HERRERA: I left. I had to. My research visa was up.
INI: That . . . That must have been hard.
HERRERA: But it was okay, you know? Now I don’t really care what anyone else thinks. I’m not a neurologist, but to me, that proved it. It proved that the stories about Gajarajan were true. That elephants really could remember things they hadn’t experienced directly, but others had. That they could . . . I don’t know.
INI: Please.
HERRERA: Like memories are something we somehow can move or share. Maybe not even all of them, but at least one. One memory. One thing that always stays, across time and space.
The amnesiac looked up from the binder, at Dr. Zadeh. “You really think we’re going to find a cure?” he asked.
Dr. Zadeh was silent for so long, the amnesiac thought he might not answer, because the answer was no, and he didn’t want to lie. “We have to,” he finally said instead.
THEY WENT OUT EVERY OTHER DAY, LOOKING FOR FOOD AND supplies in the mornings and shadowless in the afternoons. Something was happening, but it was hard to tell what. There were signs of human life left behind—things changed places, scavenged morsels among the wreckage appeared or went missing—but the humans themselves, living ones, were becoming harder and harder to find. There was more dried blood in the corners of places than there had been before. Twice they actually did glimpse other shadowed survivors—but they weren’t the sort of survivors the amnesiac wanted to meet. The first group was traveling in a set of three, and the second in a pair. All men, all wearing makeshift gear that looked as though it was for fighting, all well armed. Dr. Zadeh’s little team waited inside alleys and broken buildings until the others passed both times. They didn’t know what the men were looking for, but they didn’t want to find out.
They managed to find four more shadowless over the next few weeks. The first two had each forgotten so much they were barely wary at all. The third was far more afraid.
She was running, clothes soaked through with sweat. She must have been going for miles. “You’re safe now,” Dr. Zadeh kept repeating to her, begging her to come out from the abandoned house she’d thrown herself into when she saw them coming from the other direction.
The amnesiac started tossing the food in the open window through which she’d crawled. They’d never been so deep into the downtown before.
“We just want to help. I’m a doctor,” Dr. Zadeh continued.
Finally it was the shadowless Michael who convinced her.
“My name is Letty,” she said softly as she walked with them back toward the assisted-living facility on the other side of town.
“What were you running from?” Nurse Marie asked her.
“Exterminators,” she said.
“Exterminators?” the amnesiac asked. Beside him, he saw Michael shudder.
“You know them, too?” Dr. Zadeh had noticed the same thing.
“I thought that’s what all of you were, when you first found me,” Michael said. “They—” He shrugged helplessly. “Now I don’t remember. I just remember that they’re bad.”
“Ones with shadows who kill ones without,” Letty continued. It seemed like she couldn’t speak above a whisper. “They go around, looking for us.”
“Why?” Dr. Zadeh asked, voice stony.
Letty shook her head. “Money or food.” She paused. “They also enjoy it, I think.”
The amnesiac shook his head in disgust. “Who’s paying them?” he asked at last.
“Whoever’s inside the city hall. Someone’s still trying to run things. Trying to clean up New Orleans before too many shadowless—” She stopped abruptly, mouth snapped shut, and stared in terror at them all. Magic. Hemu’s frightened voice came back to the amnesiac, the pleading expression in the young man’s exhausted, terrified eyes.
“It’s all right,” Dr. Zadeh said to her. “We know. About the . . . pull.”
Letty’s eyes darted to the amnesiac’s.
“We do,” he said. “It’s real.” The Mandai spice market in Pune flashed in his mind. Or rather the memory of it, because it didn’t exist anymore. “We’ve seen it happen.”
THE FOURTH SHADOWLESS THEY MET BECAUSE OF LETTY. They also met their first exterminators.