Unforgotten(15)

I rest my chin on his chest. His heart is pounding. “Well, we’re here now.”

He looks more nervous than I’ve ever seen him. “Yes, we are.”

“So you can show it to me? Now?” The curiosity is devouring me.

“Tomorrow night,” he says softly, stroking my cheek. “In our woods.”

“Okay,” I reply, trying to hide my disappointment. I lay my head back down against the pillow. He turns to face me, the tips of our noses barely touching.

“Good night, Cinnamon,” he murmurs, and I watch his eyes droop and slowly close.

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the house. The ghostly creaking of the walls. The scurrying of mice under the floorboards. Owls calling to one another outside the window.

I reach down the front of my nightdress until I find my locket. I pull it out, pensively fingering the clasp.

It was the only thing I had with me when I woke up with no memories in that ocean full of broken airplane parts. The only evidence I had that someone—somewhere—cared about me.

I would later learn that Zen was the one who gave me the locket. He had designed it himself with my favorite symbol—the eternal knot—on the front, and a special engraving on the back.

S + Z = 1609

Forever reminding me of our promise to be together in a time without technology. Without Diotech.

But it was me who would eventually discover the locket’s real secret.

The truth is, should anything happen to me, should they ever find me here, this necklace is my key to escape.

It is the device that activates my transession gene.

My ability to move through time and space.

If I want to transesse, the locket has to be open. Otherwise, my gene is dormant. Useless. And that’s the real reason I insist on keeping it on at all times.

As I start to drift to sleep with the small black heart clutched tightly in my hand, I allow myself to think about Rio.

The man who created me.

He and Jans Alixter were the founders of Diotech. They started the company together. But somewhere along the way their opinions and priorities diverged. After I was created, it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t the obedient, soulless robot they had expected me to be. Rather, I was a real person. With real emotions, real thoughts, a real ability to love. And most important, an ability to rebel.

Alixter considered that an error. A mistake that needed to be fixed.

Rio felt differently.

That’s why he helped me escape. He was the one who gave Zen and me the transession gene. He was the one who installed the special mechanism inside my locket that allowed the gene to be turned on and off. Because according to him, the gene was highly unstable. And not enough tests had been done to ensure its safety. He insisted I have the ability to deactivate the gene when I wasn’t using it. To protect me from any harm that it might do.

He saved my life when he gave me that gene.

And he tried to save it again in 2013 when Alixter found me. But he wasn’t as lucky that time. By then, Alixter had discovered that Rio had betrayed him. And Alixter killed him. Right in front of me.

I can still see Rio’s motionless body lying on the floor of that cave. His limbs tangled. His face contorted in anguish.

And me. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I simply sat there and watched it happen. After everything he’d done for me, I couldn’t return the favor. I couldn’t save him.

One more detail I’m somehow expected to just magically forget.

One more memory I’m not supposed to let haunt me.

One more way I’ll surely fail.





7

STRIPPED



I run through the forest. Pine needles and sharp pebbles slice through the skin of my bare feet but the pain doesn’t stop me. I need to find it. I can hear it calling to me through the trees.

But no matter how hard I search, I can’t seem to locate it. No matter how far I run, the sound only gets farther and farther away.

I stop to catch my breath, wipe my brow, survey my surroundings. Then I hear it again. Closer this time. More desperate.

BA-BUMP!

BA-BUMP!

BA-BUMP!

I look down and finally see it. The sticky, pounding, juicy red heart lying only a few inches away. It’s buried in leaves but still beating. Still alive.

That’s when I notice the large gaping black hole in the center of my chest. The skin around it is ragged and frayed. As though someone ripped me open with a tree branch.

I reach down and gently scoop up the severed organ, hugging it close to me. Protecting it.

A shadow flickers ahead and there’s the snap of a twig. My head whips up and I come face-to-face with him. The man with the white-blond hair, sharp, angled features, steel-blue eyes.

“I’m sorry, Sera,” he says. “But I’m going to have to take that now.”