The Unhappening of Genesis Lee

by Shallee McArthur

  I had something else that could top it.

  “So.” Kalan paused. “Your dad didn’t want you to know me. But you’re here now, so . . . do you?”

  I could feel the yes like a hunger inside me, ready to eat me alive if I parted from him. Was it as strong as my fear of losing him again?

  “I need you,” I finally said. “I watched the memories you gave me, and we were right. Liza Woods is the Link thief. I can’t stop her without help.”

  By the time I’d explained everything, the sun had shifted into its early-afternoon burn, making our tree’s shade irrelevant. I wiped sweat from my forehead. Tendons in Kalan’s neck strained.

  “I’m so sorry.” He leaned toward me, then stopped.

  My hand tingled. Touch. Not just any touch, Kalan’s touch. I wanted it almost as much as I was afraid of it. I reached a gloved hand toward his. At the last second, I jerked my hand away.

  Kalan pulled back, his shoulders dropping the tiniest bit. “It’s okay, Gena.”

  My name sang in my ears and I remembered what it was to be known. All the grief inside me ignited in a sudden flame of rage.

  “It doesn’t make sense.” I hurled a handful of rocks into the river. “Something is wrong. Liza shouldn’t be able to use her SLS the way she does. Just erasing the memories, sure. But how is she accessing the info from the Link buds and the SLS grid? It’s all Mementi memories. I don’t even get why she wanted that in the first place. It’s not like she’s getting any money out of it.”

  “Sure she is,” Kalan said. “She could have access to Ascalon’s research, if your dad gave her the hookups. That gives her better stuff to sell. Plus, having Ren steal Links was a clumsy way to cover her tracks. If she can monitor everybody, then erase their memories, she can do basically anything she wants.”

  “But that can’t be the first reason she wanted to create it. She didn’t even know it could erase memories until Dad’s attempt to fade you out screwed up. And why is my Dad working with her? How did he get involved with something like this?” I yanked at the scarf around my neck, and it pulled tight around my throat. “We still don’t have all the pieces and I don’t have a clue what to do next.”

  “We’ll figure it out. I’m with you no matter what.”

  I could see why I liked this boy so much.

  Behind us, tires skid across gravel. Someone pulling into the little-used parking lot—fast. Kalan and I spun.

  “Stay here,” he said, crouching. “It could be anyone.”

  I stood. The parking area was out of sight. “It’s probably just—”

  Kalan flung a hand out to stop me. “The town was ready to detonate when I left. They must have stopped the trams by now. It’s probably people looking to get out of there, but I don’t want to take chances.”

  He crept up the rocky bank. Then he shouted.

  “Dad!”

  His panicked tone set off springs in my legs. I bolted up the bank after him.

  A nonautomatic car with sun-bleached paint glinted in the empty parking lot. A small group bunched next to it. I recognized Elijah’s top-bald, back-ponytail look from Kalan’s Memo. There were two other semifamiliar faces—Anabel, looking tinier than she had in Kalan’s memory, and Joss, who looked angrier.

  And Kalan’s sister, Rachelle. She slumped against the car, a streak of red smeared down her left arm.

  “I’m fine,” she protested to Kalan. I skidded up behind him, panting.

  He held her arm, examining the gash near her shoulder. “What happened, Rachelle, who did this?”

  “It was my fault.” Elijah put an arm around Rachelle, on the verge of tears. She leaned into him. “It’s for real this time, an actual riot. People are vandalizing trams, looting buildings, attacking each other. We only wanted to talk to our members who’d joined in. It’s not the Lord’s way, all this violence . . .”

  He took a shaky breath. “We got out of the car to talk to Gabe, and Rachelle nearly got trampled by the crowd. The hospital’s a nightmare. Since you said you were meeting Gena here, we thought it’d be our safest bet.”

  I eyed Joss and Anabel. Had they been among those Elijah had convinced away from the fighting?

  “Don’t even say it, Memental,” Joss snapped. “I was trying to get Anabel out of town, and Elijah found us on the road.”

  Anabel peered at me from under a tangle of blonde hair. Her heavily lined eyes looked tired. “Hm, what’s that I hear? Nothing? Nothing at all coming from Gena? Guess you should apologize, then, Joss. Especially for that nasty name-calling.”

  His sharp widow’s peak angled down as he glared at Anabel. She smiled at him like an expectant child. After a moment, he muttered something unintelligible.

  “Good as we’re gonna get.” Anabel fluttered over to me. “How’ve you been? Probably not so great, maybe I shouldn’t ask.”

  “I’m . . . fine.” It felt strange to be remembered by this girl. For a moment, I envied her the security of having memories stored in an untouchable place.

  “She’s not fine.” Kalan glanced up from dabbing at Rachelle’s bleeding arm with a handkerchief. She pushed him away, wincing. “Gena’s lost her memories again, and now every Mementi in town have lost their memories of her. They don’t even know she exists.”

  Rachelle gasped, her head lifting from her father’s shoulder. Anabel’s eyes rounded and she clapped her hands to her mouth. Joss crossed his arms, his hard expression fading.

  “Oh, Gena,” Elijah said, the grief in his eyes compounding.

  Their pity was like a shot of gasoline to my anger. In a tight voice, I said, “Let’s go to the pavilion. We should get out of the heat, and there’s a vending machine if we want food.”

  We gathered under the shade of the wooden roof. Anabel tied Kalan’s handkerchief around Rachelle’s arm. It had finally stopped bleeding. The cut would probably scar without stitches, but physical scars couldn’t compare to the mental ones Liza Woods could create.

  Liza was still kicking back at Happenings, waiting to vanish memories like a song fading to silence. I had to bring her down. And destroy the SLS. Preferably while inflicting as much pain as possible. I motioned Kalan aside.

  “I’ve got to get back to town.”

  He nodded. “I’ll see if we can borrow Dad’s car.”

  “You don’t have to come.” Please say you’ll come. “What about your sister?”

  “She doesn’t need me right now,” Kalan said. “You do. I’m not letting you fight Liza alone.”

  “How do you know I plan on fighting?”

  He laughed softly. “Because you always fight. Hiding your memories in me. Chasing down Jackson for clues when you knew what he could do to you. Showing up to meet me after you forgot me. Being here now after what happened this morning. That’s you fighting. And that’s why you need me, right? To fight with you.”

  My heart won out over my fractured memory. I reached toward him, brushing gloved fingertips against his knuckles. His hands opened, reaching for mine. My fingers drew back.

  “Thank you for knowing me so well,” I whispered. “I wish I could return the favor.”

  “Hey lovebirds,” Rachelle called. “You going to eat with us or not?”

  My face warmed. Kalan’s sister grinned at us, holding her injured arm. Joss rolled his eyes, and Anabel waggled her eyebrows at me. Elijah, who had an armful of snacks from the vending machine, winked at his son.

  A wink.

  The domino effect hit me for the second time in two days. I gasped with the force of memories colliding.

  Drake Matthews, winking at me before dinner with my parents, emphasizing his uneven cheekbones.

  Liza Woods, winking at me after she stole my life, highlighting a face as unbalanced as Matthews’.

  Liza’s words about my father: Well, not exactly working for me . . . but yes.

  Mom and Mrs. Harward, getting Chameleon treatments, their faces changing.

  Faces changing.

  “I don’t
believe it,” I whispered.

  “What?” Kalan said, alarmed.

  “Have any of you had a Chameleon treatment done?” I demanded, marching toward the table. “Please tell me someone has.”

  Anabel raised her hand, wiggling her fingers. “Never had one done. God gave me the face He wanted me to have, you know? But I work at a spa. I’m being trained to give them.”

  “What do you know about them? Anything technical?”

  “A little. I have to explain the details to customers.” Her eyes closed, and she continued like she was reciting something. “It’s an injection that uses a cocktail of protein enhancers and synthetic DNA to target different types of skin cells so they act younger. It doesn’t take the place of your own DNA, it simply masks itself over certain portions so you look younger for a period of time.”

  “So it’s a trick, basically,” I said. “They trick the cell into interpreting the younger DNA and showing that on your face.”

  Anabel nodded. “It only lasts two to four weeks, though. When the cells die, they don’t make new ones with the fake DNA.”

  “Makes sense. The synthetic DNA really is a mask, so when the cells go through mitosis, they’re still using your real DNA.”

  “What are you talking about?” Joss asked. “What does this have to do with anything?”

  I ignored him. “Kalan, it’s Drake Matthews. The head memory researcher at Ascalon BioTech. He’s pretending to be Liza Woods, using Chameleon treatments with her DNA to mask his features so he looks like her. He must’ve . . . done something to the real Liza Woods, so he could take her place and use the resources at Happenings for the live experiments.”

  Elijah paused in handing out the snacks. The rustling of packages stopped.

  “How—what?” Kalan sank onto one of the picnic benches. “That’s crazy.”

  Matthews’ weird feminine motions at dinner. Liza’s melodramatic, over-compensated girliness at the lab. All the awkwardness of her body and face. It was a charade, and Matthews was a crappy actor. He just had a decent costume.

  “I knew something was off with that whole sickness ruse of Liza’s,” I said. “The Chameleon treatments are only skin deep, that’s why she looks so weird. Why he had to spread around that she was sick.”

  “That’s an interesting thought,” Elijah said mildly, “but it’s a little hard to swallow. Why would Mr. Matthews want to do that when he has his own lab at Ascalon?”

  “Because it’s illegal,” I said. “His own father helped make it illegal to directly study our brains or Links. It would be impossible to experiment on live subjects at Ascalon, they’d crucify him if he tried. But he’s been working on making Mementi memory backups forever. It makes sense that he could only get so far without actually studying actual Mementi neurology. And when ‘Liza’ told me my Dad was working for her, but that he wasn’t really working for her, it’s true. My dad works at Ascalon with Matthews, who’s using Chameleon treatments to pretend he’s Liza Woods so he can use Happenings to do unsanctioned experiments without getting caught.”

  I drew a breath, almost dizzy from rambling out my revelations. And Dad. A tiny wave of relief licked at my heart. He wasn’t a spy. He hadn’t betrayed our whole Mementi world.

  Just me.

  “I don’t see how he could be working as a CEO of one company and research head at another,” Kalan said doubtfully.

  “Liza’s been ‘sick,’ remember? Ren said she’s hardly been into the office except after hours. And I heard a report that Matthews has been missing days at his lab, too. He had easy access to Cham treatments at Ascalon, and he had perfect excuses for why he was never around.”

  “Okay, I guess I could sort of see that,” Kalan said. “Except, where’s the real Liza Woods, then?”

  I swallowed.

  “You think he killed her?” Anabel squeaked.

  “I don’t know. But I know that the Liza Woods I met at Happenings today is not the real one.”

  Kalan’s forehead bore so many creases he looked like an old man. “How did you figure all this out?”

  “I met him,” I said. “Matthews, at my parent’s house, last week. Liza used his same phrases, seemed to know things about me even though she’d never met me. And there’s this thing that happens sometimes, in my head, where memories all link together and I can see the bigger—”

  Kalan cocked his head.

  “Forget it. The point is, Matthews kept winking at me all night. And Liza winked at me this morning. I can see the winks, side by side in my head. It emphasizes their facial structure, and both Matthews and Liza have these weird uneven cheekbones. Under the skin, they’re the same person. Literally.”

  The two faces flashed in my head as I spoke, my brain analyzing bone shapes and tiny muscle movements. Chameleon treatment couldn’t touch bone. I could see Matthews in Liza Woods’ face: the small forehead, the pointed nose, those cheekbones. Something filled out Matthews’ face, though. Muscle tissue, maybe, or fat. He looked too much like Liza for it to just be a skin change.

  “I swear, Kalan,” I said. “If you could see it in my memories, you’d know what I mean.”

  He frowned. Joss shook his head. Rachelle had her head on the table, eyes closed. Anabel stroked her hair, humming slightly off-key. They wouldn’t understand unless they could see my memory.

  I dug into my bag, pulling out the second Memo Kalan had given me. The one of all our days together.

  “How do I record onto this?” I asked.

  “You want to put one of your memories on here?” Kalan gaped at me.

  “You’ve got to see it.”

  He shook his head and pressed a button along the top of the Memo. A thin string, like fishing twine, slid out next to his finger.

  “Hold this up to your tear duct and push this button again. It ejects nano-recorders along your optic nerve. You think of the memory you want and the recorders find it. They bring it back to the filament and save it as a digital copy.”

  “Are you kidding me? You inject things into your brain?”

  “You can’t feel it, they’re microscopic. It’s totally sterile, and the nano-recorders decompose if they accidentally get left.”

  Not a huge deal. I was only sharing a memory in the first place. Shooting little bee-bees into my head to record my private information. No worries. “Okay.”

  Kalan held out the string. “Will this work on you? I mean, your memories aren’t in your brain.”

  “My brain is connected to my Links if I’m consciously remembering things,” I said. “It’ll work.”

  Hopefully.

  I grabbed the string and held it to my tear duct.

  “Hold still,” Kalan said. “Here goes.”

  I didn’t feel a thing. “Did you push it?”

  “Give it a minute. Think of those memories.”

  I called up the images again. Matthews and Liza, winking at me. I held them in all their photographic clarity: eyelids dropping, emphasizing those identical low left cheekbones. I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached.

  There was a small beep. Kalan said, “Okay. All done. You can let go of the wire.”

  I opened my fingers. The wire zipped inside the Memo. “Play it.”

  Kalan motioned to his father and tapped the screen. The two of them huddled over the Memo for a few moments before Kalan lowered it.

  “It could be, I guess,” he said.

  It could be? That’s all I was going to get from him?

  “It’s hard for us to say,” Elijah said. “Your brain makes quicker connections than ours. Granted, this doesn’t look like Liza Woods. It doesn’t really look like Drake Matthews, either.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I snatched the Memo and watched it play. “The short forehead, the pronounced brow ridge, and here, their off-center cheekbones . . .”

  I frowned at the Memo. Exhibit A why memory tech still couldn’t hold its own with Links. It wasn’t obvious, not on a screen. Something had gotten lost in the transfer. Ev
en my quick-thinking brain had a hard time seeing what I could see in my own head.

  I laid the Memo on the table. Joss snatched it.

  “I promise, if you could see it the way I do, you’d understand.”

  Elijah closed his eyes, fingering a small cross around his neck.

  Kalan’s eyes caught mine. “I believe you, Gen.”

  I wanted to hug him. I took an instinctive step back.

  Elijah cleared his throat. “The Lord looketh on the heart,” he said. “And maybe He can see your mind, too. I’m going to trust you on this one.”

  Joss tossed the Memo to the table with a clatter, startling Rachelle. She glared at Joss before laying her head down again. Anabel glanced at the Memo, but made no move to pick it up.

  “This is a total joke,” Joss said. “What would we do with this, if it was true?”

  “This could be huge,” Kalan said. “If we can show everyone Matthews is impersonating Liza Woods, and that he’s behind the Link thefts, it’s all over. The thefts, maybe even the rioting.”

  “We don’t know that Liza Woods is behind the Link thefts,” Joss said.

  “Actually, we do,” I said. “Or at least I do. I have memories that can prove it.”

  Joss crossed his arms. “Even then, people aren’t going to take a wink and some facial similarities as evidence this guy is cross-dressing.”

  I wanted to growl at him for being right. “We’ll need real proof. A memory of him changing from one person to another.”

  “Memories aren’t real proof,” Joss said.

  “They are in a Havendale court, if they come from a Mementi.”

  “Well, whoop-de-do, but that’s not going to do it for the rest of the world. If he’s using injections with Liza Woods’ DNA, that’s hard proof right there. That’s what you really need.”

  I forced back a retort that what we really needed was him to stop being nasty. Joss was a pain. A smart pain with a tongue as sharp as his hairline.

  “Fine. We need a syringe of the DNA too.”

  “So where do we start?” Kalan asked. “Matthews’ house?”