I close my eyes, and this time, instead of running or resisting, I go to the high shelf and take down the memory of Adam.
And I am in Adam’s chamber, and he is writhing on the bed, screaming. I back away from him, horror creeping slow up my spine, sickness and confusion spreading inside me. And when the spasm passes, Adam falls back on the bed, gasping and moaning, and he turns his head, his streaming eyes falling directly on mine. And he whispers, “Who are you?”
I yank myself back into the roar of the waterfall and the cold of the cave, stunned. Adam Forgot. He caught the Forgetting. Grandpapa Cyrus even told me a supervisor had Forgotten. It seemed so impossible, I hardly believed him at the time, and Adam was only training. But Adam went Outside that day, and there was bitterblack, they said, in the seed samples …
I jump to my feet, so unsteady I nearly fall. Adam wasn’t testing seed samples. They gave him bitterblack. The Council killed my brother. Killed my Adam to hide the Forgetting. For the same reason they almost killed me. And the ever-simmering rage inside me suddenly cools, gels into something that is icy cold.
Hate.
And then I turn, spinning on my heel toward the path up the tumbled rocks. Listening. Maybe that was an echo, a trick of the falling water. Maybe it was the draft. Or maybe that was a voice I just heard, far off down the cartage way.
I sit still, stunned, then I throw off the blanket. What just happened? What was I doing? What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. Not like I should have been. I want to hit something, preferably something that will hurt me back. But I don’t. I lie in the weird, drying grass, arms over my head in the cold, and count the ways that I am an idiot.
Samara was vulnerable. She is traumatized, and I have a feeling the brother isn’t the half of it. She is of Canaan, the people I’m supposed to be studying, objectively, like a scientist, and not only have I not been objective at all—as Jill saw fit to point out—I’ve smashed every rule I ever swore to gaining her trust, only now to go and irreparably damage it. And there is Jill, lying still and sick just a few meters away. How unfair is that? And wrong. And the sad thing is, given the opportunity, I’d be tempted to do it again.
I’m worse than an idiot. I am a fool.
And then I hear the softest crackle in my ear.
I sit up, hand to the side of my head. I’d almost forgotten the earpiece was there. But that was definitely, for just a second, a signal. I scramble to find the glasses, tangled up where Samara left them in the blanket, get them on my face, and listen. Nothing. I move around the campsite, hear another fizz and hiss. And when I look up at the hole in the ceiling, where the fiery sky is shining in, a voice full of static says, “Beckett?”
“Dad?” I whisper. I look around, but I can’t see Samara. Jill is asleep, exactly as I left her. “Dad! Is that you?”
“Beck! Are you okay? Where are … ” His voice dissolves into white noise.
“I can barely hear you. I’m okay. We’re underground.”
“Can you talk?”
I glance around one more time for Samara. “Yes.”
“Do you have the … ” I hear a jab of static. “… of the city?”
“What?”
“The position of the city?”
“No. We’re not there yet.”
“Listen, Beck, and let me know that you understand. Do not send the coordinates to the Commander. Give them only to me.”
“What?”
“Only to me, Beckett! There isn’t much time. Your mom is watching the door. Something is wrong. It’s not what they told … ” He’s gone again, then back with a popping noise. “… get in touch if I can. Take the glasses off transmit, so they can’t send a skimmer and up … ” This time the crackle hurts my ear. “… still with the local?”
“What?”
“Is the local you’re with hostile?”
If he means the local I showed our technology to, told about Earth, kissed, and who is now running around somewhere in this cave wearing my jumpsuit, then it’s a more complicated question than Dad could guess. And basically the end of protocol as we know it. “No,” I say.
“Is Jill all right?”
Also complicated. “Yes.”
“I have to … ”
The connection fizzes. “Dad, why are you watching the door? What’s happening?”
“Listen, Beck … come back to the base camp.”
“What?”
“Don’t come back to the base … or the Centauri. We … ”
“Dad?”
“… off transmit … when I can.”
“Dad!”
But there’s no static this time. No crack or fizz. I think he’s shut down the connection, and it gives me a bad feeling, deep down in my stomach.
I take the glasses off transmit, like he told me. Something stinks about this. So much that it reeks. Dad just told me to break orders, and that is not like Dr. Sean Rodriguez. Or not without a good reason. And if they were having trouble tracking us, setting the glasses on transmit would only help, wouldn’t it? Because if we did wander into a pocket of signal, like we must have just then, it would ping the base camp, and then they’d know exactly where we are … He doesn’t want Commander Faye to know where we are. He doesn’t want her to know where the city is. Why?
And suddenly I’m not thinking of Samara’s trauma anymore. I’m thinking of her abilities. What would Earth do with a people with perfect recall? Who could pick up the education of a doctor in 185 days? Keep precise time in their heads and remember every detail of a map they saw when they were four? Something tells me a military could get really creative with that. And so could the Commander. If Earth found out the people of New Canaan were that valuable, I’m not sure their culture would survive it.
But Dad couldn’t know about memory in New Canaan, and neither could Faye. So what’s going on with the Centauri?
I stare up at the hole in the ceiling. If Dad just shut down that connection because he was caught, and if another ping or two went out before I turned off transmit, then the Commander could know exactly where we are. Right now. And I have Samara. And we’re close to the city.
And then the perimeter alarm flashes in my vision.
I run across the cavern, and before I get halfway back to the grasses, Beckett is coming out to meet me. I see from his face that he knows. His technology has warned him. His gaze darts behind me, toward the cartage way.
“Is there another passage?” I ask.
“One. Over there.” He nods his head at the other end of the cavern. “But they’re coming that way, too.”
“Is there another way out?”
He shakes his head.
Trapped. “How long?”
“Six or seven minutes, at a guess.”
“What do you have?” I say. “Tell me what you can use to get us out!”
I want him to do something I’ve never thought of. Pull something out of his pack I couldn’t have imagined. I see him thinking, searching his mind. He’s not finding anything. His chest moves up and down, stretching the shirt, jaw clenched tight. I don’t Know what he’s working himself up to do, but I don’t like it. Then he says, “Tell me why you’re running.”
“Because I Know about the Forgetting when I shouldn’t.”