False Memory (19 page)

From Rhys’s armory, which is really just a closet, I choose a straight sword and extra magazines for the G36C assault rifle. Noah takes his assault rifle too, along with a collection of black throwing knives he wears across his chest in a bandolier. Rhys sticks with his revolver/sword combo. Rhys hands me a tiny radio for my ear.

Olive stares into the armory. I hold my sword out to her, hilt first.

“Do you want to try this?”

She looks at the sword, then up at me. She shrugs. “What am I good with?”

I smile. “I think you were good at a little bit of everything.”

She reaches into the closet and pulls out a metal staff. Holds it in both hands, testing its weight. Gives it a quick twirl.

“I think I’ll take this,” she says.

“It’s worked out for you so far.” I rap my knuckles against her back. “Stick it here.”

She slides the staff on to her magnet, then pulls out two handguns and a belt holster. I start to back away. It feels like a private moment. She’s rediscovering the weapons she trained with her whole life. She holds a Colt up to the light, racks the slide back, and peers inside the chamber.

She lowers the gun. “Thank you. For helping.”

“I know what it’s like.”

After arming ourselves, we stretch on the living room floor. It’s hard to stop moving; it feels like the sun will never set. Rhys passes some food around for us to nibble on, and water. Noah turns the news on, but Rhys turns it off after a few minutes. The world thinks there was some kind of airborne chemical or biological attack. The city is quarantined, only military and the CDC allowed in until it’s deemed safe again. They show footage from helicopters of abandoned cars in the streets, of ragged people standing a hundred feet from a blockade lined with armed soldiers. People trapped in the city. I’m glad when Rhys yanks the cord out of the wall.

Soon the blue sky turns purple. Key Tower appears empty and dark, an office lit every few floors. Ambulances and yellow CDC trucks patrol the streets, flickers of red light moving between buildings. Our psychic energy has disappeared, but the core of the city remains empty.

The plan is less than ideal. Climb up the side of the tower, high enough to be invisible. Then break in and plant enough H9 to melt the place, rescue Peter, and make it out with the three parachutes we have. Which means two of us will have to go down the long way, or climb down, or something. There just isn’t enough time to find more. And we’re okay with that. We are Roses and we are set on a course, and we will follow it. For now, I wear a thin chute on my back, and so do Rhys and Olive.

Once it’s completely black outside, we leave the condo and walk the empty streets. Helicopters fly above, shining their spotlights on the ground, but we avoid them easily. They aren’t looking for us anyway, I don’t think. Down one street I spot men in white hazmat suits, testing the air with handheld instruments. We have to duck into an alley when a Humvee roars around the corner, the big diesel engine like a thousand falling hammers. The soldiers wear full-face gas masks and green plastic ponchos.

Soon we reach the base of the Tower. I tilt my head back and look to the top. Rhys aims skyward with his grapnel gun and fires—a sharp
ping!
The hook and line fly high into the night. I don’t hear it catch on the ledge, or see it, but Rhys gives a couple tugs.

“See?” he says. “Perfectly safe.” Without another word he plants his feet on the side of the building and climbs, hand over hand. I lose him in the gloom.

A few minutes go by, then my earpiece crackles. “All right, North, you’re up.”

I take a deep breath, then take the line in my hands. I’m not afraid of heights, but there’s a difference between leaping over rooftops you know you can clear, and climbing up the side of a skyscraper on a line secured to something you can’t see. I plant my right foot on the wall.

“Miranda,” Noah says.

“What?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. “Be careful.”

“Always.” Which seems a funny thing to say considering the last couple days. I focus on my hands, putting one over the other. My black-scaled feet grip the windows firmly. My forearms and fingers burn, but I ignore them. I don’t look down. A hand reaches out and grabs my wrist. I almost scream, but it’s just Rhys. I’m already at the first ledge. He swings me up and over the side. I plant my feet on solid ground, then move to the opposite edge, gazing over the dark city. It’s only a hundred feet up, maybe less.

My earpiece clicks. “Olive, you’re next,” Rhys says.

Truly no going back now, not that I would. Still, the climb has left my nerves frayed. So much depends on each of us; there’s no room for error. While Noah and Olive climb, I decide to use the time wisely and sit, pulling my legs under me to meditate. It doesn’t work; my blood is too amped. Soon we’re all together on the ledge.

Rhys draws his sword and slashes at the nearest window. It shatters, creating a jagged hole big enough for us to slip through.

We enter the dark office, find the stairs, and begin the ascent.

Moving slowly, in shifts, listening for the smallest sounds, it takes nearly two hours to reach the fifty-seventh floor. Rhys and I watch for surveillance equipment the whole time, while Olive and Noah cover our rear.

The door to the fifty-seventh floor is locked with a keypad. Rhys slices off a thin piece of H9 and slaps it over the pad, then pushes one of the tiny bullet-shaped detonators into the semi-soft material. It burns through in a flash. The door sighs open and we’re inside the office.

Rhys points to the ceiling. “Above us is the first floor. This corner of the building was our bunks. It should be empty.”

“Should?” Noah says.

“Well, yes. I don’t have X-ray vision, do I?”

“I suppose not,” Noah says.

“
Guys
,” I say.

Rhys shakes his head and jumps on someone’s desk, kicking aside a pile of papers. He removes the ceiling panel, then takes a bigger slice of H9 from his satchel and sticks it into place. Hands still in the ceiling, he looks down at us. “You’ll want to move to the other side of the office.”

We do. He hurries after us. For a second I think it failed, but then sparks spit down from the ceiling, followed by chunks of molten steel that plop on the desk, which promptly bursts into flame. The headquarters of Project Rose is officially breached.

“Sorry,” Rhys says, as if the desk’s owner can hear. Noah grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall and sprays the desk with white foam.

We assemble under the hole and look up into darkness. The opening changes the acoustics of the office; I can
hear
the empty room above.

“Right then,” Rhys says, “who’s first?”

“Wait. This isn’t right,” Noah says.

Rhys throws up his hands. “Oh, good. Now he gets doubts. Maybe you could bring that up
before we’re in the building
next time.”

Noah says, “All I wanted to say was we should split up.”

Olive hooks her thumbs into her gun belt. “Um, why?” Noah faces her in the dim light. Behind him, out the window, I see the vast expanse of Lake Erie gleaming with moonlight. “Think about it. All four of us in tight corridors? We can’t be very effective. They could take us all at once. If we split up, plant charges on opposite sides, then meet somewhere, it’ll be better. Faster.”

“No. We stick together,” I say. While his point is valid, there’s too much risk, too many unknowns. I will not have one of us pinned down or captured, forcing the others to either look for that person or leave them behind. Either we all win, or we all die.

Olive nods. “What she said.”

“She’s right,” Rhys says. “Only I know my way around this place. You guys would get lost.”

Noah has no response. I take the lead by jumping up into the hole. I’m careful not to touch the still-glowing ring with my hands, instead using my foot to piston off the hole and into the room. Touching it for a second leaves the bottom of my foot roasting. The air feels baked.

The room is too dark to make out details, just the rough outline of the bunks. Then suddenly it’s not too dark, because red lights flash from every corner. A terrible alarm pushes on my ears.

They know we’re here.

Rhys jumps through next, pulling his sword and revolver while he’s still in the air. Then Noah, who lands in a crouch and unslings his rifle. We look ethereal in the strobing red lights.

“Noah, cover the door!” Rhys shouts as he pulls a brick of H9 from his satchel, still holding his gun. Noah aims his rifle at the door, and so do I.

From the corner of my eye I watch Rhys cut another slice off the brick, then stick it on the ceiling. Two soldiers burst through the doorway and crash to the floor as we open fire. 

I only shoot a quick burst to conserve ammo. The number of targets up here is unknown—there could be a dozen soldiers or more, plus the creators, plus Tobias and Nicole. Over the alarm I hear the hiss and sputter of melting metal as the H9 goes to work on the ceiling. A tiny grenade flips into the room from the open doorway, spiraling. I identify the flashbang for what it is—a grenade that disorients with sound and light instead of shrapnel. We’re lucky—it bounces once on the floor and disappears down the hole we made in the fifty-seventh floor ceiling. The white flash of light and the
bang
that follows don’t affect us. We affect the guard who comes in thinking we’re blind and deaf.

The new hole Rhys created is directly over the first one, so the molten metal dropped all the way down to the fifty-seventh floor rather than piling up on this. After a few seconds the hole above us stops glowing. Noah covers us as we jump straight up through the opening and roll clear—to fall back through would mean a two story drop onto a pile of half-cooled jagged metal. I pop up, leveling my rifle at the next threat.

There is none.

No flashing red lights in this room, no alarm except the muffled blare from beneath us. We’re in an operating room, complete with gurneys and banks of monitors and fluorescent lights. The relative quiet is almost startling. Red light from the hole paints the ceiling bloody.

Only one bed is occupied. I recognize the memory band right away, circled around her head like a thick blindfold. I recognize the auburn hair pinned tight to her ears. It’s me, another Miranda. 

Another clone.

I go to her, slinging my rifle on to my back. Noah stops

next to me, keeping an eye and gun on the door. I lift the band off her head slowly. Pull back the sheet to see she’s naked underneath.

“Miranda,” Noah says to me.

“They have my template,” I say. To my right, Rhys plants a whole brick on the wall. He sets a timer on it. The numbers flash red, then disappear, an invisible countdown. I look back at the other me.

Her eyes open.

She sits up, inhaling sharply. I step away and lift my rifle automatically.

She clutches her chest, which is bare because the sheet has fallen away. But she isn’t covering herself; it’s like she’s in pain. “I was shot. There was blood,” she says. She looks at me like I have two heads. Then she sees everyone else. “Noah?

Olive?” she says. “You left me.”

Noah looks at her, then at me. “Oh my God,” he says. 

“What do you remember?” Rhys says. He finds a balled-up gown on the next bed and unfurls it. He slides it over her head and forces her arms through.

She still clutches her chest. “I was shot. Noah, why did you leave me?” She doesn’t cry, but tears fill her eyes. Rhys helps her off the bed. Noah stares at her with his mouth open, remembering something I can’t. He left me. But how would she know that? Is this some kind of awful trick to distract us? 

“Noah!” I scream.

Two more soldiers burst into the room, helmeted, assault rifles out and blazing. A bullet ricochets off Noah’s suit. I fire and crumple the left one’s helmet while it’s still on his head.

Olive’s handguns crack a few times, lighting up on my right. Noah checks his suit. “Dammit, that. That really hurt.”

He’s staring at my clone again.

The other Miranda is off the bed, shivering, dressed in the flimsy gown. Olive takes her hand and pulls her to the rear. She tells Rhys, “I’ll watch her. Keep moving. We can’t stop now.”

The alarm shuts off. The lights stop flashing on the floor below.

Rhys nods and readies the next brick, keeping his revolver out. We leave the operating room behind, heavy one Rose. 

We move to the next room, and the next. Rhys doesn’t say how much time we have left. Some of the rooms resemble offices. Some are laboratories. Each one gets a brick of H9, not a sliver. All of their timers synced.

Rhys holds the final two bricks. He lifts one to me—
Want it?
I nod and he tosses it. I stuff it into the satchel strapped to my lower back, below my chute.

One thing is becoming very clear to me.

Peter is not here.

“We have a few minutes,” Rhys says, breathing heavy. My skin itches because it shouldn’t be this easy.

And it isn’t.

We round a corner, coming out of a hallway. Tobias and Nicole stand in front of the elevator. They have us cold. We freeze in the hallway entrance, not bothering to raise our weapons because we know they won’t give us the chance. Tobias and Nicole have their rifles pointed at us, center mass. In my peripheral vision, I see Noah back into the hallway slowly; since we stopped at the corner, the angle hid him from sight.

I kneel slowly, lifting the strap of my rifle over my head and placing it on the floor. Wondering if they know we have just minutes left before this building does its best impression of a volcano. I pull my sword and toss it on the floor too.

Nicole grins. She has malice in her eyes I’ve never seen in Olive. I wonder what they did to make Beta team different; it can’t all be the tattoo. Or maybe the malice is just a twisted form of joy—they won, after all.

“Where is Peter?” I say as steadily as I can.

“In the basement,” Tobias says, grinning behind his rifle. “We knew you were coming, so Mrs. North decided to keep him down below.” His eyes narrow. “Where’s Noah?”

He’s creeping up behind you.
Noah puts a finger to his lips. He must’ve run up some parallel hallway to get behind them.

“Just kill them,” Nicole says. “Too dangerous.”

“You’re right about that,” I say. Noah slips into the space next to Tobias, knocking his rifle toward the ceiling. I dive into a shoulder roll and scoop up my own rifle. Rhys is faster than all of us, kicking his revolver so it pops straight up. He snatches it out of the air as Noah breaks Tobias’s neck with a wet snap, just like Joshua’s. Nicole opens fire. The flash from her gun blinds me. Rhys fires too, once. Nicole falls to the floor. I run over and kick her weapon away, even though she’s already dead.

“How much time?” I say.

Rhys checks his watch. “Six minutes.”

The other Miranda cries out behind me.

I whirl.

Olive is sprawled on her back, arms out.

There’s enough blood for me to know right away some of Nicole’s bullets found their mark. Still I go to her, falling to my knees, lifting her up and holding her to me while the others stand around, helpless.

There is nothing they can say or do.

Olive is dead.

I don’t know how much time passes before Rhys grips my shoulder. “We need to go. The clock is ticking.”

My tears have dried and the only thing inside me is fire. I thought I knew what rage was, but I was wrong. I feel rage for our creators. For the other versions of us. For the mutated brains that give us these strange powers. Rage for our purpose as weapons. For the people who want to use us. For all of it. It surges through me and gives me strength.

I lay Olive down and stand up, shrugging out of my parachute.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Noah says.

Rhys fashions his final brick of H9 to the wall. Our escape.

Their
escape. Not mine.

“I’m going to the basement,” I say.

Noah’s eyes flare, and he thinks he can stop me. I hold my hand up to silence him, then spread my arms for a hug. He can’t resist. He moves forward as the H9 burns a hole to the outside. The air pressure changes and a gust of wind blows my hair around. I grab Noah’s arm and jerk him off balance, stepping behind him and wrapping an arm around his neck. He struggles at first, but is unwilling to hurt me. Rhys watches me choke him into unconsciousness, a dead look on his face. I set Noah down gently, next to Olive. Then I push the button on the elevator.

Rhys watches me, framed by a jagged black hole.

“Get the chute on him, get him awake. Get out of here. I’ll meet you outside.”

He wants to argue, but there’s no time. He nods once. I step into the elevator.

“North,” he says.

I look up from the buttons. There are only two—one labeled B and one R.

He tosses me his revolver. I pluck it from the air. His sword comes next—it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever held. Solid, light, and straight, with just enough give in the blade.

“I call it Beacon,” Rhys says, nodding at the sword.

I feel like I should say something more to Rhys, some kind of good-bye. There’s a bond between us I can’t explain, his memories ever-present in my mind. But I don’t need to say good-bye, because I’ll see them again. I’m getting Peter out.

“Keep them safe,” I say. I press the B button.

I hold his gaze while the doors close between us. The car descends.