Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(22)

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.”

I opened my mouth to disagree but quickly decided against it. There was no use arguing with her. She was right. And wrong at the same time. That was exactly who I used to be. Someone who was afraid of his own emotions, like a coward afraid of his own shadow. Someone who fought so hard to hide from anything that felt real.

But I wasn’t that person anymore.

I had found something to fight for. I had found something to feel for.

I had found Seraphina.

But obviously Xaria didn’t know about that. Couldn’t know about that. The only thing she saw was Lyzender Luman, the boy who had closed himself off to the world. Who found cheap thrills breaking into labs and stealing genetically altered bunny rabbits.

She didn’t know the person I had become. The person Seraphina had brought out of me, my layers slowly peeling away until she found something worth loving.

She didn’t know Zen.

And as much as I longed to explain it to her, I knew I never would be able to. I knew I had to let her go on thinking that she was right about me.

“I’m sorry,” I offered one last time.

She nodded again and pushed the chair back, standing up. “Me too. I’m sorry I ever felt sorry for you. I’m sorry I ever tried to help you.” She stormed toward the door of the lab. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I sat alone in the darkness, the room illuminated only by the monitor that sat before me and the memory cued up on the screen, ready to show me what they stole.

Ready to show me what was worth stealing.

I let Xaria’s pain and heartbreak flow through me, cringing at the bitterness it left in my chest. It’s the way it has to be, I told myself. If I had any hope of fulfilling my promise to protect Seraphina, there was no other way it could be.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, allowing the guilt to sink into me, knowing I would always carry it around wherever I went. But also knowing, with sadness, that it was a price I was all too willing to pay.

Then I opened my eyes and pressed Play.





17: Protocol


The images that filled the screen were disturbingly surreal. Everything was shown through my own eyes, and yet I was so removed from it, sitting in this cubical, watching it on a screen. It was like playing a virtual simulation game, except I had no control over my avatar. I could only sit back and let it happen.

Unlike real memories, the Revisualization was crisp and vivid, without the hazy filter of time. It played out before me like a movie I’d starred in. In another life. Another world. A forgotten dimension.

*

I swiped my fingertip across the sensor. It flashed green and the door to the lab clicked open. I glanced around the huge space filled with screens and processors and complicated equipment I didn’t recognize.

The far walls were lined with cages, each one housing a small white mouse. Several were dead.

I started to move toward the helpless animals, gaining speed and intensity with each step.

On the wall next to each cage, a monitor indicated the status of some kind of experiment. I chose the closest one and studied the lines of text.

Project White Flower.

Subject: 341

Latest update: Failed to transesse two minutes forward. Gene malfunctioning. Expected termination within four hours.

I turned my attention to the poor, helpless mouse. “Sorry, little guy,” I said aloud to the empty lab. “You don’t have much time left.”

His nose wiggled in response, as if he understood.

I glanced at some of the other screens. All of them had similar status reports. “Failed to transesse two minutes forward.”

*

I hit Pause on the monitor.

Failed to transesse.

What did that mean?

Transesse wasn’t a word I was familiar with.

And Project White Flower? I’d never even heard of that. Which meant it was at least a C7, possibly higher.

I pressed Play.

*

A sound echoed in the empty lab and I spun around.

A custodial droid glided into the room, her creepy human top and wheeled-machine bottom made me shudder.

She spotted me. Her head tilted curiously to the side, processing. I shut my eyes tight, knowing she would be attempting to scan them. I turned around and slid a NanoStrip onto my eyeball, blinking it into place.