False Memory Page 21

  “I hope this isn’t for nothing,” she murmurs, rubbing my ankle. Her voice drops to barely a whisper. “I hope you can go home, and we won’t have to intervene.” She gives my ankle a final squeeze.

  Tears run down my cheeks, but my breathing is normal. I point to the dead girl on the table.

  “That’s me,” I say.

  Mom stares at the dead girl. “It was,” she says.

  I open my eyes back in the present, between the rows of Peters and Olives and Noahs and Mirandas. Unsure of how much time passed while I relived the memories. Mrs. North hasn’t moved. She’s just watching me.

  She lays her palm flat on the empty tank. “This was yours.” My blood has been swapped with lead. I am not the

  Miranda North everyone grew up with.

  I’m just a shell with a few scraps of her memories. . . . I’m nothing.

  But that’s not true. Peter still kneels at the end of the row, and the look in his eyes heats the lead in my veins until I can move again. My team cares about me, and I won’t fail them. I remember what Peter said to me in the bathroom. Words spoken in the past, giving me strength right now.

  We’ ll make new memories , he said.

  Mrs. North twirls her sword once. “You were our first template, that night you died. Then, when you murdered Grace, I came down here and made our first copy. You. Using the fragmented identity your idiot boyfriend created when he tampered with your shots.”

  She pauses to let that sink in.

  “What should we call the girl upstairs?” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “She’s already gone. And so is everything above the fifty-seventh floor.”

  If this fazes her, she doesn’t show it. “Look at the room you’re in. There are plenty more of you to make.”

  The past isn’t mine. It died with Miranda in that alley.

  But the future can be.

  Mrs. North bends down to pick up Rhys’s revolver, but I slide forward in the pool and kick it down the aisle to Peter. I slash down with Beacon but Mrs. North dives forward, past my right side, and slips across the floor. She rolls to her feet as I turn, and we engage again. It’s hard to keep track of who attacks and who defends. She seems to know every move I make before I make it. The sound of steel scraping steel rings out continuously.

  She ducks under a horizontal slash, a backhand, and Beacon bites into one of Noah’s tanks. A wide, flat stream of blue-green liquid spews out, soaking us both. It has no smell. I pull my sword free, but it takes a second, which is long enough for Mrs. North to open a foot long gash in my suit, just above my navel. I cry out, backpedaling through the puddle. I stab forward for her throat, but Mrs. North throws her head back, and the sword passes above her neck and face harmlessly. She keeps going into a full-on backflip, her foot coming up and kicking the bottom of my sword hand. The little finger breaks, and I cry out again. I step forward, off balance from the thrust, and she completes the backflip perfectly, slashing across and opening another line on my cheek. Blood runs off my chin. A hank of my hair floats to the floor.

  She moves in again, a thrust. I do exactly what she doesn’t expect, what I don’t expect. I drop Beacon and use both hands to catch her wrist, bowing my torso out of the sword’s path. I rotate in until we stand shoulder to shoulder, all four arms outstretched and fighting for grip on her sword. She turns her face to mine, and I bash my forehead into her nose. I feel it crunch between my eyes and hear a low moan burble in her throat. I push her to arm’s length. She blinks rapidly, fighting to see. I hook my foot behind her heel and sweep her leg out. She goes down, practically swimming, and her sword skims down the aisle. By the time I snatch up Beacon and prepare to bring it down like a hammer, she’s already pushed off a tank and propelled herself after her weapon, leaving a wake in the fluid. I could give chase, but I have to free Peter in case she strikes me down. Leaving him at her mercy is not an option.

  I sprint for him. He’s had no luck with his bindings. I hook a hand under his armpit and hoist him up, then reach down to pick up Rhys’s gun. I point it at Mrs. North and fire three more times as she struggles to stand. The bullets knock her right leg out from under her, and she falls hard on her back.

  “C’mon,” I say, dragging Peter down a parallel aisle.

  Peter moans something behind his gag, looking down at my waist with wide eyes. Blood oozes between the scales and down my legs, mixed with the fluid. I barely feel it. My cheek, however, is on fire.

  “Mirandaaaaa!” Mrs. North screams. We’re at the archway. Mrs. North stands just inside the aisle, wavering on a bloody leg, holding her sword with both hands. Tank sludge plasters her hair to her face. She glows in the aqua light, ghastly.

  “There is no escaping true earth,” she says. She takes one limping step. Her right leg is useless. I have no idea what she’s talking about; she seems delirious. “You can’t run.”

  I shove the gun into my belt and pull out the brick of H9. I press the red button and thumb the timer down to ten seconds. I look at all the tanks behind her, all the blank slates that could be us but never will.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. North,” I say. I leap up and stick the H9 against the top of the arch.

  “NO!” she screams.

  00:08

  I run, half carrying Peter to the elevator, counting down in my head. Over my shoulder, Mrs. North has made it a few steps by the time the arch begins to sizzle and spark. Chunks of molten rock drip down, then the whole support goes, rocks cracking and shattering and falling to the floor. The rocks grow into boulders. A few fist-sized chunks skitter to the elevator, passing us.

  A wall of smoking rock blocks us from the tank room. Behind it, I hear the muffled screams of Mrs. North. Her frustrated cries.

  I sit down against the useless elevator, groaning against all the fire in my body. The revolver digs into my ribs, so I pull it out; it’s soaked, probably ruined. “Rhys is going to be mad about his gun.”

  Peter sits next to me. I start pulling at the rope around his wrist. He moans something, and I pry the wet gag out of his mouth and toss it away.

  “Rhys?” he says.

  “The rogue. Never mind.”

  “I feel like I missed a lot.”

  “You did.”

  “Why aren’t we in the elevator?”

  “It doesn’t go to any floor but the top, and the top is on fire.”

  “Ah.”

  Rock dust hangs in the air. It’s probably bad for us to breathe, but neither one of us cares at this point. I lean my head against the elevator and close my eyes.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Peter says.

  I open my eyes.

  “I won’t tell anyone. Who you really are. That’s what Mrs. North was saying right? That our Miranda was dead.”

  Hearing our Miranda stings my heart, I can’t deny. “Yeah,” I say. “She’s dead.”

  “You’re our Miranda,” Peter says. “This changes nothing.”

  “It changes everything.” I can’t look at him, not yet.

  He covers my hand with his, and we listen to the rocks tick and pop as they cool. We sit with the steady pressure of his hand squeezing mine. I could sit like this for a while.

  “Not for me,” he says softly, after what feels like an hour.

  I don’t say anything. I do lean forward and kiss him lightly on the lips. Then the pain in my stomach is too much and I lean back against the elevator.

  “I knew you’d come,” he says.

  “You would’ve done the same for me, for any of us.” Minutes pass, and the rocks finish settling.

  Then Peter notices the manhole cover in the floor. “I guess we live to fight another day,” he says.

  “I guess.”

  But he smiles, and so do I. Living another day doesn’t sound so bad. Not if it’s with him.

  I bleed against the elevator while he pries the manhole cover up with Rhys’s empty revolver.

  A foul smell fills the tiny, choked space. I guess it’s th
e smell of freedom.

  He looks down in the dark, then up at me. “Ladies first?”

  32

  The sewers are another nightmare, but a welcome one. We trudge through calf-high sewage running under the city. After a few hundred feet, we find a ladder that leads to the surface. I shoulder through, then reach down and pull Peter out, grimacing against my wounds.

  We’re next to the Tower. It’s a massive birthday candle. A torch in the night that says it’s safe to come home. We’re alone on the street, but not for long.

  Rhys walks over with Noah and the other Miranda in tow. Noah glares at me, and I can’t blame him, considering I choked him out less than twenty minutes ago. But he’s also happy to see I’m alive. Rhys ignores us, watching the surrounding area instead.

  “Nice to see you, Peter,” Noah says dryly.

  Peter laughs and nods his thanks, then wraps Noah in a hug.

  “Ew!” Noah says, pushing away. “You smell like shit.” He drops a hand on the other Miranda’s shoulder. “Um, there’s someone I’d like to introduce.”

  Peter stares at the other Miranda.

  “Hello, Peter,” she says. A little scared. I would be. Peter says, “Where’s Olive?”

  I look at the ground. I’ve got that itch again, the urge to move, to seek the darkness.

  “Was it bad?” he says, and wipes at his eyes.

  “No,” Other Miranda says. “It was fast.”

  Rhys holds out his hand to me. “My weapons?” I can tell he doesn’t like standing in the open, either. But we earned a minute.

  I drop the goo-covered gun in his hand.

  “This is awful,” he says, so tonelessly I laugh. He quirks one blond eyebrow. “The sword?”

  “I’m keeping it, I think.”

  He sighs, wraps his arm around my shoulder, then faces the burning tower. The fires are dimming, fizzling out before they reach the floors below. Soon Peter comes over and wraps his arm around my other shoulder.

  “I’m Peter,” he says to Rhys.

  “Nice to meet you,” Rhys says.

  Noah walks in front of us, and stops. “You guys ready to take off?”

  The streets are quiet around us, but they won’t be for long. While the fire still burns, we disperse into the shadows, then run through the streets, avoiding the Humvees rolling in force. They’re all going the same direction. Halfway home I make us stop near an intersection. The view is perfect here, on a dark street that runs straight to the Tower. It’s so quiet I can hear the bulbs click in the stoplight as they change. Together we watch the fire go out.

  It takes weeks for the city to sort itself out. No one is sure what happened. Most puzzling of all is the strange fire on top of Key Tower. Stern faces on the news ask, Are they connected? What did the top floors hold? There’s an elevator shaft that runs to the basement, but it’s blocked by too much rock, and no machine can fit down there to extract it. In all, six hundred and twelve people died, most of them in accidental fires. Many of them trampled. Some from heart attacks. They show the bodies on the news. Emergency vehicles, volunteers, people in yellow jackets flooding through the city, combing first the streets, then the alleys and buildings for bodies. Always flanked by National Guardsmen, rifles at the ready. Twenty-nine people drowned in Lake Erie. They cart the bodies away on stretchers. Everyone in the city wears a blue mask over their nose and mouth, for fear that whatever caused the mania was in the air.

  It could’ve been so much worse, had we been forced to participate. Had we not stopped the dry run when we did.

  Strange, then, it doesn’t feel like a victory.

  The five of us stay at Rhys’s, our new home. I have my own room. Peter and Noah share one. The other Miranda, Rhys calls her The Sequel, sleeps wherever. We fight over who can use the shower first. It’s the good kind of fighting. It’s nice to worry about stupid, pointless stuff for once. The boys have backed off each other, but not completely. We try to adjust to the other Miranda, and she tries to find her place in our group.

  But it’s hard. She’s me. And I don’t know how much of us is the same.

  We’re living different lives. We have different opinions about things. Is it enough I like onions and she doesn’t? Is it enough I’ll get in an argument with Rhys, or Noah, and she’ll act as mediator? As time passes, the hope is we’ll grow in different directions. I’ll be able to walk around without feeling like I could be killed, and no one would know it. That Sequel, or some other Miranda, could step into my shoes and take over the tenuous identity I build on each day.

  She remembers as far back as I do, the blip of Noah leaving her on the bench. Thankfully, the memory of the original Miranda dying is muddled, a nightmare. All that’s missing is the few days of experience leading up to now. The official explanation is the creators obviously had possession of me at some point, and made my identity into a template.

  Sometimes she even has the same phantom memories. Memories that aren’t even mine.

  We don’t talk much, because we can’t look at each other for more than a few seconds. It was different with Grace; Grace was not me, even if she looked the same. Seeing Sequel, on the other hand, reminds me of where I came from. A pod. Born this very summer.

  One day she comes to me when I’m in the bathroom. “Do you still see it?” she says.

  I freeze. “See what?”

  “I wake up every night in an alley, feeling the blood pumping out of me. I swear it’s real.” She tilts her head down, auburn hair hiding her eyes.

  I have the same nightmares. Slowly, I lift my hand and rest it on her shoulder. “It’s just a nightmare. Sometimes . . . it’s hard to tell the difference.” I don’t want to lie, but I can’t tell the others who I really am. Not yet. It would destroy Noah if he found out his attempt to protect the original Miranda ended with her death.

  Peter knows. He can keep my secret.

  “We aren’t that girl,” I say to her.

  “Then who are we?”

  I smile at her, and it feels good. A real smile. “That’s the beauty of it...we’re just finding out now.”

  After a moment, she smiles too. But it fades. “The others are...”

  “Treating you different, I know.” I pause, searching for the words. “I went through all this—I still am. You feel it in your chest, right? The gap... It’ll fill. I promise you. It just takes time.” It hasn’t filled for me, not completely, but that won’t help her. The promise is as much for me as it is for her.

  “Will it ever be normal between us?”

  Normal. I wish. Sequel doesn’t make understanding my own existence any easier. But every day is better. Every day we are more our own person.

  “Is it ever normal between...” I want to say “sisters,” but it’s too early for that. Too soon. I squeeze her shoulder. “It will be normal,” I say. “I promise.”

  Sequel nods once and leaves abruptly. I hear the door shut, and I guess she’s crying because it feels like I’m about to.

  We gaze out the big window from time to time, watching the city stitch itself back together. The streets are wary. Helicopters are always overhead. National Guardsmen patrol in gas masks. Scientists spout theories on cable TV. A few religions claim the end is nigh.

  There is still fear on thes treets, even if we aren’t the cause.

  We watch. We wait. We train and spar and stay in shape. We take our memory shots. Sequel has flashbacks about Noah in the middle of the night, and she’ll say his name. He’ll come into the room, not knowing who called for him. He’ll stand there with his mouth hanging open, until Sequel says it was just a nightmare. The red scar on my cheek makes it easy to tell us apart, physically at least. Noah can always tell because I look at him different. Peter says I glare. But I can never tell Noah that without his actions I’d still be growing in a pod. I can never tell him that, because of his actions, the Miranda he loved died in an alley, bleeding in the rain.

  Peter and I take out the trash one night. I recognize the tension
in his shoulders. A Humvee rolls down the street. The gunner in the back watches us, then nods. We nod back.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  Peter throws a black garbage bag into the Dumpster. He looks up at the cloudy sky. The first few raindrops plunk down around us.

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “Peter...”

  He laughs. “You’re right. There is something.”

  I smile, fighting the inevitable just for the fun of it. “You know, I think Sequel likes you.”

  “She likes Rhys,” Peter says matter-of-factly. “And Sequel didn’t rescue me from Mrs. North.”

  I wait. He stares at me, and I stare back. The wind ruffles his hair, but otherwise he is still. There’s nothing else to say. I go to him, closing the distance until I’m looking up into his eyes. I rise on my toes, and he kisses me gently. I rock back down to my heels, but his mouth doesn’t leave mine. He kisses me like he did before, softly at first. Then harder. And once again I’m glad we made it out of the Tower. Because I’m starting to realize my life doesn’t have to be about an identity, or a lack of one. If I can focus on the little moments, however fleeting, they become my own. No one experiences them the way I do but me.

  I find the hem of his shirt and pull it over his head, our lips breaking just long enough for the fabric to pass between them. He tosses it aside, onto the trash pile, as his watch begins to beep.

  He looks at it, frowning, like it’s a tick trying to burrow into his skin.

  “Time for shots?” I say, my voice hoarse.

  “Yeah,” he says, the frown turning into a smile. “I wouldn’t want to forget this.”

  He grabs his shirt, shakes it out, and puts it back on.

  “Maybe I’ll be out here tonight around midnight, to look at the stars,” I say.

  “I like stars,” he says. He loops his arm around my shoulder, and together we walk inside to take our shots. ***

  One day at the end of summer, when the others are out on a run, I take the memory band into the bathroom and shut the door. Call me paranoid, but there are some moments from this summer I don’t want to miss. Just last night we “borrowed” someone’s boat and went fishing on the moonlit lake. It was so nice that, for brief seconds here and there, I was able to forget the people out there who would have us captured or killed. And so that memory goes into the machine, in case I ever forget again.