ARC: The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  “Partly. And partly because I’m Hr Flemming’s medical apprentice. I help him with his experiments.”

  Again with the Hr Flemming thing. “Are you German?”

  He wrinkled his nose at me. “Of course not.”

  “You sound German.”

  “I do not sound German. I sound Danish. And you sound American.” He said American like it was a dirty word.

  “Did I not sound American before?”

  He returned his attention to the elevator doors ahead of him. “No. Ivy’s Danish. Like me.”

  Danish. That must be the language I remember he and Gesh speaking in my memories. If I could understand Danish in my memories, did that mean I could speak it too? I relaxed my shoulders, gave in to my host body’s instincts, and said, “Denne elevator er så langsom.” This elevator is so slow.

  Levi’s dark brown eyes snapped to mine. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Talk like Ivy. You’re not Ivy.”

  He was angry with me all of a sudden, and I didn’t understand why. Was it because I no longer knew him in the future? Was he upset that I’d come to see Blue and not him? “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he said with a scowl. “All you meant to do was descend into my girlfriend’s body, demand I risk my neck to take you into a high security area–”

  “Hey.” I stood up straighter. Taller. “I didn’t demand anything from you. If you don’t want to come along, just give me your key card. I’ll go on my own.”

  “Right, and once you’ve got what you came for, you’ll go back to Limbo and leave Ivy to get caught using my credentials. I think not.”

  He was so bitter, so mad at me. I could feel it rolling off his skin like heat. But I couldn’t blame him. I recognized the look in his eyes. The frustration in his fists. It was the same frustration I felt when I saw Blue in 1961. When he didn’t remember me and recoiled from my touch. The moment it dawned on me that the Blue I knew was gone. His body was still there, still standing before me, but a light switch had gone off. I was no longer a part of his life. Snap. Just like that. Everything we shared together meant nothing to him anymore.

  I was a stranger to Levi. A stranger standing there in his loved one’s body.

  “Believe it or not,” I said, “I know how you’re feeling right now. I can tell you really loved Ivy, and–”

  He shot a glare at me. “No, I love Ivy. Love. Present tense. She’s not gone yet.”

  “OK. You love Ivy. I get it. But you don’t have to be a jerk to me. I’m not staying long. Once I’m gone, everything can go back to the way it was.”

  He turned his shoulders to face me, his glare even more piercing. “Nothing can go back to the way it was. Nothing. When you leave, Ivy won’t remember your descent, but I will.”

  I didn’t know what he was getting at. “So?”

  “So?” He wiped his mouth with his hand like he was about to lose all patience with me. “How many years did you travel back in time?”

  I hesitated. I bit my lip. “Seventeen.” Or was it eighteen? It was confusing because of those nine months Mom was pregnant with me. Did I account for those? I had no idea.

  “Seventeen. Do you know what that means?”

  I just stared at him. I had no idea.

  “For Christ’s sake, who’s handling your training in your Base Life?” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Here. Let me put it in simple terms you might actually understand.”

  I glared at him. My compassion for his situation had one leg out the window, disappearing fast.

  “It means that any day now, any week now, Ivy’s going to die. Do you understand that? Do you get it? She’s going to die to make room for you. So you can be born. Someone who won’t remember who I am. I can’t unlearn that. I can’t just act like everything’s fine. And every time I look at her, I’ll wonder how much longer I have until she dies and you’re reborn.”

  It was like a punch in the gut. Like the time Claire kicked me in the stomach on accident when I wouldn’t stop tickling her. That churning, sickening feeling that makes you double over. The thought of Ivy dying never crossed my mind. All this time I thought it made things easier if Levi knew who I was. I guess it only made things easier for me. My compassion fell back in through the window with a thud. The window slammed shut.

  “But I do remember you,” I said, clambering to fix what I’d broken, to make him feel better. “I remember some things. We played Polygon together. I remember the first time you beat me–”

  “Stop.” He cut me off with a raise of his hand. He clenched his jaw, like I was hurting him even more.

  I tried harder. I needed to make his hurt go away. “I can make it so you don’t remember any of this. I can erase this timeline and make it so I never came here. I just have to do a touchdown–”

  “Don’t you dare.” He glowered down at me, his eyes almost black behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Don’t you dare take my memories away from me. You don’t have that right. What makes you think you have that right?”

  “Then what do you want me to do? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

  The elevator landed softly with a clunk. The doors scraped open. Levi strode out into another long hallway, this one even more brightly lit, looking like a hospital wing. I hurried after him.

  “Levi?” I said, catching up.

  He wouldn’t look at me. “I want you to get what you came for,” he said. “Then I want you to leave and never come back.”

  I felt wretched. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made a horrible mistake by descending. I couldn’t even remember why I’d descended in the first place. Why hadn’t I just waited and talked to Porter after school? What had been my rush?

  In the end it wouldn’t matter what Levi said or wanted. I had to erase this timeline whether he liked it or not. I had already made too much of an impact on him. What he knew now would change the course of his life. I hated to do it to him, but I didn’t have a choice.

  We came to two double doors, which Levi unlocked with his key card. He nudged one of the doors open a crack and peered through. Then he motioned for me to follow him into another bare, sterile hallway. No windows. No other doors. Just white walls and a sloping concrete floor leading down to yet another hallway at the end.

  How far had we gone underground?

  When we came to the end of that hallway, Levi peered around the corner. I wasn’t sure what he was watching out for. If someone came along, it wasn’t like there was anywhere for us to hide.

  He pulled on my sleeve, letting me know the coast was clear, and we continued around the corner. The hallway opened up into a large open area. Standing before us was a wide, brightly lit room with windows all the way around like the newborn nursery at a hospital. Dad took me to the nursery to look in the windows when Audrey and Claire were born. As we neared it, however, it looked nothing like a nursery inside. It looked far more foreboding than that.

  It was a robotics surgical lab. I’d seen one once at the AIDA Institute when Mom brought me in for a tour of her department. A huge, spider-like machine with half a dozen robotic arms stood in the center of the room, arched and poised over an empty surgical table. It looked futuristic, even for my Base Life. There were dozens of monitors and other machines scattered around the room, and wires and hoses snaked across the floor. Large, disc-shaped surgical lights hung from the ceiling. At the back of the room, a man with short, curly, caramel-colored hair, dressed in a white lab coat and black slacks, stood with his back to us. He seemed to be laying out quite the collection of sharp, nasty-looking stainless steel tools on a prep table.

  “Get down,” said Levi. “It’s Hr Flemming.”

  Levi grabbed my hand and pulled me to the floor beneath one of the windows. Our backs pressed against the outside wall of the lab. The bright blueish light from the surgical discs spilled out over our heads and onto the floor at our feet.

  Flemming was in there. The man who cre
ated me. Gave me Newlife. Wove my lives throughout time.

  I inched up to peek over the window ledge. I just wanted to see what he looked like – to put a face with Porter’s stories – but Levi gave me a yank and my tailbone smacked down onto the floor.

  I ripped my hand from his and mouthed, “Ow.”

  He gave me a look that said he’d skin me alive if I tried that again.

  I heard the door to the lab open and close, then two male voices around the corner to my left. They spoke to each other in thick Danish. I moved to my hands and knees and crawled toward them. I was only going to peek around the corner, but Levi grabbed me by the hips and pulled me back.

  “Are you crazy?” he whispered. “It’s this way.” He jerked his head in the opposite direction to a closed door across the hall. He stood up, bent at the waist, and quietly padded toward it. I followed after him, giving up on seeing what Flemming looked like.

  When we reached the door, Levi swiped his key card through a reader on the wall. It beeped. The green light flashed. He eased it open, pulled me through, and shut it behind me, closing us in a small white room with a single hospital bed in the center. Several monitors beeped quietly beside it. A thin, frail body lay on the bed beneath a white blanket, still as a corpse. I moved slowly forward, my body growing more numb with each step.

  It was Blue, but I could hardly believe it. He looked like he was hours from death. His skin was so pale I could almost see through it. His muscle mass was completely gone. His head was shaved like mine, and over a dozen wires were stuck to his skull, monitoring his brain functions. Half a dozen more were stuck to his chest and arms. A large white bandage covered the right side of his head, just above his ear.

  My hand fluttered to my mouth. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing him like that. So weak and defenseless. It was no wonder Porter said he looked so different at AIDA. I wouldn’t have recognized him in 1927 either.

  With my free hand, I entwined my fingers with his, but his touch wasn’t comforting. His skin was cold and clammy, like the formaldehyde frogs we dissected in Biology last year. “What have you done to him?” I whispered.

  “He just had surgery,” Levi said, his voice as cold and lifeless as Blue’s skin. He pushed his wire rims up the bridge of his nose.

  “What kind of surgery?”

  “An experimental procedure on his right temporal lobe. Hr Gesh hopes it will help him retain more of his memory when he descends.”

  I slid Blue’s hand from mine and moved to the head of the bed. My stomach lurched. There were pale pink sinuous scars all over his scalp. I lifted a hand to my own head and felt the same scars. The same rivulets of tissue. My fingertips traced over a recent incision, complete with stitches, above my right ear. “I’ve had the same surgeries.”

  Levi nodded, wrapping his fingers around one of the chrome bed rails. He squeezed until his knuckles went white, then let go. “Hr Gesh has demanded we repair your defects. Your linear traveling. Your memory loss.”

  “And you think this is right?” I looked up at Levi, angry tears stinging my eyes. “Trying to rewire a human brain like a circuit board?”

  He visibly stiffened. “It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m just the apprentice. Besides, you consented to the tests. It’s what you want. You’re defective.”

  I shook my head, hot fury coiling within me. “I am not defective,” I said, running my hands over the scars on my arms. The burns. The bruises. “Gesh and Flemming are defective. This whole damn Institute is defective.”

  I glared at Levi, daring him to argue with me, but he didn’t. In fact, his well-worn frown threatened to break for the first time. The ghost of a smile reached his eyes, but only for a second.

  He agreed with me.

  In that moment, Levi and I came to a silent understanding. A quiet moment of truce, punctuated by the rhythm of Blue’s heart monitor. He didn’t like the experiments any more than I did, but he went along with them because they were what Ivy wanted. What I’d wanted in this past life. And he supported Ivy’s wishes because he loved her more than anything.

  It was exactly how I felt about Audrey. I hated seeing how the treatments affected her. The nosebleeds. The throwing up. The bruises. But I supported her because she wanted to go through with the treatments, no matter the side effects.

  “I get it,” I said, giving him a single nod. I did. And I liked Levi for it. I hated that I no longer knew him in Base Life. I had a feeling we’d be friends.

  There was a shuffle of feet outside the door. The snick of the card reader. The beep signaling admittance.

  “It’s Hr Flemming,” said Levi. “Get down.”

  I dropped to the floor and slid under the bed between the wheeled legs. The blankets draped over Blue hid me mostly from view.

  The door opened. A slice of light spread across the glossy concrete floor. Black slacks and black shoes entered the room. The door closed. The shoes took a few steps forward, then stopped short. “Levi,” said Flemming. “Hvad laver du her?” What are you doing here?

  Levi rattled off his answer in Danish. Something about wanting to check Tre’s bandages again. He was worried he hadn’t dressed the incision well enough. He spoke confidently – no sign of anxiety. Flemming clapped him on the back and kindly chided him for being too much of a perfectionist – that he couldn’t have dressed the wound better himself.

  While they conversed, I bent my head down to the floor so I could catch a glimpse of Flemming, but it was no good. He stood too close to the bed for me to see his face.

  Then Flemming shifted on his feet. He clasped his hands before him and did something that stopped the very breath within me.

  He rubbed circles around his pinky knuckle with his thumb.

  CHAPTER 30

  MY CREATOR

  My heart was an icy stone embedded in my chest. It grew in weight, pulling me toward the floor. My arms wavered, threatening to collapse beneath me.

  Everything Porter ever said to me came billowing back, swallowing me like fog. All that stuff about how Flemming had created me. How Flemming gave me Newlife. How Flemming wove me throughout history. How Flemming met Gesh at school. How Flemming was the second founder of AIDA. He’d been talking about himself the entire time. Porter was Flemming. Porter created me and Blue. Porter started all of this. Not me.

  And all this time I’ve felt like I was to blame. And he’d let me feel that way. Never once hinting that maybe he had a hand in it too.

  My hands curled into fists, my nails biting, digging, into my palms. I believed he was on my side. That he’d never do anything to hurt me. He let me believe Gesh was the one who experimented on me, tortured me. But he’d done it too. With Levi’s help.

  I ran a shaking hand across my scarred scalp. How was I supposed to believe anything Porter ever said to me again?

  I felt the need to confront him. I wanted to crawl out from under the bed and scream at him, just to see the look on his face. I wanted to go back to Base Life just so I could chew him out on Mrs Yoder’s front porch steps. I wanted to smash his stupid cigar in his face. I wanted to knock his stupid Orioles cap off his stupid head.

  But my list of retribution ended as Flemming’s black shoes turned and headed toward the door with Levi at his heels. I stared out after them, my jaw dropped, as they both passed through the door. How long would Levi leave me there before he came back? If he even came back for me at all?

  The door closed, and I was alone with Blue.

  FEAR

  I waited under the bed for what felt like forever, the pulse of the heart rate monitor counting the seconds above me. It wasn’t until my legs started to cramp that I finally crawled out.

  Levi hadn’t come back.

  I folded Blue’s cold hand in both of mine, hoping to provide him some warmth. “Are you there?” I whispered, leaning over him. “Did you descend with me?”

  I held my breath, my eyes searching his face, his hands, for any sign of movement, any sound. But there was o
nly the slight rise and fall of his chest. The faintest puff of air from his nose. I wouldn’t get my answers from him in this state. And I wasn’t going to shake him and try to wake him up. It wasn’t in me to be that cruel. Even if he did snitch on me to Gesh.

  This mission was over. A failure.

  I trailed my fingertips down the side of his face. I pressed my lips to his ice cube skin. Then I let go of his hand and forced myself to walk away. It was time for me to go home.

  I paused at the door, my hand on the lever, listening for footsteps outside. When I was sure there were none, I opened the door and peeked into the hall. I wished I could say goodbye to Levi before I ascended, tell him I was sorry, if I could find him. Sorry for everything.

  The surgical lab stood empty before me. I stepped out into the hall, letting the door fall gently closed. I listened for Levi’s voice, but all was quiet.

  I knew I should return Ivy’s body back to where I started, but without Levi’s key card, I wouldn’t be able to get through the locked doors. I’d have to leave her in the labs.

  I was just about to ascend when I heard Flemming call out to me from my left.

  “Ivy?”

  I froze. My first instinct was to bolt, to ascend as fast as I could, but something stopped me. I wanted to see the face of the man who’d been lying to me these past few months. So I turned to look him in the eye.

  My heart was no longer an icy stone in my chest. It now pumped with fiery heat. Porter was, without a doubt, Iver Flemming.

  He looked like he was in his late forties. His short, caramel hair was wild and curly, the kind that would turn into a crazy afro if he grew it out, which was probably why he kept it so short in Base Life. He had old-school-looking sideburns that were sprinkled here and there with gray. No sign of white yet. His eyes were the same – watery, shadowed, and red around the edges. His hands were in his doctor’s coat pockets. He wore a puzzled expression.

  “Er du søger Levi?” he asked. Are you looking for Levi?