Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(17)

“You son of a bitch!” I shouted at him, thrashing against my captors. “I should have known you were behind this. I should have known. You are diabolical. You deserve to rot in hell!”

Rio walked calmly toward me, his shiny shoes clacking on the pavement. “Lyzender.”

I wet my tongue and spat into his face. I wished I had more than just saliva to spew at him. I wished I could spit rocks. Boulders. Fire.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment before wiping it away. “Why don’t you come with me? I think we have a lot to talk about.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” I shot back.

“Well, I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?” He jerked his head toward one of the guards detaining me. I felt the cold prick of metal against the base of my skull, stealing away my will to fight.





13: Capabilities


I woke up strapped to a large chair. My arms and legs were restrained. I struggled, but it was no use. I glanced around at the digital projection of a peaceful ocean sunset. So real, I could almost smell the sea breeze. But, of course, I knew it was fake.

Something beautiful to hide the ugliness.

That’s what Diotech is all about.

I recognized this chair. It was the one they secured people in right before they recoded their memories. Panicked, I tried to remember how I got there.

We ran away. We tried to escape. We failed.

I breathed out a sigh of relief. At least they hadn’t taken that memory.

Not yet, anyway.

I fought again, quickly realizing it was pointless. The restraints were too strong.

“What do you want?” I screamed into the serene sunset. If I was here, in this chair, that meant there was someone on the other side of this illusion, watching me through the one-sided screen. “Get in here and face me, you glitching cowards!”

In an instant the landscape around me vanished, flickering into the dull black hue of the powered-down screen. A door opened to my left and Dr. Rio sauntered in, pulling a chair behind him. He placed it directly across from me and sat down.

My whole body tensed at the sight of him.

He was the one.

The one behind Sera’s project. The one who had been keeping her locked up in that house like an animal. I wanted to leap out of the chair and tear his skin off with my teeth. But I forced myself to remain very still, watching him with distrustful eyes.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Lyzender,” he said. “I’ll do my best to answer them as completely as I can. But you must understand that most of what you’ll want to know is light-years beyond your clearance level.”

“I don’t have a clearance level,” I muttered.

“Exactly.”

“How did you find us?”

“It’s not a scar from when she was a baby,” Rio said, referencing the mark on Sera’s wrist and the fabricated story she had told me. Obviously he’d seen the memory of that day.

“What is it then?”

“It’s a satellite tracking device. It can be scanned from anywhere on the planet.”

The realization made my stomach sour. Of course they would build something like that into her. Of course they would never take the chance of letting her escape. I immediately felt foolish for even trying. How could I have thought I could outsmart Diotech?

Just because I’d broken in to a few C3 labs and stolen a handful of genetically modified rabbits?

I was an amateur.

I was nothing.

I’d never be able to save her.

“I have to admit, Lyzender,” Rio said, clearly reading my distress, “your plan was admirable. Everyone is impressed.”

I wanted to spit in his face again. He was patronizing me. I couldn’t care less what these people thought of my plan.

“But we’ve been tracking your movements for a long time,” he admitted. “We were prepared for something like this. You could even say we were expecting it. Especially given the way you look at her.”

I thought about the memories they’d stolen. All the times she’d looked into my eyes and felt something. Each one of those moments was now stored in an encrypted pod in a server room somewhere.

The idea made nauseated me.

“You knew I was going to see her,” I said. “For months. Why didn’t you ever tell me to stop? Why did you keep erasing her memories of it?”

Rio nodded. “At first that option was discussed. As was altering your memories. But we eventually decided to let it play its course. It was an interesting turn of events. One that made for a nice addition to the data we were collecting for this project.”

His answer made my blood boil. The fact that I was just another pawn in their game. Another variable in their equation.

“What is the project?” I growled. “What is she?”

“She’s a synthetically engineered human being, with the most advanced genetic code in history. A scientific miracle.”

I was actually surprised by how candid he was. If that was even the truth. “What do you plan to do with her?”

Dr. Rio smiled. “I’m afraid I can’t divulge that.”

So much for candidness.

“She’s not like us,” I stated somberly.

“No,” Dr. Rio confirmed. “She’s not. She’s everything we want to be. Fast. Strong. Smart. Beautiful. Healthy.”