"I'm sorry," I said, my voice scratchy with trepidation. "But this is going to hurt."
She was deathly quiet and still. I knew, having gone through this process so many times, exactly what stage she was in: shock.
Shock from my being here, from my knowing so much about her, and from the conflicting emotions that were raging inside of her.
"Please know," I begged her, "that I'm not doing this to cause you pain. I'm doing this to help you."
She nodded. Her eyes told me that she believed me. That she trusted me. There was so much I could discern from those vibrant purple eyes. And the longer I knew her, the more times I was forced to remind her of what we were, the easier it became to read them.
I flicked on the laser. It hummed to life, causing her to startle slightly.
"It's okay," I told her. "It's going to be okay."
I forced my hands to stay steady, even though my insides were a writhing mess. The last thing I needed to do was accidently cut her hand off.
I sucked in a lungful of oxygenated courage and cringed as I brought the laser to her skin. She gasped slightly at the sensation, but thankfully didn't cry out. Her bravery made my heart twist with longing. She was so strong. In so many ways. Any other human being on this compound-on this earth-would be wailing in agony right now.
Carefully, I wielded the laser in a straight line around the thin black line on her wrist, singeing the skin, tearing at her flesh. She didn't flinch. She stayed perfectly still.
I didn't go deep. I only cut the surface. The first layer of skin. When I was done, the black line was gone. All that was left in its place was a sickening red wound. It bled a little, but I was ready. I removed a white bandage from my pocket and pressed it firmly against the gash.
"Do you trust me?" I asked her, gazing into her eyes and trying to relay months of connection in a single glance.
She nodded dazedly. "Yes."
"Then I need you to come with me." I pointed toward the high concrete wall that surrounded her little cottage. "We're going to climb over that wall and then we're going to run. Do you understand me?"
She nodded again. "Run."
I pressed down on her bandage. "Hold that there. Keep applying pressure."
"Keep applying pressure," she repeated. They must have really done a number on her brain last night. She was back to sounding like the inflectionless robot I'd met the first day.
"Okay," I said, "on the count of three we go."
I turned toward the wall, my heart pounding in my chest. "One. Two-"
"Wait," she interrupted, and I spun back around, jarred from the halted adrenaline. "Look." She peeled back the bandage, and the world imploded around me.
My whole body wilted. I felt my legs give out. I felt myself start to sink. Down, down, down I fell. Until I was kneeling at her feet. I took her delicate, perfect wrist in my hand and swept my fingertip across the skin. The perfect, flawless, healing skin.
Her flesh was actually growing back right before my eyes. Like some sort of time-lapse photography. I watched in wonderment as her wound began to heal. As the thin black line began to reappear.
What would have taken a normal human being's body days-even weeks to accomplish, hers was accomplishing in minutes.
"What does it mean?" she asked me, her eyes wide and searching, drilling into mine, asking me all of the questions in the world, all at the same time.
I kissed her healed wrist, letting my lips linger on her warm, perfumed flesh.
"It means," I breathed into her skin, "I need another plan."
15: Help.
Coded into her DNA. That was the only plausible explanation. They hadn't simply tattooed her with a tracking device, they had created her with a tracking device. No matter what happened, it would always grow back. It would always be a part of her.
She would always be permanently marked by Diotech.
The thought infuriated me. Could I never win? Would I never be able to defeat them? It was certainly seeming that way.
The next day at school, I was in a stupor. I couldn't focus on any of the lessons on my slate. I walked around like a zombie. One who had lost the will to eat.
"Okay," Klo finally said at lunchtime after twenty minutes of watching me stare at my plate. "What's going on with you?"
I shook my head. "Nothing."
"It's clearly not nothing," he argued. "You've been in a daze all day."
"He looks like he's been wiped," Xaria put in, popping a turnip fry into her mouth.
"Wiped?" Rustin asked.
"Yeah, all the people who leave the memory labs after a restoration look like that." She waved a hand in front of my face. "Helloooo. What did you see? What did they take from you?"
"That's so messed up," Rustin told Xaria. "I can't believe your mom actually erases people's brains."
"Well, she's not actually the one to do the erasing," she said defensively. "She has coders for that. She just reviews the footage and decides what has to go."
"Still," Rustin said, "that's glitched up."
Xaria scoffed at this. They seemed to have forgotten about me. "Like your father's job is any better."
They went on like this for a while but I had stopped listening.
Something that Rio had said the night of our failed escape had slithered back into my consciousness during the conversation. He had mentioned something about my mother and "the last time." But he'd halted himself before he could reveal more.
I had been so preoccupied with thoughts of Seraphina that I hadn't even thought about that until now.
What had he meant?
Had I been wiped before?
Was last night not the first time I'd been in that chair? What had I seen in the past that had warranted a memory restoration?
It must have been bad. They didn't wipe memories for C3 infractions. No. Memory restorations were specifically designed for C6s and higher.
"Xaria." I interrupted their friendly debate, causing everyone to stare at me in bewilderment. It was the first word I'd uttered all day.
"Yes?" she answered warily, as though she were talking to an unstable alien.
"You said your mother has high clearance in the memory labs, right?"
She shrugged. "She's Dr. Solara. She practically runs the memory labs."
I nodded, my brain swirling. "Good. I need you to get me in there. Tonight. When no one else is around."
She laughed at this. As did Rustin and Klo. "That's a nice fantasy you've dreamed up there."
"It's not a fantasy. Do whatever you need to do, but get me into that lab. And I'll need her access codes and fingerprints."
"You're spazzed."
I glanced up, letting my eyes connect with hers. I reached out and took her hand, rubbing my thumb against her skin. "Please, Xaria." I let my voice roll over her name, massaging the syllables. "I need this."
I could tell my pleas were working. Her face softened at my touch. Her eyes danced under my pinning gaze. I knew it was wrong to use her feelings for me to get what I wanted, but I didn't have a choice. Something was stored in those memory servers. Something that I wasn't supposed to know about. And I needed to get to it.
"But why?" she asked quietly. "Why do you need access to the servers?"
Klo and Rustin glanced uneasily between us, unsure where this was going.
I released her hand but kept my eyes tightly locked on hers. "Because I'm fairly certain some of my memories are stored in there."
16: Kissed.
I went home with Xaria that afternoon and managed to lift her mother's fingerprint off a coffee mug she'd left on the kitchen table. We waited until after midnight and her mom had returned home before sneaking into lab 4 and using my freshly imprinted NanoStrip to gain access.
I had never been on this side of the glass before. There were rows of cubicles set up, each with large Revisualization monitors, high-tech command centers built specifically for sorting through and recoding memories.
We sat down at one of the terminals, and Xaria inputted her mother's access code at the login prompt. I glanced up in surprise. "You already knew it?"
She rolled her eyes. "It's my birthday."
"Well, isn't that sweet," I mumbled.
She didn't appreciate the sarcasm. "Just because your mother is never around doesn't mean you have to take it out on the rest of us."
"You're right," I said, lowering my head. "Sorry."
Once we were in the system, I typed Lyzender Luman into the search field and a pod promptly returned with my name on it. It was dated a little over a year ago.
A year ago?
That was long before I'd met Seraphina.
Before my father left.
There was only one file inside the pod.
One memory.
I dragged it into the Revisualization software. The monitor in front of me flickered on, and I hovered my finger above the Play button.
My breathing suddenly became very strained and I could feel Xaria's presence behind me.
"You don't have to stay," I told her, hoping she'd take the hint. Whatever was stored in this pod, I wanted to see it alone.
She pulled up a second chair and lowered into it. "It's okay. I don't mind staying."
She leaned forward until the dark skin of her cheek was only inches from mine.
I bit my lip in frustration. How was I going to do this without offending her?
"I'll be fine," I insisted.
She turned to me and smiled. "Lyzender." My name sounded so foreign on her lips. So awkward. Especially after Sera had started calling me Zen. Hearing it was like accidently putting your foot into someone else's worn shoe.
"You need to stop pushing people away," she continued, stern but empathetic. "Watching anyone's stolen memories can be really stressful. But watching your own could be downright disturbing. I want to help you. Let me be here for you. I'm your friend." Her voice got very soft on the last word and she turned her head away from me. "And I can be more than just your friend if you want me to."
I closed my eyes. There it was. The issue I'd been skating around for nearly half a year. Now she'd gone and said it aloud. Which meant I could no longer pretend not to notice it.
I cleared my throat. "Xaria ... I...."
And then her lips were on mine. Soft and tentative. Like she wasn't sure how I'd react. She wasn't sure if I would kiss her back.
And I didn't.
I couldn't.
All I could think about was Seraphina.
Her lips. Her hands. Her precious face.
I pulled away, cringing at Xaria's injured reaction. She wasn't doing anything to hide it. Her face reflected the pain and rejection as clearly as DigiSlate glass.
She nodded, like she knew everything. Like I didn't even need to say the words.
But I did.
"Xaria, I'm sorry. I..." I faltered, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. "I just don't feel that way about you."
She pressed her lips together so hard, I saw faint traces of white in them. "You don't know how you feel," she accused. "You are so afraid of feeling anything that you shut it all off."