Unforgotten (17 page)

“Which you won’t tell me.”

“I cannot divulge that information.”

“Right.” I snort. “But I still don’t understand how you know where to go. I don’t remember seeing anything indicating specific street names. Or Chinatown. Or—”

“Chinatown was evident,” he interrupts, “from the context. The street corner was deduced from visual reference points that were included in the memory and cross-referenced with historical databases of city maps.”

“Okay,” I allow, “but how did you know what date to come to? How did you know this all took place in 2032?”

“I repeat,” he says stiffly, “it’s
in
the memory.”

I shake my head. “No, it isn’t. I…” But my voice trails off as I flash back to the strange foreign symbols that were written in the sky and on the fronts of all the stores.

Chinatown.

And suddenly it makes sense.

They aren’t symbols.

They’re Chinese characters. And I can read them.

I take another look at the memory. At the vertical writing in the sky. And everything becomes clear.

They are
numbers.

2

0

3

2

24

REALITY

My mouth falls open just as the friendly female voice comes floating back into the vehicle. “We are approximately two minutes away from your destination.”

“Why is there a year written in the sky?” I ask Kaelen accusingly, as though he were the one who put it there.

“Technically, it’s a digital projection,” he replies. “A part of the annual Chinese New Year.”

“What is the Chinese New Year?”

Kaelen opens his mouth to answer but it’s the car who speaks first; obviously my question triggered some kind of preprogrammed response.

“The Chinese New Year is a wonderful occasion,” she replies in her gracious voice. “Honoring the start of a new cycle in the Chinese lunar calendar. There is a large-scale celebration every year. The most popular event is the parade. It begins shortly. I’m sure you will have a lovely time.”

Celebration.

Parade.

“It happens on the same day every year?” I ask. “That’s how you knew to come here today?”

“Actually, no,” Kaelen admits. “The date varies each year as the Chinese calendar aligns with the Western calendar, but the date—February 11—was easy to calculate once the year was revealed to us.”

I sigh, grateful to finally understand.

But still, there’s a disturbing tug in my stomach. Something is not adding up.

“Wait a minute.” I think aloud, retracing everything that’s happened since I awoke. “You pulled me from that fire and brought me
here
.”

Kaelen gazes out his window but I watch the back of his head fall into a terse nod.

“Because you knew the first memory took place in the year 2032.”

Another nod.

“But that would mean,” I deduce, slowly putting the pieces together in my mind, “you must have
seen
the memory before we got here. Otherwise you wouldn’t know where to go.”

His posture stiffens, a subtle alert that I’ve discovered something he didn’t want me to discover. He doesn’t turn around.

“When did you first see this memory?” I demand of him. “When did you first look inside my head?”

But he doesn’t answer. And suddenly I feel the car pulling to a stop and this time the door on Kaelen’s side swings open.

“We have arrived at the intersection of Canal and Elizabeth Streets,” the cab announces. “Please watch your step and have a wonderful day.”

Kaelen hurriedly gets out of the cab and I scoot across the seat to follow after him.

“Kaelen—” I say, but I’m cut off the moment I step outside and we’re sucked into a massive crowd of people.

I’m crushed from all four sides as the wall of bodies tightens around us. Tugged this way and that as though we’re trapped inside a wave. Then the noise starts.

The giant booming.

But it’s no longer safely contained in my mind, now it’s real. And infinitely louder.

It echoes in my teeth.

It vibrates my bones.

“What is that?” I call out, attempting to cover my ears. No one else seems to be bothered by it.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Kaelen cringes with each strike, clearly having the same problem that I’m having.

“Drums!” he calls back over the noise.

Drums?

I rack my mind for a definition but come up short. Regardless of what they’re called, they’re deafening.

And they’re only getting louder. Closer. Faster.

BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!

The people around me start to titter and point toward the sky. I look up and see it. The digital projection, as Kaelen called it. The Chinese characters. The year:

2032.

The crowd erupts in applause. I keep my gaze skyward as tiny flecks of color start to rain down. Exactly as it was in the memory.

I catch a yellow one in my hand and study it, noticing that it’s completely harmless—made out of paper.

“Confetti,” Kaelen shouts over the noise, clearly reading my confusion.

The drums get louder still and the people start to chant and yell and cheer. And that’s when I see it.

The black-and-gold-eyed beast.

Rising in the distance. Floating majestically into the air. Flying toward us.

I feel the scream bubble up inside me, the fear telling me to run. But when I glance around I’m surprised by everyone else’s reactions. Their faces don’t show fear or trepidation. They show only delight.

Even the children.

I look to Kaelen for another explanation, grateful when he has one. “It’s a dragon,” he says over the roar. “It’s made of paper and plastic.”

Then a smirk flashes over his face. “Don’t worry,” he says, echoing my exact words from the elevator, “it won’t hurt you.”

Irritation flickers through me and I shoot him a look. But Kaelen doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy pushing his way through the mass of people and gesturing for me to follow.

“This way!” he calls.

When we finally break through the last of the bystanders, I see that we’ve reached the opening of a quiet street. With seemingly everyone in the city at the celebration, the street is deserted.

Just like in my memory.

I feel a chill of familiarity as we make our way down the sidewalk. I take in each storefront, mentally ticking them off as I compare them to the versions in my mind.

And suddenly I know exactly what I need to do.

Where I need to go.

The same strange pull I felt when I was remembering this place pulls me now. But once again, because the sensation is no longer filtered through my mind—because it’s
real
and happening
to
me—it’s so much stronger.

Kaelen falls in step behind me as I stride purposefully down the street, searching for the narrow metal staircase with the blue door at the bottom.

I find it half a block away, and just as I suspected, when I peer over the railing, down into the stairwell, I see the old man standing there. Waiting.

His wispy white beard is exactly as I remembered it.

His thin, slanted eyes are exactly the same.

When our eyes meet, as I knew they would, he opens his mouth and in a soft, gentle voice, lilting in his thick Chinese accent, he says, “I help you…”

And I whisper, “Yes.”

25

HELP

The old man leads us silently through the blue door and into a tiny cramped room that smells like trees mixed with oranges mixed with Mrs. Pattinson’s pigeon pie.

A gentle chime drifts through the space, repeating and reverberating in several pitches. It immediately puts me at ease.

To our right, secured to the wall, are rows and rows of shelves, each one housing hundreds of glass bottles with Chinese markings on the sides. I tilt my head to read one, translating it awkwardly as
White Wood Ear
.

The wall to our left is covered in various drawings and charts and diagrams that don’t make any sense to me.

It soon becomes apparent that
I help you
is probably the only English the old Chinese man knows because once we’re inside, he leads us to a table with four chairs, mumbling, “Please sit down,” in a dialect I can’t identify, but understand nonetheless.

Kaelen and I lower ourselves into the chairs and the old man sits across from us. He gestures ambiguously to me. “I help you?”

Kaelen immediately takes control of the situation, leaning forward in his chair and addressing the man in his native tongue. “Do you recognize this girl?” he asks.

The old man shakes his head and then adds, “Pretty.”

I look to Kaelen as if to say,
What now?

Because the truth is, I have no idea what to do now. The memory ended with me walking down those steps. Kaelen said I would know the trigger when I saw it. That it would immediately activate the next memory, but so far I have felt or seen nothing unusual.

“I help you,” the man repeats in English.

Confused, I look to Kaelen, who shrugs and nods.

“Yes,” I say in the man’s language. “You help me. Please.”

He extends his arms and reaches across the table to me. I glance down warily at his hands. They’re chapped and wrinkled. He wiggles his fingers at me, as though he expects me to touch them.

I look to Kaelen again and he signals for me to do it.

My heart is starting to beat faster, my stomach is starting to churn. But eventually I obey, slowly pushing my own hands forward, my fingers hovering inches above his.

He reaches up and grabs both wrists, one in either hand, causing me to jump. Then he flips my hands over, revealing my black mark. I’m terrified that he’s going to say something about it, ask me what it is, but he doesn’t. He just places his fingers firmly against my veins and closes his eyes.

He seems to fall into a deep sleep. As though he’s been deactivated. I glance over at Kaelen, whose gaze is firmly locked on the old man’s hands.

The man starts to hum softly to himself.

“Your blood,” he says. “It is strong.”

I stay silent, letting him continue.

“Very strong,” he says. “Like warrior.”

He goes quiet again, his face twisting in concentration. The wrinkles around his eyes and forehead deepen. Stretch. A tremor seems to pass through him, beginning at his hands and working its way down, through his torso. His body is trembling and I’m not sure what to do. Is he dying?

And then, abruptly, his eyes snap open. They are wide. Full of fear.

“No,” he starts to mumble. “No. It isn’t right. It isn’t right.”

He drops my hands against the table with a thud and backs away. His chair scrapes loudly against the wood floor as he scrambles to push it farther and farther back, until he hits the wall of the confined space and is forced to stop.

All the while, he never takes his eyes off me. “It shouldn’t be,” he says in a petrified voice. “You shouldn’t be.”

I have no idea what’s going on or what he’s talking about. But he’s completely terrifying me. I want to get out of here. I don’t want to stay in this room with this crazy man any longer.

I push my chair back as well and start to rise to my feet, but just like that early morning on the Pattinsons’ farm, something forces me back down. Shoving at my shoulders. Dragging me toward the ground.

I collapse into my seat as a bolt of hot searing pain rips into my skull. Tearing at my brain. Shooting out of my eyes. I moan in agony, thrusting my body forward, sinking my head between my knees. I cradle it in my hands, squeezing my temples, trying to push out the throbbing. It’s unbearable. My head is going to explode.

“Sera.” I hear Kaelen’s voice but it feels like it’s coming from centuries away. “Sera, what’s happening?”

Another spear slices from ear to ear, penetrating everything in between. I let out a cry of anguish. It’s like something is inside my brain, desperate to get out. Pushing. Shoving. Cutting.

What is happening to me?

The room spins. I shut my eyes tight but I’m still rotating.

I hear the old Chinese man mumbling something incoherent. It sounds like a prayer.

The woman’s voice is back. Echoing and ghostly in my mind.

“Find me.”

Then a fiery flash blazes behind my eyelids, robbing my entire world of color. Of shape. Of meaning. Mercifully, my body turns off. Shuts down.

And I fall, fall, fall.

Into the infinite white.

26

TRIGGERED

An artificial light shines from above, illuminating the confined space I’m standing in. It’s rectangular with a low ceiling. Like a large box. Walls made of steel. It’s full of people and strange smells. A darkened world blurs by outside a smudged window.

We are moving.

The ground rumbles beneath my feet.

I’m suddenly lurched violently to the side as the vehicle jerks left. I grab on to a smooth metal pole that protrudes from the floor. It keeps me from falling.

I glance around, confused by my surroundings.

Where am I?

What is this place?

Brightly colored moving pictures project onto flat screens embedded in the wall. One in particular catches my attention. A beautiful woman stares out from behind the paper-thin glass. She has creamy white skin, iridescent pink lips, shimmering bright blue eyes. She looks right at me and smiles coyly, ready to tell me a secret.

From somewhere overhead, a friendly male voice speaks: “This is a Bronx-bound 6 train. The next stop is Fifty-Ninth Street.”

Train.

I’m on a train.

But why?

Where am I going?

What is “Bronx”?

Someone taps me on the back and I jump. I turn around to see a man covered in grime and dirt and wrinkles. He holds a piece of cardboard in his hand. The word
hungry
is scribbled in shaky black handwriting.

He holds out his hand, uncurls his fingers. He wants something. Food, I presume. But I have nothing to give him.