“I’m so lucky,” Senna heard herself say.
“Did you need something?” Anju’s voice carried through the wall of the closet.
“No! No . . .” Shimmying out of her pajamas, Senna pulled on the dress and watched it swish around her knees. “Why did I say that?” she murmured. I’m so lucky. She could remember being a little girl, sitting on a freezing table while a hazy fog of a man thumped her knee with a triangular hammer. Her foot would swing out and it made her giggle. “How did you do that?” she would ask, amazed.
The unremembered man had given her a warm, fatherly smile. His voice came out flat, atonal, as if someone had vacuumed all the life and personality out of it. “It’s a reflex. Some movements are just intrinsic to the body.”
Like a hammer striking something in her head, when she pushed against the name Paxton, against her memories of him, like a foot kicking she heard, I’m so lucky.
I’m so lucky spoken in a voice not her own. A loud, terrible voice that took up all the space in her head until it almost hurt. The door opened and Servitor Sixteen entered, startling her. The chrome AI bot came with a tray clamped in its three-fingered hands, its three button-like eyes glowing blue, flashing when they scanned across her. Senna huddled back against the bed while Sixteen deposited the food on the cube table near her.
“Thank you,” she said, out of habit.
“You enjoy,” Sixteen replied, torso and legs somewhat out of sync as it turned and left.
“Pax should really replace that thing.” Anju appeared, patting the side of her head, though no hair had moved out of place. Senna wasn’t hungry—in fact just the smell of the orange juice on the tray made her want to be sick. Instead, she found herself drawn to Anju, with her perfect hair and perfect face. Her perfect body. Senna felt terribly misshapen and average by comparison, especially in her loose dress, while Anju’s glittery gray frock could have been a quick coat of paint. Pax. She knows him so well, and she’s so otherworldly, why would he pick me over someone like this?
A throb built at her temples, pressure, her brain pressing hard against its confines. A thought, a dream, a revelation was trapped in there, a sudden painful swell like a bubble caught in the throat. Senna’s teeth chattered. I’m so lucky.
“What?” Anju asked, consulting her VIT, becoming aware of Senna’s rude gawking.
“You don’t belong here.”
“Excuse me?” the other woman scoffed.
Senna shook her head, passing her palm back and forth across her mouth, the redness over her face deepening. “I’m sorry, I don’t . . . I’m not feeling like myself today.”
Apparently gifted with infinite patience, Anju smiled gently and came to take Senna’s forearm, squeezing it. “This whole process is difficult, Senna. You’re doing fine, just don’t push yourself too hard. Sit, okay? Have something to eat, it will help.”
“I’m sorry,” Senna mumbled, refusing to sit and refusing to eat. “I shouldn’t have said that to you. There’s just . . . so much missing. Time. Memories.”
“It will get easier,” Anju assured her, taking the orange juice and pressing it into her hands. “You have to eat.”
Their eyes locked over the juice, and Senna felt herself begging silently. She couldn’t decide what she was pleading for, mercy maybe, or understanding. An explanation. Her stomach churned with acid, but she managed one single sip of the juice. That seemed to please Anju, who took a step away and then nodded, returning her focus to her VIT before heading for the door.
“Take however long you need,” Anju called over her shoulder. “Your schedule is wide open. You’re free.”
Senna put the juice back on the tray and collapsed against the edge of the bed. Her head fell into her hands, and she squeezed her skull lightly, in pulses, as if feeling for open, bleeding, raw cracks. They were there, she knew, but on the inside. So many blanks. Time. Memories.
“I’m so lucky,” she whispered, shocked by hot tears racing down her cheeks. If she concentrated, she could chart their path over her skin, though they fell slowly . . . so slowly . . . more like snowflakes on an icily still night, heedless of gravity or the shape of her bone structure, falling, falling . . . It seemed to take an age for them to run, salty and lukewarm, between her lips.
She raked her hands through her hair, and something gave. When she pulled her fingers lower to see, chunks of hair had come away, trapped under her fingernails. That bubble in her throat burst, panicked shivers racking her body. She stared at the dark blond hair drifting in tufts to the floor.
“What’s happening to me?” she murmured. You’re so lucky, the voice not her own reminded her. Lucky, lucky, lucky. “What’s happening to me?”
* * *
—
Senna arrived at the black door to the clinical labs with her hair tucked neatly behind her ears. She couldn’t stop fussing with it, which only seemed to make more strands fall out. Every time she noticed one coiling on her sleeve, she felt another clench in her stomach.
This isn’t right.
That was her shield, she decided, against the hammer-to-knee reflex of her mind insisting she was lucky, just so lucky. This didn’t feel like luck. It took her a moment to recognize the tall, gorgeous black woman approaching from the other end of the gallery. Before the name and personality clicked, the shape and quality of the woman’s eyes were familiar. Senna didn’t recognize Zurri; she recognized the same glint of fear, the same tenting of the brows that hinted at constant trepidation.
“My hair is falling out,” Senna blurted.
Zurri’s eyes widened and she laughed, craning her neck back. “Good morning to you, too, Senna.”
A dog and a young man blew like a dust devil into the gallery, the fluffy golden dog somehow running and performing circles at the same time. Han. Again the delay, the hiccup in her brain like a fog of sleep lifting before each individual thought could become clear to her. Shapes in the mist.
“You here to see Dr. Colbie about your hair?” Zurri asked. Senna noticed her feeling along her own scalp then, but she kept her hair shaved down close to the skin, so any fallout would be far less noticeable.
“Yes, I think I must be really stressed,” Senna sighed. “Or maybe it’s from the treatment. Do you think it could be a side effect?”
“Senna, I can hardly figure out what day it is, you’re asking the wrong person.”
She frowned. “I don’t like this. None of it seems . . . normal. Isn’t this awfully extreme?”
“We’re on a moon base getting our bad memories wiped clean,” Zurri pointed out. “What part of that sentence seems normal to you? This is what we signed up for.”
But her voice trailed off, and Senna heard the note of confusion in her voice. “Is it? Why are you here to see the doctor?”
“Found a bruise on my neck,” Zurri replied. “Which . . . okay, it’s not normal.” She shot a furtive glance in every direction, then leaned down, lowering her voice. “This morning I woke up and couldn’t remember where I was. I asked for all the booze to be taken out of my room, too. Does that sound like me?”
“We’re here to get our memories wiped clean,” Senna teased back with a sigh. “You’re asking the wrong person.”
“Shit, good point.” Zurri lowered her voice even further. “Did you get the alert on your VIT about verboten subjects?”
“Verboten?”
“Forbidden.” Zurri gestured her along impatiently.
“Oh. Yes. What about it?” Senna asked. Before she found the courage to pick herself up off the floor in Paxton’s room and clean up her tearstained face, her VIT had warned her not to discuss Han’s family, and to avoid any mention of fire, stalking or assistants to Zurri. Those seemed like easy enough subjects to avoid until they were well enough to leave the base.
Han and the dog sprinted together out of the gallery and back into the court
yard, vanishing into the leafy pathways. Had the dog always been there?
“I . . . I sort of want to know what it is they said about me.” Zurri licked her lips. “What you’re not supposed to mention. I think I want to know.”
“That defeats the whole purpose of being here,” Senna replied. “If we’re going to experience all these awful side effects, it had better be worth it, right? Why would you want to undo the treatment?”
Zurri swore under her breath and glanced away. “I don’t know. I just . . . I guess it’s human nature. Can’t leave well enough alone, right? I prod at things. I’m a prodder. Listen, this one model I know, she hated her lips, wanted them totally redone. It started with fillers and injections, then getting the shape changed with tattooing, more injections, and more. She wound up with a dead girl’s lips sewn on her face, a total transplant, and she hated those, too. It ruined her career, ruined her. All over lips, and she had looked just fine to start. Beautiful, even. Not perfect but indelibly her.”
“What are you saying?” asked Senna, wondering what was taking Dr. Colbie so long to notice them waiting outside the door.
“I’m saying a correction can go too far, it can become an obsession, and before you know it, one minor change is you in a shady Old Manhattan clinic with a corpse’s lips sewn all crooked on your face. Did I ask for too much?” Zurri inhaled through her nose, gazing up at the ceiling. “Is this my Old Manhattan? I can do that, I can go too far. Maybe I asked them to erase too much.”
“Or maybe it wasn’t you,” Senna murmured.
“How do you mean?”
“Crap.” She ducked her head, trying to swerve behind Zurri as she caught sight of Paxton up on the walkway above the gallery. If she was so lucky, then why did the sight of him make her entire body clench? You woke up in his bed, what the hell is wrong with you? Maybe it was just nerves. She didn’t know love, she didn’t know romance. And yet . . .
Some movements are just intrinsic to the body. Who had told her that? His face must have been erased for a reason.
Predictably, Paxton had spotted them, waving, changing course to walk in their direction. “I don’t want to see him right now. I have to . . . Just tell him something. Tell him I had to do something. Anything.”
Zurri pivoted to watch Senna scurry away. “Why don’t you want to see him? He’s nice enough. He might know about your side effects.” She frowned, going on and on while Senna slipped away. “Do you know what? I’m having a recovered memory of him . . . which is ironic, considering what we’re doing here. I think we met at a party maybe. He made some dumb crack about being the smartest man in the world and we all just stared at him. So awkward.”
“Just . . . make up an excuse! I’m sorry! Thank you! I’m sorry!” Senna tried not to run, but just a glimpse of Paxton sent a flurry of nervous tingles down her spine. She couldn’t look at him, and he called something she couldn’t quite make out as she followed Han and Lula, escaping into the courtyard. She blinked, and lightning flashed across the backs of her eyes, white-hot forks like veins stamped into her vision as she dove behind a tree and tried to catch her breath.
This isn’t right.
“This is your life, worry-free!” It was . . . her own voice, coming from somewhere deeper along the path. Senna dodged out from behind the tree and followed the sound, hugging herself. It grew louder as she took the blue-and-white-mosaic path to the right, along a tight bend and into a more private grove of sheltering fronds, with two benches placed across from each other, nestled between statues. A pair of lovebirds cooed in a tree above the left bench, where Han was engrossed in a vid playing on a loop, hovering above his VIT. At his feet, the fluffy dog rested her chin on the ball between her paws.
Senna clamped both hands over her mouth, watching herself smile into the camera, wearing a loose white crop top she didn’t recognize and tan pants cinched at the waist, her hair swinging cheerfully around her face as she leaned casually against a statue pedestal.
“Hi, I’m Senna Slate. I’m sure you recognize me, most people do. But I didn’t want to be known just for my pain, who would? Therapists and psychologists told me I was a lost cause, but I have a new start and a new life now, thanks to the LENG program at the Dome on Ganymede. The state-of-the-art technology here developed by Paxton Dunn and administered by a team of qualified MSC professionals can help you overcome even the most traumatic experiences.” It had looped back to the part she heard through the leaves. On the vid, Senna grinned and lifted up her hands, gesturing to the Dome ceiling as the camera panned to take in a broader view of the facility. “This is your life, worry-free!”
“What the fuck?”
Han shrieked, freezing as she stomped up to the bench, the dog nosing curiously at her ankles. “Whoa! I’m sorry . . . You’re not supposed to see this. I mean, duh. Obviously. Shit. I’m so, so sorry, it’s just Paxton uploaded the new ads he finished and he asked me to watch yours and give him ideas. He values my feedback, you know?”
“You’re fourteen!” she screamed, lashing out at the vid, her hand passing right through it.
Han’s mouth fell open and he went pale, staring down at his lap while the vid fizzled out, leaving them both in stunned silence. “I didn’t make it,” he said quietly.
“I don’t remember saying those things!” Senna balled up her hands into fists. “I wouldn’t say that! I wouldn’t . . . I don’t . . .” She pressed those fists into her eyes, grinding. “What is happening to me?”
“Don’t cry! Hey . . . I’m really sorry, please don’t cry,” Han pleaded. “Listen, okay? Hey, listen. I’ll tell Paxton to delete the footage. I know I’m only fourteen, but he wants me to stay on and be his apprentice. If that’s the case, then he should respect what I say. I’m sure he would get rid of this if he knew it would upset you so much. He . . . he really cares about you, Senna.”
She almost raked her hands through her hair but didn’t want any more of it to fall out. “I don’t care about him! I don’t know him!” That vid of her was proof enough. Something didn’t add up. Why would she not remember filming it? How well could the treatment be working if only fragments of her mind remained? “You shouldn’t stay here with him, Han. You should go back to your family.”
“I don’t know why you guys keep saying that.” Han grimaced, standing. Lula rearranged herself to settle beside the bench, away from all the shuffling feet. “There’s nobody out there for me, I don’t have a family.”
Senna didn’t care about the instructions she had been given. Would it hurt him? Would he even believe her? She brought her VIT up to eye level and dove into her recent messages, bringing up the advisory from that morning.
“Look.” She pointed. “We’re not supposed to discuss your family, right? Then that means you have one.”
“Maybe they’re dead,” Han pointed out, his lower lip bending. “M-Maybe that’s why I’m here and why I want to forget about it. You’re not supposed to do this! You’re sabotaging me!”
As she pointed at her messages, another appeared, this one from Zurri.
I told him you were PMSing and needed to lie down but he said you weren’t? Kinda weird. Anyway, he’s still looking for you.
Senna let out a frustrated groan and tore at the VIT strapped to her wrist. “This is how he can find me, right? This thing tracks us.”
“If you have the implant—”
“I don’t. Thank God.” Senna didn’t know why she lacked the implant, only that she did. That knowledge still remained, but not how she had avoided getting one. Blinking, she saw a flash of a screen, a form she was filling out on a tablet, something about VIT implant policies interfering with her religious beliefs. Was she religious? It’s all gone, he’s taken everything from me. And for what? Some rosy advertisements?
“Good riddance.” Throwing the VIT down on the path, she hoped it broke. “Don’t tell him you saw me.”
“But—” She saw Han kick her discarded VIT into the bushes.
“I have to write down what I know, what I remember.” Senna picked a path, and took it, and hoped it was the right one. “I can’t let him take any more.”
27
Dozens of Earth vids had taught Han what getting called into the “principal’s office” meant, but this was his first time really getting the flavor of that feeling. Those were all pre–space migration vids, when kids and teenagers crowded into nondescript brick buildings and shoved one another into lockers, ate in a shared cafeteria and did their homework on paper.
Fly casual, he told himself, wondering if whistling would be too much and give him away. Like your namesake.
“I know you saw her,” Paxton was saying. Behind his spectacles, his eyes drifted off toward where Han had hidden her VIT. “The camera feeds will pick her up, but you can just tell me what happened.” He turned back to face Han, a mild, half-disappointed frown tugging at his lips. “She’s not in trouble, neither are you.”
Han didn’t know where his loyalties lay exactly. There was nothing wrong with Senna per se, but something weird and squidgy happened behind his eyes whenever she came near, like he couldn’t quite see her correctly. Interference, he thought. By-product of the therapy? Was something about her changed or erased from his memories? That would explain the dodgy feeling he got around her. On the other hand, Paxton had given him a dog, and offered him a place to stay, giving him the opportunity of a lifetime. A dream handed to him on a silver platter.
“Maybe she should be in trouble,” Han muttered.
Paxton laughed through his nose. “Oh?”
It was easier to look down at Lula, so he watched his own hand stroke across her forehead and then outline her bushy eyebrows with his thumb. “What happened with my family?” he asked. “Senna said . . . she said I have a family, but that can’t be right. I don’t remember them.”
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