I like feeling as if I’m in one even less. But I have to do what I have to do. I have a plan.
“The deal’s off,” my companion says.
Great. I want to get back to campus and sleep. As it is, the trains stopped an hour ago. I have a long run ahead of me.
“There’s no reward for being honest, is there?” I take my backpack off. “I should know better than that in my line of work.”
The guy snorts. He clearly shaves his head to hide his pattern baldness, and he has a slight beer gut. No gun. It wouldn’t fit under his size-too-small jacket. Thanks to Fitzpatrick’s training, I could gut him with my dorm room key. But I’m not that sort of person. Not anymore.
“Your line of work?” he repeats. “You’re fourteen.”
“Nineteen, jackass, and you’re not helping your case. Stick to the deal. You got yours.”
He pulls out a switchblade. “I’m renegotiating. Be a good girl now.”
“Yeah, I guess I will be when you put it that way.” I toss the backpack between us, making sure it lands in a dry spot. I don’t need the money inside it—money I just busted my ass to acquire—getting wet. There’s no place to dry it in my dorm room without Audrey seeing it.
A car drives by, and the headlights catch the steel blade of the guy’s knife for a second before the light vanishes. Beneath the bridge, no one can see us. That’s why I stopped here.
“Good choice.” He keeps the knife out as he goes to pick up my pack, so he’s not as dumb as he looks.
Then again, he does look pretty dumb. What kind of idiot do you have to be to double-cross someone like me? After I’ve given you a sample of what I’m capable of? Pure humans are exhausting in their illogic.
The backpack’s ten feet away. I wait for him to reach down to grab it, smiling at him, because he doesn’t take his eyes off me the whole time. Nope, he’s not a total idiot. Just too greedy for his own good.
“Greed’s not a mortal sin, in my opinion. But if you take a go at me with that knife, all bets are off.”
“What?” He bends for the strap, and his balance and attention shift.
I move. He doesn’t have time to drop the backpack. My boot meets his arm, and the knife goes flying. This guy has no training whatsoever in how to use it or he’d have gripped it better. Lucky for him he simply thought he could scare me with it. He’s down without me breaking a sweat. It takes three seconds.
That’s a relief. In one of Chase’s bad movies, the fights last absurdly long. No pure human can withstand that sort of abuse and keep fighting the way they do in Hollywood. So I dodged one cliché tonight.
I fling my backpack over my shoulder and pull the guy’s phone from his pocket. He’s clutching his knee and moaning. “You want me to call an ambulance, or can you walk out of here?”
He gapes at me, blood and sweat running down his face. “You shitting me?”
“Nope. I’m trying to be a better person these days, that’s all. I’d offer to call the cops, but you probably don’t want to tell them a fourteen-year-old girl beat you up. So what’ll it be?”
“Give me back my phone and get the hell away from me.”
I oblige, wishing there were an easier way to do what needs to be done.
Chapter Eighteen
Three Weeks Ago
My drawing class is wandering around the New England Aquarium. Never in my nineteen years did I imagine I’d study art beyond a bit of history, but it’s been fun. It was a much better choice for fulfilling my humanities requirements than Intro Philosophy was, and I’m actually learning things. I already know how to play a few instruments because of the camp, and I had no interest in taking drama. Pretending to be someone else while pretending to be someone else? No thanks. So if I felt like doing something artsy, which I did, drawing or sculpting were my choices for this semester.
That Kyle is also in the class is a nice bonus. Art should be about appreciating things that look good.
Our professor, Dr. Monroe, can’t go five minutes without whooping, singing or dancing. But he’s funny crazy. He wants us to immerse ourselves in our art. That’s why we’re here. For the past two weeks, we’ve been working on motion. So far we’ve had to attend a track meet, watch footage of Hurricane Logan, and now we get to study fish.
I can’t wait until I return to the camp and tell Jordan and the others that I spent an afternoon sprawled on the aquarium floor, observing the way fish swim for a class. I swear, these college students have no idea what it means to actually work.
“What happened to your arm?” Kyle’s finger hovers over the bruises I earned this past week during my nighttime activities. They’re turning a lovely shade of greenish purple.
I pull my sweater sleeves down my forearms. “No idea. Must have bumped something.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not really.” Lots of things hurt. The physical pain doesn’t bother me so much. I can filter it out. My mental pains of late, however—it’s like bruising on my brain. Ugly splotches are forming over my whole life, and I can’t ignore those. There are so many things I’ve learned that I’d love to unlearn.
But I won’t. I’m stronger than that.
I pull my sweater tighter around my body. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about these problems, but I guess it doesn’t matter much yet. I still have to find X. Once I do that, then I’ll make the harder decision about what to do about myself. Until then, I’ll prepare as best I can.
“You cold?” Kyle asks.
“Just a little.” The lie comes so easily. I should have known something was wrong when the lies came easily.
I watch him watching the fish. He touched up his bleach job recently, and with his hair tucked behind his ears, a pencil between his teeth, he looks like someone who belongs in an art class. Or maybe a band. He doesn’t look like someone hunting down an innocent student.
And, of course, I don’t know if he is. But yesterday, the mysterious folder on his computer disappeared, and this morning, my spy program failed. I can’t tell if he knows what I’m up to. Outwardly, nothing has changed between us, but inwardly, I’m more a mess than ever, unsure what to believe and who to fear.
Kyle points toward a sand tiger shark with his pencil. “Look at that one. Its eyes are so cold and empty. They’re these soulless things. Creepy.”
“Oh, come on. They’re dull maybe, but soulless implies souls are the norm.”
He draws a line down the center of my blank page. This is the only class in which I understand the need for real paper. “Who says they aren’t? You are so literal, Hernandez.”
Kyle turns the line into an L and starts spelling out the word.
“Hey!” I attack his pencil with mine and fight him off my page. “Back off, Chen. I’m just saying soulless implies some kind of moral judgment. And who are we to judge a shark? It is what it is, and it’s very good at what it does.”
“Killing things?”
I flip to an empty page in my sketchbook, trying not to over-interpret his words. “Eating things. Surviving.”
“Yeah, but that one’s not doing such a good job of it, is it?” He waves at the fish in the giant tank in front of us.
I draw a black orb on my paper—a shark’s eye. Too bad that can’t count as motion. Monroe has praised my technical ability to translate objects to paper but says I need to work on instilling life in them. Whatever that means.
“What is it doing wrong in your opinion?” I ask.
“Everything. They’re not being sharks, or…” He squints at the sign that identifies the other species in the tank, then gives up. “Or whatever. It’s not their fault. It’s because they’re here. They’ve been captured. They’ve lost their sharky essence.”
I settle back on my elbows. “You sound like Monroe. I predict he’s going to say the same thing about my drawing—it lacks sharky ess
ence. So you don’t like aquariums. You probably don’t like zoos either?”
Kyle chews his lip, tracing the contours of the sand tiger shark’s curved teeth. “I don’t know. I get that these sorts of places do a lot for conservation, and it’s good to expose people to animals or fish because it makes them care. But it seems wrong keeping creatures in captivity like this. It diminishes what they are.”
“Maybe they have a better life in those cages than they would in the wild. Maybe they don’t know they’re in cages and are happy.”
“Possibly. Possibly we’re in cages and don’t know it either.” He grins, but some heaviness weighs down his words.
Funny, because if either one of us is in a cage, it’s me. More than ever, this past week has made me understand how trapped I am. “You’re not caged.”
“You don’t think so?” With a couple lines, he completely reworks my shark’s head. It comes alive. I see what Monroe means about my lifeless sketches.
“Nope, I don’t. I think you’re wild and free.”
Kyle laughs. “I don’t feel wild and free. Do you?”
“No, but I’m not like you. I’m more like one of them.” I motion to the sharks. “I’m stuck underwater, whether there’s a cage around me or not. But you’re more like a bird. You can fly away.”
“If I’m a bird, someone’s clipped my wings. I’m not flying anywhere.” He takes my hand, places it on a new sheet of paper and begins tracing it. “But that’s okay because I’m not going anywhere without you.”
If there’s any sinister meaning hidden in those words, Kyle should be taking acting, not art. I can’t find it.
I force a smile, trying to fight off this sadness inside, this knowledge that one day I’ll be gone and Kyle won’t know until it’s too late. My phone will never ring. I’ll never respond to a text. My very online existence will disappear, and we’ll never see each other again. All because I’m imprisoned underwater like the sharks, forced to watch the birds fly overhead but unable to join them.
“I wish I had wings,” I tell him.
The touch of his skin on my hand burns me. The sensation of the pencil as it follows the lines of my fingers makes it hard to breathe. I feel it in the nerves all the way up my arm.
“You don’t need wings,” he says. “If I ever break out of my cage, I’ll swoop down and carry you away with me.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sunday Afternoon: Present
The scan takes hours. I must drift off at some point, lulled into unconsciousness by the repetitive whirring of the machines. When I come to, the ache in my chest is the worst it’s been yet. Kyle’s voice whispers in my ears like a warm, gentle breeze. I feel dangerously close to tears, so it’s a good thing the technician hasn’t returned yet. I need time to compose myself.
I also need to figure out what else I’m feeling because something more bothers me. Beneath the sadness lurks something dark and disturbing. It nags me with its unclear importance. I chase the feeling around, but it’s a shadow. Impossible to grasp. Who was that guy under the bridge? How much did I find out about this mysterious group, The Four? Were those two memories related?
Read Harris.
And why is it all making me think of that nonsensical phrase again?
Stiff after the tech releases me from the restraints, I put my uniform on and head to the office down the hall where Malone is waiting. Whatever caused the shadow will come back. Minute by minute, my life is returning. Meanwhile, I have more important things to worry about than some hobby investigation I was doing, even one that involved the traitorous Dr. Wilson.
“Do we know what’s going on?” I ask, taking my seat.
Malone rubs his chin thoughtfully. “I believe so. If I’m correct, this started when your tracker was removed. Have you gotten back the memory of how that happened?”
“Not yet.” I motion toward the scan readings on the table, and Malone signals that I can review them. “So this has nothing to do with me hitting my head?”
“As far as we can tell, no. That’s good because the natural brain is so complex it’s hard to make predictions about it. But in your case, we’re dealing with something we understand. You know how static electricity sometimes interferes with computers, even causes one to restart?”
I nod, continuing to examine my scans. They’re mostly unintelligible to me, but still interesting. So that’s what the implants in my brain look like.
Malone clasps his hands together. “Well, that’s what we think happened to you.”
“Static electricity?”
“Not static electricity per se, but when the tracker was removed, it caused an electrical jolt near your anterior memory storage unit. Here.” He points to the spot on one of the scans, but I don’t see any difference between that implant and the others. “The readings we got off the implant yesterday suggest it experienced an electrical disturbance that shut it down, but it’s slowly coming back online. Today’s tests were to confirm that there was no additional damage that could be causing the unusual readings.”
I blink at him. “So my brain is rebooting.”
“Your natural brain is fine. But the implant responsible for augmenting your long-term memories is rebooting, yes.” He leans toward me, delighted. “Fascinating, isn’t it? Disconcerting for you, I’m sure, but from a scientific perspective this gives us far more insight into how the neural implants interact with normal brain tissue. Have you noticed any patterns in how your memories are coming back? That is, are they coming back? That’s the first question.”
“Yes.” The word rushes out of me as I recall the guarded door and the howl from behind it last night. Let there be no question that I’m getting better. Or getting back online, as it might be.
“Good.” Malone clasps his hands together. “There are some techniques we’ve been refining that could possibly pull the memories out of you if it came to that, but frankly, I’m not sure what they would do to you.”
“Wouldn’t it be the same sort of process as if I downloaded them?”
“I’m afraid not. Crudely put, it’s the difference between a push and a pull. When you download data, you know where you’re taking it from, even if that knowledge is beneath your conscious awareness. If we were to do this, we’d be grabbing in the dark. I fear the process might be damaging, and the data’s likely to come out in an even less useable form than it is when you download. It could take weeks for us to translate it. So let’s keep that option off the table for as long as possible.”
I swallow. Let’s keep that option off the table, period. I don’t need anyone screwing with my already-screwed-up head. And what if they do damage my implants? They’re so deeply connected to my brain at this point that I’m not sure what would happen to me.
“Now,” Malone continues, “have you discovered any patterns in how your memories are returning?”
“No.” I take a long breath because my voice is shaky. “Sometimes I can figure out what triggers one—something someone will say, or a smell—but not always. And sometimes they come back very vivid, almost like I’m reliving an event. Other times, I’ll suddenly realize I know something but have no idea when it came to me.”
“Interesting.” Malone taps his fingers against the table. “I would appreciate it if tonight you would begin a record, going back as far as you can, of how and when each memory returned, and whether you know what triggered it. You’re not having any trouble forming new memories, are you?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Then that shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Nope. Perfect recall—when it works—is great.
“Have any memories specific to your mission returned?” Malone’s voice is casual, but the question clearly gets at the crux of the problem. Much as Malone probably doesn’t want nineteen years of research and training lost on me, the mission must come first. Lives—or a
life—is in danger.
I wish I had better news for him. “I remember working on it, but X’s identity…” I shake my head, unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know whether I found it or not.”
There are footsteps outside the door, and Malone stands. I watch his face, trying to determine whether my failure angers him like it does Fitzpatrick, but he wears a mask of patient concern. “I’d like the rest of your focus today to be on getting your memories back and paying attention to patterns in their return. I spoke with Fitzpatrick about it. One will be resuming his role as your guide around the camp.”
He opens the door, and there stands Cole. Nice as it is to get my reprieve from Fitzpatrick extended, a horribly mean part of me wishes Jordan or Summer had been assigned to assist me instead. I long to talk to someone about Kyle and RTC, and my incorrect emotional responses to the AnChlor and the hotel assignment. I think I could do it without revealing my mission, but I can’t do it at all with Cole. He wouldn’t understand why I miss RTC because he never had the urge to GO like Jordan did, and I know what he would say about my reluctance to hurt other students. I don’t need to be reminded that empathy is weakness.
And, well, talking to Cole about Kyle would be impossible for other reasons.
“Am I dismissed then?”
“Free to go. All I ask is that if you do remember anything pertinent about your mission, you let me know at once.”
“Of course.”
Malone leaves the office after us but heads in the opposite direction. Cole and I walk silently until we reach the elevator.
“So how did it go?” he asks.
I grunt. “They ran some kind of imaging scan on me. I fell asleep during it.” He laughs, and I begrudgingly allow a small smile. It fades quickly though. “So where are we going today?”
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