Unforgotten (29 page)

Cody doesn’t avert his eyes. His tongue hangs out in concentration as he attempts to move his man around a series of barrels that have the word
EXPLOSIVE
written on the side in big red letters.

“This is an older game. From when I was a teenager. I like to bring it out when I’m having a bad day.”

A bad day.

I guess that would be me. I’m the cause of his bad day. It seems like no matter where I go, no matter what year it is, no matter how old or mature Cody gets, I always manage to swoop in and ruin his life.

I lean back and watch the action for a moment, noticing how easily the man on the screen is able to battle his way through the torn city. Fighting off enemies at an impressive rate. It reminds me of my time in the woods with Zen. When he tried to teach me to fight. When we thought that was all I needed to protect us. A few combat moves.

Oh, how much more complicated everything has gotten.

“Where’s your friend?” he asks, his focus still on the game.

The term catches me off guard.
Friend?
I definitely wouldn’t call Kaelen a
friend.
From the moment we met, I’ve considered him my enemy. Because Alixter was my enemy. And he works for Alixter.

I look at one of the fictional enemies Cody just killed in the game, lying dead in the middle of the animated street.

Could I actually
kill
Kaelen? Even the thought of it makes me feel nauseated.

“I left him outside.” I peer at Cody’s fast-moving fingers. “Can I try?”

He pauses the game and looks at me for the first time since we sat down. “You want to play?”

“Yeah.”

Cody considers this for a moment and then shrugs. “Sure. We can team up.”

He walks over to the cabinet and removes a second controller, identical to his own. He presses a button and a blue light illuminates on it. Then he hands it to me.

“What are we doing?” I ask, glancing curiously at the controller.

“Winning World War II.”

“Okay.”

“Shoot anything that has a swastika on it.”

“What’s a swastika?”

He points toward a strange red symbol on the screen. “That thing.” He shows me his controller and begins pointing at the various knobs and buttons. “The joystick moves you back and forth. This button makes you shoot. This one makes you jump. These two together make you duck. And these two together make you swivel.”

I blink, memorizing his directions. “Got it.”

Cody regards me for a moment. “The girl who proved Goldbach’s conjecture? Yeah, I’m sure you do.”

He restarts the game and we’re off. I pick it up easily. My fingers moving swiftly across the controls. It’s enjoyable. It occupies my otherwise swimming mind. I can see why Cody turns to it when he’s having a bad day.

We survive a surprise attack on the bridge and make it to a sleeping enemy camp. I manage to annihilate everyone within a matter of seconds. Before Cody has even made it off the bridge. He whistles, impressed.

“You got a secret vendetta against Nazis?” he asks.

I laugh but don’t respond otherwise. I just keep going. Keep shooting. Keep ducking punches. Diving away from bombs. Keep fighting.

Never. Stop. Fighting.

What Cody doesn’t know is that when I look at the screen, when I stare those computer-generated soldiers in the eye, I don’t see their flat, two-dimensional faces. I see Alixter.

In every single one of them.

I see his chilling blue eyes. His white-blond hair. His handsome, smug features. His soulless grin.

And I destroy it.

If only it were that easy.

But then I remember Kaelen waiting outside, counting down the seconds until my fifteen minutes are up, and I know I can’t hide in here all day. Neither of us can. Any minute now, Kaelen will be transessing through that door, ready to use whatever means necessary to get the information he’s looking for out of Cody’s head.

“Cody?” I say cautiously, keeping my eyes glued to the enormous screen.

“Yeah?”

“Why do you think the memories in my head would lead me to you?”

I can hear him sigh next to me. I can tell I’ve broken the rule. Brought up the subject I wasn’t supposed to bring up. But what choice do I have?

If I want to protect Cody from the wrath of Alixter via Kaelen, and save Zen’s life, I have to get the information myself.

“I told you,” he says, sounding irritated. “I don’t know.”

I open my mouth to argue but I’m interrupted by a bright beeping sound. A notification box has popped up on the upper left side of the screen:
The lotto announcement will air in two minutes. Would you like to change the input?

“Yes,” Cody says to the screen, pausing the game and dropping his controller next to him. He taps the surface of the coffee table, causing it to shift into another giant flat-panel screen. Like the one embedded in his kitchen counter. He maneuvers through various digital contents until he comes across a small orange-and-white square with a row of numbers displayed across the middle. I recognize it. I saw something similar on Cody’s countertop just this morning. Except that one was almost a week old. This one has today’s date.

The wall screen has changed. I’m now staring at a three-dimensional projection of a life-size woman who appears to be standing in the
middle
of the room. Next to her is a large clear container filled with tiny white balls that have numbers printed on the side.

“What is this?” I ask.

“It’s the Magnum Ball Lotto.”

I watch as the balls in the container start to jumble and hop and dance until one of them is blown into a tube at the top and rolls all the way down to the base. The woman standing in the living room picks it up and reads the number aloud. She continues to do this until seven numbers have been read.

Cody, who has been standing directly in front of her, slouches and swipes his fingertip across the glass coffee table, causing the small white-and-orange square to minimize into the corner.

“What happened?”

“I didn’t win,” he says dejectedly.

I lean forward and drag the digital lotto ticket back into the center of the coffee table. “How does it work?”

“Switch to game mode,” he commands the wall screen. Then he sinks back into the couch and scoops up his controller again. “Twice a week they pick seven random numbers. If your numbers match, you win the jackpot. It was up to $1.1 billion this week.”

“How many numbers are there in total?”

“Eighty-five.”

“But,” I protest, “the chance that you would have the same seven numbers as the ones randomly selected from eighty-five options is one in 200 million.”

Cody rolls his eyes. “That’s right. I forgot, you’re a walking calculator.”

I stare down at the numbers on his ticket.

They seem familiar somehow. But I can’t remember why.

“Why did you select these numbers?” I ask.

Cody sighs and unpauses the game. But I don’t pick up my controller. He continues playing without me. “They just feel lucky to me. Someday I’m convinced they’ll win.”

And suddenly I know where I’ve seen them before. These are the
exact
numbers that were displayed on the lotto ticket I found this morning. With last week’s date on it.

“Do you play the same combination of numbers every time?”

His gaze is still intently locked on an aircraft carrier that his avatar just boarded. “Yeah.”

“How long have you been doing that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably since I was old enough to play.”

“And when was that?”

He sounds irritated by my constant questioning. “Eighteen. Now will you please get back in the game? I can’t defeat these guys on my own.”

But I don’t touch my controller. “You’ve been playing these exact numbers for fourteen years?”

“Yeah,” he repeats, distractedly.

This jump-starts my heart. “Why
these
numbers?”

“Like I said, they just feel lucky. Call it a hunch.”

A hunch
.

“Cody,” I say, grabbing the controller from his hand.

“Hey!” he protests, but I ignore him and drop it onto the couch.

“Where did you get these numbers?”

He leans back with a scowl. “I don’t know. They’ve always just been in my head.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kaelen materialize in the dining room. My time is up. But I raise my hand in the air, signaling him to give me a second.

I’m onto something. I know it. “For how long?” I press Cody.

He opens his mouth to answer but suddenly nothing comes out except a strange, mouse-like squeak.

“Cody?” I prompt.

“I…” He stumbles, jumping slightly when he, too, notices that Kaelen has arrived. I snap my fingers in front of his face, keeping him focused.

“How long have these numbers
just been in your head
?”

Cody rubs his hands on his pants, leaving behind a sweaty streak. “I … don’t know.”

I nod. “You
do
know.”

His eyes drift upward and to the left as he struggles to remember. “I…” He tries a third time.

“Think,” I command him. “Think
hard
.”

“I … guess since”—his eyes close—“I was about thirteen.”

47

SUBMERGED

I’m out of my seat, running into the kitchen before Cody even opens his eyes again. I tap on the glass countertop, bringing it out of its hibernation.

“Numbers,” I tell Kaelen, who is by my side in a flash. “She left the final clue in a sequence of numbers.”

With a swoop of his hand, Kaelen clears the clutter of virtual pictures, documents, and videos in front of us and opens a blank white tableau. I grab a pen device, just like the one in Cody’s lab, from a holster on the refrigerator door and scribble down the numbers Cody plays twice a week in the lottery.

“Are you sure about this?” Kaelen asks, tilting his head to read what I’ve written.

“Maxxer knows my brain is designed to pick up patterns. It only makes sense that she would try to speak to me in numbers.”

I study the sequence, immediately noticing they are listed in ascending order. “Cody!” I call back toward the living room. “Is this the order you remember them in?”

Silence follows and I lean around the corner of the kitchen wall to see that Cody is still sitting on the couch staring into space, looking dazed.

“Cody?” I repeat.

“No.” I hear his quiet mumble. And then, “The lotto machine puts them in that order when it prints the ticket.”

“So what order do you remember them in?”

He doesn’t reply for a minute. I think he’s gone into shock. Nineteen years of his life he’s been carrying this around. Never knowing what it was. Never understanding why. Never expecting that eventually a girl would appear out of thin air, claiming to be from another century, asking him about a series of seemingly insignificant numbers in his mind, telling him that they mean something. That they
lead
to something.

I guess I can’t fault him for feeling just the slightest bit stupefied.

But finally, he speaks. His voice faint. Trancelike. He lists the numbers one by one, pausing for long stretches of time between them. As though reciting each digit robs him of every ounce of energy he has left and he has to wait until he can replenish before starting again.

I erase the original string and transcribe each one as he announces it, until I have a new sequence staring back at me.