The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (9 page)

Memory Thief

Monday, November 5th

TRAVIS

W
here the hell is he?
I had called Patrick to meet me and Chan-rin at the ice cream parlor a good twenty minutes ago, and he still hadn’t turned up. I texted him again.

Today 4:26 pm

Travis Centrina

Where are you? We’re only the next block over from the apartment.

And then I set the phone down and turned my attention back to Chan-rin.

She was normally rather quiet, but something about her current silence felt different. I could sense something was off with her, but like Patrick, she was much harder to get a clear emotional read on. Almost like something was purposely trying to obscure her emotions from me. But maybe it was just me expecting too much from myself. Maybe it was time to admit that suddenly acquiring two younger siblings in the last year wasn’t going to magically make me better at being a big brother. That if this new fledgling family I had cobbled together was going to work, I was going to have to get my butt in gear. Even if the thought of being responsible for someone
other
than myself terrified the crap out of me.

And so I sat and watched Chan-rin as she folded a ripped off section of her ice cream cone wrapper into a paper crane, giving her the attention she deserved.

“Where did you learn that, Chan-rin?” I asked as I nudged one of the completed cranes with the tip of my finger.

“Chan-rin learned from Aku,” she answered as she finished the last fold on the crane, and set it on the table.

“Oh, so he
taught
you?” I corrected before I shoved the last bit of my own cone into my mouth. I had been trying to help Chan-rin learn better English in the only way that made sense to me—by talking to her.

She looked at me in puzzlement for a moment, her brow furrowing. “No, not
taught
, it was in Aku’s memories.”

“In his memories?” I repeated in confusion before the realization hit me. “You
took
them from him? Chan-rin, you shouldn’t do that, it’s wrong. Taking someone’s memory is
wrong
,” I admonished her in a voice that wasn’t harsh, but hopefully told her just how bad it was to do what she had done.

“Chan-rin did not
take
, Chan-rin…Chan-rin—” Chan-rin started indignantly, and then she paused for a moment, searching for the right word in English. “—shared. Chan-rin
shared
with Aku. Chan-rin can not take. Chan-rin can only share.”

Share
, of course, like she had shared her fear with me that first day I had taken her to my lab to ask her about the other Kakodemoss captives.

I let out a long breath. “Oh, that’s okay then, Chan-rin. Sharing memories with someone is okay so long as you don’t take memories away from that person.”

Chan-rin nodded her understanding, and then went back to folding paper cranes. I leaned back into the booth seat with a heavy, exhausted sigh.

“Only Aku took.”

“
What
?” I asked, jerking up straight, my heart starting to beat faster. I couldn’t have heard her right.

“Aku took memories,” Chan-rin repeated. “This is Aku’s…job.”

I just stared at her for a moment, and then I swallowed hard. “Chan-rin, how does Aku take memories?”

In answer, Chan-rin reached out and pressed her fingers to my cheek as she looked up into my eyes. “Like this. Aku takes memories like this.”

Touch.
All he had to do was touch someone, and he could take whatever memories he wanted from them—whatever secrets. And then the horrible implications finally started to click into place. They had been using him like an external hard drive. The world’s most undetectable surveillance system. Their own set of eyes within the school, within The Embassy, within—

The Galathea estate.

It was sick—unbelievably sick—and I had to force down the bile rising up in my throat. They had probably been using Patrick to extract memories from Nualla, memories they could then pass on to Kira. That was how they were going to make the switch without any of us knowing. That was how they were going to replace her.

I took a deep breath to steady my voice before I asked, “Can anyone else do this, Chan-rin—take memories?”

She shook her head, and then stopped as if something had occurred to her. “Only Aku and…the
Machanta
.”

Machanta? Machine?
“What machine, Chan-rin?”

She opened her mouth and then closed it, starting to tremble uncontrollably. Her hands flew up to cover her eyes, and she began to rock back and forth in her seat. “No come out. No come out. The black door. The black door of death. No come out of the black door.”

I put my arms around her, and pulled her close. “It’s okay Chan-rin, no one will get you, no one will hurt you ever again. I promise. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”

I think she nodded, but I wasn’t sure because she was shaking so badly. Like a frightened rabbit.

“What’s going on?” Patrick asked with concern.

I looked up to see him standing there. Dressed nearly head to toe in black, the dark shadows under his eyes worse than they had been on Saturday. Looking like a specter. Looking like someone I didn’t know.

Just when I thought what had happened to them couldn’t get worse—it always did.

“We found these on the black market,” Tylia Lawrence stated as she plunked a pendant down on the table, the silvery sheen of the metal standing out in sharp contrast to her dark skin. Well, as dark as daemon skin got, anyways.

“Daenarian pendants that make the wearer appear Kalodaemon instead of Kakodaemon,” she continued as the rest of us just stared at the pendant.

Patrick and I had been on our way back from dropping Chan-rin off at the orphanage when Akiko had called to tell me that Tylia Lawrence, the director of the Department of Defense and Security, had asked for an emergency meeting of the Central Six. Now I knew why.

This was bad. This was really,
really
bad.

“Are you saying any Kakodaemon could just walk right into The Embassy?” Johannah Murray, the director of the Department of Records asked with alarm. Her black, shoulder-length hair rippling as she jerked her gaze toward Tylia.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Tylia admitted reluctantly as if just the mere existence of such a thing was her own personal failure.

“Which is why getting KARA up and running is top priority,” Shawn’s father, Roy Vallen, stated as he looked toward me.

As the director of the Department of Justice and the Grand High Councilor, he was the leader of the Grand Council and the Central Six in Alex’s absence. Though with my new title of
viliyata,
it was really a toss up as to who out-ranked whom. However, I wasn’t about to point that out since every time I remembered that I was in charge of anyone—let alone a
whole
department—it kinda made me nauseous.

“What’s the status on that?” Ashley Hutchenson asked me with narrowed eyes, unable to fully hide how much she didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual, and had been since I had been about nine. And trust me, it hadn’t gotten any better since I had been named the director of the Department of Technical Research and Development, and she had realized that I was now her peer instead of a child she could punish and boss around.

“I can probably get her up and running by the end of the week. And then fully integrated by the end of the month,” I said without needing to look at the tablet of notes Akiko had provided me. I knew exactly how far off from completion we were. I had basically been measuring my days by that for weeks.

“Up and running? I thought she was already functional,” Ashley asked with a patronizing and mocking tone to her voice that made me want to set loose a flock of pigeons in her office again.

I swallowed and took a steadying breath. “There was an…unforeseen security risk and portions of KARA’s code had to be rewritten,” I admitted reluctantly.
Or basically, a Kakodemoss agent hacked her and locked me out.

Ashley opened her mouth to speak, but Kiskei cut her off before she got a chance. “There were also the modifications to the biometric scanners that needed to be made.”

“Modifications?” Johannah asked as she turned toward Kiskei.

Instead of looking at her, Kiskei looked at Roy. “The data markers for the K1-2012 mutation had to be added in,” he stated. And there it was again, the weird emotions coming off of him like the ones I had felt coming off him in his office.

“What mutation?” Ashley asked with narrowed eyes. As the director of Health and Daemon Services she should have been one the first to know about any health risks, and it probably irritated her to no end that others knew before she did.

Kiskei and Roy looked at each other, and then at me before Kiskei turned back to Ashley. “When Patrick Galathea was exposed to the daemon retro-virus through the blood transfusion and underwent the Change, the daemon retro-virus
also
underwent a change—a mutation. We have labeled it the K1-2012 mutation. Patrick then later passed this mutated retro-virus on to the Arius Nualla and she to Travis Viliyata.”

At the last part everyone’s eyes darted to me, and Tylia arched her eyebrows. Apparently it wasn’t
only
teenage girls who were aware of the speculations that
Secrets
magazine was making about my and Nualla’s relationship.

“Not like
that
,” I said sarcastically as I folded my arms, and leaned back in my seat. “It was through an injection of blood.”

“Is the mutation dangerous?” Johannah asked with large eyes.

“Dangerous? No, it’s not dangerous. Though, I must admit that we don’t fully understand it yet,” Kiskei replied as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I can’t believe you are treating this so lightly, Kiskei! This
mutation
could endanger all of Karalia! He could be infecting us as we speak! We should quarantine them to an observation lab for study until we can develop something to counter the effects of this mutation,” Ashley squawked as she glared at me in disgust. Leaning away from me, and spitting out the word
mutation
as if she thought I was a diseased rat.

And that was when I finally lost it.

“The K1-2012 mutation is the only reason you’re all not
dead
right now,” I snapped through clenched teeth as I slammed my hands onto the table.

I trudged into the living room of my apartment sometime after seven o’clock, and flopped onto the floor in front of the futon couch because Patrick was stretched out across it.

I had lost my temper again. Let Ashley bait me into snapping.
Again.

After I had shouted at them, Kiskei had explained that the mutated retro-virus was only passed through blood or other “bodily contact.” A.k.a
sex
.
And
that one of the benefits of the mutation was the immunity to titanium that had allowed me to not die when I had gone out into the titanium-filled halls.

Instead of letting it go, Ashley—proving how much of an ungrateful bitch she was—said we should come up with a new designator for the three of us since we were no longer Kalodaemons. At that, I had nearly lunged across the table to throttle her. But Roy—who seemed to have better restraint, even though he also looked like he wanted nothing more than to deck her—had said that he would bring up the matter with the Chancellarius because we had more important things to worry about than labels at the moment.

“You’re home way late,” Patrick pointed out as he paused whatever show was on. Some anime with a girl in a white and red outfit and a boy in a black outfit running around with swords.

“
Ugh
, don’t remind me,” I groaned as I flung my arm over my eyes. “Just please tell me we can do something constructive tonight, like punching pixilated sheep?”

“I think you mean
destructive,
” Patrick said with a smirk to his voice.

“Whatever, I’m tired of being an adult for today.”

“Why, what happened?” Patrick asked, concern tinting his voice.

I pulled my arm from my eyes, and looked at him.

Where did I even start in answering that question? I didn’t want to bring up the stuff with Chan-rin and his apparent secret memory stealing ability. Or that I was beginning to suspect that Nualla’s memories of the night we had shared together had been stolen, maybe even by him. And I sure as
hell
didn’t want to bring up the stuff about KARA and the fact that I didn’t even know what fucking species we were anymore. So I settled for the only thing left in my craptastic day: Parker.

“I have the social graces of a horny teenage boy,” I said as I dropped my arm back over my eyes.