False Memory

by Dan Krokos

  But I know. I feel the tug on my eyes. My muscles relax. “Why are you so good to me, Peter?”

  My head tilts back against the tree. My eyes are too heavy to keep open. I feel the vague sensation of his hands sliding under me, weightlessness as he lifts me up and settles me against his broad chest.

  On the edge of sleep, I hear him whisper. “That’s for me to know, and you to never find out.”

  I open my eyes, feel the prick of the needle. My ankle tingles. The memory fades slowly, leaving me with an aching emptiness. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—I don’t want to think about how Peter is gone, I want to think about getting him back.

  If Noah took notice of me checking out of reality, he doesn’t say so.

  “How were you able to get those vials,” I say, the first question that pops into my head, “if they were waiting for you?” I feel the skin tug as he pulls the stitches.

  “I found the crate easily enough. Opened it. Got a handful of vials. Then two hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back. Guys in scuba gear. I managed to elbow one, and there were bubbles everywhere, so I crammed the vials into my mouth. It just

  happened to be four.”

  Four. But it didn’t matter for Olive, who was unlucky enough to go last in her one-on-one with Dr. Conlin. Makes me wonder how close the rest of us cut it.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder and uses me to boost himself up. “All done.”

  “Thank you.” I slide my arms through the suit and Noah pushes the self-sealing seam together.

  “It was a little different last time I had your shirt off.”

  “You had to say something, didn’t you?” My cheeks and ears burn.

  He grins. That same grin. I refuse to smile with Peter still out there, with the city shattered the way it is. “I guess so,” he says.

  I pat him on the chest once and leave the bathroom, feeling the stitches tug in my back. But they don’t hinder my movement, and that’s the important thing. The view hasn’t changed at the long floor to ceiling window. The sky is hazy with smoke from dozens of fires.

  I turn away. The whole room is wide open—on the left side are leather couches and a TV, on the right a massive dinner table. Between those and farther back is an open kitchen with a marble island. You have to step down to get to the couches.

  I put my hand on a couch, not willing to sit down. Rhys is at the island, preparing some kind of meal. Noah sits Olive down on the couch and talks to her in quiet tones, probably telling her more about who we are, like Peter did for me. I stare at Rhys until he looks up. “We’re here now, safe. I think we deserve an explanation.”

  He sucks a bit of red sauce from his finger and wrings his hands together in a rag. “Right. What’s your first question?” He leaves the island and walks over to me. His irises are reddish-brown, and I’m struck with the memory of looking in the mirror at Elena’s house. How my eye color had deepened since the mall.

  “Who are you?” I say.

  “Already answered that. Said I was from Alpha team.”

  He cocks his head to the side, looking directly into my eyes.

  “C’mere, let me see you.” He grasps both sides of my face, gently, and I fight the urge to pull away.

  His eyes narrow; one of his fingers twitches against my cheek.

  “When did you use the machine?” he says, not kindly.

  “What machine?”

  “Don’t play with me.” He’s still holding my face. All that easygoing nature has evaporated. “Your eyes have changed from green to red, or didn’t you notice?”

  “Let go of her,” Noah says from the couch, injecting false calm into his voice.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  Rhys turns me toward the big window, examining me in the better light. “Tell me,” he says.

  I speak slowly since he didn’t understand the first time. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Noah stands up. “You have five seconds.”

  Rhys looks at him, still holding my face. “Oh, does this bother you?”

  “It does.”

  Me too, but I won’t pull away. Something has him spooked and I want to know what.

  Rhys faces me again, close enough to feel his breath on my cheek. He rubs his rough thumb over my chin. “Say ah.” I open my mouth and he says, “Interesting.”

  “What?” I say.

  “You have exceptionally beautiful teeth.” As Noah takes a step closer, Rhys says, “I could snap her neck, you know. One twist, and she’d be gone.”

  “Enough,” I say, refusing to let him scare me. Standing still as a statue in his grasp. “You know where Peter is. Tell me now.”

  “I believe you don’t know why your eyes have changed. I can usually tell when someone is lying.”

  “That’s progress,” I say.

  “You’ll have an easier time with this, I think, because you’ve done it before.”

  “Done what?” I say.

  “Had somebody else’s memories transferred to your brain.”

  26

  His words don’t make sense right away. I sound it out in my head.

  Sombody else’s. Memories.

  Transferred to. Your brain. Your brain.

  “No,” I say. I could say I don’t understand or What are you talking about? but I can only manage No.

  Noah is at my side. “Explain,” he says.

  Rhys holds up his hand, palm out, warding us off. “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. I only said she’s gone through the process before. I didn’t say what it meant.” The suspicion and malice I saw when he held my face is gone, for now.

  “So say what it means,” I demand.

  “I don’t know,” Rhys says. He turns away and goes back to the island in his kitchen. “Who’s hungry?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  He spins around and throws up his hands. “What should I say? Would you like me to make something up?”

  “A theory would be nice.”

  His face is . . . careful. Like he’s preparing to hold something back. “A theory. All right. I don’t think you are who you think you are. How’s that?”

  “Then who am I?”

  He raises his eyebrows, turns back to the kitchen. “Now that’s a question.”

  I stand there for a moment with my eyes on the floor, thinking. Memories transplanted, memories lost.

  What if I’m not the Miranda they grew up with?

  She could be in a cage somewhere, hidden. Or dead in the ground. I could be a mole, planted in the group to sabotage them. Controlled by means other than the tattoo. But no, that doesn’t make sense—if they wanted to use me against my Alpha team, they would have by now.

  I grab on to that logic like a lifeline.

  Olive and Noah wait in front of me, grim. Their faces blur as tears well in my eyes.

  “You’re you,” Noah says. “I know you. I promise.”

  I nod. The sympathetic look on Olive’s face makes me want to cry more. She doesn’t remember anything, but she feels bad for me. I don’t deserve her pity.

  I wipe my tears away as we walk toward the kitchen, forcing my voice to harden. “Is it possible I’m not Miranda North?”

  Rhys licks his lips. “Anything is possible.”

  “Bullshit,” Noah says. “She’s Miranda.”

  “Noah, please,” I say. “Let me talk to him.”

  Noah clenches his jaw and faces the big window.

  Rhys raises an eyebrow at Noah. “As I was saying. Is it likely you’re someone else? Who knows. I think the answers are coming, and I think you need to focus on what’s in front of us for right now.” He tries a tentative smile. “The mission of rescuing your friend and destroying the creators. And the food I’m preparing.”

  I’m speechless for a second, then the words come out low and cold, like ice. “I don’t care about food. I need you to stop playing games. Peter is out there. The city is wrecked. And you’re saying it’s possible I’m no Mir
anda North, then making like it’s no big deal.”

  Rhys lets five whole seconds pass. “Think logically for five seconds, yeah? Maybe we can restore our strength, and then figure out the best way to recover your friend and bring the evildoers to justice. That should be acceptable.”

  Acceptable? No. But if he has the answers, we have to play by his rules.

  He gives Noah a look and gesture, like Is this girl for real?

  Noah gives him nothing in return, not even a glare. Rhys shrugs and returns to the kitchen.

  We stand around the island while Rhys finishes the meal. He adds basil and crushed pepper to a pot of red sauce on the stove. A pot of pasta boils next to it. My body is hungry, but the sight of food makes me ill; I need to move, not eat.

  Rhys says, “Sorry, I was in the middle of making lunch when I looked outside—and what did I see?—the whole city going to hell. And the faint scent of roses. Which is better than psychic energy that smells like a skunk, I suppose.”

  No one laughs. Rhys ignores it.

  “I’ve been hiding,” Rhys says. He dices mushrooms on a cutting board. “In plain sight you could say. When I first escaped the original Alpha base two years ago, I hid in vacant buildings. Would’ve stayed if they didn’t look there first.”

  I glance at Noah, who was searching for Rhys. He nods once.

  “Right, see? I’ve been keeping tabs on Alpha and Beta teams since I escaped. I’ve skills, no doubt, but I’ll need help if I want to strike that fatal blow.”

  “Against who?” I say. “With Dr. Conlin dead, who is our enemy?”

  “The creators. The ones who made us. They have your Peter.”

  The ones we were cloned from. When I was falling off that building, I had a phantom memory of my creator, the woman handing me over to Phil. Not my mother, just an older version of me.

  I notice Rhys is still armed with his revolver and sword, like he doesn’t trust us enough to take them off. I don’t blame him. But I don’t trust his story either, not until all the holes are filled. For starters, shouldn’t there be other versions of him running around? Why did the original Alpha have a Rhys, but my Alpha—and Beta—do not?

  “Where is Peter?” I say again, leaning onto the marble island. Noah rummages around in the fridge. It might be the last time I ask, before I just leave to go find him myself.

  Rhys lifts his chin to the window behind me. “You won’t like it.”

  Outside the window is downtown. “What?”

  “He’s in the tallest building,” Rhys says.

  Key Tower is the tallest. A normal stone-colored skyscraper until the top, where the point becomes silver-white.

  “My old home, where I lived and trained...everything was in the silver cap.” His voice is flat with old memories. I know the feeling.

  The cap of the tower looks white in the sun, lots of sharp angles. It reminds me of some fantasy ice palace plopped down on top of a skyscraper. I can’t tear my eyes away, wondering if Peter is behind its walls right now. Wondering if it holds the answer to the question that burns in my mind like a furnace.

  Who am I?

  We’ve barely had a moment to rest, but now, behind the safety of this glass, with the city emptied before me, I know what drives me. I want to know who I am. Not just who I was, or what I’ve done, who I might become.

  Who I am.

  Is it so much to ask?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Why draw attention to themselves? Why not test us in a city they don’t work in?”

  “Attention?” Rhys says. “How will the government ever in a million years link what happens above the fifty-seventh floor to what happened here today? Eventually life will return to normal. There is no evidence.” He pops a mushroom in his mouth. “Hiding in plain sight. Test complete. The Roses are a success.”

  He dishes up pasta for each of us, and we sit at his dark wood table next to the kitchen. I drink a glass of water, not realizing how thirsty I am until it touches my lips. Sitting down like this, eating a meal, it feels wrong. Peter is somewhere, alone, maybe hurt, and we’re eating?

  “You’re impatient, I know,” Rhys says. “But we move at dark. I have a plan that will destroy the cap and rescue your friend.”

  “But will it stop them,” Olive says. “Will it stop the people who...our creators.”

  Rhys frowns. “Maybe, if they’re there. But it will cripple them, or at least reveal them to the world. And maybe that’ll be enough for us to live out the rest of our lives without looking over our shoulders.”

  Through it all, through every moment, a phrase keeps looping in my mind—

  Transplanted memories. Transplanted memories. Transplanted memories.

  Rhys clears his plate before any of us. “You wanted to know who I am,” he says. He pulls his revolver from his belt and sets it on the table with a thunk.

  “I do,” I say. “But I’d like to know more about why our eyes are changing color. What you said about memories.”

  Rhys smiles. “Luckily, I can do both at the same time. But you might not like what you see. In fact, I guarantee it.”

  “I can handle it.” At least I think I can. I try to remember the last time I slept. That short nap in the cell. Then another nap in the Beta’s room before coming downtown. My eyelids feel caked in cement. I check the clock on the stove—12:04. A few hours ago, nothing bad had happened yet. We were still together. The dead were still alive.

  “All right, then,” Rhys says, pushing away from the table. Noah visibly tenses at the movement, but I put my hand on his forearm and he relaxes. Rhys goes to a closet near the door and opens it. And pulls out a headband. Almost like the one Tycast and Conlin wore to negate our waves, but thicker. And stiff—it holds its circular form.

  Rhys points at the couch. “Lie down, please.”

  I’m confused, but I figure the answers are coming. I step lightly to the couch, wishing I could feel the plush carpet on my toes. I’ve had this suit on for so long, I’d give anything for cool air on my skin. I remain standing for some reason. Maybe instinct.

  Rhys steps down into the couch area, holding the headband. The thick material is charcoal in color, but catches the light weirdly, shimmering at the edges. “Before, I said you’ve had memories implanted.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He holds up the band. “This is how it happened, with one of these machines. The creators had a plan from day one to make more of us. The trick would be to take our experiences—those of Alpha and Beta team—and use them as a template to imprint on new versions of us. Ready-made experiences for the clones they could continue to grow. Copies of the same person, with the same memories. Basically an endless supply of . . . us.”

  “Exactly us,” Olive says softly, standing up from the table.

  The reality of that weighs on us for a moment. I try to imagine other copies of me running around, not just identical in body but in mind.

  “I stole this from the Tower when I left, from the office of Mrs. North herself.”

  All traces of humor are gone from Rhys’s eyes. Noah and Olive sit down on the other couch.

  “What does that mean?” I say. “For me.”

  Rhys shrugs. “It could mean anything. It could mean they’ve already taken your memories to give to the next Miranda, or whatever they call you nowadays. I was part of the original Alpha team. I once knew a Peter, a Noah.” He looks at Noah and Olive on the couch. “I knew Olive.”

  Back to me. “And you, Miranda. When I escaped, I copied my memories in the hopes I would meet people from the other teams. I would have to...explain myself, show them the truth. And seeing is believing. I could talk to you all day long, but you won’t truly believe until you see it.”

  “See what?” I say.

  “Why we have to stop them. Why we can’t fail.”

  Olive says, “If the original Alpha team had our names, why does Beta team have different ones?”

  Rhys shrugs again. “I suppose it got confusing
to keep tabs on several beings with the same name. If we fail and they grow another team, say, Gamma team, I bet they’ll have different names too.” To me, he says, “You’ll want to lie down for this. Really.”

  I settle onto the couch, waiting.

  He hesitates.

  “What?” I say.

  “It won’t feel good.”

  “I can take it.” I hope I can take it.

  He gently lifts my head, so unlike the last time he touched me, and eases the headband over my eyes, blocking Noah and Olive from sight. The metal band is icy at first, but then warms against my skin.

  “Relax,” Rhys’s soothing voice says. “Relax, Miranda,” he says, as a thousand knives pierce my skull.

  27

  I open my eyes.

  I’m sitting at a computer. The monitor displays a 3-D model of Cleveland. I tap a few keys and a pinkish-red cloud spreads within the city. At the bottom, it says roses needed: 1. The number goes up as the cloud widens, until it envelopes the entire downtown area at 7.

  Terror cuts through me like a sword. I cover my face with my hands, and only then do I see the hands belong to Rhys.

  I am Rhys.

  I close my eyes. When I open them, I’m in a room just like the one back home, just like the Beta room, too. Bunks on either side, but an extra one on the left. Peter is there, and so is Noah on the bunk above him. And there’s Miranda, across from Peter, fighting with a knot in her shoelace. It’s me, only it’s not. This is the original Alpha team. . . .

  But where are they now?

  “You don’t understand,” I say. Rhys’s voice sounds different coming out of my mouth.

  Peter shakes his head. “What don’t we understand, Rhys?”

  “They’re going to use us on the city. I saw a computer simulation. They want to test us on Cleveland.”

  Miranda laughs at him. “That’s ridiculous. You know how insane that sounds, right?”

  I nod. “Yes, yes I’m aware.”

  Olive jumps down from the top bunk. “They can’t make us do anything we don’t want to. Look at how strong we are already.”

  Noah jumps off his bunk too, then begins a stretching sequence for tonight’s training mission. “I think you might be overreacting a bit,” he says. “How do you know what you saw?”