by Pintip Dunn
I blink. “What are you talking about? Most psychics develop their preliminary ability when they’re toddlers. Callie’s Receiver ability didn’t manifest until she was seventeen.”
“Because you weren’t around. Think about it. You’re the Sender; she’s the Receiver. One is useless without the other. You were supposed to have been born ten years earlier. Because you weren’t, she couldn’t become a Receiver until you became a Sender. Her preliminary ability laid dormant until it manifested in you.”
Cold air hits the back of my throat, and I realize my mouth is hanging open. Deliberately, I close it. “What’s her main ability, then? I never saw one. Neither did Mikey or Logan. At least, they never mentioned one to me.”
“She can manipulate memories.” His eyes fasten onto mine. “She can change parts of a memory so that it looks like something new. Take a red ribbon and turn it blue. Latch onto an image of her little sister and sculpt it into a man with crooked teeth and a mole on his chin.”
I frown. “How do you know this?”
“We didn’t, not until we had her in a coma and under our care. Over the past decade, we scientists have probed every part of her brain, excavated every bit of her memories. That’s when they saw what she was trying to do with her future memory. Instead of killing you, she was trying to change it so that she killed her future cheating husband.” He shrugs. “Who knows? If she’d had more time, maybe she would’ve succeeded.”
My brow creases further. “That wouldn’t have really worked, would it? Even if she changed the memory, that doesn’t mean she could change reality. I mean, who is this guy with the crooked teeth and the mole? Does he even exist?”
“No one knows. But Dresden’s convinced the only reason Callie was able to change her future is because she has this ability.”
“No.” I shake my head sharply, and the wet strands of my hair whip around my shoulders. “Callie changed the future because of her force of will—and inspired so many people because of it. Angela, Zed.” Me, I think but don’t say out loud. It’s because of Callie that I don’t have to resign myself to a future as Dresden’s assistant. “We know that we can shape our own futures. By her example.”
“Honestly, I don’t know. The research into this area is murky, but it’s what the chairwoman believes. And she wants the ability for herself.”
My head jerks back. “You mean she wants the ability to manipulate people’s memories?”
He nods.
I press my fingertips against my head as the full extent of his meaning sinks in. Of course she does. That’s why she’s so obsessed with manufacturing fake memories, even the innocuous kind. In a world where future memory exists, this ability would give Dresden unprecedented power. Power so staggering it takes my breath away. She could show people exactly what she wanted them to see. She could manipulate the entire world to her liking.
Even worse, in a future that executes Mediocres, she alone would get to decide who is exceptional. She alone would get to determine who lives—and who dies.
I look at Tanner. He doesn’t know about the vision of genocide. He doesn’t know what the woman for whom he’s been working is capable of. He merely thinks she’s a power-hungry leader—but it’s time he knows the true extent of her evilness.
It’s time I tell him. Everything.
28
I tell Tanner about the vision of genocide. The one that made my sister stab herself in the heart, the one our world is in danger of becoming now that future memory has been invented. The one that Chairwoman Dresden showed me. The one that revealed I would someday be her assistant.
I even tell him this part, something I never thought I would share with anyone. Because he gave me his secrets, and maybe it’s time I gave him mine. Because Dresden’s been controlling not just him but also me.
By sharing the vision with me, Dresden reinforced my sense of shame. She made me hide from the people closest to me. She cut me off from those who could’ve helped or at least supported me.
Not anymore. I’m done being ashamed of something that hasn’t even happened. Something, if I have anything to do with it, that will never happen.
When I finish, I realize Tanner’s face has turned parchment-paper pale. “I didn’t know,” he whispers. “Nobody ever told me.”
“Most people don’t know,” I say. “Just the members of the Underground. That’s why Zed was trying to torture the vision out of Olivia—because he wants to show the world. Mikey always said if we wanted to be believed, we had to wait until the timing was right. I guess he thinks that time is now.”
“That’s why the people are rioting. That’s why they’re so upset.”
“Yes,” I say softly. “They know what the invention of future memory might mean for our world.”
He shakes his head, over and over again, like he can’t believe it, and then he crawls away from me and lets loose a gut-curdling scream.
I blink. I expected him to have a strong reaction—but not this strong. Hesitantly, I put a hand on his back. It vibrates under my touch. “Tanner, are you okay?”
He flings his body up, knocking off my hand. “No, I’m not okay. I’m never going to be okay again. I…I’ve been assisting Dresden my whole life.” He bangs his head against the trunk of a tree, harder and harder.
Shocked, I grab his shoulders. “Stop it, Tanner! You couldn’t have known her end goal.” I wrench him around to face me. His skin is split across his forehead, and a trickle of blood drips down his face. “You’ve been trained to be a scientist since you were six. You were doing only what you were raised to do.”
“I knew she tortured me. That should have been enough. But I told myself she wasn’t all bad. I told myself she did what she had to do for the good of society. I had no idea she was actually evil.” His eyes beseech me to understand. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
“I do.” It’s true. I never thought I’d say this, but for once, I can separate the vocation from the cruelty. Tanner may have the same occupation as the people who strapped me down, but he’s not like them. He studies science for the pursuit of knowledge; they twist it to serve an evil master. He’s an innocent pawn in Dresden’s schemes, as innocent as I am. He’s been tortured and traumatized ever since he was a little kid, and I…I don’t want him to suffer anymore.
I wrap my arms around him and murmur in his ear. The way my mom used to before I left civilization. The way Callie used to when my mom was at work. I don’t have much experience comforting others, but the words come easily, naturally.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
I think of another boy, much younger, who was hurt at too young an age. Grief floods my heart, making me sicker than any motion-coaster. For Eli, it’s not okay. Neither I nor anyone else will be able to comfort him ever again.
I hold Tanner tighter, until his breath slows down and evens out. There’s not much I can do to change his past, but I can give him this moment.
I can give him right now.
“You’ve worked so hard, Tanner,” I murmur. “Made so many discoveries, so many strides in research. You have so much value in our society. Unlike me.”
I freeze. Crap. The last two words slipped out accidentally. But maybe he won’t notice. Maybe he’ll be too distraught to think about anything beyond himself.
But he does. He sits up and pulls out of my arms. “How could you think you don’t have any value?” he says in a low voice. “You are so loved. By Mikey, Angela, everyone in the Underground community. As an outsider, I see this so clearly.”
“That may be, but they love Callie more,” I shoot back and then sigh. I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t mean to shift the attention to me. But now that the words are here, hanging in the air between us, I can’t just leave them. “That sounds bratty, doesn’t it? I swear to you, this isn’t about sibling rivalry. I don’t care that they put my sister on a pedestal because I put her there, too. It’s about whose life should’ve been sav
ed.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes, and I blink, trying to push the hurt back inside. Trying to keep the hot liquid from boiling over. “Callie knew one of us had to die, in order to prevent the vision of genocide she saw. And she unilaterally made the decision to sacrifice her life in order to save mine,” I say, trying to explain the truth inside me. The knowledge I’ve always understood and lived with. “But she made a mistake. Everyone knows that, even if they don’t say it. If they were given a choice, they would’ve chosen her instead. They wish she had saved herself instead.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I refuse to believe it.”
“Don’t you see? Everybody who cares about me loved her first. My mom. Angela. Even Ryder. He didn’t know her well, but he grew up hearing stories about her. Feeling the force of her legacy. If they care about me at all, it’s because she loved me. Because I’m her little sister.”
“That’s not true,”’ he says slowly. “I care about you, and I never knew her.”
I give him a scathing look. “You don’t care about me. You’ve told me so enough times.”
He grabs a stick and digs in the dirt. Back and forth, back and forth. The rhythm is soothing, even mesmerizing. I wrap my hands around my knees. If it meant I never feel this ache in my heart again, I’d lose myself forever in the motion of that stick.
I assume we’re going to drop the subject, but then he looks up at me. “This is…hard for me,” he says haltingly. “I know I’ve sent you mixed signals. I know I pushed you away. I even said you weren’t my type, for Fate’s sake.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “I’m surprised you didn’t see through that in a nanosecond.” He pushes the stick through the dirt a few more times. He’s now dug a rut six inches deep. “The reason I did all those things was because…the opposite is true.”
I wrinkle my brow. “What do you mean?”
“I like you too much.” The words tumble out in a rush. “As soon as I came up to you at the hoverpark, I felt…this thing. This sense that I had known you before. That you had meant a lot to me. I know, I know. It sounds crazy, and I swear, nothing like this has ever happened to me before. It freaked me out. When I brought it up, you brushed off the feeling, so I knew it was all in my head. I knew you didn’t feel the same way.”
He tosses away the stick, replacing it with his hands in the dirt. “Believe me, when you grow up the way I did, an orphan nobody wants except for the brilliance of your mind, you learn how to build walls. I guess that’s why I kept trying to push you away. That’s why I made that absurd statement about you not being my type, when nothing could be further from the truth.”
My heart’s pounding so loudly it’s about to burst out of my chest, but he scoops up two fistfuls of the earth as though he doesn’t notice. The dirt trickles through his fingers. “I was just trying to protect myself, Jessa. I never meant to hurt you. The last thing I wanted was to make you feel worthless.”
He reaches a hand toward my face and then hesitates. Maybe because his fingers are dirty. Maybe because he’s not sure if I want this particular touch. Just a few minutes ago, my arms were wrapped all the way around his body. He was halfway across my lap. But that was different. That was comfort, while this is…something more. Something crazy and wonderful and real.
I grab his hand and bring it to my cheek, dirt and all.
Closing my eyes, I just experience his fingers against my face. This boy. I should feel like such a brat, complaining about not being loved for the right reasons, when he hasn’t been loved at all. But he doesn’t make me feel bratty. He makes me feel…worthy. By being here. By being me. I don’t have to redeem myself in some way. I don’t have to prove I deserve my sister’s sacrifice. I just have to…exist.
I swallow hard. No one’s ever made me feel this way before. The feeling is too big, too much. It’s so large it might swallow me whole. Part of me wants to give him everything. And that scares me more than Limbo itself.
When I open my eyes, he’s looking at me. And in his eyes, I see a girl who is stronger and braver and more beautiful than I could’ve ever imagined.
“I’m going to kiss you, Jessa,” he says in a strained voice. “Not because I’m trying to fulfill our fate. Not because you happen to be right here. But because I want to, more than anything else in the world right now.”
I lick my lips. “I want that, too.”
And we don’t talk again for a very long time.
29
Later, someone shakes my shoulders, and I jerk awake.
“We fell asleep,” Tanner says, dark circles rimming his eyes. “We have to get to Callie. She needs you to send a memory every thirty-six hours to maintain the bond. It’s been…” He taps on his wrist com. “Twenty-nine hours.”
I sit straight up, my grogginess evaporating. Maintain the bond. That’s just a pretty way of saying: keep her tethered to this world—and alive. But there’s no need to panic. Not yet. “Seven hours. That’s plenty of time. The TechRA building can’t be more than a few miles away.”
“Yes, we should be fine.” But he gnaws on his cheek, as though there’s something else he wants to say.
“What is it, Tanner?”
“I have a bad feeling,” he says, and the words hit me like a slap. Tanner doesn’t operate on feelings. He relies on data and analysis and logical conclusions.
“Dresden’s finally gotten what she’s wanted for so long,” he continues slowly. “Things are going to change. I’m just not sure how.”
“Let’s go to Callie, then.” The anxiety saturates my veins and begins to seep into my muscles, my nerves. “We have to make sure she’s safe.”
We move through the streets, as quickly as we can on our own feet. The bullet trains are shut down; the moving sidewalks are still. Instead of showing the latest news, the holo-screens plastered against the skyscrapers play on a loop the footage of Chairwoman Dresden’s announcement. What’s more, every other holo-screen is dented, as though metal sculptures or wooden benches have been hurled at them.
“ComA’s issued a lockdown on Eden City.” Tanner scrolls through his wrist com as we move from the shadows of one building to another. “The rioters have spilled into the city, ripping up park patches, destroying government property. So there’s an enforced curfew until they can figure things out.”
I see movement in my peripheral vision and pull Tanner behind the corner of a building.
“Did you see that?” I pant. Either my heart’s racing—or it’s his. I can’t tell with our chests pressed together like this.
“ComA patrols.” His lips barely move, and the words are the slightest breath against my mouth. “With electro-whips. Searching for curfew violators. We can’t let them see us.”
I nod, not daring to speak. We huddle in the shadows until they pass.
In halts and sprints, adrenaline-pumping runs and heart-pounding waits, we make our way to the TechRA building. Finally, we arrive and proceed to the subterranean corridor without incident.
Without incident—but with a whole lot of emotion. Perspiration dots my upper lip and gathers at the nape of my neck, only to cool once it hits the chilly air. I peek over my shoulder for the thirty-seventh time. The hallway is sterile, empty. Even the stretchers that once lined the hallway are no longer present. The purple and green lights blink at me in the dimness.
I wish I could’ve changed out of my grubby, dried-out clothes, but stopping by my house was out of the question. As was swinging by Tanner’s apartment in the nearby scientific residences. Every extra second we spend outside means an extra second we might get caught. We can’t let that happen, not when we need to get to Callie.
Five hours and counting. Plenty of time, and yet, I feel each minute sliding into the next like sand dripping down an hourglass.
“Hurry.” I grit my teeth to stop them from chattering. “The sooner I can send that memory to Callie, the better I’ll feel.”
“On it.” He positions himself in front of the retina scan, l
ining up his eyes with the aperture. And stays there. Four seconds, six seconds. What’s taking so long?
“That’s weird,” he murmurs. “It usually beeps to indicate the scans match.”
Panic sprints up my throat. “Is something wrong?”
“Probably not. The maintenance bots were in here earlier this week. Maybe they upgraded the security system, and there’s some sort of glitch.” He moves to the next station and sticks his finger into the slot, so that the machine can take a sample of his blood. “That’s why we have these back-up security systems.”
His finger is pricked, and his face is scanned. He speaks into a microphone. But none of these results in that elusive beep.
He looks at me. I look at him. I realize all of a sudden we aren’t alone.
Small cameras nestle in the ceiling, each one covered by a round, reflective eye. At this moment, every single “eye” is trained on us.
“Tanner?” I whisper, my mouth as dry as the air. “Why are all those cameras pointed at us?”
Before he can answer, sirens blare and the purple and green lights flash, filling the entire hallway with chaos.
Fike, fike, fike. They’ve caught us.
30
The sirens scream, drilling my ears with noise. I want to curl into a ball until it stops, but I can’t. I have to reach my sister.
I grab the door handle and jerk, putting my entire body into the motion. It doesn’t budge.
Abandoning the door, I take off down the hall, whipping my head back and forth. I need another entrance. Another way in to Callie.
There! A heating vent, covered by a grate. These vents have been good to me. They’ve taken me all over the TechRA building. Of course, the Underground has vetted all the ones I’ve used, but this one will work. It has to.
I grab the grate and pull. It comes off, and dust bellows out, choking me. I double over, coughing, and Tanner runs up to me.