Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (28 page)

Humming at first, the coils warmed to their purpose, until floor beneath Twenty’s feet shook with the strength of their vibrations. Null did not speak, she did not narrate the dissolution of the body, or how any of the components worked. Twenty was grateful for that but knew that her kindness came from her pragmatism, since any knowledge of the process might be dangerous in the future.

Seven’s body transformed as everything it was released into the air of the Reclamation room. It was as if the strife and misery of his existence found the relief they needed, finally unbound from the restraints of the soulless body. Clouds of red, blue, brown, and white tugged themselves away from the vaporized body in gentle, but lethal movements. In a second’s time the table was empty and Twenty did not see bone, or blood, or tissue of any kind. Instead, Seven became as light and free as the morning’s mist and the man, broken by the past’s lingering memories and haunted by his shattered hope, ceased to be.

Once the coils finished collecting the salvaged materials they retracted into the darkness and the empty silver walls returned. No sign of Seven survived the process and it was if he had never been in the room. It was as if, Twenty realized uncomfortably, Seven had never existed at all.

“It’s almost beautiful,” a morose Null observed.

“Almost,” Twenty agreed.

Null sighed and led Twenty out of Reclamation. In the hallway, he asked her, “What’re you going to do now?”

“There isn’t much left to do. I’ll move Nine and the others aboard the yacht. They’ll be safe there until they wake up.” Null paused, her voice drifting away with her thoughts, at the mention of her temporarily deceased husband. Technically, Twenty reminded himself, Nine was dead anymore but in stasis. When Twenty and the others returned, reborn but amnesia-stricken, none of them would recognize Nine or the others. “Ninety-Nine says reversing the transmitter array might cause a system failure. She says Provence could go offline.”

“What?” Twenty demanded, alarmed. Rose Garden was supposed to be their safety net; the place they would return to if they died out in the city. “But that means that we might actually be mortal
before
we leave Haven.”

“Don’t worry,” Null flashed a wicked grin at Twenty. “Eight’s not the only one with plans.”

“Null…”

“It’s only a failsafe, Twenty. Don’t worry about it. Trust me,” Null insisted.

“Forgive me if I find that difficult,” Twenty answered.

“I’ll try,” was Null’s prompt reply.

“I’m going to talk to Eight.”

Null grabbed his arm. “Don’t tell her what I said. She can have her plans, she can have her way, but I’m not putting my future exclusively in her hands. Do you understand?”

Twenty understood. Null would never acquiesce to Eight, not totally at least, after Eight’s betrayal. More than that, Twenty was uncomfortable with the idea of being stranded in Haven without his memories and without the assurance that Rose Garden would revive them if the plan failed. If they died while inside the city, which was a glaringly real possibility.

“Just…don’t do anything stupid,” Twenty warned her, departing from Reclamation after freeing his arm from her grasp. He spent the short elevator ride considering what he would say to Eight, wondering what insanity could justify the increasingly demented plan that Eight was enacting.

Where had she found this bravery? This singleminded absolutism that she lorded over the Rose Twelve with? How could she terminate their accumulated experiences? How could she burn down Null’s marriage? Eight’s duplicity might repulse him but her unflinching determination made the prospect of healing Seven a reality, and for that he was grateful.

She made it seem effortless.

Twenty stepped off the elevator and found Eight alone in Command.

“I heard a nasty rumor about Rose Garden going offline,” he sneered, making his way through the darkened chamber to her. Eight’s eyes flitted up to meet his. Twenty restrained himself, forced himself not to gasp, at the sight of her face.

Eight’s puffy eyes betrayed the reason for the dim lighting. She had been crying, alone and unseen, since their last encounter. His anger waned but he forced himself to hold steady.

“It’s unavoidable,” she replied without missing a beat. “Reversing the transmitter array is the opposite of what Rose Garden is intended to do. It’ll be a miracle if we don’t blow up the whole damn station in the process.”

“This is dangerous,” Twenty said, feeling like a fool for stating the obvious. “You’re endangering everybody just to get what you want. If you love Seven this much you should just revive him and tell him—”

Dismissing the accusation, Eight replied, “Don’t reduce this to hormonal nonsense.”

“That’s exactly what this is!” Twenty shouted. “That’s why you’ve been crying! That’s why everything else is secondary to bringing Seven back! This plan is ruthless and cunning and brilliant but it’s damning the rest of us in the process.”

“We are the product of our times,” an exhausted Eight retorted.

“We are the product of our creators! That’s all we’ve ever been, isn’t it?”

“Then this time, at least, we will be our own creators. Our own masters. There will be no slaves or pawns or rebels.”

“Does that matter anymore? Our lives are proof enough that what we feel can transcend time, transcends even death itself. Isn’t that what you romantic airheads believe? If love is real, it defies death?”

“Love,” Eight said the word, almost with disapproval. Twenty thought she was testing it out, listening to the way it sounded coming from her. “I thought I loved Tobias but it turns out that there’s a fine line between infatuation and love. When I realized that I didn’t love him, I was never able to trust my feelings again. If what I felt was a lie, then who or what could I possibly love?” Laughter escaped her, dark and heavy with irony. “Then Seven was created and I suddenly found myself imagining a world where Tobias didn’t exist. A world where I had no husband. What would I do? Who would I love?”

“What’s your answer?”

“I haven’t found it yet,” she admitted. “This…” she gestured to the screen on the wall, its surface alighted with images of Haven’s centuries-old devastation, “This is a world where Tobias doesn’t exist. Strangely, I’m not sad. I don’t even think I care.”

“Like you said, there’s a fine line between infatuation and love.”

Eight snorted at his remark. “I was a slave and Tobias was my master. I was too blind to see it but by the time I did…it was too late.” Regaining her confidence, Eight said, “We were fools to think of ourselves as mere symbols. We are the Founders.” 

Twenty chuckled. “Just another legacy. Just another name.”

“But a legacy worth living up to, I think.” Eight handed Twenty his favorite tablet with its chipped corner. “The finer points of my plan. Nothing can be left to chance.”

Blueprints of the city’s underground canals, of the drop-off points for the unconscious clones, of the journey’s outline, flashed across the glass. “Roses. How clever,” he mentioned, seeing how the opera house was to be staged. “So? Reading this doesn’t do me any good. In a few hours I’ll have amnesia, too.”

The remnants of Eight’s strength escaped her in a sigh. “No, you won’t. You’ll keep your memories but pretend that you don’t remember anything. Your job will be to make sure we get to Rose Garden safely without arousing our suspicion.”

“Are you kidding? You put me through all this and tell me I have to be the normal one?”

“To erase all of our memories would be tantamount to suicide. Provence will be offline, Rose Garden won’t be functional, and if the allergen cloud is still inside the city then we need a failsafe. You have to be our compass. Our voice of reason.”

Unhappy with her explanation, he divined the true reason. “You’re lying again. I don’t need to lose my memories because you think I’m stupid.”

“No!”

“Yes! I can keep my memories because I don’t know anything important about how Rose Garden or cloning works,” he objected, shocking Eight with his accusations. “None of the others do, either, which is why you killed them but weren’t worried about their memories.”

“A minute ago you were criticizing me for cutting away our memories and now you’re irate that you have to feign amnesia?” Eight’s exasperation was etched into her face. He could see her confusion, genuine as it was, feeding into her anger. “And, if it’s worth anything at this point, you’re the smartest of us. I remember how you were already lobbying the others to leave Haven, to let the Descendants and Rebels fight it out, days after your creation. ‘Steal a boat and go’ you said. So tell me, how are you not constantly bragging? You were right about everything.”

 Twenty found it hard to brag when being right had the high price of nine millions lives but his sentiment dulled his rebelliousness. A long silence passed between them until Twenty answered, “Because it’s difficult.”

“What’s difficult?”

“Being honest,” Twenty replied. “I might not have had the latent memories that Seven did but I
felt
things, Eight. I knew who was right and who was wrong in the War of the Begotten. We should never have pretended to be impartial, we should never have abided the crimes of our creators. We should have defected publicly. Earnestly.” Twenty shook his head. “Instead, like everyone else, I lied to myself because it was easier to live a lie than to face the truth.”

“Who we are is not who we were,” Eight said, her voice echoing Seven’s certainty.

“Exactly,” he agreed.

“Then help us,” Eight begged him. “Help us be who we were meant to be.”

In a bygone age, Seven once said, Twenty helped set a generation of slaves free from the overwhelming might of their masters. What if he could do it again? What if he could help Seven, help all of Rose Twelve, set themselves free? Twenty would be someone who remembered their follies and shortcomings, even while pretending he didn’t, and in doing so would face his own judgment.

“
On whose sentence, they depend
,” Twenty finished singing, the music in his ears his alone to to enjoy. After tethering his boat to the dock at the Second Core, Twenty paused and studied the power plant. Holding the tablet with the activation codes close to his chest did wonders for his bravery even with the music fading away. He felt confident that this was the right thing to do. That was what the music meant, he was certain of it, even if he didn’t understand its sudden apparition only days ago.

Where had the music come from? It couldn’t be the result of biological tampering by Eight and Ninety-Nine because Twenty hadn’t died and been reborn into a new body; which meant that is origins lay…elsewhere.

Since he could hear the music, since the words came to him across time and space, he knew that the answer must be bigger than science. Bigger than cloning. Exactly what that answer was, though, he wasn’t sure he would ever know.

Leaping into action, Twenty rushed up the stone staircase to the Second Core with the docks at his back. Scanning the maze-like complex for a spot to access a computer presented a challenge to him. Though he knew of the Second Core’s layout in a general sense, he lacked a personal knowledge of the station’s layout.

 “Remember where I parked, okay?” he said to the two golden statues that stood sentry at the top of the stairs. The humanoid figures overlooked the water and his request fell on nonexistent ears. Deciding to take the nearest route, Twenty walked down the empty spaces between generators and power lines, convinced that there must be a minor access computer nearby.

His optimism paid off when he discovered a substation where power lines converged above a small steel building. Mounted to the side, dusted over and neglected, was a computer terminal. Detecting his approach, the weathered machine blinked on and calmly waited for his commands. Twenty slid the glass tablet out of his back pocket and waved it in front of the display.

Wirelessly and instantly, the commands jumped from computer to computer. The attack against his ears came instantly and instinct took over, forcing Twenty to slam his palms tightly against his ears, hoping to shut out the paroxysm of inescapable noise. He feared that he might be deaf after his visit to the Second Core, only to morbidly remind himself that a new body was one death away.

Either Twenty adjusted or the clamor lessened because a minute later he dared to peel his hands away. His eardrums, abused but still working, gladly received the loud sounds of torrential splashing coming from the turbines as they inhaled fresh salt water. Beneath his feet the Second Core rumbled happily, rediscovering its purpose after centuries of slumber.

On the screen, the computer depicted the reactivation of the complex with graphs, numbers, and codes that danced merrily in complicated sequences. Sighing triumphantly, Twenty took a step back and turned in the direction that the docks lay.

The golden statue’s hand reached out and grabbed him by the throat, choking his surprise into a squeaking gasp for air, his legs kicking as they lifted away from the ground. He gasped and choked, fighting against the machine’s hold as his eyes met the singular red orb inlaid upon the golden skull. For such a narrow build the machine’s strength was unassailable and it tightened its pressure around Twenty’s neck.

A pinprick stabbed into his side, drawing his blood, and the statue’s shining red eye flashed and scanned him. What was the machine looking for? What did it hope to find? The luminous red bulb in the skull shone white, then back to red, and Twenty fell to the ground.