by Pintip Dunn
“The chairwoman may have released us to live in the scientific residences,” Ryder says, seeing my glance. “But that doesn’t mean she trusts us to roam free in society. She said letting us loose would be akin to releasing the documents—and there was nothing Jessa could do to change her mind.”
So much for my mother being generous. But if security is such an issue, why let them come to the swim meet at all?
The hair prickles at the back of my neck, and every nerve shouts at me to run! But Ryder drops his hand onto my arm, smoothing away the goose bumps.
I roll my shoulders. “You seem…relaxed,” I say to Ryder, studying the long length of his body. His leg isn’t jiggling, his hands aren’t fidgeting. He’s been in motion ever since I’ve met him, and now he’s finally still. “No, not just relaxed. You seem at peace.”
“I am.” He picks up my hand, brushing his lips across my knuckles. I shiver. Even in this crowded natatorium, with people screaming from every direction, he makes me feel like the only girl in this time.
“Jessa told me about the manufactured memories,” he says. “And I’m happy for two reasons. First, because Mikey’s going to ask the chairwoman about letting me use one—”
“And you’d do it?” I interrupt. “Even if it means you’d be cheating to gain a spot on the list?”
His eyes flash. “Right and wrong became blurred for me the moment my biological parents abandoned me. Using a manufactured memory would mean I could be with the people I love. It would mean I could live. That’s good enough for me.”
“You know what?” I say, realizing something. “That would be good enough for me, too. If you could live—I wouldn’t even care if you cheated. Because right and wrong isn’t a rigid line. It’s about what you feel in your heart.”
“The people I love are what’s in my heart,” he says. “That’s how I live my life—how I’ve always lived my life. I put my trust in my family, and they put their trust in me. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t walk through that window. I don’t know how it feels for my body to vanish, bit by bit. I don’t know…death.”
There’s a finality to his words. A resoluteness that I can’t argue with—that I don’t want to argue with. When we look death in the face, we peel back the layers of our heart to the core of who we are. Who am I to judge the choices that are made? Maybe, in that moment, there is no morality. Maybe there are just the choices we can bear on our souls—and the ones that we can’t.
I lick my lips. “You said there were two reasons why you’re happy. What’s the second?”
“They know how to manufacture memories.” He turns to me, his eyes bright. “Don’t you see what this means? That vision of me injecting you with the syringe. It’s not going to happen after all. Because it’s not a real memory. They made up the entire thing.”
He is so hopeful, so relieved. It’s as though a weight was strapped to each of his nerves, and now, they’ve all been released.
I can’t bear to tell him he’s wrong. Because I lived his memory seventeen days ago, and it was pristine. Seamless. Not a jerk or a jostle to be found. As of a couple mornings ago, TechRA was still ironing out those final wrinkles.
My mother may have figured out how to manufacture future memories…but Ryder’s memory isn’t one of them.
“Yeah.” I hope I sound more convincing than I feel. “Maybe so.”
All of a sudden, the crowd begins yelling Logan’s name. He’s standing on the hard concrete next to the starting line, water dripping from his body as though he’s just pulled himself out of the pool. He’s been gone six months, but Logan’s still the local favorite, still Eden City’s big hope for a gold star.
He rips the swim cap off his head, and his eyes roam the bleachers, skimming, skimming, skimming. He’s looking for one person, and one person alone, and I know exactly who it is.
Sure enough, his eyes fasten on Callie. I don’t know what she says or does—there are too many people sitting between us—but whatever it is makes Logan straighten his shoulders and stand tall. A power exudes from him, further fueled by the cheers of the crowd. He doesn’t just look like a gold-star swimmer. He looks damn near invincible.
A buzzer sounds, signaling the swimmers to take their starting positions. Logan moves to the third of nine stalls. This is it. The final meet. The most important swim of Logan’s life. Whoever wins this race will be crowned the gold-star winner of North Amerie. More than that, he—and his plus one—will be granted the opportunity to leave this deteriorating time stream and walk through a window into another world. He is literally swimming for his—and his wife’s and unborn baby’s—lives.
I stop clapping abruptly. If the fetus travels through the realm between times, it may become a precognitive like me. Will her life be as difficult as mine? Will she feel as isolated, will she feel as alone? For a moment, the worry buries inside me, sinking into my stomach. And then, I do my best to push the niggling aside. Better a precog than dead, I suppose.
A hush falls over the crowd. Around the box, Jessa’s family joins hands, first Callie and Jessa with their parents, and then Mikey, Angela, Ryder—and me.
I stare uncomprehendingly at my hand clutched in Ryder’s. We’ve held hands before, but never like this. Never when it connects me so intimately with his family.
The buzzer goes off, and the swimmers dive into the water. One of them edges in front of the others. Could it be? First—second—third stall—yes! It’s Logan!
“You can do it!” Jessa screams. “Go, Logan! Go!”
Everyone in the box starts chanting his name, even the FuMA guards, and Ryder’s on his feet, waving his hands, yelling at the top of his lungs.
I reach into Logan’s future. As blurry as it is, one outcome seems to dominate the rest. And still, and still, I hold my breath for the next one minute and fifty-four seconds, until Logan’s hand slaps against the concrete, until he heaves his powerful body out of the water, until the referee grabs his hand and stabs it into the air and declares him the official gold-star winner.
He did it, he did it. Around me, Phoebe bursts into tears, and Callie and Jessa hold each other as though they’ll never let go. Mikey jumps to his feet, giving Logan a standing ovation, and if there were a prouder brother in any time stream, I’ve never seen him, in all the billions of pathways that have crossed my mind.
Ryder sweeps me up, and I somehow find myself in the middle of them, this celebrating, happy clan. Callie kisses me on both cheeks, and Jessa swings me around. Even Mikey encloses me in a hard, fierce hug. Bubbles like this have never fizzed up inside me—big and inclusive and unbreakable. I’ve never felt my lungs burn with this much happiness; I’ve never felt my skin stretch and stretch until it covers not just myself but all of us. An entire community. An entire family.
And then, the lights dim. The national anthem cuts off, not cleanly as befitting our advanced technology, but with a screech that could only be deliberate in order to grab our attention.
An enormous, three-dimensional hologram appears above the swimming pool. It is my mother, blown up to ten times her normal size.
All jubilation and cheer drain out of the natatorium.
44
“Greetings, citizens of North Amerie,” the chairwoman begins. The hologram shows her from the shoulders up, but I can imagine her legs crossed demurely. “Thank you for interrupting your daily routines, whether they be work or school, virtual theaters or swim meets.” Her left eye twitches as she says the final words. The movement is subtle, but it’s there.
My core turns ice cold. She knows we’re here, trapped in her personal box by rays of electricity. Of course she knows. She orchestrated the entire thing. Whatever this announcement, she wants all of us in one place and under the custody of her FuMA guards.
Why? my mind screams. Why? Why? Why?
Automatically, I reach into her future, even though I know I don’t have access. Once again, there’s nothing. A blankness so gaping it rivals the blankness of al
l my visions after May Fourth.
“I am pleased to inform you we have decided to switch up the order of those who receive the antidote. So many of you have expressed concern over your children that we have decided to treat our youngest citizens first,” my mother continues. “Thus, we will no longer proceed by sector but by age.”
The hologram switches to a vid, showing a row of babies being injected by techs in scrubs and face masks. But the syringes don’t have amber-colored liquid swishing in their barrels. Instead, the formula is clear.
My mind whirls so quickly and so chaotically, it might fall right out of this dimension.
Clear.
Clear like the formula that Callie plunged into her own heart, causing it to stop. Clear like the syringe that Ryder will inject into me in three days’ time.
Sinister in its absence of color. A liquid that stands out against the bright, brilliant colors of the rest of the vials.
From the time I was a child, my mother has taught me one thing about a syringe with clear liquid swimming in the barrel.
Clear is bad. Clear means poison. Clear tells you to run, run, run.
But I don’t run. I can’t even move, as the thoughts circle my body like creeping vines, fixing me in place.
Why? Why is the chairwoman injecting kids with the clear formula?
My mother’s words echo in my mind. We have to increase supply and decrease demand, she said. We need to cut down our population. By a lot.
The International Council’s solution was always twofold. They built a realm machine to take a miniscule portion of the human race to a parallel world. And for everyone else? In order to give them a fighting chance, they would have to get the number of people in line with the meager supply of formula.
My thoughts spiral and tighten, spiral and tighten until they come down to one inevitable conclusion. Oh dear Fate. The council’s decided to cut down the population. Starting with society’s youngest, most defenseless citizens.
While I’m still reeling from the horror, the chairwoman continues. “Please bring children under the age of five to your nearest FuMA office, so that they may be injected with the antidote. This is not a request, nor is it voluntary. In order to eradicate this virus from our world, we will need one hundred percent participation. What does this mean?” The chairwoman smiles, the picture of all things kind and good. “This means if you don’t bring in your child to receive his or her injection…” Her eyes flash. “We will.”
My toes go numb, my knees knock together, and my teeth would chatter if I weren’t clenching them so tightly. My mother just issued a death sentence for all the children under five in North Amerie.
That’s why she wanted all of us in one place. So that she could keep us contained and under her control when she broke this news to the public.
The hologram shuts off, and the pool hall erupts in shouts and cheers. But I hardly hear any of it. I’m too busy staring at one person, and she’s currently gnawing on her mother’s collarbone, completely unaware.
Remi.
45
For an infinitesimal moment, I am frozen. And then one of the FuMA guards stands up casually and begins to walk toward Remi, his hand caressing the electro-whip at his belt.
No. His future pours into my mind, patchy and crumbling. But one thing is clear. He’s going to grab Remi. He’ll take her to a center to be injected with the “antidote.” And she’ll die.
Not if I have anything to do with it.
I don’t think. Lunging forward, I snatch Remi out of Angela’s arms. Angela blinks, too shocked to react, and the baby shrieks, pummeling me with her little fists.
“Olivia,” Ryder barks. “What in Limbo are you doing? Give her back to her mother.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, my eyes darting to the guards, who are advancing on me.
Limbo. Limbo. Limbo. The others didn’t notice the clear formula. They don’t comprehend its significance. But there’s no time. No time to explain. No time for reassurances. No time to feel the little nails biting across my skin.
If Remi and I are going to get out of here, we have to leave now.
The guards pull out their weapons, and the electro-rays surrounding the box hum to life, ready to electrocute any cuffed person who crosses its boundary.
But I don’t have on electro-cuffs, and neither does Remi. Holding the baby close, I duck underneath the rays and lose myself in the crowd.
“O-liv-i-a!” I hear Ryder’s angry scream over the din. “Get back here right now!”
I grit my teeth and continue weaving, even as sorrow lances through my heart. I’m sorry, Ryder. I’m sorry. I knew I was going to lose your trust. I knew it. But if it comes down to your good opinion or Remi’s life, I will always choose Remi.
The people no longer sit in orderly rows. They’re on their feet, tossing pennants in the air, shouting at friends six seats over. They return to celebrating Logan’s win, unaware of the ramifications of what just happened. Unaware their children are about to die.
He hates me. He hates me. He hates me. The thought repeats in my mind, but I don’t have time to mourn. I don’t have time for anything other than to keep moving. The guards are right at my heels, but luckily, I have the advantage of foresight. Short-term physical movements, devoid of complex human decision. Even Jessa or any baby precog could predict these moves.
The guards look left, and I duck under a beefy guy’s arm. They charge straight ahead, and I double back and head for the rear exit. After a complicated five minutes of mouse-and-maze, I exit onto the roof of the building, where the self-driving pods are parked.
Good. I need to get far from here, fast. And a vehicle’s the only way to do it.
Remi’s still crying, still ramming her head against my shoulder. It’s like she’s completely forgotten I already rescued her once. I push forward through the crowd. Come on, kid. Help me out here.
We’re almost at my pod before I think to reach into my future. And it stops me in my tracks.
Limbo, Limbo, Limbo. My precognition’s half useless now, but on all the pathways I can see, if I get into that vehicle, they’ll catch us. I could gamble that the pathways I can’t see yield a better result—but I’d rather not.
The pod is an official FuMA vehicle, one that’s equipped with a tracking device. That’s probably why my mother so “generously” loaned it to us in the first place. She may have confessed to having feelings once upon a time, but that doesn’t mean the chairwoman’s changed. She’s still the woman she always was. Every action she takes is for an ultimate end goal. Just because that goal happens to be saving our world doesn’t make her any less hard.
I charge back toward the entrance but stop short of crossing the threshold. Now what? I can’t go back inside. They’ll just lock down the building, and then it’ll be a matter of time before they find us. Jessa told me once that Logan and Callie jumped off a building into the river to escape, but that’s not an option. For one thing, I have a squirming baby in my arms. For another, there’s no river nearby.
I squint at the blue, blue sky, and a pathway unfurls before me. Calmer now, Remi lays her head on my shoulder and stuffs her thumb in her mouth.
Yes. It just might work. We may not be able to use the vehicle I arrived in, but maybe we can hitch a ride in another pod.
The doors of the elevator capsule open, and a trio of FuMA guards spills out, with Scar Face leading the way.
Oh Fates. He wasn’t sitting with us in the box. He must’ve been stationed somewhere else. My heart thudding in my throat, I swing back around. Poor Remi’s probably getting whiplash. People stream past me. Big, bulky guys and lean, angular women. Young girls with rainbow hair and elderly men with mechanically straightened spines. There are so many of them, and they’re all walking so fast. No way do I have time to search all their futures, not with Scar Face breathing down my back. I just have to pick one and hope for the best.
There! A woman with shoulder-length brown hair, flipped
up at the ends like a question mark, is ushering a boy toward a silver-gray pod. She’s a mom. Surely she’ll be sympathetic to my and Remi’s plight.
I rush toward them as the boy climbs inside.
“Excuse me, ma’am!” I pant. Coming up behind the woman, I put my hand on her slim shoulder. “I have an emergency. Could you please give me and my little girl a ride?”
The woman turns, and I look right into the eyes of my mother’s former assistant and my long ago child-minder. It’s been over ten years, but she hasn’t changed one bit.
MK Rivers.
46
MK gapes at me, and then her eyes dart over my shoulder. Does she see Scar Face? Are the guards barreling toward us? I don’t dare turn around.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she says. “Get in!”
Oh, bless the Fates that led me to MK. Action first, questions later. That’s the only way we’ll get out of here.
I clamor into the pod, one hand supporting Remi’s bottom and the other cradling her head. The boy jumps into the back row of seats. MK’s son, I’m assuming. He’s about eight years old and has the same red hair with golden tips as his dad. If I ever knew his name, though, I no longer remember it.
MK slams down the locks and engages the engine. The walls shimmer and start to turn transparent. I grab her arm, and Remi falls into my lap.
“Should we leave the walls opaque?” I ask.
Her fingers hover over the controls. “I don’t think so.” Sweat dots her upper lip, and she’s not even the one running away. “If we stay opaque, they’ll notice our pod in an instant. Better to turn transparent and hope they don’t see us. Do you agree?”