He walks silently into the room and sets the tray down on the table at the foot of the bed. There’s something very stilted and unusual about his movements. As though his joints click into place, rather than rotate smoothly.
“You’re awake,” he states in a neutral tone, making it impossible to tell if he’s happy about this development or disappointed. All I know is that the sound of his voice sends a quiver up my newly healed legs. Even though it’s detached and somewhat cold, there’s a penetrating depth. A strange intimacy. As though he’s breathing the words right into my ear.
“Who are you?” I ask, surprised by the tremble in my voice. Am I afraid of him?
Of course I’m not, my mind answers instinctively. Without even giving itself a chance to contemplate the question.
If anything, I feel the opposite. Safe. Protected. Understood.
Like I know him. Like I’ve never not known him.
He stands at the foot of the bed, his arms tight and rigid at his sides. “My name is Kaelen,” he says, the syllables flat. Like he’s a stone reciting definitions to another stone.
And yet a swell of emotion undulates through me, ricocheting off every surface in this room.
Kaelen.
I don’t know this name but I want to. More than anything. I want to repeat it over and over again in my mind. I want to use it in place of every other word in the English language. Even if it means I will no longer speak sense.
“What are you doing here?” I bring myself to ask. I want to sound accusing. Harsh. I want to warn this stranger that I have a mission and I’m not going to let anyone stand in the way of it.
But none of that is conveyed.
And in this moment, staring into his endless blue-green eyes, I can’t even remember what my mission is.
A small, almost sinister smile dances across his lips.
“Sera.” Even through his dispassionate tone, I hear an air of condescendence when he says my name. As if the explanation he’s about to give is pointless. Wasted breath. Wasted energy. “I’m here because of you.”
A shudder ripples through me as I finally comprehend everything.
The figure I saw through the rising smoke. The movement just before I passed out. My missing necklace.
The truth of my realization is like ice in my veins. Fog in my head. Wood splinters in my muscles.
I knew they would never let me burn.
As the paralyzing words tumble out of my lips, I know I can’t take them back. I can’t take anything back anymore. The chase is over. “Diotech sent you.”
18
AMBASSADOR
I’m amazed at how calm I feel as the words slide off my tongue. I’ve been restlessly dreaming of this moment for so long—fearing it, dreading it, waking up in a cold sweat—I guess I always assumed I would feel differently. That the rage and terror and determination to escape Diotech would all combine and coil up in my limbs, readying me to spring into action. To fight. To run.
But where am I going to go?
This man—this boy—clearly has my necklace. My freedom. My only way to Zen.
He nods, confirming that he is, in fact, who I think he is, and continues to stand eerily still at the foot of the bed.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “If Diotech sent you, then why am I not…” I glance around the large empty room, another horrifying realization settling in. “Wait. Am I here? Am I back? Is this the compound?”
“No.” His response is unfeeling. Almost mechanical.
I’m besieged with confusion. All this time, I assumed they were hunting me to bring me back. That’s what Alixter said in the cave. I was their trillion-dollar investment. I had to be returned. I couldn’t be allowed to just run loose through time.
“But I thought…” I protest.
“My orders were not to bring you back,” Kaelen explains stiffly.
“Then what are your orders?”
“You have information that we need. I have been assigned to acquire it.”
Information?
Despite everything—despite the fact that I’m standing in the middle of my worst nightmare—I have to laugh. Although it’s more like a nervous titter. “I’m sorry you went through the trouble but I think you were misinformed. I don’t have any information. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
He appears undeterred by this news. “It’s not something you know,” he states in a measured tone. “It’s something you remember.”
I chuckle again, feeling satisfied that I’ve somehow managed to outsmart them without even trying. “Well, obviously someone lied to you because I don’t remember anything. My memories are gone. Wiped clean. There’s nothing left.”