Unremembered (Unremembered #1)(71)

‘Shut up!’ he yells back.

‘Cody, please,’ I beg. ‘You’ve got to trust me.’

‘I’m done trusting you,’ he resolves. ‘It’s gotten me into nothing but trouble.’

I look to Maxxer, who gives me a subtle nod. I know what I have to do. As much as I hate to do it.

‘Cody,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Save it,’ he snaps. ‘What’s done is done.’

‘I mean,’ I say softly, ‘I’m sorry for this.’

His forehead crinkles as he regards me with confusion. ‘What are you talk—’

I lunge towards him with such speed that he doesn’t have time to react, nor finish his sentence. I go for his arm first, thrusting it upward, praying I don’t hear any bones crack.

Cody cries out in pain and the Modifier goes flying up into the air. Maxxer leaps forward to catch it.

I kick Cody’s legs from underneath him and hold his body as it falls to the ground, protecting his head from crashing against the concrete.

Maxxer fidgets with the dial on the side of the device while Cody squirms against my grip, whipping this way and that. I pin his shoulders down with my arms while I use my knees to keep his legs in place. It’s not difficult to restrain him. His puny strength is no match for mine.

It’s his eyes that I have trouble with.

He glares up at me with such hatred, such loathing, I have to look away. He thinks I betrayed him.

‘Hurry!’ I tell Maxxer, who sprints over with the Modifier.

Cody struggles harder. ‘You . . . you . . . bitch!’ he shouts.

‘Do it!’ I cry to Maxxer.

Maxxer kneels down. Cody thrashes his head back and forth, refusing to give Maxxer direct access to him. I lean forward and press my forearm across his face, attempting to hold it still while Maxxer places the metal tip of the device under Cody’s left ear.

I hear a small buzzing sound and then Cody’s body goes limp again.

I sigh and push myself back to my feet. When I glance down at his unconscious form, the tears instantly start streaming down my face.

Maxxer puts a hand on my shoulder but it does little to comfort me.

‘Now the only thing he’ll remember about me is this,’ I snivel. ‘This is what I’ll always be to him. The monster who attacked and restrained him while someone deactivated his brain.’

The thought makes me sob harder.

Maxxer squeezes my shoulder. ‘It won’t be that way,’ she says.

‘Yes, it will,’ I say quietly. ‘You didn’t see the way he looked at me. He thinks I betrayed him. And he always will.’

‘I promise you, he won’t.’ Maxxer says this with such conviction my tears dry almost instantly. I sniffle and look up at him. ‘What do you mean?’

Maxxer steps away from me and returns to her table. From a small wooden box, strikingly similar to the one that Zen carried in his pocket, she pulls out three small rubber discs – receptors – and kneels back down next to Cody.

‘He’s heard too much,’ Maxxer explains, shifting Cody’s head so that she can properly place one disc behind each ear and the other on the back of his neck, near his hairline. ‘The information he knows will only put him in danger.’

‘You’re going to erase his memories,’ I say with a numbing realization.

Maxxer sighs and stands up again. ‘We don’t have a choice. If he tells anyone about what he’s seen or heard today, he’ll be putting his life in jeopardy. As well as his parents’. Not to mention the ridicule and social consequences for a thirteen-year-old boy running around claiming he met people from the future.’

I wipe my eyes and nod. ‘How much will you take?’

She walks back to her computer. ‘Everything that happened today.’

‘But his parents,’ I say. ‘They think he’s at his friend Marcus’s house – that’s what he told them.’

Maxxer nods. ‘OK. I’ll replace today with a memory of that. I can access a similar past experience and create a template from them.’

‘Computer games,’ I say softly. ‘He likes playing computer games. Put that in too.’

‘OK,’ Maxxer says, and immediately goes to work.

I breathe a sigh of relief but I’m still an emotional mess. Although I’m grateful that Cody won’t remember any of this, that he’ll wake up tomorrow morning still thinking of me as some kind of ‘amnesiac supermodel’, as he called me, I will know the truth. I will still remember the last time he looked at me, and the horror I saw in his eyes.

And I will never be able to forget it.

But I suppose I deserve that.

I should never have gotten him mixed up in this. I should have left him at that coffee shop and gone with Maxxer alone. Or better yet, I never should have called him for help in the first place. This is my fault and now I’ll have to live with the memory of the consequences.

Even if he doesn’t.

A shrill beeping sound interrupts my thoughts. Maxxer looks up from her computer in alarm and I glance around the dark room for the source. I follow the sound to Maxxer’s table, where I find the cellphone Cody gave me.

I reach for the phone and peer curiously at it.

‘What is it?’ Maxxer asks.