Fierce Reads
Page 11
UNSTOLEN
by Jessica Brody
The files were marked by numbers.
For some reason I felt disappointed by this convention. As though it should have been more ceremonious than that. More elegant. These were pieces of her life. Bytes of her experiences. And they’d been reduced to a sequence of digits.
Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They’d failed to humanize her in every way possible. Why should cataloging her memories as though they were payment transactions in a register be any different?
I’ll never forget the day I found them. Or rather, the day I saw them. Finding them is one thing; experiencing them as though I were in her head, as though I were watching it all through her eyes, is something else entirely. Something that stays with you. That mars you.
I knew they had done things to her. Unspeakable things. Before erasing them from her memory. But no knowledge of the horror could prepare me for the horror itself. Of seeing it played back in supreme definition on the Revisualization monitor.
Although I suppose the monitor provides somewhat of a buffer from the experience itself. A playback is still far from the real thing. Still far from what she had to go through.
How could they think it wouldn’t scar her permanently? How could they think that simply erasing the recollection of the acts themselves would ever erase them from who she is? It’s this kind of infuriating arrogance on the part of the scientists here that makes me want to live a life of piety in a Far East temple somewhere. Just to spite them.
I located the first encrypted pod shortly after hacking into the system’s mainframe. I knew I would never have time to find all her memories. For one, there was no way they’d be stored in the same pods. Or even in adjacent pods. The monsters who ran this place may have been arrogant, but they weren’t stupid. And if there was anything they were especially careful about, it was security.
But hacking had always been my specialty. And having a mother with a high clearance level who was too absorbed in her work to notice that her son had been stealing her fingerprints off coffee mugs and wall panels for years didn’t hurt either.
I had to be fast. I had to get out before anyone realized the protocol had been breached. The last thing I needed was for them to wipe my memories as well. Then we’d both be lost forever. Apart. And she’d never come to know the truth.
They’d find her where I left her. They’d bring her back here. They’d rewire everything. They’d fix the loopholes they left behind last time. The very loopholes that allowed her to fall in love with me.
And where would I be?
Shipped off to a boarding school in Europe somewhere. Made to study useless things like Latin and physics and quantum theory. Imprisoned by haunting, incomprehensible dreams of a strangely familiar girl with purple eyes. And then maybe one day I would meet someone. I would get married. I would live out my life with a woman I thought I loved. But it would be an empty arrangement. There would always be a chasm I would never be able to fill nor understand.
I knew it was risky to come back here, but it was my only choice. After our meeting at the supermarket, it had become clear that Sera wasn’t going to trust me. Not until I could show her proof. And this time, we didn’t have the luxury of being able to wait for her to come around. It was only a matter of days, minutes, seconds before they would be able to track her.
I just needed to collect enough memories to convince her.
But I never expected to find what I found.
I never expected to be so permanently changed by something with a name as harmless as #989970.
989970.
Six numbers that will stalk me forever. Like a ghost with rattling chains.
I had been sifting through files for the past thirty minutes, the microspeakers lodged comfortably in my ears, my finger resting on the scrub wheel. I fast-forwarded through hours of countless footage. Tedious memories of meals and pointless conversations and walks down dimly lit restricted hallways that I’d never seen before.
I had already had the good luck of stumbling across several useful files—the last of which was the memory of the day I first met her. I felt considerably fortunate to have found that one. Like a gold nugget magically appearing in a cast-iron pan full of dirty water and dull rocks. Not only was it magnificent to be able to relive that day from her perspective, but it served as an excellent motivator for me to keep searching.
A reminder of everything they stole from her.
A reminder of how many times they tried to erase me.
It fueled my resolve.
With each new valuable memory file that I found, I transferred it to the cube drive and kept going. Kept fast-forwarding through all the forgotten moments of her life.
It was the scream that halted me. That caused my finger to slip from the scrub wheel like tires skidding off a road.
That scream.
Sera’s scream.
It shrieked through the microspeakers in my ears, echoing off the chambers of my brain, reverberating against my skull. It sent tiny shivers pulsing through my body. It turned everything cold. Colder. Coldest.
I should have kept going. I should have advanced right through it, on to the next. No good can come from watching the Revisualization of a memory that begins with a scream like that. No good. But the cold had reached my fingers. The frost had congealed everything, including my common sense. My finger hovered above the scrub wheel like a bird afraid to touch down upon volcanic ash.
The scream was still going. It felt unnaturally long. Surely, sooner or later she would run out of breath. But it was as though she’d had an infinite supply. As though the agony bursting from her was fueling the heart-wrenching wail all on its own.
The only consolation was that I couldn’t feel what she was feeling.
The sound of it was bad enough. The way tears coated her eyes and blurred the interior of the room was sufficient to mutilate my heart.
It was a white, sterile room with no windows. Lots of machines.
Having lived here for so long, I recognized it as any room within these walls. After a while, the labs start to blend together. But from the angle of her perspective—ceiling and heat ducts and light fixtures—it was clear she was lying down. Probably on some sort of table or gurney. I couldn’t see any of her appendages. Which meant they were probably restrained.
A male voice came from somewhere behind her head. Somewhere unseen.
“Left tibia,” it said stiffly. Emotionless.
I felt my toes curl inside my shoes.
A robotic metal arm protruded from the ceiling, flashing in and out of her view as it descended toward the bottom half of her body. The sight of it was followed quickly by a sharp cracking sound. Another scream erupted from her, blasting my eardrums.
Her eyes closed, turning the monitor to black. When they opened again, she had managed to rotate her head slightly to the side, revealing a screen with a live feed from the inside of her body. The atom-sized nanocam maneuvered effortlessly beneath her flesh, traveling to her lower leg. The handiwork of the metal arm was revealed a moment later.
I shuddered as I saw that her long, perfect white tibia bone on the inside of her calf had been snapped in two, causing the muscle and skin to bulge unnaturally around it.
“Fracture complete. Starting clock,” another voice said. This one female. Also unseen. They were probably both hiding behind a wall of glass like the cowards they are. While they let their machines do the dirty work.
The screaming had stopped. Replaced by a low whimper. My view was clouded by more tears and excessive blinking, but Sera continued to stare straight at the monitor. At the inner workings of her own anatomy. Almost as though she were just as curious as the spineless scientists hiding behind their wall.
I loved her infinitely more for that.
With mouth open and eyes wide, I watched the two halves of the bone start to progress toward each other. Like a magnet pulling at metal. They interlocked as seamlessly as
puzzle pieces sliding into place. And then in complete disbelief, I watched the fissure between them … cease to exist.
It was as though someone had recorded a video clip of the fracture and simply played it in reverse. Erasing any evidence of a break. Any evidence of heartless violence.
“Two minutes, fifteen seconds,” the female voice reported.
“Impressive,” came the response.
Sera turned her head, providing me a view of the ceiling again. I could tell the pain had vanished because she was no longer whimpering and her breathing had evened out.
I leaned over the side of my chair and vomited the contents of my stomach.
I retched and retched until there was nothing left. And then I retched air for good measure. It wasn’t the lack of bile that finally stopped my heaving. It was the sound of the man’s voice from the memory, yanking me back in.
“Moving on. Right wrist and left ankle simultaneously.”
Sera’s eyes closed tightly, filling my monitor with swift darkness again. Panicked, I lunged for the controls, slamming my hand down on all of them at once. The Revisualization screeched to a halt just as the tip of her scream penetrated the air.
With numb, fumbling fingers, I logged out of the pod and shut down the system. I grabbed my cube drive and jammed it into my pocket. I couldn’t stay there any longer. The files I had found so far would have to do. I couldn’t risk accidentally running into anything else like that.
I swore right then that I would never repeat to Seraphina what I had witnessed. I would take it to my grave.
I never thought I could ever be thankful for what they did to her. But removing this moment from her memory, banishing it forever … I’m thankful for that.
No one should have to remember #989970.
I often find myself wishing it could be erased from my mind, just as it had been erased from hers. But, at the same time, I don’t. It’s a burden I need to bear.
To this day, I use it as a reminder of why we ran. I call on it for renewed strength when I feel weary or hopeless. I let it keep me from ever giving up. From ever failing to protect her. This will never be her fate again.
With the cube safely in my pocket, I stood up and stepped over the pool of my regurgitated stomach matter. I knew, once the breach was detected, that they would easily match the DNA to me.
Fine, I thought to myself. Let them work themselves into a frenzy knowing their precious security protocols have been violated. Let them deploy mass numbers of agents to the far corners of the earth. Let them try to find me.
And let them fail.
SECRET HEART
Ann Aguirre
BY ANN AGUIRRE
The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things
~ The Razorland Trilogy ~
Enclave
Outpost
Horde
~ The Immortal Game ~
Mortal Danger
Public Enemies
Meet Ann Aguirre
My road to becoming a published author was long. Ever so long. It started well enough. When I was eight, I wrote a story for a school writing competition called “The Mystery of the Gold Doubloon.” This seminal, self-illustrated work was about two best friends who went to Florida on vacation and busted an illegal treasure-hunting ring. I won the contest. I went to the state finals and met Shel Silverstein, who read to a bunch of us from Where the Sidewalk Ends. In that moment, sitting on my square of carpet, I thought, They pay him for his words. This is what I want to do. Later that same year, my teacher told me writing wasn’t a real job and I should pick something else. As it turns out, I am stubborn beyond the point of common sense, as I never did choose another career.
I wrote my first novel at fifteen. I sent it to New York. At sixteen I got my first rejection. This pattern continued at nineteen, and again at twenty-one, although I did interest an agent at that early stage. Unfortunately, the historical romance I had written was too dark for the market, though the editors all agreed I could write and that I had talent. I wrote more. In the meantime, I got married and had some babies. I kept writing. More rejections. I hit my thirties, signed with an agent, and got more rejections. By this point, I had, oh, eight books that had been rejected. In utter despair, I wrote a sci-fi novel. I decided, You know, if I’m never going to sell, then I am going to write the novel I want to read. I’m going to write for myself, for fun, for pleasure, and without regard for market. The result was Grimspace. Unfortunately, my agent at the time thought it sounded unsellable. I had to choose between my book and my agent. It was a terrible decision, but I believed so strongly in that project that I gave notice. I went back to cold querying. I was thirty-six by this point. An agent pulled me out of the slush pile—and that was the start of a really magical career with my current agent, Laura Bradford.
Laura Bradford is a romance specialist. (I thought I’d written a romance with futuristic elements. Turns out, no.) But she loved Grimspace so much, she learned the market, just for me. She said, “I’ve never sold sci-fi but I want the challenge, so if you’re okay with that, I’m offering you representation at this time.” I chose passion and enthusiasm over experience. I signed with her on March 31, 2007. We pitched Grimspace on April 11, my husband’s birthday. Within a couple of weeks, we had a nibble. An editor loved it and was taking it to acquisitions. She updated the rest of the editors, who were then motivated to read faster. Before we heard from the first editor, we had an offer from Anne Sowards. That day, I cried in excitement and disbelief. This sale was over twenty years in the making, closer to thirty if you count the story I wrote when I was eight. We accepted the offer at once, and since then, we’ve sold thirty-three books together in the last seven years. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a day job, and it’s my plan to write for the rest of my life.
So that’s my story. I currently live in Mexico with my family, I was raised in the Midwest, and I graduated from Ball State University in the early nineties. I write steampunk fantasy, romantic science fiction, new adult romance, and several genres of YA. As of now, I’m a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author with books in print in many countries. And I’m so glad to be living my dream.
The short story you are about to read takes place in the world of my YA post-apocalyptic Razorland trilogy (Enclave, Outpost, and Horde). And here is how the trilogy was conceived. First, I was a child in the eighties, when we lived with constant fear from nuclear stockpiling and the Cold War. In grade school, they actually showed us films on what we should do if a bomb dropped. As a result, I’ve always had some issues from that constant anxiety. When I’m afraid of something, I tend to work it into my books, so it was natural that I would, someday, write about the end of the world as we know it.
Furthermore, I’ve always been a fan of apocalypse movies. The first one I saw on my own was Night of the Comet. (Don’t laugh!) As a kid, I was alone at the mall with a friend for the first time, and we decided a zombie movie would rock. The flick was awesome, campy, and it imprinted me for life. Later, I took a film class as part of my English degree, and I wrote a paper analyzing the themes in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Since then, I can’t get enough of the genre. Most of the apocalypse movies I’ve loved over the years haven’t been as silly as Night of the Comet. Some of my favorites include Terminator (the future is bleak indeed), any Resident Evil film, 28 Days Later, Undead (a wicked awesome indie Aussie film), Daybreakers (by the same directors who did Undead), Zombieland, 12 Monkeys, Children of Men, The Road Warrior, Shaun of the Dead, Logan’s Run, Blade Runner (some might argue its inclusion), Equilibrium, Tank Girl, The Postman, Escape from New York, The Blood of Heroes, Reign of Fire … hmmm. I should stop now.
The final piece of the puzzle came when I read The Mole People by Jennifer Toth about the folks who live in the tunnels below New York. I started to wonder, What if they were the ones who survived when the worst happens? Before I wrote the Razorland trilogy, I hadn’t read extensively in the genre, mo
stly because I intended to take a crack at it, so I wanted to be able to say, honestly, that any similarity came from a collective zeitgeist. Before I finished the series, I had only read A Canticle for Leibowitz, which is post-apocalyptic but not YA, and Lord of the Flies, which is more about the savagery that lurks close to the skin. Since completing the Razorland trilogy, I’ve discovered a long list of dystopian authors I cheerfully recommend, including but not limited to, Paolo Bacigalupi, Veronica Rossi, Patrick Ness, Courtney Summers, Meg Rosoff, and more.
For me, every book starts in the same place—with the characters. They tell me their names and then I listen as they share their stories. I write them down. So far, it’s working really well. “Secret Heart” first came about when I asked readers what they wanted and they said something that would give them a hint about how Fade felt, long before Deuce had any clue what was going on. “Secret Heart” is a scene from Enclave, rewritten from Fade’s perspective, giving the reader a glimpse into his hidden longings. While readers may suspect that he had feelings for Deuce long before she figured it out, they can’t be sure until they see for themselves. And being in the hero’s head is pretty delicious. The result is both sweet and tender, romantic and protective. It should make Fade fans swoon. The best thing about him is that while he adores Deuce, he doesn’t want to change her. He loves the fact that she’s fierce, every bit as much as he fears the possibility of losing her before she realizes how he feels.
SECRET HEART
by Ann Aguirre
You lost her.
I turned slowly, keeping my movements quiet. Calling out would draw the monsters. Yet the tunnel didn’t lend a clue to what might’ve become of Deuce. I froze, listening to distant movements. Once, caution had kept me safe against overwhelming odds. Good ears and quick feet saved me more than once. Maybe I could save her, too. Impossible to think about losing somebody I didn’t want to care about; she shouldn’t matter. I was only biding time here anyway until I was big enough, strong enough, to return to the surface. It had been years, though. No telling how dangerous it was now. Before, the gangs were bad enough, but we hadn’t been harassed topside by the Freaks when my dad was alive.