Lifer (21 page)

She sits between the two chimneys in the least disrepair, on the edge of the roof, and tugs me down beside her. “Here.”

I sit and swing my feet like Megs. The tap of my heels against the crumbling concrete beneath makes pieces of it break off and tumble to the street below. I get the feeling that the whole thing could collapse at any moment. But instead of being scared it makes me feel more alive.

A glance over my shoulder shows us completely hidden from the sentries keeping watch on the street. We’re alone.

“What do you see?” she asks.

I’ve been so focused on Megs I hadn’t considered the view. I look out. The destruction I saw from the back of the bike is worse through the fog and the heavy brown stench that coats this part of the city like the pillow Eliza tried to use to smother me.

“Ruins,” I say. “Buildings missing their rooftops or several walls. Bits of concrete that might’ve been roads once. Black shadows I’m guessing are cracks in the earth.” I stifle a shudder at the black hole that took the Company girl. I never want to end up in one of those.

“Anything else?”

I look closer. She must be testing me. “There’s no people, no plants other than the mossy weed that grows over everything, no signs of life.”

“Really?” She takes our joined hands and points toward the roof of a neighboring building.

I follow the direction she’s pointing. For a second I don’t see she wants me to look at. This building’s the same as the others. Gray and grimy, with the moss growing in the damp cracks. Until in the far corner…“The bit of green?”

She flashes a grin that makes me feel like I’ve said something brilliant. “Exactly. Someone’s growing something there. Sometimes when I come up here, I see an old lady out watering that little patch.”

“What do they grow?”

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why bother?” I don’t understand what she thinks I should be getting excited about.

“Because she’s trying. To make a life free of the Company. If the food grows she can trade it for something else she needs, like making sure she keeps electricity in her home. The hungry and the desperate are easy prey for the lure of New City.”

“Why do so many here wear the green robes?”

“A small symbol of defiance.” She grins. “And someone found a huge stash of the material in one of the old buildings.”

“But the Company has control. What’s to stop it from shutting everything left in this city down?”

“Manpower. But as Keane said, they’ll outnumber us in time. New City began as an alternative to the devastation left by the Upheaval, but we’re not being left alone as promised by the Company. They’re more open in their attacks.”

“What then?”

She slides her hand free of mine, and twists the end of her purple hair. “We have plans.”

“Like?”

She’s silent. We’re shoulder to shoulder, but in her mind she doesn’t believe it’s safe to let me too close. It’s the same point at which she stopped Keane talking on the mountain. She’s afraid to reveal the rebellion’s master plan in case I’m Company.

I lie back, close my eyes and rub at my aching temples. “Look, I get it. I get why you don’t want to tell me.”

Her hands slip over mine.

I open my eyes and she’s kneeling over me, her light weight settles on my stomach. Every part of me aches to press her even closer. The usual guilt fights a losing battle against how much I want to kiss her.

My hands go to her thighs, bare from her cutoffs. Her skin’s warm and smooth. I trail a path of Goosebumps on her skin. “You’re pretty close to the edge,” I manage to say past a dry throat.

Her eyes are shadowed as the sun behind her begins to burn through the fog. “You won’t let me fall.”

From thighs, to waist, to her jaw. My hands move on instinct. Her breath catch. I answer the smile on her lips with one of my own.

And then I pull her down. Slowly. As though we have forever, when in a few hours I might be her enemy. Anticipation ramps the ache in me to painful, alongside the whisper of a memory.

I promise. Forever
…

“Megs.” I say her name to drown out that other girl in my mind. Gravel from my feet tumbles down the side of the building as I shift.

She shakes her head. “If you don’t kiss me soon…” Her mouth’s so close, her breath, sweet on my lips.

Then the kiss. And it’s everything. Her mouth, her taste. I deepen the kiss. Her lips part beneath mine. I tangle my fingers in her hair and arch up to press closer.

She pulls back a little. “Blank,” she murmurs.

My name on her lips reminds me of the decision ahead. I never want to stop kissing her but the shadow of what lies ahead hangs over us. When she pulls away again we’re both breathing faster. Her cheeks are flushed pink and her eyes are hazy. Her fingertips return to my temples.

“Do you have the answers in there?” she whispers.

My gut clenches. “Is that what this is about?”

She pales. “Of course not. I thought…”

I lift her off me, making sure she’s well away from the edge of the building. Then I bring up my knees and wrap my arms around them to stop myself reaching for her again. My hands are fists. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Angry heat burns my cheeks. At myself. These people are at war. Would they trade a kiss to get the answers they want? Megs made it clear how much she wants revenge on the Company.

How stupid to think she actually wanted to kiss me.

“Blank?” Her voice pleads.

I won’t look at her. I refuse to feel bad. Like I need more guilt. “I wish I’d never followed you to the warehouse.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because then Janic wouldn’t have a chance.”

I laugh. I got my hopes up. Thought she might’ve been glad we’d met for me. But no, it’s because I’m the freak who doesn’t get hurt by the Q and was strong enough to bring her brother to safety.

“I’m just a means to an end for you people.”

She’s silent.

I scramble to my feet, dangerously close to the edge but I’m past caring. Fall. Not fall. Whatever. At least a fall would put an end to the million questions in my brain.

“I’ll do it.” I’m shouting but I don’t care. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s the reason for this whole performance?”

I stare at her then. Daring her to argue, still somehow hoping she’ll tell me I’m wrong, that she brought me here because she likes me. Not just what I might be able to do for her friends.

She hasn’t moved from where I put her. When she looks up her eyes shine with unshed tears. “I can’t lie. I did bring you here to help you decide.” She stands and walks over to stand right on the edge with me. Her hands wrap around my fist, her touch warm and soft despite my anger. “But kissing you. Damn it, Blank, if you don’t know why I kissed you then you really need something done to fix your brain.”

I want to believe her.

“I could die.” It’s the closest I come to admitting I’m scared. It’s funny how a few days of a life already seem important enough to cling to.

She nods. “I’d miss you terribly.”

“But you still think I should take the chance.”

Her hands move to clasp around my neck. She rests her head on my chest, against where my heart pounds hard from her nearness and from the procedure ahead.

“More importantly, you do,” she says into my t-shirt.

She’s right. I want answers. I want to know who did this to me and why. I want to help Megs if I can.

I hold her close. “We’d better find Keane.”

She hesitates. When I look back she’s biting her lower lip.

“There’s another place.”

Her words are so soft and spoken so quickly it takes a second to make sense of them. “This is your secret?”

“A community over the Upheaval Mountains, out of the Company’s reach.”

She’s given me the greatest gift by trusting me. “I won’t let you down.”

This time we use the new stairs. They’re clean and brightly lit. As I expect, we head toward Janic but turn off the corridor before the one leading to the Recovery center.

Silently we pass closed doors and silent hallways. And then we stop. Megs squeezes my hand in front of a plain white door, no different to any of the others we’ve walked past to get here. “Here.”

I knock. Keane opens the door but he’s not smiling. “You’ve decided?”

I nod, looking past him, but there’s not much to see beyond a hallway opening into a larger room beyond.

“You need to say the words.”

“Yes. I want my memories back.”

He smiles then, but it’s a grim twist of his mouth. “You’d better come in.”

“Now?” I’m glad the question doesn’t come out as a squeak.

“No point wasting time.” He heads inside, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Megs pulls me close in a brief hug. “Good luck.”

This is when I should drop her hand and stride away. I linger. “I’ll see you soon.”

But the simple farewell isn’t enough. I meet her gaze and am selfish enough to hope the fear in the green depths of her eyes is for me. I lean close and press a hard kiss on her mouth.

I walk into the room without looking back.

The door clicks closed behind me with a finality that should terrify me. Instead I’m calm again for the first time since I made my decision. Soon, I’ll have answers. Or be so brain damaged it won’t matter anymore.

I expect something similar to the Recovery center, but the room beyond the entryway is shining white and sterile. More like the Doctor’s rooms in my memory banks. The rest of the station might be run down but they obviously don’t mess around with medical procedures.

There’s a hospital bed in the center of the room beneath bright directional lights and Keane waits beside it. I cross the few feet in a blink. I avoid the metal tray with medical devices on it. Scalpels. Needles.

I gulp. “Here I am.”

As I speak, a trim, dark-skinned woman enters through another door. She’s holding a machine that’s the stuff of nightmares, with wires and probes and a crapload of buttons.

“This is Charley. She’s our senior medic.”

I attempt a smile. “Blank.”

“Hopefully not Blank for long,” she says with a warmth that reminds me of Megs. Even in tossing her long dark, curly hair over her shoulder, this woman exudes skill and confidence.

Some of the tension in me eases and I breathe for the first time since entering the room.

Keane points to the orange stubble on my head. “At least we don’t need to shave you down.”

I swallow past a constriction in my throat. The ID picture back at the gaming bar showed me with longer hair. Whoever modified my memory must’ve cut my hair, and in the back of my mind I sort of knew it. But the idea gives me the creeps. Almost more than what they did to my mind. Was I conscious at the time? Did I struggle? My gut flips. Maybe I’ll know soon.

“Do it,” I say, before I lose my nerve.

Keane nods to Charley. She pats the bed. “Take a seat.”

I do as she asks and she raises the back of the bed so it supports my spine. “Should I take off my shoes?”

“Whatever makes you comfortable.”

I take them off, not thinking about whether I’m delaying what’s about to happen.

She attaches the probes at regular intervals across my scalp. Each one’s cold and damp when it first touches me, but once they’re there I hardly feel them.

“Ready,” she says to Keane when she’s finished.

He pulls up a chair and straddles it, facing me. “Last chance to wimp out. Are you sure you want us to try this? The fact that you’ve remembered nothing in days suggests that whoever did the operation on you knew what they were doing.”

My neck muscles tighten and my ear tips burn. That I remember nothing isn’t exactly true. I mean, I’ve remembered a girl’s voice a couple of times and there’s the nagging guilt whenever I’m around Megs. But did I take such an instant liking to Megs if there was already someone special in my life? I’ve been here for days and there’s been no sign of anyone from my past looking for me.

Anyway, I don’t want to reveal everything to Keane. He saved my life but it doesn’t mean he won’t sell me out for his cause. He’s made no secret that bringing down the Company and their mysterious CEO comes first.

I take a deep breath and lift my head to look him straight in the eye. “I’m sure.”

He nods. “We’ll begin with a local anesthetic.”

“I thought you’d knock me out.”

“It’s important you’re awake so we know whether it’s working.”

“Will the memory part hurt?” I ask, managing to keep my tone level. Showing fear is showing weakness.

“The probes will enter your brain using nano-fine needles. You might not even feel them.”

I haven’t seen the whole Station but nothing about their setup suggests they have the capability to make nano-anything. “How did you make—”

“Let’s just say we borrowed some of the technology,” Keane explains, cutting me off.

“At considerable expense,” Charley adds.

They mean lives. People died to get this. The weight of the experiment settles heavily where each part of the instrument touches my scalp. If the procedure works the rebellion might be able to reclaim their own people. It’s about so much more than me.

But I’m the one who’s taking all the risk. “Okay, so you jab me and the nano-things go in my brain. Then what?”

“It’s hard to explain, but we believe the memory change is achieved by literally blocking some of the pathways in the subject’s brain and creating new ones.” While Keane speaks, Charley’s busy with the machine and I don’t know who to watch. “We use special frequency waves across those pathways to break them open.”

“Break?”

“I didn’t say this would be fun.”

He didn’t and I never thought finding the answers would be easy. “Give me the local.”

Keane and Charley share a look over my head.

She fumbles with the side of the bed and I hold my breath. Long, gray straps like the ones Eliza used are attached to the side. She looks apologetic. “First we have to tie you down.”

“But I won’t move.”

Keane places a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You might not have a choice.”

There’s more to it than moving from pain. It’s about what happens after. If I’m a trained Company spy then unlocking my memories might be dangerous for everyone in the Station. Just because I understand doesn’t mean I like it. But it’s a too late to start complaining about the details. I lie still while they strap my chest, each foot and my hands.