21.
Memory modification is an extremely advanced form of control. Much more than suggestion, which is what the transmissions do. MemMod is only done to those who have a memory They need them to forget. I know, because the one time Ty came home, she’d told me she couldn’t find her way. She’d suspected They’d been performing MemMod on her, but she couldn’t remember what for.
Her eyes were cloudy—like Zenn’s. Ty said she couldn’t see, and I’d had to lead her to her bedroom. I brought her lunch and then dinner. And the whole time, all I could think was how I was going to kill the Thinker that had erased my sister’s memories.
I begged her not to go back, but she said she had to. I’d never see her again. After that, I stopped plugging into the transmissions. I dyed my hair. Zenn and I snuck out and stayed up all night just to watch the sun rise the next morning. We skipped rocks in the lake. I went to parties and stole shoes and anything else I could think of to show that no one—and I mean no one—could control me. Through it all, Zenn had been there with me, my silent partner. My perfect match.
But now I wasn’t sure of anything. My memory of that day in the park had been modified, stolen. They’d taken my memory of Zenn and his birthday present—and I use that term loosely. Even boiled cabbage is better than a kiss of betrayal, a gold-plated tracker, and a whispered word of MemMod.
And who’d done that to me? My match, the person I loved and trusted the most after my dad disappeared.
Jag stood straight, his eyes boring into mine. So cold. Finally the agents pulled him away.
Zenn pushed and prodded me in another direction. Two agents walked with him, and they joked about how easy it had been to find us. I tuned them out and thought about what might happen to Jag.
“Worried about your boyfriend?” Zenn asked when he caught me looking back.
“Yeah. When did you go all Green?”
He looked shocked, but quickly wiped the emotion away. “Please. I saw you with him.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Sleeping in a tree with him. Vi, are you really so desperate?”
“At least I didn’t kiss him to cover my ass.”
He flinched like I’d slapped him. He blinked a couple of times and fell back with his squad. The thing is, the words hurt me as much as him.
The facility was a lot farther away than it looked. It took most of the night to get there, mostly because I kept tripping on purpose.
“Knock it off,” Zenn said, pulling me to my feet once again. “My mission needs to go smoothly.”
And there it was. I was Zenn’s mission. Probably his first, and he needed to make a good impression for the big boys in the Association—for Thane.
The facility stood five stories tall, shiny and silver, made with seamless tech. Zenn led me inside with his traitorous hand on my shoulder. He kept glancing from left to right as if he expected an ambush, but none came.
Icy air blew in my face. It didn’t cool the heat spreading from my chest into my limbs. The tech felt different here. New. Bad.
The stark walls lay bare: no art, no color, no hint that anyone had ever been here before. An alarm sounded, and four Mechs whizzed out of a door in the far left corner.
“I thought you said she was clean,” Zenn hissed to another agent.
“She is.”
“Where’s Jag?” I demanded.
“Who?” Zenn’s eyes looked like he’d had an optical-enhancement that didn’t turn out so well. Blurred. Foggy.
Each Mech’s siren erupted as they scanned my left wrist.
“I thought you said it wasn’t activated,” Zenn shouted over the whoop-whoop-whoop! of the Mechs.
“That’s what that guy said!” I yelled back.
“What guy?”
“Him!” I pointed to Baldie as he appeared next to me, wearing his Greenie robes.
Baldie reset each Mech, silencing the alarms. “Thank you, Specialist Bower, you may go.”
Zenn stood there, blinking fast. That obviously wasn’t what he’d expected. “Who are you?”
“I’m invisible. You should go now.” Baldie stood with a smile on his face that only touched his lips. The tech lights glared on his scalp. Tension and power emanated from him.
Zenn opened his mouth to protest. Then the defiance slid off his face, and he turned to the other agents. “We should go now.” The way he repeated Baldie’s words screamed of control.
I puzzled over exactly what Zenn had done on his own and what he’d been told to do. I wondered which of the words he’d said to me came from his mind or from someone else’s. I wondered if he knew my dad was Thane Myers or not. I wondered if it mattered. I still loved him. I still couldn’t stand idly by and watch him be controlled.
“Welcome, Violet,” Baldie said after Zenn had gone. “We have a lot to talk about.” He gestured toward the door in the far corner. His voice could definitely influence me—if I let it.
“Like I’m going anywhere with you. Where’s Jag?”
He turned and took a step toward me. “Trust me, it’s in your best interest if we move to a more secure location.” His eyes darted around the sterile room, as though expecting danger.
“I want to see Jag first.” I moved toward the exit. Baldie appeared in front of me in a flicker of light.
That was teleportation without a terminal. Way advanced in the tech department.
“How did you do that?”
He held up his left hand. He wore a wide silver ring on his middle finger. A symbol adorned it—two looping snakes with no beginning and no end.
“Jag will be fine. The Special Forces pose no threat to him—or you. Their job was to bring you safely here.”
“Then where is he?”
Baldie stepped forward and held out an identical ring. “I’ll give you this if you’ll please just go through that door.” He nodded behind him to the door in the corner.
Something didn’t add up. He’d give me an advanced teleporter ring just to walk through a door?
“Yeah, it’s probably not activated,” I said. “Like my tag. Oh, wait. That is activated. You said it wasn’t.”
“It’s not.”
“Then what’s up with the Mechs?”
“They merely sense bar codes. All tags have a bar code, I believe.”
Yeah, he was right, but I still didn’t believe a single word he said. “I set off the alarm at the border. Explain that.”
“We have Mechs stationed at each entrance to the Goodgrounds.” He glared back at me, then gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”
I folded my legs underneath me. “I’m not going anywhere until I see Jag.”
“Fine.” Baldie nodded to the wall. A projection screen brightened, and a picture of Jag appeared. He wore a blue shirt and lay sleeping on a bed under white sheets. Iron bars barely showed at the top of the screen.
“That’s nothing,” I said. “That looks like Ward D. No. I want to see him, in person.”
“He’s through that door.”
“Then get him the hell out here!”
He glared down at me. For a second I thought he’d throw me over his shoulder and carry me through the door. I stared back, willing him to do what I wanted. His eyes glazed over, and he nodded again. A few minutes later, Jag walked through the door, wearing a black shirt. That lame projection was Ward D.
Jag didn’t speak. He wouldn’t look at me as I sprinted toward him. Tech-cuffs still circled his wrists, and his right eye looked puffy and bloodshot.
“Jag!” I flung myself at him, but he had no way to catch me. We stumbled backward together, landing in a pile on the floor. “I didn’t know, Jag, I swear I didn’t,” I breathed in his ear. “Zenn tricked me. I didn’t—oof!”
“No talking.” Baldie shoved me away from Jag, using himself as a barrier between us.
Jag kept his icy gaze trained on the blank wall behind me, silent, as Baldie helped him stand.
“You’ve seen him, now go.” Baldie pushed me behind Jag, who was already being herded through the door by two Mechs.
“Jag!” I yelled. “We have to stay—” Baldie slapped on a silencer and the rest of my words died.
Jag’s left arm twitched, but he didn’t break stride or turn around.
Baldie steered us down a long hallway (un)decorated exactly as the main entry. Doors bordered both sides. All white, all closed, all unlabeled.
At the end of the hall, a waist-high silver desk broke the monotony of the walls. Baldie tapped on an electro-board. Images flashed to life, filling at least a dozen projection screens simultaneously.
I moaned with the spike in techtricity. A moment later the fireball in my chest burned.
But I couldn’t look away from the pictures.
A five-year-old Tyson and a three-year-old me played in the water, dipping our feet and splashing each other. I could almost hear our laughter. A sob broke from my throat, mingled with a smile.
A young boy—obviously Jag with his playful grin—played ball with his brothers Pace and Blaze. His blueberry eyes sparkled in the sun with freedom.
In front of me, Jag clenched his fists.
My dad, exactly how I remembered him, filled the screen. Clean-cut brown hair. Crinkly green eyes. Alabaster skin. The tears flowed freely now, and I raised my hand halfway toward the picture before letting it fall back to my side. He wasn’t that man anymore. I wasn’t sure who he was. The man on the back of Jag’s book? Thane Myers? Or the man in my memory? He couldn’t be all three.
A man and a woman appeared next. I’d seen the man in Jag’s nightmares. His parents. Jag’s shoulders shook as he broke apart again. The stupid silencer kept me from consoling him verbally. I laid my hand on his back, and he didn’t shrug me off.
Another picture filled the screen. A man sat in a red armchair. The middle Greenie, wearing the black robes of a Director. And—now that my memory was complete—the man who’d taken Ty away.
Jag was still cuffed, so I slipped my hand around his waist in an effort to calm my rage.
The projection began to move and speak. “Hello, Mr. Barque and Miss Schoenfeld. Welcome to the Tech Production Facility, located in the Badlands. You’re here to learn how you can serve the Association.”
I reached up and removed the silencer, something not lightly done. Pain ripped through my neck and shoulders, and I screamed.
“Now, Violet,” the Director said. “Sometimes silence is called for.”
“You killed Ty,” I managed to gasp out. “Screw you.”
Jag chuckled. “Ditto.”