False Memory (2 page)

A guy about my age sits in the middle of the court amid scattered and overturned tables and chairs. A plate of mango chicken from Ruby Thai sits in front of him. He’s lean, with the most intense face I’ve seen so far. A staring-contest face. His black hair is thick, a little long, curling slightly at the neck. His white T-shirt stretches over a body pared down to just muscle and skin.

He waves at me, like everything is fine. I stand there for a moment, frozen. Finally he turns his hand around and makes a
Come here
motion.

He knows who I am; he has to. No other reason he’d be sitting there instead of running. He could know why I can’t remember; he could know what just happened; he could know why those people fell, why they’re probably dead; he could know if it’s my fault.

I make my way over to him, stepping lightly over upended chairs. Part of me wonders if I should be moving in the opposite direction. My eyes keep flitting up to him, tracking him, and that’s why I step in a puddle of Coke. My right foot makes a squeak with every step until I reach his table and fall into the chair across from him.

“Hello,” I say, trying to play it cool. I don’t know what I’m more afraid of—finding the truth, or not finding it. I fold my hands in my lap to keep them still.

Behind and below me, on the lower level of the mall, people still run and shout. Their panic echoes off the ceiling.

“Hello,” he says. His blue eyes are startling. Fake, almost. Like bright blue paint.

I smell him then, his sweat and soap, but something else. Flowers? Not just flowers—roses. Now that I recognize the scent, I realize it’s been there since the pain in my head started. “Are you wearing perfume?” I ask.

“It’s the psychic energy. Messes with the limbic system, so for some reason you smell roses.”

I don’t say anything. He waits for a reaction, but I have no idea what to say. He lost me at
psychic energy
.

“It’s . . . we smell it and they smell it, people the energy affects. It’s just a weird byproduct. How’s your head?” “It feels like it’s on fire,” I say.

“It’s running hot, yeah.”

We sit there. Like nothing’s wrong. Somewhere glass breaks and tinkles over the floor. He studies me under two black eyebrows that aren’t thick but aren’t thin either. It’s like he has two faces—from the nose down he’s amused, but his eyes are lowered in a studying scowl.

“Is this funny to you?” I say.

He frowns. “It’s the least funny thing I can imagine.”

I’m starving, and I need something to do with my hands, so I pluck a piece of his mango chicken. It tastes like ashes. For the first time, I begin to wonder if any of this is real. If a doctor in a white coat walked over and said I was experiencing a psychotic break, I’d probably buy it.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“No idea.” I see it all again—the pumping legs, flailing arms. The people falling. The woman’s purse in the air. “Those people...”

He shakes his head slowly. “This wasn’t your fault.” But his face says it is. He appears calm, but his mouth is tight. He’s trying to hide his horror, that much is plain. I know now, for sure, the panic was my doing. All of it. Somehow.

“This wasn’t your fault,” he says again, like he’s trying to convince himself.

“No?” My cheeks are wet now. I smear tears away with my fingertips.

He leans forward, pulls his tray back before I can grab more chicken. “How’s your memory?”

He knows. But how? An excited trill cuts through me at the thought of an answer, numbing all the unease for a moment.

“Gone,” I say, voice paper-dry. I suck in a breath and hold it, willing my hands to stop shaking.

“I figured.”

“Did you?”

We sit there some more. The mall is silent now, tombish.

“Do you have a name?” Iask, harshly, since he doesn’t seem willing to offer up information.

“Peter.”

“Peter...”

“Just Peter for now,” he says.

The insanity of the situation finally sinks in. Not the madness from before, but how I’m sitting here now, with “Peter,” and he’s talking about memory loss and psychic energy. I feel a kernel of something awful pop in my stomach. The truth is near and I don’t know if I’m ready for it.

“My name is Miranda,” I say. I lay my hands on my thighs and squeeze to keep from fidgeting.

“I know.”

“What happened?” I say.

He scrubs his face with his hands and runs one through his hair, leans back in his chair. “You released a burst of psychic energy that affected the brains of everyone in the mall, specifically their amygdala and prefrontal cortex. The energy incited base panic in the minds of everyone, freezing all other functions until only pure terror remained. You were able to control it before you forgot how. So when you felt threatened by the cop, your response was automatic.”

“Liar,” I say. I can’t think of a more absurd explanation. I don’t even understand what he said. But if I didn’t believe him, I wouldn’t be frozen on this plastic chair. If I woke up in Boston I wouldn’t be here, listening to this crazy boy tell me these crazy things.

He gives me a patient blink. “I can explain more later, but we need to go. Now.”

I stand up, the chair screeching under me, too loud in the big empty space. “Why can’t I remember?”

“Because you haven’t been taking your shots. Or your shots weren’t actually shots.”

My shots weren’t actually shots. The boy who smells like roses named Peter comes around the table and takes my arm. I shrug out of it and almost punch him in the chest but hold back. My body is humming again; I feel like I did the second before I threw that cop.

He holds my gaze until I look away. “Relax,” he says, “We’re friends.”

“How do I know that? I lose my memory and you’re just waiting for me, brooding over mango chicken?”

He shrugs like it doesn’t matter. He starts to walk away, calling to me without looking back. “We’re leaving, Miranda.” The scent of roses gets fainter, as if it’s coming from
him
.

I stand there a moment longer. Wondering if I should trust him when I don’t trust myself.

But I can’t stay here. If he knows more about me, there’s only one option.

“If I come, will you tell me what happened?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” he says. He steps onto the escalator and descends out of sight.

I could stay here and get no answers, or I could take my chances with the crazy fearless boy.

Not much of a choice at all.

The bodies slide into view as the escalator takes us down. Five of them, spaced evenly across the floor. The woman’s beige purse is next to her head, sitting in her halo of blood. The first man who fell, his arm bent under him, bruised face pressed against the floor. None of them stir. The escalator pushes at my heels but I don’t want to move yet. Not until the wash of dizziness passes. A few blinks don’t clear it. Peter keeps walking, scanning the environment like I did when I first came here.

“We just leave them...?” I say, more to myself than him.

Peter sees I’ve stopped and he comes back and grabs my arm gently. I jerk out of his grasp and walk toward the bodies.

He grabs my arm again and lifts it high. “You can’t help them.” He’s wrenching my arm upward, holding me in place. His midsection is exposed; I could hammer him and get away.

His harsh look falls for a split second. His forehead wrinkles and he squeezes his eyes shut, as if the idea of leaving them is physically painful. When he opens them his face is clear, the flicker of emotion so brief I wonder if he felt any of it.

“I’m sorry, but we have to go.”

I nod, unable to speak. Part of me, the cowardly part, is glad he’s pulling me away. The other part hates him for it.

We walk fast through the empty mall.

“So, Peter, who are you, exactly?” I try to make my tone light, but my voice is on the verge of cracking.

“I’m a friend.”

“Yeah, sorry if I don’t buy that right away.”

We break into a light jog. “I think you do buy it,” he says.

“Why?”

He’s pulling ahead. “You’re following me, aren’t you?”

He runs and I match him easily. The storefronts whisk by us, some vacant, some containing refugees that cower and huddle together. I catch glimpses of scratched faces. Hear hushed whimpers. I want to go to them, but Peter will just grab me again. A pang of guilt hits me—if only I could tell them it’s all right. It’s over now. The malignant psychic energy is gone. I step around a teenage boy lying on his side, groaning and clutching his arm.

“Where are we going?” I ask, since my first question got a three word answer.

“Away from here first. One thing at a time.”

I stop running. He makes it a few more steps before turning around and throwing up his hands. “What now?” he says.

“You can’t just expect me to come with you. Tell me where we’re going, or I walk.”

“We’re going home, Miranda. Do you remember where home is?”

“No...”

“I didn’t think so. Now come on.”

Not like staying behind is an option. I blow out a sigh, then hurry to catch up.

We go out through a sporting goods store. As we step into the failing light of the afternoon sun, a police cruiser screeches around the corner, heading right for us.

The parking lot is scattered with people who escaped this way; they mill in between the cars. The man closest to us blinks rapidly and rubs his eyes, squinting at the sky. The rest look like they’re coming out of nightmares, with terrible hangovers.

The cop rams to a stop a few feet away. Of course he picks us to talk to. Maybe standing right next to the entrance has something to do with it.

Peter turns to me, that half-amused, half-deprecating look on his face. “Nice job, North.”

“It was your idea to come this way,” I say.

The cop flings his door open and steps out. I imagine the call for help didn’t give many details, so he doesn’t know I’m the culprit. Still, his hand is on his gun and his back is stiff, feet planted. “Stay right there,” he says, even though we weren’t moving.

He reminds me of my old pal C. Lyle.

“What happened in there?” he says, hand still on the gun.

A nightmare.

Instead of that, I say, “I don’t know. Everybody freaked out and ran away. I think some are still inside.”

“Is anyone hurt?” he says.

Yes. Because of me. And not just hurt—broken. Dead.

It stings, but I keep my face placid. If Peter can do it, so can I.

“I don’t know,” Peter says. “We hid until it was clear. We don’t know what happened.”

The cop nods a couple times, his mouth a thin hard line. “Okay. I want you to wait here. Wait here by my car. I’m going inside to look.”

“No problem,” Peter says.

He steps around us and goes inside. The door sighs shut behind him.

Police sirens wail in the distance, growing louder. We have another twenty seconds, tops, until they arrive. There’s no reason a cruiser would be traveling away from a crime scene another was just called to. But trying to leave on foot is riskier; depending on what the emergency call reported, they may want to stop us.

“You wanna drive?” Peter says.

“Sure, why not,” I say. He doesn’t seem worried at all, so I pretend like I’m not.

We move to either side of the still-running Crown Victoria and climb in. Peter closes the dash-mounted laptop and unplugs the wires from the back.

It smells like old coffee and sweat. I pull the shifter into gear, not positive I remember how to drive until I do, and put my foot on the gas.

We make it out of there okay, looping around the mall and passing the other cops from a distance. Thankfully, none of them peel off in pursuit.

Peter says, “Make a right out of the parking lot,” and I do. We’re south of the city, in a suburb. I try to remember how I made it here from downtown, but I can’t. My shortterm memories aren’t becoming long-term; things seem to float around in my mind, then gradually fade.

Without warning, Peter reaches over and jabs me with a needle, pushing the plunger down halfway. While I’m still driving.

I take my left hand off the wheel and slap him across the nose, then reach down and pluck the syringe out of my arm, giving the lemonade-colored liquid a full second of my attention. Next second, I drive the needle into his leg and push the plunger. All while adjusting the wheel with my knee and maintaining speed.

“I already had my shot,” he says through hands cupped over his nose.

“What shot?” My voice cracks. I’m more shocked at how I’ve stuck him with the needle while driving. No idea where that came from. It’s another action foreign to me, like when I automatically scanned for escape routes and enemies in the mall. No thought involved, only movement, which is scary when you think about it. I don’t know what it means,
or
how it’s possible. Or what the hell was in that syringe.

Blood runs down Peter’s wrist.

“You didn’t break my nose,” he says.

“Too bad.”

“No, that’s good,” he says. “Because I would’ve broken yours.”

“You’d hit a girl?”

“We fight all the time.” Peter wipes his bloody palm on my thigh, then rolls his window down and spits a red glob that arcs out and jets behind us at light speed.

“I wanted to get the medicine in you quick, without having an argument. You would’ve argued. And it tastes terrible in a drink.” He wipes his nose again.

“What medicine?” I say, feeling a little bad that I’d hit him. I make a right; I’m not sure why. Traffic is light and the sky is bright blue. It reminds me of the mall skylights, the people flipping over the railing. The little boy’s voice calling for his mom. I focus on the double yellow line instead.

“The kind that helps us remember. I’m like you, Miranda. We’re the same.”

I want to believe him, but I still don’t know what it means.

After a few minutes of driving and silence, Peter points to an alley between two worn-out buildings. The bricks at street level are stained with years. “There is fine,” he says.

“Fine for what?”

“Fine to pull over.”

I turn the cruiser into the alley, crushing a wet cardboard

box with my right tire. I hope it wasn’t someone’s house. We get out, scraping the doors on the brick. He walks to a rusty ladder bolted to the building.

“We climb before someone sees us. Then we’ll talk, I promise.”

When I don’t move right away, he grabs one of the rungs up high and leans against it. “Please. If you don’t like what I have to say, we climb back down and go our separate ways. Deal?”

Fair enough. I don’t think my curiosity would let me walk away if I wanted to. If you can call the need to know who you are curiosity.

I meet him at the ladder. He goes first. While I climb, questions bubble up and fight to be asked first, but I can wait a little longer.

The roof is covered in gravel. Vents and ducts poke up. I shield my eyes and look east, see the city in the distance and the lake behind it. Now, away from the action, a familiar calm settles in. I feel safe up here, even though I don’t fully trust Peter.

The stones scrape behind me. Peter sits down, wrists on his knees, back against the three-foot ledge. Half his face glows red in the sun, the other half in shade. He pats the roof beside him with his right hand, posture a little deflated, like he was staying strong to get us out of there, but now the reality of what happened at the mall is sinking in. His shoulders slump, and he presses the first two knuckles of his left hand between his eyes. He blinks a few times and tries to smile at me. Like smiling around a sore tooth.

I shiver and rub my bare arms as a breeze cuts over the roof. I tug my tank top down and walk over to him. When I sit, it’s closer than I intended. I feel his warmth next to me even though we aren’t quite touching. I don’t know how, but I still smell roses when I’m near him.

“What am I?” I say.

He doesn’t sugarcoat it.

“Your brain has been engineered to emit waves powerful enough to affect the brains of people around you. Specifically, the centers responsible for controlling and responding to fear. You are a high-tech version of crowd control. When you were two, a doctor drew your blood. It revealed an abnormality that allows you to survive the gene therapy needed to become a Rose. That’s what we call ourselves, because we don’t have a name.”

My hands are shaking now. I clasp them together and squeeze, but it does nothing. His words bounce around in my he ad—
waves powerful enough, crowd control, gene therapy
. I should’ve stayed in the mall and let the police take me. I should be in a jail cell, or better yet a dungeon. A place where I can’t hurt anyone ever again. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but it wasn’t this.

Peter reaches over and takes my left hand in both of his, which are warm and dry and a little rough. His callouses tickle, and a chill shoots up my arm and down to my stomach.

He continues speaking in calm, even tones, giving me time to process each idea, even though I can’t. Not the way I want to. I try to accept each idea as fact, but with each one I want to stand up and scream
No!

“A side effect of the therapy is memory loss. Our brains have so many more connections, and our axons are thicker than normal. Which means we run hotter than normal people, about a hundred and three degrees at rest. To keep from damaging our memories, we take shots. The medicine protects our cerebrum before all the extra energy flying around can fry it. Now that it’s in your system again, you’ll keep new memories.”

He lets that sit for a spell. The words jumble around in my head, new ones added to the pile.
Axons
.
Cerebrum
.

“Will I get the old memories back?” I say softly.

He is silent for a moment. “I don’t know.” Better than
No,
I guess, but it still leaves me feeling heavy. Another stretch of silence. I can almost hear him wondering if I can handle more.

“Someone tampered with your shots. We know who. Two of us, two of our friends, left. They ran away. We
don’t
know why. And now they’re gone. Dr. Tycast thought you left with them, but I didn’t believe it. I had a way to track you, and I did it.”

Suddenly it’s too much—gene therapy? Memory medicine? Friends running away, friends I don’t even
know
, whose faces I can’t recall?—and I have to get up. My hand tears free of Peter’s grip.

“Who is
we
?” I say. “Who is Dr. Tycast?” They aren’t the only questions I have, but I figure the answers will be the easiest to handle.

“We... we is the four of us. Me and you, Noah and Olive. And the people who teach us. That’s who
we
are.”

“You know that doesn’t mean anything to me,” I say. I don’t know if I want it to, either. Back in the mall I wanted answers. Now I don’t know what I want.

Below us, cars squeal to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Car doors open and shut. The cops probably tracked the stolen cruiser with GPS. But we’re safe up here, I think. I assume they wouldn’t expect a car thief to climb the building right next to the stolen vehicle. The commotion becomes faraway and unimportant.

“What’s the point?” I say. “Of us. Of everything you’re telling me.”

Peter closes his eyes, like he’s considering his words carefully. “Imagine being dropped into a war zone and scaring everyone into surrender. No death. No bloodshed. With enough of us, you could bring an entire city to its knees.” His own words seem to startle him, like he got them from somewhere else and only now realizes how false they are.
No death? No bloodshed?

I stand facing away from him, hands on my hips, that same breeze ruffling the fine hair on my arms. It doesn’t make sense. I saw the panic in the mall. On a larger scale? Death and bloodshed.