False Memory

by Dan Krokos

“Don’t be alarmed,” he says. “But the redness of your eyes has deepened. The machine works by...”

  “How?”

  “It pierces your skull with microscopic needles, I think, much too fine to see. Once it’s jacked into your entire brain, it can recreate the memory as if it’s actually happening. I’m guessing this includes the eyes.”

  The thought of needles in my eyes doesn’t do much for my stomach. “And they built it to create more versions of us. To store our identities.”

  “I can’t think of anything else it would be used for.”

  Oh, I’m sure there’s all manner of nefarious uses for it, ones we can’t even think of. “Will you show this to the others?”

  He shakes his head and sits down on the couch again. “No. I won’t tell them, either. Not until this is finished.”

  “Just show them. You showed me.”

  He shakes his head while I speak. “It’s too painful the first time. Physically. Or it was for me. If we’re going after Peter tonight, they need to be ready. And I don’t want to distract them. They may not take it as well as you have.”

  “I’m taking it well?”

  He shrugs. “You’re still here.”

  I nod. It’s suddenly awkward here on the couch, alone. His emotions for the other Miranda flood through me as I remember them. How much he cared for her, like a sister.

  He must see this. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I know you’re not the Miranda I knew. I know that.”

  “Okay,” I say. Something occurs to me. “What’s your name?”

  “Rhys...”

  “Your last name,” I say.

  His mouth grows tight. “My father’s last name was Noble. The silly compass thing was from a training mission when we were kids. I guess your team did the same mission, the one where you each start in a different place on the map? I never got a direction. I’m just Rhys.”

  I don’t remember the mission. “And Mrs. North?”

  He almost smiles. “That’s what the creators had us call them. Mrs. North, Mr. West. Guess they didn’t trust us with real names. I only found out my dad’s real name because he told me the night before he disappeared.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was gone in the morning. Just gone. They told us he died. No other explanation.”

  The apartment door opens; Rhys has the revolver in his hand a half-second later. Seeing the gun again makes me sick. I’ve never touched it, but I know exactly what it feels like.

  It’s only Noah and Olive, carrying enormous black duffel bags. Noah sees me and drops the bag on his way over.

  “Are you okay?” he says, stopping at a distance. He glares at Rhys. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “I’m fine.” But I’m not.

  “What did you see?” Noah asks.

  I shake my head. “Later. We have to focus.”

  “Miranda—”

  “I need you to trust me, Noah. Please.”

  He’s about to say more when Rhys claps his hands and says, “That’s more like it.” He stands up and walks back to the kitchen table, where Olive is counting out bricks of H9. “I hope you’re all familiar with climbing.”

  We each take another memory shot and discuss what we hope to accomplish.

  Rhys wants to burn the building to the ground, hoping that will get the creators off his back for good.

  Olive pretty much wants the same, so nothing like this can ever happen to her again.

  Noah wants Peter free, and more answers about where we came from and what we’re made for, since Dr. Conlin made it seem like we have uses that aren’t yet apparent.

  I want it all. I want to be free. But most of all I want Peter back where he belongs, with us. If I have to level a skyscraper and kill the creators to make that happen, so be it. Peter should be good through the night, but we agree they’ll deprive him of shots to wipe him clean, reuse him. I pull Olive aside while Rhys and Noah argue over entry plans.

  “How are you holding up?” I say. I grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator and take a sip.

  She shrugs. “Fine, I guess. I remember snippets. I remember you. Noah seems familiar. What can I do but go with it, you know?”

  I smile. “I know. That’s how it was for me in the beginning.”

  “I guess it’s not hard because I have nothing to compare it to. This seems...normal. But more is coming back. Maybe because I didn’t go without a shot for too long, you know? I remember Dr. Tycast and I remember riding a pair of black motorcycles with you on a winding road. Do you remember?”

  “I do. That was a fun day.” In truth, I don’t remember, and I want to so bad it hurts.

  She doesn’t seem to believe me. “We’ll do it again when this is over, yeah?”

  “Deal.”

  I walk back to the table, where Noah is shaking his head.

  “We’ll be exhausted after the climb. There’s no way we can break in, plant the charges, and get out undetected.”

  “You have another idea?” Rhys says, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest.

  “Yeah. We go up from the inside, blast our way in. Use the stairs like sane individuals would.”

  Rhys shakes his head. “You don’t know the security like I do. We climb up the side of the building, or we don’t go at all. We don’t have to climb the whole way, Noah, just high enough. They’ll obviously be watching the lobby.”

  Noah says, “Well I don’t like being exposed on the side of a building like that, darkness or not.”

  Rhys shrugs. “There are other entrances, sure. All of them watched by cameras.”

  I sit down at the table. “And how do we get out?” I say.

  “Parachutes,” Rhys says. He might as well have added Duh.

  Noah says, “How do you know they do the cloning there? They could have a separate facility.”

  “I don’t know,” Rhys says, “but the mothers and fathers are there. It’s where they do their research. There might be more of their labs in the basement. I remember them going down there when I was a child.”

  He doesn’t have to explain it—mothers and fathers.

  Our “parents.”

  Olive says, “I like the idea of destroying what we can while searching for Peter, but maybe we don’t stick around afterward and tempt fate. What does a wolf do? Cripple the prey then wait for it to weaken before moving in for the kill.”

  “Wolves do that?” Noah says.

  “Actually, I may have made that up. The point is, blowing off the top of the building will get noticed. Being greedy might hurt us in the end.”

  “Noted,” Rhys says, picking up a marker. His tone says we won’t be going anywhere until the job is done, which is fine with me. He walks to the big window overlooking the city. I see emergency lights flashing in the distance, a few camouflaged Humvees rolling down the road. On the glass, he draws a horizontal line where the Tower ends and the cap begins. “The base is from here up. The first level was our living area. The second was a laboratory. The third was where we trained.” He draws a vertical line from the cap to below the building. “And here is the basement. I don’t know what happens here, but I know they have an elevator running to it. One the rest of the building can’t use.”

  “Will using H9 destroy the entire building?” I say.

  Rhys caps the marker, taps it against his lips. “It shouldn’t. But their real estate front owns it anyway, so who gives a shit. If we do this right, it should only melt the cap. They’ll have a hell of a cleanup job, but the building will remain structurally intact.”

  He smears the marker on the window with his hand, turning away.

  The Tower looms in the distance, hazed by smoke from fires still burning. Waiting for us.

  29

  From Rhys’s armory, which is really just a closet, I choose a straight sword and extra magazines for the G36C assault rifle. Noah takes his assault rifle too, along with a collection of black throwing kniv
es he wears across his chest in a bandolier. Rhys sticks with his revolver/sword combo. Rhys hands me a tiny radio for my ear.

  Olive stares into the armory. I hold my sword out to her, hilt first.

  “Do you want to try this?”

  She looks at the sword, then up at me. She shrugs. “What am I good with?”

  I smile. “I think you were good at a little bit of everything.”

  She reaches into the closet and pulls out a metal staff. Holds it in both hands, testing its weight. Gives it a quick twirl.

  “I think I’ll take this,” she says.

  “It’s worked out for you so far.” I rap my knuckles against her back. “Stick it here.”

  She slides the staff on to her magnet, then pulls out two handguns and a belt holster. I start to back away. It feels like a private moment. She’s rediscovering the weapons she trained with her whole life. She holds a Colt up to the light, racks the slide back, and peers inside the chamber.

  She lowers the gun. “Thank you. For helping.”

  “I know what it’s like.”

  After arming ourselves, we stretch on the living room floor. It’s hard to stop moving; it feels like the sun will never set. Rhys passes some food around for us to nibble on, and water. Noah turns the news on, but Rhys turns it off after a few minutes. The world thinks there was some kind of airborne chemical or biological attack. The city is quarantined, only military and the CDC allowed in until it’s deemed safe again. They show footage from helicopters of abandoned cars in the streets, of ragged people standing a hundred feet from a blockade lined with armed soldiers. People trapped in the city. I’m glad when Rhys yanks the cord out of the wall.

  Soon the blue sky turns purple. Key Tower appears empty and dark, an office lit every few floors. Ambulances and yellow CDC trucks patrol the streets, flickers of red light moving between buildings. Our psychic energy has disappeared, but the core of the city remains empty.

  The plan is less than ideal. Climb up the side of the tower, high enough to be invisible. Then break in and plant enough H9 to melt the place, rescue Peter, and make it out with the three parachutes we have. Which means two of us will have to go down the long way, or climb down, or something. There just isn’t enough time to find more. And we’re okay with that. We are Roses and we are set on a course, and we will follow it. For now, I wear a thin chute on my back, and so do Rhys and Olive.

  Once it’s completely black outside, we leave the condo and walk the empty streets. Helicopters fly above, shining their spotlights on the ground, but we avoid them easily. They aren’t looking for us anyway, I don’t think. Down one street I spot men in white hazmat suits, testing the air with handheld instruments. We have to duck into an alley when a Humvee roars around the corner, the big diesel engine like a thousand falling hammers. The soldiers wear full-face gas masks and green plastic ponchos.

  Soon we reach the base of the Tower. I tilt my head back and look to the top. Rhys aims skyward with his grapnel gun and fires—a sharp ping!The hook and line fly high into the night. I don’t hear it catch on the ledge, or see it, but Rhys gives a couple tugs.

  “See?” he says. “Perfectly safe.” Without another word he plants his feet on the side of the building and climbs, hand over hand. I lose him in the gloom.

  A few minutes go by, then my earpiece crackles. “All right, North, you’re up.”

  I take a deep breath, then take the line in my hands. I’m not afraid of heights, but there’s a difference between leaping over rooftops you know you can clear, and climbing up the side of a skyscraper on a line secured to something you can’t see. I plant my right foot on the wall.

  “Miranda,” Noah says.

  “What?”

  He opens his mouth. Closes it. “Be careful.”

  “Always.” Which seems a funny thing to say considering the last couple days. I focus on my hands, putting one over the other. My black-scaled feet grip the windows firmly. My forearms and fingers burn, but I ignore them. I don’t look down. A hand reaches out and grabs my wrist. I almost scream, but it’s just Rhys. I’m already at the first ledge. He swings me up and over the side. I plant my feet on solid ground, then move to the opposite edge, gazing over the dark city. It’s only a hundred feet up, maybe less.

  My earpiece clicks. “Olive, you’re next,” Rhys says.

  Truly no going back now, not that I would. Still, the climb has left my nerves frayed. So much depends on each of us; there’s no room for error. While Noah and Olive climb, I decide to use the time wisely and sit, pulling my legs under me to meditate. It doesn’t work; my blood is too amped. Soon we’re all together on the ledge.

  Rhys draws his sword and slashes at the nearest window. It shatters, creating a jagged hole big enough for us to slip through.

  We enter the dark office, find the stairs, and begin the ascent.

  Moving slowly, in shifts, listening for the smallest sounds, it takes nearly two hours to reach the fifty-seventh floor. Rhys and I watch for surveillance equipment the whole time, while Olive and Noah cover our rear.

  The door to the fifty-seventh floor is locked with a keypad. Rhys slices off a thin piece of H9 and slaps it over the pad, then pushes one of the tiny bullet-shaped detonators into the semi-soft material. It burns through in a flash. The door sighs open and we’re inside the office.

  Rhys points to the ceiling. “Above us is the first floor. This corner of the building was our bunks. It should be empty.”

  “Should?” Noah says.

  “Well, yes. I don’t have X-ray vision, do I?”

  “I suppose not,” Noah says.

  “Guys,” I say.

  Rhys shakes his head and jumps on someone’s desk, kicking aside a pile of papers. He removes the ceiling panel, then takes a bigger slice of H9 from his satchel and sticks it into place. Hands still in the ceiling, he looks down at us. “You’ll want to move to the other side of the office.”

  We do. He hurries after us. For a second I think it failed, but then sparks spit down from the ceiling, followed by chunks of molten steel that plop on the desk, which promptly bursts into flame. The headquarters of Project Rose is officially breached.

  “Sorry,” Rhys says, as if the desk’s owner can hear. Noah grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall and sprays the desk with white foam.

  We assemble under the hole and look up into darkness. The opening changes the acoustics of the office; I can hear the empty room above.

  “Right then,” Rhys says, “who’s first?”

  “Wait. This isn’t right,” Noah says.

  Rhys throws up his hands. “Oh, good. Now he gets doubts. Maybe you could bring that up before we’re in the building next time.”

  Noah says, “All I wanted to say was we should split up.”

  Olive hooks her thumbs into her gun belt. “Um, why?” Noah faces her in the dim light. Behind him, out the window, I see the vast expanse of Lake Erie gleaming with moonlight. “Think about it. All four of us in tight corridors? We can’t be very effective. They could take us all at once. If we split up, plant charges on opposite sides, then meet somewhere, it’ll be better. Faster.”

  “No. We stick together,” I say. While his point is valid, there’s too much risk, too many unknowns. I will not have one of us pinned down or captured, forcing the others to either look for that person or leave them behind. Either we all win, or we all die.

  Olive nods. “What she said.”

  “She’s right,” Rhys says. “Only I know my way around this place. You guys would get lost.”

  Noah has no response. I take the lead by jumping up into the hole. I’m careful not to touch the still-glowing ring with my hands, instead using my foot to piston off the hole and into the room. Touching it for a second leaves the bottom of my foot roasting. The air feels baked.

  The room is too dark to make out details, just the rough outline of the bunks. Then suddenly it’s not too dark, because red lights flash from every corner. A terrible alarm pushes on my ears.
<
br />   They know we’re here.

  30

  Rhys jumps through next, pulling his sword and revolver while he’s still in the air. Then Noah, who lands in a crouch and unslings his rifle. We look ethereal in the strobing red lights.

  “Noah, cover the door!” Rhys shouts as he pulls a brick of H9 from his satchel, still holding his gun. Noah aims his rifle at the door, and so do I.

  From the corner of my eye I watch Rhys cut another slice off the brick, then stick it on the ceiling. Two soldiers burst through the doorway and crash to the floor as we open fire.

  I only shoot a quick burst to conserve ammo. The number of targets up here is unknown—there could be a dozen soldiers or more, plus the creators, plus Tobias and Nicole. Over the alarm I hear the hiss and sputter of melting metal as the H9 goes to work on the ceiling. A tiny grenade flips into the room from the open doorway, spiraling. I identify the flashbang for what it is—a grenade that disorients with sound and light instead of shrapnel. We’re lucky—it bounces once on the floor and disappears down the hole we made in the fifty-seventh floor ceiling. The white flash of light and the bang that follows don’t affect us. We affect the guard who comes in thinking we’re blind and deaf.

  The new hole Rhys created is directly over the first one, so the molten metal dropped all the way down to the fifty-seventh floor rather than piling up on this. After a few seconds the hole above us stops glowing. Noah covers us as we jump straight up through the opening and roll clear—to fall back through would mean a two story drop onto a pile of half-cooled jagged metal. I pop up, leveling my rifle at the next threat.

  There is none.

  No flashing red lights in this room, no alarm except the muffled blare from beneath us. We’re in an operating room, complete with gurneys and banks of monitors and fluorescent lights. The relative quiet is almost startling. Red light from the hole paints the ceiling bloody.

  Only one bed is occupied. I recognize the memory band right away, circled around her head like a thick blindfold. I recognize the auburn hair pinned tight to her ears. It’s me, another Miranda.

  Another clone.