The World Forgot

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For Lena and Bob

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

—Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard”

Prologue

Some days I sleep. Some days I pace. Some days, the days when they decide we have no need for light, I sit in absolute darkness.

Today I have no idea where I am. I haven't known much of anything for as long as I can remember. Since they brought me here. They moved me or didn't, and I simply can't remember. I can't seem to remember much of anything. Can't even remember which things I forgot and which things I never knew to begin with.

Today I do not know where I am.

It's loud. I know that much. Blaring horns, like an alarm or a whatdayacallit. Signage? Siphon?

It's loud. There are flashing lights. On and off and on again.

Siren.
I remember the word. Siren, that's what's making so much noise.

A siren means something is wrong.

The others don't seem to care that something is wrong. Most of them are sleeping. Some of them, the ones who just came back from their tests, are sleeping the most soundly. You're always the most tired after a test.

After a while, I don't know how long, I drift off to sleep too.

More time passes.

I wake up.

I pace.

I sit in the darkness.

The door hisses and clicks, and suddenly everyone's at attention. Everyone always wakes up when they open the door.

The white light that streams in when the door is opened is blinding. Two black silhouettes in the doorway.

“Number Twelve!” the first guard barks out. I don't know his name. Or maybe I just don't remember.

I rub a sore spot on my shoulder. I don't know why it's sore. I don't think I've taken a test recently. Around me I hear whispers, more shifting of weight.

“Number Twelve!” the guard shouts again.

There is a sharp poke in my back.
“That's you,”
one of them hisses at me.

“Oh!” The wheels click together in my brain. “Oh.” I squint into the whiteness of the light beyond the door. “That's me,” I tell the guard. My voice is hoarse, cracking. I guess that's what happens when you're stuck in one dark room after another—you stop talking so much, and then your voice goes hoarse.

Or maybe my voice was always like that. I can't remember.

The guard jerks his chin downward, a sharp nod.

“Come with us,” he says.

I step out into the light.

As my eyes adjust to the brightness, I take in the guard who leads me by the arm—with swift, sure strides—and, four steps behind him, the other, shorter guard. I recognize him. I think I recognize him. He is young. Short blond hair, sharp blue eyes. And I think I remember that he is friendlier than the others.

“Hi,” I greet him quietly.

“No talking,” the first guard snaps at me. He yanks me forward with such force that I stumble, almost fall. The second guard steadies me.

I turn to thank him, to offer him a smile at least, and I see that he is turned away from me. He will not accept my gratitude.

Still,
I think,
I will remember this small kindness.
I will try to remember.

I am led to a room. White, sterile, silent. There's nothing here that's memorable, and yet when we walk into it, I'm flooded with memories. I can feel the sore spot on my shoulder. I can hear crying. But it's not me. A baby? A baby's cries? I . . . had a baby once—didn't I? Thoughts whirl through my brain, and I can't remember which are real and which are imagined. The white walls blur into one another in my memories. The friendlier guard leads me to a high table, and he helps me hop up to sit on it. The taller, gruffer guard stays in the hallway to confer with someone else. I take my opportunity to talk. Use my voice.

“Why did the siren go off, before?” I ask. I'm pleased that I was able to remember the word before I got to ask.

The guard's eyes dart to the door. No one is listening.

“There was a breach,” he tells me. I don't know what that means. It's a word I've forgotten, or never learned. But I don't want him to know I can't remember. I want him to think I'm the kind of person who knows what words mean. “But it's okay. We're safe now.”

We talk no more after that, and he doesn't look at me. But I sit up a little straighter. Brush the tangles out of my hair when I think he isn't looking.

The person who enters the room next is not the first guard but an older man. A doctor, maybe? He wears a white coat, carries a lap-pad. I may have met him before. He glances down at the lap-pad. “Number Twelve,” he says, reading.

“Yes, sir,” I respond.
I know that I am Number Twelve,
I think proudly. I remembered.

“How have you been feeling?” the doctor asks me.

I try to remember. “Fine,” I say.

“Aches or pains of the joints?”

“No,” I tell him. I think that's right. “Oh! My shoulder is sore.” I rub the spot again. Tugging at the neck of my tunic, I can make out a mark there—one short line that intersects another at a right angle, like a capital
L
. I rub at it again, but the mark will not go away.

The doctor ignores my observation. “Any stomach cramping, abdominal pain, chest flutters?”

“No.”

“Disturbing dreams? Thoughts?”

“Thoughts? No. Would that be bad?”

“Could be. Psychological stresses could introduce unknown variables into the testing.”

Tests. It's my turn for a test. What are the tests for again? I always get so sleepy after and forget. I glance back at the friendly guard. He gives me a small smile when the doctor is focused on his lap-pad. I smile back.

I remember how to do
that
, at least.

“I don't have any dreams,” I tell the doctor.

The doctor nods, pleased with my answer. “Just one final question,” he tells me, “and then we can begin the testing.” I sit up a little straighter, waiting. “Do you remember anything from before your time here began?”

“Remember?”

“Yes. For instance, your name? Do you remember your name?”

I open my mouth to answer—such a simple question—and find that I can't.

“I . . . ,” I start. A jumble of words circle frantically in my brain, but I can't quite grab at any of them. I look at the friendly guard. He's frowning. I want to tell them,
Yes, I know my name. I can remember things. I'm good at knowing things and remembering words. I remembered the word for the loud noise before. Didn't I? Surgeon?
“I can't remember. I'm sorry.” I hang my head, ashamed.

The doctor smiles a kind smile at me and sets down his lap-pad. “Don't be sorry. Let's get you into the lab so we can begin testing.”

I nod. I'm tired. That must be why I can't remember. I turn to the friendly guard, who puts a guiding hand on the small of my back. “This way,” he directs.

I have disappointed him. And after the testing I'll be even more tired. And I'll remember even less.

I allow the guard to lead me to the door, while I still search my mind. There must be
something
there. I probe the furthest corners, grab at the tumbling thoughts.

Until, finally, I reach one.

“Britta,” I say quickly, spinning around to face the doctor. “That's my name. Britta McVicker.” They both look stunned, but I know this is correct.
I know something.
I am elated. I smile at the friendly guard.

But he is not smiling back. He takes in a deep breath. I
feel
it, as though he has taken in the air I needed to breathe.

And I don't know why, but the skin on the back of my knees begins to tingle.

I face the doctor again. He is frowning.

“That's right, isn't it?” I ask him, even though I am sure of the answer. “My name is Britta McVicker?” How have I disappointed them with my remembering?

“Sir?” the guard says to him, as though to confirm something.

The doctor is poking around inside a drawer, looking for something. “Unfortunate,” he tells the guard. “We do not have time for these setbacks.” He does look up now, but not at me.

The doctor is holding something long and thin in his hand. What do they call it? A needle. I think that's the word. The doctor clasps the needle tightly in his gloved hand.

I don't remember when he put on the gloves.

“Sit back down, please,” the doctor tells me. His voice is cold. “Hold her down.” That he says to the guard.

Suddenly I feel sick. A cold feeling—dread—runs through me. It's as if in finding my name I have turned on a switch, and now light is creeping slowly through a dark room. A room like where they were holding me. With the others. All the others.

The others.
Oh God. I remember. I know.

“Just relax,” the friendly guard says. He's trying to smile as he holds my shoulders down, but his eyes are sad. “This won't hurt at all. You'll feel sleepy, and when you wake up, everything will be fine.”

I look at his face, then the doctor's. I watch the needle go into my arm. And I know that he's lying.

Chapter One

In Which We Attempt to Hit the Ground Running

Come on, already. Is it too much to ask for a little time to myself for once?

I spot Cole on the other side of the deck, where he slouches over the rail, staring out at the water. For a split second I consider turning around and heading back belowdecks, but Cole spots me before I make up my mind. He gives me a quick nod, then turns back to the water and takes a slug from a silver can. He makes no movement toward me, leaving me in the unenviable position of having to either be an antisocial jerk and ignore him or choose to hold an actual conversation.

You'd think that chatting with Cole would be easy enough, despite our current dire situation. I mean, we did conceive a child together. That kind of thing doesn't happen when you're communicating solely by semaphore. But after the realization I had back in Antarctica that I'm changing in really unexpected ways while Cole, for better or worse, is pretty much always going to be, well, Cole, I've been having a hard time acting normal around him. The fact that Cole's testing to see if I'll approach him is proof enough that even he has picked up on this.

I take up a spot about an arm's length away from him along the ship's railing and follow his gaze out to the horizon. The wind is superbrisk, but thanks to my Enosi hybrid genes, I adapted to the chill long before we even disembarked.

“Where's Ducky?” Cole says to me, still not looking in my direction.

“He's down in the bathroom. Barfing again.”

“I'm surprised you're not down there holding his hair,” Cole says. “You've barely left his side since we set sail from Cape Crozier.”

“Cole, I've been with Ducky because Ducky's been with Marnie, and Marnie's been the one taking care of my dad. Remember? Harry Nara, middle-aged, out-of-shape engineer-slash-world's-oldest-and-most-chuteless-skydiver?”

Cole takes another long drag from his nondescript tin can, then hurls it overboard. I want to chastise him for being an ocean litterbug, but I somehow manage to stop myself. I guess I'm growing as a person. Cole bends down and pulls two more cans from a crate at his feet on his other side.

“You'd think he'd have his sea legs after two weeks at sea,” he says, offering me one of the cans.

I don't take it. “He's spending twenty hours a day in a medi­cal gel bath recovering from frostbite, hypothermia, and more than a few broken bones, Cole,” I reply, more than a little rankled. “I hardly think sea legs are his biggest—”

“I meant Ducky.”

“Oh. Well, I think he was hoping that Oates's contact would come pick us up in a fancy spaceship or something, instead of an old oil tanker. But I guess beggars can't be choosers when it comes to which smugglers aid in your escape from prison.” I do take the can from him then, but I don't open it. It's shiny and silvery smooth, like a can of peaches with the label pulled off. I play with the pop-top, lifting it slightly up and then letting it snap back onto the lid. “Besides, I'm sure Ducky'd barf in a spaceship, too. I've yet to discover any form of transportation gentle enough for his world-class motion sickness.”

“At least Oates had friends out there who could pick us up,” Cole says. “Even if they are kinda shady. After those pricks on the elevator platform left us stranded.”

“Well, the elevator was kinda sorta completely destroyed,” I remind him. “Those guys didn't have any way to send a transport to pick us up before they left.”

“They could have left us
something
,” Cole argues. “Instead of scrambling back home with that weak-ass excuse about a ‘communications blackout.' If it weren't for Oates's pals, we'd still be stuck in the snow.”

I look at Cole's profile, a beautiful silhouette against the white sunlight. There are things we need to be talking about. Another conversation entirely.

I'm not sure I'm ready to have it.

“They're still fighting down there,” I say, darting my eyes down to the deck below, where all the Almiri and Enosi trapped with us in Antarctica have been battling it out for the past several days. They stop only for meal breaks. “Oates is doing his best to referee, but no one's seeing eye to eye on the whole let's-go-back-to-Almiri-headquarters-and-hug-this-out plan we've got going.”

“Well, probably because it's a shit plan,” Cole says.

“It's the only option we have.”

Cole turns and looks at me. “Elvs, the hybrids are never going to be okay with going to HQ. We Almiri have been huge dicks to them for centuries. And I don't see that changing anytime soon just because we all took a boat ride together.”

“The Jin'Kai invasion is coming,” I say, and I hate to admit it, but even I can hear the hint of desperation in my voice. “Marsden said as much. A fleet of those Devastators is on its way to Earth. Our only hope is to make sure everyone who calls Earth home—Almiri, Enosi, human—learns to play nice and form a unified resistance.”

“That's all well and good to say,” Cole says, “except that's not why you want to go back to HQ. You think Byron knows how to find Olivia.”

“Yeah,” I snap back. “And so what if that's my reason? You act like wanting to find my daughter is some sort of crime.”

She stole her. My own mother kidnapped my daughter, right out of my hands, and handed her over to Dr. Marsden.

“
Our
daughter,” Cole says, and when I give him a funny look, he bores his stony eyes into me. “You said ‘my.' You keep forgetting that Olivia's my daughter too.”

I do. I do keep forgetting that. Probably because Cole hasn't been acting much like a parent lately. Probably because he's been acting more like a whiny, entitled baby, sulking on the deck when he should be helping Oates to get everyone to play nice like I've been doing for two weeks straight. Suddenly I feel butterflies climbing into my throat. I haven't felt butterflies, not truly, since I was home in Ardmore, before any of this alien invasion craziness was a thing. A million years ago, in my bedroom in Ardmore, when Cole touched my hair, and I looked into his eyes, and he kissed me for the very first time.

Those were very different butterflies.

“I think we should break up,” I say softly. The words hover in the air between us like they're in a cartoon speech bubble. Cole barely reacts at all, but I notice the corner of his mouth twitch. For several seconds the only sound is the crashing of the waves against the hull of the ship. I wait, as patiently as I can, for the explosion of feelings that's probably welling up inside him right now.

“Whatever,” Cole says finally.

Not exactly what I was expecting.

“Whatever?”
I snap back.

“What do you want me to say, Elvs?”

“Something more than ‘whatever.' We have a
child
together, for Christ's sake.”

“
You're
the one who just said you want to break up!”

I'm at a loss. I want so badly for Cole to understand. I want to tell him that he'll always be my first true love, that he'll always be the father of my child, and that there will always be a special place in my heart just for him. That I'll always want him in my life, but that I'm growing into a different person from who I was when we met, and that I need to figure out who this new person is going to be. I want to tell him I'm sorry.

“Fine. Whatever, then,” I shoot back at him.

My mouth feels like I've been chewing on cotton balls. I crack open the silver can and take a huge sip, only to immediately spit it back out in a glorious spray over the bow of the ship.

“Jesus, Cole! What in the hell is this?” I run my finger along the lip of the can, picking up the thick white liquid. “Have you been drinking
condensed milk
?”

“It was all they had in the galley!” he shouts. “And, hey, I don't have to explain myself to you, because
we just broke up
!”

With that, he storms away, brushing past Captain Oates, who is walking toward us. Cole doesn't break his stride and starts running as he gets farther away from me. Oates looks back at him before turning to me with a concerned look on his face.

“Miss Elvie?” he asks. “You're crying.”

“It's nothing,” I say, holding up the can of syrupy milk. “Just went down the wrong pipe.”

“Ah.” Oates settles in right beside me and looks out at the water. I can tell he doesn't believe me, but he's way too British to let on. “It's quite lovely, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” I say, sniffing.

“It's been too long since I've been on the water. I hadn't realized how much I truly missed it.”

“Well, seems like you could have called your buddies here to escape from prison anytime you wanted to.”

“I broke the law of my people, even if I felt that law to be unjust. If I wanted my actions to mean something, I could not run away from their consequences.”

“I didn't realize extra hanky-panky was such a weighty subject for you,” I say. Seriously, I've always thought the Almiri “code” was a bit bogus—deciding who a dude gets to sleep with, and then locking him up indefinitely if said dude can't keep it in his pants—but my buddy Oates has taken things to a new level of bogusitude.

Oates looks me dead in the eye. Now I've done it. I should just keep my mouth shut for the rest of the trip so that I don't piss anyone else off.

“These sailors who aid us in our journey home . . . ,” Oates begins.

“The smugglers? What about them?”

“They are not smugglers. Well, they are, but not in the manner that you suppose. They are freedom runners. They transport the, shall we say, recently liberated, to safer harbor.”

“You mean like escaped convicts?” I ask.

Oates shrugs. “Perhaps, sometimes. But not always. They have been making their covert runs for centuries now.”

“They're Almiri?” I'm stunned. I mean, I guess they were handsome enough dudes, but with this entire alien race war being such a sausagefest, I've been getting kind of immune to hot guys.

Oates nods. “They have helped to transport freed slaves. Illegal prisoners of war. And even men and women like yourself.”

“Enosi,” I say, slowly beginning to understand. “You mean they've helped hybrids escape from Almiri camps. But how did they . . .” And then it dawns on me, full force. “You!” I turn to face Oates straight on. “Cape Crozier wasn't originally for Almiri Code-breakers with extra ants in their pants, was it? The Almiri held Enosi captive there, back when the continent was unexplored. And you . . . your trip to the South Pole in the twentieth century . . . you were
freeing
them.”

Oates is way too classy a dude to even acknowledge his own heroics. He simply rubs the palms of his hands along the cool rail. Me, being not so cool or classy, I slap him on the arm.

“Why didn't you ever say anything? You helped rescue, what, a hundred Enosi prisoners? A thousand? You need to tell them that! They need to see that not all Almiri are raging prejudiced asshats.”

“The time may very well be at hand,” Oates agrees. “I am equally concerned with convincing the Almiri Council that they have been, as you put it so poetically, ‘asshats.'”

“So you, what? Stayed in the prison as a statement to Byron and the others?”

“I did. And it has already had some positive effects.”

“Such as?”

“Well, your grandfather sent you to me, did he not?”

Byron, aka James Dean, aka my grandfather. Who would have imagined that sending your granddaughter to an Antarctic prison could be considered a
relaxed
position in the whole Almiri-Enosi conundrum?

“So he sent me to you to keep me and Olivia safe,” I say.

“That was the idea. God laughs at all our plans, child.”

I feel the tightness in my chest that comes whenever I allow myself to think about my daughter. “Byron will help us get Olivia back, won't he? I mean, I know the world is coming to an end and everything, but . . .”

“We will find your daughter. I gave you my word. But you must be patient. There are many developments that we must account for now, not the least of which is the imminent Jin'Kai invasion.”

I clench my teeth and say nothing. I mean, I know he's right, that there are bigger things going on right now. That I need to be patient.

But that doesn't mean I can do it.

I grip the railing and smell the salty air as a frigid breeze blows across the deck of the rickety old boat. There's a bitter taste in my mouth, which can only be blamed in part on the milk residue on my tongue.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“Miss?”

“You stayed trapped for so long, because you thought it was the right thing to do. How did you know when it was time to free yourself?”

“We are all captains of our own destiny,” he says, putting an arm gently around my shoulders. “When the time comes, you just know.”

And for some reason that starts me bawling, crying like some sort of girl. I press my face into Oates's coat, letting it absorb my tears. He pats my back.

“There, there, Miss Elvie,” he reassures me. “Everything's all right now. You're almost there.”

And as I look out at the water, I can almost allow myself to believe it.

Hold on,
I think to my daughter, wherever she may be.
Just hold on a little longer. Mama's coming for you.

Hold on.