She pushed her hood down, movements awkward. She’d landed badly, on her shoulder.
Where are you when I need you? She asked the killer.
I think he’s sulking. Maia said.
“What the hell was that?” Stephanie asked.
Ivan shrugged. “DIY stun grenade?”
He held out a hand and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet.
“How come I’ve never heard of that?” she asked.
They went around the corner carefully, stepping over bodies.
“It doesn’t always work,” Ivan stopped to check someone’s pulse. A tension she hadn’t noticed forming seemed to drop from him, his shoulders relaxing.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “Nothing good.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Stephanie stared out into the blank empty expanse of space.
"Where is it? Where is Sanctuary?"
Her eyes darted from one side of the screen to the other. She had a sinking feeling that she knew exactly where it was. But she wasn't willing to admit it, not even to herself.
Ivan cleared his throat. "There's nothing there."
Stephanie gripped the back of the chair. She shook her head.
"Stephanie… I think it's time we consider the fact that we got the coordinates from a man in a mental institution."
"No, Caroline said-"
"Caroline said a lot of things."
"You don't understand. It has to be here."
"There's nothing here, Stephanie. I've run scans of the area a million times."
"Run it again."
"Stephanie-"
"Run it again."
Ivan's hands danced across the console as he called up a scan of the area. Stephanie watched the screen, searching for even a glimmer of something.
Dr. Volkov stood in a corner, his arms folded across his chest.
She felt Maia waiting in the back of her skull, holding her breath.
The killer watched in silence, as always.
All her delusions gathered together.... waiting for her to see the truth.
"What if they have some kind of new technology? Some kind of shielding we've never seen before?" she asked.
"Then I don't know how we’re going to find them."
"Maybe we can send a voice message? There must be someone out there. Someone listening, waiting to welcome refugees."
There has to be something out there. Stephanie literally had nowhere else to go. She had three options... return to the corporation, find Sanctuary, or die.
She'd already made the decision months ago, in Ana's bedroom. She couldn't go back to the corporation.
And now she'd lost hope of finding Sanctuary.
She turned away from the view screen, her shoulders drooping. Her face felt hot – as though a mask she’d been wearing had suddenly burned away, leaving her with nothing but ash.
Ivan called after her as she left the room.
She felt like she was floating as she moved down the hallway...
It was almost as though her body was working on autopilot, carrying out a plan she hadn't been aware of making. She found the clothes she'd taken from the killer's body stuffed at the bottom of the bag she’d left in the dining room, its pockets like Pandora’s box, filled with death. No, Pandora's box had been opened when she looked at the view screen and saw nothing.
She emptied the killer's pockets, placing the items carefully on the table. The one speed-sleep pill she had left gleamed in its packaging. A helads rifle, poison, thin wire blades.... She had enough items there for one thousand deaths.
She felt the killer lurking in the back of her mind, watching curiously.
Sorry, killer, Stephanie thought, I should have just let you kill me in the beginning.
Arms wrapped around her from behind, pulling her away from the table.
Stephanie struggled against Ivan's grip. She tried to draw on the killer's knowledge to fight him, but the killer turned his back on her.
Ivan's thoughts exploded through her skull.
Not again, he thought. I can't lose her again.
"I'm not Caroline." Stephanie screamed. Her voice broke on a sob. Caroline is dead.
She felt her thoughts slip into Ivan's head.
The weight of his despair threatened to cripple her and they tumbled to the floor.
"She can't be dead," Ivan said.
You don't know if that's true, Maia whispered. She could still be alive.
You're the one who's always telling me not to think about it, Stephanie thought. You're the one who’s always thought she was dead.
So why do you believe me now?
“I can’t do this anymore,” Stephanie cried. “You don’t understand.”
“Whose fault is that, Stephanie? It’s not like you’ll tell me anything.”
Tears stung at her eyes. She started rocking back and forth, trying to soothe the ache at her core.
Ivan stilled her. “Talk to me, Stephanie. So there’s no Sanctuary. We’ll find another way to keep you safe.”
“You don’t even know why they’re chasing me.”
“I know.”
Stephanie shook her head. “You wouldn’t be looking at me like that if you knew.”
“Stephanie,” Ivan caught her chin, tilting her head so that she was forced to look up at him.
I know, he thought at her.
“Don’t touch me,” she pushed him away.
He caught hold of her again, his anger washing over her.
She flipped him to the ground, pinning him beneath her.
“You’re angry?” she asked.
“After all we’ve been through, you’re just going to give up?”
“I’m not giving up, I’ve already lost everything. Don’t you get it? There’s nowhere left to run. They’re going to find me, take me back to some research center and lock me away to run experiments on. There’s no way they’re going to let me go, not until they find out how I can kill people just by touching them.”
“You’re never going to find a way to get free if you kill yourself.”
Stephanie snorted. “It’s not about being free, it’s about getting away from them.”
“And Caroline?”
“She’s probably dead. Probably has been for a long time.”
Stephanie stood up, turning her back on Ivan. It was time she put aside childish fantasies and fairy-tales that Caroline had put in her head.
“And the others?” She heard him get to his feet.
Every muscle in Stephanie’s back seemed to tighten at the word. “Others?”
“Caroline told me she grew up in an orphanage. The way she talked about it. Sleeping in rows of bunks as a small child. Meal times together in a big hall. She didn’t make that up, did she?”
Stephanie shook her head. “It wasn’t an orphanage.”
“You’re just going to leave them there? People you grew up with?”
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“Not this.”
She spun around to face him. “Then what?”
Ivan frowned. “Find a way to destroy them.”
Stephanie laughed. “You don’t even know who they are and you think you can destroy them?”
“Not by myself.”
Stephanie felt like his eyes were drilling into her, cutting her to the core. She wrapped her arms around herself. She felt sick.
“Why are you protecting them, Stephanie?”
“I’m not.” Stephanie’s eyebrows shot up.
“You are. You think you’re protecting yourself but this.... this refusing to let anyone in thing... who do you think it helps?”
“You think you’ve got it all figured out, huh?”
“I know you know things you couldn’t possibly know. I know these people who are after you are doing some kind of experiments on you. Trying to find out how you can do the things you do-”
Stephanie choked on a lau
gh, the taste of it bitter at the back of her throat. He didn’t know. There’s no way he’d look at her the same way if he knew.
“They made us.”
He froze. Everything around them went still. The sound of the reporter beating on the bedroom door penetrated the silence between them.
“What?” he breathed.
Stephanie spun on her heal.
She opened the door, Sofia Wang falling into the living area. The woman stood up, straightening her suit.
“Now, you-” Sofia waved a finger in her face.
“You might want your vid orbs for this,” Stephanie muttered. She turned back to Ivan. She was done fighting. Done hiding.
She heard the reporter scramble to grab something and a second later an orb hovered near her face. Stephanie stared past it. She didn’t care what anyone else in the universe was going to think when they saw the vid. She cared what Ivan thought.
She swallowed, mouth dry. Her breath felt tight in her chest.
Ivan stared at her, a thin line creasing his brow.
“I was made in a lab. An experiment in human genetic engineering. They were trying to make us into spies. Mind readers... but something went wrong.”
Ivan gripped the back of a chair. “Wrong how?”
His voice was tight but his expression was empty.
“Some of us started hearing voices. Different to the voices that came from other people’s heads. Voices that wouldn’t go away. Hallucinations followed. Paranoia. I don’t think the human mind is capable of holding on to so many contradicting memories without fracturing. I’m not even sure we’re still classed as human, but we’re human enough that we can’t seem to handle the parts of us that are different.”
Sofia Wang cleared her throat. “You touched a man and he died... was that another part of their experiments?”
Stephanie shook her head. “I don’t know if the others can do that. Maybe there’s something in me that’s even more broken than them.”
“How many others are there?”
Pain twisted through her center. “I don’t know... I had twenty nine batch sisters and thirty brothers. Then there was another batch after us.... and the other experiments. I’m not even sure I know everything they made.”
Stephanie rubbed a hand over her face. She felt so tired. She wanted to fall asleep and never wake up.
A hand took hers gently and pulled it away from her face.
Ivan’s eyes met hers. Warm and brown. The expression in them took her a while to place. If she hadn’t been able to feel his emotions washing over her she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to figure it out.
Trust.
Tears pricked at her eyes.
“You’re right.” Her voice cracked.
Ivan tilted his head to the side.
“I want to go back for them. Whoever is left. I want to destroy the corporation. What they’ve done to us. What they’re still doing.” She shook her head. She wasn’t saying it right.
Ivan nodded. “We’ll figure this out.”
Chapter Forty
Their ship slipped into orbit around the dusty planet, its attempts at terraforming the surface slower than would be expected of a planet that size, as though funds had gone into developing something else.
Stephanie’s hands shook as they climbed into the drop ship.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she muttered.
“I’m not letting you go alone.”
“You’re the one making me do this in the first place,” she reminded him.
“I still think it’s better than what you wanted to do.”
“Let’s not talk about that.”
The reporter’s voice interrupted them, loud over the ship to shuttle communication systems.
“Is everything ready?” she asked.
“Yeah, we’re just strapping in.”
“Turn your vid-feed on now, I want to get everything.”
Stephanie switched hers on and saw Ivan do the same.
“Great. Receiving a clear image here. Test audio.”
“Um...”
“Hi?”
“Perfect. You’re clear to drop.”
Stephanie nodded. She took a deep breath. Ivan reached for her hand and she let him take it. His nerves crashed with hers, almost as turbulent.
She cued the drop sequence with one hand.
They disembarked from the ship and she held her breath. She felt Ivan do the same beside her.
Then they were weightless. Silence pressing in on them from all sides. The straps bit into her shoulders and she felt her stomach rise in her throat and all around them was the sound of screaming as they hit atmosphere and plummeted to the planet’s surface.
She gripped Ivan’s hand tighter, feeling the bones dig into her hand. She was sure that they were going to die. Any second.
The noise outside faded away, replaced by the rushing sound of her blood pumping past her ears, adrenaline making her heart beat double time.
She opened her eyes, trying to remember when she’d closed them.
“We made it?” she asked.
“I can see why that’s an unpopular way to travel,” Ivan said. He disengaged his fingers from hers and unbuckled his seat belt.
“Yeah,” Stephanie’s breath escaped on a shaky laugh.
“Plus, it’s not much good for getting back up.”
“It’s too late for second thoughts, Ivan.”
He fiddled with the controls, ordering the shuttle to retract its docking gear and convert to an all-terrain vehicle. Its camouflage capabilities were nothing compared to the killer’s suit - Ivan had said the drop ship was a relic from a previous war - but it was better than nothing.
Stephanie took over, driving to the entrance of the corporation.
“That’s it,” she pointed, as they approached.
“Huh, I was expecting more, somehow.”
“They didn’t build much on the surface,” Stephanie said.
Ivan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know, you told me that. I wish I had your powers. Trying to remember everything you told me about the layout of the center is giving me a headache.”
Stephanie glanced sideways. “You don’t want my power, not with the side effects.”
“Hmm, probably not.”
“I could...” her mouth was suddenly dry. She swallowed. Cleared her throat.
“What?”
“I might be able to push the memory into your mind.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “If you want.”
“Okay. Sure.” Ivan nodded. “What do I do?”
“Give me your hand and try to relax.”
A half laugh escaped his lips. Like he was going to be able to relax.
His hand fit with hers, palm dry and warm.
She concentrated on the memories of growing up in the center, on leaving for the first time, of coming back. She tried to remember every room and every hall she’d ever been in and how they fit together. Then she pushed. The memory drifted, like a puff of smoke around a silhouette.
“Wow, that’s a weird feeling,” Ivan said. He took his hand back, letting it drop against the arm rest.
“Sorry, it’s hard to separate memory from emotion.”
“That’s okay.”
They came up on the center quickly.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” he asked.
“No.”
It’s a terrible plan, Maia said.
I didn’t hear you volunteering a better one.
It might work. The killer saw a million ways that it could go wrong, but he also saw a handful of ways that it could work. If they were lucky.
So, we’ll just have to be lucky then, won’t we?
I don’t think it works like that.
They pulled up outside the entrance, parking the shuttle to the side of the building. Stephanie took a slow, deep breath before she opened the door.
She activated the killer’s suit, its camouflage capa
bilities rendering her practically invisible with the hood pulled up and the visor down. She saw in double vision, letting the killer take over as she went through his systems, the information displayed on her screen. She entered through the front door, no way to hide the door opening and closing around her.
She pressed her back against the wall, sliding past the security guard as he went to investigate. She misted him with the sedative, watching as he stumbled, putting an arm against the wall to steady himself.
She moved through the entryway. Took out the second guard. Hacked the system for the elevators.
Ivan appeared behind her, slipping into the elevator as she finally convinced the system that she had the right codes.
The doors closed behind them and they moved down.
Ivan walked through the doors ahead of her, the camouflage wouldn’t have worked as well if she’d gone first, struggling to read the image of him walking behind her and project it seamlessly across her body. Much easier with blank walls.
She moved to the side, hugging the wall as she slid down the corridor.
Rogue Memory Page 19