Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(5)

Confused, I scanned the length of the concrete barrier, noticing an unpatrolled solid metal gate on the east side, leading to a long road that disappeared over another hill. I could make out an additional identity scanner on the wall next to the gate, but my instinct was telling me not to use it.

No doubt my mother’s ID was already showing up on someone’s slate somewhere, alerting them to her presence in this sector. But it was a big sector; she could be anywhere. This wall only enclosed a small area, about three thousand square feet. On the off chance she was not supposed to be here, I didn’t need anyone pinpointing my exact location.

Which meant there was only one way in.

The concrete took off layers of skin from several parts of my body, favoring my knees and palms. I felt ridiculous. After everything I’d done to get here. After every forbidden device I’d invented, every system I’d hacked, and every fingerprint I’d lifted, I was climbing a glitching wall.

The idea felt so old-fashioned and archaic, I would have laughed had I not been trying to keep my intrusion quiet.

But eventually, after much effort, I made it to the other side. And if I had known what was waiting for me, I would have gotten there much sooner.

I would have run.

I would have leaped over that wall in a single bound.

I would have found a way to fly.

To say it was a girl would be like saying the earth orbited around a lightbulb and the Milky Way was nothing but a tangled string of Christmas lights.

She was hiding behind a pillar of a white wraparound porch, her face barely visible. But when she braved a glance in my direction and our eyes met, I swear the planet tilted on its axis.

It wasn’t just her eyes—a vibrant, sparkling shade of purple. It wasn’t just her skin—hands down the most beautiful, flawless maple-colored skin I’d ever seen. It was the way the air seemed to bend around her, the ground seemed to slope toward her, as though she created her own gravity.

Like the universe itself was pointing a giant flashing arrow at this exquisite girl locked away behind a wall.

A real wall.

It was something out of a fairy tale.

A very deranged, glitched-up fairy tale.

The kind of fairy tale that only a place like Diotech could write.

She was dressed in gray. An uninspiring shirt/pants combination that reminded me of pajamas.

But her face.

Holy flux, her face.

She looked like she was pulled straight from an advertisement on one of the DigiBoards you see alongside the highway, a few miles away from the compound. She was more breathtaking than even the computer-generated models gracing the covers of the beauty feeds that the girls at school pored over on their slates every morning.

I took a step toward her, my whole body entranced. I opened my mouth to speak, unsure if words would come out. A safer bet would have been indecipherable, nonsensical babble.

But luck and syllables were on my side that day, and I managed to form a full thought. A coherent question.

“Who are you?”

Her spellbindingly perfect pink lips parted and, in a stilted, almost robotic voice, she answered, “My name is Seraphina.”

Seraphina.

The name echoed for eternity in my mind. Like a shooting star caught in a jar.

I suddenly knew how Galileo felt when he discovered that the Earth rotated around the sun, how Newton felt when he discovered gravity, and how Handler felt when he discovered the first signs of life in the Andromeda galaxy three years ago.

I knew, without another word spoken, without another step taken, without another breath exhaled, that what I had stumbled upon would change everything.





5: Promises


The girl scooted closer to me. She smelled amazing. Like flowers dipped in honey. We’d been sitting on the lawn in front of the house for the past half hour, and every few minutes she’d move a few inches toward me. But she was still too far away.

I had the sinking feeling that no matter how close she got, she would always be too far away.

I found it funny that earlier the same day, I had tried so desperately to distance myself from Xaria, and now I was drowning in my need to get closer to this mysterious girl.

Klo and Rustin always thought I was crazy. Crazy for not responding to Xaria’s obvious interest in me. Insane for not returning her advances.

“There’s only, what, a hundred kids on this compound?” Klo reminded me last week, “Ten of which are actually our age. And only two of those ten are of the female variety. You don’t exactly have the luxury of being picky, now do you?”

I knew he was right. I didn’t have the luxury of being picky. But girls had just never appealed to me. Or rather, the two girls my age that lived on this compound had never appealed to me.

But they were not her.

They were not Seraphina.

“How old are you?” I asked her, picking at a blade of grass so I would have something to do with my hands.

“Sixteen,” she answered immediately. Her voice was so mechanical. So stiff. For a moment, I worried that she was actually just another droid. A very advanced droid. But I ruled it out solely based on the way she made me feel. The way she created a thunderstorm in my chest just by being near me.

The way I felt like nothing in my life mattered anymore.

There was no way a Diotech-built robot could do that.

She had to be human.

Whether or not she was real was another story.