Level 2 (Memory Chronicles)

by Lenore Appelhans

  But there are too many of them. For every individual Morati that I repel, another five sink their icy fingers through my clothes, straight into my flesh, burning me.

  “Silly girl,” they hiss, like a thousand snakes coiled for attack. And then they suck in a powerful breath and exhale a dustlike cloud that fills up every molecule of the hive. It’s like being plunged into an ocean and getting ensnared and entangled by seaweed. My mind can no longer hold out.

  I am dimly aware of being lifted by a group of hands and passed on, like the crowd surf after a stage dive, but the fight has been leeched out of me. It’s so much easier to let go. I fall into a memory chamber pod, and the Morati fit my hands into the grooves and close a glass lid over me. As seven of them, like pallbearers, carry the pod through the hive door, I float into a memory.

  Ward, Felicia. Memory #32777

  Tags: Ohio, Neil, Confession

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  Careful not to wake Neil, I slowly untangle my arms and legs from his embrace and lift my head from the pillow to check the time. The neon numbers of his bedside alarm clock glow 4:30 p.m., meaning his parents won’t be home for at least another two hours. Neil fell asleep straightaway when we got here after school, but I’ve just been lying here, my head against his chest listening to the steady beating of his heart, and his deep, measured breathing.

  Usually, if I can’t sleep, it’s because of the multitude of thoughts racing through my mind. But not today. Because today my mind is at peace, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. After wrestling with myself for weeks, I’ve decided I’m going to confess my sins to Neil. To lay bare my soul so he can see everything, and judge the dark with the light. Because I want a future with him, and that future has to start with a clean slate. No secrets between us.

  A rush of affection for Neil bubbles up inside me, for this boy who fought to save me when everyone else abandoned me. He deserves the best I can give him. And I deserve the chance to give him my best.

  I’m ready. I untangle Sugar from the crook of Neil’s leg, and she mews in protest. Petting her, I carry her to the hallway and shut her out. I sit down on the edge of the bed and slip out of my clothes, kicking them to the floor before I chicken out. My skin prickles, and despite the warm air of Neil’s bedroom, goose bumps run rampant across my body.

  I take a deep breath and lie on my side in front of Neil. He still hasn’t stirred. My hand shaking, I lift my index finger to Neil’s lips and trace them lightly. Without opening his eyes, he groggily pulls me into a hug, his hands sliding over my shoulders and back. The sensation of skin on skin feels so right, I forget myself. Desperate for more contact, I push up his T-shirt and help him pull it over his head. We press together, his lips finding mine. If he asked, I would give him everything.

  While we kiss I let my fingers trail across his smooth chest, down his sides, over his flat stomach. The way his body trembles at my touch makes me dizzy. My heart races faster than it ever has before in my life, and I slip my hand under the waistband of his jeans.

  Neil tenses up, as if finally realizing he’s not dreaming. His eyes pop open and he scrambles away from me, throwing his T-shirt at me in a frantic attempt to cover me up. “What . . . what are you doing?” he chokes out, his eyes wild from not knowing where to look.

  His reaction is so not what I expected; I start to have second thoughts. Maybe this isn’t the best way to go about my confession. But I press on. “I’m ready. I want to tell you what happened to me, because I want you to see me. All of me.”

  “But you don’t have to be naked for that!” He closes his eyes tightly, scrunching up his face in the process.

  I feel like I’ve been slapped. Why is Neil so freaked out by seeing me naked? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disgust you.” I am deeply ashamed. But also so deeply horrified, I can’t bring myself to retrieve my clothes.

  He opens his eyes and looks at me, searching my face, seeing the pain of his rejection etched there. “Oh, God, no. . . . How can you say that?” he asks, risking a tentative once-over of my body, drinking me in. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Then what is it?” I ask, confused.

  He takes a deep breath. “It’s just . . . and don’t take this the wrong way . . . but I don’t want you to think you need to get, you know . . . physically intimate . . . in order to get emotionally intimate.” He sounds disturbingly like Pastor Joe, and at first I want to call him on it, but then he laughs. “And honestly, if you don’t cover up, I promise I won’t hear a word you say anyway.”

  Blushing but relieved, I laugh too. “I’ll put my clothes back on.” I whip his shirt at his chest, and as he puts it back on, he rolls over to give me privacy. I get dressed quickly.

  I sit cross-legged on his bed, facing him, and he mirrors my posture. He takes my hands in his and squeezes them encouragingly. It’s as if the highly embarrassing scene before never took place. “Tell me.”

  And so I do. It comes out in a rush. The nightmares, the sneaking around with Julian, the confrontation with Autumn, my overwhelming feelings of guilt, and all the events of the horrible day when Autumn died and I fled. He doesn’t interrupt me, doesn’t look away in condemnation. He takes it all in, and as I confess each and every misdeed, I feel cleaner—as if with its telling, each black spot unsticks itself from my soul and flutters away.

  I tell him about the aftermath, how the military police in Frankfurt interrogated me about Autumn’s death, how reproachful eyes followed me wherever I went. Because I left her there, and didn’t call the police or them, Autumn’s parents refused to talk to me, and broke off their long-standing friendship with my family. I was cleared of wrongdoing but reprimanded for fleeing the scene. They couldn’t say for certain if it was suicide or murder, but they couldn’t pin her death on me because my alibi was rock solid. I was miles away in class at the official time of death. The case is still open as far as I know.

  As for the hacked plane ticket, the airline settled with us out of court, and just like that, my family’s modest savings disappeared. Even worse, my parents were forced to take out a loan to cover the rest. The State Department revoked my diplomatic passport, and Mother had to make a choice between her job and me. And my father had to choose between his wife and his daughter. I can’t blame either for their decisions.

  Having told him everything, I fall silent. Neil pulls me up off the bed and into a hug. “I’m glad you finally decided to trust me,” he says.

  “Me too.” And I do. I feel like an entire new world has opened up before me. So maybe I’ll never live up to my mother’s once high expectations, but there’s so much else I can do. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I could have a future. And Neil will be beside me. Maybe forever. Maybe only for a while. But I’m no longer scared to live my life and find out.

  Boom! The memory chamber pod the Morati plugged me into thuds to the floor, pulling me out of my memory and thrusting me back into my terrifying new reality. The Morati bore their oily eyes into me, and my whole body spasms uncontrollably. What will they do with me? Lock me in the isolation plains? Infect me with their rage virus? Torture me until my mind is a barren wasteland like Beckah’s?

  But when they push forward to help me from the travel pod, they are surprisingly gentle. “You wonder about our plans for you.”

  I can only stare. We’re in a cavernous round room with walls as blindingly white as the rest of the Morati’s dominion. Narrow passageways lead off in every direction, and the high domed ceiling is decorated with flecks of silver and gold. Is this their palace?

  “We must plug you into our mainframe.” There are so many of them now, their voices sound like a deep hum when they speak.

  The mainframe? “But why?”

  “Because,” their voices pulsate, “your energy is the essential element in our plan.”

  CHAPTER 20

  WHY IS MY ENERGY specifi
cally so important to them? I stare in confusion until it dawns on me their words make a strange sort of sense. If my energy is essential, then that’s probably why the hives have been deteriorating. Because I’ve spent less time plugged in. What was once a symbiotic relationship—I needed the drugs the net gave me, and the net needed my energy to function properly—became increasingly one-sided as I conquered my addiction and started reserving my energy for myself.

  “So only my energy will do?”

  One of the Morati steps forward and raises an arm in the air, as if it is about to conduct an orchestra. The others fall back against the far wall, leaving us alone, relatively speaking. As they retreat, the radiance of the leader’s skin dims. I can see now he’s a young man, with features as chiseled and cold as a marble statue of a Greek god.

  “Do you remember the day before your thirteenth birthday?” he asks, his voice now singular but no less intimidating. He doesn’t wait for my reply. He knows my answer is yes.

  “It was the day we first attempted to leave this dimension. We caused a fissure to open up between here and Earth, and coincidentally at the exact same moment, your soul was straining to leave your body. But you didn’t cross over, not fully. Your energy mingled with ours; our destinies fused together. We appropriated your technology, your understanding of the world, to create the net architecture we hope will propel us on to the next level. We reached within you and saw everything you were, and everything you’d become. When the fissure closed, leaving nothing but a window that followed your every move, we were disappointed we had not yet been able to travel. You returned to your body. Only, you were racked with visions of us, weren’t you?”

  My eyes widen in shock. “But in those visions, those nightmares . . . I saw Julian.”

  “Did you never suspect Julian’s true nature?” The Morati leader emits a mirthless and hollow sound that might be his version of a laugh. “Julian is one of us. An angel. A Morati. We exploited your special bond. Once we had set up the net and siphoned enough power from humans, we sent him to Earth to bring you to us—so we could one day take advantage of the full range of your energy to break into heaven. In exchange we granted him his dearest wish. To live on Earth like a human.”

  What he is saying is too unbelievable to be true. Julian an angel? Julian a traitor? “That’s impossible!”

  He steps back. “You will see for yourself soon enough.” The other Morati surge forward again to join their ambassador, and they surround me, picking me up as a group and carrying me through one of the narrow passageways into a great rectangular room. They set me in front of a mainframe computer so large, it takes up a wall the length of a city block.

  In front of me is a sector that is flat except for a human-size indentation. It looks a bit like a giant-size muffin pan turned up on its end. When they press me into the indentation, I fit perfectly, like it was molded just for me. And I suppose it was.

  I struggle against my captors, but it’s no use. “Why didn’t you shove me in here from the beginning?” I ask as they fit my hands into the master grooves.

  “Too high profile.” Their voices reverberate through the great hall. “Too easy for dissenters to find you before we were ready to use you.” They fiddle with some buttons above my head, and a hologram screen lights up. “Quiet now.”

  My body spasms as bursts of energy and the fragmented memories of millions upon millions of people surge through me, fighting for dominance in my mind. But then I’m pulled under into a memory I recognize as my own.

  Ward, Felicia. Memory #33017

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  “What is that you’re playing?” Grammy asks when I pause to shuffle the pages of the score in front of me.

  I smile up at her. “It’s the piano part for Dad’s Prancing Goat Symphony. Came in the mail today. Isn’t it gorgeous?” The way Dad has been able to capture the atmosphere of being there in those wild Turkish hills that morning blows me away. Playing his notes brings me back fully into the moment. I can feel the wind whipping through my hair, can taste the salty cheese on my tongue, can see the excitement in Dad’s eyes as the goats began their performance. And it also brings me closer to him again. Even though we’re an ocean apart, he made it clear on the phone last week that he’s here for me. That he never stopped loving me.

  Grammy blows on her steaming mug. “It’s certainly . . . different. But then, your father’s music isn’t known for being accessible.”

  “No.” I laugh, fingering the keys, itching to get back to the music.

  “But it’s nice to hear you play again. I wonder if we can attribute your recent good moods to a certain young man,” she says, taking a small sip of her tea. There’s a teasing twinkle in her eye that belies her gruff tone.

  Blushing, I glance at the wall clock hanging in the foyer. Seventeen after one. “Speaking of which, Neil is picking me up in a few. His cousin is getting married.” Well, technically it’s more of a commitment ceremony, but they’re calling it a wedding.

  “Angela,” Grammy states, a judgmental twinge creeping into her voice. “I haven’t seen her since she stopped attending services.”

  “I’ve never met her, but Neil was pretty adamant about going to show his support,” I say, not wanting to turn Angela and her alternative lifestyle into a discussion.

  I stand up, stepping away from the piano bench so I can give the full skirt of my sundress some space while I spin. “How do I look?”

  Grammy approaches me, using her free hand to smooth my hair and check for chips in my nail polish. I can tell she’d like to debate the appropriateness of bare shoulders, but surprisingly, she holds it in. “Yellow is a lovely color on you.”

  “Thank you, Grammy.” I plant a kiss on her forehead and squeeze her shoulder gently. “For everything. I mean it.”

  Grammy nods curtly. “Have fun, dear.” I think I might detect a ghost of a smile as she hobbles back toward the kitchen.

  I use the few minutes I have before Neil’s arrival to immerse myself in Dad’s notes, letting my fingers fly across the keys as if they hadn’t been away from the piano for months. I’m in the middle of the third movement when I hear a car horn blaring. Startled, I look up at the clock. Neil’s late.

  I close the lid of the piano, grab my purse, and rush to meet him.

  “Happy Birthday, Felicia,” Neil calls out to me across the lawn, opening the passenger door of his car as I skip out of the house, letting the screen door slam behind me. He’s wearing pressed khakis and a summery blue-and-white- checked button-down shirt.

  “It’s not my birthday till tomorrow, silly,” I say breathlessly as I throw my arms around his neck and tilt my head up, waiting for his lips to touch mine. He brushes them quickly and then takes my arm, twirling and depositing me in the passenger seat before firmly closing my door.

  Not five seconds later he’s beside me, gripping the steering wheel, his foot on the gas. “We’re going to be so late.”

  “Well, better late than never, right?” I say as he peels out, squealing the tires, gunning it down the street. “And you’d better slow down. You’ve tempted fate by wishing me happy birthday early, you know.”

  He glances at me quickly, taking the corner at high speed, not even really pausing for the stop sign. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just one of those German quirks. A superstition. They think if you wish someone happy birthday before the actual day, you are inviting death to swoop in and carry that person off.”

  Neil shakes his head. “That’s crazy talk! I celebrate birthdays for at least a week, and I like to get a head start.”

  “Oooh . . . does that mean I get presents every day for seven days?” I say, teasing.

  “I don’t know, but you might want to check the glove compartment.”

  I squeal in delight and wrestle open the compartment. Inside there’s a small box, wrapped in silver pa
per with little silver bells hanging from a gold ribbon. I pull it out.

  “You’re not tricking me into opening Angela’s wedding present, are you?” I ask.

  He laughs. “No, but I did have both wrapped in the same paper.”

  I survey the backseat and then shoot him a wary look when I don’t see any silver paper. “Where’s Angela’s?”

  “In the trunk.” He reaches over and pulls at the ribbon playfully. “C’mon. Stop stalling and open it!”

  I disentangle the silver bells from the package and hang them over his rearview mirror. We’ve pulled onto an old country road, and the bells swing wildly whenever we hit the curves. “Aren’t you driving a bit fast?” I ask.

  Neil glances at the speedometer. “No more than seven over. Cops here don’t pull you over for that.”

  I slide my finger under the tape, careful not to rip the paper, and unwrap a small white fabric-covered ring box. My heart skips a beat, and I freeze for a second. Did Neil buy me a ring?

  I pull open the box, and the hinge makes a dull popping noise. It’s not a ring. It’s a charm. A charm in the shape of a skep. I exhale deeply, not exactly sure if I’m relieved or disappointed.

  “Do you like it?” Neil asks, his voice wobbling slightly. “When I saw it, I thought of you. I know how much you like those vintage beehives.”

  I look at it in wonder. “No, it’s perfect.” I lean over to give him a kiss on the cheek, but as I do, he half turns his head, and I end up kissing him on the corner of his mouth. “I love it. I mean, as long as you don’t picture me in that bee suit every time I wear it.”

  “Aw, you were adorable in that big, plastic baggy suit,” he says. “In fact, I think that might have been the moment I fell in love with you.”

  “Oh, please!” I shriek, whipping his arm with the ribbon.

  He twists his arm away from me and scrunches up his shoulder as if to protect himself from my blows. “It’s true! I swear!” I stop my assault, and he relaxes, turning to me with one of his trademark dimpled grins. “I really wish you’d wear it more often.”