“Bethany,” her father said. “Calm down. Ms. Malik assures me they had nothing to do with this unfortunate incident with the zombies, and I’m assuring her that you know the meaning of the word discretion. Now, if you could go upstairs and check on your mother, she’s had a really taxing day.”
That was a low blow, and everyone in this room knew it. Bethany weathered it like a pro and flounced off, without once breaking her cover. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn she was a spoiled, shallow little princess who would forget all of this for a trip to St. Barts.
I just hoped the woman in heels bought it as well.
“She’s charming,” the woman in question told Bethany’s father. “Really. I can see why you enrolled her in the protocol.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be there when we attempted inoculation,” Dr. Davis said, a vein in his forehead bulging. “It was a mistake—very nearly a tragic mistake.”
I didn’t know whether it was comforting that Bethany’s father hadn’t specifically infected her, or whether it was disturbing that he thought infecting other teenagers was okay.
“Shall we proceed to round two?” he asked, moving on. “Or should I expect to be retired soon, like Dr. Vincent?”
“Dr. Vincent moved to Florida,” the woman said, her voice crisp.
Bethany’s father met her gaze. “Sure he did.”
Listening to the sounds of the room—their words, their heartbeats, mine and Skylar’s—it would have been so easy to give up my hiding spot and make myself known.
So easy to tear out their throats.
Fight it, Kali.
I absorbed Zev’s words. I fought it. And then the woman in heels stepped directly into my line of sight. If she turned, even a bit, to the side, she’d be able to see me.
As it was, I could see her.
She had dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her features were even and pretty; her eyes were soft and brown, just a shade darker then her perfect, glowing skin. She was wearing a suit.
I’d seen her before—at the ice rink. At the school. I’d seen her reflection. I’d seen her when I was on the verge of passing out, but I’d never been this close, never fully taken in her features, never looked straight at her, my mind completely my own.
I’ve seen her before, I realized. Not just at the school. Not just at the ice rink. Seen her, seen her, seen her.
The sense of déjà vu was so strong, so violent, that I couldn’t move.
“We’ll hold off on round two,” she said, and her voice washed over me—far too familiar for comfort. “We still don’t know what happened to the body. If one of our competitors has acquired it …,” she trailed off. “Well, then, you can look forward to your retirement.”
“Rena.” Dr. Davis said the woman’s first name. I recognized the attempt at intimacy and might have read into it more, but for the fact that those four little letters—R-E-N-A—unlocked something incomprehensible and vast in the corridors of my mind.
She’s just a child, Rena.
Almost finished, baby.
Can you say gun?
I’d seen this woman before—not just at the ice rink or at the school, but in my dreams, all of them, for as long as I could remember. I’d held her face—not this detailed, not this clear—in my mind for what seemed like forever.
She’d been the memory I’d least wanted to lose.
The woman in heels—Rena Malik—was my mother.
25
A lifetime of broken memories came crashing down around me—flashes of the past, things I’d seen in dreams, pretty pictures I’d painted for myself. The air was so thick with it, I couldn’t breathe.
Beside me, Skylar squeezed my hand, and I looked down, concentrating on the way her fingers—delicate, pale—looked interwoven with mine.
Do you know what this is, Kali-Kay? Can you say gun?
I wanted to bring my knees to my chest and my hand to my mouth. I wanted to rock back on my heels. I wanted to throw up. But I couldn’t do any of that, because Bethany’s father was standing five feet away—right next to my mother.
“I don’t like being threatened, Rena.”
How could I have missed this? Even looking at a distorted reflection, even on the verge of passing out—I should have known.
“I don’t like threatening you, Paul, but you knew the score when you signed up. You knew we were on the cutting edge. You, better than anyone, know that there’s a cost to every scientific advancement.”
I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but there was a part of me that had always thought she was dead. I’d thought—stupidly, naively—that if she was really still out there, she would have made some effort to see me.
To know me.
But in all of my imaginings, I’d never considered the possibility that she might be alive and well and playing around with the forces of nature, that she might be the kind of person capable of threatening to “retire” someone if his research fell into a competitor’s hands.
That’s not all she ordered, my insides whispered, and I thought about the view from Bethany’s car, about the men in suits, about lying in pieces on the side of the road, waiting for my body to make the switch.
You don’t know that she ordered that, I told myself. You don’t know that she’s in charge.
That was the problem—I didn’t know anything.
“Costs are acceptable,” Dr. Davis said. “But let me be very clear, with you and with your employers: my daughter is not collateral damage. We all have our limits. That’s mine.”
The woman who was my mother smiled. “So noted.”
I wanted to ask her if she knew—who I was, what I was. I wanted to ask what her limits were and if I was collateral damage.
I wanted to scream—or maybe die.
It was one thing to think that your mother had left you when you were three years old, that she’d walked out the door and never even looked back.
It was another thing to think she’d never loved you in the first place.
Almost finished, baby.
We’re going to play a game, Kali.
Mommy’s secret girl.
The memories came faster and more violently into my mind. I choked on them. My eyes burned, worse than they had in the sun, and I realized that I was on the verge of tears.
They hung there, unshed, in my eyes, and I willed something calm and cool and animal to take over my body. I wasn’t going to cry.
I wasn’t going to remember.
You’re all right, Kali. Zev’s voice wasn’t gentle; I couldn’t have taken it if it were. He was matter-of-fact, and I accepted his words at face value. I’m here. You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.
“You do your job, Paul. Let me take care of mine. Keep your daughter on her leash, and we’ll all be just fine.”
The words rhymed, making the ultimatum sound like some kind of sick nursery rhyme and threatening to send me back in time—to lying on my bed, while she brushed my hair out of my face.
She sang me to sleep, I thought dully.
And then she was gone—not just gone from my memories, or gone from my life, but gone from this room. The woman in heels—Rena Malik, my mother—followed Paul Davis out of the room, leaving Skylar and me hidden behind the hard drives, neither one of us willing to say a word out loud.
Seconds crept into minutes, and finally, I let out a long and jagged breath.
“You okay?” Skylar asked quietly, and I realized I was still holding her hand, still squeezing it.
“Sorry,” I said, letting go.
“Sorry you’re not okay?” Skylar asked, eyeing me with concern.
“Sorry about your hand,” I corrected. She looked down, surprised, as if she’d forgotten she even had a hand. Then she smiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “I have two.” To demonstrate, she held up her left hand, and I smiled—or at least, I tried to.
The simple motion—my lips curving upward—brought bile into my throat. How could I smile? How could I do anything except lie there and hurt?