Tabula Rasa
Page 8
As I start to get up, I misjudge where the edge of the mattress is and slip to the yurt floor like a clumsy cat missing the windowsill. Pierce wakes with a jolt, rolls on top of me, and presses his forearm across my throat. He yawns.
“What’re you doing?”
“You’re choking me!”
“That’s what I’m doing. What are you doing?” He lifts his arm so that he’s no longer pressing all his weight onto my windpipe. “Why are you out of bed after lights out?”
“I was looking for something to wear.”
“What?”
“I think these coveralls are made of burlap.”
He rolls off me and gives a small huff of amusement.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Nothing. I’m just relieved that I was dreaming after all. I was listening to 8-Bit argue with that Russian dude, and 8-Bit offered to sell me to the guy for a thousand rubles and a sack of beets.”
“That’s crazy. You’re easily worth three sacks of beets. Maybe even four.”
“Thanks.” He yawns loudly. “Just to refresh my memory, we’re in a yurt near the Canadian border and people are trying to kill you?”
“Correct. Possibly you as well.”
“Right. Forgot about that second part. I’ve got a shirt you can wear. If you help me find the flashlight. It’s in the pack on the floor over—”
“Don’t turn the light on!”
But he flicks the light on before I can pull the coveralls back up to cover my chest. I dive onto the mattress, face down.
“Whoops. Sorry. I didn’t realize …”
I have my arms pulled in next to my chest. I keep waiting for him to hand me a shirt, but he doesn’t. He’s not doing anything, as far as I can tell. Finally I say, “Can I have the shirt, please?”
“Here you go.”
I feel it land on my back. My face is against the pillow and I can’t tell where he is. “Are you turned around?”
“No.”
“Well, turn around.”
“Your back,” he whispers.
“What about it? What’s the matter?”
He comes closer. For a second I think he’s going to tell me that I have a bullet wound that I somehow hadn’t noticed. “What’s the matter? Is there blood or something?”
“No blood. Just wings.”
CHAPTER 11
He kneels on the mattress next to me and traces something on my back with his finger. His touch is light, and I feel a shiver rise up from my spine, into my neck.
“I don’t do ink on underage kids. Period. End of story.”
He’s got a beard down to his chest and a barbell stud through each eyebrow. He keeps his heavily tattooed arms crossed over his chest. He’s not going to budge.
“I’ll pay you,” I say. “A lot. Twice what you normally get.”
“Money’s not the issue. Last thing I need is some kid’s mom coming in here, threatening to have me arrested for ruining her poor, sweet angel’s perfect skin.”
“No one’s going to do that,” I say. “No one will ever do that.”
I tell him about me. I tell him about my mom.
He does the tattoo half price.
I pull away so suddenly, Pierce is startled. His finger is still extended, like he’d been painting and I’ve snatched his canvas away. He’s looking at my back, and his eyes do not meet mine. He withdraws his hand slowly and lets it drop.
I try to look over my shoulder. “What do you mean, I have wings?”
He turns away, allowing me to pull the T-shirt over my head quickly. When I spin back around, I see his profile. He’s staring into space, his hand covering his mouth. After a minute, I wave my hand in front of his eyes.
“Pierce?”
He says nothing.
“What’s the matter with you?”
He looks at me in wonder and starts shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“What? What is it?”
“I think I know who you are.” He gets up, flips his laptop open, and types something. Then he hoists me up and stands me in front of the computer. “Look.”
In the center of the screen there is a black-and-white picture of a young woman, her back exposed by a low-cut tank top, her arms extended like she’s about to dive. Her head is turned to the side, and you can just make out her ear, which has three piercings in the cartilage. You can also see part of her cheek, but her dark brown hair is blowing around her face. She’s standing on the ledge of a roof. The background is a sea of buildings and rooftops with small wooden water towers. It’s New York City. I’m sure of it. And I feel a surge of warm, gushing affection.
Home.
“That’s New York City.”
“Yes, but look at this.” He points to the girl’s back, to the wings tattoo. They spread across her shoulder blades. “That’s what’s on your back. Or most of it, anyway. It looks like someone got a start on removing it. The tip of one of your wings is missing.”
“Who is that? What’s this website?”
“That’s Angel. And I guess you could call this a fan site. Or maybe a memorial, depending on which theory you believe.”
I can’t reconcile this powerful image on the computer screen with how I feel right now: not powerful at all.
“How do you know I didn’t just see this picture and copy it?”
“Turn your head.”
I do.
“May I?” he asks, but before I can answer, he’s already touching my ear, comparing it to the picture.
More shivering.
“That’s your ear. Ears are like fingerprints. Distinct.”
I touch my upper ear as I stare at the screen.
“And look, you’ve got three holes in your ear. Just like her.”
I pinch my ear. “I didn’t know that.”
“Didn’t you ever notice the piercings in the mirror?”
“I haven’t looked in a mirror since I arrived at the hospital. I mean, here. Whatever this place really is.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You don’t know what you look like?”
“No, and I’m afraid to ask.” I feel my eyes stinging, because I can hardly blink. “So … what do I look like?”
“You look like an escaped mental patient.”
“Thanks.”
“A cute one, but still.”
He smiles at me, and I can’t help but smile back. I lean toward the computer and look closely at the image on the screen, focusing less on the girl than the background, trying to see past her and into the city where she lives. I wish the screen were a window, so I could look out at the streets below.
“Let me see it again.”
“What?”
“Your back.”
I turn around and lift up my shirt a little, trying to make sure my back is all he can see.
“It’s so intricate. Who could copy it exactly? I’m telling you,” he says, looking back and forth from the computer screen to my back, “the tattoo on your back and that one in the picture—they’re exactly the same.”
He shakes his head, smiling in awe. “Wow. That’s—I mean … you’re, like, a legend.”
A legend? I cringe a little, because I suddenly feel like an impostor. “What did I do?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just exposed a vast government scandal and then vanished into thin air, which is just the sort of thing that conspiracy theorists live for. Here, check it out.” He types Angel and New York City and government into a search engine. “You kind of got famous for derailing this housing project they were going to build along the Hudson River. At least, that’s what they said it was. The developer claimed it was condos. But you kept hanging these huge banners up nearby that had these numbers and stuff.”
“What were they?”
“At first nobody knew. That was sort of the fun of it—figuring out the message. Turned out they were verse citations from Hamlet. I’m not a Hamlet kind of guy, but I think all the references were about lies a
nd deception. Something like that.”
I put my hand to my forehead. Larry! Had he been trying to tell me something? Trying to give me a clue about who I was? Why not just tell me?
“Nobody could figure out how you found out what was really going on, not to mention how you got those banners up once you did. Then the city started looking into the developer’s building permits, and what do you know? It turned out the company was a shell corporation. From there it kind of snowballed, because the government stepped in and claimed whatever they were building was a matter of national security. A bunch of very important guys ended up in prison for lying to Congress about it. You bagged a sitting senator and two White House advisers. It was pretty cool. From a David versus Goliath standpoint, I mean.”
He shows me another picture—a construction crane.
“See this? You hung banners on these. The police figured you shinnied up the things, freestyle. No ropes, nothing.”
This would explain the images coming back to me.
“What happened to me? I mean her. Angel.”
“There were all kinds of rumors about you. Some people thought you’d been snuffed out. Assassinated. People started painting angel wings all over the place in New York. Where’s Angel? It became a thing. People had T-shirts printed up, and posters. You know how kids are these days, trying to borrow your mojo. Things died down a bit after a while.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About eighteen months, I guess. How long you been in this joint?”
“A year maybe? I don’t really know for sure.” I look at Pierce and ask, “What were the other rumors about me?”
“Just some stuff,” he says.
“What?”
“Keep in mind that these are rumors. Probably entirely made up.”
“Tell me.”
“Okay, there was a report that you tried to murder someone in the police station when you got arrested.”
“Wow.”
“After that, though, there was nothing else. Well, nothing else halfway credible. No one knew what happened to you, and not for lack of trying to find out. There must have been a dozen stories and at least that many theories about why you disappeared.”
“I just … I can’t believe it. I feel like you’re telling me a story about someone else. Someone who can’t possibly be me.”
Pierce puts his hand out like he wants to shake, and I put my hand in his, even though I’m not entirely sure why. “Congratulations on not being dead,” he says.
“For all that’s worth.”
“Hey, it’s no small feat being alive. And it’s even more amazing that you’ve survived this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a highly secret, highly secure, almost hack-proof place. It’s not like it’s juvie. They’ve been drilling into your head! Why did they put you in here? How did they put you in here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember anything about how you got here?”
“No. I always figured I must be some nobody if no one came looking for me.”
He scratches his chin and squints. “Well, they’re looking for you now.”
“You believe me, then?”
“About the guys with guns coming here specifically to kill you?”
I nod.
“I guess I have to. Not that I understand it. It’s hard to believe this whole operation is about killing a girl who hung up a bunch of protest banners. I mean, these guys inside? They are the elite of the elite. The kind of hired guns really powerful people employ to whack dictators and then get lost. They cost a whole lotta money. My boss’s services do not come cheap, either.”
“Your father’s, you mean?”
“Right. My father. I may never get used to calling him that.”
Pierce stands up and tries to pace back and forth in what little space is available. “What is it?” I ask.
“This is what’s bugging me the most: I don’t see why 8-Bit would get mixed up with this. I can’t say I know him inside out or anything, but up until now we haven’t done anything on this scale. And he’s way too smart for someone to use him without him catching on to what’s happening. Besides that, he’s … he’s not a bad guy. Obviously not the most responsible person ever, but I have a hard time believing he’d get involved with some plan to put a hit on someone.”
“Even as a personal favor?”
“For someone who has no memory, you have a pretty good memory.”
“Thanks.”
“How we’ve gone from totally tame corporate espionage, stealing some company’s idea for a new cell phone, to providing support to guys with more high-tech gadgets than the Navy SEALs—it’s strange. I wish I knew what he was thinking, why we got involved.”
Pierce takes the flash drive he was holding earlier out of his pocket. “And then there’s this.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a file on this drive that’s labeled ‘In Case Something Happens to Me.’ 8-Bit used his standard encryption on it, which means he knows I’ll hack it eventually. Not that it’ll be easy, but I’ll get there.”
“Have you tried to open it yet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still hoping that nothing’s happened to him.”
“I wish I had some hope.” I walk to the door of the yurt and open the flaps. Cold air rushes in. “But there’s no getting back what they took out of my head.”
“Sure there is.”
I whip my head around. “What do you mean?”
“They’re not actually extracting anything. There’s a small amount of brain tissue damaged during the needle insertion, but for the most part there is no real injury to the brain.”
“Are you sure?”
“Like I said, I read through some of the reports. Kind of got the gist of how things work.”
“They told me that they inject this stuff into my brain that kills off the neurons they’ve isolated. I had all these CAT scans before they started working on me. I don’t remember much of that process, though. I guess they erased that, too. All I know is what they told me.”
“Who are they?”
“This guy named Larry. His real name is Dr. Ladner. Plus Dr. Buckley.”
Pierce taps on the computer and brings up a grainy picture of a man with a beard. The picture must have been snapped while the guy was in motion, but I can still tell who it is easily enough. Middle-aged Santa Claus.
“That’s Dr. Buckley.”
“Buckley is the name he’s using, is it?”
I give Pierce a confused look.
“He’s the mastermind of the Tabula Rasa project. A very mysterious man. 8-Bit went to Harvard grad school with him. His real name is Joseph Purcell Wilson. And he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yup. Supposedly he was killed four years ago. There was an obit and everything. A very carefully orchestrated story about his tragic death in a small aircraft crash. 8-Bit never believed it. 8-Bit’s got a hang-up because the guy scored six points higher on his IQ test or something. Geniuses seem to be the most envious humans alive.”
“Dr. Buckley was supposed to do my surgery this morning, but it got interrupted.”
“Did it now?”
I explain about the power outage.
“What time was that?”
I point to my holey head. “Sorry. Time’s not my best subject.”
“It’s just weird. Our not-so-friendly crew of mercenaries didn’t cut the power to the main hospital building until right around the time the storm hit. So, say, early afternoon.”
I suddenly have an idea that makes me feel momentarily better. “Dr. Buckley’s probably still inside right now. Maybe it’s him they’re really after. I mean, maybe they were after me just to get to him. They want to kill all the patients he was working on as some kind of punishment or something. She said they were looking for a man.”
“Who is she?”
I freeze. I hadn’t really thought of this before, but maybe there’s a chance Hodges is after me—that she hates me—for a very good reason. Because of what Buckley did to us. Or specifically to me. Maybe there’s a good reason the nurses were always so cautious around me.
“That woman we heard on the radio,” I say.
“I’m sure they wish they could get to Buckley, but he’s not here. He’s hardly ever here.”
“What do you mean? Where is he?”
“Best guess is Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.”
“That can’t be.”
“Let me ask you this: Was he actually in the room with you?”
“No, he was up in the surgeon’s booth. He uses—”
“A robotic arm?”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly. He does the surgeries remotely.”
I start to speak, but stop myself. For some reason, I find this idea horribly offensive. All this time Dr. Buckley/Wilson/Whatever wasn’t even in the same state while he was doing brain surgery on me?
“Why did you say the procedure isn’t permanent?”
“It can become permanent. What they do is inject a sort of plasticizer compound into your head that seeks out certain kinds of nerve cells. Every time you think about an incident, the compound migrates to those nerve endings. Once all the nerve endings containing a certain memory are identified, they inject another compound that causes the plasticizer stuff to harden and kill the neuron for good. Before they do that, though, the process is reversible.”
I touch my head in wonder. “I can still get my memories back? All of them?”
“If that’s what you really want.”
“Of course I do.”
Don’t I?
“There’s a pill you can take that flushes the plasticizer out of your system through your cerebral spinal fluid.”
“Pills,” I say. I get up and put my hand in the pocket of the coat I stole from the locker. I pull out the baggy and show it to Pierce.
“Where’d you get this?”
“I don’t know.”
He sighs. “How can you not know? Did they just appear in your pocket?”
“Basically, yes.” I tell him about what happened during the injection procedure, the clothes in my room, and the passcard.