The Amnesia Experiment: A Young Adult Dystopian Novel

by Caroline Wei

  One second left for Malchin—

  “Go.”

  He waited until I started running, then shot off like a rocket. I tore across the ground, the toddler bouncing against my shoulders, and I heard the stampede of people on our side coming with me. There were lots of screams from behind and the sound of falling, but I couldn’t go back to help them. My heart clenched.

  The teenage girl was laughing hysterically when I got to her, but I slapped her out of the way. She fell to the ground and was trampled immediately by panicked escapees.

  When we got to the hole, I slid the toddler into a lady’s arms and waved them all inside.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” I muttered. They filed in, but not quickly enough. Two men were coming towards us, their eyes rolling crazily. I pushed the last few people into the hole and faced them, blocking the entrance into the underground tunnel with my body.

  “Sweet morsel,” one of them was muttering. He had graying hair and would probably be a grandfather, but his memory had been stripped from him, along with his sanity. It made me mad at the creators of the Cube, the people who had done this to him.

  His companion was giggling. “Carnival ride, sweetcheeks? Wanna go on a carnival ride?”

  I didn’t waste my breath on replying. Instead, I waited for them to come to me, and then I started punching.

  I threw my legs out from underneath me and managed to catch the grandfather at the ankles, making him tumble, but I didn’t have the athletic ability to kick my legs out correctly, so I fell too. It made me feel like a moron, especially when the other man started bashing my head.

  “Carnival ride!” he shrieked. “Go carnival ride!”

  I pushed him away and scrambled to my feet. He charged, swinging his fists, and I blocked one but took a hit to my jaw from his other hand. My foot connected with his knees, and he crumpled to the ground, whimpering. Breathing heavily, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of triumph.

  “Alle!” came Malchin’s voice.

  I turned just in time to see the grandfather get up. His eyes were no longer rolling, and he looked stormily angry. His face was a molten red, contorted in rage.

  “Very bad morsel,” he hissed. “Rotten morsel.” Then he flew at me.

  Malchin pushed me out of the way just in time, into the hole, and I tumbled in, my legs flipping over my head. I pushed myself up to see Malchin deflecting all of the grandfather’s wild punches, never once hitting back. He probably didn’t want to hurt who he knew wasn’t in his right mind.

  I could see the other infected forming a mob behind the sparring duo. If Malchin didn’t escape, he was going to get overrun.

  “Malchin!” I screamed. “Get in here!”

  Malchin wasn’t hitting the man, so the grandfather never got hurt. He just kept swinging, and Malchin kept blocking.

  The mob was getting closer, and my vision was flashing with images. The dead, after the lightning Trial. Sabaa, her head leaking blood. Carmen, clutching her chest.

  “Malchin!”

  He finally pushed the grandfather far enough away where he could scramble into the hole. His muscles straining, he lugged a gigantic rock over the opening, but it was too slow-going. I went to help him, but the grandfather was coming back.

  My cheeks were wet. We weren’t going to make it.

  The grandfather reached down into the hole, his hand outstretched, right before we snapped the rock over the opening, preventing others from coming in. The man roared gutturally from the outside, and his hand, cut and bloody, fell to the ground in front of us, detached from its owner.

  Malchin and I stood there for a while, breathing in the dusty air.

  Then I shoved him.

  “Why do you have to play the hero?” I yelled, shoving him again, harder. “Why couldn’t you just beat the guy up?”

  Malchin’s eyes widened in surprise as he grabbed my wrists to keep me from attacking him. “It’s over, Alle. Let’s go and rest.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I felt all the blood rushing to my face. “You didn’t listen to me! I told you to come in here and you wouldn’t! You could have died! Did you see the rest of them?” The words were spilling faster and faster. “They were all going to get you, and all you wanted to do was trade bruises with that old man! What would have happened if you went down, huh? They’d have overridden the underground, Malchin, that’s what would have happened, and then everyone would have died!”

  I was so close to Malchin’s face I could feel his breath, coming in heavy pants, on my nose. His chest was heaving, and though I felt some shame, I felt more anger. Malchin should have been more considerate.

  I yanked myself away from him and went down the tunnel. I was so mad there were red clouds swirling in my vision.

  Victoria was bending over a sick child when I entered. She straightened, leaf cup in hand, as her blue eyes met mine.

  “Alle, something happened.”

  I felt a chill on my neck, even as I heard the long wail coming from deeper within the tunnel rooms.

  “What?” I asked. I couldn’t take anymore. Please, no more.

  “It’s Clarice.”

  4

  OLIVER

  Sometimes the darkness inside scared me.

  I yanked a blue tie up to my collar, watching my reflection. I watched the eyes that my father trusted to be wise, the hands that were supposed to be strong, the lips that were meant to speak justice. These were the traits of a strong, mature leader, of a king. He had faith in me to have a crown on my head and a nation on my shoulders, but he didn’t know how naive I was, how inexperienced and young.

  I turned away from the mirror to see my mother, sitting on the bed. She was stately, as always, her cobalt gown so long it fanned out on the floor. Her thick dark hair was twisted on top of her head, wreathed with translucent ribbon. She would tell me to calm down, to find the logic in every problem and go from there. Usually, I would agree with her, but Niveus’ actions called for drastic measures.

  I wanted to rip out their queen’s throat.

  “Are you ready?” my mother asked, reaching her gentle hands out to me. I wondered how she could be so steadfast in times of turbulence.

  “Yeah.” I offered her my arm, and she took it.

  We walked down the hallway together, our footsteps clicking against the tiled floor. It was the hallway that faced the outside, with floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing all who passed a full view of the kingdom.

  Caesitas was crowded, filled with dirty buildings stacked up against each other, a maze where parents scavenged for food for their children and where the homeless lived in abandoned dumpsters. My eyes followed the figures on the winding streets below, the people carrying baskets of scarce vegetables or toting babies in slings on their backs. A few were better dressed, with sturdy shoes and jackets, making their way into bookstores and well-to-do restaurants. Still, there were so many homeless, so many poor, so many struggling, and I hated that I couldn’t put an end to it for them.

  When we reached our destination, Mom knocked on the door lightly before opening it, letting me step in first. The room inside was large, big enough for two kids to kick a ball around, but quiet. Except for a handful of guards, it was horribly empty. The lights overhead flickered, like they were as tired as the rest of us.

  In the center of the room was my father, in bed, hooked up to multiple beeping machines. He was pale and gaunt, a far cry from the strong, sun-bronzed man I had known from my childhood.

  “Father,” I said, pulling up a chair next to his bed. Mom settled in on the couch at Father’s feet, contentedly folding her hands in her lap. I would always wonder how she looked so peaceful when all I wanted to do was scream and rage.

  My father turned his head to look at me, his mouth curving into a watery smile. “Well, if it isn’t my son,” he said. “How is the palace? Everything well?”

  “Yes. All is well.”

  “The ambassadors from Thalassius? They are getting the hospitality the
y deserve?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “What about Flavus? You know we need to negotiate trade—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to make my voice soothing. I patted his frail, veined hand. “Things are on track, and it’ll get figured out. You’ll see.”

  He turned his head back to look at the ceiling, blowing air out of his lips. “You’re already running the place, son. I’m glad. Soon enough you’ll be king.”

  My breath seized up inside my throat, but I pushed it down, trying to ignore the nausea Father’s words gave me. “That’s ridiculous. You’ll live for a long while yet. There’s still so much I need to learn.”

  Mom had found a book and was reading, but I wasn’t deceived. She was listening to us, and judging from her pinched lips, she was grim. Even if she was always the composed queen, I could tell when she was upset.

  Father grabbed my hand with the strength of a young man, his eyes burning with a lifetime of determination. “Oliver, I have raised you to be many things, but blind is not one of them. This sickness, this”—he waved a hand over his feeble body—“blight, it’s winning the war. I’m not going to be here much longer, and you’d be a fool not to see it. You are ready to be king. I know you are.” He was so fierce I almost believed him, but not quite. I lowered my head like I was agreeing.

  “Good boy.” As if I was eight again, Father ruffled my hair fondly. “I always knew I could count on you.” He squeezed my hand, then turned his attention to Mom. “Kalauni, my love. Come, talk with me.”

  I took that as my cue and got up from my seat, offering it to Mom, who sat down gracefully. They began to talk in hushed murmurs, clasping each other’s hands. I excused myself and went out to the hallway windows.

  The palace was probably the only luxurious building in all of Caesitas. It was made from wood and steel, forged from a world revolted. The windows were bulletproof, and the building itself was supported by platinum stilts. Below were the palace gardens.

  Still, it was nothing compared to Niveus’ royal grounds. Just thinking about the country made my fists curl. Niveus, the richest nation in the world, thriving in the South Pole, the only real, inhabitable land left on the earth. Niveus, which forsook everyone else to live on ocean shanties, supported only by poles reaching deep into the sea. Niveus, which used its wealth to put innocents in a dangerous experiment and have everyone watch it as entertainment.

  It sickened me to my very bones.

  The only thing that gave me solace was that the South Pole was melting, and fast. World War III had already obliterated its northern counterpart, and the aftershock from the thermal energy of so many nuclear bombs was coming for the south. Even if it wasn’t strong enough to melt the ice, climate change sure was going to be.

  I slumped against the windows until I was sitting, my head in my hands. The fury and loathing roiling inside my stomach, like an untamed beast, frightened me more than Father dying, more than assuming responsibility for the throne, even more than Alle getting hurt in the Amnesia Experiment. The hatred was a darkness so dark I was afraid it would completely consume the good side of me, the kind side of me, and make me an evil king.

  I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to live up to Father’s standards, that I wouldn’t be compassionate and just—that I would be like her.

  The queen of Niveus.

  5

  ALLE

  Clarice was in one of the inner tunnel rooms, where it was dark and damp. The only light came from a hole in the ground, where someone had the idea to burn strips of clothing.

  She was tied to two stakes buried deep in the ground, one for each of her bound wrists. I realized Clarice was imprisoned by her own rope, the one that we used to help me climb to the top of the Cube.

  I could see the veins bulging out on her forehead as she moaned, her face to the ground, but when I entered the room, she popped up like she had an ultra-tuned sense of where I was.

  “The little puppy has come to play,” Clarice snarled. She spat blood onto the floor, but I didn’t wince. I’d seen too much blood today.

  “She managed to get in undetected when you and Malchin went out,” Victoria said. She’d come with me. “Some people saw her, but they’d assumed she was sane. Then she started attacking one of the wounded.”

  I tried to take Clarice in, tried to see the saucy, easy-going girl I knew, but all I saw was someone snapping at the air with her jaws, talking to no one. Guilt washed over me.

  “How do we help her?”

  “There’s no way,” Victoria said simply. Her eyes were hard, her voice frigid. “We have to leave her like this.” After a moment’s silence, she said, “We have to kill her.”

  “What? No!” I shook my head, astounded Victoria would think such a thing. “Clarice is our friend. We can’t just kill her.”

  “Do you see that right there?” Victoria gestured to Clarice, who was now lunging at the wall. “That’s not Clarice.” She turned to look at me for a moment, her face like marble. Then she turned and swept away, leaving only cold air.

  Clarice stopped trying to attack the wall and instead turned her eyes on me. Her face was dashed in blood and sweat, and she grinned.

  “We’re going to find a way to cure you,” I said, but my voice didn’t sound as confident as I wanted it to.

  Clarice, she just chuckled.

  ~.~.~.~.~

  That evening, we did a head count. There were only fifty-two in the tunnels, which left 116 outside, either dead or crazy. A feeling of foreboding filled me as I realized we were outnumbered and had nowhere to run.

  Malchin called a meeting, which included me, Victoria, and the head farmer, a man whose name was Galen. The bald man from earlier, called Adisa, whose armlet broke into a lie detector, also decided to join us.

  I already knew what I had to say. “We need to prepare for Trial Three.” It was clear to me that no one had any memories except for the basic groundwork of how the world functioned. We’d only waste time talking about it, and based on how Trials One and Two went, Trial Three could only be worse.

  We were arranged in a circle on the floor, since there were no chairs. Malchin sat directly across from me, his fingers steepled. He looked deep in thought.

  Galen was agreeing with me. “We could stay in the tunnels. There’s soil here, and plants above—a little garden is possible. Not to mention, we have some water. Then we could feed ourselves.”

  “And then what?” Adisa shook his head. His lie detector was clutched in his hand, the word veritas flashing at me. “It’s near impossible to stay here forever. Even if you say there’s some, there’s definitely not enough water to last very long. Would we just wait for everyone out there”—he gestured with his arm—“to die off?”

  I bit my lip as Clarice’s moaning came through the walls of dirt. She sounded like she was in pain, but then I heard her shrill cackling.

  “Venturing outside is out of the question at the moment,” Malchin said. His eyebrows were furrowed together, his shoulders clenched. The anger I’d felt against him before had evaporated, and now I just felt guilty and awkward.

  “Which is good,” I cut in. “I mean, Trial Three is sure to happen outside, right? And I think I know what it might be.” An image appeared in my mind, of a carved box and little words inside.

  Malchin’s head came up, as did Victoria’s. “You do?” he asked.

  “When I was climbing the wall, before I fell, I saw something up there. It was kind of like the glass wall was made by some sort of factory, called”—I paused to think for a moment— “Niveus Vitrics Incorporated. And it also said that the Cube had a name. It’s called the Amnesia Complex.”

  Galen and Adisa visibly shuddered. I completely agreed with them.

  “Yeah. Kind of chilling, but it only proves what we’ve known from the start—that people made the Cube, and they put us in it intentionally, for whatever reason. But more importantly, the glass wall also said ‘To be used in Trial Three.�
�” I swallowed. “I don’t know what that might entail. Maybe it’ll turn into something, like metal, and start shooting stuff at us? Or maybe the wall will start moving so that we all get crushed against the other side? ’Cause in that case, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about it. Like Galen said, we could stay inside.”

  “Unwise,” Victoria said sharply. “You don’t know what the wall is going to do. At this point, it’s just meaningless guessing. Staying inside not only means inability to live here forever, it also means no way of escape.”

  A spike of annoyance jutted up from my stomach as I glared at the floor. “It’s better than getting killed by Trial Three.”

  Galen and Adisa broke out into bickering, while Victoria threw in some comments. I didn’t speak. There was nothing we could come up with, and even if we did, we couldn’t agree.

  Clarice’s shrieking cut through the conversation. I sighed and got up.

  “Let’s just say we’ll leave this undecided for now,” I said. Malchin stayed silent while the others looked at me. “I’m going to try to figure out how to help Clarice.”

  I left them in their circle, and even though it sickened me to see my friend turned into an animal, I still went into Clarice’s room, sitting down against the wall.

  She was licking her fingers, crouched on the ground. Her pale arm changed colors in the flickering light of the burning clothes in the corner, somehow emphasizing the eight black puncture wounds that the spider had left in her.

  The creators of the Cube must have been scientific geniuses. Whatever had been in those little devils was powerful enough to overtake a human mind.

  “Potestrine,” Clarice murmured to herself.

  “What?” I couldn’t help but ask, even though I knew provoking Clarice was probably not the best move.

  “Potestrine,” she said, her eyes connecting with mine. They held a rabid wildfire. “That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it, Miss Baby-baby?”

  “What’s potestrine?”