The Complication (The Program #6)(92)

My heart is racing, banging painfully. Wes could have been free. I’m devastated by the decision he made. But I’m humbled by it too. He saved my life.

“Dr. Warren agreed to his terms,” Realm says, watching me. “You were sent home immediately. Once there, you were secretly given the Adjustment based on the files I supplied Marie with. Wes didn’t want to stay with his parents, so he hid out, waiting for you to recover. It was another week before I called him and told him he could see you. See you one last time. He went immediately to your house.

“You remembered him,” Realm says, his voice cracking. “Tatum, he was so happy that you remembered him—it was all he could think about, right up until the moment they erased it in The Program.”

There’s a tickle on my cheek, and I swipe at it, realizing I’m crying. Wes’s missing week was spent waiting for me, waiting on a deal that would ruin him. He had given up everything for me. Just like Wes said before The Program took him: “I’ll make it right, Tate.” That’s what he thought he was doing.

“So that was how you got out of The Program,” Realm says. “Wes traded his life for yours. And the deal was you’d stay apart, forever. Dr. Warren was convinced it would send you spiraling otherwise. And after Wes’s Adjustment failed, and Dr. McKee and Marie realized you’d lied about the actual breakup, they agreed with her assessment. They worried rekindling would lead into a full-blown crashback—the kind you couldn’t get over. No one, and I mean literally no one, wanted the two of you together.” He pauses. “But I knew you would be anyway.”

Realm takes a deep breath. “It didn’t help that Wes lied too,” he says, sipping from his coffee. “Seems neither of you wanted to talk about the end of your relationship. Just skipped right over all the Kyle Mahoney bullshit.”

“Who’s Kyle Mahoney?” Wes asks.

“Nobody,” Realm and I say at the same time, and then look at each other. I almost laugh. I would if I wasn’t so completely and utterly heartbroken right now.

“But I’ll admit,” Realm says. “I wasn’t a great handler at the end. I was doing incomplete work. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to get Wes’s true memories about you—who knows. But I left soon after, and The Program erased more than just you.” He looks at Wes. “I’m sorry about that. I brought you in; I should have stayed.”

Realm turns to me. “And even with all that,” he continues, “I know I was right to send you to Marie. She thinks you hold the key to the cure, and I think she’s right. And selfishly . . . I need you. I need the cure.” He swallows hard, and I notice the swelling in his neck, just under his jaw. It occurs to me that he’s unwell.

“But, sweetness,” Realm continues in an earnest voice, “I’m so sorry for whatever part I’ve played in your story. I wish I could go back and make it right, but at this point, what is right? Wrong? Is there even such a thing?”

“We’re right and you’re wrong,” Wes says quietly, his eyes downcast, and he pokes the spoon into his ice cream. What could he possibly be thinking right now? I may not have asked him to give himself up, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty about his decision.

A thought occurs to me, and I turn to Realm. “Why did Dr. Warren flag me again?” I ask. “Why now?”

“You broke the deal,” he says. “You demonstrated over and over again that you’d keep going back to him. That he’d keep coming for you. But more than that, you told her about your memories, and she realized what she learned in The Program was false. She figured out that you lied, that I lied. Fuck—we’re all liars. And she knew that the only reason we’d all go so far to protect you was because you’re the cure. She was running out of time.”

“How do we stop her? I ask.

“The only way to stop The Program is to make it obsolete,” Realm says. “Cure it and make it irrelevant. Attack the bottom line.”

“Then Marie needs you,” I say. “She asked me to find you.”

“Everybody’s always trying to find me,” Realm says under his breath, and then coughs, grabbing a napkin to wipe his mouth. I furrow my brow.

“How do you know everything?” I ask. “How are you so connected?”

“Because I’ve been here since the beginning,” he says. “I was one of the first in The Program. I was given the Treatment. I’m sure I still have an experiment or two left in me. I’ve made mistakes, Tatum. Huge ones. But I always try to set things right where I can. I’m trying to be a better person.” He smiles at me, knowing that I’ve been trying to do the same. His words remind me of the first conversation we had, and I narrow my eyes.

“The Treatment?” I say. “Are you the ‘friend’ who remembers everything? The cursed one?”

“I’m not the only one who remembers,” he says, rubbing absently at the scar on his neck. “But yes—I’m definitely the cursed one.”

I want to tell him not to talk like that, but when he glances at me again, something is wrong. There’s a splotch of red on the white part of his right eye.

“Your eye is bleeding,” I say, pointing.

“What?” Realm swipes one finger under the lid, checking for blood. Wes looks up curiously.