Remember Yesterday

23

I wrench myself out of Zed’s grasp and fall to my knees. I crawl to her, the girl who’s haunted me most of my life. In my dreams, in my few, meager memories of her. She watches me with a swirl of emotions, fear and curiosity, shock and trust, each one battling the others to see which will dominate.

“Are you okay?” I whisper. I don’t introduce myself. I don’t need to. I feel the bond between us as if it were a physical thing, created all those years ago on the seesaw pods. Lying dormant until the moment we see each other again.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Jessa Stone.” Her voice is soft and surprisingly fragile, so unlike the brash six-year-old who demanded answers from me a decade ago. “Every day, I reached into my future, wondering if you would be in it. This morning, you were.”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” I say. But I don’t promise. Once upon a time, my sister made promises to me, promises she couldn’t keep. I learned the hard way that fate is something you can influence but never control.

I look over my shoulder. Zed waits by the doorway, but Brayden and Tanner are nowhere to be seen. I’m not worried about Tanner’s welfare. We’re not dealing with a mob but two men who carefully weigh their decisions. Tanner’s safe, at least for the moment.

“Why is she naked, Zed?” I stride to the seam in the wall and place my hand squarely in the middle of the panel. The wall slides open, revealing a storage closet. I grab a blanket and some oversize pajamas and hand them to Olivia.

He flushes. “We didn’t touch her, I swear. Not like that. We were afraid TechRA embedded monitoring devices in her clothes, so we took them off so they couldn’t track her.”

“Really?” I cross my arms. “’Cause they usually embed trackers under our skin, next to our black data chips.”

“Not Olivia. The chairwoman didn’t want anything permanent inside her little girl. How else could she hide her daughter off the grid?”

Behind me, Olivia puts on the pajamas and wraps the blanket around her shoulders. Our eyes meet, and she nods once.

So Zed’s telling the truth. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop the interrogation. “How did you find her?”

“The Underground has always known her location. From the beginning, we knew Olivia wasn’t at a boarding school, like her mother claimed, but rather, hidden away because she was powerful. Too powerful. So powerful she crosses the line into dangerous.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” I say. “If you knew where she was, why didn’t you rescue her before now?”

He runs his fingers over his jaw, along a dark red scratch. The nausea climbs in my throat, and I know the answer to my own question. This isn’t a rescue mission. This is about what Olivia can do for the Underground.

“Is that…dried blood?” I ask.

He pulls his hand from his face. “She didn’t come nicely.”

“Of course she didn’t. You kidnapped her.” I press my hand against my stomach. I feel sick. Sick that there’s matching red matter under Olivia’s nails. Sick that there’s a bruise forming on her cheek. “Does Mikey know about this?”

He looks me right in the eyes. “Whose orders do you think we’re following?”

The room spins, and black spots appear in my vision. I collapse on the pressure-sensitive tile. So Mikey’s involved in this. Not just involved. He orchestrated the entire kidnapping. Is that why he sent us away? Maybe he wasn’t protecting us after all. Maybe he just didn’t want witnesses to his crime.

“He’s just as bad as they are,” I whisper.

“Don’t judge him too harshly.” Zed scrubs a hand down his face. “These are the casualties of war. Fates know, the chairwoman’s not playing nice. If you don’t want to live in her future, the one where Mediocres are executed, this is what we have to do. Show Olivia’s vision to the world.”

“I don’t have it,” she speaks up. “This vision you’re looking for. The one I gave Callie all those years ago. I don’t have it anymore.”

“What do you mean? Where did it go?”

She ducks behind me. “Tell him, Jessa. Tell him what it’s like being a precognitive. Different versions of people’s futures flickering before our eyes. There’s no one future, no single path. When Callie injected herself, she changed the course of our world. The vision of genocide I showed her disappeared from my mind. If we hadn’t recorded it on a black chip, we’d no longer be able to access it. I have no idea where that black chip is.”

I do. At least, I know who would know. Chairwoman Dresden.

“You’re lying.” Zed pulls an electro-whip from his belt. “You have the vision. It’s in your head. You just don’t want to give it to us.”

“That’s not true.” She tucks her face in between my shoulder blades. “Explain to him, Jessa. You’re a precog, too. You understand.”

I’m not a real precognitive, not in the same way she is. I don’t see different versions of people’s futures. I can access a vision only when the future becomes fixed. That’s why my visions are limited to a couple of minutes in the future. That’s why they’re usually confined to physical events that don’t involve independent free will.

But Zed doesn’t know this.

“She needs to rest,” I say. “Fatigue zaps the psychic abilities, and she can’t access the vision right now because she’s too tired. That doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.” I have no idea if this is true, but it doesn’t matter. It will appease Zed and buy us time. Time to talk to Mikey, time to get this all figured out. “Perhaps tomorrow morning, after she’s had a chance to rest, we can try again.” I turn to Olivia, gripping her hand. “Isn’t that right?”

She nods.

He looks from me to her, his brow creasing. “Fine,” he huffs. “We’ll wait for morning. But tomorrow, you’d better have that vision.”

He leaves the room, and I expel the breath caught in my lungs. Tomorrow, I have no intention of either of us being here.