Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (10 page)

“After that, though, there was nothing else. Well, noth-
 ing else halfway credible. No one knew what happened to
 you, and not for lack of trying to find out. There must have
 been a dozen stories and at least that many theories about
 why you disappeared.”
“I just . . . I can’t believe it. I feel like you’re telling me
 a story about someone else. Someone who can’t possibly
 be me.”
Pierce puts his hand out like he wants to shake, and I
 put my hand in his, even though I’m not entirely sure why.
“Congratulations on not being dead.”
“For all that’s worth.”
“Hey, it’s no small feat being alive. And it’s even more
 amazing that you’ve survived this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a highly secret, highly secure, almost hack-
 proof place. It’s not like it’s juvie. They’ve been drilling
 into your head! Why did they put you in here? How did
 they put you in here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember anything about how you got here?”
“No. I always figured I must be some nobody if no one
 came looking for me.”  
He scratches his chin and squints. “Well, they’re look-
 ing for you now.”
“You believe me, then?”
“About the guys with guns coming here specifically to
 kill you?”
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I nod.  
“I guess I have to. Not that I understand it. It’s hard
 to believe this whole operation is about killing a girl who
 hung up a bunch of protest banners. I mean, these guys
 inside? They are the elite of the elite. The kind of hired
 guns really powerful people employ to whack dictators and
 then get lost. They cost a whole lotta money. My boss’s
 services do not come cheap, either.”
“Your father’s, you mean?”
“Right. My father. I may never get used to calling him
 that.”
Pierce stands up and tries to pace back and forth in what
 little space is available. “What is it?” I ask.
“This is what’s bugging me the most: I don’t see why
8-Bit would get mixed up with this. I can’t say I know him
 inside out or anything, but up until now we haven’t done
 anything on this scale. And he’s way too smart for someone
 to use him without him catching on to what’s happen-
 ing. Besides that, he’s . . . he’s not a bad guy. Obviously
 not the most responsible person ever, but I have a hard time
 believing he’d get involved with some plan to put a hit on
 someone.”
“Even as a personal favor?”
“For someone who has no memory, you have a pretty
 good memory.”
“Thanks.”
“How we’ve gone from totally tame corporate espio-
 nage, stealing some company’s idea for a new cell phone,
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to providing support to guys with more high-tech gadgets
 than the Navy SEALs—it’s strange. I wish I knew what he
 was thinking, why we got involved.”
Pierce takes the flash drive he was holding earlier out of
 his pocket. “And then there’s this.”  
“What is it?”
“There’s a file on this drive that’s labeled ‘In Case Some-
 thing Happens to Me.’ 8-Bit used his standard encryption
 on it, which means he knows I’ll hack it eventually. Not
 that it’ll be easy, but I’ll get there.”
“Have you tried to open it yet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still hoping that nothing’s happened to
 him.”
“I wish I had some hope.” I walk to the door of the yurt
 and open the flaps. Cold air rushes in. “But there’s no get-
 ting back what they took out of my head.”
“Sure there is.”
I whip my head around. “What do you mean?”
“They’re not actually extracting anything. There’s a
 small amount of brain tissue damaged during the needle
 insertion, but for the most part there is no real injury to
 the brain.”
“Are you sure?”
“Like I said, I read through some of the reports. Kind of
 got the gist of how things work.”
“They told me that they inject this stuff into my brain
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that kills off the neurons they’ve isolated. I had all these
CAT scans before they started working on me. I don’t
 remember much of that process, though. I guess they erased
 that, too. All I know is what they told me.”
“Who are they?”
“This guy named Larry. His real name is Dr. Ladner.
Plus Dr. Buckley.”
Pierce taps on the computer and brings up a grainy pic-
 ture of a man with a beard. The picture must have been
 snapped while the guy was in motion, but I can still tell
 who it is easily enough. Middle-aged Santa Claus.
“That’s Dr. Buckley.”
“Buckley is the name he’s using, is it?”
I give Pierce a confused look.
“He’s the mastermind of the Tabula Rasa project. A very
 mysterious man. 8-Bit went to Harvard grad school with
 him. His real name is Joseph Purcell Wilson. And he’s
 dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yup. Supposedly he was killed four years ago. There
 was an obit and everything. A very carefully orchestrated
 story about his tragic death in a small aircraft crash. 8-Bit
 never believed it. 8-Bit’s got a hang-up because the guy
 scored six points higher on his IQ test or something.
Geniuses seem to be the most envious humans alive.”
“Dr. Buckley was supposed to do my surgery this morn-
 ing, but it got interrupted.”
“Did it now?”
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I explain about the power outage.
“What time was that?”
I point to my holey head. “Sorry. Time’s not my best
 subject.”
“It’s just weird. Our not-so-friendly crew of mercenar-
 ies didn’t cut the power to the main hospital building until
 right around the time the storm hit. So, say, early after-
 noon.”
I suddenly have an idea that makes me feel momen-
 tarily better. “Dr. Buckley’s probably still inside right now.
Maybe it’s him they’re really after. I mean, maybe they
 were after me just to get to him. They want to kill all the
 patients he was working on as some kind of punishment or
 something. She said they were looking for a man.”
“Who is she?”
“Hod  —”
I freeze. I hadn’t really thought of this before, but maybe
 there’s a chance Hodges is after me—that she hates me—
 for a very good reason. Because of what Buckley did to
 us. Or specifically to me. Maybe there’s a good reason the
 nurses were always so cautious around me.
“That woman we heard on the radio,” I say.
“I’m sure they wish they could get to Buckley, but he’s
 not here. He’s hardly ever here.”
“What do you mean? Where is he?”
“Best guess is Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.”
“That can’t be.”
“Let me ask you this: Was he actually in the room with
 you?”
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“No, he was up in the surgeon’s booth. He uses—”
“A robotic arm?”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly. He does the surgeries remotely.”
I start to speak, but stop myself. For some reason, I find
 this idea horribly offensive. All this time Dr. Buckley/
Wilson/Whatever wasn’t even in the same state while he
 was doing brain surgery on me?
“Why did you say the procedure isn’t permanent?”
“It can become permanent. What they do is inject a
 sort of plasticizer compound into your head that seeks out
 certain kinds of nerve cells. Every time you think about an
 incident, the compound migrates to those nerve endings.
Once all the nerve endings containing a certain memory
 are identified, they inject another compound that causes
 the plasticized stuff to harden and kill the neuron for good.
Before they do that, though, the process is reversible.”
I touch my head in wonder. “I can still get my memo-
 ries back? All of them?”
“If that’s what you really want.”
“Of course I do.”
Don’t I?
“There’s a pill you can take that flushes the plasticizer
 out of your system through your cerebral spinal fluid.”
“Pills,” I say. I get up and put my hand in the pocket of
 the coat I stole from the locker. I pull out the baggy and
 show it to Pierce.
“Where’d you get this?”
“I don’t know.”
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He sighs. “How can you not know? Did they just appear
 in your pocket?”
“Basically, yes.” I tell him about what happened during
 the injection procedure, the clothes in my room, and the
 passcard.
He goes silent for a moment.
“What?”
“Pretty amazing timing, wouldn’t you say? I mean,
 right before someone busts in to try to kill you, clothes and
 a passcard magically appear in your room?”
“I think it was Larry who gave them to me,” I blurt out.
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“I can understand why someone on staff might want
 to help you, you know, avoid getting whacked. But why
 would one of the doctors who’ve been trying to erase your
 memories want you to take those pills to bring them back?”
“I don’t know.”
Pierce laughs. “Okay, listen. You’re not allowed to
 answer ‘I don’t know’ to any more of my questions.”
“Then you better stop asking me questions.”
He sits down at the desk. “Well, whatever the story is,
 you’re probably better off not knowing.”
“Why?”
“Why put all that mud back in your head again? I wish
I could chuck out half of what’s in my brain and get a fresh
 start. Seriously, it’s for the best that you never took them.”
“I did take them,” I say. “One of them, anyway.”
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“What?” He jostles the computer table with his leg and
 catches one of the computers before it hits the floor.
“I took one right before those soldiers busted in.”
“That’s a problem then,” he says. “That’s a big, huge
 problem.”
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CHAPTER 12
 f my brain is in jeopardy, I know I should probably ask
Iwhy, but it’s still hard to get the question out of my
 mouth.
“Why is it bad that I took one of the pills?”
He rubs his eyes and says, “I don’t understand all the
 medical stuff they talk about in their case studies. . . .”
“You have their case studies? For everyone in The Cen-
 ter?”
“I do now. That and a whole lot more. Normally I don’t
 come along on these kinds of projects, but 8-Bit set up this
 yurt and wanted me here, out of sight, so the soldiers don’t
 know I’m here.”
“To take their files?”
“To take everything. All their research data and patient
files. Every last thing. And to leave with it if 8-Bit ran
 into any problems. I think that’s what’s in this encrypted
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file he left me. Instructions about what to do with all this
 data.”
“Tell me what you know about the pills,” I say.
“You have to take them at certain intervals . . . .”
“Yes! Twenty-four hours. That’s what the instructions
 said.”
“They get rid of the plasticizer. They loosen that stuff
 up, but it’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing. If you don’t get
 it all out, it floats around in there,” he points to my head.
“Then it adheres to whatever it feels like adhering to. Like,
 say, that part of your brain that tells you what the color
 red is, or what music sounds like, or how to breathe. Or
 that little thing called your conscience that makes sure you
 don’t kill people just for the sheer pleasure of it.”
“I’m one pill short.”
Now I’m the one pacing. I feel like too much energy
 is coursing through me. I can’t contain it all. I realize that
 what I’m feeling is, weirdly, elation. I hug Pierce briefly,
 intensely, for telling me this. Yes, he’s given me a lot of bad
 news, but he’s also just given me something I need—hope.
“I just need to get one more, right?”
“Angel. . . ”
“Where can I get more of them?”
He looks like he doesn’t want to extinguish my hopes
 but knows he must. My heart tumbles onto this concrete
 reality: I have to go back in there.
I walk toward the computer desk and let myself fall into
 the chair, my head in my hands. I’ve got whiplash from
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jerking between the extremes of hope and dread in the
 span of seconds. Pierce is there in an instant.    
“Don’t look so glum.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m not going to let you go in there by your-
 self.”
“Absolutely not! You can’t!”
He shakes his head at me and says, “I think that as you
 get to know me better, you’ll find that I’m rather difficult
 to control.”
I look back at him, determined, adamant. I’m going to
 tell him no way, no how is he coming with me. I don’t care
 what he says.
But then he smiles. And I give in.
He is difficult to control.
I suppose I like that about him.
We trudge along, taking turns in front to block the snow
 and wind. Dawn punches weakly at the clouds. Through
 the canopy of the pines I can see the occasional patch of
 fading stars. A couple times the storm eases up, only to get
 twice as bad the minute I think the worst is over.
It seems to take much  longer to get from the yurt to
 the hospital than it did to go the other way. Pierce gave me
 a pair of glove liners to put under my leather work gloves,
 but my fingertips hurt  from the cold—it’s like someone
 has been hitting them with a hammer. I look at Pierce’s
 ski pants and his puffy down parka. It’s one of those real
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expensive ones, lightweight but warm. In the city, it’s the
 kind of jacket guys bash people over the head to steal.
Now there’s something else I can remember that I
 couldn’t before.
When we get within fifty yards of the compound, I see
 it. The tower crane. It’s swaying slightly, and we can hear
 the creaking of the cold metal even in the howling wind. I
 can just make out the heavy plates of the counterbalance. I
 wonder if they’re enough to keep the crane stable in these
 high winds. Each time it moves, I feel my stomach lurch.
We arrive at the fence and find the point where we went
 through earlier. Pierce cuts the zip-ties. He slides through,
 careful not to touch the edges. I pass his backpack through
 and follow after.
We walk at an angle, pressing ourselves into the wind,
 and I look down into the excavation pit. A line of solar-
 powered lamps hang by their cords, swinging wildly back
 and forth. All the heavy equipment sits motionless, like
 bright yellow dinosaurs stuck in a tar pit.
Pierce looks up toward the hospital. He takes out the
 walkie-talkie and looks at it. “Maybe I could give it one
 more try. See if 8-Bit responds this time. See if he could
 help us.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” I say. “That woman’s voice we
 heard earlier . . . ”
“What? You know her?”
“I do. I don’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
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“You told me I couldn’t say ‘I don’t know’ anymore.”
He throws his hands up in exasperation.
“Her name is Evangeline Hodges, and all I can tell you
 is that every time I think of her, I feel so much hate and
 anger I can’t see straight. She’s the link between this hospi-
 tal, me, your boss, and those mercenary guys.”
“If she was, I think I’d know about it.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem to be out
 of the loop on some key aspects of 8-Bit’s plan.”  
Pierce gives me a quick, pained smile. My eyes drift
 toward the main hospital building. I remember the warm,
 bland world I had there. I miss everyone telling me I should
 relax. It only lasts a moment, though, and I recognize it for
 what it is: a longing for safety. I would never want to go
 back to that life again.
We walk a few more yards, and I stop. I know I need to
 do something I don’t want to do: I need to give him one
 last chance to leave.
“Pierce . . . I . . . this is far enough. Really. You’ve done
 more than enough.” I point to the snowmobile. “Push that
 toward the woods and start it up when you’re out of ear-
 shot.”
“I was wondering when you were going to make this
 heroic little speech.” He checks his watch. “Yep. Pretty
 much right on schedule.”
I grab him by the wrist. “If I were truly being heroic,
I’d actually mean what I’m saying right now. But I don’t. I
 want you to stay with me, but I realize how selfish that is.
That’s why I’m telling you to go.”
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