False Memory (17 page)

“That’s progress,” I say.

“You’ll have an easier time with this, I think, because you’ve done it before.”

“Done what?” I say.

“Had somebody else’s memories transferred to your brain.”

His words don’t make sense right away. I sound it out in my head.

Sombody else’s. Memories.

Transferred to. Your brain. Your
brain
.

“No,” I say. I could say
I don’t understand
or
What are you talking about?
but I can only manage No.

Noah is at my side. “Explain,” he says.

Rhys holds up his hand, palm out, warding us off. “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. I only said she’s gone through the process before. I didn’t say what it meant.” The suspicion and malice I saw when he held my face is gone, for now.

“So say what it means,” I demand.

“I don’t
know
,” Rhys says. He turns away and goes back to the island in his kitchen. “Who’s hungry?”

“
I’m talking to you
.”

He spins around and throws up his hands. “What should I say? Would you like me to make something up?”

“A theory would be nice.”

His face is . . . careful. Like he’s preparing to hold something back. “A theory. All right. I don’t think you are who you think you are. How’s that?”

“Then who am I?”

He raises his eyebrows, turns back to the kitchen. “Now that’s a question.”

I stand there for a moment with my eyes on the floor, thinking. Memories transplanted, memories lost.

What if I’m not the Miranda they grew up with?

She could be in a cage somewhere, hidden. Or dead in the ground. I could be a mole, planted in the group to sabotage them. Controlled by means other than the tattoo. But no, that doesn’t make sense—if they wanted to use me against my Alpha team, they would have by now.

I grab on to that logic like a lifeline.

Olive and Noah wait in front of me, grim. Their faces blur as tears well in my eyes.

“You’re you,” Noah says. “I know you. I promise.”

I nod. The sympathetic look on Olive’s face makes me want to cry more. She doesn’t remember anything, but she feels bad for me. I don’t deserve her pity.

I wipe my tears away as we walk toward the kitchen, forcing my voice to harden. “Is it possible I’m not Miranda North?”

Rhys licks his lips. “Anything is possible.”

“Bullshit,” Noah says. “She’s Miranda.”

“Noah, please,” I say. “Let me talk to him.”

Noah clenches his jaw and faces the big window.

Rhys raises an eyebrow at Noah. “As I was saying. Is it likely you’re someone else? Who knows. I think the answers are coming, and I think you need to focus on what’s in front of us for right now.” He tries a tentative smile. “The mission of rescuing your friend and destroying the creators. And the food I’m preparing.”

I’m speechless for a second, then the words come out low and cold, like ice. “I don’t care about food. I need you to stop playing games. Peter is out there. The city is wrecked. And you’re saying it’s possible I’m no Miranda North, then making like it’s no big deal.”

Rhys lets five whole seconds pass. “Think logically for five seconds, yeah? Maybe we can restore our strength, and then figure out the best way to recover your friend and bring the evildoers to justice. That should be acceptable.”

Acceptable? No. But if he has the answers, we have to play by his rules.

He gives Noah a look and gesture, like
Is this girl for real?

Noah gives him nothing in return, not even a glare. Rhys shrugs and returns to the kitchen.

We stand around the island while Rhys finishes the meal. He adds basil and crushed pepper to a pot of red sauce on the stove. A pot of pasta boils next to it. My body is hungry, but the sight of food makes me ill; I need to move, not eat.

Rhys says, “Sorry, I was in the middle of making lunch when I looked outside—and what did I see?—the whole city going to hell. And the faint scent of roses. Which is better than psychic energy that smells like a skunk, I suppose.”

No one laughs. Rhys ignores it.

“I’ve been hiding,” Rhys says. He dices mushrooms on a cutting board. “In plain sight you could say. When I first escaped the original Alpha base two years ago, I hid in vacant buildings. Would’ve stayed if they didn’t look there first.”

I glance at Noah, who
was
searching for Rhys. He nods once.

“Right, see? I’ve been keeping tabs on Alpha and Beta teams since I escaped. I’ve skills, no doubt, but I’ll need help if I want to strike that fatal blow.”

“Against
who
?” I say. “With Dr. Conlin dead, who is our enemy?”

“The creators. The ones who made us. They have your Peter.”

The ones we were cloned from. When I was falling off that building, I had a phantom memory of my creator, the woman handing me over to Phil. Not my mother, just an older version of me.

I notice Rhys is still armed with his revolver and sword, like he doesn’t trust us enough to take them off. I don’t blame him. But I don’t trust his story either, not until all the holes are filled. For starters, shouldn’t there be other versions of him running around? Why did the original Alpha have a Rhys, but my Alpha—and Beta—do not?

“Where is Peter?” I say again, leaning onto the marble island. Noah rummages around in the fridge. It might be the last time I ask, before I just leave to go find him myself.

Rhys lifts his chin to the window behind me. “You won’t like it.”

Outside the window is downtown. “What?”

“He’s in the tallest building,” Rhys says.

Key Tower is the tallest. A normal stone-colored skyscraper until the top, where the point becomes silver-white.

“My old home, where I lived and trained...everything was in the silver cap.” His voice is flat with old memories. I know the feeling.

The cap of the tower looks white in the sun, lots of sharp angles. It reminds me of some fantasy ice palace plopped down on top of a skyscraper. I can’t tear my eyes away, wondering if Peter is behind its walls right now. Wondering if it holds the answer to the question that burns in my mind like a furnace.

Who am I?

We’ve barely had a moment to rest, but now, behind the safety of this glass, with the city emptied before me, I know what drives me. I want to know who I am. Not just who I was, or what I’ve done, who I might become.

Who I am.

Is it so much to ask?

“It doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Why draw attention to themselves? Why not test us in a city they don’t
work
in?”

“Attention?” Rhys says. “How will the government ever in a million years link what happens above the fifty-seventh floor to what happened here today? Eventually life will return to normal. There is no evidence.” He pops a mushroom in his mouth. “Hiding in plain sight. Test complete. The Roses are a success.”

He dishes up pasta for each of us, and we sit at his dark wood table next to the kitchen. I drink a glass of water, not realizing how thirsty I am until it touches my lips. Sitting down like this, eating a meal, it feels wrong. Peter is somewhere, alone, maybe hurt, and we’re eating?

“You’re impatient, I know,” Rhys says. “But we move at dark. I have a plan that will destroy the cap and rescue your friend.”

“But will it stop them,” Olive says. “Will it stop the people who...our creators.”

Rhys frowns. “Maybe, if they’re there. But it will cripple them, or at least reveal them to the world. And maybe that’ll be enough for us to live out the rest of our lives without looking over our shoulders.”

Through it all, through every moment, a phrase keeps looping in my mind—

Transplanted memories. Transplanted memories. Transplanted memories.

Rhys clears his plate before any of us. “You wanted to know who I am,” he says. He pulls his revolver from his belt and sets it on the table with a thunk.

“I do,” I say. “But I’d like to know more about why our eyes are changing color. What you said about memories.”

Rhys smiles. “Luckily, I can do both at the same time. But you might not like what you see. In fact, I guarantee it.”

“I can handle it.” At least I think I can. I try to remember the last time I slept. That short nap in the cell. Then another nap in the Beta’s room before coming downtown. My eyelids feel caked in cement. I check the clock on the stove—12:04. A few hours ago, nothing bad had happened yet. We were still together. The dead were still alive.

“All right, then,” Rhys says, pushing away from the table. Noah visibly tenses at the movement, but I put my hand on his forearm and he relaxes. Rhys goes to a closet near the door and opens it. And pulls out a headband. Almost like the one Tycast and Conlin wore to negate our waves, but thicker. And stiff—it holds its circular form.

Rhys points at the couch. “Lie down, please.”

I’m confused, but I figure the answers are coming. I step lightly to the couch, wishing I could feel the plush carpet on my toes. I’ve had this suit on for so long, I’d give anything for cool air on my skin. I remain standing for some reason. Maybe instinct.

Rhys steps down into the couch area, holding the headband. The thick material is charcoal in color, but catches the light weirdly, shimmering at the edges. “Before, I said you’ve had memories implanted.”

“Yes,” I say.

He holds up the band. “This is how it happened, with one of these machines. The creators had a plan from day one to make more of us. The trick would be to take our experiences—those of Alpha and Beta team—and use them as a template to imprint on new versions of us. Ready-made experiences for the clones they could continue to grow. Copies of the same person, with the same memories. Basically an endless supply of . . . us.”

“Exactly us,” Olive says softly, standing up from the table.

The reality of that weighs on us for a moment. I try to imagine other copies of me running around, not just identical in body but in mind.

“I stole this from the Tower when I left, from the office of Mrs. North herself.”

All traces of humor are gone from Rhys’s eyes. Noah and Olive sit down on the other couch.

“What does that mean?” I say. “For me.”

Rhys shrugs. “It could mean anything. It could mean they’ve already taken your memories to give to the next Miranda, or whatever they call you nowadays. I was part of the original Alpha team. I once knew a Peter, a Noah.” He looks at Noah and Olive on the couch. “I knew Olive.”

Back to me. “And you, Miranda. When I escaped, I copied my memories in the hopes I would meet people from the other teams. I would have to...explain myself, show them the truth. And seeing is believing. I could talk to you all day long, but you won’t truly believe until you see it.”

“See what?” I say.

“Why we have to stop them. Why we can’t fail.”

Olive says, “If the original Alpha team had our names, why does Beta team have different ones?”

Rhys shrugs again. “I suppose it got confusing to keep tabs on several beings with the same name. If we fail and they grow another team, say, Gamma team, I bet they’ll have different names too.” To me, he says, “You’ll want to lie down for this. Really.”

I settle onto the couch, waiting.

He hesitates.

“What?” I say.

“It won’t feel good.”

“I can take it.” I hope I can take it.

He gently lifts my head, so unlike the last time he touched me, and eases the headband over my eyes, blocking Noah and Olive from sight. The metal band is icy at first, but then warms against my skin.

“Relax,” Rhys’s soothing voice says. “Relax, Miranda,” he says, as a thousand knives pierce my skull.

I open my eyes.

I’m sitting at a computer. The monitor displays a 3-D model of Cleveland. I tap a few keys and a pinkish-red cloud spreads within the city. At the bottom, it says
roses needed
:
1
. The number goes up as the cloud widens, until it envelopes the entire downtown area at 7.

Terror cuts through me like a sword. I cover my face with my hands, and only then do I see the hands belong to Rhys.

I am Rhys.

I close my eyes. When I open them, I’m in a room just like the one back home, just like the Beta room, too. Bunks on either side, but an extra one on the left. Peter is there, and so is Noah on the bunk above him. And there’s Miranda, across from Peter, fighting with a knot in her shoelace. It’s
me
, only it’s not. This is the original Alpha team. . . .

But where are they now?

“You don’t understand,” I say. Rhys’s voice sounds different coming out of my mouth.

Peter shakes his head. “What don’t we understand, Rhys?”

“They’re going to
use
us on the city. I saw a computer simulation. They want to test us on Cleveland.”

Miranda laughs at him. “That’s ridiculous. You know how insane that sounds, right?”

I nod. “Yes, yes I’m aware.”

Olive jumps down from the top bunk. “They can’t make us do anything we don’t want to. Look at how strong we are already.”

Noah jumps off his bunk too, then begins a stretching sequence for tonight’s training mission. “I think you might be overreacting a bit,” he says. “How do you know what you saw?”

Peter holds up his hands. “Guys, stop. If Rhys says he saw something, he saw something.”

I throw up my hands. “Listen to me. Why do you think we’re here? I mean, what is our
purpose
?”

Miranda stands up. “Rhys, indoor voice please.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I say.

Miranda shrugs. “Fine. I’ll get my mom, and she can tell you how crazy you are.”

I stop her with a hand on her shoulder. She looks down at it, then up at me. Why is she acting like this? Good plan—let’s tell her mom I’ve found something bad, when I’m saying her mom is the one behind it. Her bright green eyes hold mine steadily.

“Sit down, Miranda,” I say.

Noah laughs from the floor, stretching over his extended leg. “Giving orders now?”

Peter is the only one taking me seriously. And maybe Olive, who is uncertain and quiet, as always. They’re too trusting. They always have been. We’ve been living here for years, training, learning how to use this power we don’t fully understand. I shouldn’t have been in the server room, but it doesn’t change what I saw. I still remember the headline—

PROJECT ROSE / PROJECTED WAVE RELEASE PATTERN FOR CITY
 

Min: Four (4) Roses.

Two roses can be used effectively in smaller cities. Recommend pairing with partner. Roses One and Three can be paired. Do not recommend pairing Three and Five. Do not recommend pairing two of the same clone. Roses Two and Four can be used in any configuration.

I make a final plea to my friends. “They gave us numbers
.
The program talked about what configuration we could be used in. It said ‘projected wave release pattern for city.’ You tell me what that means. It said we were
clones
.”

“You swear to God you’re not kidding?”

“Rhys’s jokes are usually believable,” Peter says. I take a deep breath. “I swear. I saw it.”

“Then let’s look into it,” Noah says. “You probably misunderstood, but let’s look into it. Then when it turns out you’re an idiot, you can clean the bathroom for the next six months.”

Noah glances over my shoulder, and I turn. Miranda’s mom stands in the doorway, one sculpted eyebrow raised. She is beautiful like her daughter, not yet forty and only a few lines on her face to show for it. She’s wearing a crisp gray business suit.

“I don’t know, Mrs. North,” Noah says.

Mrs. North rolls her eyes. “Really, Noah? Get your ass moving.” They file out at once. I’m in trouble and they know it. I want to scream at them to stay. No one is grasping the severity of the situation, and it’s my fault for not explaining it right.

We are going to be used to hurt innocent people. How’s that for an explanation?

But I let them go. I will let Mrs. North explain herself, and then I will take my next course of action. We’ve lived in comfort for so long I don’t blame them for being blind to the truth. If I hadn’t seen it, I might not believe it either.

“Rhys,” Mrs. North says. She points at the table. It has a half-played game of Monopoly spread over it. “Have a seat.”

I sit down across from her, closer to the door and the weapon hidden in my bunk. Mrs. North is our martial arts instructor. She taught us how to use a staff, a sword, our fingers and feet. She folds her powerful, delicate hands on the table. Hands I’ve felt so many times, but never in kindness. Always on the mat, always when I was too slow and a strike slipped through, cuffing me on the head or neck.

Mrs. North sighs and moves one of the hotels on the board with her thumb. “I feel any explanation I give you will not be good enough.”

I lick my lips.

She nods. “Yes, I see that. What were you looking for, Rhys?”

“Something has been off for as long as I can remember. Even my earliest memories are from this tower, all of us living together. And you never explained
why
. None of the parents did. The others...they know something isn’t right, but they’re afraid to see it. They don’t want to see it.”

“What were you looking for, Rhys?”

“The truth,” I say.

She nods. “Did you find it?”

“Yes. You’re raising us to be
weapons
. We can create fear from nothing, and I bet some people are willing to pay you for that power. You’re...you’ve made copies of us.” Saying the word makes me feel silly, but I say it anyway. “
Clones
.”

My own father died a few years ago, but the other parents stuck around to help raise us. Because we’re special, they said. A family.

“You’re wrong,” Mrs. North says.

“No, I’m not.”

“You are,” she says. “We aren’t cloning you. You are the clone.”

“What? No.”

“Yes. All of you. Miranda? Who do you think that is? Look at me.” Mrs. North’s green eyes are flecked with brown and gold. “Look at my face, Rhys. Who am I?”

“No...” I say.

“Yes. We made you. And we can do what we want with you.”

“What happens now?”

There is new tension in Mrs. North’s shoulders. I’ve never been able to beat her one-on-one. Only recently have I been able to hold my own.

Mrs. North unbuttons the front of her business suit. “I’m going to put you in holding and keep your memory shots away. After a while you will forget this, and then I can place you back with the others. I’ll have to do the same for them, too. Which is your fault, Rhys.
Your
fault. You go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and stuff like this happens.”

I think about going back to the way things were. Clueless. With the same outcome—our use as the ultimate weapon. I can’t have it. I can’t let them make me forget.

Mrs. North takes off her slender wristwatch. “Now. Will you come with me, or do I have to force you?”

Neither of us moves for a long beat. Mrs. North blinks. I spring out of my seat and lunge for my bunk. My revolver is there, under the pillow. We aren’t supposed to keep the weapons in our room, but I do. I hear Mrs. North step onto the table and spring off; she’ll be on me in the next second. I slide my hand under my pillow, feeling cool steel. My fingers close around it as Mrs. North hits me so hard in the back of the head my vision fuzzes black for a second. She wraps her arms around me and twists, throws me across the room. I land on my back, sliding, but she doesn’t see I had already closed my hand on the gun. I aim it at her heart and pull the trigger. The gun bucks in my hand and a red hole opens in her chest. Another step before she falls to one knee. She covers the hole on her blouse with one hand, but it drops away.

I don’t waste time. I roll off the floor and gather what items I have and throw them into a pack. I kneel over Mrs. North and check her pulse. Still beating. I missed her heart. I put the gun against her forehead and hold it there. But I can’t do it. I don’t know why. Because she was a mother to me all those years, alongside the others? Even if she was as brutal a mother as I can imagine, she still helped raise me. It was a lie, I know, but I can’t. I can’t pull the trigger. The gun leaves a pinkish ring of burned skin on her brow.

A guard kicks in the door with his rifle up and ready. I fire a shot between his eyes. He falls in the doorway, wedging it open.

I stand up, sparing Mrs. North a final glance.

Then I run.

More guards fall before me, faceless men who’ve been there my whole life but have never spoken a word. They die. In Mrs. North’s office I find more ammunition and a strange metal headband. They go in my pack. I find a parachute stashed in the bottom of a cabinet, along with bundles of cash. I find cases of memory shots. Eyes on the door, I fill my pack till it’s near bursting. Leave it to Mrs. North to keep a parachute and enough cash on hand in case she needed to escape. I’ll remember to thank her one day, if she survives.

I close my eyes and open them.

Now I stand in front of a window overlooking the city and the lake. Gunfire erupts behind me. The window shatters and I jump through the falling shards, out into open air. The wind rushes through my hair...the violent tug as the parachute opens. The scent of roses.

I close my eyes.

You’re Miranda. Not Rhys. Miranda. I am Miranda. Miranda North.

But at the same time, I’m Rhys.

As my eyes open once more, I lose myself completely.

I’m in a forest. The Beta team base is nearby—I’ve seen the other versions of us training in the woods. They’re almost as far along as us, maybe a year behind.

Dr. Tycast seems like a good enough guy. I wonder if I can warn Beta team without getting myself killed. But my Alpha is a lost cause. They’re in the woods, chasing me, blind to the truth. They think I’ve gone mad. My friends, turned against me because of a lie. They’ll be used. Sold to kill. And there’s not a thing I can say or do to convince them otherwise.

“Rhyyyyyys!” Someone calls to me. They’re closing in. I jump onto a low branch of the nearest tree and start climbing. It doesn’t matter if they kill me. All that matters is what will happen to them after they do.

There is only one thing I can do to save them.

I wait in the branches for an hour. Maybe more. My breath stays shallow through force of will, muscles relaxed but ready. Then I see Peter crouched under the tree, unaware I’m directly above him. He scans some bushes across the path, calm as still water. Now is my chance. I slip off a branch as silently as I can and free-fall, pulling my revolver. I land behind him in a crouch, then rise up. Peter, who might have believed me. Peter, who was fair to everyone.

“Rhys,” Peter says without turning around. He raises his hands slowly.

I shoot him in the back of the head. The tall grass around me rustles as small animals flee the explosion. I’m running again. The forest thickens around me, branches snagging my suit. My passing sounds like an elephant trampling through the brush. I leap over a large bush into a clearing. The sky is purple, speckled with stars. Noah stands in the clearing with his sword out.

“Who did you shoot?” he says. He’s breathing heavy. “Peter.”

“Why, Rhys? Why?”

“Because I won’t let us be monsters. Mrs. North will make us forget everything.”

“She won’t. You have to trust her.” He unslings a rifle from his back and holds it vertically, barrel down.

I point the revolver. “Don’t.”

“Are you crazy, Rhys? She told us you were crazy. That your body was rejecting the memory shots.”

“Listen to yourself.
Memory shots
. Who are we, Noah? Why are we here?”

“You killed Peter.” He lifts his rifle, but too slowly. Like he was giving me time, or afraid to shoot. I pull the trigger and a bright red hole opens on his forehead and he disappears into the tall grass.

Olive bursts from the tree line where she was hidden, sword raised. I spin, lose the gun when she chops it from my hand. She kicks, slim heel connecting with my Adam’s apple. I fall into the grass, struggling for breath through my aching throat. She jumps on me, screaming, and raises the sword above her head. My own sword is jammed on my belt under her thigh, so I slam my knee into her butt, and she wobbles forward and rolls off me. Her sword point sticks in the dirt next to my head. I grab her leg and twist her over, pulling her close. One hand grips her throat and the other pins her sword arm to the ground. A quick pinch of her delicate wrist bones and the sword falls from her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, squeezing until the little capillaries in her eyes burst and she stops struggling. I squeeze some more. Until she’s dead. I start crying. Big, fat tears falling onto Olive’s black suit. But they can’t be used to hurt anyone now. No one will make them forget.

I slide off her, still crying, and find my gun in the tall grass by luck. I stand up and drag my forearm across my eyes. My breath hitches. When I open my eyes, Miranda stands at the edge of the tall grass. Her face is resigned, sad. I wish I could say something to make it okay.

“I love you,” she says.

I start crying again, face pinched, cheeks aching. But I keep my gun on her, shaky though it is.

“Don’t do this,” she says. “I love you, Rhys. You’re my brother.”

Is she just saying that? Is this her cunning? Does it even matter? I can’t trust her. She came with the others.

“Show me your hands, Miranda.”

She holds them up, palm out, and steps into the clearing. I hear a helicopter in the distance, the faint rhythmic buzz of its blades.