I follow, moving deeper in, picking around the debris as best as I can. What is she thinking, taking crazy chances, stashing weapons in the Tanglelands? And she probably didn’t even know she was being pursued by a killer. I shudder to recall the horrible things she has in store for Packard. Killer of Avery, as she calls him, unable to even say his name. Killing Packard would destroy her. Even Avery would see a quest for vengeance as a form of oppression.
How could Shelby have gone off the edge like this, and I didn’t even know it? I’ve been an oblivious friend, that’s how. No more.
Her tracks fade out in a minichamber that’s composed of concrete and twisted metal. The hum of the vehicles above sounds throatier here.
I pick up her prints on the other side of a slimy puddle and crawl through a small, rocky space that angles upward. Everything I touch is cold, gross, or sharp. I curse myself for not grabbing my mittens off the street where I fought the fake Butcher.
I follow her trail onward, into a smaller underhighway cavern, a space that would be totally dark if it weren’t for a storm lantern, hanging mysteriously and somewhat ominously from a rebar arm poking out of broken concrete. Did I scare somebody off? Is somebody lurking? I grip my axe, straining to hear anything above the thrumming of vehicles. If nothing else, surely rats, bats, and cannibals are roaming around in here.
Okay, glory hour is definitely fading.
In the distance is a steep incline, like a rocky mountainside. I ramble over and climb it, pushing with the edges of my rollerblade wheels and my axe, dislodging rubble. I reach the tip-top, panting. In front of me stretches a stadium-sized space, except in place of a ceiling, there are crisscrosses of highway, soaring above like the heavenly dome of a dystopian world.
You can even see bits of sky between the twisting highways, some of which are dimly strobed with car headlights. I turn my gaze downward; below is a dark expanse of something—liquid? Ambient light from above pulses off it. It has its own kind of beauty, this strange cavernous place.
A dim flash draws my attention to the ledge that encircles the huge space. Another flash—it’s a person carrying a flashlight. I squint, making out the figure’s dark hair, large bag. It’s Shelby, walking around the space, staying close to the edge, trying to avoid the dark lake in the middle
A glint of metal—she has one of the machine guns out. She carries it in front of her chest, like a mercenary. It’s strange, almost comical, like seeing your cat driving a car. I call out, but the hum is too loud, and she’s too far away.
I make my way down, nearly losing my footing. At one point, my axe slips from my grip and tumbles on ahead of me, but I grab onto stuff and manage a controlled slide, albeit with a hard landing. I find my axe again and survey the area. Up close, the slime lake smells, and it’s full of debris that I don’t want to think about. A trail leads off to my right—the one Shelby followed. In the distance across the slime expanse, I spy a kind of platform atop a hill of boulders. There are people up there, huddled by a dim fire. Two figures. Is Shelby going to join them?
The figure whose back is to me pokes at the embers, and flames rise, casting a glow on the face and cinnamon hair of the figure oriented toward me.
Packard.
I know him even from this distance. I’d know him anywhere. I watch him, stunned. Relieved. Then I realize Shelby is approaching them unseen…with a gun.
She’s going to kill him.
“Packard!” I yell. “Packard!” He can’t hear me, of course. Every molecule of my being screams to get to him, save him, a kind of blind primal urge. “Packard!”
Shelby continues stalking around the edge of the space. But I’m closer—if I go through the lake.
I grip my axe and take off, wading right into the slime, or more, through it, through the viscous, oily fluid. It’s deeper than I thought—up to my knees in areas. I try not to splash or get any in my mouth. I hit something big and fall right onto it, or more like through it—my hands plunge into something soft and lumpy. I tell myself it’s a submerged sack of garbage, and I just get back up and keep on, shaking the slime off my hands and arms, rubbing it on my lycra outer layer, moving forward on the rollerblades. There’s no way this fluid isn’t toxic. Virulent. Bacteria-laden. My knee’s screaming again—white hot with pain, but nothing matters except stopping Shelby. She’s distraught. Vengeful.
And she’s found Packard.
A waving light in the distance—it’s Shelby’s flashlight beam—she’s jerking it around. No—she’s running. She’s seen me! She’s trying to beat me to Packard’s perch!
“No!” I scream, trying to wade faster, arms out, legs fighting through the sludge. On the other side I smash into a boulder and start climbing up, axe in hand. I have to beat Shelby. I scramble right to the top.
“Packard!” I call.
He springs up from where he sits. “Justine?”
I practically fall right onto him.
He grabs my arm. “Justine!”
“Shelby’s coming! She has a gun!”
I recognize the other person by the fire now: Jordan the crazy therapist, the second-most dangerous disillusionist. She makes people feel really screwed up. Is Shelby gunning for Jordan, too?
I look around for an exit. “We have to get out—”
Shelby appears on the other side, black, winter face mask pulled up to reveal blazing eyes.
I step in front of Packard, clutching him behind me with one hand, axe in the other. “Drop it, Shelby!”
Shelby points her gun at me. “No.” The traffic hum seems to louden. “Away from him, Justine. Now.”
“Justine—” Packard says, laying his hands on my shoulders, tentatively, like he doesn’t want to startle me. “Shelby—”
“Now!” Shelby yells.
I say, “It won’t solve anything or make you feel better, and it won’t bring Avery back.”
Shelby straightens. “What won’t?”
Packard says my name again in my ear and I feel his hand curving round my waist. I begin to feel really strange. My knee screams in pain.
Shelby laughs.
“What?”
“You are protecting him.” Shelby says.
I straighten. She’s right—I’m protecting him. A killer. The memory of his killing Avery hits me, blindingly, like needles in my head. My legs feel weak. Not now!
Strong arms fasten around me, keeping me upright, holding me so tightly the breath goes out of me. “Justine. It's okay,” he murmurs. Warm words on my neck.
“Stay behind me! Nobody’s shooting anyone here.” I pull myself together, wriggle to force him back behind me, legs still wobbling. It's pathetic to think I can save him when I can barely stand.
He pulls me right up against him, supporting me, helping me save him. “It’s okay,” he says again. “She’s okay.”
“Justine, you think I will kill him?” Shelby snorts. “I thought you were here to kill him.”
I regard her dimly. We thought each other was here to kill Packard?
Shelby grins.
Packard grabs my axe, pulls me around to face him, close enough to kiss him. “Justine.” His face is shadowed, but his gaze is fierce, and I stare into his green eyes with their pale ruffle of lashes, feeling suspended in time, in place. It’s like the feeling you get on a swing set when you’ve swung as far forward as physics will allow, and there’s this one blank moment where the world stops. Yet somehow, everything is in motion.
Packard.
Yes, I was protecting him. And I’d do it again. It doesn’t make sense, because I saw him kill…the pain stabs at my head as I flash on the memory.
And then he kisses me.
And we’re in freefall. The delicious sensation of him takes me by surprise. I grab on, pull him to me. I’m feeling him with my heart, and I know I’ve never felt anything so good—so true—as his lips crushed against mine, the gritty rub of his stubble on my cheek, my fingers in his hair. I forget about Jordan, Shelby; the momentum is t
oo delicious, too smooth. I kiss him, soak in the warmth of him.
And then something strange happens: it’s as though a layer is peeling away, and I’m discovering my heart again. The more I know my heart, the more I know Packard.
And I know that he didn’t kill Avery.
The memory of it strikes me now as strangely two-dimensional, disembodied, like a deeply troubling dream. The stabbing pain in my head fades as the reality drains from the memory.
The memory isn’t real.
I pull away, shocked. “Packard!” I exclaim. My mouth falls open. He didn’t do it. “Packard,” I say, this time in recognition.
He whooshes out a breath, gaze bright. “Oh God, Justine,” he breathes, relieved, kissing my cheek, my neck.
I want to laugh, to cry. I know Packard. I know he hates the smell of curry, and that he loves bossing people, and swimming in the ocean. He loves dry humor and kicking snow clumps off the bottoms of cars. And I know he didn’t kill Avery. It’s as if my knowing got covered over, and now I’m pulling off the layers.
Up above, car lights bounce dimly off the highway undersides that stretch up into the night. I want to stay with him in this humming hideaway forever, peeling everything away until it’s just us.
I hear Shelby groan, but I don’t care. Shamelessly, happily, I drink in his lips, his body. Feelings roar through me as powerfully as the thousands of cars above.
I pull away and look up at him, at the unsure smile hidden inside his big, boyish lips, as the thinness of the memory becomes even more apparent. “I was revised!” I exclaim. “That whole memory—it’s made of nothing! You didn’t kill him.”
“No, I didn’t.” He keeps his hands on my arms. I’m none too steady. “Justine—”
I’m outraged I’d ever believed it. “You’re innocent, and I falsely accused you!”
And I love him.
The realization is stunning, terrifying. I look into his green eyes, feeling as if I’ve stepped into a wildly extravagant reality, but at the same time, the love feels like it’s an ancient part of me.
“You were revised,” Packard says.
“How—” Even in the face of the truth, I can barely believe it. “A fake memory was in me this whole time. I should’ve known!”
“You couldn’t help it.”
“I should’ve.”
Packard shakes his head. “You couldn’t.” Even so, his gaze shifts away; it’s the minutest of flickers, lasting a bare moment. Most people wouldn’t catch it, but I do.
Hurt.
How could he not be hurt that I would believe such a thing?
“I don’t know what to say…” I spin around. “Shelby…you knew?”
“Of course.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You cannot tell revised person they are revised,” Shelby says.
“You could’ve tried! I would’ve told you. I rely on you. Christ, there was even this one time when I even thought, well, if my friends thought I was revised, they’d say something.”
“So we would simply say something?” Shelby glares. There’s a new hard edge to my friend.
“Yeah. You would say something. Hey Justine. We think you were revised. It’s not that complicated.”
“For us, is very complicated,” Shelby says. “Very much. When she killed your memory, she killed the Justine who might have recognized revise.”
“Well, obviously this Justine recognized the revise.”
Packard pushes my hair back. “It’s not something you can tell a person.”
I turn to him. “You tried.”
“I had nothing to lose. And it didn’t work so well, did it?”
I say, “We have to tell Otto you’re innocent. We have to make this right.”
His face darkens. “No—”
“What? I falsely accused you!” I’m also thinking about the wedding. How can I marry Otto after I had this surge of feeling for Packard? After I kissed him like that? “I have to tell Otto.”
Shelby and Packard exchange glances.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Jordan says, coming at me with a wand-like device. “Yuck. You’re covered in sludge.”
“Take it easy,” Packard snatches the wand from her. “You might be tracked,” he says to me. “You mind?” He touches my hand, lifts it so my palm rests on his.
“Oh.” I lift my arms out to the side, and he waves the wand around. “I got sludge all over you.”
“I don’t care.”
He didn’t do it. He’s innocent. I wonder vaguely why they’d focus on trackers when we need to make this right, and for the twentieth time, I wish for boots instead of skates.
“They were smart not to tell you about the revise,” Jordan says to me. “Sophia obliterated the truth from your head, and no amount of reasoning or new information could ever trump what she put in there. And a planted memory like that grows roots, links up with genuine memories. It could only be trumped from inside, because nobody can revise emotions. That’s likely the source of all that pain in your head too. Internal conflict. Head versus heart.”
Jordan sits down, opens a laptop. Shelby takes something out of her pocket and hands it to her. Flash drive. Data from the computers on the seventh floor.
Packard snaps off the wand. “Clean.” Again I get that hit of hurt off him. I believed he killed a man. How could I?
“Simon said you were tracked,” Shelby says.
“All of you were in on this? And I’m walking around like an idiot?” I feel this spark of shame.
“Not like an idiot.” Packard puts a hand on my arm. “You had your head messed with. You’re going to be reeling from it, feeling crazy, feeling angry. But you came back, Justine. That’s what’s important.”
I do feel crazy and angry.
Shelby grabs his sleeve, telling him about the seventh floor. He converses with her, but stays looking at me until she pulls him over to look at her bag of weapons.
My mind races. All this time they all knew I was revised. They let me tell this preposterous story, and I had no idea it was false. But my heart knew it was false. Because if I’d seen Packard kill, I wouldn’t love him like I do.
He looks over at me from across the fire where he’s listening to Shelby’s report, and the breath goes out of me. I just want to go to him, and for things to be simple, but they’re not simple. I’m getting married the day after tomorrow, becoming Midcity’s first lady. I’ve dedicated myself to a nursing career, to Otto. Horses and carriages have been rented. My accusations put Packard on the run.
What have I done?
I say, “You guys, if Sophia revised me, it means she knows who the real killer is!”
Shelby and Packard say nothing. Across the fire, Jordan taps away at the computer.
“We have to tell Otto so he can question Sophia,” I say. “Oh no, wait,” I say. “Could Sophia have killed Avery?”
Jordan snickers: “Getting warmer.”
“You think this is funny?” I catch Packard exchanging glances with Shelby. I know that look—they’re keeping things from me. Why are they treating me like an outsider?
But then again, I accused Packard, betrayed him. A new thought comes to me: what if that’s all Packard wanted? For me to help clear his name? Was that what the kiss was for? My heart sinks as I remember all the times he’s taken advantage of my feelings for him to get what he wants. He seemed relieved, but wouldn’t anybody be relieved when their accuser recants? I ruined his life!
“I’ll make an official statement at the police station. Whatever you need.”
Shelby says, “We think you saw the killer.”
“And Sophia blanked out my memory,” I say.
“Yes, yes,” Shelby says impatiently. “I mean, we think you were with killer and Avery.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come here,” Packard says. “Sit.”
“I don’t want to sit.” I fight back the tears. “Otto’s going to be upset if I’m gone.” Ott
o. Our life seems a world away. How can I marry him now?
“What do you remember of the day after the kidnapping?” Packard asks. “Anything special? You see the falseness of the memory. Does anything else…” he pauses, and my heart fills the space with pounding. “Does anything…feel different?”
“Just everything.” I move nearer to the fire, balancing tentatively on my wheels, hoping to warm my slime-drenched, winter workout clothes. The warmth, at least, is true. It withholds nothing. Unlike my friends. Not that I can blame them. I’ve become untrustworthy.
I rub my arms, feeling so foolish. But why should I begrudge Packard for wanting to clear his name?
Packard touches my arm. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” I say cheerfully.
“You knew the memory of me killing Avery was fake,” he tries, “on an emotional level. But is there anything else? From that day? That you remember or…feel anything about? Anything significant?”
I sigh and launch into what I recall of the day. “When I woke up, Otto was still sleeping. I went down to the hotel lobby. I was having coffee in the hotel lobby by myself, killing time. I decided to go for a walk, and I ran into Avery. And we walked…” I try to remember things from the walk. “We walked along the lakeshore. Some city blocks.” I try to recall what we talked about. We were walking, looking at Midcity sights. It seemed perfectly normal, but why would Avery and I take such a long walk? “We had a burger at the McDonald’s on 4th and Maxbert.”
“With Avery?” Shelby says. “Avery would stab pin into his eye before he would go to McDonald’s.”
I stiffen. She’s right. I think back on the walk, trying to remember what we talked about. Avery was a fascinating, fiery thinker, and we would’ve talked about interesting things, but all I can recall are streetscape images and random stuff about the shops. The walk doesn’t feel false in my heart, the way the Packard killing did—I guess there’s no emotional conflict—but it’s definitely out of character. Could it, too, be a revise?
I recall something else: “I was wearing those flimsy clothes from the hospital free box,” I say. “It was all I had with me. And it was so cold…I wouldn’t have wanted to walk so far in those clothes! And if I woke up at around nine, and Avery…”
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