Unremembered (Unremembered #1)(70)

The room becomes fuzzy.

I see someone in the doorway. A silhouette. It moves towards me. Fast. Urgently.

‘Can you hear me? Please open your eyes.’

He touches my hand and I struggle to stay awake.

‘Please wake up,’ he pleads, from far away. His voice echoes in my ears.

I can barely make out his face. Hovering inches from mine. It blurs in and out of focus.

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ he says. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’

He moves quickly, removing my IV, the tubes from my face and chest.

I hear footsteps down the hall, coming from the nurses’ station.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’

The touch of his hand slowly dissolves and I fight to open my eyes one last time before the darkness comes.

He is gone.

‘Wait,’ I say, standing up. Now it’s my turn to pace. ‘Zen found me in the hospital. But the Diotech security agents didn’t show up until I stepped out of that diner and walked into a sea of press. Then they showed up again at the gas station after that girl took a picture of me with her cellphone. Why wouldn’t they just come to the hospital too? If that was the first time my picture appeared in the news. How did they miss that?’

Maxxer smiles. It’s obvious she takes great pleasure in relaying what she’s about to say. ‘Because Zen was watching out for you.’

I feel an instant warmth spread through my entire body and that magic spot in the centre of my forehead burns again. But the heat is short-lived. It cools the moment I think about how fast I abandoned him. How fast I ran away to save myself. After everything he did for me.

‘He tried to cover your trail,’ Maxxer goes on. ‘He knew it was only a matter of time before Alixter figured out that you had transessed and came looking for you too. So once he discovered you were here, in this year, he hired a professional to hack into the digital news archives and erase the evidence of your whereabouts.’

‘Then why didn’t he also remove the photograph taken outside the diner or the one taken by the girl on her cellphone?’ I ask.

Maxxer shakes her head. ‘Because those events happened after he was already here. In fact, they happened as a result of him being here. You only ran away from the Carlsons’ home and ended up at the diner because Zen told you there were people following you. And then you were only at that gas station because you escaped with Zen. Those events and photographs didn’t exist until after he came here to find you. Which means it would have been impossible for him to erase them because the technology doesn’t exist here.’

My head is starting to hurt again and I rub my temples with my index fingers.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It will start to make sense eventually.’

I laugh. ‘Somehow I doubt it.’

‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘I . . .’ Maxxer’s voice trails off as something seems to catch her eye. And then a strange shadow passes over her face.

‘What?’ I ask, glancing around. ‘What’s wrong?’

But I don’t have to wait for her to answer. My gaze falls upon the empty space on the floor where Cody’s unconscious body once lay.

Maxxer looks from one end of the room to the other, coming up with nothing. She turns to me and with panic-stricken eyes asks, ‘Where’s the kid?’





41


BETRAYED


‘For the last time,’ I hear a voice yell, ‘I’m not a kid!’

We both spin to see Cody crawling out from under the table, holding the Modifier in his hand and pointing it at Maxxer.

‘Cody,’ I say gently, stepping towards him. ‘Please put that down.’

But he waves it frantically, forcing me to back away. ‘Don’t come near me!’ He looks scared and overwhelmed. His eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them. His breathing is strained.

‘Be careful with that,’ Maxxer warns, nodding towards Cody’s hand. ‘Modifiers can be very tricky to operate and extremely dangerous if you don’t know how to use them.’

But Cody ignores Maxxer, pushing her against the wall with a few threatening flicks of his hand.

‘What is this place?’ he asks, his voice breaking. ‘It looks like the inside of a storage unit.’

‘It is,’ Maxxer replies patiently.

Cody’s face contorts in fear. He shoots an accusatory glare at me. ‘I told you! I told you not to get in that car! I knew this was bad news. But did you listen to me? Noooo! Who listens to the thirteen-year-old kid? No one! And now we’re about to be murdered and left to rot in a storage unit!’

I shake my head and try to approach him again. ‘Cody, you’ve got it completely wrong. Dr Maxxer is on our side.’

But Cody shoos me back right away. ‘Our side!’ he screams. ‘Our side? You and I are not on the same side. I don’t even know who or what you are!’ He gazes at me with such hurt in his eyes it makes my chest ache.

‘How much of our conversation did you hear?’ I ask him, trying to stay calm.

‘Enough,’ he replies sharply. Then with his other hand he reaches out and cranks up a small dial on the side of the Modifier.

‘No!’ Maxxer calls out to him, rushing forward. ‘That setting is too strong!’