Remember Yesterday

58

Later, I’m in front of Callie once again. Holding her hand once again, while the others talk to one another in small groups. My sister lies against her pillow, exhausted. The machines kept her muscles from atrophying, but she’s not used to sitting and breathing on her own.

Still, there’s a reddish tinge to her cheeks that wasn’t there earlier. The light in her eyes completely overwhelms the fatigue in her face, and her breath, while short, has the unevenness associated with life.

I check my joy. My job here isn’t done. I didn’t get to say the speech I prepared, and maybe that’s just as well. It won’t preempt what I’m about to do now.

“I have something to say to you, something everyone should hear,” I tell Callie, raising my voice to get the others’ attention. My throat is tight; my heart, the one that so recently expanded like a balloon, feels even tighter. “For a long time, I believed I should’ve died instead of you. I felt unworthy of your sacrifice. You gave so much—not only to me but also to the rest of the world. You gave us back the belief in ourselves, in our own free will, in the control we have over our futures. ‘Remember yesterday’ became our rallying cry. Remember Callie. Remember what she did to change her future. If Callie could do it, then we can, too.”

I take a deep breath. This one comes from deeper than my lungs. It comes from the very center of my soul. “While I appreciate what you gave me, while I honor and love every bit of who you are, I’ve come to realize that you made a mistake. That’s okay. Because every mistake brings us closer to the right answer.”

I let her hand slip through my fingers, and I back away. Ryder and Angela part as I crowd into them, giving me a clear path to the wall screen. And the security panel next to it.

“How do you stop the chairwoman?” I flex my hand. My fingers are shaking, but I don’t need steadiness for what I’m about to do. “Not by taking your own life. Not even by cutting off the fingers of a little boy. You can’t stop the chairwoman by delaying the invention of future memory. First, because science won’t be delayed forever. And second, because future memory is simply a tool. You can’t stop a monster by taking away her tools. You have to get into her brain and you change her, and if she’s unmalleable, then you have to change her organization.”

My back bumps into the wall. And there it is: the red security button, at the top left corner of the panel. The one with a direct line to PuSA, the Public Safety Agency. The one that alerts the authorities of a traitor in our midst. Every ComA employee is urged to install one in his or her home, and every apartment in the scientific residences has one.

“I used to believe I was unworthy, but not anymore. Everything that’s happened has led me to this moment. When I finally prove my worth to you.”

My eyes drift to Tanner, and he gives me a single, precise nod. He’s the one who helped me hide all the equipment. He’s the one who knows about and believes in my plan.

Quickly, before I can change my mind, I flip open the glass cover and push the button. “You have exactly six minutes to get out of here before PuSA arrives. Run through the woods and jump into the river. I’ve hidden canoes on the other side. There’s enough dry food and equipment in them to last you several months in the wilderness. Medicines for Callie, formula for Remi. Everything you could possibly need to make your lives comfortable. It’s time for you to go on the run once more.”

The anger, the rants, the cries explode instantaneously.

“What are you doing?” Logan roars. “Callie’s still weak. She’s in no shape to travel.”

“Remi’s just a baby,” Angela wails. “She might die out there in the wilderness.”

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” Ryder bites off. “In all our years of friendship, I never pegged you for a traitor.”

I cover my ears. No. Not him, too. My closest friend. He knows me better than I know myself. I’m not going to see him for a long, long time. I can’t bear for this to be the last words I hear from him.

But what can I do? Even if I block my hearing, I can still see the kaleidoscope of their accusations. The slashing anger in Ryder’s cheeks, the twisted rage in Mikey’s lips, the burning betrayal in Angela’s movements. My mother looks worried, my father confused. Each expression cuts me, deeper than my skin. Deeper even than arteries and veins. I hurt, I hurt, I hurt. I didn’t know I could hurt so much.

This is the core of my nightmares. This is the vision I swore would never come to fruition. Their hatred. My betrayal.

Well, it’s coming true now. Except it’s worse. Worse than waking up screaming in my bed. Worse than recognizing the birthmark on the waist of the chairwoman’s assistant. Worse even than facing myself in the deep of night and knowing that the only solution is to betray my family.

Because I knew what was coming. And I still chose to do it.

So the vision will come true after all. I will become the chairwoman’s assistant. Just not for the reasons that I thought.

I’ll become her assistant not because I’m on her side. But because this is the only way I know to stop her. The only way I can get her to trust me. The only way I can insinuate myself onto her team and work my destruction from within.

She said she needed actions, not words. Well, this is the only action I can think to take. If I’m right, then maybe I’ll save the world. Maybe I’ll obliterate this future of genocide, once and for all.

If I’m wrong? Then I will have suffered the hatred of everyone I love for no reason at all. Tanner’s been through worse.

The room spins around me with their anger, with their flurry of motion. Hate me or not, they must save themselves. They must get away before PuSA breaks down these doors.

My knees go weak, and I stumble. Tanner catches me an instant before I hit the floor. Looking into his eyes, I know that at least he is on my side—will always be on my side.

No one else pays attention to me. I’m beneath their notice now.

All except Callie. She is the only one who is still, while the others race around, struggling to prepare in five minutes for a trip that might last five months or more. She is the eye of a storm that’s been raging for the last ten years, and she watches me with the deep love and generosity only a sister can feel.

“Forgive me,” I whisper, repeating back to her the words she said to me so many years ago.

“Always,” she says, and with that single word, she gives me strength. Hope that I will be brave enough and worthy enough to face what’s to come. To do what I need to do to defeat the chairwoman.

Callie believes in me. For now, and for always, and that means everything.

Of course, it shouldn’t surprise me that she alone would be the one to understand. It was the jingle that woke her up, after all.