My name is Samantha Conway and I’ve been alive for eighteen days. Well, I only remember the past eighteen days. My friend Rebecca says I hit my head during a fight with slayers and the blow knocked a few screws loose, causing amnesia. She suggested I keep this journal, write down all of my feelings and any memories that surface. So far, I just feel frustrated. I’ve remembered nothing! The only thing I don’t have to wonder about is the hole in my heart. I know it’s there—there’s never a moment I’m not aware of it. It’s like a bottomless pit of despair and it’s so not cake.
Ugh. Did I really just write “so not cake”? Clearly there’s something more than amnesia wrong with me.
I’m supposedly some kind of bad-A enforcer. I capture and kill the people who slay my zombies. But I haven’t gone out on a mission since The Incident—what I’m calling the world’s worst brain fart—because cleansing zombies has kept me weak, but Rebecca says today is my last cleansing. For a while, at least.
Apparently, slayers are hunting me, determined to kill ME. I’m supposed to take them out first. I’m told I’ll head out tomorrow. But the problem is, I don’t remember how to fight! So how am I supposed to stop them?
Enough! I threw the pen and journal across the room and rose. I was sick of writing. Sick of not remembering. Mostly sick of this helplessness. I needed to...
I didn’t know what I needed to do. Something. Anything.
A knock at my door. Rebecca strode inside without waiting for permission, as usual. And as usual, it annoyed the crap out of me.
“Excellent,” she said. “You’re awake. Your presence is required in the lab.”
Her tone was clipped. But then, her tone was always clipped. I wasn’t sure she liked me all that much, even though she’d claimed we’d known each other for ages. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure I liked her. I looked at her, and the hole in my heart throbbed.
The same way it throbbed every time I looked at the tattoos on my arms and the one on the back of my neck.
“Come on.” She waved me over with her good arm. Her other one had sported a thick bandage for the first week of my stay, and now that the bandage was gone, I could see a big black scab.
Anger pricked at me—not at her, but at slayers. They’d hurt her, same as they’d hurt me. A group of them had invaded our building, our home, hoping to abduct me, but she’d saved my life, taking a beating for me.
I could only guess why they wanted to stop us from cleansing zombies and making the world a better place. Their own gain.
She led me to the bank of elevators at the end of my hall. There were thirty-two floors in the building, each a maze of hallways, offices and labs. My guards and me had an entire floor to ourselves. The one above us had rooms teeming with cages and zombies.
Zombies I would save.
That was the only thing I really liked about my life. Saving the lost.
“This is Ethan,” Rebecca said as we entered an area with all kinds of medical equipment. “You met him before your accident. You adore him.”
He was a little older than me, putting him at about twenty. He was only slightly taller than me and lean. He had dark hair and a weird expression. As if he was trying to say sorry without actually saying a word. Had we fought? We must have, because the hole in my heart was throbbing again.
I wanted so badly to remember.
“Ali,” he acknowledged with a nod.
Ali? An image flashed through my mind, there and gone in the blink of an eye. But still it managed to arrest me. This boy, this Ethan, sat on a bench beside a stunning teenage girl with dark hair and eyes. He looked at her with such tenderness, such love. Beside her was another teenage girl. This one had lighter brown hair, straight as a pen, and mischievous hazel eyes.
She was looking at me and laughing.
The throb in my heart hurt so much I almost doubled over.
“Her name is Sami,” Rebecca snapped. “And, Sami, I need you to get in the chair. Please don’t make me tell you again.”
“Or what?” I quipped. I hated obeying her. But I did it. I sat. Because even though I hated it, I loved the results. Two men in hazmat suits strapped my ankles and wrists to the chair.
Rebecca and Ethan stepped into a protected chamber within the room. The walls were clear, allowing them to watch everything that happened outside it.
Both hazmat-clad men exited and then returned with a young zombie girl. She hadn’t been dead long, I didn’t think. Her skin was gray, but not dark, and she still had most of her hair. There was a metal collar around her neck.