Level 2 (Memory Chronicles) (22 page)

I shuffle through my books and break out in a cold sweat. I’ve managed to bring every book home except the one I need. I rub my temples and blow out my breath in short bursts. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

My stomach sinking, I go through my options, each more pathetic and desperate than the last. I could fake sick tomorrow and hope Mr. Hall takes pity on me again. I could go to Autumn’s and beg to borrow her book. Or I could borrow Mother’s car keys once she falls asleep and break into the school to get my study materials from my locker.

That last option has me giggling hysterically. When I sober, I absentmindedly dial Julian again. Still the message that his number’s been disconnected.

Lost in thought, I don’t even hear my mother come into the apartment until she’s right outside my bedroom door. “Felicia?” she calls. “You home?”

I bolt across the room and wedge myself through the door, blocking her view into my room. Last thing I need right now is her nosing around. “Hi, Mother. You’re home early.”

“I thought we could cook dinner together tonight,” she says, moving to turn on the hallway light. When she flips the switch, she gasps. “You look terrible! Are you sick?” I’m dimly aware I don’t look my best. Because I haven’t done laundry in weeks, I’ve resorted to the dregs of my closet—a pair of saggy jeans with grass-stained knees and a Frankfurt consulate T-shirt from an open house last year. I didn’t bother to put on any makeup today, my hair is stringy, and the skin around my eyes is tender and puffy.

Mother approaches me and places the back of her hand against my forehead. “You’re clammy. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong.” She pushes against my door.

“No!” I shout wildly, pulling on the doorknob so she can’t enter my room.

“What’s gotten into you? Open this door right now!” She says it with authority, in her best
Don’t mess with me or else
voice.

“It’s my room,” I say. “And you’re not allowed to come in.”

Mother crosses her arms. She is not amused. “I’ll give you three seconds. Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

When I don’t budge after her countdown, Mother’s eyes go wide. “Are you disobeying me?” she screeches. “What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing.”

She backs away, as if giving up, and then lunges at the door, forcing it open. Triumphant, she marches into my room. She doesn’t make it far before she spins and stares at me disbelievingly. “What is this mess?”

As furious as I am with her trespassing, I know if she has taken it this far, I need to tread carefully. I bend down and start picking up clothes to put into the hamper. “I’ve been so busy . . . studying . . . I’ve let a few things fall by the wayside.”

“Yes. You have.” Her lips are pursed as she scans my room, and her eyes zoom in on the books and papers strewn across my bed. She plucks one of the balled-up papers from the floor and smoothes it out. It’s a pop quiz from my German class this morning. She shakes her head, grabbing at the rest of my school papers and uncovering my red badges of shame.

“You can’t have been studying very hard if you’ve been getting these grades. C, C minus, C, B minus, C plus . . . I’ve been much too lenient with you.” She sees my cell phone, still in my hand, and her eyes narrow. “I’ll take that,” she says as she snatches it from me. “Until you get your grades back up, no phone, no friends, no TV.”

“How are you going to enforce that?” I scoff. “You’re never here.”

She reaches over and grabs the skin above my elbow, twisting it in a painful pinch. “Do I need to get you a babysitter, young lady?”

I glare at her, but I say nothing. Finally she stalks out of my room, taking my papers with her. I slam the door
behind her, then slide down it and grunt in frustration. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” I chant the words under my breath, wishing I were ballsy enough to spit them in Mother’s face. Then I jump up and tear back my bedspread, causing all my books to scatter onto the floor. I dive face-first into my pillow and beat my fists against my mattress.

I no longer care about my stupid test tomorrow, or Autumn, or Julian or my mother or any of this crap. I just want things to be normal again, to sleep without slipping into the same terrifying nightmare. The one where I’m trapped. Where my heart palpitates so fast, it might burst. Where a sinister presence shines with otherworldly light. I am so tired. So, so, so tired . . .

I open my eyes
with a start, and for several terrifying seconds I think I’ve awakened in my nightmare. But then I hear the low voices of Mira and Eli, and I remember where I am. I lie still, straining to hear what they’re saying. I catch only bits and pieces, but it seems like Mira is stressing my importance to the mission and how dearly the Morati would like to capture me. Could phase three entail using me as bait or as a trade? I wouldn’t put that past Eli or Mira. But then why would they go to the trouble of training me? I must have some other purpose—and I wish I had enough power to force them to be honest with me. Probably God himself couldn’t manage to get the whole truth out of these three.

Careful not to trip on the debris outside my borrowed chamber, I clamber out.

Mira looks up from her conversation with Eli, bemused. “Feeling stronger?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. “Can we finally ditch these digs?”

I tap Virginia on her arm, and she disengages from her session. She pets the sleeve of my sweater and looks up at me. “Say, how do I go about getting something besides this plain, itchy shift?” I’m relieved she’s back to her old self.

“I don’t think you’re strong enough yet, but once you are, I’ll show you how you can wear anything you want.”

“Cool,” she says.

“We’re ready when you are,” I confirm to Mira. “Where’s Julian?”

“He’s outside on lookout duty,” she says. She springs off the sofa and dematerializes the furniture.

We walk through the door together, and are immediately swallowed by the fog. It furls around me, probing, skimming the surface of my skin. It whistles a somber tune, so heartrendingly sad, it makes me want to curl into a ball and rock myself into oblivion. “Stay close,” says Julian in my ear as he links his arm through mine. “And think happy thoughts.”

With Julian as a buoy, I glide safely though the fog. “Depression gas,” says Julian. “Derived from the Kokytos, the underworld river of lamentation. The Morati use it as a border around the isolation plains.”

Mira frowns deeply. She and Eli are supporting a totally wrecked-looking Virginia between them. “More potent than ever before too.” Not potent enough to affect any of them, though, I guess. Maybe because
they’ve been out and active longer than we have?

The plains are wide open, a vast expanse of white. When I squint, I can see they’re dotted with slabs of gray, like a graveyard right after a heavy snow. Mira explains that these structures are where the isolated people are housed.

As we get deeper into the plains, I realize the whiteness comes not only from the smooth polished surface of the ground, but also from a strange moss that gets deeper and thicker as we walk, until it feels like we’re wading shin-deep in cotton candy. Plodding through, I reach out to search for Beckah, concentrating on picturing her shy smile. I feel the presence of many souls, and I sense their suffering. This is a terrible place to end up—cut off from the net, cut off from all contact with others. I steady my thoughts and keep throwing out my line, hoping to reel Beckah in.

With each step, with each failed scan, my mind grows wearier. I’ve nearly given up on finding Beckah, when I sense a brain wave I recognize. It’s her. I’ve found her! I home in on her signal and break out in a sprint, the others hot on my heels.

When I reach her, I pry open the tiny, hivelike sepulcher that encases her. Julian helps me lift the heavy lid, and I gasp when I see Beckah lying supine, her hands crossed at the neck, eyes open, blank and sightless.

Without the net architecture, I have to try to enter Beckah’s mind directly. But when I bear down, ready to grasp the first thought I find, I recoil in shock. Beckah’s mind is nothing but static.

CHAPTER 17

“SHE IS GONE,”
Eli says dispassionately. “And we have to keep moving.”

I run my hands over Beckah’s face, refusing to believe there’s no chance for her, that this body is just an empty shell. “No! There has to be a way!” I chew my lip, racking my brain for some strategy, some inspiration—anything that would bring Beckah back. “Tell me there’s a way, Julian. Please!”

Julian shakes his head sadly and tugs on my sleeve. “Eli’s right. We have to go. There is nothing more we can do.”

I rip out of his grasp and shake Beckah’s shoulders—first gently, but increasingly violently. “Wake up! C’mon, Beckah. Wake up!” Her head lolls back and forth, and her arms flail like a rag doll’s. White moss flutters around us,
and I almost wish it would swallow me whole.

“Scanner drones!” hisses Mira. “Julian, take Felicia to safety, now!”

As quick as a flash, Julian throws me over his shoulder feetfirst like I’m nothing more than a goose-down pillow. “No!” I cry out as I thrash against him. “We can’t leave her here!”

As Julian runs back the way we came, he clamps his hand over my mouth. I see Eli and Mira waving their arms at the scanner drones, Virginia terrified between them. The scanner drones veer toward them, hovering low, making figure eights as they go. Once they’re close enough, their amber light spills over Virginia, rooting her to the spot. I scream, but it comes out as a gurgle against Julian’s hand. Eli and Mira push back against the beams that try to trap them.

I don’t know what happens next because we arrive at the fog. Julian barrels me through, insisting everything will be fine, in an attempt to counteract the wailing wraiths of mist. The mist tells me I’m a failure for not being able to save Beckah, that I’m a bad friend for abandoning Virginia. I know it’s right. I had my chance for redemption and I failed.

We arrive at the hive we just left, and Julian curses. As I attempt to swallow down my despair, I notice that all the chambers inside have collapsed. I won’t be plugging in here.

Julian sets me back on my feet and drags me into the corridor, toward the other hives and away from the isolation plains.

“Why are we backtracking?” I struggle against his firm grip. “We need to meet up with the others. . . .” I have to
know that at least Virginia is okay, even as I admit to myself that Beckah is a lost cause.

Julian doesn’t stop but ducks into another hive, surveying the damage. “What we need to do is lie low. Get you into a chamber and calmed down.”

I go limp, stop fighting him. It doesn’t matter anymore. Julian always seems to get his way. “I’m calm. You can let go now.”

He regards me with skepticism but complies.

I massage the skin of my forearm and then yank the cuff of my sweater back over my wrist. “Thanks.”

Detecting movement on the horizon in the direction of the hives, I squint to get a better look. It’s a pair of humans, like us. I materialize binocular glasses and then gasp, covering my mouth with my hand. Julian knocks me into a recess between hives. “What did you see?” he demands.

“They’re humans . . . but . . . I think they’re infected with that rage river virus Eli was taking about.” I shiver. “They’re shuffling around and sniffing at the air.”

Then we hear it, a bone-shattering roar of rage.

Julian curses under his breath. “They saw us!”

I peek out from my hiding place and see the infected drones racing at us, their eyes popping out with rage, their mouths foaming and spitting. At their pace they’ll be upon us within seconds.

“Get a weapon!” Julian commands, materializing a bow and a quiver of arrows. He strings the first arrow and aims at the head of the larger drone. The arrow
pierces his eye, causing him to stumble. But not fall.

As Julian strings his second arrow, I look at him in a daze. I can’t think.

“Felicia! Do you want them to infect you, too?” His second arrow hits the man’s other eye, but even blinded he keeps coming.

I steady myself and will giant-size darts into my hands. The man is innocent, and I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t know how else to keep him from attacking us. I call up a burst of energy and heave it forward to slam the smaller man to the ground. Then I send the five darts flying, pinning him down to incapacitate him. My aim is true. The man roars and spits, his limbs popping and jerking so wildly, I have to think of a slab of bacon frying in a skillet.

Julian has shot the blinded man a third time—through the forehead—but it hasn’t even slowed him down. He’s close, leaping and tearing at the air, poised to strike at Julian. Julian drops his bow and materializes a sword. When the man claws toward Julian’s face, Julian lops off his head in a clean slice.

I cautiously approach the man I peppered with darts. Despite all his gurgling, moaning, and hissing—and the prominent veins straining against his skin like cords ready to burst—I can recognize him as a man in his late twenties. Someone’s son. Someone’s boyfriend or husband. Maybe even someone’s father. He’s a chilling testimony to how far the Morati are willing to go.

“Chop off his head, and he’ll disappear,” says Julian,
coming over and putting a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “See, the other guy is dissolving into nothingness as we speak.” He offers me his sword.

“To cycle back through again, right?”

“Probably. But with everything that’s been changing around here, I honestly don’t know what the rules are anymore.”

My eyes flit back and forth between the man’s eerie, possessed eyes and the sword. Is it better to leave him here or put him out of his misery? I take Julian’s sword and raise it above the man’s head, but I can’t do it. My conscience won’t let me. Instead I let the sword clatter to the ground.

“He’s a goner either way. Even if you don’t strike the killing blow . . . you contributed.”

“Let’s just go,” I say, unable to look at the man again.

Julian sighs. He picks up the sword, and the man’s god-awful cries cease. I can’t believe Julian can be so calm about killing two people, especially when my nerves are run ragged. I mean sure, technically they’re already dead, but he was so casual about it, so steady, it makes me wonder if he’s killed before.