Unchanged (40 page)

When I leave Rio's lab two hours later, the clock on his screen has already started ticking. Counting down the seconds until a new beginning.

“I wish I could have fallen in love with you in a different world.”

In the end, this will be my legacy.

In the end, this is how I will be remembered.

 

68

SOMEWHERE

The sun is just beginning to appear over the horizon when I transesse into the boy's tent. I sit on the edge of his creaky, metal bed and stare at his beautiful face. The one I've fallen in love with so many times I've lost count.

Or maybe it was
her
who fell in love with him.

Maybe it was
her
heart guiding me all along.

He's no longer a boy. He's a man now. Time stole his childhood from him. Then it turned around and stole his love, too.

He doesn't wake when the weight of my body presses down on the thin mattress. Or when I brush his dark hair from his sleeping eyes.

It's not until I bend down and touch my lips to his that he stirs.

At first he returns my kiss, his body stepping in to respond while his mind is still waking up. His arms wrap around my neck. His hands compel me closer.

But then panic overtakes him. He pushes me away and sits up, blinking against the vanishing darkness to make out my features. To confirm it's really me.

“You can't be here,” he whispers hoarsely. “They know you sabotaged the attack. They'll kill you if they find you here.”

“I'm not staying,” I tell him. I reach out to touch his lips. They're so warm. Just as I remember. “I can't stay.”

My fingers find his. I tangle them together in no particular order. A clutter of thumbs and pinkies. I hold on tight. Then I close my eyes and transport us far, far away. To another place. Another time.

A time where Diotech doesn't exist.

Where the stars aren't crossed.

Where wood is wood. Glass is glass. And people fall in love with people. Not synthetic hybrids.

We land on a soft bed of leaves. The change in the air is the first thing I notice. There's a chill. A sweet humidity that the desert can never provide. Zen fights against the wooziness that accompanies such a long journey and glances around, recognizing our destination immediately. The tall trees, the supple moss, the smell of embers burning on a stove somewhere in the distance.

“Our woods,” he says in astonishment.

“Our time,” I answer.

I smile and lace my fingers through his. This time lining them up properly. His thumb, my thumb, his index finger, my index finger. His heartbeat, my heartbeat.

Nearly five hundred years before Diotech was built, Zen and I lived in a tiny farmhouse not far from this very spot. We worked the land and fed chickens and darned socks. And every night, we retreated to these woods to be alone. Zen taught me how to fight. How to overcome the instincts programmed into my DNA. Just in case they ever found us here.

In these woods, I defeated an imaginary Diotech.

In these woods, we lived out a promise we made to each other.

But it wasn't long before the world surrounding these woods closed in on us and stole that promise away.

I take a deep breath. There is so much to say and yet there is so much I would rather leave unsaid. Saved for another time. Another world. Another me.

But I know there are things that can't be set aside. Apologies that can't wait. Truths that must be stated.

“I don't blame you for hating me,” I tell him.

“Sera—”

“I don't blame you for your anger,” I go on. “Toward me, toward Diotech, toward the world. I'm sorry for what they did to you. For what they did to us. I'm sorry for letting them do it so many times. For not being stronger. I want so badly to be the person you think I am. But—”

My voice begins to crumble. Zen places a hand on my cheek, quieting me.

“I never hated you. I tried. God knows I tried so many times. Three years is a long time to hold on to something that slips farther away every day. Hating you would have been the easier thing to do. Would have been such a beautiful release. But I could never do it.”

“Until you saw me with Kaelen?”

He shakes his head. “Even then.”

“Until I betrayed you and Paddok's entire team?”

“Seraphina.” He says the name so delicately. Like it might shatter between his lips. “When are you going to understand? When are you going to get it? Diotech is the monster here. Not you. Every time you hurt me was when they were controlling you. Every time you loved me, was when you managed to break free.”

“No!” I push his hand away from my cheek. “I can't keep blaming them for my mistakes. I have to take responsibility for the things I've done. For the things I've made you feel. For the agony I've put you through.” I stop. Because I'm crying now. Because the words are caught in my throat. Somehow, I still manage to choke them out. “I have to let you go.”

The tears are falling down my face like fat drops of rain. Zen leans forward and carefully kisses each one of them, absorbing them into his lips until my skin is dry.

“You can't let go of someone who won't stop holding on,” he whispers into my ear.

I melt into him. He wraps his arms around me and draws me to him. His heart pounds against my cheek. So strong. So steady. So unwavering.

“What I said yesterday,” I murmur into his chest. “When I told you I couldn't love you…”

“I know you didn't mean it.”

I close my eyes and draw strength from the parts of me I never knew existed until just a few hours ago. “I did,” I whisper. “I meant it.
I
can't love you. The girl you fell in love with—the girl you climbed walls for, and traveled through time for, and nearly died for—she's not me. She's a ghost living inside me. Who never deserved to die. She fell in love with you, too. But it's not me. It's never been
me
. I am just an empty vessel with bones that can't break and lungs that don't tire and eyes that see in the dark.”

Zen pulls away from me so that he can look into my eyes.
Her
eyes.

He doesn't know what I know. What I've seen in Rio's memories. Yet somehow he understands.

“Sera,” he says intensely. “I fell in love with
you
. I climbed that wall over and over again for
you
. I came back for
you
. Whoever you think you are, or think you're not, it's all the same to me. It's always been
you
.”

His words sink deep into me. Like boulders settling to the bottom of a lake. At first they don't fit. They feel out of place. They feel like strangers. But slowly, the water begins to welcome them. The moss grows up around them, embracing them, rooting them to the ground. Making them feel like maybe they've never been anywhere else.

Maybe they've never
not
been true.

Sariana may be the life that breathes inside me, but I've kept her alive these past few years. I've allowed her to run faster than she's ever run, travel farther than she's ever gone, fall in love deeper than she'll ever know.

Maybe that's worth something.

Zen slips his hand into my hair and guides my mouth to his. The kiss is unlike any of the thousand kisses that live in our past. It isn't angry or desperate. It doesn't scream goodbye or murmur hello. It isn't searching for something missing or recovering something lost.

Science brought us together. Science kept us apart. And this is the kiss that unchains us both.

Somewhere out there, right now, two business partners are preparing to build a corporation that will one day dominate the world. A Jamaican nurse in a hospital is tending to a plane-crash survivor with no memories. A fire is burning the skin of a convicted witch. A pastor is telling stories about monsters. A child is falling from a tree.

And on the soft, mossy floor of a forest in the English countryside, a girl who has finally discovered the truth is kissing a boy who has known it from the very beginning.

And that brings them closer together than they've ever been.

 

69

NOW

I lie beneath the canopy of trees and listen to the forest breathing. The sun will be rising soon. Zen is fast asleep by my side, his arm draped over me, just as we used to sleep when we lived here. When this forest was our backyard and that sunrise was our morning ritual. At one time it seemed like we could live forever here. Peaceful, undisturbed, far away from the horrors that brought us together.

Then new horrors found us. The people we hoped would help shield us, exposed us. The gene that ran through Zen's blood turned on him. Our serenity became a nightmare in the blink of an eye.

I'd like to think that maybe we could have done things differently. Maybe if my abilities hadn't been revealed, maybe if I'd been able to find a cure for Zen's illness and bring it back to him here, maybe if I had never met Kaelen, never learned about the Providence from Dr. Maxxer, never watched so many innocent people die, then we would have been able to stay. Our fantasy of spending the rest of our lives together buried in the past might have lasted.

I know that's only wishful thinking. I know that five hundred years in the future, there are problems that won't simply go away. There's a corporation wreaking havoc on people's lives, and there are souls that died because I couldn't stop it from happening.

There is one battle I still have to fight. There is a monster I still have to destroy. And I have to do it in the present. In the time where I belong. I can't keep running away and disappearing into the past. The past is not where this war will be won.

I know Zen will hate what I'm about to do. I know he would never approve of me doing it alone. But alone is the only option.

Carefully, I remove his arm from my body and sit up. I pull the injector from my pocket and secure the first vial I brought into its reservoir.

He doesn't flinch even when the pressure of the tip pinches his skin.

I wait for the drug to enter his system. For his sleep to become deep and dreamless. The Releaser works better on him than it ever did on me.

When I'm sure that he won't wake, I wrap my hand around his and I take us back. Back to reality. Back to the present.

The bed in Zen's tent creaks as our weight materializes upon it. I close my eyes and count to ten while the dizziness and nausea subside. Then I remove the second vial. The one I stole from the Medical Sector before I came here.

“I'm sorry,” I tell him as I attach the vial to the injector and position the tip against his vein again. “We can't travel the universe forever. Sooner or later, we have to come home.”

I release the serum that will repress his transession gene, save his life once again, and turn time back into a highway.

Like it is for everyone else.

I bend down and brush my lips against his, stealing one last kiss. From my pocket, I withdraw the small silver cube drive. There was a time when Zen buried it deep within the earth with a message for me to find. With a promise to return to me. Now it's my turn to leave something for him.

I place the cube in his palm and close his warm fingers around it. Slowly and carefully, I trace the symbol of our eternal knot across his hand and the tops of his knuckles. Once, twice, again.

Two hearts, forever intersected. In a loop that never ends.

“Fall in love with me in a different world,” I whisper.

And then I vanish.

I can't stay. I was never meant to stay.

 

70

LEGEND

Once upon a time, there was a brilliant scientist named Dr. Rylan Maxxer. She discovered that human beings could travel through time and space with a single tweak to their DNA. A transession gene.

But she was convinced that the people who hired her to develop this gene would use it for the wrong purposes. So she injected herself with her creation and disappeared into the past. That's when she stumbled upon a secret organization called the Providence: a collection of the most powerful people on the planet. A secret society that has been around for centuries. Their number one priority has always been to maintain control over the human race and keep the power in their own hands.

At one point, not so long ago, when they felt that control might be slipping, they invested in a small biotechnology company called Diotech. Although Diotech launched many important experiments, the Providence really only cared about one.

The Genesis Project.

The creation of two superior life-forms that would serve as promotional tools for a new line of genetic modifications to be released into the marketplace. Little does the public know, the enhancements will do more than just enhance. They will control. The injections will be laced with undetectable stimulated-response systems that can be activated whenever the Providence wants. Humankind manipulated at the touch of a button.

This is the story Dr. Maxxer told me when I was brought to her submarine in the year 2032.

This is the story she devoted her life to.

And for the past year I've believed it was exactly that—a story.

The rantings of a lunatic.

What do I believe now? I'm not sure. I know that Diotech is not what it seems. I know that Dr. Alixter has lied to me, manipulated me, and used me in a game bigger than what I can see.

When I think back to everything that's happened over the last few weeks, crucial moments stand out more prominently than the rest.

Dr. Alixter's mysterious conversation in the early morning.

Dr. Maxxer's death in the year 2032.

Countless reports of people who suffered at the hands of a corporation that has somehow always managed to be vindicated from the consequences of their mistakes.