False Memory (20 page)

I check the load on the revolver—six shots. He must have reloaded between shooting Nicole and pulling me away from Olive. The rifle I left behind might be high-tech, but it was cumbersome. I see why Rhys chose this combination of weapons; it feels elegant just holding them. Maybe if I live long enough, I’ll adopt it.

The elevator doesn’t travel faster than normal. I feel the lightness in my stomach and watch the floors wind down on a tiny readout above the two buttons. I thumb back the hammer on the revolver and point it at the door.

The car stops hard enough to bend my knees. The doors open.

A near pitch-black tunnel leads to a strange blue-green glow. I step out, gun leveled straight, Beacon in a reverse grip, tucked flat against my arm. The doors hiss shut behind me, and cables twang as the car ascends.

I walk the whole way like that. One step, then another. The only sounds my shallow breath and the light crunching of grit beneath my feet. The gun grows heavy, but I can handle it.

A hundred feet later I enter a room with a black ceiling that could be a thousand feet high. A steady hum fills the air, a soothing hum, peaceful. It comes from the four rows of tanks lined up in the room, each three feet taller than I am. Nothing else is here. Four rows, ten deep. All of them glow blue-green. All of them illuminate the person suspended inside them. Each row has a name branded on top of the tanks—

peter
.

noah
.

miranda
.

olive
.

Rhys is absent.

The Miranda row is the third from the left. Two of the tanks are empty and dark. Each tank seems to hold a different aged version of us. Some are children, and some appear our age.

I came from here. This is where I was born. There are no thoughts beyond that. Just a general lack of understanding. A question, maybe—How is this real?

Staring at the field of tanks, I let my gun drop toward my side. It snaps back up when I see two figures at the other end of the field, in between the second row—Noah—and the third row—Miranda.

It’s Mrs. North, the origin of me. Whatever you want to call her. Peter is on his knees next to her, arms bound behind him, mouth gagged with a white cloth. He has a black eye, blood crusted around the gag.

I don’t waste time. I simply squeeze the trigger and the revolver crashes in my hand, scraping the skin on my palm. The endless ceiling swallows the noise. Smoke curls from the barrel, but Mrs. North is gone. Peter is still there, on his knees, screaming something behind his gag. I take a few steps into the field, hating how the tanks illuminate my suit with eerie light.

To my right, a flash of black scales amid seafoam. I fire again and hit one of the tanks. There’s the snap of plastic followed by a stream of blue-green goo that arcs out and splatters on the floor. She’s baiting me. She wants to draw my fire until I click empty. Movement again, closer. I look up—Mrs. North stands on one of my tanks. I raise Beacon just as her blade crashes down. She wanted me to see her; she could’ve just dropped down behind me.

My creator is toying with me.

She leaps over my head to the row of Noahs. I raise the revolver and she slashes it out of my hand before I can aim. It fires, a flash of orange light between us. The gun tumbles away, barrel to grip, and stops in the spreading pool. Mrs. North jumps down, and I move forward with a flurry of slashes. She doesn’t bother to parry them, instead walking backward into the goo, ducking her torso when needed. Her feet splash in the liquid and I stop. She looks exactly like me, just aged, fine lines around her eyes. Same reddish-brown hair. Same red eyes from the memory band.

Her breathing is smooth. “You’re better than the last Miranda. I’m impressed.”

The revolver is half-submerged in the liquid between us. “The Miranda from the original Alpha team,” I say. “The one Rhys killed...”

Mrs. North laughs. She’s standing near the two empty tanks in my row. One for the Miranda we found in the operating room upstairs.

And one for...

“No,” Mrs. North says. “The one your Noah stole and left in Columbus.” She raps her knuckles on the empty tank. “Go on, you remember. I left some of the memories intact. Buried, but intact.”

“No.” I shake my head, fighting to stay in the room. I can’t let a memory take me, not now.

“Yes. Remember.” She lowers her voice and speaks a string of numbers. Too fast to decipher individually, but hearing them tugs at my brain. The code dredges up another memory, buried deep.

Finally I can’t help it anymore.

I remember.

I don’t know where I am. It’s a city. Tall, unfamiliar buildings. I’m in a small park, one of those dingy ones they set down on an empty lot and then forget about. A boy stands in front of me. The pain in his eyes almost rips me in two.

“You won’t understand this for a while,” he says. “I don’t know how long.”

“Why can’t I remember anything?” I say.

He takes my hands and I let him, even though he’s a stranger to me. He rubs his thumbs over the backs of my knuckles. “I hope you can forgive me one day. I’m trying to keep you safe. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.” He gives a short, helpless laugh. “I would take it back if I could, but I can’t.”

Behind me, a girl with black hair stands in the street. She’s watching us. “Noah, hurry,” she says.

Noah holds up a finger. “I’m doing this because I love you. When I figure how to keep us safe, I will come back. I will find you. Just stay here. You’re resourceful. Don’t get in trouble, Miranda, okay? Just lie low.”

“Why can’t I come?” I say.

“Because I don’t think we can win.” He hands me a folded up piece of paper. “This has instructions. If you’re still alone on the date I wrote down, call this number. Ask for Peter. It tells you what to say.”

I take it from him, not really understanding.

“But it won’t come to that,” he says. “I swear I’ll find you.”

He leans in and we kiss. It’s automatic. Do I normally kiss strangers? What did he say about loving me? It feels like I’m dreaming.

I sit down on the park bench and watch the boy leave with the girl. They don’t look back.

I’m running. I don’t know where I am. I’m in a city with tall buildings I don’t recognize. It’s raining and my clothes are soaked. Night has fallen, and I don’t know where I’m running to or what I’m running from.

Wait. Yes I do. People are trying to shoot nets at me. Something is wrong with my head; it’s too hot. I think I have a fever. Pressure builds behind my eyes.

I turn down the next alley and slip on a piece of wet cardboard. My shoulder hits the slimy brick wall and I stumble forward. It’s a dead end. I turn around to see a woman standing a few feet away. She has pretty red hair and bright eyes. I feel like I know her.

“Mom?” I say.

“Hey, honey. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know. I think people are chasing me.” Mom waves me over. “C’mere sweetheart.”

I can’t remember how I got here. I was running and people

were chasing me. A man steps out from behind her. His short brown hair sparkles with rainwater. He looks familiar, like a boy I saw earlier. Like that boy but grown up. Like I went to sleep for a very long time and woke up to find he is much older now.

This isn’t right. Someone told me to run, to stay free. That isn’t my mom. Names flicker and fade in my head—
Peter Noah Olive
—and I bend down to pick up a rusted piece of pipe. It feels gritty and solid in my palm.

“Let me through,” I say.

The woman says, “Miranda, let us take you home.” “You’re not my mother.
Get out of my way
.”

“No, Miranda. Put down the pipe.”

I charge them, raising the pipe above my head. I jump.

They’re frozen with surprise, and I’m going to hit them. Something yellow flashes on one of the rooftops lining the alley, and something punches me in the chest. I hit the ground and skid on my knees before toppling over. The pipe rolls into a puddle.

“Jesus,” the man says next to her. A radio crackles and he says, “We had it under control.”

On my belly it feels like the water under me is growing hotter, and spreading out. I can’t breathe. I can’t take a single breath.

Mom kneels and rolls me onto my back. Blood bubbles out of my chest, mixing with the rain. She smoothes the hair off my face. I look into her eyes, thinking,
Please give me comfort. Please tell me what all this means.

“I’m hurt,” I say. Or at least I think I say. I might just mouth the words.

“I know. I’m sorry, baby. It was an accident.”

My mind catches up. That flash on the rooftop was a gunshot. Of course it was. They shot me and now I’m bleeding.

“You won’t die for good,” my mom says. “I promise.”

I try to say something but my mouth doesn’t work. She looks up at the man. “Do we have another body ready?”

“Two, actually. They’re already prepping one.”

“We need to hurry,” Mom says.

She bends over to plant a kiss on my wet forehead, but my eyes close before she reaches me.

I open my eyes. Bright white light above me. Something beeps steadily in the background. I lift my head and see I’m naked. I remember the alleyway, the water and blood and pressure in my chest. But there are no wounds. A nightmare, then. I sit upright, pulling on the sensors and needles plugged all over my body. I have to get out of here. I don’t know why, but I know it’s true.

On the operating table to my left is a girl with reddish brown hair. She’s naked like me, with a gaping red hole between her breasts. On a table between us is a thick black hoop of metal with wires running off it, and an empty syringe with a wide-gauged needle.

“How do you feel?” the voice says again. Mom steps out of the darkness.

“I’m dead,” I say, not knowing what it means, but knowing it’s true.

Mom stops between the two tables. She puts a hand on my leg, and a hand on the leg of the dead girl. She looks at the dead girl’s toes, sees they’re painted a dusky red, almost identical to the girl’s hair. “Dammit, I have to paint your toes,” she says to herself.

I point at the corpse. “That’s what happened to me. Something hit my chest. I’m dead.”

Mom shakes her head. “You were just born, sweetie.” She sees I don’t understand and sighs. “Do you remember anything from home?”

I don’t even know where home is.

She hands me a pair of jeans and a black tank top. “Put these on. You won’t remember this, but you’ll get to go home.” From the rolling table in the middle, she picks up the syringe. It’s not empty. There’s a little pill-shaped object inside. She holds my foot still and sticks the needle into the soft skin behind my ankle. I hear a blast of compressed air, and the little pill thing disappears. I don’t even feel it.

“I hope this isn’t for nothing,” she murmurs, rubbing my ankle. Her voice drops to barely a whisper. “I hope you can go home, and we won’t have to intervene.” She gives my ankle a final squeeze.

Tears run down my cheeks, but my breathing is normal. I point to the dead girl on the table.

“That’s me,” I say.

Mom stares at the dead girl. “It was,” she says.

I open my eyes back in the present, between the rows of Peters and Olives and Noahs and Mirandas. Unsure of how much time passed while I relived the memories. Mrs. North hasn’t moved. She’s just watching me.

Miranda North everyone grew up with.

I’m just a shell with a few scraps of her memories. . . . I’m nothing.

But that’s not true. Peter still kneels at the end of the row, and the look in his eyes heats the lead in my veins until I can move again. My team cares about me, and I won’t fail them. I remember what Peter said to me in the bathroom. Words spoken in the past, giving me strength right now.

We’ ll make new memories
, he said.

Mrs. North twirls her sword once. “You were our first template, that night you died. Then, when you murdered Grace, I came down here and made our first copy. You. Using the fragmented identity your idiot boyfriend created when he tampered with your shots.”

She pauses to let that sink in.

“What should we call the girl upstairs?” she says.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “She’s already gone. And so is everything above the fifty-seventh floor.”

If this fazes her, she doesn’t show it. “Look at the room you’re in. There are plenty more of you to make.”

The past isn’t mine. It died with Miranda in that alley.

But the future can be.

Mrs. North bends down to pick up Rhys’s revolver, but I slide forward in the pool and kick it down the aisle to Peter. I slash down with Beacon but Mrs. North dives forward, past my right side, and slips across the floor. She rolls to her feet as I turn, and we engage again. It’s hard to keep track of who attacks and who defends. She seems to know every move I make before I make it. The sound of steel scraping steel rings out continuously.

She ducks under a horizontal slash, a backhand, and Beacon bites into one of Noah’s tanks. A wide, flat stream of blue-green liquid spews out, soaking us both. It has no smell. I pull my sword free, but it takes a second, which is long enough for Mrs. North to open a foot long gash in my suit, just above my navel. I cry out, backpedaling through the puddle. I stab forward for her throat, but Mrs. North throws her head back, and the sword passes above her neck and face harmlessly. She keeps going into a full-on backflip, her foot coming up and kicking the bottom of my sword hand. The little finger breaks, and I cry out again. I step forward, off balance from the thrust, and she completes the backflip perfectly, slashing across and opening another line on my cheek. Blood runs off my chin. A hank of my hair floats to the floor.

She moves in again, a thrust. I do exactly what she doesn’t expect, what I don’t expect. I drop Beacon and use both hands to catch her wrist, bowing my torso out of the sword’s path. I rotate in until we stand shoulder to shoulder, all four arms outstretched and fighting for grip on her sword. She turns her face to mine, and I bash my forehead into her nose. I feel it crunch between my eyes and hear a low moan burble in her throat. I push her to arm’s length. She blinks rapidly, fighting to see. I hook my foot behind her heel and sweep her leg out. She goes down, practically swimming, and her sword skims down the aisle. By the time I snatch up Beacon and prepare to bring it down like a hammer, she’s already pushed off a tank and propelled herself after her weapon, leaving a wake in the fluid. I could give chase, but I have to free Peter in case she strikes me down. Leaving him at her mercy is not an option.