Unremembered (Unremembered #1)(58)

Is it really because of my DNA? Because some scientist programmed me to flee? I can’t bear the thought of it. I can’t stand to think that Zen might be dead because I was too weak to defy my impulses.

What’s the point of remembering someone if you’re only going to lose him again? What’s the point of clinging to something if it’s only going to be ripped away from you?

My eyes burn. My head pounds. Everything is spinning.

I fall on to my side and curl into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest, begging for someone – something – to come and take this moment from me. Steal it from my memory. Store it somewhere I’ll never find it.

I don’t care.

I just want to forget.

I stay like that for a long time – maybe even hours, I don’t know – but no one comes.

The memory of Zen’s lifeless body stays locked in my brain. Condemned to play on a never-ending loop. To torture me forever.

Eventually a voice comes from deep in the back of my mind, telling me to get up. To stop crying and start formulating a plan.

But it feels hopeless.

I know nothing about these people or what they’re capable of. I have no information to act upon. If Zen is still alive, what will they do to him? Where will they take him? I don’t even know where to start looking.

You’re wrong, the voice argues.

And it’s enough to make me sit up and wipe the tears and dirt from my face.

‘I am?’ I ask aloud.

You know exactly where they would take him, it replies.

And I immediately realize that the voice inside me is right.

I do know. They would take him back to where he came from. Back to the place where we met. Where we read poetry together. The place we tried to escape from.

The Diotech compound.

At that instant I know that I have to go there. If he’s alive, then I have to help him. I don’t know where this unyielding sense of necessity is coming from but it’s there. It’s not something I can touch or define or even remember. And yet I trust it blindly. It’s an undeniable part of me. A force I can’t fight. No matter how strong I am. A power I cannot run from. No matter how fast I am.

It’s as though I don’t have a choice.

I pull myself to my feet and dig the cellphone out of my pocket.

When I searched for Diotech on the Internet, I came up with nothing. But maybe the Diotech compound isn’t listed on the Internet for a reason. If they’re as secretive as Zen described, maybe they’re purposefully not publishing their whereabouts.

Or maybe I simply don’t know how to search for it. Maybe there’s another way. A better way.

If there is, there’s only one person I can think of who would know about it.

I fumble through the phone’s various on-screen menus until I find what I’m looking for. An entry in the address book that reads Cody.

I press Call and hold the phone up to my ear.

‘Hello?’ comes the familiar voice after the second ring. The sound of it comforts me.

‘Cody,’ I say, sniffling, ‘it’s me. I need your help.’

There’s a stunned silence and then, ‘Already?’

I let out a weak and tired chuckle. ‘Something went wrong. Someone has –’ I search for the right word; it pops into my head a split second later, feeling all too appropriate given who’s on the other end of this call – ‘kidnapped Zen.’

‘What?’ Cody shrieks.

‘Can you come meet me?’ I plead desperately.

Cody sighs. ‘Fine. Tell me where you are.’ He then proceeds to walk me step by step through the process of using the GPS on the cellphone to identify my location.

‘OK,’ he says, after it’s been determined that I’m about three miles from a city called Bakersfield. ‘There’s a train that goes there. I’ll try to get on the next one. Meet me at the coffee shop next to the station in two hours.’

‘OK,’ I agree. ‘And Cody?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Bring your laptop too. I need help finding a top-secret compound.’

I hear him laughing quietly and I can picture him rolling his eyes as he mumbles to himself, ‘I should have just stayed at science camp.’





34


INCOMPLETE


I don’t have any sort of disguise to shield myself from inquisitive stares and wandering eyes, so I find a table in the back, pull my hair down around my face and try to keep my head low to avoid eye contact with anyone.

The last thing I want is to be recognized – and photographed – again. I’m starting to see a very disconcerting pattern here. The last two times I was photographed, those creepy men in black somehow managed to appear almost instantaneously.

When I left the diner and the news vans and reporters were there taking my picture, I saw the man with the scar as soon as I tried to run. And then again a few hours ago at the gas station: the second that girl took my photograph with her phone, they appeared. Seemingly out of nowhere.

I pull the cellphone Cody stole for me out of my pocket and place it on the table in case he tries to call. Then I reach down the front of my shirt and take out the locket.

I hold the heart-shaped locket in my hand, gently stroking the grooves of the clasp and the raised surface of the symbol on the front – the eternal knot – then my fingertips graze the engraving on the back.