Among These Bones (Book 3): Maybe We'll Remember

by Luzzader, Amanda

  As we passed through the final mountain pass that lay between us and our fate, we adopted a plan that Chase and Arie accepted with no small skepticism. I thought it might work, but even to me it seemed too simple, too direct. We agreed that we’d need to be flexible, and we formulated alternate plans B through F, but even though I knew I was flying mostly by the seat of my pants, I just wanted to get there. I just wanted to see if it might be true.

  A prickly dread stole over me when, as we crested a low rise along a back road in the foothills, I saw the dark spot of an Agency troop carrier cruising along a highway down in the valley. Beyond that lay the sprawling Zones gray and grimy looking. I felt a heavy but familiar knot forming in my gut.

  When night fell, we were creeping along the outer protective fencing of the Agency infirmary. We were all familiar with how easy it was to move in and out of Zone obstructions—they simply didn’t have the personnel to patrol the entire rambling perimeter effectively, but getting into the infirmary was a different matter, a piece of the plan I thought would either go very smoothly or disastrously. During my time with Gary, the infirmary sometimes seemed to be heavily guarded, but there were other times when there was hardly anyone there at all.

  “Here’s where I find out if I’m a genius or a damned fool,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

  Chase and Arie didn’t agree out loud, but even just their body language told me they were thinking the same thing.

  “So, if I understand correctly,” said Chase, “the first step was us cutting this fence, then you go up to a side-door in a secure Agency facility and try Gary’s old access code on the keypad to a building that he wasn’t authorized to enter.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s the plan.”

  “And you think the door is just going to—open. Just like that. It won’t set off some alert? And what if Gary’s code doesn’t work at all? And what if this is all just a trap anyhow?”

  “We’ve been over this,” I sighed. “If he thought I was gonna be captured or killed in a raid he’d order, he’d have no reason to lie.”

  Chase squeezed his lips together and shook his head slowly.

  “Chase, you weren’t there,” I said. “I really think Davey was being honest with me.”

  “Davey,” spat Chase.

  Arie laughed quietly.

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, guys, I may not remember the overwhelming majority of my own birthdays, or what I used to do for a living, but I know that I have become very adept at detecting deception. Besides, what do you want to do? Change the plan now? Here?”

  “She’s right, Chase,” said Arie. “This is the plan. Let’s do this. I’ve been wanting to take them down for so long I can practically taste it.”

  “I should have said something earlier. You’re okay with this, kid?”

  “If her gut feeling is all we’ve got to go on, I guess I trust it,” said Arie. “Yeah. I’m okay with it.”

  “I think it’s wishful thinking,” said Chase.

  “You’re outvoted, hon,” I said. “This is happening, with or without you.”

  Chase blinked slowly and made a small nod. “We’ll cover you from here,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, you know what to do.”

  Chase drew his pistol and Arie produced a pair of bolt cutters. He clipped a gash into the heavy chain-link and then pulled on the fencing until there was a void for me. We’d returned Steele’s pistol, but he’d given me a snub-nose revolver that fit perfectly into my pocket. I checked to see that it was ready and then slipped through the torn fencing. As I set off across the expanse of brown dead lawn between the fence and the door, I looked back and saw Chase gazing at me from his place in the gloom.

  I thought the first time I’d kissed Chase was shortly after we left Lotus burning, crumbling, but I found out later that wasn’t true. I’d asked Chase about it once, and he smiled slyly, but then shook his head. He said it didn’t matter. It was in the past. But it mattered to me. How could anyone be okay with special moments like that just being erased? Even bad times had their own special place in our hearts, and forgetting them, letting them drift away like autumn leaves on the current of a stream simply wasn’t an option for me. I had no doubt that we’d make many new memories, but what about the past? Whenever I had ever said anything like this to Ruby, she would call me to attention.

  “Stay in the present, Al,” she’d bark. “The grass ain’t never greener.”

  But I rankled at her admonishments. Remembering Arie as a little boy? A baby? I’d risk almost anything for that. And what if Chase was there, too? What price was too great? If I could feel such excitement and joy over just the idea of it, how much grander would it actually be to experience it? The best part was, it wouldn’t just be for me. We’d share it with everyone. We’d get to find out who Ruby really was. Chase. Woolly. And everyone else. I was just as excited for them as I was for me. What greater way to show my appreciation and gratitude to the people who meant the most to me than to give them their memories back? To give them their lives.

  I ran through the half-light toward the door and the keypad that just might unlock many lifetimes of memory. It was only fifty yards. When I’d cut the distance to forty yards, I felt a thrill of victory. When only twenty yards remained, I knew the plan would work.

  When I was just ten yards away, the door opened and two people stepped out.

  I dove onto my belly and held still. Surely they would see me.

  It was a man and a woman. They looked around suspiciously. How could they have detected my approach? The man seemed to look directly at me, but his gaze passed over me, and he made no sign that he’d seen me.

  Then the man and woman turned to one another and embraced, sharing a long kiss.

  Agency goons in love, I thought.

  They stood just outside the door and kissed for what seemed like an hour. I was starting to shiver on the cold ground. They talked quietly, laughed, and then kissed more. Then the man looked around again, and again I thought he looked directly at me.

  They walked away together.

  I let out the long breath I’d been holding, but I waited there on the ground for what I guessed was another ten minutes before I finally started to get to my feet. When I did I felt a presence coming up behind me. It was Chase, and Arie was behind him.

  “I couldn’t wait back there for something like that to happen again,” he whispered. Then he kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s do this then.”

  We crouched down and scurried over the remaining lawn to the door. Chase and Arie had their guns drawn. Chase nodded at the keypad, signaling me to enter the code.

  “It’s not going to work,” Chase said under his breath. “It’s just too easy. That door is not going to open.”

  8-2-3-5-Enter

  And just like that the door clicked unlocked. I pushed the door handle, and we were in.

  CHAPTER 36

  The interior was a long hallway with many old metal doors painted with blue paint. Again I felt the prickly dread of returning to this terrible place. But my purpose drove me ahead. The ceiling was dropped-in with ugly tiles and the lighting was that especially grim yellow-gray fluorescent. They buzzed and flickered and a couple moths that came in with us bounced against the lights.

  Chase stopped us just inside the door, as if expecting a rush of guards. But after a full minute, nothing had happened. No one had appeared. No alarms had sounded. The only sound was that of the lights and the bumping moths.

  So far, it was just as Bellington said it would be.

  We walked down the hallway quietly.

  There were camera pods here and there, but Bellington had told me they were poorly monitored at night, and sometimes they weren’t working at all.

  I counted the doors. One. Two. Three. Four. Then fifth on the left. Another keypad.

  It wasn’t a struggle to remember the numbers. I memorized them practically the moment they passed Bellington’s lips, like they were engraved on my brain. But still, I�
��d repeated them to him several times to be sure I knew them and later I wrote them down. The paper was rolled up in my pocket. I didn’t need to look at it, but my fingers shook as I pressed the buttons. Not from fear. It was pure exhilaration.

  0-5-2-1-Enter.

  Again the door unlocked, and we moved into a darkened room.

  “I don’t like this,” said Chase. “It’s too easy.”

  Arie turned on a flashlight and shone it around the room.

  “Look, there’s a camera in here, too,” he said.

  It was indeed a lab or depository of some sort. There were an industrial sink and marble workbenches. There were shelves and cabinets of medical supplies and bottles of powders and pills.

  Bellington said the cabinets would be locked, but the key was under the sink, hanging from a nail up underneath out of sight. I knelt by the sink, opened the doors underneath it, and groped around inside.

  I found the key.

  Chase got a look of panic when I held it up to Arie’s light. His composure seemed to deteriorate a little more after each small success.

  I unlocked the cabinet and opened it. Bellington had told me what to look for. A small, gray plastic case that looked like a first-aid kit.

  “It’s here,” I said. “Just like he told me it would be.”

  “I think we should abort,” growled Chase. “This is a trap.”

  “I agree,” said Arie. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  But it was all just as Bellington had said. I set the case on the workbench and opened it. Hypodermic syringes. Small vials. As Bellington had said, the liquid in the vials had a slightly amber tint.

  “Al,” said Chase, looking out the small window in the door. “We leave. Now.”

  “But it’s here, Chase. It’s all right here.”

  “Then bring it with you, but let’s go. Now.”

  “Chase, think about it. If this was a trap, they’d already have us. They never dreamed we’d make it here, never dreamed we’d make it this far. If they did, they’d already be lined up outside this door with twenty armed thugs. It’s not a trap!”

  Chase’s face was red. He breathed a frustrated sigh. Arie looked cagey, the whites of his eyes flashing. They came to my side.

  I picked up a syringe, and then I picked up a vial.

  CHAPTER 37

  “You’re not using that here,” said Chase. “No way. I insist, Al. What if it knocks you out for three days? Like the wiping serum? What if it is a wiping serum? There’s just numbers and codes on these vials. It could be anything.”

  “He’s right,” said Arie, placing a hand on my arm. “We should get out of here.”

  I returned the vial and syringe to the gray medical case. We left the lab room and headed down the hall toward the door. I held the case tightly in my hands.

  But as we hurried down the hall and toward the exterior door, we saw the bobbing beams of flashlights, headlamps. People were approaching. We stopped and watched, frozen and silent. Then we heard their voices, a lot of them. The flashlight beams grew brighter. They were getting closer.

  “Follow me,” growled Chase.

  We turned around and ran further into the building.

  As we sprinted down the dark halls, we heard them enter. A door thrown open, banging, echoing. There were barked commands and more slamming doors. They were quartering the building, searching each room, moving in. Shouts of “move up!” and “clear!” clamored sharply down the hallways to us, even though I thought we were getting farther away. We turned one corner and then another, running almost blindly through the lightless hallways. We came to an open foyer and a row of glass doors that led outside.

  “There!” hissed Chase. “Come on!”

  We ran toward the door, Arie out front, then Chase, and then me. Chase glanced back to see if I was falling behind. I gave him my “keep-going-I’m-fine” look.

  But then we both almost blundered into Arie, who’d stopped short of the exterior doors. In another instant we saw why—three more armed men stood outside the doors in the light of the lamps outside. They hadn’t seen us—it was brighter outside than inside, and the men only stood there looking bored. We backed slowly away from the doors and were just turning to run again when one of the men outside must have caught sight of our movement. He pointed. The others looked. They all rushed toward the doors.

  We practically flew down a new corridor. The men from outside would enter slowly, I thought, their weapons ready. Chase was trying doorknobs as we fled. They seemed to all be locked.

  “In here!” he said, at last finding an unlocked door. “Maybe we can find a window! C’mon!”

  We hustled inside. It looked like a small classroom. No windows, but there was another door.

  “You two, go through there,” Chase whispered, pointing at the other door. “Find a window. Bust it out.”

  “But—”

  “Now!” said Chase.

  “What about you?”

  He was already shoving a huge steel desk over to the door. We heard more shouting from the corridor. They hadn’t located us yet, but they were close.

  “I’m right behind you. I’ll block this door and follow you. Go! Hurry!”

  Arie tried the door. It opened.

  “Let’s go,” said Arie.

  I looked at Chase and our gazes locked. Arie looked at me and then Chase. We knew it was the end, but there wasn’t time to process it. I’m sure I was afraid, terrified, infuriated, but I didn’t feel it. And so we had this moment, a last look shared between the three of us to somehow say the things we had no time to say out loud. In that moment, we had to say everything about the way we felt about each other—all three of us. We loved each other. That is how it felt to me.

  I learned something. I learned that when death literally arrives at your door, you look at the people who have traveled with you, the people you’ve invited into your life, who have become your family, and the thing you are thinking is not what you will lose, but the reality of all that you have.

  So much, I thought. I have so much.

  “Arie!” snapped Chase in an urgent whisper. He was pulling a huge bookcase over to join the desk. “Get her out of here!”

  Arie nodded, and we went through the door.

  I had often thought of how Chase and I would grow old together. Even without our memories, and in the midst of the Agency chaos, I thought of being by his side for the rest of my days. Because that’s what you do with the people in your life. You see them day after day, and you assume they will always be there. And when I thought of death, I thought of it coming at the end of my life, after we’d escaped Agency tyranny, after I’d done all I’d wanted to do. When I reached that stage, I’d be ready to go, eager for my next adventure, whatever that might be.

  I never pictured it would end this way. There was no final embrace. No kiss. No tender words. Arie pulled my arm, trying to lead me. There were no windows here, either. Only another anonymous door. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t said goodbye.

  If I’d been able to, I’d have said three things to Chase. First, I’d have told him I was sorry. Sorry that my impatience and eagerness had led us here. I had no long-term memories, of course, but I had a feeling, a deep-seated hunch, that this was not the first time I’d been here before. Not this place, not this exact situation, but something like it. I wanted to tell Chase that I was sorry for not listening to him, for dragging us down into another disaster.

  And I would have told him thank you. Thank you for being a light in my life. Thank you for every moment we spent together. The times when we sat in the grass and ate wild strawberries. The times when we walked trails in the sunset. And for the times when we were fleeing and in danger. The good times and the bad.

  And finally, I would have tried, but probably failed, to tell Chase just how much I loved him. Not just to say “I love you,” but to explain it to him.

  Maybe it was because I was stunned or because everything happened so fast, but I didn’t even t
hink to say the words until Arie and I were engulfed by the darkness of the next room. I shouted, “I love you, Chase!”

  But it was too late. The door was shut. And if he heard me, I didn’t know.

  CHAPTER 38

  “Stay down,” Arie told me. “Stay low.” It was another classroom, almost identical to the last one. There were no windows here, but no other door, either.

  We heard muffled shouting and the sound of someone pounding on the door where Chase was. Soon they’d break through and capture us all.

  What was the point of it all? We couldn’t escape. Chase might buy us some time, but there was nowhere to go from here.

  Rachel most likely wanted us all dead. Would her soldiers kill us, or would they take us back to Rachel first?

  It didn’t matter. I pictured Chase with his gun drawn, coolly waiting for them to storm the room. Would he put up a fight? I thought maybe he’d surrender and maybe try to divert the troopers’ attention from us.

  He’d put up a fight, I decided. He wouldn’t make it easy for them.

  There came a great crash and then the back-and-forth blasts of exchanged gunshots. Guns firing indoors never sounded right to me. It was incredibly loud, but the sound was somehow too brief, unreal.

  I crouched with Arie and covered my ears and waited. They had killed Chase and would now kill Arie and me. I squeezed my eyes together as tears ran down my cheeks.

  And then all at once it was quiet.

  Arie and I exchanged a short glance, knowing what the silence must mean. Chase would not have surrendered, but, could he have slipped their noose? Could he have gotten away and made a run for it? I didn’t want to think about any other possibility.