The Extinction Trials(50)

“I think we should assume,” Cara said, “that we can rely on our memories. Believing anything else leads us nowhere. We can’t act on that information. But it could cause uncertainty, which would harm us.”

“I agree,” Will said. “There’s no reason for them to modify our memories—that we know of yet. But I do think Genesis was moving toward some sort of end game. They were gathering larger and larger amounts of data. Even at ARC, we were having trouble providing enough storage and processing power.”

“How were they getting more data?” Maya asked.

“I don’t know,” Will replied. “I do know that they had formed an alliance with other corporations and possibly governments. It was called The Human Union, and the idea was to combine what Genesis was doing with other projects to affect change on a large scale.”

“Change,” Maya said, “as in The Change?”

“I don’t know,” Will replied. “I think we have to assume that Genesis and the Genesis Virus are part of the change.”

“If you worked for ARC,” Owen asked, “how did you end up in The Extinction Trials?”

“As I said, I was working on the Revelation project. We were running out of data storage, and we were working feverishly to add processing power. I was told that I would be working at an off-site data recovery facility. That facility was Station 17. They brought me in and… It’s hard to explain, but the next thing I knew, I was there in that observation room with all of you.”

Maya couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about the story bothered her.

“And you can’t remember anything else?” Owen asked.

“Nothing that might help us,” Will said.

They ate lunch then, mostly in silence. Maya reread the journal while Owen buried his nose in The Birthright, deep in concentration.

“Any good?” she asked.

“It’s interesting,” he replied.

After lunch, Maya took Blair below decks to the bedroom. “I know you may not want to, but it would help us a lot if you told us what happened to you before you woke up at the station.”

She nodded. “I want to.”

From the bedside table, she picked up the envelope with her name on it, and she followed Maya up to the main deck.

Maya watched as the young girl reached into the envelope and drew out small, printed picture that easily fit in the palm of her hand.

She handed the small picture to Maya. “Please pass it around.”

Maya studied the photo for a moment. There was a man and a woman and two children–Blair and what looked like a younger brother. It’d been taken some time ago. Blair had clearly grown since then. They were at what looked like an amusement park that Maya didn’t recognize. The family was sunburned and looked weary and tired.

She passed the picture to Cara, who seemed alarmed by it.

“What is it?” Maya whispered. Cara simply shook her head and passed the picture to Will, who seemed even more surprised by the photo. He looked up at Blair and merely cocked his head, as if seeing her in a completely different light. Alister seemed to have no reaction to the photo. He barely looked at it.

Owen glanced at it but also seemed to have no reaction.

“There is one major difference between me and all of you,” Blair said. “I knew about The Extinction Trials before I woke up in that station. In fact, I was told that it would save my life.”

“By whom?” Owen asked.

“My father,” Blair replied. “He’s the man you see in that photo.”

“He’s also,” Will said, “the founder of Genesis Biosciences.”

“That’s correct,” Blair said.

“And your mother,” Cara said, “is the emergency room doctor that pulled me out of that car and saved my life when I was a child.”

Blair was silent for a moment. “I didn’t know that. What I do know is that she is the reason my father started Genesis Biosciences. She is the reason he was so obsessed with memory. Because of what happened to her.”

“Is she still alive?” Cara asked. “Or was she before you entered the trials?”

“Yes,” Blair said. “But she wasn’t the same as she was before. Every year things were harder for her. When she came home from her job at the ER, she would just sit down on the sofa and stare at the TV. She seemed sad. She always looked tired. She would tell me how many accidents she saw. She said that, most times, people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And she said that some people had to use the ER because they couldn't get any help anywhere else. Daddy said that mommy was a smart doctor, but that she just hated to see what was happening to people everyday. My dad wanted to help her. He begged her to quit work, but she didn’t want to. Mommy always said she was meant to be a doctor.”

“I know that feeling,” Cara said.

“So, my dad made a new plan. He thought if he could change how my mommy’s mind stored her memories and how she felt about those memories, like putting different types of memories in different containers, she would feel better.”

Blair looked at the picture again. “My daddy is a good man. He just wanted to help my mommy and other people who were like her.”

She placed the picture back in the envelope. “The day before I came to Station 17, my daddy woke me up in the middle of the night. He looked scared. He wouldn’t tell me and my brother what was happening. We got on the helicopter, and we flew all night. I don’t know where we went, but I remember we landed at a landing pad and a mountain range when the sun was coming up. We hiked until we reached the station. He told me that I was going to go to sleep for a little while, and that when I woke up, the world would be completely different. That it would be a better world—a world without crime or hunger or disease or anything that I remembered. He told me that he would be there when I woke up and that my mother would too, and she would be like she used to be.”