Unremembered (21 page)

And I realize I still don’t know how I ended up among them.

I still don’t know a lot of things.

But for the first time since I woke up on that floating piece of debris, I am optimistic that my questions will finally be answered.

I suck in a sharp breath. ‘Are they dead?’ I ask, afraid of what the response might be.

But all I hear is laughter. Cody’s laughter. ‘Dead?’ he repeats. ‘No. Just passed out.’

‘Deactivated?’ I clarify, remembering the strange device that Rio showed me.

Cody laughs again. This time even Zen joins in. But his laughter is much more scornful in nature.

‘Sure,’ Cody allows. ‘Deactivated. Drinking all night will do that to you.’

I glance around the room again. ‘Drinking?’

‘Yeah. You know, alcohol.’ Cody crouches down and peeks behind a red square pillow that’s covering the face of one of the inert bodies. I steal a glance as well. The young man
looks to be the same age as Zen. He has longish brown hair that appears to be acting as some kind of trap because it has several bright orange pieces of food stuck to it. As soon as the pillow is
removed, he groans at the sudden blast of daylight and clumsily reaches up to pull his hair over his eyes.

His hand lands on one of the orange objects and, without opening his eyes, he picks it from his hair and pops it in his mouth, chewing languidly.

Cody rolls his eyes. ‘A friend told me his older brother was coming to a party here last night.’ He walks over to a person lying on a nearby couch and leans over to peer at his face,
grimacing slightly at what he sees. ‘And from the looks of it, it was a big one.’

He stands up and turns to me, taking in my puzzled expression. ‘Lemme guess. You don’t remember alcohol either?’

I look to Zen for help but he just flashes a quick smile that I can’t interpret. ‘No,’ I admit. ‘I don’t. What is it?’

‘It’s a substance that makes you act like a total dickhead,’ Cody explains.

I open my mouth to ask what that is, but Zen jumps in. ‘It’s slang for someone who is mean or rude.’

‘Or in high school,’ Cody says with a shrug. He stoops to pick up one of the empty aluminum cans that’s been crushed in the middle. ‘See?’ he says, brandishing it
towards me. ‘This is beer. A very common form of alcohol. Some people drink it to relax. While others –’ he motions towards the handful of deactivated teenagers –
‘like these jerkwads, drink it to become even bigger jerkwads.’

‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t like these people,’ Zen remarks.

Cody steps over another body and tilts his head to get a look at her face. ‘How’d you guess?’

I glance down and instantly recognize the girl Cody is standing over. It’s Lacey, from the dressing room at the mall. And she’s wearing the very skirt I saw her holding when she
disappeared into the stall with her friends.

But for some reason, she’s not wearing a shirt with it. Just the skirt, a white belt – presumably the one her friend recommended – and a bra.

I shake my head in bemusement, wondering if I’ll ever understand normal teenagers.

‘Are you looking for someone in particular?’ I ask Cody.

‘Yeah,’ he mumbles, his tone becoming instantly more hostile. He lifts the brim of a baseball cap off a person who’s asleep on the dining-room table and calls out, ‘Aha!
Here he is.’

‘Who?’ I ask, making my way over and studying the guy’s features. He doesn’t look familiar.

‘Trevor Stoltz. The biggest jerkwad of them all. And also the richest.’

Cody leans in close to Trevor’s face and then grimaces, as though he’s just smelt something extremely unpleasant. ‘Not so tough now, are you,
Trevor
?’ He
pronounces the name with unmistakable disgust.

‘I’m sorry,’ Zen says, taking a step forward. ‘But how exactly is this going to help us get a car?’

Cody’s tongue hangs out of his mouth as he concentrates hard on digging his hand deep into the pocket of Trevor’s jeans. Trevor doesn’t even flinch. Apparently alcohol is a very
strong deactivator.

A moment later he withdraws a set of keys and dangles them high in the air. ‘Trevor Stoltz’s very expensive and very
fast
Porsche. A gift from Daddy. His favourite pastime
is to chase middle-schoolers down the street in it.’

I look from Zen to Cody. ‘Are you sure about this?’

Cody just shrugs. ‘The guy has been tormenting me for
years
. He owes me one.’

Zen and I follow Cody out of the sleeping house. The driveway is filled with cars but it’s easy to spot the one that goes with these keys. I don’t even know what a Porsche is, but
the bright red, sporty-looking vehicle parked crookedly on the lawn immediately jumps out at me. It’s the only one I would describe as ‘expensive and fast’. The thing just
looks
fast.

Zen jabs at a button on the keys and the headlights of the car flash. He hurries to the driver’s-side door and yanks it open, plopping down in the seat. He sticks the key in the ignition
and then his entire body sags in disappointment.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘This is a manual transmission. I don’t know how to drive this.’ Zen closes his eyes, then bangs his hand against the steering wheel.

I touch his arm. ‘It’s OK. We’ll figure something out. Maybe we can find another car somewhere.’

He shakes his head. ‘No, there’s no time.’ He swiftly reaches across the console and opens a compartment on the passenger side. ‘You’ll have to drive.’

‘Me?’ I ask, watching in horror as he pulls out a shiny, rectangular booklet.

He hands it to me and gets out of the car, gesturing to the now-empty driver’s seat. ‘Come on. Get behind the wheel. Hurry.’

I’m completely perplexed by his directive but I reluctantly grip the booklet in my hand and lower myself into the driver’s seat while Zen runs around to the passenger side.

‘But,’ I protest as soon as he sits down, ‘I don’t know how to drive.’

He nods towards the book in my hand. ‘Not yet anyway.’

I stare at him in bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about?’

Cody sticks his head in my open door. ‘What’s the matter? Why aren’t you guys leaving?’

Zen holds up a hand to quiet him. ‘It’s fine. She’s just getting a little crash course in driving.’

I toss the booklet into Zen’s lap as though it was red-hot and burning my skin. ‘No. I’ve never driven before.’

‘Sera,’ he warns, handing it back, ‘it’s the quickest way to get out of here. It’ll take too long for me to figure out how to drive a stick shift. You can learn in
a matter of seconds.’

‘Sera?’ Cody repeats. ‘Is that your real name?’

I shrug. ‘I suppose so.’

He nods approvingly. ‘I like it.’

Zen groans. ‘That’s very nice but we really don’t have time for this. Sera, just read it!’

‘But,’ I protest again, flipping through the booklet from beginning to end. The pages fan by in a blur. There are over three hundred of them. ‘It’s going to take me
hours
to read this. Let alone understand it all. I can’t simply—’

I freeze, my voice coming to a dead halt. The booklet drops into my lap as an explosion of images crashes into my mind, shaking my entire body.

I don’t know how it’s possible but I suddenly know exactly what to do. My limbs act entirely on their own. My right foot thrusts down hard on the brake while my left foot depresses
the clutch.

Wait a minute, what’s a clutch?

The voice in my head answers before I even finish asking the question.

It’s the pedal that engages the transmission.

My arms move next. Without my brain even having to tell them what to do. My left hand grasps the steering wheel while my right hand turns the key in the ignition and swiftly manoeuvres the
gearshift into first gear.

Terrified by my involuntary actions, I throw both my hands in the air and pull my feet from the pedals. The car jerks violently, tossing my head back into the seat, and the engine sputters and
stalls.

Cody jumps out of the way. ‘Whoa!’

‘What was that?’ I ask, my voice and hands trembling.

Zen smirks. ‘You read the owner’s manual.’

I peer down at the glossy book in my lap and shake my head. ‘No. I didn’t.’

‘She didn’t.’ Cody backs me up. ‘I saw it. She only flipped through it.’

Zen chuckles softly to himself. ‘Trust me, you read it.’

‘He’s right.’ I point at Cody. ‘I only flipped through it.’

‘How many pages are in it?’ Zen asks, raising his eyebrows as though he’s challenging me.

I feel my throat constrict. ‘322.’

Cody snorts. ‘Well, that’s easy.’ He reaches in through the still-open door and grabs the booklet from my lap. ‘The pages are obviously numbered . . .’ But his
voice trails off as he flips to the end and his mouth falls open.

I grab the book back from him. ‘What?’ I glance at the last page and immediately understand Cody’s reaction.

To my astonishment, the number
322
isn’t written on the bottom corner. Instead, the number
10-18
is written.

The book is labelled in sections. And subsections.

Not in pages.

‘How did you know there are 322 pages in there?’ Cody asks.

‘I counted them,’ I reply softly.

‘No one can count that fast,’ Cody argues.

Zen remains quiet, waiting for the realization to hit me. And even though it’s starting to sink in, I still can’t bring myself to believe it.

‘That’s impossible,’ I argue feebly. ‘There’s no way I can read something just by glancing at it for a split second.’

‘Like it’s impossible for you to speak multiple foreign languages and add large sums in your head and—’

‘OK!’ I say, wanting nothing more than for him to stop talking. ‘I get it.’ I reengage the clutch and brake, and turn the key in the ignition again, desperate for the
sound of the engine to drown out Zen’s voice . . . and my own thoughts. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Cody, still wide-eyed and open-mouthed, stumbles dazedly away from the car as I reach out and grab hold of the door handle.

‘Wait! I almost forgot.’ He digs into his pocket and pulls out a cellphone. ‘Here. You might need this.’ He tosses it into the car. It lands softly on my lap, atop the
owner’s manual. ‘I took it from my good friend Trevor back there. I programmed my number in, just in case.’

I slide the phone into one of my pants pockets. ‘Thanks, Cody,’ I say earnestly. ‘For everything.’

Then I slam the door, jam the transmission into first gear again, and peel off the grass, leaving a cloud of smoke and a spray of dirt visible in the rear-view mirror.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

We’ve been driving for twenty minutes and Zen hasn’t said a word other than to direct me where to turn, when to speed up and pass other cars, and how to read the signs on the side of
the highway. Because although the Porsche’s owner’s manual taught me how to operate the car, it didn’t teach me anything about the rules of the road.

‘Somewhere we can stay under the radar,’ he replies.

‘How do we stay under the radar?’

Zen points to a sign that reads 55. ‘That’s the speed limit.’

I check the odometer on the dash – 83 – and gently apply the brakes.

‘For one,’ he replies, ‘we don’t get any speeding tickets. Because you don’t have a licence and they’ll be monitoring police reports and radio
traffic.’

‘Diotech?’ I confirm.

He nods. ‘But most important, we have to keep you away from the press. And nosy people in general. No photographs can be taken of you. Anything that gets posted on the Web or in any news
outlets can be used to track down your location. They’ll be monitoring for that too. So we just have to find a remote place to lay low. I figure if we head inland we can camp out in the
desert for a while.’

‘Until what?’ I ask.

‘Until I can figure out how to get us out of here.’

I shake my head, downshifting into fifth gear. ‘But if they can find me anywhere, where are we supposed to go? How can we ever escape them?’

Zen rests his hand on mine on the gearshift. ‘We can,’ he assures me. ‘I just need some time.’

‘Time to do what?’

‘Sera,’ he begins, his voice turning very solemn and serious, ‘something happened when we tried to escape.’

‘You mean the fact that I lost all my memories?’

He sighs. ‘Yes,
that
– although I’m still not quite sure
how
you lost them.’

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. ‘What do you mean? Didn’t Diotech steal them?’

He shakes his head. ‘Not this time. At least I don’t think so. You were perfectly fine that morning, before we escaped. Your memories were fully intact. Or as intact as they could be
given the circumstances. I know for a fact Diotech hadn’t messed with your brain for weeks. Which means something must have happened between the time we left and the time I found you in the
hospital.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I complain. ‘If it wasn’t Diotech, then what could have happened that would erase my memories? And how did I end up floating in the ocean with
a bunch of plane wreckage if I was never actually
on
the plane?’

‘That’s the thing,’ Zen says, anxiously rubbing his chin. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure it out but I can’t. All I know is,
something went wrong. You weren’t supposed to be at that crash site. You were supposed to be with
me.
But somehow you ended up here and I ended up . . . there.’

I frown. ‘You’re not making much sense.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He sighs. ‘I just need to come up with a way to explain it to you.’

He presses his lips together so hard they’re white when he opens his mouth to speak again. ‘After we figured out what Diotech was doing – what you were involved in – we
knew we had to get as far away from there as possible. It was the only way you could have a normal life and we could be together. Because it was clear that they weren’t going to let that
happen.’

I nod. ‘So we tried to flee the compound. You already told me.’