Remember Yesterday

14

Insects flit around my stomach. Not just annoying gnats, either, but giant moths that fly around, crash into one another, and rip up their own wings.

Tanner presses his palm against the sensor and sticks his finger into a machine that takes a prick of his blood. Once his biometrics are verified, the door clicks open.

He steps aside to let me go first, but not out of politeness. Oh, no. His stiff jaw tells me he’s still angry. But there’s something else, too. An alertness to his stance, a readiness in his eyes. As though he wants me to go first so that he can catch me if I fall.

Ridiculous. The only feeling Tanner Callahan has toward me is disgust.

I lift my chin and try to channel Callie. Try to be as brave as she was. As brave as a girl worthy of her sacrifice.

I walk into the room.

The space is dark, with low lights set into the ceiling. I can’t see much at first, but I have the sense of being in a vast room, a massive underground cavern whose walls disappear into the shadows. A slight wind blows against me—an oscillating fan, perhaps, to keep the air moving. I shiver and rub my arms.

And then, my eyes adjust. I see row after row of rectangular pods rising out of the ground. There’s a stretcher in each pod, surrounded by blinking machines. A person lies on each stretcher, but unlike the bodies in the hallway, each chest rises up and down. These people are alive.

I swallow hard. “What is this place?”

“TechRA’s best-kept secret. The hot spot of our scientific innovation. We call it ‘the dream lab.’” He places his hand lightly on a bed rail. “This is the place in between, where the people are neither dead nor alive. Their bodies are in a coma, but in this suspended state, their minds work. They dream, floating through an endless, dark night. You wouldn’t believe the number of breakthroughs that have come from studying their minds.”

His words are a sledgehammer to my knees. I stumble forward, my mind shooting in so many directions it can’t form a coherent thought. “These people—oh Fates—trapped here—forever— The mice—fike—this is so much worse than the mice—”

“They volunteered.” He pulls back his hand. “Once it became clear the end was imminent, they signed a directive donating their brains to science. They knew exactly what would happen to their bodies, and they chose to benefit science rather than let their brains go to waste.”

“So who are the people in the hallway?” I whisper.

“TechRA no longer has use for them. Their bodies are in the hallway waiting to be transported to another sector of the building. And then they’ll be…disposed of.”

My eyebrows climb toward the ceiling. “Disposed of? You mean killed.”

“I suppose,” he says. “But I repeat: For the most part, they donated their bodies to science. What else are we supposed to do with them when we’re finished?”

“For the most part? That means at least some of them didn’t have a choice.”

The pause is so long you could stack a row of pods inside.

“Yes,” he finally says.

My nerves turn to rage. Olivia. The only true precog of our generation. Her brain is a gold mine. Rather than letting her live, her mother’s trapped her here this last decade, so that the scientists can excavate her mind, day after day. And when they’re done with her, they’ll dispose of her like last week’s garbage.

Well, not anymore. Not if I have anything to do with it.

“Where is she?” I ask.

He grimaces. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.”

I round on him. The stun gun’s still in my hand, and I point it at him, as though shooting him is a possibility. The way the anger pulses inside me, maybe it is. “She sent me a message, Tanner. A vision that led me down a purple and green rabbit hole to get me here. That means she’s not dreaming in there. That means, to some extent, she wants out. So tell me now. Where is she?”

He places his hands on my shoulders, and a burst of electricity zips through me, tangling with the anger, leaving me unsettled and confused. Blindly, I grope for the future, searching for something—anything—that will get me back to solid ground again.

The vision crashes over me, almost knocking me down. In the near future, I weep, sobs racking my body. Strong arms wrap around me, pulling me close to a muscled chest covered by a thermal shirt with a tight weave. Tanner’s shirt. Tanner’s chest. Moments from now, Tanner Callahan will hold me as I soak his shirt with my tears.

“No!” Back in the present, I wrench away from Tanner and race down a row of pods, running from him and my vision. I don’t want to be comforted. Don’t have time to cry. I’ve got to find a girl.

I scan the faces in the stretchers, searching for those telltale brown bangs, trying to extrapolate how Olivia might’ve aged in the last ten years. Not a little girl anymore, but a teenager like me.

I finish one row and turn down the next. In my wake, the machines start beeping and flashing.

“Slow down,” Tanner says, jogging behind me. The bastard, he’s not even breathing hard. “These monitors are very sensitive. They detect the slightest change in the vital signs, and you’re making too much noise. The bodies are reacting to your running.”

“So they are aware.”

“In the same way that a plant turns toward the sun. They react, but that doesn’t mean they feel. You’re making the machines go crazy. Stop running.”

“Tell me where she is.” I slow down, but I swivel my head, continuing to search. Olivia’s here, and she’s counting on me. I’m not going to desert her. Not the way I was deserted.

He sighs. Even with the incessant beeping, I hear the soft whisper of air. “Last row. The pod all the way at the end. She was our very first suspension.”

I run to the back of the room and fly down the row, setting off even more alarms. But I don’t care. Because for the first time, I’m about to do something that might make me worthy of my sister’s sacrifice. I’ve waited ten years for this moment. I’m not about to delay it a second longer than necessary.

When I reach the last pod in the row, I freeze. The girl on the stretcher doesn’t have brown bangs. Her face is nothing like the little girl I remember from my memories.

It’s not Olivia Dresden.

When I stare into the girl’s face, I feel like I’m looking in a mirror. The same high cheekbones, the same sparse eyelashes, the same swoop at the end of each eye.

I’m lying on the bed. No, not me. She’s thinner than me and older. Ten years older.

My legs buckle. Deep, deep in my soul, I scream, a scream that started ten years ago and hasn’t let up since.

It’s not me lying on the bed, but my other half. My twin, my sister, my soul.

Callie.