There’s a tugging familiarity about her.
Not as though I knew her, but as though I knew of her. One level removed from my recognition. Like a memory of a memory. A dream of a dream.
“What?” Kaelen asks, breaking into my thoughts. “What did you see?”
But his voice is muffled through all the noise in my head. I pull my gaze away from Rio and look at Kaelen. His face is swimming. I can’t seem to focus on it. I blink again and again but reality is no match for the anarchy that’s playing in my mind, echoing off Rio’s ruined brain.
“Disconnect me,” I tell him, cringing against the bombardment.
“But…” he argues.
“Just do it,” I tell him.
Reluctantly he taps the plastic screen and gradually the noise fades into nothing. I breathe a sigh of relief, relishing the silence. It takes me a moment to steady myself. I feel like I’ve been rotating in circles at two hundred miles per hour.
I hold my head in my hands and take deep breaths. When the room finally stops spinning and my surroundings start to make sense, I release my hands and look up again. Kaelen’s bright aquamarine eyes settle into focus.
“I know,” I tell him quietly.
“You know what?”
I rise to my feet. “I know where he hid the last two doses.”
63
HOME
The house feels different in person. In the memories that Zen stole for me, it felt larger somehow. More spacious. It’s actually quite small and somewhat cramped.
It has a warm energy about it, though.
Somehow I always thought that it would feel cold and isolated. Like the prison cell where I spent too many long nights in 1609. As prison cells go, I suppose this one isn’t terrible.
I appreciate that Rio attempted to make it nice for me. Homey.
I guess he felt it was the least he could do.
I know we’re running out of time. The scab on my arm is already healing. I stare down at a small speck of black peeking through the corner of the wound. My skin is growing back. My DNA is doing its job. Re-creating the tracking device.
In a matter of minutes, the satellites will scan me.
An alert message will appear on someone’s screen. In someone’s head. On someone’s radar. And it will all be over. Alixter will know that I’m here.
But I need to do this.
I walk slowly from room to room, grazing my fingertips over the walls, the wood paneling, every square inch of the furniture. Committing it to memory all over again.
I need them to be real. The memories I have of this place where I lived. Where I slept. Where I fell in love.
I need them to be mine.
Not stolen. Not triggered. Not transferred from a glowing green cube. But mine. Made in the moment. And stored directly in my head.
“Sera,” Kaelen warns from somewhere behind me, “we don’t have time for this. My tracker is already 25 percent healed.”
I ignore him and keep walking. Down the hallway, turning the knob on the first door.
A bedroom. My bedroom.
I don’t know how I know but I do. It just feels like mine.
The furnishings are sparse, reminding me of our quarters at the Pattinsons’ house. There’s a bed, a nightstand, a desk, a chair, and two lamps. A picture frame hangs above the bed, the image cycling through several different landscapes. Sunrises. Meadows. Seashores.
There’s a window in one of the other walls. It looks into the yard. Green grass surrounded by the high concrete wall that Zen used to climb when he would come see me.
The comforter on the bed is a light lavender. I wonder if I picked it out. Or requested it. Was it my favorite color? Because of my eyes?
Or was I not given a choice in that either?
“Sera!” Kaelen calls from the doorway. “We need to move. NOW. Where is the antidote?”
With a sigh, I stand up and walk out of the bedroom, glancing back longingly. Part of me doesn’t want to leave. Part of me wants to curl up on that bed and wait. Wait until Zen comes back. Wait until he climbs over that wall again. Wait until my life becomes simple once more.
But I know that can never happen.
I close the door and continue back up the hallway until I reach the living room. Kaelen stands in the middle, looking terribly out of place. He doesn’t belong in this house. He doesn’t belong in these memories.
This house is mine. Mine and Zen’s. Mine and Rio’s.
But he’s here anyway. Reminding me of why we came. Why we risked everything to be here.
I snap to attention and make my way to the bookshelf on the far back wall of the room. I scan the titles rapidly, running my finger along the spines.
“Why are there so many?” Kaelen asks.
“Rio used to collect them.”
“Are you looking for one in particular?”
“Yes. The Giving Tree.” I don’t look up. “I remember seeing it in one of my memories of this place. It was on the bookshelf behind me when I was sitting on that couch.”