Estranged (36 page)

Terin replied, “I don’t think Landen
is the one orchestrating this. It’s true, he wants us out of the
way, but I think the ‘how’ has fallen to Xamic. Regardless of why
he made the decision, I don’t think Landen realizes the danger he’s
put us all in.” 

“
He might now,” Kalei
said.

Erit said, “Oh yes, the incident at
the mansion. I’m glad you girls made it out. The stories we
collected from the turned... let’s just say, you managed to avoid
the worst of it.”

Kalei was appalled to think that the
incident at the mansion could have become any worse. But if Xamic
was capable of so much destruction in just one mansion... Kalei
shuddered and said, “That’s the least of Franklin’s problems. Well,
he might not have any problems anymore. He’s dead.”

Her companions fell silent. Even Terin
looked mildly surprised, his left eyebrow raised ever so slightly
higher than his right. Or perhaps it was Kalei’s imagination. She
couldn’t be sure. Finally, Walker asked. “What are you talking
about?”

“
I...” Kalei studied her
hands, trying to make sense of these new images, these not-memories
that mingled with her own. Her swirls flexed and danced oddly
across her nails. She looked back up at Terin and said, “Samantha
was there when Landen confronted Xamic about the thing at the
mansion...”

She remembered – Samantha remembered –
Landen standing behind the desk in his Tusic office, yelling at
Xamic, “What the hell do you think you are doing! You destroy my
house, you kill my guests, and now I find out you are working
behind my back?” Landen reached into a drawer and dropped a thumb
drive onto his desk. “What the hell is this, Xamic?”

For once, Xamic wasn’t laughing. He
met Landen’s threat with a cool, level stare. He didn’t say
anything.

Landen continued, “You are threatening
everything we created. We made this city what it is, and now you
want to tear it apart?”

Xamic replied,
“
We?
You and
Terin made this city, Landen, while I rotted in the ground. I
made
you,
Landen.
I made you Estranged, I gave you the tools to establish Tusic, I
handed this city to you on a platter. And you repaid me with
eighteen years in a six-foot grave, waking up with dirt in my
lungs, suffocating, never free to just die, cursed by my own
creation to wake up again and again...”

“
I had no idea what
happened to you. It took me years to find—”

“
You didn’t even start
looking until your little girl fell through! What if she had lived
to be eighty, Landen? Would you have waited that long to dig me up?
You and Terin stabbed me in the back, after everything I did for
you!”

Xamic was suddenly behind Landen, an
arm around his throat in a chokehold. He leaned in and said in a
low growl, “I am going to enjoy tearing your empire apart, brick by
brick.”

Landen’s eyes grew wide. Then Xamic
released him, and the entrepreneur fell to the floor,
dead.

Kalei realized Landen hadn’t given
Samantha the order to kill her. It had been Xamic.

She looked up at Terin and somehow
knew that the message was meant for him. “Xamic killed Landen. He
said he is going to dismantle the Tusic Empire.”

Terin’s eyes grew distant. Kalei
thought he would say something, but Walker interrupted, “Why would
he have it out for Franklin? All of our intel indicates that the
two were working together. Why would Xamic choose now to take out
Tusic?”

Terin looked away and
studied the wall. “This obviously happened several days ago, and no
word of Landen’s death has gotten out yet. If Xamic is keeping up
the ruse that Landen is still alive, then it means he’s using their
resources.” He looked back at the group. “You are not to breathe a
word of this to
anyone
. If word gets out that Landen Franklin was killed by an
Estranged, there will be panic in the city. Walker, rewrite the
security protocols for all vital systems—”

“
What! Do you have any
idea—?”

Terin ignored him. “Kalei, go with
Erit. He’ll help you sort things out with those
memories.”

“
I don’t want to sort
things out. I—”

“
After that, you and Erit
will track down any information you can get on Xamic, Tusic, and
the device.”

Kalei knew she had no grounds to argue
with him. Terin was still giving her what she wanted, even if he
did tack on the stupid, tedious task of messing with memories. So
she relented. “Fine.”

Erit started to lead her back to their
old classroom, but Kalei refused. If she was going to be slotted
back into the role of student, she was going to need some air. They
went to the roof instead.

Once there, Erit settled himself on
top of an old vent and asked, “How many of Samantha’s memories can
you access?”

Kalei sat down on a sturdier vent
across from him and sighed. “I don’t know. All of them?”

Erit raised an eyebrow. “Can you
remember what she had for breakfast yesterday?”

Kalei paused and shuffled through the
back of her mind. “No.”

“
Then you don’t have all
of them. It will take some time, though. Some people never recover
all of the latent memories, but don’t be surprised if new memories
start showing up from here on out. The trick is to keep them apart
from your own.”

Kalei looked out across the rooftops.
“Why does that matter?”

“
If you hold any value for
your sanity, it matters quite a bit. Now, think back. Can you
remember where Samantha was last month?”

“
I don’t even know
where 
I 
was last month.” Kalei looked back to Erit. “What month is it
now anyway?”

Erit smiled encouragingly. “I’m sure
Samantha knew.”

Kalei sighed again.
“Really?”

“
Yes. See if Samantha
recalled what month it is.”

Kalei focused her gaze on a grey,
crumbling building across the way. Then, she retreated from the
visible world and focused her attention inward, digging and
searching for the answer. It had to be in her head somewhere... but
the harder she searched, the more she found nothing. “This is
bullshit!”

Erit didn’t waver. “Just keep
trying.”

The answer was August. Kalei didn’t
figure it out until September. Luckily, Samantha’s death
certificate read “August twenty-eighth.”  

After her sessions, Kalei usually
tracked down Terin. The first time she saw him, she claimed she
wanted to know more about Xamic, but she really just wanted to know
how her family was doing.

He told her what she wanted to know,
that Xamic was an unrepentant frat-boy genius who lived only for
the high. Then, without any further prompt from Kalei, he told her
that her family was safe. After that, she dropped the act and just
asked him every time she saw him. He never gave any details, but he
always told her they were safe. After a while, the conversations
became a simple glance and a reassuring nod. Kalei could call Terin
a lot of things, but she could never call him a liar.

“
Grandpa” was the weirdest
name to call him. She was still trying to wrap her head around that
one.

At first, she was revolted to be
related to the man who had killed her parents. But it made sense.
The love in his eyes when he saw Mom. The hug. The tears of joy on
his face. The sheer horror when he’d realized what he had done. It
made sense. And now she knew why he was so adamant about keeping
her away from Fenn and the girls. She got it now. And she could
respect what he’d been through. She couldn’t forgive him, but she
could respect him.

Kalei wondered if Jenna knew, but she
didn’t bother to ask. She never saw her sister and she never asked
to find out where she was. It was better that way. Kalei didn’t
want anything to do with Jenna after what she had done.

When Kalei wasn’t working on her
memories, or just sitting around wondering how the hell she ended
up here in the first place, she found Erit and helped him track
down information. There weren’t many leads. Mostly just addicts who
would tell them anything they wanted to hear, and dead end tips
called in by concerned civilians. After a while, Erit pushed Kalei
to spend more time sorting out Samantha’s memories. The more their
leads fell through, the more he became convinced that Samantha
could provide key information.

During one of these solitary memory
meditations, Mar came up and paid Kalei a visit. She asked, “No
hard feelings about leaving you in that cage, right?”

Kalei shrugged. “You were just keeping
yourself out of trouble. I can’t hold that against you.”

“
Damn right.” Mar sat down
next to her. “You know, things have gotten a lot stupider since you
left. I got assigned to a team of fucking kids. One of them spends
so much time focusing on his nails that he damn near walks into a
wall if you don’t steer him in the right direction. I’m trying to
get Terin to reassign me to whatever you’re working on.”

Kalei was touched that Mar wanted to
work with her again, but she was also a bit surprised. “Why do you
want to work with us? You don’t even know what we’re working
on.”

“
I don’t care. Whatever it
is, I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot better than patrolling the fence
with a bunch of piss-heads.” Mar leaned back. “So, you visit your
sister yet?”

Kalei gave Mar a sideways glance.
“Since when do you know I have a sister?”

“
Hell, everyone knows. I
can’t believe I didn’t see the family resemblance sooner. But hey,
your sister don’t make it easy with all her crazy haircuts and
makeup. Anyway, Shenaia, Jenna, whoever the hell she is, I hear
she’s got a pretty sweet room down on the third floor. Rumor has it
she’s got—”

Kalei cut Mar off and stiffly replied,
“No. I haven’t been to visit her. Now bug off. I’ve got meditating
to do.”

Mar grunted, bemused. “That’s
harsh.”

Kalei didn’t see the humor in it. “You
want to talk about harsh? Some man is dead because of her! Who
knows what kind of family he left behind, or how many people will
miss—” Kalei cried out as a shooting pain sliced through her skull;
it felt like an ice pick had just emerged in the core of her brain
and was trying to make its way to her forehead.

“
What is it?”

Kalei held up a hand to shut up Mar.
One of Samantha’s memories was working its way through. Kalei’s own
memory of the man lying on the ground shifted to one of the man
standing up. But he was lying down – now he was standing up – down
– up...Her mind fought the contradiction, but another burst of pain
hammered into the invisible icepick. With a mental shove, Kalei
forced the two memories apart. She tried to focus on the new one—
to pull it through gently before it ripped itself through whatever
barrier her mind had erected between herself and
Samantha.

The dead man was standing; talking,
even. He seemed wary as Kalei-Samantha asked him for directions.
The man tried to brush her off, but Samantha pulled off a glove and
showed him clear nails, assuring him that she was harmless. At
that, the man relaxed a bit.

Samantha put the glove into her pocket
and asked if the man lived nearby. He said he lived just up the
street, and asked her to repeat where it was she was trying to go.
Samantha smiled and said that he could give her directions on the
way, and offered to help him carry his groceries home. She could
see his well-toned muscles bulging beneath the weight of so many
bags. The man politely refused, noting that he only had a couple of
bags.

That was when Jenna showed up. She
emerged from a side street, haggard and frantic. When she saw the
two on the sidewalk, she gave a painful grunt and bit down on her
fist. But then she recognized Samantha. “Hey, can you hook me up? I
need—”

While the man with the groceries was
distracted by Jenna’s arrival, Samantha’s ungloved hand shot out
and closed around the man’s arm. He screamed.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Sisterly Love

“
Where is Jenna?” Kalei
stood up and waited for Mar to answer.

“
Last I heard, she was in
her room on the fifth floor.” Kalei started toward the stairwell.
Mar called out, “I think it’s room 520!”

Kalei raced down several flights of
steps, down the hallway, past a half dozen doors, and stopped
outside door 520. Kalei raised her hand to knock, but she
hesitated, unsure of what she was going to say. She let her eyes
linger on the bronze numbers tacked to the door. They still held a
dull gleam, but the 2 hung upside down, making it look more like
550. Kalei took a deep breath. She decided to wing it. She
knocked.

Jenna’s voice called out from the
other side, “Yeah?”

Kalei placed her hand on the cold
doorknob and opened the door.

The room was a bit smaller than their
old rooms, but the furniture was much nicer. There were far fewer
scratches in the wood of the nightstands, and the upholstery on the
chair in the corner was almost entirely intact, aside from a minor
rip on the side. If someone bothered to give the room a good
dusting, it could have passed for a real hotel room.