I slowly look past his crouched body to his face. His strong jaw, his chestnut hair, his soft caring eyes. I feel like I’ve looked at him a million times before. Feelings for him blend with feelings for the other guy and I’m not sure where they really belong.

  His thumb smoothes my jaw, gently stroking it. “It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re home.”

  “I don’t know what happened, Josh …” My words tumble out. “He said he knew me and I felt like it was true.” My hand trembles.

  “You’ve said that to me too. What’s going on with you?”

  “It wasn’t the same as the feeling I get with you, it was an older feeling, one that ran right through me and feels like it’s been there forever.”

  “So you kissed him?” His mouth quirks, a lone corner threatening to rise.

  “He kissed me.” At least I think that’s what happened. “I just … ever since the accident … I don’t know …” My shoulders slump as I let out a long sigh. “I just don’t know, Jax.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mae

  Joshua’s hand drops from my chin like I burnt him. A frown puckers his usually smooth face as his head tips to the side and he takes a step back. “Where did you hear that name?”

  I shrug. “I … ah … I don’t know. It was just … it slipped out.”

  “No one has called me that since my mom died.” All the color has fled from his face, making his eyes pop like a stormy green sea against a pristine beach.

  “Your mom died?”

  His arms bunch, the muscles flexing as he crosses them. “Let’s keep this on track. You called me a name you don’t know.”

  A thud makes us both turn toward the bull’s eye mat. Nik braces his knees and straightens up, his face as stormy as Josh’s eyes. He takes two long strides, grabs the back of Joshua’s shirt and raises him off the ground till his toes are just barely touching.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” It’s more a growl than a question.

  Joshua spins, a sharp elbow jabbing Nik’s chest as he pulls himself out of his brother’s grasp. He plants his feet wide on the floor and meets Nik, stony eye to icy glare.

  “Thought you’d skip out of the mission to make out, huh?”

  Josh’s fist connects with Nik’s chin, jerking his head back in a sharp snap. “If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed your partner needed you.” Joshua takes a preemptive step back.

  Nik brings his fist up and takes a swing at Josh, who ducks just in time, stepping to the side. Nik stumbles off balance and grabs hold of his brother’s shirt again, his biceps bulging as he raises Joshua single-handed off the ground. I never would have thought he had that kind of strength. Josh isn’t a small guy.

  Everything twists and churns and sloshes inside me. All the feelings merge into one big mess of broken emotions. The boys continue to swing at each other, neither of them using words when clearly Neanderthal fists will do. The urge to scream or run or maybe just curl up and cry makes me jump to my feet and stride right up to them. Trying to pry them apart with my hands, I yell, “Stop it.”

  They both halt, and look at each other with identical expressions: red faces, throbbing veins, and gritted teeth. Nik’s fist is still curled around Josh’s collar and Joshua’s arm is pulled back, ready to punch his brother again. “Just stop it, both of you stop it.”

  Nik releases his hold, Josh drops his fist, but they both stand there, shoulders rising and falling rapidly while they glare at each other. Neither one looks at me.

  “You should have been watching out for her,” Joshua says through his teeth.

  “And what about your partner, little brother, where’s he?” Nik grins in a way which makes the hairs on my arms prick up. “That’s right, you were too busy mooning over my partner to worry about your own.”

  Another series of thuds on the mat and Cynnie, Xane, and Kalon all land. Kalon clutches a gash on his arm, blood trickling between his tight fingers. Xane’s face, swollen and bruising, doesn’t look good. Cynnie drops both boys’ hands with a sharp flick, glowers at Nik, then Joshua, then me and back again. “What the heck happened to you three?”

  I shake my head as I turn my back, moving toward the door. I can’t do this. I need to get out of here. In a low voice, I mumble, “Don’t ask.”

  Just as I reach for the knob, the door flies open, almost smacking me in the face. I step back and the sensor who helped us earlier enters. She casts a quick glance around the room, her mouth falling slightly open as she lays a hand over her breast. “We warned them this mission was too much.”

  Nik scoffs and his hand darts to his pocket, retrieving something small and electronic. He holds it up. “Only for some of us.”

  She nods. “You must report to your socrai.” Glancing at the trio on the port mat, the sensor scrunches her nose. “I’d best summon him here.” She stalks out the door.

  Nik moves away from Joshua and scowls as he looks around the room. “We succeeded. We destroyed the experiment, trashed the lab, and burnt the blueprints. The resistance was there, that’s how these two got hurt. But they didn’t stop us from achieving our objective.”

  Cynnie opens her mouth, but Nik cuts her off before she even begins to speak. “There’s no question, and I won’t have an uptight girl robbing me of agent status.”

  He turns on his heels and stalks toward the door, kicking it open. As he storms out of the room, the rest of us stare after him open-mouthed. Somehow I’m not surprised he expects us all to lie. The longer I know him, the more his true nature shines through. I knew he’d been acting weirder, but this … this feels like the real him and it fits right in with the way he spoke to his father that night we overheard.

  “Are you all right?” Cynnie asks.

  Xane and Kalon. We’ve all been standing here arguing while they’ve been bleeding. Cynnie examines Kalon’s gaping wound, prying his hand off it.

  I go straight to Xane. “Are you okay?”

  He nods. “Just some bumps and bruises. I’ll be fine.” He runs a tentative finger down the side of his split face where a line of drying blood scabs over a thin wound.

  “They had a paralyzing mace,” Cynnie says. “It knocked him out cold.”

  The door swings open and the same sensor enters again, flanked by two of her sisters with their creamy hoods pushed back, exposing their cropped heads. I’ve never seen either of them before, one tall and one short. The six-foot-whatever sensor heads straight to Kalon while the other one comes to Xane. “Excuse me.”

  I move out of the way and she hops right to work, dabbing the blood off his face and gently prodding the swelling.

  Moments later, Socrai appears with Nik at his side. Socrai wears a huge smile, his arms crossed and hands tucked into his pits with thumbs pointing upward. He looks pretty pleased. “Well done,” he says. “Nikias tells me the mission was successful.”

  Lies, all lies. No one says a word. Xane and Kalon, busy with the sensors tending them, are distracted. Cynnie’s mouth is set in a firm line, her eyes narrowed. Should I speak up? Yes. Someone needs to put Nik in his place.

  Before I get the chance though, Josh’s voice comes from where he sits on the floor. “They were already there waiting for us—”

  “And we still managed to succeed,” Nik says.

  “We didn’t—” Josh says.

  “Have a single fatality.” Nik smiles.

  “It was—”

  “Highly successful,” Nik continues to talk over him.

  Joshua bounds to his feet, glares at his brother and opens his mouth once more but Nik cuts him off before he can speak. “We destroyed the tech, burned the blueprints, and deleted the research from their computers.”

  What a load of lies. “That’s not—” I begin.

  “Well done, team.” Socrai claps Nik on the shoulder.

  Josh lets out a long sigh.

  Let me speak. “But Socrai, that�
�s not—”

  He speaks over the top of me, his proud smile all over Nik. “That’s it for today. You’re all free to go home.”

  Nik saunters over to Joshua and grabs him by the forearm. “Come on little brother, our father will be excited with our news.”

  Joshua’s face is set and his usual sparkling eyes glower as Nik guides him by the arm. “Let’s go, Anamae,” Nik says.

  Joshua yanks his arm from Nik’s hold and storms out of the room. I try to push past Nik to catch up, but he grabs my elbow with his bony fingers, giving a small shake of his head and a fake smile. I try to pull myself away but it’s no use. He’s too strong.

  “You aren’t meant to be with him, you’re meant for me,” he says low enough so only I can hear.

  “That’s never going to happen.”

  He shoots me a sickly-sweet smile. “Oh, it will.”

  His fingers ring my arm tightly while we walk through the temple and down the front steps. The transport’s already waiting with Joshua standing on its hexagonal base. His look slips over us, stopping on Nik’s hand around my upper arm and his scowl deepens. His feet smash against the pavement as he jumps off the transport and slams his palms square into Nik’s chest. “Let her go.”

  I pull against Nik and my arm falls as he releases it with a chuckle, a mean, nasty sound. Joshua balls his hand into a fist.

  “Home,” Nik orders.

  I hold my ground. There’s no way I’m getting on a transport with him behind the controls. In this mood, he’ll send me slamming into the screen. Besides, I need time to process everything that’s happened. “I’m walking.”

  Cynnie’s voice comes from behind us. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Nik looks from Cynnie to me and then at Joshua. Josh gives me a questioning look as if to offer his company, but I shake my head, there’s no way Nik would let that happen. “I want to be alone.”

  Joshua steps back onto the transport and Nik jumps on too, saying, “Fine.”

  The barriers rise and the transport zooms off faster than my eyes can follow. I let out a long breath as soon as it’s out of sight, the air suddenly feeling lighter now that they’re both gone.

  “Anamae,” Cynnie says, “What happened?”

  She must have been too busy fighting to notice. What didn’t happen? Kissing, brawling, lying, hurt friends. More fuzzy unreal, maybe real, memories. A lump pops into my throat again, aching fiercely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “At least let me walk with you.” She draws her brows together and purses her lips in that way she has of saying, this isn’t a question. I can’t say no, even though all I want is to be alone with my thoughts. Sift through them.

  “Okay.”

  We start moving down the cobbled road. Placing one foot in front of the other takes more energy than I have left, but I lift and step, lift and step, lift and step. From this high on the hill, I can see far and wide. Lamps throw light onto the street, which spirals down to the walls. House lights twinkle in the night, making me realize the community’s much smaller than I envisioned at only a few hundred houses. The huge mansion that is my home stands out like a white, shining beacon only a few streets away and over the back side of the hill. As I take in its three-story rectangular shape—taller and grander than the homes around it with spotlights shining up at it from below like some kind of monument—I let out a long sigh. I don’t want to face Nik and I’m not ready to talk to Joshua. I need to get my head around everything that happened, not only tonight, but over the past few weeks.

  Nik’s change in attitude, the real him, I think. Joshua, the names, the barrier, the guy tonight, Cynnie, training.

  Everything.

  My memories and my past feel close. Closer than they’ve felt since I opened my eyes in the green room of the hocrei’s infirmary. It’s like they’re right on the edge of my consciousness, just waiting for me to seize them, but every time I reach out to try, they flutter away like fallen leaves on a breeze.

  “We don’t have to go straight there,” Cynnie says, following my gaze to the house.

  We continue down the hill in the opposite direction, strolling through the dark streets and past numerous houses without speaking a word. That’s what I like about Cynnie. Silence is never uncomfortable: she never feels the need to fill it. My mind wanders and flits through a million reasons why this has happened to me. I doubt a single bump to the head from Nik caused everything to be lost. But it’s not really lost anymore. Now everything’s kind of blurred, my new memories becoming the old and I’m not sure if I know things from now or before. Things like Joshua’s other name. Jax.

  “Why did you three abort the mission?” Cynnie asks. I startle when she speaks, we’ve been walking in silence for so long.

  “It’s complicated.”

  In the half dark, I see enough of her outline to know she’s turned to face me and I bet she has that expression that says, give me a break.

  “Joshua and I left first, Nik came later.”

  “You teleported with Josh?”

  “Yes.”

  “No wonder Nik was pissed.” She chuckles. “What happened to make you leave with Josh instead of Nik? Partners are supposed to stick together.”

  “There was a guy …”

  She raises a brow and huffs. “Seriously, Anamae, a guy? Josh—”

  “No. I was fighting just like everyone else but this guy, he acted surprised to see me.” I pause not sure how to go on. Now it sounds kind of crazy. “He called me by name …”

  “Did you know him?”

  “At first I didn’t think so, but he kept talking and the more he did the stronger my sense of actually knowing him grew.”

  “That’s really weird,” she says, “but it doesn’t explain why you and Josh left together.”

  I examine my thumbnail, which is really getting too long. I should cut it. “He just grabbed me before I knew what was happening.”

  “For no reason?”

  There’s dirt under the nail too, I try to scrape it out with my other thumbnail.

  Cynnie clears her throat. “Well?”

  “Yes, for no reason.”

  “You’re lying again.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are, too. You’re not telling the whole truth.”

  If she hadn’t told me our friendship was new, I’d swear we’d known each other forever. There’s no hiding anything from her. I sigh. “He kissed me.”

  “Josh kissed you in the middle of that?”

  “No. Why would Joshua kiss me?” My stomach flutters at the thought. “The guy … the resistance guy.”

  She stops. “By the Founders.”

  “What is it?”

  She shakes her head. Her face, stark white against the black backdrop of night looks shocked. “Surely … no … that kind of tech doesn’t exist.”

  “Cynnie. What is it?”

  She glances at me, a small frown scrunching her petite features. Her curls bob like mini springs as we start walking again. “Tell me what you don’t remember.”

  There’s just too much. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Okay then, tell me what feels familiar.” She slows the pace as we walk the street.

  “Joshua …” I pause. Other images flit through my mind: a protective suit, iretum, fighting hand to hand, but nothing has the same feeling the sight of him sends coursing through me.

  “What else?”

  “The resistance guy,” I say and realize that’s it. They are the only familiar faces and really, truly familiar things amongst a sea of the unknown. The rest are just vague, not even half-memories.

  “Anything else, not people, but places or things, maybe objects?”

  “I don’t know.” I let out a long breath unable to think past the two faces swimming in the front of my mind.

  “Okay, then what do they have in common?”

  “I don’t know. They’re both guys.”

  “Obviously. Come on, Anamae,
there has to be something.”

  I search, and there’s something there, right on the tip of my tongue. It’s between their two faces, merging, separating. What is it?

  Anamae … Anamae … Anamae.

  MAE.

  “They both called me Mae, and said it so easily it was like that name was the only one right for me.”

  “Hmm.” Cynnie twirls a finger through a lone curl, pulls it down and lets it spring back up. “Throw that in with you getting stuck in the barrier.”

  I’m not sure what she means. Joshua, the barrier, the guy with sandy-blond hair.

  Moonlight reflects off a huge building, its pompous columns flanking the twin staircases, and I realize we’ve come full circle. We’ve reached the house. We face each other on the front lawn and Cynnie leans in, throws her arms around me, squeezing tight.

  “You really need to think. Think really hard, like you need to figure it out just to survive.” She releases me and disappears into the night before I can even thank her for walking with me. I cross the lawn, and take the back entry inside, traveling through the silent house. My head feels a little clearer now.

  I’m in my own thoughts as I enter my room and jump, squealing when I spot a lone figure standing in the darkness.

  “Explain yourself.”

  I stand there staring at his back, my body, my mind, and my psyche all feeling like they’ve been hit with a wrecking ball. I blow air out in a long sigh. “Not now, Nik. I’m too tired.”

  “What happened? Joshua wouldn’t tell me.”

  I slump onto the couch. Telling him could be bad, and until I’m sure of what’s going on and have it all sorted, I’m not saying a word because God knows if he’s trustworthy.

  “Well?” he says.

  “I got into trouble with the fighting. Joshua was close, so he grabbed me and ported us out.”

  “Ported?” He frowns. “Then what were you doing when I came back?”

  “He was comforting me. Nothing else.” I get up and walk toward my bedroom. “Goodnight, Nik.”

  The door to the sitting room slams as I fling it closed. Rubbing tired eyes, I sink onto my bed, facing the window. I don’t hear Nik leave and I really couldn’t care less if he’s still on the other side of the door or not. Time rolls by with my wandering thoughts, reliving every moment of the past few weeks. As the sky through the window lightens and pink, purple, and violet clouds line the morning horizon, something clicks like it’s all adding up in my mind.