“I think that in my past life I was something of an architect. That was why I went up into the building I told you about. It was there that I saw the ocean in both directions. It occurred to me that we might be on a peninsula, but the map at the railway station would have depicted that. If I had to guess the dimensions of this island, then I would say we’re on an island with a narrow northern region, a wide southern cape, with at least three peninsulas extending horizontally away from the western coast.”
“Then whoever built this city, and whoever caused its end, was here on this island,” Eight surmised.
“A city on an island,” Seven repeated in a wistful tone.
“Who picks somewhere like this?” Twenty balked at the idea of a city on an island, having silently rejoined the group. “Thanks to their bad municipal development, we’re out of food and out of shelter.”
“If it comes to it we can eat the artist first,” Null declared.
“Oh, ha ha ha. Don’t you have a building to go climb up?”
“I’m sure I could, but I wouldn’t risk it,” Null chuckled. “They’re forged from some type of molecularly enhanced titanium, I’m sure of it even though I don’t know how I know that. If I had to build a city like this in a place like this, I’d start with that material. It’s lightweight but strong and extremely resistant to the elements.”
“Then why wouldn’t you climb up?” Twenty wondered, confused by her elaborate detailing of Haven’s elemental makeup.
Null cleared her throat. “I bring it up because the building I surveyed showed horrible, and I mean awful, signs of metal fatigue.”
“Metal fatigue?” Seven queried.
“Metal can fatigue. It can wear out, weaken, and eventually just snap, tear, and burst on its own. But it’s very rare.”
“Why is that?”
“Because most buildings are not left standing long enough for their metal to fatigue to begin with. Let’s say you’re building a normal city. You erect buildings that last an average of sixty years, and that’s being generous, before someone else comes along, tears it down, and buildings something new to replace it. I mean, you’d have to build it, and then ignore it for years and years and years until metal fatigue would become a noticeable problem,” Null droned on, as if reciting a textbook. “But these buildings weren’t made from poor materials. They were forged from the best metals and resources that science…I guess I should say, the best materials that our science could bring us.”
Seven shook his head, lost.
Doubling down on her attempt to make sense of her knowledge to Seven and the others, Null continued, “If the average person used sticks to build their cities, our people came up with something that revolutionized the way buildings were built. They used the strongest metal they could make,” she brightened considerably, convinced that she’d boiled it down to layman’s terms. “For this fantastic type of titanium, that these buildings use, to fatigue so badly...” and again she gestured to the skyscrapers to drive home her point. “Let me make this as simple to understand as possible: the metal says that whatever left this place abandoned occurred hundreds of years ago.”
Seven stopped moving.
“Hundreds of years ago?” he demanded.
“I can’t be sure without seeing the formulaic equations for this offshoot of titanium that was used, but my most mild estimates would say that the buildings are at least hundreds of years old.”
“Is it safe for us to be here?” Eight wondered, surveying the railway with a newfound anxiety.
“Of course. For the four of us this city would last, say, another thousand years or two.”
“Then we urgently need to get to the city’s center,” Eight wiped the indecision from her expression, her determination reinvigorating Null and Seven. Null imagined Twenty audibly rolling his eyes behind her. “We need to find out what happened here and why we survived it.”
“Survived it?” Null inquired, her curiosity piqued by Eight’s phrasing. “You mean that your memory was from when the city was occupied?”
“Yes. Wasn’t yours?” inquired Eight.
“No. My memory is from before the city even stood. I think I was helping to build it.”
“That’s not possible,” Twenty scoffed. “I mean, how would you have survived that long? You just said this city is hundreds and hundreds of years old. If you were there when they were building it, wouldn’t that make you incredibly old?”
“I’m not claiming that I can make sense of the situation,” Null defended herself, shrugging with indifference. “I’m telling you what I remember.”
“There!” Seven pointed, interrupting the conversation.
A web of railway lines and elevated roads began to converge. Pressing on, their path joined with dozens of other rail platforms until they merged into one elaborate transit station, with multitiered platforms and complicated stairwells. They wandered the darkened station, too hesitant to touch anything, until Null discovered the route to the main concourse. It was in ruins, in worse condition than anything she’d encountered yet. Whole sections of the ceiling were gone, the windows were blown out, and she deduced that the black smears on the floor were burns.
Narrating this aloud helped to ease the nerves of her traveling companions. Null suspected that Eight could piece the clues together well enough on her own, but Seven and Twenty were not as talented. Seven nodded, respectfully accepting the information. Twenty rolled his eyes and snorted, discarding the fate suffered by the building for weak assurances that they weren’t in mortal peril.
“I guess that’s what caused it,” Eight declared, having reached the entryway before the rest of the group. “This is the city center.”
Null regretted her decision to come to the city’s heart. For every untouched, neglected, and abandoned building across Haven she had managed to bring herself and three others to the only place that showed intense signs of warfare. A civic complex, largely demolished by an explosion from its center, greeted the visitors. The central building, visibly similar to an enormous disc, had crashed into the complex below.
“It looks like that building fell out of the sky,” Eight gestured at the lopsided building, petulantly sticking out of the ground.
“Fell from the sky?” Seven insisted. “None of the other buildings fly. How did that one do it?”
“Flying buildings, angry monsters, abandoned city...please, can’t we go see more of it?” Twenty drawled.
“What did the sign call this place?” Eight asked Null.
“The Voice. I assumed that it was their representative assembly. Their democratic stadium,” she conjectured, burdened by disappointment.
“I don’t think we’re going to find any records in there,” an embittered Seven rightly observed.
Overwhelmed by her failure, Null lamented, “I’m so sorry. I thought we might find answers here. I didn’t know about the monster, I didn’t know that it would look like this.”
Her voice cracked and her eyes reddened as the seriousness of their plight devoured her. Without records, they lacked information. That meant that they didn’t have any idea where to begin searching for food, shelter, or an escape from Haven. Their deaths, she concluded, were reasonably assured.
“We could always try the Great Library.”
Null, Eight, and Seven turned to face Twenty. He had begrudgingly issued the statement and from his defiant glare he regretted it.
“The Great Library?” Eight challenged him.
“It was on that big glowing sign you and Seven turned on, remember? I saw it,” he pointed at his eyes. “There’s a library due west of here.”
“You saw that and you didn’t bother mentioning it?”
“Would you have listened if I had?” Twenty challenged Eight.
A speechless Eight gestured for Twenty to lead the way. Gladly putting a healthy distance between himself and the three people that he, for once, held in his power, Twenty led them towards a western transit station. Deciding that
it was safe enough to speak without fear of him overhearing, Null asked, “Where’d you pick that one up?”
Eight’s answer was swift and disenchanted. “Apparently, an artist just had to survive the apocalypse.”
Chapter Four:
Timeless Knowledge
Giving up sounded better right now than it had this morning. Seven watched as the heatless sun began its downward arc, well past its prime. Though it illuminated the landscape of spires and roads, the air felt as chill and unwelcoming as it had at dawn. Eight’s pace kept her a few steps ahead of Seven and while he stared at the back of her head, he conceded that a few good things had happened across a horrible day.
He appreciated Null’s wealth of knowledge. And Twenty’s dark humor. His thoughts returned to Eight, who was something different entirely. Glancing down at his bandaged hand, willing the ache to go away, he wondered how it was possible that he felt as if they were lifelong friends after a matter of hours.
Eight’s persistence went unfazed by their worsening situation. She was determined to forge ahead and Seven committed to following her there, to keeping a wary eye over his shoulder on her behalf. As they had throughout the day, they carried on in silence. There was too much and too little to discuss. What else could be said about Haven, the great dead city? What else could be said about themselves, the amnesiacs that survived an extinction? What could they guess at or theorize about that wouldn’t make them sound insane?
At least two hours after they departed the wreckage of the complex called the Voice, they had trekked along a fifteen-lane highway to the brink of exhaustion. The silence that imposed itself on the group stemmed from weariness rather than annoyance, and only when Seven thought about calling for a rest did they see the first signs of the Great Library.
From their considerable distance the library was still a formidable sight. A circular building rose out of the center of a stone plaza, decorated with golden pillars that encircled it. It was intact and undamaged, enough to make Seven’s heart hammer wildly in his chest.
Everyone, Twenty included, shared a celebratory exchange at their arrival. For once, luck weighed in their favor. Seven opened his mouth to speak but the sound of his voice was cut off by another familiar noise.
The roar was so close that Seven knew the fight was over. Behind them, pieces of the highway erupted into the sky, propelled by the force of the monster breaking through the bottom of the road. The four survivors clustered together, unanimous in their acceptance of an unkind fate, watching the monster haul itself through the breach in the pavement.
A magnificent cloud of shimmering dust, a pale rust color, spilled out of the break in the middle of the road. It pooled and congealed, as fluid as water, coalescing into a singular body of airborne death. Specks of light flashed beneath its surface as the ground trembled, as if the cloud were stamping the road with a thousand heavy feet. Roaring triumphantly, the bulk of the monster rose above Seven and his companions. High above the heads of its prey, the monster issued a third, victorious, roar. It collapsed upon them, smashing into Seven and the others like a flood, drowning out the twilight in a jubilant attempt to murder them.
Somewhere in the sandstorm, Seven became aware of himself again. Yet his awareness was dimmed, restrained by the sensation that something was studying him. Scanning him. All the dark spots in his memory were occupied by an intrusive force that sought answers as eagerly as he had. Seven’s mind greeted the monster’s inquisition with images. Sporadic at first, nonsensical certainly. Flashes, sights, and sounds poured into his mind before Seven, emerging from the hazy fog of memory and time, found himself standing outside the Great Library while the luminous moon shone in the midnight sky.
He stood beside one of the golden pillars. Except that the pillar was a statue, a fairly realistic one, of a prominent individual whose name he did not know. Its polished surface was effulgent in the sparkling light coming from the surrounding towers. Haven, basking in a tenuous peace, reflected a fatigued beauty upon the statues. Though her southern streets had been forcibly evacuated, leaving two armies to peacefully intimidate one another, the city gladly accepted the truce.
If only for a time, as Ninety-Nine was apt at remarking. His skin tingled with the chill of the evening air and he rejected the notion of putting on the jacket that was slung over his shoulder. The location and the time of the clandestine meeting served to keep them out of sight and away from any recording devices. Bold, yet simple.
“Someone you know?” Twenty joked, the first to arrive.
“Nope. Just admiring the craftsmanship,” Seven answered.
“Sure you are. These things still creep me out. You know there’s a cult that comes out here and prays to the statues once a month? I watched it happen two months ago. There’s an elaborate ceremony with a torch and a history book,” he droned, staring up at the statue alongside Seven.
“You sound disappointed.”
“Obviously. It’s the most theatrical nonsense I’ve ever seen and I’m not involved? A travesty is what it is.” As tired as he was, Seven managed to laugh. His lack of sleep held his humor hostage but Twenty’s particular brand of comedy always got through. “I know Eight doesn’t enjoy being around you but that doesn’t mean you should avoid the rest of us,” Seven’s friend added, uncharacteristically serious.
“I’m not avoiding any of you.”
Twenty glared, forcing Seven to relent.
“I’m not trying to, at least. It’s hard for me,” Seven shook his head. “I feel like there are two of me in my head. And one of me—the one that says we knew each other in a past life—that half is unhappy with where things stand with Eight and I. That part of me wants to do terrible things to Tobias, to Haven, to everything that’s getting between us.” He left the confession linger in the air between them. “How is this possible? It shouldn’t be. It can’t be but it is, because I remember things that never happened, information nobody’s told me...” Seven, embittered by the topic rambled on. “I don’t need anyone to coddle me or to tell me things are going to be fine.”
“Seven...have you bothered to explain any of this to her?”
Alarmed that Twenty would even mention Eight, Seven scrambled to reply. “The day Eight gives half a care about me is the day the world ends,” Seven drawled. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to talk to me if I was her. I know for a fact that I first met Eight a few years ago, but ever since the memories started...” he exhaled, thoroughly beaten, “I feel as if I knew her once before. I feel like I was supposed to protect her, supposed to free her, and back then I think I did...”
“...but?” Twenty asked, hearing his friend stop short of saying it.
“That’s not the truth anymore. Is it?”
“You’re getting into some dangerous territory, my friend,” Twenty warned Seven. “To compare our situation to Haven’s rebels is extremely inaccurate.” Seven knew that Twenty would reject his perspective, his life being as inebriated by Haven’s high society as it was. “I think what you need is to relax a bit. Let the truce you helped to negotiate calm things down and take a break. Take a vacation.”
“Are vacations an option? If so, sign me up,” Null announced herself to Seven and Twenty, stepping into view. “For what it’s worth, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I agree with Twenty.”
“You should come to the exhibition next week. At the gallery! You could post some of your photos,” Twenty nudged him. “I told you about the exhibition, didn’t I?”
“If he hasn’t then you’re about to get bludgeoned with information,” Null warned Seven ruefully. “Don’t worry. I got my invitation. Five times,” she said to Twenty.
“Can you blame me for being thorough? Make sure you bring Nine with you,” he insisted. “I expect a full house.”
“I doubt the same can be said for tonight. I’m guessing that a quorum isn’t expected?”
“Just the five of us,” Seven nodded slowly, as if confessing to a crime.
“
I absolutely dread these meetings,” Null admitted with grim resignation.
“Why? They’re always efficient,” came another woman’s factual announcement, her voice the only indicator of her presence for a few moments more. Stepping out from behind one of the neighboring statues came Ninety-Nine, her undetectable entrance made possible by her slight frame and narrow build. Though she was smaller than everyone present, she was still taller than the average citizen of Haven. Her ability to move without drawing attention made Seven envious. “The five of us are three times as likely to be more sympathetic to the plight of the rebels and we typically reach a consensus at least sixty-four percent faster than when the twelve of us are assembled for a majority vote.”
“Majority voting wasn’t meant to be subjected to secretive meetings and midnight compromises,” Null protested.
“Why not? Our methods paved the way for the truce. We five decided to convince the others to vote Seven the power to negotiate with the rebels directly. On average, we are eighty-four percent more efficient when we decide on an agenda this way and convince the others to side with us later,” Ninety-Nine concluded, so fiercely confident in the authenticity of her statistics that she willingly put her argument to rest.
“Well what’s the agenda tonight?” Null asked, her irritability on full display.
“Tonight’s agenda is the same as it was before Seven convinced the two sides to stop killing each other,” insisted Eight, the last to arrive on the scene. She must have come directly from her workplace at the University—her white laboratory coat could be seen beneath her jacket and she grumpily stomped towards the assembly. Eight gave their surroundings the slightest indication of displeasure. None of the the twelve particularly enjoyed the Round of Heroes, which made it the perfect spot to convene in secret. Nobody would bother looking for them here.
Seven, whose concerted effort not to stare at Eight was failing miserably, turned his eyes skyward. Eight’s dismissive glare had already taken him in and cast him aside. Whatever conviction had guided him into orchestrating this meeting evaporated, the usual casualty of Eight’s furnace-like hatred.
Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition Page 6