Unchanged (6 page)

A large transparent structure has been erected in the middle of the field. A freestanding glass cube with no ceiling. Inside, a deadly fire roars.

I watch in horror as a scientist in a white lab coat guides a blindfolded woman toward the entrance of the chamber. Another scientist standing nearby presses a button on his Slate and a door in the glass wall slides opens. The fire doesn't try to escape. It's being controlled. Limited to the boundaries of the small room.

The first scientist removes the blindfold from the woman. She stares blankly into the flames. Not a drop of fear registers on her face. The second scientist presses another button on his Slate and the woman advances toward the open chamber.

Without a flicker of hesitation or even a flinch of concern, she walks straight into the fire. It consumes her instantly, the blistering flames wrapping around her slender body and yielding her motionless and silent in a matter of seconds.

I open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out. That's when I realize Kaelen's hand is clamped over my lips, blocking the sound.

“Sera,” he whispers urgently. “We have to go. Now.”

I try to speak, but he won't allow it. In a blur, he lifts me with one arm, his other hand still firmly secured over my mouth. I don't struggle. I let him carry me away. As we vanish into the darkness, I hear a voice behind us. It's coming from the nightmare we just witnessed.

“Excellent work,” it commends the scientists. “I believe we are ready.”

There's no doubt in my mind that the voice belongs to Dr. A.

 

10

GAPS

I wake up in a chair. My hands are shackled to the armrests, my brain is fuzzy. It feels like my head has been stuffed with cotton. I blink and look around. It takes me a moment to recognize where I am. The VersaScreens that surround me are powered down, leaving the four walls a muted black.

I'm inside the memory labs.

Sevan Sidler's familiar voice comes through a small speaker by my ear. “Hi, Sera. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I mumble groggily.

I do what I always do when I wake up in this room: struggle to conjure the last thing I remember.

Crest did my hair. I went to evening meal. Dr. A got angry and smashed a crystal glass. Dane told us about our upcoming appearance on Mosima's show. Kaelen and I went running. And then …

Then there is nothing.

Then I woke up here.

I know exactly what this means. One of my memories has been altered. Probably erased. It's not an uncommon occurrence. It happens fairly often, actually. Often enough that it doesn't warp me out like it used to. Over the past year, I've come to terms with the fact that memory modifications are in the best interest of everyone, and, above all else, in the best interest of the Objective. I trust Dr. A's judgment. That's why, with me, they no longer go through the trouble of coding artificial memories to replace the ones they remove. I've accepted the fact that there are some things I just don't need to know.

But tonight, after everything else that's happened, I feel curiosity trickling its way into my thoughts.

The time flashes across my Lenses: 01:42 a.m. When Kaelen and I left the house after evening meal it was after ten. What happened in those three hours? What did I see?

The restraints holding my wrists release and I stand up and flex my fingers. One of the VersaScreens splits open and I walk into the hallway where Kaelen is waiting, a beatific smile on his face.

“Ça va?”
He asks me if I'm doing okay in French.

“Oui,”
I respond. The fog in my brain has already started to lift. In a few minutes, I will be sharp and alert again.

Sevan pops his head through the doorway that leads to the control room. That's where he sits at a computer all day as the cryptic code of Revisual
+
, the language of memories, streams across his screen.

“Have a good night, you two,” he says, his usual cheerfulness not at all affected by whatever memory he took, or the fact that it's now the middle of the night and he was most likely woken from sleep to perform my alteration.

“You, too,” I reply, and follow Kaelen outside.

We walk back to the Residential Sector in silence. I want to ask so many questions. I want to ask what happened. What they stole. Did they alter his memories, too? Or was it just mine? But I know that I can't. It goes against all the rules. All the protocols. And even if Kaelen does know the answers, he's not allowed to tell me.

We are so close in so many ways—bonded by the very life that runs in our veins—but Diotech always comes first.

The Objective always comes first.

I fight to draw out even the smallest strand of what was removed from my mind. What I might have seen. How it might have made me feel. Hoping, beyond reason, that some remnant of the past few hours might still be lingering. Hiding somewhere in the back corners of my brain.

But Sevan is good at his job. There is nothing left.

I don't even notice that Kaelen has stopped walking until I feel a rough tug on my arm and I'm suddenly spun around. He brings me crushing against his chest as he urgently captures my mouth with his. His kiss is hungry. Desperately redemptive. For what, I don't know. But like always, I lose everything that once stood guard in my mind. My knees start to buckle.

Kaelen has a way of consuming me with his kisses. Rendering me useless. Stealing everything from me. Almost as effectively as a Memory Coder.

When he pulls away, I'm wobbly, leaning against him for balance.

“Can I come to your room tonight?” he whispers into the skin behind my ear.

All I can do is nod against his lingering lips.

We run. Hand in hand. Up the manicured pathway of the house. With nothing at our backs but desert wind and lost memories. This is us. This has always been us. An undeniable pull toward each other. An invisible force field that pulses in the spaces between us, holding us together, connecting us with the same heartbeat.

A thrill of nervous energy fuels my legs as we spring up the porch steps. A fierce longing to be close to him thrums through me as he pauses before the front door, wrapping his strong, chiseled arms around my waist and pulling me into him.

His scent is intoxicating.

His mouth is debilitating.

His touch makes me forget.

He looks at me, his eyes wild and unfocused. “You completely warp me.”

I flash him a coy smirk. “You have to say that. It's in your DNA.”

“And what glitching good DNA it is.”

This makes me laugh. Kaelen opens the front door and starts up the stairs, keeping his hand firmly secured around mine. I stay close to him, hoping the anguish of the day will gradually fade with every step.

But as we reach the landing of the second floor, I begin to realize, with a profound disappointment, that it will take more than a flight of stairs to erase the demons inside of me. I could climb to the moon and I would still feel my fears following right behind me like a dark shadow.

An unwanted passenger who was never invited. And never leaves.

 

11

RELEASED

That night, I dream of Rio countless times. I watch his skull being sawed open over and over again. I'm trapped behind thick synthoglass, high above the sterile white surgical room. I stand idle and motionless as they carve out his brain, which has turned black and rotten, and replace it with a sleek and shimmering artificial substitute.

In the last dream, I finally fight back. I bang against the glass but no one even bothers to look up. They work tirelessly, replacing the top of his skull, sealing his skin around the incision with flesh-colored nanopatches.

I yell and cry and bang harder.

“They can't hear you,” a voice says behind me. I whip around and he is there. The boy from my memories. The one I've tried so hard to forget. His dark eyes are cold and untrusting.

“Zen.” I murmur his name softly. So no one else can hear.

“They'll never be able to hear you.”

I wake up screaming.

A body is there to calm me. Lips whispering soothing words into my ear. A hand brushing back my damp hair. The only time I sweat is when I'm trapped in a nightmare.

I blink against the darkness and the lingering images in my mind.

“Shhh, it was just a dream.” Crest sits on the edge of my bed, continuing to stroke my hair.

Her presence calms me. It always does.

It's not part of her job—chasing away nightmares. But she knows I have trouble sleeping. And her room is, unfortunately for her, next to mine, so she can hear the screams.

My ragged breathing gradually begins to subside. I turn my head to see the empty space next to me. Kaelen left a while ago. Not long after we entered my room, he kissed me like he wanted more, but I told him I couldn't give him more. Not tonight. I told him I was anxious about our departure this morning and needed to be alone. He tried to hide his disappointment but I read it on his slightly downturned lips, in the subtle wilt of his shoulders as he left.

“There you go, my sweet pearl,” Crest encourages. “It's okay. Just a dream.”

I sink down under the covers as she opens the top drawer of my nightstand. She riffles around until she finds the injector she keeps there. “Just one dose,” she tells me as she clicks a vial of pale blue liquid into place. “To help you fall back asleep. You need your beauty rest.”

I smile at her joke. I would look the same no matter how much sleep I got. But Crest likes to say it's why she comes in here. Why she cares so much about whether or not I'm sleeping. I secretly think she likes taking care of me. I think this semiregular nightly routine is one of the ways she combats her loneliness.

She places the tip of the injector against my arm. I feel a slight pinch of pressure as the Releaser enters my system. The drug usually works fast and I pray that tonight will be no exception.

Crest pulls the blanket up to my chin. “Have I told you about Jin's eyelashes?”

I shake my head.

It's a lie and we both know it. She's told me about every part of his body so many times even
I've
lost count. But it makes her happy to talk about him so I let her. Tonight, apparently it's his eyelashes that are monopolizing her thoughts. Two nights ago, it was his wrists.

“They are the most thermal shade of dark green,” she begins dreamily. Her gaze drifts to that place on the wall just above my bed. Always the same spot. As though his capture is playing on a constant loop on the wall screen behind me. “Don't ever let him look at you from beneath them. If you do? Flux, it's all over. I've broken promises because of those lashes. They can turn a good girl bad in three seconds flat.”

I giggle as my eyes start to close.

Crest bends down and kisses my forehead. “Don't let those nightmares frighten you, pearl. You're stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

The sleep is coming on fast. I hear the drawer of my nightstand opening and closing as Crest replaces the injector. She stands up and walks quietly toward the door.

“And if you ever realized how strong you really are,” she whispers to the darkness, “we'd all be in trouble.”

 

12

UNEARTHED

The Releaser wears off in a few hours, like it always does. My system is too strong for the injector's maximum dose. When I wake the next morning, the sun hasn't yet risen. The clock on my wall screen reads 5:07 a.m.

The night shield on my windows is active and I give the command for transparency so I can see outside. The real one. Not the simulated plantation backyard that Dr. A programmed as a default.

The dark façade lifts and I see the back of the Transportation Sector hangars, where they make prototypes for the next generation of hovers and repair all the carts that roam the compound. I admit it's not the nicest of views. It's no wonder Dr. A chose the digital veneer that he did. But the sight of it grounds me.

So many aspects of our lives are artificial. Holograms are projected onto our screens. Fictional stories are streamed onto the Feed. Our DigiLenses transform the world around us with virtual programs and apps. Every once in a while, it's nice to get fleeting glimpses of the real world.

From here, I can barely see the edge of the vast field that separates the rest of the compound from what used to be the Restricted Sector and I'm instantly reminded of my run with Kaelen last night.

Something happened in that field, I know it.

Something they don't want me to remember.

I climb out of bed and quietly dress, careful not to wake the rest of the house.

I hurry down the tree-lined path. My speed is somewhere between human and ExGen. Not quite a blur, but definitely a pace that would draw attention. Good thing no one is around to notice.

It isn't until I'm halfway through the curved, polished buildings of the Aerospace Sector that I realize where I'm going. It's almost as though I didn't even have a choice in the matter. As though some invisible force was pulling me back here all along.

The small white cottage looks exactly the same as when I left it yesterday evening.

How can I feel so different when nothing has changed? When the grass is still overgrown? When the gate is still unlocked? When this sector that used to be restricted—that once held a foolish, disobedient girl—is still abandoned?

Soon the sun will rise. The compound will wake up. The hovercopters will arrive to take us from the compound. Tomorrow Kaelen and I will be introduced to the world for the first time. We will be on display, like merchandise. We will show the people what they want.

“As soon as they see you and everything that you can do,” Dr. A once said to me, “they'll be lining up at the doors to pay for whatever it is you have. They'll be begging to be more like you.
That's
how you save a species.”