The Ones We're Meant to Find(69)

CANCEL

I am aware of the risks and accept.

I ACCEPT





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HE CRUMPLES LIKE A BODY without a spirit, head dropping into his hands. The fork is still ringing on the floor when I rush to his side and kneel. “What’s wrong?” I reach for his arm.

“Get back.”

“But—”

“Get back.”

My hand retracts. I watch, helpless, as he lifts his head spinal disc by spinal disc, eyes glazed over with pain. The veins in his hands stiffen, followed by the veins in his neck.

The spell passes the way it came: without warning. He sags in the chair, panting. Shakes his head as if to clear it.

“What hurts?” I demand.

“It’s nothing,” says Hero. I glare, and he amends, “Just a headache.”

Something tells me it’s not the first time this has happened. He doesn’t seem surprised enough, and was able to speak to me through the pain. “When did you start getting them?” I ask.

Hero doesn’t say anything.

“Since I came back?”

After a moment, he nods.

Since I smashed an oar into your head. I slide my hand over his forehead and push up his bangs. Everything looks healed from the surface, but it’s what’s underneath that worries me. He could have a concussion—if we have the equivalent of brains. If we don’t, and it’s just wires and hardware inside our skulls, then I could have broken something that will never heal on its own.

How do I ask without giving our true natures away? “Besides the pain … do you feel any different, mentally?”

“As in, do I have memories?”

I nod.

Hero’s gaze drops to the fork on the ground. He shakes his head, and picks the fork up.

“Hero…” He’s keeping secrets from me. I know it. And I’m in no position to judge him for that, but I could help, if I knew his truth. If he knew mine, he’d never be able to return to the life he has now. Kay stole my world from me. I won’t do the same to him.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I say quietly.

His honest nature wins out in the end. “I’ve been hearing voices.”

My blood slows as I recall Kay’s. Find me. “What do they say?” I venture.

“Stop her.” He swallows. “And in my dreams, I … now see a face.” His fingers twitch, as if itching to mold the face out of clay. We have no clay, so I hand him the next best thing: the butter knife.

Hero hesitates. “It’ll ruin the table.”

“Screw the table,” I say, and at last he digs the knife tip into the wood.

A man’s face emerges. Now, I like an angular face, but this one is too angular, skeletal almost, and I find the austerity to the man’s expression disturbing. The other disturbing thing? How good Hero’s crude line drawing is. Is his programming the source of his many talents? What was he made for? Stop her. Is it too self-centered of me to think I’m the her? Why would anyone want to stop me? I look back to the table. Maybe Hero is also disconcerted by his own drawing skills, because he doesn’t say a thing. We stare at the face in silence.

I break it. “Who is it?”

Hero sets the knife down. “I don’t know.”

“But then how can you draw it?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you don’t remember them? Or someone like them? Someone from your past?” False past, but maybe there are answers there.

“No. Cee…” Hero looks pale. He rocks onto the hind legs of his chair. “What if I don’t have a past? What if?” he repeats, already sensing my resistance. “Just consider this: What if I never had a name?”

That’s impossible, I would have said before. Everyone has a name. Now I realize I took so much for granted. Things I thought everyone deserved—a name, a past—are not guaranteed to us. And when they are given, it’s for a reason. Memories are how Kay controlled me. They bolstered me when I considered giving up. They reminded me of who I was and who I am and who I could be. I am the vehicle; they are the gasoline. They drive me to “find Kay” on top of my explicit programming, because even if my happiness levels failed to trigger the command, my memories would have held me hostage to the idea of a lost sister.

Meanwhile, maybe what Hero’s meant to do doesn’t require memories. Or his creator simply couldn’t be bothered to build in a fail-safe. Anger boils up my throat at the thought—that who we are is determined by how others intend to use us. It’s not fair, I think, especially when Hero says, horror hushing his voice, “I’ve wondered it this whole time. If you didn’t ask me for my name, I wouldn’t have realized I was missing one. Some days … I can’t even remember how I used to act or talk.”

No memories … and no personality. I recall how Hero shifted from jumpy to skeptical to glum when I first met him. His considerate nature has always been a constant, but the rest, I now see, was never quite stable.

He rocks the chair back to a steeper angle. “I’m sorry,” he says out of the blue.

“Why?” His apology only enrages me more. We’re at no fault.

Even our faults are built into us.

“Sometimes…” Hero starts. “I think about all of this from your point of view. Three years on an island, alone. You must have been so happy the day when I washed ashore.” He smiles, rueful. “Then it turns out I have nothing to offer. No goals of my own, no past to share.”