Lifer (14 page)

I fight nausea down and look around. A faint light shines around the door seal but there’s no sign of my assailant. She must be on the floor. I blink, trying to adjust my sight and see deeper into the shadows, while my hands tug uselessly at the straps holding me down.

Scrape. It comes from the floor. The unmistakable sound of someone gathering themselves to stand.

Damn. I hoped I’d hit something vital. Any moment she’ll return, and I’m lying here like dessert on a platter. The straps are tied too well and too tight for me to get up. The weapon I kept by my side is gone. I have to do something

“Megs!” I yell as loud as my aching lungs will let me. “Toby!”

My only hope is that the woman who attacked me works alone. I have to believe that Megs, Keane and Toby had plenty of opportunity to take me down without resorting to sneaking in the night.

“Keane!” I shout again straining my chemically abused vocal chords.

A black shape blocks the light from the doorframe and my gut contracts. She’s up on her feet. What the hell have I done to make this woman want me dead?

There’s the click of the weapon that was within my reach a few hours ago. She swears again. “Why won’t this work?”

I stretch out in the direction of her voice, but she doesn’t move close enough for me to reach. Distance equals time. The more I delay her, the more chance someone will come to check on me. I clear my aching throat. “It’s never going to work.”

She says nothing, but I hear more clicking.

“I said,” I speak louder this time, “the Q is never going to work. Any minute someone will come and you’ll be discovered. Better make a run for it now.” I inject my words with a confidence I don’t feel.

“Better for you, maybe.” There’s frustration in every angry syllable. Frustration I don’t mind. If we’re talking, I’m not dead.

“The weapon’s broken,” I say conversationally. While I speak I’m listening for noise from outside the small room.

“They can’t both be broken.”

So she’s got another Q. It’s a hell of a way to have my immunity to the Q weapon confirmed. “Bad luck. Might as well cut your losses. Even tied down, I’m stronger than you and if I’m not asleep you won’t get close enough with that chemical to knock me out.”

As I speak, I’m picking at the edge of the straps. Somewhere there’s a weakness.

More clicking is her only answer.

“Why the attack anyway? I don’t even know you.” In the silence after I say the words, I hear a familiar step in the hallway outside the room. The drag of the slightest of limps. “Toby!” I scream.

The woman comes at me in a rush. She uses the weapon as a baton, striking over and over again at my head while dodging my attempts to grab hold. I’m hit square on the nose and my eyes tear up. So it’s with blurred vision that I see the door swing open and the light come on.

Toby’s jaw actually drops. “Eliza, what are you doing?”

The woman spins to face the doorway, hunching over. To appear small and weak, I guess. “He attacked me,” she says with a quaver in her voice.

Toby’s gaze swings from me tied up on the bed to the weapon in the older woman’s hand. “Keane will have to sort this out.” He unhooks a device from his belt and waits before speaking into it. “Problems with our guest.”

With me? More like problems with a crazy old woman on the loose. I’m in no position to defend myself. “Can you at least untie me?”

Toby shakes his head but there’s sympathy in his gaze. “Keane won’t be long.”

When I wipe my watering eyes, my hand comes away bloody. One of the woman’s blows must have opened the cut above my eye from the game. I move to get comfortable and a stab of pain from my leg reminds me of the burn. Once I notice, it’s all I focus on.

I force myself to breathe slow and deep. My teeth come together and my jaw locks. Showing these people my agony isn’t an option.

Don’t think about the pain
.

I switch my focus to my attacker. The old woman, Toby called her Eliza, is lean and fit despite her deeply-lined skin and her attempts at frailty. Black pants and a black sweater combine with a tight black beanie over fine white hair. She’s dressed for the shadows and armed with both a Q and the chemically drenched pillow. Whatever this attack on me was, she planned it carefully.

Why? Did I do something before I was Blank, in the time before I remember? I try to catch her gaze but she stares at the door, arms folded, preparing her story for Keane I bet. It better be a good one. He’s not stupid. It’s clear who initiated this. The wait drags on until the tension holding Toby stiff in the doorway relaxes. Keane walks through the door a second later.

He takes in the situation at a glance.

I open my mouth but he silences me with a raised hand. Then he turns to the older woman. “Eliza, explain what happened here tonight.”

“Oh, Keane, I‘m so glad you’re here. He attacked me. I was checking on him like you requested and he lashed out. What could I do but defend myself?” As she speaks her hands wrap around each other. Over and around. Over and around. They whisper a sound like two pieces of paper rubbing together.

Keane says nothing, just watches her steadily. Seconds pass and become a minute.

His silence bothers Eliza. The movement of her hands becomes feverish. Her eyes dart from Keane to me and back and her wrinkled cheeks flush. When she shrinks before my eyes it’s no act. Her mouth opens and closes but no sounds come out.

Still, Keane waits.

I shift on the bed, to avoid the straps cutting into me. It would be nice if someone would set me free, but I sense Keane’s making a point about exactly who the victim is here. And the demonstration isn’t aimed at me.

“You don’t know anything about this stranger,” Eliza says eventually.

Keane nods. “Do you?”

“I know he doesn’t belong here.”

“The solution was to drug him in his sleep, tie him up, and Q him.”

“But—”

Keane steps toward her. “Blank’s here as my guest.”

Her head drops, but not before I see anger blazing in her pale blue eyes. “You’re going to take his word over mine?”

“I’m looking at the evidence.” He picks up the pillow, sniffs. “You came in here with a chloroform-soaked pillow and a weapon. I didn’t request you check on him. Every word you’ve said is a lie. Blank didn’t attack you. What I want to know is why you attacked him?”

The glare she gives me is deadly and I see the other side of her face. A purple bruise forms just beneath her ear from the contact with my knee. She sighs. “He’s a spy for the Company.”

Keane looks to me. “Are you?”

It’s a good question. I can’t ignore the possibility that I was sent here to cause trouble. Not when my past is a mystery. “I don’t know.”

He flashes a smile. “At least you’re honest.” Then he turns to Toby. “Take Eliza to the holding cells. She can’t be trusted.”

“No,” she cries. She fumbles for the weapon and aims it at Toby while stepping sideways toward the door. “You won’t take me anywhere.”

“It’s broken, remember?” I pipe up in the hope she won’t test it on the old sentry. At my reminder, she glances down at the black shape in her hands.

Toby lashes out with a roundhouse kick. Surprisingly fluid considering his limp. The weapon falls to the floor. In one movement he grabs her and twists her arm up behind her back until she moans. With her neutralized, he removes the second weapon and marches her out the door, throwing me a grateful grin on his way out. Then I’m left alone with Keane.

He picks up the Q from where it fell on the floor, looks at it a moment, and then throws it to land next to me on the bed. “It’s not broken is it?”

I become very aware I’m still tied down. My original relief at being believed evaporates as fast as the sweat forms at my temples. “No, it’s not.”

“That fits with Megs’ report of you taking a hit at the warehouse and Janic’s earlier story.”

He draws another Q from his pocket and flicks the safety off. “I need to be sure.”

“You’re going to shoot me?”

“Yes.” In three steps he’s standing over me on the bed. “I’ll aim for your hand though. I’m not inhuman.”

“And the straps?”

“It’d be a shame to waste Eliza’s effort. This way you won’t move and cause me to miss the target.”

I nod but my mouth dries. Despite my experience so far of being safe from the weapon, it’s not easy to be told someone intends to shoot you point-blank.

Keane holds my wrist down on the bed, firm but not painful. With the Q positioned over the palm of my hand he meets my gaze. “Ready.”

I catch myself from another nod. It takes all my will to keep my hand steady and speak at the same time. “Yes.”

Without hesitation he presses the small button. I feel the familiar tickle on my skin but no pain. A faint, round, green discoloration forms on my palm’s surface.

He shakes his head slowly. “That didn’t hurt?”

“Not at all.”

Stubby fingers press at the mark. “Do you know how it works?”

“No.”

“The technology for the Q apparently came from the Upheaval itself. Alien technology.” He says it with a sneer. “Tell me everything you know about the Upheaval.”

I search my memories of the worldwide disaster. “Depending on whom you believe, the earthquakes and tsunamis were a result of a terrible, natural chain reaction or alien intervention.”

“What do you think?”

I catch myself from saying I don’t know. I dig through the memories I’ve been left with. “My memory says aliens.” I hear the surprise in my voice. I take a guess, “You don’t think the aliens are real?”

“I think humans have done plenty to cause nature to reach a breaking point.” He shrugs. “There are no aliens here now.”

I have enough problems in my own head to worry about aliens. Like these learned memories someone or something put in my brain. “Does the government say they’re coming back?”

“It’s one of the Company’s lines. Anyway.” he gestures to the weapon. “Using laser-like theory, it’s been tuned to the wavelength of the vibrations of the molecules it targets. Bone, skin, blood whatever. The breaking of those bonds in isolation is incredibly painful. And selective.” Keane runs a hand through his hair. “Why not you?”

“I don’t know. Can you release me now?”

He reaches beneath the bed and the straps across my chest loosen. “Here.” He drags a rag from his pocket and throws it at me. “For your head.”

My muscles protest the movement as I ease to a sit, slumping against the wall. The cloth comes away bloody when I wipe my brow.

Megs taps on the open door still wearing the clothes from the warehouse. “Did I miss the party?”

I’m stupidly happy to see her but play it cool. “Seems killing the stranger is the fun thing to do.”

“Sorry I wasn’t here.”

“Me too.”

Keane clears his throat. Funny, I’d almost forgotten he was here. “We were just testing to see whether the weapon works on Blank.”

Meg crosses to stand next to Keane. “Does it?”

I hold up my hand for her to see. The green mark hasn’t faded. When I lift my top there’s a similar mark on my side where Janic aimed yesterday. Megs prods at the mark, her touch sends a whole other kind of tingle through my skin. The muscles in my belly tighten and she lingers a second before removing her hand. “It really doesn’t hurt?”

“Really,” I squeak, sliding my top back down and adjusting the way I sit. My ears are burning and I don’t meet Megs’ or Keane’s gaze. “What now?”

“We need some answers. First, why do you think Eliza attacked you?”

“I don’t—”

“Think.”

My heart rate is slowly returning to normal and with the fumes from the pillow dispersing through the open door, I’m thinking a little clearer. An image springs to my mind. Not Eliza all in black and on a murderous mission but something else. Sometime else.

“I’ve seen her before. I’m sure of it,” I say slowly. Keane waits as I mentally scan back through the events of the day before. It’s not like I have a heap of memories to go through.

She wasn’t at the warehouse or the gaming bar. Was it the market? There were dozens of people there and I’m sure the green robes are associated with the market but…No.

It hits me.

“She was in the garden when I woke yesterday morning. My earliest memory.”

“What garden?” asks Megs.

I describe the slice of green in what’s otherwise been a mass of broken concrete, dirt and mud. “I was naked and the old woman, Eliza, looked horrified. I ran for cover, assuming she was passing through, but what if she had something to do with the wiping of my memories?”

“Eliza,” repeats Keane. He doesn’t discard the possibility out of hand. A frown marks his brow and I imagine he’s turning the idea over in his mind with what he knows of Eliza. “Maybe.”

Now that I’ve started thinking I can’t stop, the words tumble out. “It would make sense. She wouldn’t want to be discovered, and it might lead to an unprovoked attack when word spread through the station that a stranger had arrived.”

“She’s been a bit secretive lately,” adds Megs.

“Maybe,” says Keane. “I’ve known Eliza for a long time.”

It’s a warning. I wouldn’t want to make accusations without proof. “I need my memories.”

“Yes.” He stands and looks down at me as though he’s come to a decision. “I think I can help you out.”

It can’t be that simple. “But?”

“I’ve heard of the process where the ‘me’ is taken out of people’s memories. We’ve suspected it’s been happening to green robes who’ve gone into the Company’s New City and never returned.”

“Can you reverse it?”

His mouth curves but it’s more of a grimace than a smile. “We’ve been working on something, but it’s hard to find a willing test subject.”

Me. He’s talking about me trying some untested theoretical process. What do I have to lose? My life. Two days of memories.

My gaze goes to Megs. I don’t want to lose her. I’ve known her for only hours but the thought of wiping from my mind this time with her, the game, even the dash through the streets is scary. Almost sad. It’s all I know.

Finding the answers was never going to be easy. “What are the risks?”

Keane’s arms cross. “Brain damage. Death.”