The Amnesia Experiment: A Young Adult Dystopian Novel

by Caroline Wei

  Clarice squeezed her eyes shut.

  “One, two, three—” There was a snapping sound and a moan, and Clarice doubled over, holding her hand.

  “Ow.”

  “Are we quite finished?” Victoria stood over them. “We’re all very famished and there’s no time for these theatrics.” She took a bundle of sticks from the ground, where they were lying on top of a scrap of cloth ripped from her pants. “I’m going to try to get these to start a fire now that I’ve dried them off. Okay? Then we can heat snow to drink and at least we won’t die as fast.”

  We did as Victoria instructed, and before long everyone had their fill to drink. It was a dismal affair, seeing as how hopelessness seemed to permeate the very air we breathed. I figured the only thing driving Alle was her fury. I didn’t like how she was plotting what she’d do after it was all over.

  Still, I hoped each of us could make it to the end. I hoped we could all be safe.

  I hoped, I hoped.

  24

  Alle

  The hunger was a monster living in my stomach. It was eating at my insides, starting first with the lining of my intestines, then moving on to my lungs, to my heart, riding every artery up into my throat, until my face caved in on itself.

  Malchin rolled over in his sleep and his arm slung over my body without warning, warm in the middle of all the freezing cold. His arm tightened, pulling me to him until his lips were at my ear. I listened to him breathing and prayed that he would live until a long time yet, that his life would be filled with happiness.

  He shifted his head until his mouth was at my neck, and I shivered. I wanted to beat the system. I wanted to beat the Amnesia Complex or whatever they called this outside of the Cube, and I wanted to tell Ollie that it was done. Thank you for all you’ve been to me, all you’ve made me feel, but I want to be Malchin’s. There was no question and no doubt.

  I turned over to brush some black hair out of Malchin’s closed eyes. “Why are you so perfect?” Slowly, I pressed a kiss to his cheek and lingered a little longer than I should have.

  25

  Malchin

  I dreamed about summer.

  26

  Alle

  I wriggled out of Malchin’s gentle hold to get closer to the fire, even though we were all huddled pretty close. I held out my hands to the flames and caught sight of something glimmering in the snow.

  Reaching down, I fished out one glass slipper, sparkling like diamonds, and then its twin. Tossed around in the avalanche, the pair had made its way back. I held the heels in my hands, moving them apart, then back together, then apart again. Whenever one heel got too far away, it gave off an ethereal glow, soft and turquoise. I supposed whoever had made them intended for it to be easy to find one if the other was lost.

  Somebody put their freezing hands on my back and pushed me face first into the fire.

  27

  Oliver

  I slammed the touch screen face down onto my desk.

  No one else needed to die.

  After the loss of Father, I couldn’t take this.

  “Get this out of my sight,” I said, trembling with rage. The manservant I had grown up with, Nathan, bowed and took the touch screen away. An image of Alle blazed in my vision.

  How could Carlen do this to her own daughter?

  Caesitas was now officially against the Amnesia Experiment, in every way possible. My coronation had happened a few days ago, but it didn’t feel right to sit in Father’s armchair, in his study, with all his plaques and commemorations on the mantle above the fake fireplace.

  And now.

  I let out a guttural scream and slammed my fist into the desk. Alle had possibly just died before my eyes. I had refused to see it, but what if it was the last time I saw her alive?

  28

  Alle

  I caught myself at the very last second, my nose so close to the fire it started to get a little singed. Whirling around, I grabbed the perpetrator’s arm and tried to yank them down to eye level, only to get pulled out of the circle of light and into the darkness.

  “Who are you?” I hissed, grappling for their face.

  Fingernails dug into my wrists, hard, and then released. When I reached out again, whoever it was had gone.

  ~.~.~.~.~

  The next morning, Anna was dead. Bruises marked her neck, purple and blue mottling the skin, her eyes glossy and wide open to the white sky. Her tongue was swollen, her hair strewn about her in a ghostly halo.

  I was shocked into silence.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been, after everything, but I was.

  Adisa had to be left alone for several long hours, sitting by himself a few feet away from the rest of us, right over the place where Anna was buried. Her silver blanket, the one that healed frostbite wherever it touched, had been lost in the avalanche, but Adisa fingered a piece of its fabric as he sat, one that he’d kept for himself.

  Malchin looked enraged, like a parent who had just watched his child punished for something he didn’t do.

  “Please come clean,” he said, standing with his hands behind his back. His jaw flexed as he watched everyone stay silent. “This is atrocious, what you’re doing, whoever you are.” His eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second as they landed on Victoria, who didn’t flinch.

  Slowly, Malchin sat back down, and I noticed I was beginning to see bones under his skin. Malnutrition was getting to the best of us.

  Victoria heated more snow, adding a few rocks and dead leaves in the water for some hope of flavor or sustenance, I couldn’t tell. It didn’t stave off the hunger or the growing anxiety. If we kept on like this, would we resort to cannibalism? Would we dig out Grayson and Anna and carve the flesh off their bones for dinner?

  Eventually there was no more fuel to burn. We huddled as close to the dying embers as possible, dreaming of better times. I watched as the charcoal crumpled in on itself, almost like a last chance.

  But then the charcoal lifted itself upright again, colliding with its neighbors, turning red and gold and spouting flames. Heat simmered up from the renewed fire, making the air wavy, and suddenly I was sitting on a throne, watching the fire encased in a stone fireplace. The throne was much bigger than me, the arms dwarfing my chubby ones, gilded in gold and silver. Glass was embedded in the chair, making crystal refractions wherever the light hit it.

  I was sitting on the lap of a man. His robes were soft, silky.

  “Come here, Yaley,” he said to a little girl, maybe two years old, in front of me. She had pale ginger hair tied up into a sprig on the top of her head, and she waddled to his feet. “That’s a good girl. What do you think we should do this Christmas?”

  Yale’s eyes lit up, and she pointed at the fir garlands and mistletoe strung up around the room. “Fawries.”

  “Fairy cookies? You want to make fairy cookies?”

  Yale giggled.

  “Yes, Mimi makes really good fairy cookies, doesn’t she? All that sugar and butter. We’ll have to make a special reservation just for Christmas Eve, so the four of us can bake together, huh?”

  I reached up to touch the man’s chin, which was coated in spiky stubble. I ran my fingers over it again and again, entranced with the texture.

  A woman entered the room and bent over Yale, who smiled so hard her cheeks bunched up. The lady was very young and wore an emerald gown, with dark blonde hair that hung to her waist. “Fairy cookies are one of my favorite things about the holiday season,” she said. “I’m glad to see you and Al-Gal like them too. We’ll eat them every year, okay? Have Mimi teach us the special recipe. She can’t stay here forever.”

  The man who was holding me—my father, I realized—gave a deep laugh. “I’ll have Mimi stay for the rest of her life if that’s what it takes.”

  The woman looked up and smiled brilliantly. “You are beautiful, Ravi.”

  “This is beautiful,” he said.

  ~.~.~.~.~

  The tremors came later that day. Little shivers i
n the earth, making snow shift and putting me in a state of paranoia and constant fear. The creators of the Cube could do anything they wanted to us—and that included putting us through one avalanche every day until all of us were dead.

  There was no avalanche, though. It was just unexpected quivers that happened without explanation. Malchin still wouldn’t get too close to me, but I longed for him. It was like every single cell in my body was magnetically attracted to every single cell in his body. I admired the cut of his jaw, the way he stretched, his back muscles when he leaned over to pick up something. I liked his voice, I liked his drooping eyes, I liked his yawns, and I liked the set of his mouth when he was angry.

  But there was something new inside me. Every minute, I was assailed with a yearning to know my past—every second, every moment, every hour spent in corridors, on stairwells, in dining halls. What was I like? Had I been anything like the person I was now? Was I a good princess?

  I wanted to know if I’d ever had to escape murderers, or if I had been any good at getting new ideas, because at the moment I had completely run out.

  29

  Yale

  I was in the gardens when I decided I was done.

  The blizzard that often roamed the halls of the Niveus palace would no longer hold any power over my life. Not when Alle was being subjected to outright assasination attempts.

  I thought the rest of the world was catching on. Thalassius and Aes had just joined Caesitas in trade sanctions against Niveus, a silent protest to trying to kill a royal heir. King Ichiro, Queen Meiyu, and Princess Malaya had been in the palace infirmary for a while now, with no sign of improvement. Rubrum was in a state of uproar, and basically everyone blamed Carlen.

  Shears snapped aggressively in my hands, slicing the top of a hedge and a couple of holly branches. Worry seemed to be my only emotion these past few days. Worry over the future. Worry over Alle’s well-being. Worry over my feelings for Oliver.

  He was good and kind and brave and funny. No wonder Alle had fallen in love with him, and so quickly. Isolated from the rest of the world, a Niveus princess didn’t have many boys to choose from—and yet, their story had developed so naturally.

  It had been my unofficial job to find good hiding places for all the gifts Oliver would bring Alle. A medallion from his uniform, a box of chocolates, a tiny stuffed teddy bear, a velvet ribbon. Alle was delighted with each one.

  I wondered which memories she had gotten. The cameras couldn’t capture what was going on in her head, but it was clear Alle was receiving memories. Her eyes would zoom out and enter another dimension, her limbs loosening.

  I hoped she knew who I was.

  “Yale!” Amelia was waving a rake at me from five paces away. “You’ve been summoned to in-palace duty. They don’t have enough hands in the infirmary.”

  I dipped her a joking curtsy, past awkwardness mostly forgotten, and hustled inside, making my way to the white tile and glass room that always smelled like hand sanitizer and puke.

  The Rubrum royal family—or most of them, anyway—lay in tall white beds, draped in hospital gowns embroidered with motifs of winter. They were the color of tombstones and acted like it too—there was no movement, no sound, not even the faintest trace of breathing.

  Goosebumps spiked on my skin, and I set to scrubbing every surface I could find with a cloth dipped in alcohol. I had made it halfway around the room when I bumped into someone, nearly losing my balance.

  “Excuse me,” I muttered, really not in the mood to play the helpful, obedient maid. That Yale seemed to be from another life, before all the madness began and I realized what a fool I was to serve such a cruel government.

  “Yale,” a voice murmured, a hand wrapping around my arm.

  Oliver stood, stately in his royal uniform, his hair messy like a bird’s nest after a thunderstorm.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, alarmed. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “Yes, of course they do. I’m here on an official visit as a new king.” Sadness lined his eyes. “And also to see Rubrum’s beloved.”

  “She did it on purpose,” I said quickly.

  “Hernandez? The cooks?”

  “Either or both. Definitely not Mimi.” I couldn’t imagine the head cook, with her frizzy gray hair and constantly misplaced spectacles, to be behind the task. “I don’t expect them to live past this attempt, Oliver.”

  He closed his eyes. “Neither do I. But they must stay alive. Without them, who would stand against Carlen? Prince Malchin is already at a 96% chance of dying in the Experiment, did you read in the news? There would be no one left to lead Rubrum.”

  I had no doubt this was Queen Carlen’s plan the entire time. “And Alle’s chance is 99%.”

  Oliver’s hands clenched. “How dare they make murder a trial. This has nothing to do with the Experiment’s alleged purpose, and I’m going to make sure everyone knows it.”

  “Most everyone knows, Ollie.”

  Alle’s presence, like a ghost, simmered between us.

  He turned abruptly and grasped both of my wrists. “I want a fresh start.”

  “What?”

  “I want a fresh start with you. I know I only barely knew you, in the beginning, because you were Alle’s friend.”

  Guilt, jealousy and sorrow rolled into one knife to stab me in the chest.

  “And I know—I know you said that you’ll always be an extension of someone else to me. That may have been true then, but I also want to know you. Alle will always have a special place in my heart, but something’s changed. She’s not quite the same girl I grew up with.”

  I pushed his hands away as gently as I could. “But you’re still waiting for her. You’re waiting for her to remember, not just the little snippets, but all of it. Right?”

  Oliver’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

  A feeling expanded in my chest, like a sigh, a finish line. “I know who the murderer is.”

  His eyes hardened. “Yes, I know, the Internet is blaring with it.”

  “The point is, Oliver, the Experiment will be over soon. And I think—I hope, with all my being—that Alle will still be alive by then. The thought of it being anything other than that is too painful for me to bear. But when it ends, she’ll be here. She’ll have all her memories back.” Alle would remember every inside joke, every slide down the banister, every fight with her mother, every heartache and every joy.

  “She’ll be yours.”

  He looked away. “I’ve yet to see it. She seems to be Malchin’s, if anyone’s.”

  This was true. The way Alle looked at Malchin was something new, something I hadn’t seen before. Maybe the Experiment had made her different. Braver.

  “I like you,” Oliver blurted. “I like you a lot. You were willing to defy the queen when no one else would. Everything with you is kind of like a surprise.”

  Warmth fisted in my chest, then unfurled. There was nothing I had enough courage to say. It still felt like a betrayal.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I put my alcohol-dipped cloth away and started checking the IVs hooked into the Rubrum king, queen, and princess’s arms. “All we can do now, King Oliver, is pray.”

  30

  Alle

  I used to think grief was the worst feeling in the whole world.

  It was not.

  It was hunger. It was thirst.

  Hunger.

  Thirst.

  Malchin held me to his side as we laid on the snow, watching everyone else wilt away. Each of us were like little flowers. Maybe we’d seen the light of day before, felt the sunshine on our petals, felt the rain soak into our roots.

  But all flowers have their time.

  Hunger.

  Thirst.

  31

  Malchin

  I loved her.

  32

  Alle

  I lifted my hand, my skin freezing off the bones. My fingers picked at the snow, marveling at its texture and temperature. How pretty it was.
Grounded diamonds. Crushed moondust. Teeth, polar bears, calcium.

  Something shiny poked at me through the ice. It was a lolly stick.

  “Veritas,” I whispered.

  Malchin shifted behind me. “Mm?”

  “The truth.” I sat up with great difficulty, my bones creaking, joints rusting. I held the lolly stick to Malchin’s thinning wrist. “Are you the murderer?”

  Malchin stared up at me, his eyes cloudy. “No.”

  The light turned green. Relief rushed into my blood, although I had never really suspected Malchin anyways. I crawled over to Adisa, who had collapsed onto his back, ribs showing from underneath his clothes.

  “Adisa, are you the murderer?”

  “What kind of a stupid question is that?” he mumbled. “No!”

  Green.

  Oliver, the little boy. “You’re surely not the killer, are you?”

  He sniveled into his small hand. “I’m not.”

  Green.

  The toddler.

  Green. Not a real surprise.

  I paused in front of Victoria, who was asleep, then decided to leave her for last and went for Clarice. Her yellow hair was tangled around her shoulders, her eyes closed. Also asleep.

  I pressed the lie detector to her arm. “Clarice, are you the murderer?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Hm?”

  “Are you the murderer?”

  She closed her eyes again. “Alle, you’re the friend I never knew I had.”

  Green.

  I smiled. “Thank you for your kindness.” I was about to leave when I realized she hadn’t answered my question. “Clarice. You’re not the killer, are you?”

  A sigh blew out over the snow. “No.”

  The lolly stick didn’t turn a color immediately, almost like it was reluctant to give an answer. I stared at it and stared at it.