Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (6 page)

“Yeah, but,” and Twenty took a deep breath, “Even if the dead were moved by survivors, the survivors would still die eventually. There would be bodies. Or graveyards. We’ve walked for hours and seen nothing like that! There are no graveyards. There are no survivors. There’s just that monster!”

Twenty positioned himself ahead of Seven and Eight, speaking to them with effortless condescension. “There’s a bloodthirsty monster roaming the streets of this city. Hunting us, in all likelihood, and you two are dumb enough to go wandering around looking for what? For answers? You’re going to walk us right into harm’s way,” Twenty howled. He turned the street corner, eager to be sensational.

Which was precisely when Twenty and the stranger walked into each other.

Chapter Three:

On The Hunt

Eight-Four-Two-Zero settled on her log, comfortable in her distance from the bonfire's heat. Letting out a loud sigh, she conceded that it had been the longest day of her life. She could smell the smoke rising away from the pile of wood, freshly chopped and sacrificed for the wellbeing of the horde of people around it. Casting a quick look around her she saw numerous similar fires dotting the sloping knolls, their vermilion hue darkened by the star-struck midnight sky.

Turning back to the fire closest to her, she tried to pretend that she didn't see the suspicious glares or the people nearest to her vacating their spots. A certain level of animosity was to be expected, she was that much of a pragmatist, but when she realized that a crowd had formed around her, she wondered if coming had been a mistake. To join the assembly meant confronting a unique set of social problems but they were issues she preferred to deal with sooner rather than later. That, and in the middle of the night this close to the shore, she was cold.

Among her many other concerns, Eight-Four-Two-Zero doubted the crowd’s ability to create and to build the things needed to survive. They were on an empty island, a tangible strip of hospitable and sustainable land—the first of its kind in generations. Here they had found the spoils of war, and she found herself in the company of the victors. She frowned at that. Victors who were staring at the possibility of starvation? Of homelessness?

Because their old home was wrecked, because they feared returning to it, every single person on the island was stranded. And they were uneducated. Uncertain. Fear coupled with ignorance begot devastation.

She saw, in their avoidance of her, in the flicker of fear in their eyes, that her companions were ready to blame her. To discard her. Failure would turn the victors against their captive. Eight-Four-Two-Zero wondered why she had come. What had she been expecting? Certainly not acceptance of her, or appreciation of her actions, but maybe a begrudging inclusion at least?

Her actions were as crucial to their liberation as
Seven’s
were. As if summoned into her sight by the mere thought of their liberator, Eight-Four-Two-Zero saw
her
, Eight, on the opposite side of the fire, sitting alone, and she realized that all of this—the war, their freedom, the destruction of their old home and prison—had been accomplished on Eight’s behalf. Whether or not the woman on the other side of the fire knew as much appeared doubtful. Her eyes were red and puffy, her posture exuding a solitary grief.

For everything that Eight-Four-Two-Zero felt towards Two-Six-Five-Eight, sympathy was rarely among them. But now, staring at the broken woman who had lost everything, she couldn’t stop empathizing. Like everything as of late, her feelings were messy, and thinking about the woman across from her who was not-quite a friend but not-quite an enemy either dredged up flashes of resentment mingled with appreciation.

A person, no more than an amalgam of shadow, light, and mass wordlessly sat down beside her. She knew who it was without asking, without looking. A familiar presence, a companion through this war that would be spoken of down the generations.

“Enjoying the view?” her companion asked, crossing his arms around himself to keep warm.

“Not particularly,” she sniffed, forcing her eyes away from the grieving woman. “I can’t imagine how she must feel. To have found everything only to have it snatched away. Love, freedom, happiness,” her voice trailed off.

“His greatest gift to us was our freedom,” he answered, somewhat cross. “Seven died defending that gift. If Eight is smart, she’ll remember that.”

“Eight. Smart? Technically? Yes. Pragmatically? No. Remember,” and Eight-Four-Two-Zero held up her wrists, revealing the handcuffs binding them together as her long black sleeves fell back against her arms, “I may be biased.”

Her companion raised an accusatory eyebrow at her, but something else flickered into his eyes that revealed how deeply troubled he felt. Was it pity? Or remorse? It occurred to her that he liked the idea of her in chains far less than she did, and before she could brush off her gesture as a lighthearted joke, he had already retrieved a key from his pocket.

“You still have that? After everything that happened up there?” she glanced upwards at the night sky, pocked with stars.

Instead of answering, he took her hands, set them on his knee, and wrangled the key into its place on the restraints. She tried not to watch him too closely, this sometimes serious but ultimately compassionate fool. Freed from the bonds, the skin on her wrists were reddened from wear and irritation.

“Consider your sentence commuted,” he advised her.

“Commuted?”

“Eight thought it would be the best thing to do.”

“Our glorious and self-declared leader might have more common sense than I thought,” she said, glancing at Eight. Still absorbed in her mourning, lost in her thoughts, Eight was oblivious to the crowd settled around and watching her. “She was the one who slapped those on me, after all.”

“Careful. By this time tomorrow, when everyone that’s on this island votes, she will be our elected leader.”

“Elections are no guarantee of moral righteousness. Trust me on that,” she warned her companion, assuring him of her knowledge of such affairs. “Still. It’s a brave new land we’ve come to. This island is massive. It could eventually sustain millions of people for generations.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” he shook his head, disillusioned. “Think about it—there’s nothing on this island. If we’re going to survive, we need to learn how to build things. Big things.”

“I hear a proposition coming.”

“Not a proposition. A new sentence.”

“I thought you said it was commuted? Time served?”

“That was the old one. Eight’s cooked up a new one for you.”

“I’ll do it,” she agreed preemptively. In spite of her companion’s surprised expression, she continued on, “Did you think I would wait until this moment to consider my future’s prospects? It’s been thirteen hours since we crashed on this island and I’m stuck here like the rest of you. Not that I think my life needs more excitement. One war is enough for me, I think.”

“Then you agree?” he asked her, becoming jovial.

“Our best chance at survival, at long-term survival, is to
build
like our lives depend on it,” Eight-Four-Two-Zero announced to her friend. “Because they really do. When we were up there,” she looked to the cloudless sky, “I wondered what my purpose was. Down here, I’ve found it. I will take all of my knowledge and build something so great, so magnificent, that a thousand years from now our descendants will look back in awe.”

Her companion nodded, enthralled by the ferocity of her declaration. His voice trembled with longing as he spoke, “I want to leave something better to my descendants than what was handed to me. We have a chance to do that. To create a world without masters, without slaves, without war. That’s what I want,” he finished, throwing the empty handcuffs into the dirt ahead of them. They slid through the loose soil that had been upturned by the bonfire’s builders, and when they stopped moving their stillness announced the emergence of a melody.

She came to with a start, thrust back into the waking world from a vivid dream that slipped into the furthest reaches of memory. Her heart pounded wildly against her chest, the sounds of a timeless memory driving the blood through her veins and the bile into her throat.

Eight-Four-Two-Zero rolled off of her back and onto her arms and legs in time to feel her body convulse. Vomiting onto the street, she could still hear the music in her ears, but it grew fainter with each breath she took. Spitting on the pavement, Eight-Four-Two-Zero staggered onto a pair of unsure legs and took in the sight ahead of her.

A city, impossible to adequately classify in its size and magnificence, lay before her. Its many towers, pillar-like in their uniformity, seemed to hold the sky in the air. Each tower, wider and taller than she could have conceived without seeing them in person, stole her voice from her. More than that, the sight of the unnamed city stole her words. Her vocabulary.

Eight-Four-Two-Zero struggled to identify the words for the parts of the buildings, for their corners and their curves, their heights and their widths. Why couldn’t she remember those things? She opened her mouth to speak, knowing that she wanted to say something, but her mind thought about buildings and found nothing. Blank. Empty. No words to translate her thoughts.

“I know this,” she whispered, staring at the melancholy buildings as they shone in gray light. “I know this,” she repeated. “Why can’t I remember?”

With no other options, she set off down the empty street. At first she felt awkward, moving through the abandoned city on her own, and she realized what a strange sight she must be to the empty buildings around her. The questions flooded her: what happened to this place? Where were the people? How could the city still be standing?

“Why don’t I remember anything?” she asked herself, stopping to take stock of an entrance to the building closest to her. At their base, the towers were made from glass and their interior spaces served different purposes. In the one closest to her were shopping spaces and dining areas ruined by time and neglect. Leaving the street, she pressed her face against the dirty glass, peering within to examine the mausoleum. With a wipe of her hand a space of glass was cleaned, but beneath her fingertips the glass illuminated itself—first with red and then with green.

A chirp sounded and the glass became a door, popping itself open to admit her. Eight-Four-Two-Zero backed away cautiously. Had the glass scanned her fingertips? Her hand? How did it know to open for her? She took another step back and craned her head upwards, staring at the building. Maybe it was inviting her in? Hardening her resolve, she stepped into the dead hall and continued into the dining area she had seen.

Maybe it had been a restaurant? She spotted chipped dishes and bent silverware on the floor. Signs of a sudden abandonment. Age had worn everything within view into a collapsed state. Tables were snapped in half, chairs were flat against the ground, and signage was not to be found. It seemed to her that much of the first floor had been salvaged. Reclaimed for an unknown purpose by an invisible force.

At an elevator bank, she pressed her hand against a golden plate of metal. Expecting to find an up or down button, she was surprised when a transparent gray picture appeared at her fingertips. Becoming giddy with the modest demonstration of technology, she punched the symbols that corresponded to movement.

Metallic shrieking announced the elevator’s movement so loudly that she clapped her hands over her ears and ducked instinctively. Remembering that she was alone, Eight-Four-Two-Zero stepped up from her crouching position. Grinding against themselves, the doors parted and allowed her to board. Dismissing her fears for her safety, she encountered another control panel crafted of translucent light. Ordering the elevator midway up the building, some ninety stories, she stood back and waited.

Delighted to survive the ride, she stepped off of the elevator onto floor ninety ten minutes later. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the city from ninety-stories in the air. A wall of glass awaited her, and though the ages had been cruel to its exterior, Eight-Four-Two-Zero could still see past it, across the countless buildings and to the sea beyond. Turning around, she discovered an apartment door left open.

Entering the apartment felt like entering a family tomb. Wreckage and debris, better protected from the elements here than downstairs, littered the floor. Tables and chairs, pots and pans were among the items that described the apartment’s legacy. At first glance there were no bodies, and most of the cloth and fabric was deteriorated beyond recognition.

On her approach to the apartment’s patio, she saw the light gleaming off of an exposed pillar of metal. An overwhelming curiosity drew her to it, and she studied the splintered surface with growing alarm. Running her hand across the rotting metal, grief welled up within her. Her face felt cold and, wiping away a tear, she realized she was crying.

This city wasn’t dead. It was still dying, the bones of metal continuing to wither away after ages of abandonment. Despite its glory, the city hadn’t earned a quick and peaceful death. The fate reserved for it was agonizing and lengthy. Prying herself away from the injurious sight, she moved towards the patio. Not daring enough to test the patio’s functionality, she remained inside. To her surprise, the ocean could be seen far in the distance on the city’s other side.

“Island,” she whispered.