Chapter 23

After a set of brief orders from Mallory, she darted off down a dark side street, and Zane couldn't help but picture her in ragged clothes, making off with some rich person's wallet. He felt a rush of feeling rise up, blunt emotions forcing a single tear from his eye. He turned away from her swinging ponytail and walked back out onto the now-empty street.

He righted his stride, a sudden rush of memory flashing across his eyelids. He flinched away at the vividness of it.

He was twelve, wearing a too-big suit newly given to him, standing on the slippery polished floor of his old home. His mother and father stood at his sides, disinterestedness painted across their faces. He was their requirement, their negotiation with the governors. They'd never appreciated him or praised him, only critiqued and reprimanded.

All this flew through Zane's brain in a matter of milliseconds. He shook his head, but it would not clear. It only persisted viciously, demanding his full attention.

His parents were looking at him with stern gazes, and they appeared to be saying something, but it was as if Zane was floating formless in his cloud of particles, absorbing everything about the memory; the perfectly folded blanket over the back of the sofa, the blemish-less wood floor. The lovely stained glass over the window, casting rainbow shadows over anything and everything.

He saw his younger self, a stripe of blue light thrown over his face. His hair was regulation length, swept to the side, not a strand astray. His bright green eyes were hesitant, watching the cuffs of the pants curve around his ankles and rest on the floor. His arms were hanging at his sides, his younger self unsure what to do with the awkward appendages.

With a sudden and obtuse popping noise, sound ripped through the memory, revealing a whole new dimension of his thoughts he never knew was accessible. He tried to close his eyes, but, although he felt the sensation of his eyes closing, he still saw the memory. It was inside his mind: it wasn't something he could choose not to see.

Young Zane took a halting step forward, his heel brushing the floor, creating an ominous scraping noise. He winced and tensed, as if expecting a hit. Zane himself winced as if he were reliving the event instead of just watching it.

His parents' mouths were grim lines of displeasure. His father pursed his lips and pushed his hands into his pockets. Zane's mother stepped forward, grabbing him by the upper arm. She leaned down. "Never scrape your foot along the ground," she whispered hoarsely. "You'll be looked down upon. Lift your feet, Zane. "Fit in. Don't stand out. Be one with everybody and everything. You'll never be disappointed that way."

Zane snapped from the memory and found his physical body stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

The rush of remembrance had been completely unexpected. Why would his brain choose now to relive moments from his past? He hadn't remembered a single thing until then. Where had the memory came from? Why had it surfaced only then? These were questions Zane could not yet answer, for he did not yet have explanations for either.

He threw the concerns over his shoulder (his left shoulder, thank you Marcus) and strode off down the side of the street, ignoring the cameras glaring down at him with their beady red eyes.

Despite the prejudice he obtained against the memory, he found his feet lifting higher than usual, obeying the words he'd heard his mother speak. He cursed himself for retaining this shred of his former obedience, and he made a point from then on to scrape his heels against the stone, grating his stolen shoes and creating shrieking noises that echoed off the metal all around him.

He continued walking, never slowing as the crowds thickened and he became a part of the entity again, blending into New Vancouver without plausible distinction. He kept his head levelled and his eyes straight forward. He needed only to wait for Mallory's signal.

"Zane?" an astonished voice exclaimed. A body shouldered its way through the throng of downtown, heading straight for him. Zane reeled back and began to thrust through the crowd in the opposite direction. "Where are you going?" The voice was following him, pursuing him through the throng. He didn't look back to see whoever it was. He kept walking to appear like a regular New Vancouver citizen.

Zane didn't stop until he felt a hand laid across his back. Such physical contact was forbidden. Whoever this was, they may not be a complete brainless citizen, a brainwashed bug.

The hand tightened in his suit, pulling him backward, toward a small book store on a street corner labelled with a closed sign. He resisted struggle, hoping the cameras couldn't see the illegal actions being performed.

He allowed the person to tug him through the door after a long time jangling keys.

Zane turned around to face his captor. It was a tall boy, about Zane's age, well over six feet, his chin hovering over Zane's forehead. His dark brown hair was tousled from unknown activities, thrown out every which way as if he'd just been electrocuted. Soulful brown eyes the color of dirt gazed out at Zane from under the mop of hair. Zane started when he realized the boy was not wearing the required gray suit; he was dressed in a simple long-sleeve, bright green, and jeans. Who was this kid?

"Zane?" the boy repeated, less of a question this time. He reached toward Zane with long, knobby arms and poked him as if checking that he was real. "I heard you'd died in a freak lab accident." Zane opened his mouth to retort, but the boy wasn't done. "Get in the back, they'll be coming soon." He grabbed Zane by the shoulders and turned him around, pushing him into a dark back room, the door solid steel, impenetrable.

"Who'll be coming soon?" Zane asked, already anticipating the answer.

"Wawrzynski's Special Forces soldiers. They've been flooding the city, heading for the west gate." Zane still didn't recognize the boy, but the latter obviously knew him.

"Who are you?" Zane asked curiously.

"Let's just say I'm the Sherlock Holmes of New Vancouver," he said, locking the door behind them and flicking on a light switch. The room they were in was painfully ancient, constructed completely of wood and plaster, rickety furniture scattered around the otherwise bare floor. A small light bulb swung from a hook on the ceiling, its exposed wires running over the roof beams and down the walls to an electrical outlet.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Zane inquired, knowing he recognized the thick eyebrows, the acne strewn across the tall boy's face.

The stranger cocked his head curiously, a smile spreading across his face. Zane couldn't place the emotion he portrayed.

"Physics class," the boy stated. "Ninth grade." The second bolt of memory that day struck Zane. He recalled a lanky boy with dark brown hair seated in the dark corner of the classroom, furiously typing at a laptop, the faint echoes of the keys running like vibrations through the room.

These startlingly vivid flashes of memory were starting to freak Zane out. Could it only be because he was back in New Vancouver? He didn't know whether to appreciate them or hate them. He wasn't yet sure if he wanted those memories back.

A name hit him. "Jonas?" he whispered, stepping closer.

"The one and only,"

"How did you remember my name?"

Jonas wrinkled his eyebrows as if smelling something particularly revolting. "I'm not a big fan of compliance and obedience," he said. "It's not something you enjoy after seven years of foster care at the hands of Governor Lucas Wawrzynski."

Zane's jaw dropped. "Wawrzynski is your foster dad?" he implored, dumbstruck.

"Was," the boy said, collapsing in a chair, its broken leg twisting out of control and threatening to throw him onto the ground. "Not something I'm particularly proud of." He reached in a nearby container Zane hadn't noticed before, and his hand reappeared grasping a soda. "Cola?" he asked. Zane shook his head. "Pity."

Jonas tipped up the can, downing over half of it in a single gulp. His swallow echoed around the small room, making Zane shiver. He roughly set the can down on top of the container he'd pulled it from and reached to the side, grappling for something behind his chair.

Zane winced at the brightness of the seemingly workaday light swinging from the ceiling as if there was a slight breeze. Upon watching it, he saw the bulb flicker and the fixture list to the side as if reaching for something.

Jonas turned back around, multiple dangerously thick black binders clasped in his hands. The muscles in his thin arms strained to lift the stack which was at least three feet high and towered over his face so Zane only glimpsed the tufts of his dark hair.

"What in the hell are those?" Zane asked marvellously.

"Everything I've ever seen since ninth grade," Jonas whispered quietly, the first hint of sobriety Zane had observed from him.

"You remember everything?"

"Not by choice," the tall boy replied. He took a deep breath and opened the top binder. "Father had already tested his microchips on the Marcus boy before he turned to me." Zane opened his mouth to speak, but Jonas raised a hand to silence him. "Yes, I know all about him, I read the file, and god knows I remember every goddamn word of it."

"He experimented on you?"

"Of course he did," Jonas said. "I lived in the same freaking house, he could use me as a subject without even leaving his office." He took another swig of his cola. "Anyway, he came home one day and told me he'd broken the Brown boy, wrecked his brain somehow. I knew, of course, what Father did for a living, but I was a naive brainless monkey, and it took next to nothing from him to coerce me to help him with his research."

Jonas flipped a page, and Zane noticed the font was overly small, and the boy had to crane his head forward to read the minuscule text. Small drawings of mysterious objects with mysterious motivation were etched in thick pencil. His voice became distorted through the thick wads of paper and sticky notes. "He didn't have his serum yet, so he was still using his blasted microchips. I, of course, was a willing subject, because really, what choice did I have?"

He stopped and a disappointed look flashed over his eyes, and Zane knew it was meant for Jonas himself rather than Zane. He slapped his hand down on the binder in front of him, scattering a layer of dust. "How could I have been so stupid?" he asked to no one in particular.

"Did the microchips do the same thing to you as they did to Marcus?" Zane asked, assuming this boy knew that as well. It was probably scribbled on a green sticky note somewhere in one of those binders.

"Of course not," Jonas snapped. "Father didn't want a repeated failure. He tweaked the microchip, twisting its nature from obedience to remembrance. He didn't want a soldier from me, I was nowhere near physically qualified."

"Then why choose you?"

"He wanted a database," Jonas said, his eyes flashing. "He knew he could never memorize all the components of his microchips and serums. He wrote them down, of course, but they were filed away in a secret lab some place or another. He was too lazy and incompetent to get them every time he needed them, so he made me what I am." Jonas dropped his gaze with a frown.

"Do you know where this secret lab is?"

Jonas shook his head. "My microchip was programmed to remember things I had seen or had been told. Father kept the lab a secret." He paused for a second, pointing to the binders in front of him. "Everything contained in my microchip is in these. Given several minutes, I can pull the information myself, but this hurts my brain far less. Remembering manually runs the risk of overheating the chip."

Zane briefly wondered if Marcus still had programmed hardware in his brain, but he figured Wawrzynski would have extracted them the moment he decreed Marcus a failure. Marcus may still be affected by the experiments, but there was no indication of a microchip still contained within his mind.

Jonas went on. "Father assumed making me his database would help him supremely in his facilities and experiments. But he didn't realize, even though I retained the information he needed, that I also remembered every horrible thing I'd seen, all the screaming kids, the mindlessness of the people here. It started to overwhelm my brain, and I gained a consciousness, something I think Father had hoped to avoid.

"I realized this place is not all sunshine and rainbows, like I'm sure you have by now. I heard of the weird abilities you guys were obtaining, and I knew if I stayed as powerless as I was, I would never be able to leave Father and his brutal tests behind."

Zane's jaw dropped. "You didn't," he whispered hoarsely, knowing what was coming.

Jonas sighed. "I did," he said, not meeting Zane's gaze. "I turned his microchip against him, recalling the exact pattern of his master key and replicating it perfectly. I snuck into the facility you guys were held in. I found a lab." He exhaled. "There was a cooler, with all kinds of vials filled with different colors of serums. They were all labelled with the unnatural component that replaced the genes. I'm not happy about it, but I sorted through them until I found one I deemed to be helpful.

"I-I grabbed a syringe and a needle," he whispered.

"No," Zane said, recalling the burning feeling after the injections, the rush of hopelessness and pure fear.

"I don't know what I was thinking," Jonas murmured. "I cursed myself for eternity. I now have a power I don't want, a responsibility I can't comprehend." He turned his eyes on Zane, and Zane thought he saw a hint of circuitry behind his eyes, but it was only his imagination and fear playing tricks on him. "I have to stop this war."

Zane nodded. "I feel the same responsibility," he said. "Like it'll be my fault if there's bloodshed." He paused. "But if you're like us, come with us," he said, not caring about the others' opinions of Jonas. This boy needed help. Zane knew the feeling, and he wouldn't let this boy experience it any longer. "Do you know where all the soldiers are going?"

Jonas closed his eyes, scrunching his eyebrows together. "West gate, air hangar, transport to tactical offense," he muttered monotonously.

"Right," Zane said, not worrying about revealing vital information. This boy was like him, lost in a place he'd never been lost before, afraid in a place free of fear. "We're trying to get to Japan, and I anticipate that if Wawrzynski wants soldiers, he's sending them to the war." He had never told Mallory this information. He'd assumed she'd picked up on it herself.

"That's an awful plan,"

"It's all we have, Jonas,"

"It's crap,"

"We can't stay here, Wawrzynski knows where we are, he wants us back. We're not safe. Our only options are sit on the sidelines and let millions be killed, or do everything we can to avoid a war. It may be beyond our abilities, but we have to try."

These words seemed to sway the lanky boy slightly, and his gaze softened. "It's that Joseph boy, isn't it?"

"What?"

"I could tell right away," Jonas said. "There's somebody you really care about. Enough to stop a war for them. It's the Joseph boy, isn't it?"

"How did you know?"

"I wasn't sure until just now. If you were a normal citizen-turned-rebel of New Vancouver, you wouldn't believe you had a future. I know first-hand, the future looks bleak when everything you know is turned upside down. But you are willing to try and prevent a war to protect the future. It'll take a while before you realize you want that future. For now, you're trying to preserve somebody else's."

Zane sensed the truth in these words. He felt a growing urge to live out his life, snatch his future, but it wasn't a strong feeling yet. But he wanted Joseph to have it. He couldn't bear to see Joseph's whole life torn away from him like Zane's had. He smiled softly.

An earth-shattering crash echoed from outside the old musty bookstore. Jonas flapped his arms in surprise and the binder he'd been flipping through fell to the floor, rattling, adding to the already deafening noise. He cringed.

Zane yelled, "That's Mallory's signal! If you're coming, you've got to get moving!"

Jonas didn't need further urging. He drew out what the binders had been in, a large rucksack, fraying at the corners, with a shoulder strap. He shoved the binders in and zipped it up, slinging it over his shoulder. Despite the obvious immense weight, he bore it like a burden.

Jonas snatched a cola. "For the road," he said, smiling.

Zane rolled his eyes and bolted for the exit, his newfound ally hard on his heels.