Unforgotten (30 page)

I let out a small gasp and cover my mouth.

“What?” Kaelen asks, his eyes scouring the digits.

“The password. On Cody’s computer. It’s the same sequence. I watched him input it earlier today. And in the memory…”

“He was inputting an unseen password into a computer,” Kaelen finishes the thought as we arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously.

“That was supposed to be the trigger,” I deduce, feeling more confident than ever. “The password. It’s why I felt drawn to it in the memory. The sequence is telling me where and when to go next.”

Kaelen and I both stare at it, our eyes focused, our lips pressed together. Concentrating. Searching for an indication of time and place.

I circle the 32. “This has to be the year.”

“You don’t know that,” Kaelen disagrees. “Any of those numbers could indicate a year.”

I shake my head. “Why suddenly send me to a whole different year? She wanted me here. Every clue has been in
this
year.”

“Maybe because
he’s
here,” Kaelen suggests, glancing back at Cody, who still hasn’t moved.

But I refute him again. “He’s in a lot of years. There’s a reason she sent me to 2032. I just don’t know what it is.”

“Okay,” Kaelen concedes. “What about the other numbers?”

I study the sequence. “If 32 is the year,” I say, pointing to it, “then it’s only logical the two numbers before it are also part of the date.”

“7 12 32,” Kaelen reads aloud.

“July 12, 2032.” Excitement is boiling up inside me. And even though I know we have different motivations—even though I know once he acquires what he’s been sent for he won’t hesitate to rip me away from Zen—I feel a kind of bond forming between us. The connection of a shared goal. A common ground.

I glance at Kaelen out of the corner of my eye and for a split second our gazes connect. That energy exchange starts. That pull. He flashes me the smallest of smiles.

But the expression itself isn’t what surprises me. It’s the emotion behind it.

It feels genuine.

Real.

Not programmed.

I blink and focus back on the countertop.

“If that’s the date,” Kaelen speculates, “then the next two figures must be the time.”

With a flick of his fingers, he pulls the 21 and the 15 out of the sequence and places them above the original string.

21:15.

“9:15 in the evening.”

We both study the last two numbers: 77 and 78.

“When I was with Maxxer I received a message from Alixter,” I point out. “It was a pair of two-digit numbers, like this.”

“GPS coordinates?” Kaelen suggests.

I nod. “That’s what I’m thinking. She knows I would recognize them because I followed them once before. And if that’s the case, then she’s telling me to go to this location”—I point to the last two numbers—“on this date”—I indicate the first two numbers—“at this exact time.” I point to the middle sequence.

Kaelen is one step ahead of me, tapping an icon at the bottom of the counter. A huge map of New York spreads across the glass, taking up every inch of the surface.

He drags the coordinates into a search box above the map.

Immediately the map morphs and we’re flying over terrain, heading east, through the streets of New York City, off the edge of a bridge, and into the sea. We travel over miles and miles of ocean, veering up. We cross more land. I catch sight of labels on the map.

Ireland.

Norway.

Sweden.

Russia.

The terrain has turned snowy white. And still we travel upward. Into a swatch of crystal-blue water teeming with massive chunks of ice. The map identifies it as the Kara Sea.

And then suddenly it stops. A small, blinking orange dot indicates that we’ve arrived at the location of the coordinates.

Near the top of the world.

In the middle of nowhere.

“Where is that?” I ask, tilting my head to try to find a landmass nearby. An island. Even, perhaps, something floating in the water. But there doesn’t seem to be anything around for miles.

Of course,
I think. Where would you go if you never wanted to be found? What location would ensure that anyone who tried to transesse there without an exact date and time would die?

“She’s on the water?” Kaelen says, squinting at the map.

I shake my head, remembering the lesson I learned the last time I followed GPS coordinates: they’re two dimensional. They only track left and right. Not up and down.

“No,” I say with certainty, tapping the blinking orange dot. “She’s
under
it.”

48

UNSHAKEN

The lamps have all been turned off in the guest room. The only light emanates from Cody’s computer and the various monitors surrounding Zen’s bed. I’ve asked for five minutes alone and, surprisingly, Kaelen has granted it.

He and Cody wait in the living room. When I left, Cody had gone back to playing a game—a different one this time. Clearly something more modern because for the past five minutes, life-size three-dimensional street fighters have been battling each other in the middle of the living room. They look so real, I don’t know how you can tell the difference between the game and reality.

Maybe you can’t.

Maybe
this
is all a game.

A game about a sixteen-year-old girl with golden-brown hair and purple eyes who can lift heavy objects, run like the wind, speak every language, mentally calculate like a computer. Who is beautiful and strong. Who was created by science to be perfect but whose life is far from it.

In this level, she is forced to find a cure to save the boy she loves while being tormented by the company who made her. If she is to survive and move on, she must find the missing scientist, the only one who knows how to save her soul mate, all the while trying to fight the strange, inexplicable, and completely unfounded attraction she feels for the agent who was sent to apprehend her.

And then, when it’s over, regardless of whether I succeed or fail, I’ll simply switch off the console and go back to my real life. Whatever that may be.

If only …

I close the door quietly behind me. I can still hear the sounds of death and avatars falling in the next room from Cody’s game. I try to block it out. To focus everything I have left on the boy in front of me.

The one who found me brainwashed and helpless on the other side of that concrete wall. The one who convinced me that everything I knew, everything I
ever
knew, was a lie. The one who risked everything to take me away from it all.

The one who saved me.

And now it’s my turn to save him.

I pull a chair up to the side of the bed and sit down. Zen’s eyes are closed. His chest rises and falls in an uneven rhythm.

“Zen,” I begin. But it quickly occurs to me that I don’t know what to say. I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. With Kaelen. I’ll be going to find Maxxer. Going to find the cure.

But I don’t really want to explain all that to him. For one, I’m not sure he can even hear me. But mostly because, if I somehow can’t return, I don’t want that to be the last thing I ever said to him.

The truth of the matter is, I can’t be sure that I’ll ever come back here.

Although he’s never said it outright, I’m confident that Kaelen’s mission wasn’t just to get the cure from Maxxer and then leave me to go on my way and live out my life with Zen. He has his own motives. His own plan outside the one we’ve created together.

And I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to outsmart him. Outmaneuver him.

“I’m like you … Only better
.”

So what do I say to Zen now? How can I possibly describe what I’m feeling?

I’m scared
isn’t enough.

I’m sorry
isn’t enough.

Even
I love you
doesn’t seem like enough.

And
goodbye
will only make me lose my nerve to go.

My time alone with him is running out and I fear that I may have to leave him with only silence.

But somehow, from somewhere inside me, the answer comes. I know what I have to say. The
only
thing I can say.

Although they are borrowed words and stolen letters, the meaning—the soul—belongs to me.

I press my lips together to keep myself from shuddering as I slowly reach out and press two fingers to the center of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. My throat is constricting. Tears are burning my eyes. But I manage to recite the entire poem—
our
poem—in a clear, unbroken voice.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

I hear the creak of a footstep on the other side of the door. Kaelen coming to tell me that my time is up. I expect the door to open but, surprisingly, it remains closed, allowing me a few more private seconds with Zen.

I bend down close to his ear and whisper, “I am not shaken.”

Then I place my lips to his, feeling the fire of his fever burning me. Feeling the lingering threads of his life reach out to me. Entangle me. Weave together with mine. Creating something that can never be duplicated.

I invite it in, finding solace in the heat. The energy. Letting it spread through me. I commit it to memory. Not knowing how long his lips will stay warm. Not knowing how far away I will be if they cool forever.

Miles?

Months?

Years?

Decades?

Regardless of what happens next, this is what I want to take with me. This is what I want to remember. And even if they win, even if I never return, even if they bring me back and destroy my identity and wipe my mind completely clean, this is what I will always have.

This is what will remain unforgotten.

49

MEANING

I step out into the hallway and close the door behind me. When I reach the living room, Cody looks up from his game. “How is he?”

I shrug. “The same.”

He pauses the game. “I’ll go check on his fluids and get a download of his vitals.”

Cody passes me on the way to the guest room. I stop him right as he’s about to disappear behind the door. “Cody?”

Cody looks at me. “Yeah?”

“If I don’t come back,” I say, my gaze flickering momentarily to Kaelen. “If something happens,” I amend, “take care of him. However you can.”

Cody holds my gaze for a moment, offering me silent agreement, before slipping behind the door.
“Good luck”
is the last thing he says to me.

“What did you tell him?” Kaelen asks, and I see his expression shift from his usual blank, detached look to one of curiosity and intrigue.

I turn back. “Who? Cody?”

“No,” Kaelen corrects. “Zen. I heard words. I understood each one. But together they are nonsensical.”

The poem. He’s talking about the Shakespeare sonnet.

“You heard me?” I think of the creak I heard outside the door and my voice turns accusing. “Were you listening?”

He raises a single eyebrow and I feel stupid. Of course he heard me. I was only one room away and his hearing is as good as mine. If not better.

“It was a poem,” I admit begrudgingly. I hate that I have to share my last private moment with Zen with Kaelen. That he intruded in it without invitation.

“What’s a poem?” he asks.

“It’s…” I struggle to describe it, wondering what words Zen once used to explain it to me. Because just like Kaelen, in the beginning, I didn’t know what a poem was either. And at one point, it was probably nonsensical to me, too. “It’s like a story,” I try, “but more beautiful. And cryptic. Almost like it’s written in code. You have to really feel the words to understand the meaning.”

“What
is
the meaning?” he asks.

I bite my lip and look to the floor. “That specific poem is about love. The kind that never goes away.”

“Is that what you feel for Zen?” The bluntness of his question catches me by surprise. But I suppose it’s simply a testament to his nature. His programming. The way he was made. If there’s one thing Alixter hated about me it was the fact that I fell in love. And that means it’s pretty safe to say that Kaelen was created without that ability. Alixter would have made sure not to make the same mistake twice.

So I guess I can’t really expect him to understand anything I say about Zen. But I answer regardless. “Yes.”

“What does it feel like?”

I stop and think. I’ve never actually had to describe it before. I’m not even sure I can. And even if I could, I know for a fact it wouldn’t have any impact on Kaelen. He’s clearly so intricately conditioned, whatever I say is going to sound like gibberish to him.

But I decide to make an attempt anyway. For Zen.

“It feels like…” I begin hesitantly, “… falling from the sky.”

As I suspected, confusion registers on Kaelen’s face.

“Thrilling and terrifying at the same time,” I add.

Kaelen ponders for a while. “Falling from the sky equals death.”

I bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Only if there’s a ground underneath you,” I counter.

“There is.”

I shrug. “But what if there wasn’t? What if you simply fell forever? Never knowing if there was a ground beneath you or not.”

“It’s not possible,” Kaelen rationalizes. “Unless you were falling in a vacuum.”