Unremembered (Unremembered #1)(55)

Cody jumps out of the way. ‘Whoa!’

‘What was that?’ I ask, my voice and hands trembling.

Zen smirks. ‘You read the owner’s manual.’

I peer down at the glossy book in my lap and shake my head. ‘No. I didn’t.’

‘She didn’t.’ Cody backs me up. ‘I saw it. She only flipped through it.’

Zen chuckles softly to himself. ‘Trust me, you read it.’

‘He’s right.’ I point at Cody. ‘I only flipped through it.’

‘How many pages are in it?’ Zen asks, raising his eyebrows as though he’s challenging me.

I feel my throat constrict. ‘322.’

Cody snorts. ‘Well, that’s easy.’ He reaches in through the still-open door and grabs the booklet from my lap. ‘The pages are obviously numbered . . .’ But his voice trails off as he flips to the end and his mouth falls open.

I grab the book back from him. ‘What?’ I glance at the last page and immediately understand Cody’s reaction.

To my astonishment, the number 322 isn’t written on the bottom corner. Instead, the number 10-18 is written.

The book is labelled in sections. And subsections.

Not in pages.

‘How did you know there are 322 pages in there?’ Cody asks.

‘I counted them,’ I reply softly.

‘No one can count that fast,’ Cody argues.

Zen remains quiet, waiting for the realization to hit me. And even though it’s starting to sink in, I still can’t bring myself to believe it.

‘That’s impossible,’ I argue feebly. ‘There’s no way I can read something just by glancing at it for a split second.’

‘Like it’s impossible for you to speak multiple foreign languages and add large sums in your head and—’

‘OK!’ I say, wanting nothing more than for him to stop talking. ‘I get it.’ I reengage the clutch and brake, and turn the key in the ignition again, desperate for the sound of the engine to drown out Zen’s voice . . . and my own thoughts. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Cody, still wide-eyed and open-mouthed, stumbles dazedly away from the car as I reach out and grab hold of the door handle.

‘Wait! I almost forgot.’ He digs into his pocket and pulls out a cellphone. ‘Here. You might need this.’ He tosses it into the car. It lands softly on my lap, atop the owner’s manual. ‘I took it from my good friend Trevor back there. I programmed my number in, just in case.’

I slide the phone into one of my pants pockets. ‘Thanks, Cody,’ I say earnestly. ‘For everything.’

Then I slam the door, jam the transmission into first gear again, and peel off the grass, leaving a cloud of smoke and a spray of dirt visible in the rear-view mirror.





32


IMPEDIMENTS


‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

We’ve been driving for twenty minutes and Zen hasn’t said a word other than to direct me where to turn, when to speed up and pass other cars, and how to read the signs on the side of the highway. Because although the Porsche’s owner’s manual taught me how to operate the car, it didn’t teach me anything about the rules of the road.

‘Somewhere we can stay under the radar,’ he replies.

‘How do we stay under the radar?’

Zen points to a sign that reads 55. ‘That’s the speed limit.’

I check the odometer on the dash – 83 – and gently apply the brakes.

‘For one,’ he replies, ‘we don’t get any speeding tickets. Because you don’t have a licence and they’ll be monitoring police reports and radio traffic.’

‘Diotech?’ I confirm.

He nods. ‘But most important, we have to keep you away from the press. And nosy people in general. No photographs can be taken of you. Anything that gets posted on the Web or in any news outlets can be used to track down your location. They’ll be monitoring for that too. So we just have to find a remote place to lay low. I figure if we head inland we can camp out in the desert for a while.’

‘Until what?’ I ask.

‘Until I can figure out how to get us out of here.’

I shake my head, downshifting into fifth gear. ‘But if they can find me anywhere, where are we supposed to go? How can we ever escape them?’

Zen rests his hand on mine on the gearshift. ‘We can,’ he assures me. ‘I just need some time.’

‘Time to do what?’

‘Sera,’ he begins, his voice turning very solemn and serious, ‘something happened when we tried to escape.’

‘You mean the fact that I lost all my memories?’

He sighs. ‘Yes, that – although I’m still not quite sure how you lost them.’

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. ‘What do you mean? Didn’t Diotech steal them?’

He shakes his head. ‘Not this time. At least I don’t think so. You were perfectly fine that morning, before we escaped. Your memories were fully intact. Or as intact as they could be given the circumstances. I know for a fact Diotech hadn’t messed with your brain for weeks. Which means something must have happened between the time we left and the time I found you in the hospital.’