Unforgotten(105)

“Stop,” booms an emotionless voice. Not human. “Don’t move.”

With the vials tucked safely in her pocket, she struggles to her feet and runs. Her legs threatening to give out with every painful step.

She reaches the front door of the house and yanks it open, tumbling inside.

He’s asleep when she reaches him. Looking peaceful. His soft red beard rippling with each breath. She digs into her pocket and pulls out two of the three vials, thrusting them into his palm and tightening his fingers around them.

He wakes at her touch, his eyes heaving open. A smile appearing.

“You’re here,” he says, his voice thick with sleep.

But the joy fades as soon as he’s able to focus on her haggard, diseased face.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“The gene,” she manages to squeak, the oxygen barely able to fuel the words.

The light from the hovercopter blasts through the window, lowering steadily as the craft comes in for a landing. Her time is coming to an end.

“You have to find him,” she whimpers as she squeezes his fingers tighter around the two vials. “You have to find him.”

She gathers whatever energy she has left and focuses it all on her final destination. Knowing this is the last time she will ever see him.

The front door of the house bursts open just as the feel of his touch dissolves against her skin and the first tear treks down her face.

She lands huddled on the floor of the submarine’s command center, trembling. She drifts in and out of consciousness as Trestin covers her with a blanket, tugs on her pants to remove the vial from her pocket. He works quickly, inserting the needle and drawing out the fluid.

She feels the prick in her arm as he locates the vein.

The heavy, clear, cleansing liquid chugs through her bloodstream. Reversing the past. Healing the pain.

Trapping her in time forever.





59

BATTLE



Maxxer’s memory fades to an end and I open my eyes and take in the mess that we’ve created.

Furniture has been overturned. Framed artwork has fallen from the walls and shattered. Breakfast food and broken dishes are scattered across the white rug. Maxxer’s two guards lie in a heap at the base of the stairs, looking like a lumpy pile of snow in their crisp white uniforms. One’s nose bleeds from where it came into contact with the heel of my hand. The other sports a swollen lip from Kaelen’s elbow.

And Maxxer. She is unconscious on the couch. Sitting upright with her head slumped forward. Kaelen’s fingertips are still resting against her forehead. Sending her memories directly to the receptors he removed from his own head and placed on mine.

I blink and study my surroundings. Recognizing the room from the memory. I eye the section of carpet at the base of the dining table where Trestin injected Maxxer with the clear liquid from the vial.

The repressor.

The cure.

Disabling her gene permanently. Reversing the effects of the illness. Keeping her here forever. She will never transesse again.

“What did you see?” Kaelen asks, interrupting my thoughts.

I blink up at him. “There were three doses,” I explain.

Kaelen nods, as though he already knew this. “When it was believed that Dr. Maxxer returned to the compound, Dr. Alixter confirmed that the molecule accelerator in Maxxer’s lab had been used to manufacture three doses of a serum. But they could never be found. He assumed she came back to produce an antidote to reverse the effects of the gene. But when he attempted to re-create it, he was unsuccessful. Dr. Maxxer made sure no one could replicate her process.”

I nod. “I didn’t see how the antidote was manufactured. The memory started after the vials were already created.”

“She most likely erased it.”

I gaze at Maxxer’s sleeping face. She’s been so careful to guard so many secrets. And yet I feel like there are still some that have yet to be uncovered.

What did she mean when she said, “You have to find him.”

“Did you see what happened to the three doses?” Kaelen asks.

I bite my lip. “Maxxer used one of them on herself.”

“What about the other two?”

Maxxer’s memories may have been fuzzier and harder to decipher than my own, but I recognized the man she gave them to. I know exactly who it is.

And this is where the road seems to come to a dead end. Yet again. Just further evidence proving that the forces of the universe have banded together to fight against me. To keep me from Zen.

“She gave them to Rio,” I tell Kaelen with a crestfallen sigh, feeling the stab of another hope disintegrating into nothing. “And he’s dead.”

Kaelen falls eerily quiet and I glance over to see his bottom lip is twitching. As though his body is having an epic battle with his brain. The outcome of which will determine whether or not his mouth moves and words emerge.