Authors: Greg Krehbiel
"He was hit by a car and thrown into that sign," she said, and started running toward it, just as she had a week ago. It was starting to work. Her memory was starting to come back, but she couldn't remember what happened next.
"That's enough for now," MacKenzie said. "Actually, it's better than I expected. Let's go get something to eat and come back, okay?"
*
*
*
MacKenzie picked up some food at the bagel shop across the street as Hanna put her thumb on the identification plate of the autodispenser to get her large coffee and two egg muffins. A familiar voice from behind her said, "Eating a real breakfast for a change? That's good."
"Jeremy!" Hanna said in surprise. She threw her arms around his neck. "Where have you ..." She couldn't continue. Jeremy put his finger to her lips to keep her quiet, then pointed outside with a nod of his head. Hanna followed him out and they found MacKenzie waiting for them in the alley, all smiles, with a touch of cream cheese on the corner of her mouth.
"Sorry to hush you like that, Hanna," Jeremy said, "but I need to keep a low profile. Come with me."
He led them deeper into the alley between McDonald's and the office building next door, then behind a large cargo vehicle and a few trash receptacles, through a door and into the physical plant of the office building. The hallways were like a maze, but Jeremy picked his way through quickly and confidently to another door that said "Janitor" on a small, red nameplate. He pressed his thumb to the locking device, opened the door and led them in.
The room was clearly not for a janitor. An attractive, very busy woman sat behind a large desk, working meticulously on a very small electronics device with a pair of hand-held instruments, not unlike surgeon's tools. She greeted Jeremy with, "Hi, Mr. Mitchell." Jeremy nodded and hurried Hanna and MacKenzie past the reception area into a small conference room and shut the door.
"Jeremy, what's going on?" Hanna said, looking around in wonder at the room. It was posh in the extreme, unlike anything she had seen in
Washington
.
"I really hate to say this, especially since you've probably been worried about me for the last week, but I can't tell you." He looked sheepishly at both of them, expecting a torrent of righteous indignation, but MacKenzie just shrugged and said, "We should have expected as much."
"So what
can
you tell us, then?" Hanna asked. "And can I eat my egg McMuffin in this place? I'm starved."
Jeremy nodded and held out a chair for her at the conference-room table. "What I can tell you is that I wasn't hurt too badly by my run-in with the car, and that I still need to keep clear of Dr.
Berry
, and probably the police, for a little while." He looked them over for a minute and then continued. "But you both look like you've got your own story to tell."
MacKenzie had been riding on an emotional high since Jeremy spirited her out of the bagel shop. Her best friend was back safe, and now Jeremy seemed okay as well. She wanted to talk so badly it hurt, but she realized that she needed to work with Hanna on recovering her memory, and she believed, based on something she'd picked up in a psychology class, that associations were the key to memory, and lost memory had to be recovered very carefully. Anything she said here might make the process more difficult.
She composed a private message to Jeremy. Just at that moment, Hanna started speaking.
"Yeah, something weird has happened to me," she said. "I can't remember anything from the time you were hit by that car until yesterday afternoon." Jeremy looked at her with concern and remembered Peter's words that her organization had checked up on his friends. He had received a few delayed messages from Hanna yesterday at about
noon
, but they didn't say anything about being kidnapped, and he assumed they had been delayed because of his situation, not hers.
His implant chimed an incoming message.
From MacKenzie. Chat mode requested.
Accepted,
Jeremy replied.
"You can't remember anything?" he said.
Don't push her, Jeremy. I've got a strategy for helping her get her memory back, okay?
"Nothing, really," Hanna replied, "except little pieces of images from here and there." She paused for a minute and looked at her McMuffin. "I remember that I didn't like the food."
"That's not saying much, knowing your habits," MacKenzie said disdainfully, and then sent another message to Jeremy.
She was kidnapped by somebody. She composed lots of messages to me that explain what they did to her.
"I'm so sorry, Hanna, it must have been terrifying," Jeremy said.
Can you send me copies? I got five messages from her as well. I'll forward them to you.
"I guess it was, but, ... I don't remember," Hanna said.
"That's okay, Hanna, don't worry about it now," MacKenzie said. "We'll work on it."
I guess that's okay,
MacKenzie replied. Secretly she was pleased that Hanna had sent 42 messages to her, but only five to Jeremy. She forwarded the messages.
The room was suddenly quiet, and then Jeremy laughed. "This is maddening. We've all got these tremendous stories to tell, and we can't say a thing."
*
*
*
"Okay, this is where he left us, right?" Hanna said to MacKenzie as they went over the events of that fateful night for the fourth time. "Then he ran that way," she pointed, "then the cop sent the dog after him, and it looked for a minute like he was coming after us, but then right here," she walked forward about 30 feet, "the dog veered off toward Jeremy." MacKenzie nodded and the two of them started walking toward the street, following the path of the dog. Hanna munched on a candy bar, still trying to catch up from a week on a starvation diet.
"Then there was all that foolishness in the street, and the collision, and then Jeremy came flying through the air and hit his head against this post," she said, laying her hand on it. She had reviewed this scene enough to be fairly dispassionate about it now, but the first time she remembered that Jeremy had been hurt she begged MacKenzie to tell her what happened. MacKenzie refused, and Hanna finally decided to play along.
"That's right," MacKenzie said, leaning against the post herself, "and what did the dog do?"
"It came right back here and started growling at Jeremy, but then the cop called the dog off. I think he knelt down next to him like this," she did it, "and started looking Jeremy over." By now they were both immune to the curious stares of passersby, and continued to act out as much of the events of that night as they could. They had informed their professors that they would be out of class for at least a day. MacKenzie hoped they could get this over with soon. She was dying to talk to Hanna about what happened during her interrogation, but she had committed herself to trying to rebuild Hanna's memory one step at a time, and she was pleased to discover that the method was working.
"And then I saw the emergency vehicle hovering over that building there, and I waved to it," Hanna said, "but it was already on its way. I guess the cop had already called for it."
They continued like this, working on every scene in the park until Hanna could remember everything as well as MacKenzie, or better. Then they went to the hospital and repeated the procedure. The process picked up momentum: the more Hanna remembered, the easier it was to remember more. By dinner she was able to recall some of her experiences in that dark room. MacKenzie decided she had done her job, and that she would go over all the messages with Hanna later.
The day's work drained them more than either expected, so they decided to treat themselves to a fancy dinner and relax. When the wine arrived, Hanna made a toast. "To my best and truest friend, MacKenzie," she said, holding up her glass.
"Wherever you go, I go," MacKenzie replied.
*
*
*
"What kind of a perverted, criminal outfit do you run here," Jeremy yelled at Peter. He had finished reading about half of the messages MacKenzie had supplied him and he couldn't contain himself any longer. The rest of the staff, loitering around on the edges of the main suite were in shocked silence, afraid to show any interest, but too intrigued to miss hearing this confrontation. Peter was not a man you yelled at.
"You kidnapped me and put a cast on a healthy leg, and you kidnapped my friend and half tortured her. I don't care who you work for or what kind of high-and-mighty moral principles you have, you can't treat people this way."
Peter stared at him for a solid minute, completely unperturbed by his rampage. He could have been considering what to have for lunch, or whether or not to kill him on the spot, but you couldn't tell it from his face.
"How do you know we kidnapped her?" Peter asked in a calm voice, and then walked away.
Jeremy was so boiling with rage that Peter's words took a few minutes to sink in. He stood there, not sure whether to yell or throw a punch. Finally he stomped back to his office and shut his door. He wished he could slam it, but Society doors didn't work that way. They slid out from a cavity in the wall and were opened and closed by pulleys and engines.
Jeremy fell into his chair and closed his eyes, allowing the torrent of emotion to flow unrestricted through his mind. After a few minutes he began to calm down and systematize his thoughts. It embarrassed him to explode like that. He knew he had a violent temper and he preferred to keep it under control. So far in his life it had only caused him grief, but part of him still believed it was a hidden asset that served him well, somehow.
From Peter to Jeremy. Come into my office in five minutes.
That was the last thing he expected to hear from him.
So, he has to dress me down now,
he thought. He looked for an object to hurl across the room, but there was nothing available. Instead, he took a deep breath and began to analyze what he knew about Hanna's situation. He had five minutes to get his thoughts in order and decide whether to yell at him again and quit, or whether he had jumped to a wrong conclusion.
*
*
*
"Give me five reasons why it probably wasn't us who kidnapped your friend, and five why it probably wasn't the Network," Peter said as soon as Jeremy entered her office. He did his absolute best not to look sheepish, but Peter had such an austere look about him, he wasn't sure he had pulled it off. Ever since Jeremy had signed on with his organization, Peter had been a rigid taskmaster. The last four days had been the most intensive experience of his life as Peter ran him through a series of lessons and drills. He had learned more in the last 48 hours than he thought possible.
"One," he began. "When you told me you had checked up on my friends, you didn't mention Hanna. That could indicate that you were unaware of her, or that you hadn't tracked her down yet. Two. You used completely different techniques on me. The operation against Hanna seemed low-budget by comparison. Three. You admit that you checked up on MacKenzie, but you didn't kidnap her. Why would you kidnap Hanna but not MacKenzie?"
"Reasons why it probably wasn't the Network," he continued, "Why didn't they kill her?"
Peter nodded. "I'm glad you didn't make up a bunch of nonsense just to fill your quota," he said. "Based on what you know of the Network, that's a decent analysis. Now," he said, moving on, "I want a full report of what they did to Hanna, with your opinions on what it all means, and I want you to tell me everything you think they could have learned from her. I want it before tomorrow morning."
He didn't say "dismissed," but he might as well have. Jeremy left, trying very hard not to look like his tail was between his legs.
I guess that's initiation,
he thought.
Chapter 11
"Eunice MacKenzie?" a man with a heavy Scottish accent asked as she was heading across campus the next morning. She and Hanna still had a lot of work to do to restore Hanna's memory of her ordeal, but they had decided to go back to class before Hanna got too far behind.
"Sort of," she said, stopping to talk to the powerfully built man. She didn't recognize him, and his demeanor didn't inspire confidence. He reminded Hanna of a Scot she had once seen in a movie -- stern, strong, someone you wouldn't want to cross, and who might be a saint or a devil. "I go by MacKenzie, if you don't mind." He nodded.
"I'm an admirer of your groundbreaking work on hole communications," he said with no hint of a smile.
How could he possibly know about that?
she wondered. She hadn't told anyone what she had been doing, and none of her other projects could really be called "groundbreaking." Had someone been looking over her shoulder in the lab? MacKenzie wasn't sure if she should play dumb, ignore him and walk away, accuse him of violating her privacy, or what. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then he asked if they could talk privately.
"Privately?" she laughed. "No, we can't. But I would be willing to meet you somewhere, in public, with a friend."