Unchanged

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  To my readers,

  For believing anything is possible.

  Even the crazy stories I make up in my head.

  Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

  —Helen Keller

  0

  BEFORE

  The girl didn’t fight. She knew it was pointless. She watched the doctor prepare the needle, drawing up the Cv9 into the reservoir and inserting it directly into her vein.

  Of course, there were more modern ways to inject sedatives but he preferred the tactile feel of the needle. The small popping sound it made as it penetrated the skin. The pressure of manually compelling the drug into the bloodstream.

  He could trust his own fingers.

  He couldn’t say the same for much else.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “This won’t hurt. And you won’t remember a thing.”

  The serum worked fast. The dose was significant. As she drifted to sleep, she held one face in her mind. The face she longed to remember. And also longed to forget.

  She would wake up chained. She would wake up changed.

  She knew this.

  The smile on her lips as her mind slipped into darkness was her last act of rebellion.

  The doctor watched her vitals on a monitor. When she was fully under, he sent for the president.

  The slender blond man entered the room ten minutes later, limping against a cane. It was a vast improvement over the mechanical chair that carried him only yesterday.

  “She’s ready,” the doctor informed him.

  The president walked unsteadily around the edge of the hovering metal slab that held the unconscious girl. Without uttering a word, he gazed down upon her. An ignorant bystander might even describe the look in his eyes as adoring, particularly as he reached down to brush a strand of golden-brown hair from her face.

  But the longer he watched her, the less innocuous his stare became. Hardening with each passing second. Until icy blue stones glared out from the sockets where his eyes had once been.

  She had betrayed him for the last time. He would not make the same mistakes again.

  “I have a Memory Coder standing by,” the doctor informed him. “I’ve ordered a full wipe to be initiated on your command.”

  “No.” The president’s response was swift and stern.

  The doctor was certain he had misunderstood. “No?”

  “We’ve tried that before. Countless times. And it always leads us right back here.”

  “But surely this time the Coders can—”

  The president silenced him with a shaky raise of his hand. “She keeps her memories. All of them. Restore everything we have in the server bunker.”

  “Everything?”

  “Guilt is a powerful weapon. Her memories will be a constant reminder of her disloyalty. Every time she thinks of him, I want her to feel that betrayal. Tell the Coder we’re going to implement the new procedure.”

  The doctor squirmed. “Sir, with all due respect, that procedure hasn’t been fully tested and—”

  “That will be all.”

  The doctor stood in stunned silence until he finally managed to utter an acknowledgment of the order.

  The president returned his gaze to the girl, reaching out to gently stroke her silken cheek. Then, so the doctor couldn’t hear, he bent down and whispered in her ear, “This time you won’t be given the luxury of forgetting.”

  PART 1

  THE UNKNOWING

  1

  UPDATED

  ONE YEAR LATER …

  The air is harsh and blistering, whipping around me as I cross the barren field. There are no buildings to thwart the desert wind, and today it seems angrier than most. I could outrun it. I’m certainly capable. But I keep my current pace.

  I’m in no rush to get there.

  The compound is almost unrecognizable out here. The landscaped pathways ended a half mile back. The sleek, reflective surfaces of the Aerospace Sector were the last signs of civilization.

  Now it’s just …

  Nothingness.

  But I feel reassured knowing the fortifications that mark the boundaries lie beyond the hill to my left.

  There used to be a time when the walls of the compound kept me in—when I thought of them as prison walls and tried to escape. Now, it’s as though someone has lifted a veil of deception from my eyes and I can finally see the truth.

  The walls are there to keep others out.

  Those who don’t understand me. Those who want to hurt me. Those who are unlike me.

  Of course, there are plenty of people on this side of the wall who are unlike me, too, but they can be trusted. Their bodies and minds may not be as strong as mine, but they still think like me. They still serve the Objective.

  The dry shrubs crunch beneath my feet as I approach the cottage. The ten-foot wall around the perimeter remains standing but the gate is no longer locked.

  I run my fingertips along the warm unyielding surface of the concrete, feeling the rough edges prickle my skin.

  He used to climb these walls.

  The boy from my memories.

  That’s how he got to me. How he broke into my world and corrupted my brain with impossible notions. Impossible dreams. Promises of a life outside these barriers.

  As if I could ever live anywhere else.

  This is where I belong. Where I’ve always belonged. And now that my memories have been restored and the truth has been revealed to me, my brain is stronger, my goals refortified. I am no longer susceptible to bewitching lies.

  I can no longer be swayed.

  They fixed me. They introduced me to my true purpose. And I am grateful.

  I push open the heavy steel gate of what was once the Restricted Sector and slip inside. The white cottage is smaller than I remember. As though it’s physically shrinking day by day, its importance diminishing in my mind. This is the first time I’ve visited in over a year. The first time I’ve been able to gather the strength to.

  I’m hoping that today it will remind me of where I started. Who I was. How far I’ve come.

  I’m no longer the vulnerable, naïve little girl who had to be locked in a cage for her own protection.

  I am strong now. A fully functioning member of the Objective.

  A soldier.

  Even if he were here, even if he had found his way back, it wouldn’t matter. I would be able to resist him now. I will never fall prey to his charms again.

  That stupid girl is gone.

  I am the better version.

  The grass surrounding the cottage is overgrown and burnt to a brown crisp by the desert sun. No one comes here anymore. There is no reason to. The Restricted Sector of the compound was originally built to shield me from the world. But ever since the announcement of the Unveiling three months ago, I no longer have to be shielded.

  I exist.

  And the world knows.

  Now the sector
remains abandoned. All of my training, testing, and recreation takes place in the other sectors.

  When I step through the front door of the house, I find the rooms barren. They must have emptied them, redistributing the furniture to other parts of the compound. What few possessions I had were undoubtedly thrown away. Which is for the best. That was the darkest time in my life. I don’t want mementos.

  I walk from room to room, my legs wobbly and unreliable beneath me. I may collapse at any minute from the sheer heaviness of this place. But I push myself to keep going.

  I stand in the middle of what used to be the living room and close my eyes. I can smell the scent of my own betrayal. My weakness is steeped in these walls. It makes me gag, but I force myself to breathe it in, allow it to settle in my lungs. The shame trickles through my body like a cold insect. I hate how ugly it feels inside of me but I don’t fight it. I don’t push it out. I only draw it in deeper. Letting it saturate me.

  This is exactly what I need to make sure I stay strong. Focused. Committed. This is an important time for the Objective. And I won’t allow myself to falter again.

  Outside, the sun is already setting, the bright gold orb kissing the pink horizon. As I step onto the porch, my gaze is pulled toward a patch of indented grass on the far side of the lawn. I know from accessing the memories of my life before my rehabilitation that there used to be a white marble bench there.

  The boy and I used to hide things under it before we escaped. It was our way of communicating with each other without the scientists knowing.

  Another method of flagrant rebellion on my part.

  A new onslaught of guilt punches me in the chest. I clench my fists and grit my teeth, soaking in the sensation, letting it fuel the fire of determination I keep lit inside me at all times.

  The bench is long gone, but something is strangely drawing me to the spot where it once stood. Like a magnetic force field pulling me in, rendering me helpless in its grasp.

  Could something still be buried there after all this time?

  The thought enters my mind before I can stop it and I feel my feet drag as I approach, my mind and body at war.

  A small object in the grass where the bench once stood catches my eye. I walk over and bend down, plucking the small blossom from the ground and holding it up. The white feathery surface sparkles as the vanishing sunlight shines through it.

  “Dandelion,” I say, accessing the correct name from my mind.

  I smile at how easily the word comes to me. The uploads I receive weekly provide me with more data than I’ll ever need. Now that I am trustworthy, I have been given full clearance to all the knowledge I desire. My access to data is no longer limited.

  I search for more information, quickly discovering that a dandelion is a weed that was eradicated thanks to advances made in Diotech’s Agricultural Sector.

  But evidently they weren’t able to eliminate all of them.

  “Weed,” I say curiously, rolling the thick, rough stem between my thumb and forefinger.

  The memory of the first time I saw one explodes into my mind. I was with him. The boy called Lyzender. The day we met. Right here in this yard.

  He told me to wish on it.

  He told me a lot of things.

  “It’s more beautiful than other plants,” I remark, clutching the stem.

  His eyes find mine. Endless brown eyes. “It most certainly is.”

  I wrap my palm around the downy white flower and squeeze, crushing the soft fibers against my hand. When I unfurl my fingers, there’s nothing but a sickly grayish pulp left.

  “I wish I had never fallen,” I announce to the empty yard, wiping my hand against my pant leg and dropping the barren stem to the ground. There’s a satisfying squish as my shoe lands on top of it. “I wish we had never met.”

  2

  AMISS

  I take the long route back to the Residential Sector, weaving through the glinting Aerospace hangars whose surfaces always distort my reflection in unsettling ways. Turning me into a disfigured monster with one giant eye and no neck.

  I’m one of the few people who walk around the compound. Most people prefer to travel by hovercart, due to the heat and distance between sectors, but I actually enjoy walking. The distances don’t bother me and my body was designed to withstand severe climates.

  I used to like to walk the perimeters, alongside the VersaScreens so I could see the world on the other side. But ever since the announcement of the upcoming Unveiling, the world on the other side is populated with news crews and protesters and people wanting to steal a peek inside our walls.

  Even though I know they can’t see through—the screens are programmed for one-way visibility—it still frightens me to walk past them. I can feel their energy in the air like buzzing flies around a dead carcass. There’s a franticness about their desperation that unnerves me.

  Dr. A says that’s normal. I’m allowed to be afraid.

  “Fear doesn’t equate with weakness,” he told me. “It equates with obedience. You want to be obedient, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “I want to serve the Objective.”

  He smiled. “We all do. And your distrust of strangers will keep you safe.”

  I know I won’t be able to stay hidden behind those walls for much longer, though. The Unveiling is in two days. Then they will see my face. Then they will know me.

  And that is the part that frightens me most of all.

  I cut across the Agricultural Sector, making a wide arc around the cottonwood tree in the corner. I’ve never liked that tree. It looks like a pudgy old ogre with too many twisted limbs. And when the sun splinters through the branches at just the right angle, I swear I can hear it screaming. A shadowy, piercing sound that vanishes the second I turn around. Like the ghost of an echo.

  The delicious scents of the freshly grown herbs waft from the vents of the hydroponic dome as I walk. Dr. A says one day we won’t need to grow food at all. Computers will be able to engineer molecules from raw materials and shape them into anything we want to eat.

  “Kind of like we did with you,” he likes to say, as though I’m a hot plate of superberry flatcakes, molecularly processed to order.

  I like when Dr. A talks about the future. It implies that the Objective will be a success. And really, we’re not that far off. Diotech already mastered the engineering of synthetic meat after the government outlawed the breeding of livestock for food seven years ago. I learned about it from one of my uploads on agricultural history.

  From here, with my enhanced vision, I can see all the way to the northwest gate, the main entrance of the compound, where the majority of the media crews have gathered. They’re all hoping to gain access or corner someone for an interview to put on the Feed. I know they will never be allowed inside. Director Raze’s security force is top-notch.

  “They’ll have to step over my dead body before I let them get near you, princess,” he says to me. Always with a wink.

  As I exit the Agricultural Sector and near the polished metallic archway of the Medical Sector, I stop when a familiar nagging sensation starts to tickle the pit of my stomach. I turn around, almost expecting to find someone standing behind me, but there’s no one there.

  Yet the feeling persists.

  I spin in a slow circle, letting my flawless eyes zero in on every planted flower, every curved ceiling of every building, each individual blade of grass along the pathway. I can feel my shoulders tighten, my body clench.

  What are you looking for? I silently ask myself.

  But there is no reply. I can’t answer the question.

  I can never answer the question.

  All I know is that almost every day something compels me to look.

  I once asked Dr. A about holes.

  He thought I was referring to the holes that the rodents dig in the desert floor outside the compound and offered me an upload about animal habitats, but I shook my head. “No. I mean, holes inside of me.”

  “There
are no holes inside of you, Sera,” he replied sharply. “I made you perfect, remember?”

  I was frustrated that I couldn’t make him understand. “Something is missing,” was the only way I could think to explain it.

  “Nothing is missing,” he snapped, anger unexpectedly flashing in his eyes. “I’ve given you everything you could ever ask for. Are you ungrateful for all the luxuries you have here?”

  I knew instantly that I had said the wrong thing. I often do. “I’m sorry,” I offered, desperate to reverse the distress I had caused him. “You’re right. Nothing is missing. I am very grateful.”

  I never asked him about holes again.

  I jog down the pathway through the Medical Sector, keeping careful watch on my pace. Dr. A says when I’m walking around the compound, it’s important for me to hide my enhancements as much as possible so I don’t make anyone else uncomfortable.

  On my left is the grand, ornate building that houses the memory labs. It’s by far the largest, most well-appointed structure in the sector. If appearances are any indication of funding allocation, memories are definitely high on Dr. A’s priority list.

  And I know why.

  So much goes on within these compound walls that the outside world can never know about. So many secrets are buried inside the sleek surfaces of the labs, you’d need more than just a mini-military to keep them guarded.

  I used to be one of those secrets.

  Director Raze’s team is tasked with preventing breaches. But what happens when those preventative measures fail?

  That’s when the Memory Coders step in.

  As I pass, I peer through the synthoglass walls at the pristine white entry hallway that leads to the labs where Sevan Sidler and his team of Memory Coders work to keep Diotech’s secrets safe. The synthetic tile floors are so clean the pillars on either side are reflected in their surface, making the tall posts appear as though they plunge deep into the ground below.