“The interrogation was successful.” Anaximander gave nothing away.
“So what happens to him now?” I asked casually. “Does he go to prison?” What would be my punishment if I had, in fact, been Michael Vallant’s partner?
Anaximander surprised me. “No. In return for SilverDollar’s dropping the charges he has agreed to work for us. After his Loyalty Induction, he’ll join you in training.”
My jaw dropped open. I closed it hastily, but long after supper was over and the pickup volleyball game in the gym had fizzled out, Anaximander’s revelation kept exploding over and over in my mind.
I’d been hoping to make some friends my age at SilverDollar, but Michael Vallant wasn’t whom I’d had in mind. Laying aside the problem of whether or not we knew each other, he was athief. A criminal. How could I work with him?
But what disturbed me the most was the thought of Michael Vallant undergoing Loyalty Induction. Logically, I knew that Loyalty Induction was necessary to prevent industrial spies from infiltrating SilverDollar. I remembered my own Induction only vaguely, but I knew it had been rigorous, verging on painful. For some reason the thought of the violet-eyed thief experiencing even the small amount of pain caused by the Loyalty Induction bothered me—greatly.
Evenings at SilverDollar were always long— most of the other employees spent the time with their families, leaving me at loose ends—but this evening dragged on for years. I spent it rereading the articles I’d downloaded, searching for some clue I’d missed, and not finding anything. I was about to resort to watchingEscape from Historyagain when I came to my senses and went to bed early instead.
Black dreams woke me, in which I chased myself through the maze, never able to catch the Angel from the past to demand answers.
Cold, I rubbed my upper arms, trying to create some friction heat. My thumb traced the raised surface of a scar on my inner arm, following lines and curved shapes.
Letters.
“Computer, lights on.” Heart pounding, I lifted my arm over my head. Twisting my head so far around made my neck ache, so I went into the bathroom for a better look. The jumble of lines resolved itself into letters, a word written in mirror writing, another message from Angel in the past.
A message so important I’d carved it in my own flesh.
“Michelangelo.”
This message clearly referred to the second one I’d found, as Michelangelo had been a great Renaissance artist, but my mind saw a different, hidden meaning: Michael + Angel.
I shivered, icy with something I didn’t understand, didn’t remember.
Sleep was impossible. Driven by a need I couldn’t deny, I dressed and slipped out the door. I had to see Michael Vallant.
My footsteps echoed down the deserted halls as I hurried from Blue to Gray Section. Two levels down in the subbasement, I stopped in front of the gunmetal gray door labeled L.I. for Loyalty Induction. The door was locked, but last week Anaximander had taught me how to jimmy cardlocks and this one opened easily.
I eased open the door and, thankfully, found that the room beyond was empty. The technicians must have all returned to their quarters for the night. The large one-way window in the far wall drew my gaze. I stood with one hand pressed against the glass, looking in.
I’d forgotten the chamber’s odd dimensions: two stories high but only eight feet square. The room was utterly bare. Its starkness chilled me, as if it were an old-fashioned prison cell where men were thrown after being tortured for information.
Michael Vallant sat leaning against the opposite wall. His dark hair was mussed, and there were bags under his eyes, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
He was very deliberately staring at the one-way wall that hid the Observation Room, making a statement that he knew he was being watched. He was awake, and now I remembered why: sleep deprivation was part of the Loyalty Induction procedure. Hidden speakers inside the chamber produced an earsplitting screech that prowled up and down the limits of human hearing.
A video camera recorded everything that happened in the room; no doubt the technicians would fast forward through the tape in the morning to see how Michael Vallant had fared during the night.
I turned off the camera. If anything happened that the technicians needed to know about, I would tell them. If it was all foolishness on my part, I didn’t want any witnesses.
As soon as I stepped inside, a high-pitched whine assaulted my ears, scraping my nerves raw.
Michael Vallant’s head came up when he saw me, and he stood. “Finally.” There was both relief and anger in his voice. “Get me out of here.” He held out his bound hands.
I took a step back. “I can’t do that.” The sight of the padded handcuffs and chains he wore made me feel sick. I had to keeping reminding myself that Michael Vallant had agreed to the Loyalty Induction and the restraints were there to keep him from momentarily changing his mind about taking the oath.
“Then when?” Michael Vallant demanded. “The noise is driving me crazy.” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Have you got the money yet?”
“What money?” I felt cold. He did know me. We had been partners. I was a criminal.
Michael didn’t answer, staring. “Angel?”
A screech from the speakers made me flinch. “What money?” I asked.
“Angel, what’s wrong?” Michael spoke without moving his lips, his expression urgent. “Is it Anaximander? Is he watching us? Tap your left foot if he is.”
“No,” I said aloud, lips moving, “I’m alone.”
He stared at me a moment longer, then apparently took me at my word. “Then what’s with you? Why didn’t you warn me before you hit me with Knockout? I have bruises from the way I fell.”
I started to back away. “I didn’t warn you because I work for SilverDollar and you stole from them.”
He stared, violet eyes intense. “What?”
“I don’t know you. I never saw you before this afternoon.”
He kept staring at me as if I was crazy. “What have they done to you?” he whispered.
I spoke faster, my skin crawling with the need to get out of the tiny chamber and its prickly shrieking. “I hit my head eleven days ago. I don’t remember you. I don’twantto remember you or anything criminal we might have done together. I don’t care what the messages say. I don’t know you.”
I slammed out of the room, the door locking automatically behind me, walking fast, fleeing— then had to stop, go back, and turn the video camera on. I pretended I didn’t hear Michael call my name in despair, “Angel!”
THE NEXT DAY passed so slowly I thought I would lose my mind. Not even a flying lesson could hold my attention. After the second time Anaximander had to take over to prevent us from crashing, he flew us back to camp. I tensed in expectation of a lecture, but Anaximander just studied me for a moment and then sent me to study indoors.
I started to go to the doctor twice and to Anaximander a dozen times, but something always stopped me. Michael Vallant had behaved as if we were partners. If he was telling the truth, then I was a possible security risk if my memory returned and I should turn myself in. If he was lying, as the message “Violet eyes lie” said, then I wasn’t a security risk—but if I hadn’t known Michael Vallant before, then how could the message refer to him? I went round and round in circles all day.
In the back of my mind burned the knowledge that Michael Vallant’s Loyalty Induction would be continuing all day, getting more and more intense.
It was a relief finally to reach the privacy of my own room after supper. I locked the door and feverishly began searching everything, including myself, for more messages from my past self.
It struck me as significant that two of the messages I’d found had been in the one outfit I owned that hadn’t been bought for me by SilverDollar, so I concentrated on my purple sweater and blue jeans.
My hunch paid off. I found a scrap of paper tucked inside the unraveling hem of my purple sweater which said, “Dr. Franken
stein,” and gave me another brief stab of recognition—a fat man with glasses—before stagnant green water closed over my head and the smell of the bog filled my nostrils once more.
The tiny flash of memory hardly seemed worth reliving the horror of drowning. I became angry at my past self. Why couldn’t I have been more clear?
The next message was even less help. On the sole of my foot I found another mirror-writing scar, a date, or possibly a number, saying simply “1987.”
I badly wanted to do another computer database search but didn’t dare.
I searched the rest of my room, but if there were other messages I couldn’t find them. There just weren’t that many places to look. I didn’t have very many personal possessions—no computer games, no e-books, no teddy bears, not even a clock—and for the first time I wondered why.
I smoothed back my rising panic by telling myself that I must be storing my possessions somewhere else, that I’d just forgotten where they were because of my head injury. I tried to believeit, but it seemed wrong that I wouldn’t have brought something with me, a photo of my family, for instance.
My parents.I was suddenly gasping. Oh, God. I’d forgotten I had parents. Where were they? What did they look like? I couldn’t remember.
For the first time I stopped thinking in terms of what I’d forgotten and tried to think of what I did remember about my past before coming to SilverDollar. The answer was a big fat nothing. I didn’t remember my parents, didn’t know if I had brothers and sisters or where I’d grown up.
A terrible thought occurred to me. Michael had known me in the past. He might know who my parents were. He could answer my questions.
I held out until one in the morning, when the halls were likely to be deserted, before I gave in and went to see Michael Vallant again. I had to know.
He didn’t look surprised to see me; he looked as if he was in pain. He was slumped against the same wall as before, his violet eyes two deep wells burning in his ashen face.
The Loyalty Induction is causing him a lot more than discomfort.
It hurt me to see him suffering. I wanted to run to his side. Desperately, I reminded myself that he had consented to the Loyalty Induction just as I had.
Lines of pain bracketed his mouth.
I’ve kissed that mouth,I thought suddenly. The memory made me dizzy:lying on my back beside a pool, dripping wet, my head tipped back at an awkward angle, warm lips covering mine . . .
And then I was drowning. Again. Damn it.
“What do you want?” Michael asked when my head cleared.
I had no subtlety left. “Did you know my parents?”
He swallowed painfully. “Not really well, but yeah, I knew them.”
“What are they like? Are they still alive?” I raised my voice above the screeching of the speakers; my fingernails dug into the soft flesh of my palms.
“Last time you saw them they were fine. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t be now,” Michael said. “As for what they were like, I only met them a couple of times. You seemed to like them well enough.”
Other questions boiled inside me: Where were my parents now? Why wasn’t I in contact with them anymore? What did they look like? Were they blond like me? What did they do for a living? But it didn’t sound as if Michael had the answers.
“So I’m not the only person you’ve forgotten, then?” Michael asked hoarsely.
“No.” I twisted my lips into a smile. “You can laugh, but I was starting to be afraid that I didn’t have parents at all, that I was just some genetic experiment mixed together in a petri dish.” The fear that had been with me since viewingEscape from Historydrained away. “I have parents.”
“You have adoptive parents,” Michael corrected, plunging me back into uncertainty. “You and I are both genetically engineered.”
“Project Renaissance?” I asked. My heart thumped in my chest.
He licked cracked lips. “Let’s make a deal. I’lltell you about Project Renaissance, if you answer my questions.”
I couldn’t make him tell me, and he was the best source of information I had. I nodded reluctant permission.
“The last time you visited me, you said I had stolen from SilverDollar. What is it I’m supposed to have stolen?”
“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “Something worth millions.”
“I’m not a thief.” Michael’s violet eyes met mine. “Not unless it’s possible to steal yourself. You and I are worth millions, but we belong to ourselves, not to a corporation.”
He had to be lying, but I didn’t argue the point. “Tell me about Project Renaissance.”
He didn’t try to cheat. “Project Renaissance is the code name for an illegal genetic experiment cooked up by NorAm twenty years ago. They successfully created a new subspecies of human,Homo sapiens renascentia.Renaissance, meaning the rebirth of humankind. They gave all the Renaissance children violet eyes as a genetic marker.”
I felt sick. “So you and I belong to a different subspecies?”Homo sapiens renascentia,he’d said. Current humankind wasHomo sapiens sapiens.Neanderthal man had beenHomo sapiens neanderthalensis.
“Yes,” Michael said. “My turn. If you’ve forgotten your past, how did you know about Project Renaissance?”
I hesitated, then explained about the hidden messages that I didn’t remember writing pricked into torn-up paper. “There’s also a scaron my arm that says ‘Michelangelo.’ What does it mean?”
“What you think it means. Michael and Angel.”
“And?”
“It’s a code name,” he said hoarsely. “Dr. Frankenstein gave it to us. When Project Renaissance was discovered there was a big scandal. The UN stopped the project, but they didn’t know what to do with the violet-eyed children that had already been created. We were put in an orphanage, but some fanatics burned it down. The survivors were paired up and put into different Historical Immersion towns.”
“You mean that stupid movie was true?” I was appalled.
“Escape from History?”Michael snorted. “No, it’s not true, except for the general outline. We killed ourselves laughing watching the movie when it came out a couple of months ago. They got almost everything wrong.”
“What did they get right?” I asked.
“Other than the fact that we were raised as if we were living a hundred years in the past, not much. They got the cameras right. We lived under constant surveillance. Dr. Frankenstein studied us as if we were lab rats.”
“Why?” I asked. “So we’re smart. Big deal.”
“It’s not just intelligence,” Michael said. “It’s the whole package. In addition to being smarter thansapiens,we’re also world-class athletes and have faster reflexes. We’re healthier, too, with better immune systems. We were bred to be spies and assassins. We’re a very valuable commodity. Why do you think SilverDollar is so eager to have us work for them?”
“I was hired as a security investigator. SilverDollar is a mining company, not a government,” I said skeptically. “What do they need spies for?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Michael admitted. “Probably industrial espionage. Infiltrating a rival company, stealing their secrets, maybe committing acts of sabotage . . . SilverDollar tried to buy us from Dr. Frankenstein, and when we escaped, they hunted us down as if we were foxes. Anaximander and his men have been pursuing us relentlessly since we escaped five months ago, in November. They must have some need for us.”
“That can’t be true,” I said. “Companies can’t just go around buying people or kidnapping them off the street. Why didn’t we just go to the police?”
“And put ourselves back in the hands of the government that failed us twice before?” Michael asked. “No thank you. Besides, some would say you and I aren’t ‘people.’ We were genetic experiments, remember? Property. Don’t you get it? We’re different, Angel. The prejudice the Augmented face is nothing compared to the hostility leveled at the violet-eyed. Ordinary people look at us, and they see a
threat. Unfair competition in the job market and the gene pool. They’re afraid that, if we’re left to ourselves, in a few generations Renaissance children will become the de facto rulers of the world and they’ll be the serving class.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“You and I know that,” Michael said wearily. “They don’t. That’s why SilverDollar could pursue us without worrying about the law. They knew we didn’t dare risk our cover. We stayed one stepahead of Anaximander, but it was costing us. We could never stay in one place long enough to save any money or make any friends.”
“What did we do?” I asked.
“We haunted the library, learning as much as we could about the new time we found ourselves in, and we earned money doing menial labor: shoveling snow, dishwashing, baby-sitting, that sort of thing. A better job would have required ID, which we don’t have. In 2099 you need ID to do everything: get a library card, fly an aircar, get an education.
“We lived like that for five months, barely surviving. Toward the end, we were tired all the time and twitchy from living in constant fear of discovery. Finally, we decided to let Anaximander capture one of us. That person would try to obtain identicards and money from the inside.”
“Steal, you mean,” I said bitterly. He was a thief.
“Compensation,” Michael argued. “Reparation. They’ve been persecuting us, trying to kidnap and enslave us. It looks to me as if they’ve succeeded with you.”
“I’m not a slave,” I said at once.
“They’ve brainwashed you, the same as they’re trying to brainwash me. They installed a Loyalty chip in your head and erased your memory.” Michael’s gaze was intense.
“I don’t have a Loyalty chip.”
“Oh, come on,” Michael scoffed. “There’s still a bandage on your head from the surgery.”
My hand went automatically to my forehead. I’d heard of Loyalty chips; they were evil inventions. SilverDollar would never use one. “This is from a training accident.”
“Are you sure?” Michael asked. “Do you remember it?”
I tried once more to remember falling from a rope. Heard again the hesitation in Anaximander’s voice before he answered my question. . . . “That’s not unusual with head injuries,” I said defensively.
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