Ugo stepped back. His knuckle was gashed and bleeding, and he was panting heavily, but he was grinning.
The grin wavered. A look crossed Ugo’s face, as if he were trying to remember something, then it vanished. He kicked Faller in the face.
Faller was gone for a moment, lost in pain, disoriented, not sure where he was, or what was happening.
“I’m going to beat you to death.” Ugo stood over him, hands on his hips. “I want you to be aware of what’s happening. You’re going to die right here in this grass.”
Faller touched his nose, which felt much too big and thick. It was numb on the outside, but pain raged deeper inside.
Ugo kicked him in the stomach, higher up this time. Faller felt a rib snap.
“There was a time when…” Ugo trailed off, his mouth forming an O, his eyebrows clenched.
“You’re forgetting something, Ugo,” Faller said. He waited for Ugo to catch on, but Ugo just stood there, his face pinched in concentration. “Fine. You’ll…” Faller trailed off, the thought he’d formed vanished. There was a fizzing/popping sensation in his head, as if he were feeling each individual memory as it was extinguished.
“What am I forgetting?” Ugo asked, his tone almost pleading.
“I’m not going to tell you.” The truth was, Faller couldn’t remember what he was going to say, but he wasn’t going to tell Ugo that. He hated Ugo. Although at the moment he couldn’t remember why.
Ugo turned to one of the soldiers, held out his hand. The soldier put a crowbar in it.
“Hang on, I’ll tell you,” Faller said.
Ugo waited.
Faller strained to remember what he was about to tell Ugo. It was something he’d done, something Ugo wouldn’t like. It was so hard to think, though. Something was wrong with him. Something—
“The blackout virus. You’re forgetting the blackout virus.”
Faller could see the wheels turning in Ugo’s head. “You released it? Here?”
It felt as if the back of Faller’s head had vanished, replaced by inky blackness. Faller reached up, pressed his fingers against the back of his head to make sure it was still there.
It was.
“I’m bringing a hundred fifty copies of you up to speed in astrophysics,” Ugo said. “At the pace they’re going, in two years they’ll know as much about … something … as you knew. Then they’ll put their heads together and—” Faller could see the thought get away from Ugo as he pressed a palm to his forehead, trying to concentrate. “Goddamnit, you little fuck.”
The big man swung the crowbar at Faller’s face. Faller raised his hands to ward off the blow, caught the brunt of it on his fingers. The next blow landed on his kneecap. Then his thigh. His hip. His ribs again, the pain blinding.
He wrapped his arms around his head and steeled himself for the next blow. The pain was blinding, excruciating. When the next blow didn’t come, he looked up.
The big man stood over him holding the crowbar with the most peculiar expression on his face.
“Where was I?” the big man asked. “I—” He licked his lips, looked at the crowbar. “Was I hitting you?”
“No.” It seemed the safest answer. “Why would you hit me?”
“Him, yes,” a woman in a uniform said, pointing. “He’s—”
“Because you—” The big man dragged his hand through his thinning hair. “It was something. You did something to me. You took something.”
The pain was terrible. Intolerable.
What was happening to him? Then he remembered: blackout virus. He was being erased. Soon there would be nothing left. Was there anything left now? He closed his eyes, tried to remember something. Anything.
“I was falling. I remember that.” He was falling through the sky, the endless sky, toward a thin woman with black hair. He loved her.
The crowbar thunked to the ground. The big man clapped his hands over his ears.
Something was wrong. Had they been in an accident? Were they sick?
54
CHIRPING WOKE him. Stabbing, burning, throbbing pain radiated from so many places in his body he couldn’t focus on any one. He’d been in some sort of accident. Maybe he’d fallen.
He peeled open one eye, expecting to find himself in a hospital bed. Instead he was lying in the grass, surrounded by other people.
He waited for memory to follow, for reminders of why he was badly hurt, who these people were, but nothing came.
The chirping was coming from a thin metal rectangle lying in the grass near him.
“Do you know me?” a voice asked.
Slowly, gently, he got to his hands and knees, tried to rise. Stabbing, agonizing pain shot through his knee and he dropped back into the grass.
“Do you know me?” the man repeated.
“No.” The chirping stopped.
There was another man nearby who looked exactly the same as the first: sandy-brown hair, a roundish face. He had an A on the sleeve of his shirt. The other man had a C. “Do you know either of us?” Faller asked him.
“No,” the man said.
The standing man, C, frowned. “How can you not know each other? You’re brothers or something. You look exactly alike.”
Slowly, gingerly, he pointed at himself. The pain in his ribs doubled. “I look like him? So do you.” He looked around. There was a building nearby, all glass and steel. Other buildings nearby. Nothing was familiar. He craved something familiar to stave off the awful lost feeling he had.
Other people were walking around, speaking to each other in urgent tones. They all looked terribly confused and scared.
A click behind him made his shoulders clench. He turned. His twin with a C on his sleeve was holding up a rifle, examining it.
“It’s loaded,” C said.
“We must have been fighting someone. Maybe they did this to us,” a big man said. He had a bruise on his cheek, a drooping, slightly swollen left eye.
Maybe there was something in his pockets that would give him a clue to who he was. He checked them, and found three photographs. They were of children of varying ages with bronze-colored skin and black hair.
The big guy was standing over him. “Maybe they’re your family.”
Seeing what he was doing, the other men went through their own pockets. A had a half-empty pack of gum, two keys on a ring. C had an identical key ring and a pen.
“Are those your children?” the big man asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Amnesia. That’s the word for this,” A said.
The word sounded strange, like it was the first time he’d ever heard it, yet the man was right. That was the right word.
The thin rectangle started chirping again. He picked it up, held it in his palm. “Phone?” The word sizzled in his mind like he was giving birth to it.
All three men nodded. “You talk to people on it,” C said.
“How?” He turned it over, looking for buttons, but it didn’t have any. It stopped chirping.
“We should find food and water,” the big man said.
55
HE NEEDED something to drink, but the distance between his cot and the sink was a thousand miles to his eye—the one that wasn’t swollen shut.
Pain. It was his whole world.
A woman was shouting outside, her voice muffled. The sound drew closer. He wanted to go to the door to see what the commotion was, but that, like the glass of water, would mean more pain.
Of course he had to get the water sooner or later. Maybe he should get it over with, and see who was shouting, and what they were shouting about, while he was up.
He swung his leg over, pushed himself into a sitting position, wincing from the stabbing pain in his ribs and knee. Grasping the broom handle he leaned on when he walked, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered to the door.
“Faller?” a woman was calling. She was jogging beside a woman who looked exactly like her, both of them looking all around. They we
re skinny, green-eyed, freckled. He hadn’t noticed them before, which was odd, because he thought he’d met just about everyone in the world over the past few days. One of his look-alikes was following a few paces behind them.
One of the women spotted him, and stopped short. “What number was on your shirt?”
“Excuse me?”
“On the first day. What number was on the sleeve of your shirt?”
He looked at the floor. The shirt was lying where he’d dropped it when he discovered clean ones in a drawer of the room he chose.
“Two.”
The woman’s face lit up. She raced toward him. “Faller. Oh, my God.” She grasped his arm and leaned in to study his face, hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God. How did you get like this?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman wrapped her arms around him. Faller hissed through his teeth, grasped her arms. “I could really use a hug right now, I admit it, but it hurts too much.”
The other woman, who was hovering a few feet away, said, “We need to get you out of here.”
“Out of where?”
The woman who’d tried to hug him touched his arm gently. “We’re your friends. We know what happened to you, and we’ll tell you, but right now we have to get you and a few other people off this world. Bad people are coming.”
He fought back tears of relief. The thought of having friends who wanted to help him was overwhelming. “Do you know my name?”
She let him go. “You’re Faller. I’m Storm, that’s Melissa, and that handsome devil over there is One-Thirty-one.” She pointed at his look-alike.
“Faller.” He liked the sound of it. He didn’t think much of his face, but he liked his name.
“Can we save the introductions for the ride?” One-Thirty-one said.
Storm smiled. “He’s our ride.”
“Sure, that’s all I am to you. A means of transportation,” One-Thirty-one said. “Once we’re safe you’ll probably try to shoot me again.”
Laughing, Storm put a hand on Faller’s shoulder. “Can you walk?”
As she led him away, she explained what had happened. He wasn’t surprised to learn he and Storm were in love, but his mind reeled when Storm went on to explain that he and Melissa were divorced. And that was just the beginning.
56
FALLER WATCHED the ground approach, the whine of the aircraft deafening.
“This is definitely it.” Melissa studied the landscape through a window. “I knew it was five or six islands directly up from where I was dropped off. We were in a hurry to get hidden, so we ended up clustered together.”
“Finally,” Ugo said. “I’m so airsick I’m not sure I’ll ever feel normal again.”
Faller studied the big man’s profile. It was hard to grasp that they’d been mortal enemies. He looked like a pleasant enough fellow.
It was a pretty world, with two lakes and a lot of trees in the center, the rest of the land cut up into parcels with houses on them.
When One-Thirty-one swung the stairs into place, Melissa went out first, glancing this way and that, rifle pointed at the ground, as a crowd gathered.
“We’re looking for a man named Harry,” Melissa called. “This tall.” She held her hand out a bit higher than the top of her own head. “Asian.”
“He’s probably at home,” a grey-haired woman said. “Who are you?”
“We’re—” Melissa hesitated, cast about for the right words.
“We’re the good guys,” One-Thirty-one said. Under his breath, he added, “At least, I’m a good guy. The jury’s still out on you.”
“Shut up,” Melissa said. “I may still shoot you.”
A contingent of locals led Faller—who was still getting accustomed to his crutches—Storm, Penny, and Melissa to Harry’s house, which backed onto one of the lakes. Some children had run ahead, and as Faller and his companions approached the house a man came barreling down the street, laughing and screaming like a lunatic. Melissa had told Faller they were friends, so he tucked one crutch under his arm and held out his hand to shake. Harry just kept coming, arms open.
He might have plowed right into Faller if Storm hadn’t stepped between them. “Gentle, gentle. He’s injured.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God, I can’t believe it!” Harry kissed Faller on the forehead. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Don’t take it personally. I don’t remember anyone.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.” Harry nodded sympathetically. He went and hugged Storm, and Melissa.
“You’ll never guess what we have on our aircraft,” Melissa said.
Harry tilted his head. “Tons of food, I hope. Vodka would be nice. Maybe some Xanax? I’d kill for a Xanax.”
Melissa waved her hands at him. “Think big. What one thing would you most want us to have with us?”
Harry frowned, thinking. Then his eyes got huge. “No. Seriously? You got it? Seriously?”
“Can we use it? We can’t go back to Peter’s lab—Elba is in control there. Are there other places we can go where you can find the equipment you need?”
“Absolutely. Just find me an R-1 university with a decent physics department. UNC Chapel Hill. UVA.”
“We also have Peter’s notes,” Melissa said.
Harry clutched his chest. “Seriously?”
“Is there any chance we can fix this mess?”
Harry considered. “It’ll take time—years—because God knows, we’ve learned our lesson about rushing things. I don’t know. It’s possible.”
57
MELISSA WAS standing by the cargo door, staring out at empty blue sky, one hand on the wall. She went on staring as Faller joined her.
“You look sad. The worst parts are over, you know.”
Still, she didn’t look at him. “It was supposed to be you and me who ended up together, not you and one of my duplicates.” She sighed. “It makes sense, though. She’s me without the past. You’re you without the past. It’s like when we first met.”
The words surprised Faller. Since they’d gotten divorced, he’d assumed Melissa didn’t like him much. “I’ll be the first to admit I’m still getting a grasp on all of this, but I’m not the original Peter—the one you met in high school, right?”
Melissa sighed. “You insisted you were. You told me I was getting hung up on bodies and being too literal-minded.”
Peter pointed at One-Thirty-one. “So how am I different to you from that guy over there?”
Melissa glanced at One-Thirty-one. “We have a shared past. Mostly a bad one filled with pain, but we fought Ugo together.”
“Aren’t you getting hung up on bodies again? I mean, either you’re willing to accept that I’m just a continuation of the original Peter, or you’re not. And if you are…” Faller pointed at One-Thirty-one again. “So is he.”
Noticing Faller pointing, One-Thirty-one raised his eyebrows, then jokingly looked over his shoulder before pointing at himself in a “Who, me?” gesture.
“Look at him,” Faller said. “He’s in love with you. When a Peter looks at a Melissa, he can’t help but love her. We need to locate all the Melissas, and introduce them all to Peters.”
Melissa burst out laughing. At the sound of her laughter One-Thirty-one glanced her way again.
“I’m serious. We’re meant to be together. Look at him. He loves you. We’re all in love with every one of you. Every damned one of us.”
Melissa leaned over and kissed Faller’s cheek. “And I love every damned one of you, too. Just—” She shook her fist in mock frustration. “Think before you jump.”
“I’ll try.” It was hard to learn from your mistakes when you didn’t remember making them. At least now he knew what most of them were. Maybe that was enough.
58
THEY HOVERED a thousand feet above the world, which was packed with towering buildings on one end, punctuated by one skyscraper that seemed much too tall to stay upright.
&nbs
p; “This has to be it,” Penny said.
Storm pointed. “There’s the building you parachuted from.”
He eyed the distance between the building and the nearest edge of the world. How had he ever managed to make it that far? He wished he could remember.
As Storm took the Harrier down, Faller watched the upturned faces, the shock and wide-eyed wonder of the people in the streets.
They set down at the foot of the skyscraper that had started all of this.
A rumble went through the gathering crowd as Faller stepped out. “Faller. It’s Faller.” It made him sad, that he didn’t remember them.
“Does anyone know where I can find Daisy?” he called.
A teenaged boy broke away from the crowd and ran off.
“He’s going to fetch her,” an old man shouted.
They waited expectantly for him to say something.
“I guess you’re surprised to see me back here.”
Murmurs of assent rolled through the crowd.
“Well, I’m surprised to be here. I never expected to make it back. The important thing is, I’m bringing good news. From here on out, things are going to get better. There’s going to be enough food. Plus medicine, and electricity. People to teach you how to plant crops—”
“Faller!” A young, brown-skinned girl pushed through the crowd, launched herself into his arms.
“Daisy.” She was nothing but skin and bones. Not starving, but not far off.
She looked at him, eyes wide. “You died. I saw you.”
“You saw me fall. I didn’t die.”
“Hello, Daisy,” Storm said.
“This is Storm,” Faller said.
“Hello, Storm.” Daisy looked her up and down, eyes wide. “You’re the woman in Faller’s picture. You’re so clean.”
“Thanks.” Storm laughed. “We’re going to get you clean as well. Would that be okay?”
“Oh, sure.”
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