Remember Yesterday

30

The sirens scream, drilling my ears with noise. I want to curl into a ball until it stops, but I can’t. I have to reach my sister.

I grab the door handle and jerk, putting my entire body into the motion. It doesn’t budge.

Abandoning the door, I take off down the hall, whipping my head back and forth. I need another entrance. Another way in to Callie.

There! A heating vent, covered by a grate. These vents have been good to me. They’ve taken me all over the TechRA building. Of course, the Underground has vetted all the ones I’ve used, but this one will work. It has to.

I grab the grate and pull. It comes off, and dust bellows out, choking me. I double over, coughing, and Tanner runs up to me.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” he yells. “We’ve got to—”

The door at the end of the hall opens, and half a dozen guards spill into the corridor.

Too late.

One of them grabs my arms, shoving me to the ground, while two others point their Tasers at me—one at my temple, the other at my chest.

I’m unarmed, I want to say. Just a girl, rendered helpless by a cough. It shouldn’t take three of you to contain me. But of course I don’t. Even if they could hear me above the noise, they wouldn’t listen.

Two more guards approach Tanner and flank him. But they don’t restrain him. They don’t wrench his arms behind his back. They don’t force him to his knees.

Why not?

The question worth a lifetime of credits, and maybe a couple of Meal Assemblers to boot.

I try to catch Tanner’s eye in all the commotion, but he either doesn’t see me—or he won’t.

The door opens again, and Chairwoman Dresden strides inside, her icicle heels slapping the tile, her smile shoving blades into my heart.

She waves her wrist in front of the security system, enters a code, and the alarm shuts down. Finally. We can hear one another talk again, but I’m no longer sure that’s a good thing.

“You’re so predictable, Tanner. I knew it was only a matter of time before you brought her back,” Dresden says. “I didn’t realize it would be so soon after my announcement, however. The riots are still going strong. A curfew is in place. But you couldn’t wait any longer to betray me, could you, darling boy?”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Tanner rasps. “I have to take Jessa to see her sister. She’s the only connection Callie has to this world, to this time.”

Something I can’t read flickers in Dresden’s eyes. “Yes, I know. Even though you never bothered to tell me. I had to find out from other people, scientists who are more loyal than you.” She tilts her head. “Always so earnest, so idealistic. Even as a little boy, you thought you could save the world. But what did I tell you when we took you in and trained you to be our hope for the future? You must be loyal to me—or people will die.”

I gulp. What is she saying? Does she mean she’ll kill Callie to punish Tanner? Will she kill me? No way. She’s allowed both of us to live for the last ten years. She needs us. Doesn’t she?

I may be confused, but Tanner doesn’t have any trouble understanding her meaning. His shoulders droop, and his head lowers. Right before my eyes, he transforms into a six-year-old boy again. “I’m sorry, Chairwoman. It won’t happen again.”

“Damn the Fates right, it won’t. I won’t allow it.” She snaps her fingers in the air. “Take them away.”

“Wait a minute.” I yank my arms, and the guards yank back, turning my body into a tug-of-war rope. “Where are you taking us?”

Dresden’s smile gets wider and colder. A few more degrees, and it’ll shatter in a million pieces. “You’re going to isolation, of course. But don’t worry. You won’t be there long.” She checks her wrist com. “A mere four hours and fifty-three minutes. Then you’ll be free to do as you wish once again.”

My blood turns solid. Four hours and fifty-three minutes. The exact amount of time I have remaining to send Callie a memory and tether her to this world.

“You can’t mean that.” I dart a look at Tanner, but he refuses to meet my eyes. Dresden can’t possibly understand what she’s saying. “I need to get close enough to touch Callie, for only a few moments. I need to send her a memory. It’s the only way to keep her alive.”

She turns to me, her eyelids at half-mast. “I told you already. I understand all of this, no thanks to my traitor boy. Your sister was valuable to me once upon a time. But now we’ve wrung her brain dry, and keeping her alive is costing ComA too many credits.”

“No.” I lunge forward. “Please, Chairwoman. I’ll do anything you want. You don’t even have to bribe me. I’ll sit in that chair. I’ll let the scientists study my brain. For as long as they want. I won’t even complain. I promise.”

She flickers her eyes over me. “You had your chance, Jessa. You turned me down, time and time again.”

“Please!” I’m begging now, but I have no choice. I need to make her change her mind. “I’ll come work for you. I’ll be your assistant. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s why you showed me the vision. So that I could make it come true.”

Her nostrils flare. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve seen how you really feel about me. Why would I want an assistant whom I can’t trust? When you come to me, for real, you’ll have to give me more than just words, Jessa. You’ll have to show me, with actions, that you’ve changed. Irrevocably. You’ll have to prove to me, once and for all, that you’re on my side. Until then, don’t bother negotiating.”

She spins on her heels, but Tanner grabs her sleeve.

“Don’t do this, Chairwoman,” he pleads. “Callie’s given you so much. Because of her brain, we were able to discover everything.”

“She also took everything from me.” Her voice rises, filling the hallway as thoroughly as the sirens. “I got back only what was originally mine.”

The room’s spinning; my forehead’s burning. I can barely process what they’re saying. But something Tanner says doesn’t seem right. Something makes me focus in on his words and replay them in my mind.

“What do you mean, she let you discover everything?” I look from Dresden to Tanner. “I thought you weren’t able to learn much by examining her brain.”

Dresden turns to me, her eyes wide open. I guess she’s no longer bored. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“A few days ago, Tanner accomplished what I was beginning to believe was impossible.” Triumph rings through her voice. “He discovered future memory and put our world back on track.”

No. He couldn’t have been the inventor. He was with me when Dresden made her announcement. He was just as surprised as I was. Wasn’t he? Or is Tanner a bigger actor—a bigger liar—than I ever suspected?

I won’t believe it—I won’t—until I hear the words from his lips. “Tanner? Is she telling the truth? Did you invent future memory?”

For the first time since Dresden appeared, he lifts his head and meets my eyes. “Yes. I did.”

The air tangles in my throat. Before I can figure out how to breathe again, Dresden steps forward. “Tell her how you discovered it,” she says, her voice too gleeful, her expression too smug. “Tell her what—or, should I say, whom—you used.”

It hits me then. The guards grab my elbows to keep me from pitching forward, but it doesn’t matter. I’m free-falling anyway. I’m detached from my body, spinning in space, unable to tell which way is up.

The memories. He used the memories I sent into Callie’s mind to keep her alive. I’m the Sender; she’s the Receiver. Together, we were the key to the invention of future memory. The scientists were supposed to study our genetically identical twin brains. By observing the way messages were passed between us, they were supposed to derive a key insight that would lead to the invention of future memory.

But Callie changed everything by stabbing a needle into her heart. By making it impossible for me to send memories into her mind…until a week ago. When I did exactly what she sacrificed her life to prevent.

Callie lies in a coma, the last ten years of her life a black hole. Three lives—mine, my mom’s, and Logan’s—have been irreparably harmed. For what? This?

We’ve come full circle. I left civilization and came back again. I followed a maze and walked straight into a trap I never saw coming. One that plops me back into the world we thought we’d left behind.

“You tricked me,” I whisper. “You told me to send my sister a memory. You said it would save her life.”

“It did save her life,” Tanner says miserably. “At the time I made the suggestion, that’s all I was thinking about, I swear. But the monitors were already set up to record her brain activity, and when you sent that memory, it captured the transmission. What was I supposed to do? Here was all this data, right in front of me. Data that was ripe for analysis. Data for which I’ve been searching my entire life.” He reaches a hand toward me, but one of the guards slaps a cuff on his wrist and pulls it down. Doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t let him touch me anyway.

“I couldn’t resist, Jessa. For the sake of science, I had to see. I’d already laid the foundation with my mice. The messages you sent to Callie provided me with the final missing piece of the puzzle. They gave me what I needed to invent future memory.”

“For the sake of science, you betrayed me,” I say, my voice hard, my heart harder.

“I told you. I didn’t know what the discovery of future memory meant.” His eyes beseech me. The cut in his forehead reminds me. “Please. You believed me. You forgave me.”

My soul cements until it is thick, solid concrete. “I don’t forgive you anymore.”