Unforgotten (16 page)

He comes close enough to study the tag fastened to my sweater. Then he grabs the two ends, one in either hand, and pulls down, bending the metal easily. I watch the tag pop off. He repeats the process with the pants before hastily retreating, as though I’m a deadly snake with bared fangs.

“We will go now.” He reaches for my locket again.

“Nuh-uh,” I say, shaking my head adamantly. “I told you, I’m not transessing anywhere with you.”

I can tell by the look on his face that this puts some kind of damper on his plans but I really don’t care. I don’t trust him at all.

He thinks for a moment, glancing again at his watch. Then he finally pivots abruptly on his heels and opens the front door of the apartment. “We’ll have to hurry.”

I crane my neck to steal a peek at the long white-and-gray corridor. It’s a new world on the other side of that door. A foreign world. I have no idea where we’re going. I have no idea if I’ll ever be back. I look longingly toward the barren room where Zen now lies, his life slipping away like the last minutes of precious daylight.

For him,
I tell myself.
I’m doing this for him
.

I brace myself for whatever lies outside these walls. For whatever tricks Diotech might have planned. For the wretched sensation I will undoubtedly feel when I leave Zen behind. And then I take a deep breath and step into 2032.

23

IDENTIFIED

Kaelen holds the door open, gesturing for me to walk through. I edge past him, my back pressed tightly against the jamb in an attempt to keep as much distance between us as I can.

As we walk down the corridor, I stay a full five paces behind him. Kaelen stops when we reach an elevator at the end, studying it curiously, as though he’s not quite sure what to do with it.

I laugh and press the Down button. “First time out of the compound?”

His head jerks in a succinct staccato motion, like gears snapping into place. “I’ve received extensive training in twenty-first-century civilization and society,” he replies, sounding, to my delight, just a tad defensive.

“What kind of training?”

He presses a finger to a spot behind his left ear, as though he has an itch there. “Virtual-simulation downloads.”

“Clearly they forgot to include a few things,” I say with a smirk. “Like how you’re not supposed to barge in on girls when they’re in the shower.”

The elevator dings as the doors open and I think I see Kaelen jump, although he composes himself so quickly, I can’t be sure.

“So they don’t have elevators on the compound?” I prod.

But he responds gruffly, “They work differently.”

We both eye the confined space, and I cringe, stepping in and quickly moving to the far corner while he does the same at the other side.

Seeming to have caught on to the mechanical functions of an elevator, he presses the button labeled “Lobby.” The gears hum to life, moving us swiftly downward, and I watch Kaelen carefully. His reaction reminds me of mine during my first ride in an elevator, at the mall that Heather took me to. A little bit of fascination mixed with a lot of fear. The only difference is, he does a much better job of hiding his reaction than I did.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him, a small, triumphant smile dancing on my lips. “It won’t hurt you.”

The doors open to a spacious, elegant lobby. We walk through it, toward the street. Kaelen opens the heavy, glass door. A gust of frigid wind whips across my face, blowing my hair back. It’s by far the coldest air I’ve ever felt. But fortunately, we seem to have been built for any kind of weather. The chill doesn’t appear to bother either of us. One of our many advantages, I suppose.

Kaelen walks briskly down the street and I struggle to follow him through the throngs of people.

I can feel a hundred pairs of eyes on us. Like a heavy wall closing in from all sides. Some people actually stop walking and turn to stare. The women gawk silently at Kaelen, while the men seem more interested in me, some of them actually letting out low whistles as I walk by. Kaelen is completely oblivious, but my face flushes with heat and I drop my head, attempting to avoid eye contact.

I suppose I no longer have to worry about drawing attention to myself, now that Diotech has found me, but I still don’t like the feeling of people watching me. It makes me uneasy. Quickens my breath.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I pick up my pace so that I’m walking alongside him.

“To the corner of Canal Street and Elizabeth Street. And we’re running out of time.”

He moves fast, faster than he should in front of all these people. And when he dodges people so effortlessly, so swiftly, his body nearly blurs. Passersby are starting to give him astonished, frightened looks.

“Stop!” I finally shout. He draws to a halt and turns to look at me. “You can’t run like that,” I whisper, barely audible, but I know he can hear me.

“Why?”

“Because it’s not …
natural.
You’ll cause a commotion. You have to act like everyone else. You have to act
human
.”

“I am human,” he says, but it’s not a whisper. He speaks in his regular voice. And about ten people stop and spin to look at him.

I grit my teeth and grab him by the arm, pulling him into a small alley. But I’m taken aback by a startling electricity that suddenly zaps through me. It originates in the five fingers that are wrapped around his impressive biceps and spreads swiftly through my chest, giving my entire body a shuddering jolt.

I hastily release his arm and study my still-tingling fingertips.

I don’t think I should
ever
do that again.

But unfortunately, just letting go doesn’t completely alleviate the sensation as we are now crammed together in this small space, which I immediately realize was a mistake. His proximity is overpowering. I feel a strange energy pulsing around me, emitting waves of something I can’t understand. Can’t fight. Don’t want to.

Suddenly I forget everything I was about to say. I’m breathing so heavily. Feeling so drawn to him. I close my eyes tight and attempt to push it away but just when I think I’ve succeeded, I open them again and he’s there. And his brilliant shimmering eyes are setting me on fire and putting me out and setting me on fire again.

Stop that!

But I don’t know who I’m sending this silent command to. Is it me? I’m certainly not the one doing it.

Is it him?

That’s doubtful. He looks just as put off by our closeness as I am.

“What do you want?” he nearly growls at me. It’s probably the most emotion I’ve heard from him since we met.

“I…” I search for what I was going to say. Why I pulled him in here to begin with. “You have to
try
to blend in.” I finally remember. “You’re not like anyone else out there. Neither of us is.”

“I know that,” he says.

“But
they
don’t,” I go on. “They don’t know anything about you or me. And unless you want us both to end up in a hospital while inquisitive doctors and specialists run tests on us, you have to be more careful. We can’t draw too much attention to ourselves.”

This seems to get through to him. He silently acquiesces and takes a step back. Then another. I feel the fire fade with each speck of distance that he puts between us.

“Now,” I say, taking control of the situation, “do you know which way it is?”

He nods sharply. “I’ve received a download of a map of the city. It’s about four miles south of here. And we have twenty minutes to get there.”

He starts to walk urgently again in the direction we’ve been heading.

“Wouldn’t it be faster to drive?” I say, gesturing to the vehicles whizzing by on the street.

He stops and seems to contemplate this before finally deciding, once again, that I’m right. Another small victory for me.

“Yes. We will take a taxicab,” he resolves. “They are the most common form of hired transportation in today’s society.”

I have to fight back a groan. He sounds like he’s reading from a dictionary. Did I
ever
sound that ridiculous?

Kaelen turns and walks directly into the street. There’s a loud
screech
as a blue van swerves around him, its horn honking. Kaelen leaps back onto the curb, looking frazzled.

I
almost
laugh. “You can’t just walk right into the street.”

“Then how do we get to one of the taxicabs?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. But I do know you should wait for one of them to
stop
first.”

Kaelen looks deep in thought, probably accessing one of his many brain downloads. In the meantime, I glance around and notice a woman on the other side of the street raising her hand in the air. A yellow car with
TAXI
written on the side slows and pulls up to the curb.

I decide it’s worth a try. I step to the edge of the sidewalk and imitate her movements, lifting my hand above my head and waving as the next cluster of cars comes barreling down the street.

It works.

A yellow taxi maneuvers away from the rest of the vehicles and slows in front of me. The door opens automatically and I gesture grandly. “I guess that’s how you do it.”

Kaelen, looking as embarrassed as his statuesque face will allow, avoids eye contact and ducks into the backseat, scooting to the other side. I get in after him, staying as close to the window as I can. The door closes on its own.

“Where would you like to go?” A friendly female voice emanates from somewhere above our heads. I glance up, searching for the source.

It’s only then that I realize the front seat—where the driver should be—is completely empty. In fact, there’s not even a seat. Or a steering wheel. There’s just a divider, separating us from a complex instrument panel, and a floor.

Bewildered, I turn to Kaelen. “Who’s driving the car?”

Now it’s
his
turn to look smug. And he does it all too well. Heat flares in my chest.

“Taxicabs have been self-operating since 2027,” he states knowledgeably. “It was determined to be safer for the general public. And by 2050, all cars will be self-operating, reducing the number of vehicle-related deaths per year to under ten worldwide.”

“Probably just the ten idiots who walk into the middle of the street,” I mumble under my breath.

“Where would you like to go?” repeats the friendly female voice, which I now realize is not real, but rather a computer.

“The intersection of Canal Street and Elizabeth Street,” Kaelen responds.

“That intersection is located in Chinatown,” the car replies. “Is that correct?”

Chinatown?

I look to Kaelen, who responds impassively to the car. “Yes, that is correct.” Ironically, the car sounds more human than he does.

“Please validate your identity so that I may deduct my fare.”

I watch Kaelen as he leans back and slips his hand into his pocket, drawing out two peculiar transparent cards. They appear to be made out of paper-thin glass. He locates a small plate with a blinking blue light attached to the divider in front of us and holds both cards up to it, eliciting a faint
ding
.

“What are those?” I ask as he places them back in his pocket.

“People in this time period refer to them as DIP cards,” he explains. “Digital-identification Pass. In the year 2025, the United States government issued a law that all legal citizens must be in possession of a valid card. It is imprinted with information pertaining to the cardholder’s identification, medical records, citizenship status, and other relevant data. It also links directly to the cardholder’s monetary funds. I’ve just used ours to pay for this taxicab fare.”

“But we don’t live here,” I point out. “How did you get them?”

“Diotech manufactured two counterfeit cards for me to use while on assignment.”

He points toward a flat screen embedded in the divider. It flickers to life, displaying a still image of my face alongside Kaelen’s.

Underneath are two names I’ve never seen before.

And below that a single word flashes in green:
Clear
.

“As far as the scanners are concerned,” he replies. “We
do
live here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brown and Ms. Connor,” the voice says, and I feel the vehicle pull away from the curb, gliding smoothly down the street. “Your account has been debited. Would you like to watch TV during your journey?”

Our faces vanish from the screen and a live news report takes their place. I catch sight of the headline scrolling under a grim-looking reporter’s face:
Two hundred more lives claimed by white fever. CDC hopeful for a vaccine soon.

“No,” Kaelen replies to the nonexistent driver, and the screen turns off, fading to black.

“What is Chinatown?” I ask him.

“It’s an enclave of the city where several people of Chinese ancestry live and work.”

Is that what I saw in my memory? Was I in Chinatown?

I think back to the crowd of people. The beast floating in the sky. The deserted street. The man standing in front of the blue door at the bottom of the stairwell. Apart from having seen it all in my head, none of it feels even remotely familiar. When I remember it, it’s like looking into someone else’s mind.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Are these memories real? Have I actually
experienced
them before?”

“No,” Kaelen confirms. “For you, they are artificial memories. But we believe they are based on real events and real people. That is how you will know that you are in the right place at the right time. When we step into Chinatown, everything should look exactly the same as it does in your mind. Except this time it will be real. You will essentially be inserting yourself into the memory.”

The car stops at a red light.

“And what happens after that? After we get there?”

He glances over at me. “That’s up to you.”

“Me?”

“Something will most likely trigger another memory. You have to alert me when that happens. It will direct us to the subsequent location. We believe that each memory has been specifically set to activate the next until ultimately delivering you to the final destination.”