Persistence of Memory

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

“It might take some time, Ashe, but he’ll remember who I am. Who we are. I’ll help him remember.” Ashe sighs, a lusty, exasperated sound. “They’ve erased his memories,” he tries to explain, but this Tobin is stubborn, thinking he can help me remember who I am when the chip is still stuck into my brain. If only it were that easy, I want to tell him. “You can’t just kiss them back. Your love can’t make everything right.” “Why not?” Tobin kneels by my bed, and I fight the urge to laugh at him, to let them know I’m listening to their every word. Because you just can’t, I want to say, as I feel his hand slip into mine. His grip is strong and comforting, and for a moment I almost believe he might do it, he might be able to bring back who I was before. I can feel determination curled in his fingers—he seems strong enough and stubborn enough to stop the sun in its tracks if he sets his mind to it. So maybe he can help me remember who I used to be. He raises my hand and kisses my knuckles, his lips soft against my skin. I feel his fingers trace the tattoo on the inside of my wrist, his touch light and feathery. Did I used to love this man? The way he touches me is so intimate, so familiar. Has he loved me all these years I’ve been locked away, knowing I was forced to forget him? And does he honestly think after all that I’ve been through, I can remember how to love him once again?

BOOKS BY J. M. SNYDER The Powers of Love Persistence Of Memory

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY BY J. M. SNYDER

AMBER Q UILL PRESS, LLC http://www.amberquill.com

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY AN AMBER HEAT BOOK This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. Amber Quill Press, LLC http://www.amberquill.com http://www.amberheat.com All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review. Copyright © 2007 by by J. M. Snyder ISBN 978-1-60272-027-5 Cover Art © 2007 Trace Edward Zaber Layout and Formatting provided by: ElementalAlchemy.com

PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For J & L. Forever

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CHAPTER 1 Free. The word races through my mind, looking for something to connect with, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard or even thought it that I have no concept of freedom anymore. Even now it amazes me and I can’t stop to think about it or I might freeze and then they’ll catch me and I’ll lose this wind rushing against my hot skin, this grass swishing against my legs, this burning in my lungs as I run. I can’t stop, not now, not until the smoky buildings that block out the night sky are just bad memories. Not until the steel fencing that looms in the darkness is behind me, miles in the past, and the alarms that ring around me, raising the guards, are muffled screams I hear 1

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only in nightmares. When the first shouts cry above the klaxons, I jump for the fence. Even though I know it’s deactivated, I half-expect to feel its electric bite as my fingers fold through the chained links. How long will it take someone to realize the current has been cut? Long enough for me to vault over the top, I hope. With moves I’ve rehearsed over and over again in my mind, I climb to the top of the fence, risking a glance back at the armed guards who begin to pour from the building. The hard echoes of boot heels on concrete ring through the courtyard, and the first shots ping into the night as I reach the top of the fence. There’s no wire, nothing keeping me in, nothing but the way they tried to break my spirit and drag me down. But it was all a lie. Everything—from the moment I came here, I’ve been living a lie, their lie. And I almost believed it. Almost. My hands close over the steel rod at the top of the fence and I’m free, I’m free… Below me the guards are shouting at each other, their guns aimed at me, the shots loud around me in the night, but I’m almost free— Pain explodes through my leg, flames licking across my thigh like a wildfire, and in a graceless heap I tumble over the top of the fence. I can’t catch myself in time; my hands scrape helplessly against steel as I fall. When I hit the ground, pain shoots up my back, balls into fists behind my eyes, and punches my mind so that I can’t think, can’t act, can’t breathe. The voice in my head tells me to stop, stand still and await directions, wait for the guards to take me back. 2

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Back inside, back in there. My body is numb, listening to the reasonable, bland voice I’ve heard since they imprisoned me. The voice that tells me the lies. The voice that keeps me from being free. The dull scrape of steel on concrete as the gate opens goads me into action. Like one of their bullets, I fling myself into the dark of night, stumbling across the tall grass, heading for the trees and underbrush beyond. I’ve measured the distance in my mind; I’ve calculated the steps. But I hadn’t counted on the pain eating away at my leg, gnawing on my bones like a hungry mutt, and as I run I try to shake it free from my body. I tell myself I don’t feel the blood that drenches my pants, I don’t feel the ache in my head. I don’t feel anything, I don’t think, I don’t even breathe anymore, because each breath is labored and gasped, flames that burn down my throat and sting my lungs, filling them like a dragon’s bellows. I just need to get to the trees, lose myself in their growth and then I’ll be free. A word I almost forgot existed. A concept I told myself didn’t apply to me. The alarms fade in the distance, and the angry shouts of the guards become lost in the rustling branches I push aside as I tumble into the woods. I let the word roll through my mind, looking for something to define it, something to cling to. Free. *

*

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I stumble to a stop somewhere miles from the facility—I 3

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don’t know how long I’ve been running but it’s almost dawn now, the air around me starting to lighten with a rosy hue that I used to see from the window of my cell. A pinkish, bluish tinge that will burn off as the sun rises, but right now it’s cottony and clings to the trees with a low fog that’s hard to navigate. At least in the darkness I could sense the trees around me, I could dodge out of their way, I could open my mind and feel the forest and know where the guards were, how much distance I’d managed to put between them and me. But in this fog, time is blurred, trees jump out from odd angles, startling me into another direction, until I’m sure I’m running in circles around the same patch of wood and the sun will rise to find me frantic. The guards will catch up then—I feel them breathing down on me like hell hounds, and the thought of returning terrifies me. No one has ever escaped before. I don’t know what they’ll do to me when they find me. If they find me. I have to keep that in mind, that if, because if I can help it, I’m never going back. For five years I lived in their prison, I ate their food and wore their regulation clothes—the one-piece gray jumpsuit covers me now, even though there’s a gaping hole torn at my hip, edged black with my own blood. Five years I trained to become one of them, one of the elite, one of the soldiers who kept the world in check, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I tried to fight back and they wouldn’t let me, they stuck the voice into my head and erased everything I used to be, everything I used to know, and made me anew. Or rather, tried to make me over in 4

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their image, but they didn’t know how stubborn I am. I didn’t want to be created from their god. I clung to who I was, who I was meant to be. That’s how I managed to escape. Because I held onto just one thing from the time before, the time when I was free, the time I lost and don’t remember and don’t know if I can ever get back. I held onto my name. I’m not this series of bars tattooed into my wrist, this universal personnel code they gave me to identify who I was to the system, these binary digits they know me as. I’m not that. I’m much more than that, than 23-854. That’s nothing, just a number, just a soldier in their army they can now cross off the books because he’s never coming back. He’s not one of them anymore. Because I remember my name. It’s Joah. I don’t remember anything else—who I was before the culling, who I knew, what I did, where I lived. But someone, somewhere should remember that for me. They should recognize my face and recall that we were once friends before the soldiers came through to replenish their stock and picked me. I just have to find that person, ask them to remind me, to tell me who I am. I’m Joah. I’m free. And right now that’s all I’ve got going for me. I just hope it’s enough. *

*

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By the time the sun rises high enough above the trees to blind me, I’m too tired to keep walking. The wound in my hip 5

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flares with fresh pain at each step, sending slivers stabbing up my side and into my shoulder until every movement pinches my neck and makes my vision swim. I last ate…when? Last night, evening meal, gruel I devoured because I knew I’d need my strength, but it didn’t help much. I’m barely trotting anymore. The run in me is gone. If the guards found me now, there wouldn’t be much of a fight. I might even go back with them willingly if they promised the anesthetic touch of a suture laser for my wound. Anything to end this pain. But you’re free. It’s a small whisper, barely audible above the whine of the voice inside my head, the endless screaming that will drive me mad if I let it. It’s like a headache almost, only it’s deeper than that, deep in my brain and rattling my teeth until I want to sob. I want to squeeze out my eyes and cram my ears but I know I’ll still hear it because it’s inside me, in the chip they put in my mind during the culling. We studied it in class, row upon row of perfect human soldiers, learning about the cullings with a disinterested glaze in our eyes because it happened to us but we don’t remember anything before so it’s not personal anymore. We were culled, taken from our homes, our families, our lives. Culled, stripped of our memories and our beings, leaving only an empty shell waiting to be filled with war. Culled, trained to be the best at what we did, and what they wanted us to do was kill and cull and grow like a cancer, spread through the land until we were all that remained, not men and women, but a superior race of soldiers, a weapon of the government, a 6

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weapon for the gods. We learned all about the voice, the chip inserted right behind our left ear, where a faint scar is all that marks the spot on my neck. The voice was our god, our commander, our conscience. It was who we were now, who we were to become after the culling. It kept us alive in the battlefield, sane in the trenches, and safe within the prison of their camps. No one ever escaped before because no one survived the endless, mindless screech of the voice when one ventured too far past the boundaries. I knew what to expect—outside the compound, the voice commands you to stay and wait for the guards. I survived that because I didn’t listen. Four hundred meters into the forest, the screeching had begun. A sound like tires squealing over ice, and I tried to ignore it. In the darkness last night it was all I heard, a steady sound that I managed to block out until now. Every few meters it goes up an octave, and I know the stories, I saw the films. Too far out and the pitch gets so high, your blood vessels begin to pop. Your nose bleeds, your ears, your eyes, and then finally your soul shatters, you fall to the ground in a heap, crash and bleed out as they say, dying because you wanted to be free and they wouldn’t let you go. But that’s not going to happen to me. I’ve got a plan. I’ll only go as far as I can stand it. When the voice gets too intrusive, I’ll stop. I’ll find a town and get my wound cauterized, and I’ll see if anyone there remembers me. If they don’t, I’ll wait until I get used to the voice and then I’ll move on. I’ll stop again when I can’t stand it anymore. 7

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Eventually I should be able to live with the constant screech. I can get used to anything if I have to deal with it long enough, I’m sure. First I have to find a physician, a healer, someone to seal up this wound. When I stop for a breath I take a look at my leg, but all I see is black blood and angry red flesh and I close my eyes as dizziness washes over me. It’s going to get infected. It’s going to rot, I just know it, it already looks bad and I’m sure it’s going to get worse if I don’t get it tended soon. The guards haven’t caught up with me yet, which makes me think they’ve left me for dead. They know the voice will shriek my life away. But they don’t know I don’t plan to let it.

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CHAPTER 2 My mind is a fury of white noise, a buzzing like bees encircling my brain, stinging at my thoughts and leaving them numb and swollen and useless. I don’t know if it’s the voice anymore or if the sun has anything to do with it, beating down on me through the thinning trees until all I hear is a highpitched hum, all I see are white spots. I stumble along, hoping I don’t fall because I don’t have the strength to get up again. I feel nauseous, the pain eating into my stomach, making me swoon. Did I go through everything for this, just to die here in this heat, amid these trees? If I fall, at least I’ll die free. At least there’s that. 9

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When the sun starts to sink in the sky, I trip out of the woods and find myself on a road of sorts, crumbled asphalt buckled into wrinkles like corduroy. The chunks of black rubble cut into my thin boots and each step aggravates my hip, so I stick to the edge of the trees, just out of sight. I can duck out of the way if a patrol passes by, and if I keep to the stunted grass, I won’t cut myself on the asphalt when I get too delirious to continue on and fall. Because the sun rose in front of me this morning, I put it to my back now and follow the road as it stretches away to my left. I figure the sun will set over the facility—to the right leads back there, and I didn’t come all this way to walk into their open arms. How far is the nearest city? I try to recall my teachings but the voice is screaming at me now, not offering any help whatsoever, and I can’t remember the maps of the area I once knew as intimately as the tattoo on the inside of my wrist. Most of the cities have been destroyed, shaken apart by the last war, years before I was ever born—those who aren’t culled live in sparse towns or sprawling farms, in shanty homes and dingy shacks. They keep to themselves, away from each other in a vain attempt to keep beneath the government’s notice. But that doesn’t stop the cullings. The soldiers come—they always come. Into the makeshift towns to round up the strong, the smart, the ones who threaten them the most. I can’t imagine I was threatening, whoever I was before, but I was among those culled somewhere near here, in one of these little farming communities. For some reason, I was deemed scary 10

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enough to wipe clean. They inserted a new memory into me, turned me into one of them. A killing machine. Even now the soldier they created me to be registers everything my conscious mind barely notices—all possible hiding places, all angles of trajectory, all flight paths, all escape routes. The soldier refuses to die to the whine inside. I only hope the person I used to be is equally as strong. *

*

*

My throat is raw, my feet blistered, my face burnt by the sun, now a flame against my back. My left side is completely numb from my toes to my fingers, but where the bullet scraped into me, my body buzzes in time with the noise in my head. I can’t go on much longer. I can’t. Just when I’m about to sit down and let death have its way—I can’t walk anymore, I just can’t—I see a house. Almost nothing but a shadow in the dying light, the rundown shack is surrounded by meadowfoam in full bloom, low white blossoms that stretch from the road across the flat fields to edge the trees. There’s a light on in one window, and near the road, a man bends over the crop, his back to me, a small scythe in one hand. He wears nothing but a pair of denim dungarees cut at the knee. His muscular back is tanned by the sun, his shoulders strong and thin, his waist narrow. A fine dusting of dark hair crosses his lower arms. As I approach, I gasp out, “Please.” He’s the first person I remember ever seeing who isn’t a soldier or guard, who doesn’t have a tattoo on his wrist or scar behind his ear, and I 11

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don’t want him to run. I want, I need his help. More than anything else, I want him to turn and see me. And he does. His hair is a close thatch that hugs his scalp in burnished copper twists bleached from time spent in the fields. He scowls at me for a moment, trying to see me against the sun, the expression in his deep blue eyes unreadable, unfathomable. I think of films we saw at the facility, movies about oceans—his eyes remind me of those stormy waters, they’re that dark, that wild. There’s something about the way he stands slowly, the scythe forgotten in one hand as he stares, that tugs at my memory. I feel like I should know him, as if we’ve met before, but I can’t remember when or how or where. Then he frowns, his eyebrows furrowing together, and the scythe falls from his grip. “Joah?” he whispers. He knows me. Somehow he knows me. Before I can reply, the noise in my head grows deafening, my vision clouds, and I fall to the ground. My name in his voice is the last thing I hear before the world goes black. *

*

*

I awake to voices arguing low in the next room. I hear them over the screech in my head, which has eased up a little. Maybe I’ve already grown used to its constant presence. I keep my eyes closed and listen to the new voices, the real ones, because I know they’re talking about me. “It’s not him,” the first says. A man, probably around my own age. Why does he sound so familiar? 12

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“How can you say that?” I know that voice—it belongs to the man I saw in the fields, the one who knew my name. “Ashe, it’s him. How can you not see?” “See what?” Ashe asks. “That he’s a soldier now? He was culled, Tobin. Culled. One doesn’t just recover from that. They took him apart and put the pieces together again into something new. It may look like Joah, talk like him, act like him…but it’s not him. It’s not the same man you swore forever to at your handfasting. Can’t you see that? Or don’t you want to see it?” Tobin. The name drifts through my mind like stray notes to a tune I heard once but can’t place. When he speaks, I hear barely restrained rage and energy mingled together in his voice, and I know he’s thrilled to see me. I can almost feel his excitement zipping through the rooms of the house like a bothersome mosquito, never settling in one place for long. “It’s him,” he says, his voice growing louder as he comes into my room. I keep my eyes shut; I don’t let them know I’m awake. Lowering his voice, he adds, “It might take some time, Ashe, but he’ll remember who I am. Who we are. I’ll help him remember.” Ashe sighs, a lusty, exasperated sound. “They’ve erased his memories,” he tries to explain, but this Tobin is stubborn, thinking he can help me remember who I am when the chip is still stuck into my brain. If only it were that easy, I want to tell him. “You can’t just kiss them back. Your love can’t make 13

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everything right.” “Why not?” Tobin kneels by my bed, and I fight the urge to laugh at him, to let them know I’m listening to their every word. Because you just can’t, I want to say, as I feel his hand slip into mine. His grip is strong and comforting, and for a moment I almost believe he might do it, he might be able to bring back who I was before. I can feel determination curled in his fingers—he seems strong enough and stubborn enough to stop the sun in its tracks if he sets his mind to it. So maybe he can help me remember who I used to be. He raises my hand and kisses my knuckles, his lips soft against my skin. I feel his fingers trace the tattoo on the inside of my wrist, his touch light and feathery. Did I used to love this man? The way he touches me is so intimate, so familiar. Has he loved me all these years I’ve been locked away, knowing I was forced to forget him? And does he honestly think after all that I’ve been through, I can remember how to love him once again? *

*

*

When I wake again some time later, there is a woman sitting in a chair by my bed. She has pretty strawberry-colored hair, a menagerie of crimps and curls and long, straight strands like spun wine that looks windblown and unkempt. She’s hunched over my hip, a healing laser held steady in one hand while her fingers smooth out the torn skin around my wound. I watch her work, detached—the pain has settled into a rhythmic throb that aches in time with my heartbeat, and the 14

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blue light from the tip of the laser leaves behind an echo of hurt as it weaves my muscles and skin back together again. When she shakes her head to brush the hair back from her eyes, she sees me staring at her and, for a second, her hands freeze on my leg, her touch gentle and healing. Her eyes widen slightly and, without turning away, she calls out, “Tobin?” Running footsteps shake the house, and then the door opens and the man from the fields enters, a frown marring his angelic face. “Naphalie, what—” Then he notices I’m awake and that frown dissolves so quickly, I wonder if it was ever there at all. “Joah,” he sighs, falling to sit on the edge of the bed. His hands find mine and his words tumble in a rush to escape. “Oh, God, I thought I’d never see you again. My heart broke that day they came. Do you remember me? Do you remember anything at all? The farm, Ashe, Naphalie?” He clasps my hand to his chest and I can feel his heart beat beneath my palm. His other hand caresses my cheek, the touch so soft, so gentle, so unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. “My God, what did they do to you? How did you escape?” “Tobin,” Naphalie chides, concentrating once again on my wound. “Let him wake up first.” Behind Tobin, someone else enters the room. This must be Ashe, this large bear of a man with blonde hair that looks out of place with his tanned skin, his dark beard. His brown eyes watch me cautiously—he’s the only one here who knows I’m not the same and he’s not giving me any chance to prove him 15

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wrong. He leans against the far wall and crosses his arms in front of his chest, studying me, waiting. “Sorry,” Tobin says, but the smile doesn’t fade from his face. He glances at Ashe and when he turns around, I swear his smile has widened. It threatens to split his face in half, and right now I don’t think he’d mind that one bit. The way his eyes sparkle when he looks at me leaves me breathless—I could easily fall for this man if he keeps looking at me like this, keeps touching me so softly. It doesn’t matter if I loved him before, because I know I could love him again. “Do you remember me?” I want to tell him yes. I want to say that I remember him and his hands and his lips, I remember the way it feels to hold him in my arms and fall asleep in his embrace. There’s so much hope shining in his face that I don’t want to say no, I can’t say it—I don’t want to see that happiness turn to disappointment. I don’t want to cause that smile to disappear. But I can’t lie to him, so I look at Ashe when I whisper, “No.” Ashe closes his eyes but not before I see the resignation written there. He knows I don’t remember. He’s not holding out on the belief that being here might trigger something for me. Tobin purses his lips into a pretty pout. Damn, I lost this when they took me away? These hands, these eyes, these lips? How could I have let them strip this man from my life? From my memory? How did I live for five years without remembering him at all? “I’m sorry,” I sigh, because I am. I am so sorry that I lost him in the culling. 16

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“Well,” he says bravely, and there’s that stubbornness again; at least one of us never forgot, “you must remember me, you have to. Somewhere deep down inside where it matters, Joah.” His smile is contagious enough to make me smile back. “Why else are you here?” I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t know where I am. I escaped from the facility and ran blindly into the night. I would never even have stopped if I hadn’t been sick from the heat and my wound. I would have stuck to the road and passed by this house without a second glance. And because I don’t want to crush the hope he clings to so desperately, I don’t answer his question.

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CHAPTER 3 Now that I’m awake, Tobin doesn’t leave my side. He shows me pictures of the two of us in places I have never been, and he tells me who we were before the culling. We met when we were kids, he says, and he fell for me the moment he first laid eyes on me. I’m beautiful, he insists, the most beautiful man he’s ever seen, and the memory of our first kiss still makes him weak. Me? I want to ask. Are you sure you mean me? I can’t imagine kissing him. I can’t remember what love is, let alone what it feels like to kiss someone, and here he says he can never forget my lips on his. I want him to kiss me now, just to see what it’s like, but Naphalie’s still in the room, the wound 18

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on my hip almost sutured completely beneath her careful ministrations, so I don’t ask. “Do you remember the handfasting?” he asks, handing me a stack of old photographs. As I thumb through them, I shake my head. I don’t even know what a handfasting is—that wasn’t necessary information for a soldier to learn. He points to one of the pictures, taken years ago. I’m standing beside him, both of us dressed in what must have been our nicest suits, holding hands. Ashe is behind him and Naphalie beside me, and we’re all smiling at the camera. Naphalie has flowers in her hair, beautiful white meadowfoam blossoms, and I look like I’m holding my breath because I’m so excited, I can’t believe this is happening to me, all of my dreams have finally come true. They took that from me, too, didn’t they? That happiness, that smile, those dreams, whatever they were. “This is after the ceremony.” Tobin is so patient with me, he wants me to remember so badly. “Right before Naphalie tore her dress. Do you remember that?” He laughs at Naphalie before smiling my way, his eyes crinkling in mirth. “Tore the bottom of it all up, got caught in the combine when she was dancing with Ashe. That was when we had a combine—” “He doesn’t need to remember that,” Naphalie says, but the grin on her face tells me that it’s a pleasant memory, a fun memory, and I wish I had it in my mind so I could smile at it, too. Tobin shuffles a few photographs, looking at them thoughtfully. “This isn’t helping you any?” 19

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I hand back the pictures. “No,” I admit with a sigh. “Tobin, I’m sorry. Really, I want to remember. I want…” I don’t know what I want. Something other than the last five years. Something more than the whine inside my skull that has dulled a bit but is still there. “I want what I had before.” I don’t even know what that was but it must have been wonderful because Tobin is ecstatic to see me, Naphalie is comfortable beside us, Ashe is in the other room—he’s brooding but he hasn’t said anything to me yet, so at least that’s something. I want this homey feeling back, this sense of belonging, this love I know was mine at one time because they tell me it was. I want that back. Is that too much to ask? *

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Because Naphalie says I can’t walk until morning, even though all that remains of the wound is a ragged scar along my hip and a dull ache that throbs down my leg, Tobin brings my supper into the room. As I eat, he watches me with a faint smile he can’t seem to suppress. “This is good,” I say, diving into hot soup full of vegetables and meat. It is good, like nothing I’ve ever eaten before. In the facility food was meant to be energizing, not tasteful. Tobin beams. “Ashe made it. He’s a great cook. Don’t you remember—” He catches himself and clears his throat, slightly embarrassed. “No, I guess you don’t.” I stir the soup, trying to think of something to say to take 20

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away the sudden awkwardness between us. “Where’s your dinner?” Shrugging, he says, “I’ll eat something later. You must be starving.” I am. As I finish the soup, he picks at the blanket covering my legs and watches me openly. The way he stares makes me think he’s starving, too, but soup isn’t going to be enough to fill him up. Five years he’s remained faithful to me, five years he’s kept hoping I’d return…and now I have, only I don’t remember him at all. God, how can he even stand to look at me when he knows he’s spent the last five years dreaming about me and I didn’t even remember his name? He glances at the partially shut door. Naphalie and Ashe are eating in the other room and we’re alone for the first time since I awoke. Scooting a little closer to me, he runs his hand over my leg where it rests beneath the blanket. His touch is warm and comforting through the thin fabric. Lowering his voice, he asks, “So tell me what it was like in there.” “I can’t,” I say softly. He frowns at me. “Don’t you remember? Joah, don’t you remember anything?” I shake my head. “I remember it all,” I tell him. “Every minute is etched into my mind from the moment they wiped the rest of me away. But I’m not going to tell you about it, Tobin. I can’t. I don’t want you to know what it was like in there. I won’t let you know.” For a minute I think he’s going to protest. He strikes me as the type who doesn’t take “no” for an answer. But then he 21

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smiles again, his laughter boyish and free. “Oh, Joah,” he sighs happily. Did I miss something? He takes my hand in his. He can’t seem to stop touching me, but I like the warmth of his touch, the strength in his grip, and the way his smile lights up his eyes when he looks at me. “That sounds like something you’d say. You’re always trying to protect me. That hasn’t changed, has it?” I shrug. I don’t know the answer to that. How can I? I don’t remember anything of my life with him. But there’s a part of me that wants to keep him away from the facility, away from the life I led. I want to go back to what I had before, and I want him to take me there, because he loves me. I can see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, feel it in his touch. It’s in everything he says, everything he does, and just being near him intoxicates me. He’s waited for me for five years. Five years. I can’t imagine it. Gently I squeeze his hand and whisper, “For what it’s worth, I’ve never had a lover.” At the frown that crosses his face, I hurry on. “I mean, at the facility. I know you say we were together but I don’t remember it. I don’t, I’m sorry. But I just want you to know that I didn’t…I mean, I never…” I sigh. This is hard. “We were assigned separate cells. Single bunks. There were classes, meals, exercises, drills. Everything was strictly by the book—we had nothing to ourselves. Nothing but this tattoo, these clothes. Even if I don’t remember you, I never loved anyone else.” He kisses my knuckles, and the smoldering look in his 22

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eyes makes my stomach flutter. “You remembered your name,” he points out. “I thought the culling took everything away. Even that.” “I hung onto it,” I tell him. “It was all I had. And because I had it, I knew there was someone else I was supposed to be. That’s what kept me going. I knew someone somewhere knew who I used to be, and I wanted to find that person. I wanted to remember who I was because it had to be better than who I am now.” “You’re Joah,” Tobin says, as if that clears things up. “I know who you were, I know you better than you even know yourself.” He runs a hand through my hair, smoothing it down, before he pulls me towards him, his hand on the back of my neck. Our foreheads bump together lightly and he stares into my eyes with such an earnest expression, I can’t not believe him. “I know that you like to be kissed back here,” he says, wiggling his fingers along the nape of my neck. “I know that you taste sweet like peaches in the summertime. I know you like to be hugged close when you fall asleep. I know you get breathless when you come. I know…” My cheeks heat up and he grins at the pinked blush. “What?” “I get breathless?” I ask, rolling my eyes. He laughs again. “You do.” Then he kisses me, just a quick peck, but I’ve never been kissed before and my lips tingle when he pulls away. “I know this is all new to you,” he whispers, “but I just want to tell you how much I missed you, Joah. I don’t expect things to be like they were before, not overnight, but God, I’m so glad you’re back. I can’t even 23

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begin to tell you…” He sighs. “I know you don’t know me, not yet, but can I say I want to sleep with you tonight?” Oh, God. He must see in my eyes the fear that springs up at his words, because he smiles disarmingly and turns away. “I’m not going to push you,” he says, his voice sad. “Just knowing you’re here is enough. It’s going to have to be.” “Tobin,” I say, catching his arm as he stands. I wait for him to look down at me and then I smile. But I don’t know what to say—what can I say? That I missed him too? But I didn’t. I didn’t know he existed until today. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. He smiles bravely. “I know.” As he leaves the room, I touch my lips tentatively, still feeling the hum of his kiss. This must be killing him inside. How can he be so strong? Was what we had together worth this pain I’m causing him now?

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CHAPTER 4 In the morning I dress in the jumpsuit I wore at the facility—Naphalie mended the tear where I was shot and tried her best to get out the blood that stains the fabric. It’s wearable but I’ll have to see if Tobin still has any of my clothes from before. He didn’t mention it yesterday—then again, he was too excited at seeing me, so I’m sure it just slipped his mind. He’s so damn sweet and cute. I think I’m going to like falling in love with him all over again. I still can’t believe he hasn’t met someone else in my place—five years is a long time. It’s the only lifetime I’ve ever known. As I’m zipping up the jumpsuit, the door to my room opens and I turn, a smile already on my face because I think 25

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it’s him but it’s not. It’s Ashe, my breakfast tray in both hands and a distrustful gleam in his bruised eyes. “You’re up,” he says. It’s the first he’s spoken to me since I arrived. “Yeah.” Were we friends before? I can’t tell. Of the three of them, he’s the one least happy to see me. When he sets the tray down on the end of the bed, I venture, “Thanks. You’re Ashe, right?” He laughs bitterly. “Not that you remember.” “Is there a problem?” I ask. If I’m going to stay here, I don’t want to have to creep around this guy just because he can’t forgive me for something I had no control over. When he gives me a half-hearted shrug, I add, “Did we have words before I was culled? Are you still mad at me for something I no longer recall?” He looks at me with those deep, dark eyes like bruises in his face and sighs. “Let me tell you something, Joah,” he says, crossing his arms against his chest. “We were best friends, the three of us. You, me, and Tobin. We grew up together. Not that I expect you to remember that.” “And you hold it against me?” I want to know. “I had no control— ” “I know,” he says, cutting me off. “You were culled. And no one ever comes back from that. I don’t know what all they told you in that place, but you must’ve learned that much at least. Once a person is culled, they’re changed forever. They’re not the same person you knew before. They never will be.” What he says is true. Or at least true until now, because I 26

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came back, didn’t I? And maybe I’m not the same person, but I can learn who I was before. In a quiet voice, I say, “I know.” He takes a step closer. I fight the urge to step back. We were best friends once, him and me. I have to keep that in mind. “When they took you away, Tobin cried for days. Days. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, made himself sick with misery. Physically ill. Do you know how hard it is to have to live with one of the people you care for most in the whole world, to see them suffering to the point of wanting to die, and to know there is nothing you can do to make them feel better? Not a damn thing?” I have to look away from the intensity of his gaze because the idea of that bright, bubbly man I met yesterday weeping inconsolably makes me want to stop the world to see him smile again. “It would’ve been better if they killed you outright,” Ashe tells me, anger flaring behind his dark eyes. “Because then you’d be dead and he wouldn’t have the hope of finding you again. Not in this lifetime. Do you know how long he cried himself to sleep at night? Do you know how many years he just went through the motions because the person he was living for, you, because you were gone?” “I’m sorry.” I’ve been apologizing a lot lately, but there’s nothing else I can think of to say. Ashe laughs again, a desperate chuckle that scares me. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “He finally started sleeping through the night last year. And this past solstice was the first time he smiled since you left. It was a small grin, a shadow of the way he used to smile, but it was something. It gave me hope. 27

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Maybe he was moving on, maybe he was finally able to put the past behind him and come to terms with the fact that you weren’t coming back.” Ashe narrows his eyes, pinning me with that steady gaze of his. “And then you do.” Did Tobin really suffer that much? Did he love me so badly that he couldn’t bear the thought of living without me? “I didn’t know…” Ashe finds that funny. “No, how could you? You don’t remember anything from before, do you? You don’t remember me, or Naphalie, or Tobin even. How could you forget him, Joah? How could you ever forget someone who thinks the stars shine in your eyes or the sun hides in your smile? How can you just let them take that away from you?” Now I’m angry. Who does he think he is, telling me what I should have clung to when they culled me? “I had no choice.” My voice rises slightly—I don’t need him to make me feel like shit because I left. If Tobin loved me the way Ashe says he did, if I loved him back even a fraction as much, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave. But it wasn’t up to me. “Don’t you get it, Ashe? I didn’t choose to remember my name. Truth be told, it would’ve been easier for me if I hadn’t remembered. Because these past five years have been hell. I knew there was somewhere else I was meant to be and I didn’t know how to get there. I couldn’t. I was trapped in their prison and I had to be careful—I could’ve been killed if they knew I still had my name. If they even suspected I was planning to run, I would’ve been slipped something in my evening meal and never seen the light of day 28

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again.” He watches me carefully, weighing my words. Who is this man? I don’t have to prove anything to him. “Maybe you’re right,” I say, lowering my voice. “Maybe it would’ve been better if they killed me. But then he would’ve never known, and somewhere deep inside he still would’ve held out the hope that I’d have come back. You know?” Ashe thinks this over. I want to ask him where Tobin is now, but I don’t. I let my words sink in. Finally he says, “I won’t let his heart break again. If you leave—” “I’m not planning on it,” I say. “I only wanted to find where I belong. This is it.” “Then I’ll kill you myself,” he swears, talking over me. The look in his eyes says he’s not threatening me, simply stating a fact. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you, Joah, I swear it. Because if you leave again, he’ll die. I know he will.” He sighs. “He loves you so much, you just don’t know…” “I want to find out.” Ashe gives me a long, hard look before he turns and walks out, leaving me alone in the room. *

*

*

Naphalie says not to let him get to me too much. “He’s just worried,” she says as I help her put away the breakfast dishes. Tobin still isn’t up yet and it’s almost noon, judging by the sun. Ashe is out in the field already, harvesting meadowfoam that’s ready to be picked, and I know he told Naphalie we spoke because she’s the one who brought it up. I wipe one of 29

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the dishes from the drainer and hand it to her. As she stretches to put it on the top shelf of the cabinet, she says, “You can’t imagine what it was like, Joah, when you weren’t here. Tobin wouldn’t even get out of bed most days. He didn’t want to.” “And he’s better now?” I venture. Here it is, morning almost over, and he’s not up yet. She laughs, a faint sound like tinkling bells. “You just don’t know.” I wish people would stop saying that and explain it to me already. Of course I don’t know—I was culled. “He sleeps in late anyway. You don’t remember that, I know, but he wasn’t getting up at all for a while there. He’d stay in bed until the sun fell and then when we tried to get him up he’d say it was time to go to sleep so what was the point?” She sighs and smiles sadly at me. “That’s what he thought without you. What was the point?” I frown at my reflection in the dish I’m wiping down. “Ashe said he was finally moving on,” I tell her, even though I’m sure he told her that already. “He implied maybe…” I shrug. “Maybe I should’ve stayed gone.” “Oh, don’t listen to him,” Naphalie says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He’s just being Ashe. He loves Tobin to death. You too, though you’d never know it how he acts. He knows Tobin isn’t whole without you, just like you aren’t whole without him.” When I start to argue, she cuts me off. “You can say you don’t remember him, Joah, and that might be true. But you knew there was somewhere you belonged. There was something telling you that you weren’t meant to be 30

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locked away in a cell and forced into a life of warfare. Somehow you knew there was more. You knew you weren’t complete.” “Yeah,” I admit, “but—” “But nothing.” Naphalie’s good at stopping protests before they start. “You need to be here. Call it fate or coincidence or destiny or what have you, but it was simply meant to be. You belong here. Ashe knows that. He’s a little bristly right now, but he’ll get over it.” I hand her another dish and sigh. “He thinks I’m going to leave,” I tell her. I debate saying more, but I have to ask her, I have to know the answer. “Was I that kind of person before? The kind of guy to just up and leave?” When she doesn’t reply right away, I press on. “If he loves me that much, how could I be like that? How could he love me like that?” “You weren’t that way,” she says softly, but she doesn’t look at me. “Then what?” I want to know. “Why does Ashe think I’ll do that now?” For a moment her lower lip trembles. She’s fighting back tears; I can see them glistening unshed in her eyes. “When the soldiers came,” she whispers, and I have to strain to hear her words, they’re so quiet, “for the culling, they wanted to take Tobin. You don’t remember this, do you? Any of this…” “No,” I reply. Stepping closer, I place my hand over hers. “What happened?” “You wouldn’t let him go.” She sighs and blinks, looking up at the ceiling, trying to will away her tears. “You made 31

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them take you instead. Tobin said no, he’d go, they wanted him, but you wouldn’t let him do it. The soldiers didn’t care— they just needed their quota.” She falters, and I squeeze her hand gently, prompting her to continue. “You knocked him down, jumped into the convoy, and before he could get back up, you were gone.” I did that? Me? I loved him so much that I’d lose everything I had, all memory, all life as I knew it, just so he could keep his? “He must have hated me…” “Do you see how much you mean to him?” Naphalie whispers. “Do you see why?” God, Tobin, I think, even if I wanted to, how could I ever hope to leave you again? If it would bring back my memories, I’d kill the soldiers who did this to me, I’d rip out the chip in my head, I’d cut it out myself if I knew it meant I would remember all the times I spent with the man still asleep upstairs. Right now I’d give anything to have those memories back, because they must be wonderful if I was willing to give them up just so he could hold onto them forever.

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CHAPTER 5 I’m leafing through a magazine at the kitchen table when Tobin finally comes downstairs, dressed in an old T-shirt and a thin pair of boxer shorts. His curls are disheveled and he blinks owlishly in the sunlight falling through the open windows, but when he sees me he smiles through a yawn and pads over to sit beside me on the bench. “Good morning,” I say, surprised at how glad I am to see him. He slips his arms around my waist and snuggles close to me, resting his head on my shoulder. It amazes me how comfortable we are with each other all of a sudden, but maybe Naphalie is right, maybe I’m not whole without him. “Do you want something to eat?” He shakes his head. “Last night I didn’t think I’d get to 33

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sleep,” he tells me, his voice throaty because he just woke up. “I kept checking on you to make sure you were still here.” “I’m not going anywhere,” I assure him. His arms tighten around my waist. “I know,” he says. “Ashe keeps telling me to be careful—he keeps saying to not get my hopes up, you might want to go back, but every time I look at you, my soul sings. I almost forgot what that sounded like, how my whole body trills like a weed in the wind when you’re near.” I feel my face heat up at his words. He buries his head in my arm and, without thinking about it, I let my hand trail along his bare thigh. The downy hair fluffs beneath my fingers, and I rub tiny circles into it—his skin is so impossibly soft. I’ve never touched anyone like this before, and I keep looking at the kitchen door to make sure Naphalie or Ashe don’t walk in to see us like this. “I’m guessing you fell asleep eventually,” I point out. “Did you sleep well?” He moves closer, his head now resting on my collarbone, his breath tickling through the open zipper of my jumpsuit. “I dreamed you weren’t really here,” he says softly. My heart skips a beat. God, I’m tearing this man apart, aren’t I? He’s so happy to see me, he’s having nightmares of my leaving again. “I found you in a dream, everything yesterday was part of that, and when I went to sleep I really woke up and you weren’t here. I kept trying to go back to sleep, to dream you back again, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.” I ease my arm around his shoulders, hugging him gently. 34

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“Tobin—” “When I opened my eyes this morning,” he continues, “just now actually, I almost didn’t get up because I didn’t think I was really awake. I thought I was still trying to get back to sleep to see you.” His hands fist in my jumpsuit and when he sighs it’s a sad sound that makes my throat close. “Are you really here?” he whispers. “Not just a dream, but real now? For good?” “Yes.” There’s nothing else I can say. I’m not leaving him again. I know that already. He sighs again, a little more easily this time, and wipes his eyes on my collar. “I love you, Joah,” he says, so low it’s almost a breath, but I hear it over the buzz behind my eyes and I know it’s the truth. I only wish I could say the same right now. I can love him, I know I can, and I probably will soon enough, but I wish I could say it right this second and take away a little of the pain I see in his deep sea eyes. *

*

*

Tobin holds my hand as he takes me on a tour of our house. These rooms are new to me, this furniture strange, though he says we picked it out together, we decorated everything together. I don’t remember any of it. He shows me the knickknacks in the den, scattered across the mantle above the fireplace and filling bookshelves that line the wall, but none of them trigger anything. They’re just ornaments of blown glass that I’d see in a store somewhere and never look at twice. He points out which ones I bought him, in various 35

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shades of blue resting like a pool of water on one shelf. He shows me the knives he says I collected—daggers and bodkins and poniards, beautifully crafted hilts with stainless blades of steel. “I bought you this one when we wed,” he tells me, picking up an exceptional shiv with light mauve amethysts fastened to the hilt. “I picked it out because the stones are the color of your eyes when you first wake up.” The thought makes me weak. “It’s gorgeous,” I say, turning the blade over in my hands. So this is why I adapted to the knife so easily at the facility, how I could understand and use a dirk with an innate sense of grace and style that left my opponents breathless with wonder. I set the knife back carefully with the dozen or so others that are mine. Mine. He lets me take my time, touching things I don’t remember, trying desperately to find something in this house that will help me recall the life I led here. There are more photographs on the wall, these in heavy wooden frames, larger pictures than the ones he showed me yesterday. I recognize the two of us in them, the easy way we stand so close together, the way Tobin’s always touching me or I’m always holding his hand. I look over the photos and wish desperately to remember some of that love, some part of it—even just a tiny sip would be enough to fill me up. “This is your mom,” he says, pointing at one picture. It’s me and him and two women, smiling. In all these pictures I’m always smiling. I don’t remember ever smiling at the facility. Somewhere between here and there I forgot how. Maybe they 36

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took my smile away with the rest of my memories when I was culled, and like everything else I’m just now getting it back. “Is this your mother?” I ask, pointing to the other woman. Tobin catches his breath, hopeful. “Do you remember her?” I shake my head. “You favor her,” I explain, and I hate the crestfallen look that crosses his face for a moment before he forces a grin. Taking his hand, I squeeze it gently and tell him, “I’ll let you know, Tobin, if any of this comes back to me. I promise.” He nods. “Okay.” His arms find their way around my waist again and he leans against my back as I study the other pictures. Here’s one of me and Naphalie, laughing in a field of meadowfoam. Here’s Ashe standing on an old, rusted combine as if he’s king of the world. Here’s Tobin and me in a creek— he’s on my back and I’m holding onto his legs, carrying him as we smile for the camera. A collage of memories, each one connected to the others in a way I’ll never know. What order were they taken in? Where are these places? At the end of the wall there’s one picture that catches my eye. It’s of an old car, the kind that ran on solar energy when they first outlawed gasoline, before they began using meadowfoam oil for fuel. We learned about these vehicles at the facility because a few of them still run, though most are like the one in this picture, dilapidated hunks of metal and junk that’ll never run again. The roof of this car is gone, lost somewhere long before the picture was taken, and the torn leather seats bleed springs and padding into the car’s interior. 37

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Tobin and I sit in the back seat, my head on his shoulder, his arm around me. We’re only teenagers, not even twenty. How long ago was this taken? I don’t even know how old I am now. Ashe is beside Tobin, his head resting on Tobin’s other shoulder, and from the way he’s winking at the camera, I think maybe Naphalie’s taking the picture. It’s an audacious wink that promises something more to come. Tobin’s grinning from ear to ear like he could die happy at that instant, frozen in time, and I’m looking so damn lovestruck it hurts to see the sated look in my own eyes because I’ve never felt that good, never. “Do you remember this?” Tobin asks, grinning. When I shake my head, he places his lips against my ear and whispers, “This was taken the day after we first made love. By the creek on a blanket when we were supposed to be at Ashe’s party. I screamed your name into the night and the stars exploded around us, showering you with stardust and light. You were beautiful, Joah. You’re so beautiful.” God, why can’t I remember that? I’d sell every last minute of the past five years to recall that one moment, just to be able to close my eyes and hear my name in his voice cried out into the night, to see the stars showering us with love and beauty and light. I’d give anything for that, anything to bring the smile I have in the photograph to my face now. He sighs against my hair and I frown at the picture, mad because I don’t see what he sees. I see the two of us and Ashe, and in the front seat of the car are two other guys, boys that aren’t in the other pictures. One is a thin, gangly lad with 38

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puckish hair, a mix of brown and gold that looks almost glittery in the photograph’s lighting. He’s got laughing blue eyes and he’s grinning wildly, as if we pinned him down for this shot and the moment the flash went off he flew away again. “Who’s this?” I ask. “Zeb,” Tobin tells me, kissing my shoulder. I feel his warm lips through the thin fabric of my jumpsuit. “He doesn’t live here anymore. He left after the culling.” The guy next to this Zeb looks familiar…too familiar. There’s an angry look in his icy eyes, like someone just said something to piss him off. Long, thick dreadlocks frame his face, a dirty shade of blonde that clashes with dark, polished skin. Even though it’s only a picture, I feel him staring at me through time, through the glass covering the photograph, forcing me to remember… “I know him,” I say, pointing. I know I know him. “Micaiah?” Tobin asks, frowning. “You remember him?” I shake my head slightly. “Not from before.” He wasn’t Micaiah when I met him. He was… “Unit 36-722. He was in the squadron I trained with my second year at the facility. I remember his eyes.” Tobin’s grip tightens around me. “You saw him?” he whispers, and I turn in his embrace, nodding. “Jesus, is he alright? Did he recognize you?” “He was culled,” I remind him. “I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me. We didn’t even speak. I just remember seeing him there, that’s all.” Sighing, Tobin hugs me close and kisses my forehead, his 39

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mouth damp on my skin. “I know, Joah,” he says. “I know.”

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CHAPTER 6 Upstairs Tobin points out the room Naphalie shares with Ashe. As he leads me past the closed door, his hand once again in mine, he tells me that without her, the farm would have been gone long ago. “Right after the culling,” he says, leading me down the hall, “I didn’t do anything but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and cry. God, I missed you, Joah. I missed you so much. At first I wanted to storm the facility and demand you back, but Ashe talked me out of it. He said you’d never remember me anyway, that you wouldn’t want to come back, and that thought alone killed anything in me that wanted to find you again.” His voice grows quiet in the unlit hall, and when we 41

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stop in front of a second closed door, he whispers, “I didn’t want to believe you didn’t remember me.” I rub my hand up his forearm and sigh. “I want to remember,” I tell him. I do. I really, honestly, truly do. I want to remember everything about this man, why I loved him in the first place. Why he loves me. I want that love back. As he pushes open the door, I ask softly, “But if I don’t, can we still go on? Together?” He frowns, unsure what I’m asking. “I don’t want to lose you again, even if I don’t remember the first time. I’m not going to lie to you, Tobin, but I want to love you. I want to have what we had before. Can we do that?” His brow clears like the sky after a summer shower. His smile is all the reply I need. “This is our room,” he tells me, and that says it all, doesn’t it? This is our room, not was, not mine. Ours. Is. As in he expects me to be sleeping here, too. As in my things go in this room, I go here. I belong in this bed, in his arms. I grin back at him as he leads me inside. It’s like stepping into a hall of mirrors—pictures of myself stare at me from every table top, the dresser, the walls. Shrine of Joah, remove your shoes at the door, bow down and, my God, no wonder he never got over me. I looked out at him from grainy photographs every second of every day and night. “I’ve redecorated a bit,” he says shyly, and the faint blush that colors his cheeks is so infuriatingly cute, I can’t help but laugh. “Just a bit?” I ask, teasing him a shade pinker. “Yeah,” he replies. “I’ll take some of them down, if you 42

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want. I just…” He sighs. “They made me feel better, like you were watching over me, like you were still here and still keeping me safe. As long as I could see you, I could believe you would come back.” “Tobin,” I say, turning towards him. My hands spread across the warmth of his chest, smoothing the wrinkles out of his T-shirt. I don’t know what else to say, nothing comes to mind, so I say his name again. “Oh, Tobin,” I sigh, and when I lean my head against his shoulder, his arms tighten around me, hugging me close. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “If I had even known you were here, waiting, I would’ve chanced an escape years earlier. I wouldn’t have waited so long, I wouldn’t have let them take everything away from me. If I had only managed to hold onto something more than my name. If only—” “Shh,” he admonishes, rubbing my back as I take a deep breath, trying to calm the whirlwind in my heart. “You didn’t know, Joah. It’s not your fault. You’re here now. We can start all over again. At least we have that.” His arms are strong around me, comforting, and he’s right. At least we have another chance. We can both be happy again. Together. *

*

*

“I saved everything of yours.” Tobin sits on the edge of the bed, watching me riffle through clothes hanging in the closet. I don’t remember any of these cotton shirts or denim pants, but he says they’re mine. His are in the dresser drawers. “Sometimes I wear your shirts,” he tells me, “because they 43

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still smell like you.” “What do I smell like?” I pull out a faded chambray work shirt and a pair of worn jeans and hold them up to me, trying to see if they’ll still fit. He shrugs. “Clean,” he says. “Like spring rain. And fresh. And warm. I like the way you smell.” I smile at that. “I like the way you smell, too,” I say, because the musky scent of him still lingers on my arms from where he held me. “You smell free.” He laughs, a boyish sound. As I unzip my jumpsuit, he asks, “Do you want me to leave?” “Why?” I ask, frowning. He shrugs again. “I just thought,” he starts, then sighs. “Maybe you’d want to be alone.” “I’m not embarrassed,” I tell him, slipping my arms out of the jumpsuit. The cool air prickles my bare chest. “You’ve already seen it all anyway, haven’t you?” When he doesn’t answer immediately, I look over only to find him staring back at me hungrily. “Haven’t you?” “Yeah,” he whispers, but his gaze is riveted to my waist. I push the jumpsuit down slowly, savoring the way his eyes widen as I step out of the pants. It’s been five years, and even if I don’t remember him, he obviously remembers me. Desire and lust slacken his face and his lips part slightly, his eyes darken like the sky before a storm. I’m wearing a thin pair of briefs, but I don’t think he even notices. He’s too busy devouring me with his eyes. If looks could kill… “Jesus,” he sighs, and then he clears his throat and runs a 44

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nervous hand through his unkempt curls. “How’s your leg?” I frown. “Okay,” I say, tugging down the waistband of my briefs to look at the pink scar on my hip. “Not too pretty, but I’ll live.” Before I can stop him, he’s on his knees beside me, and his hands cover mine as he presses his lips to the scar, kissing it better. “Joah,” he sighs. My fingers go numb at the passion I hear in his voice, the need, the raw emotion. “Oh, Joah, it’s been so long, so damn long…” And then he’s easing my briefs down and I can’t stop him, I don’t want to stop him, his gentle fingers on my skin, his lips kissing my hip, my groin, his tongue licking in places I’ve never been touched before. My hands fist in his curls as he takes me into his mouth, his tongue swirling down around the hard length between my legs, his hands cradling my hips and guiding me into him, deeper, farther. He’s right…I am breathless when I come. I can’t believe they took this away—how could I ever have let them take this from me? This man holding me close, whispering he loves me, kissing me with the salty taste of my own juices on his lips as we lie together on the floor in a tangled heap of legs and arms… How did I ever let memories like this one disappear? *

*

*

After we dress, Tobin takes me outside to show me the fields of meadowfoam in full bloom. The white flowers glisten in the early afternoon sun and I follow him through the crops, listening as he explains how this is the first year since I left 45

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that he’s actually done some of the harvesting. “It was just Ashe and Naphalie before,” he says. I squeeze his hand where I hold it in my own because I know it’s hard for him, talking about when I wasn’t here. It’s hard for me to hear it, it pains him so. “I thought maybe I should try to help out a bit, you know?” “I’m sorry,” I say again. I can’t say it enough. Tobin shrugs. “That’s all over with. You’re here now.” And then he kisses the back of my hand. I know it’s only been a day but my heart swells every time I look at him. He’s more alive than anyone I met in the five years I spent at the facility, more emotional, more real, and I know I’m falling for him again. I don’t want to stop myself. I want him. We wave to Ashe, working out by the road, where Tobin was yesterday when I stumbled upon him. He’s bent over the crops and doesn’t see us, but Naphalie’s nearby, picking nutlets from the plants Ashe uproots, and she waves back. Then Tobin leads me to the edge of the field, where the trees hem in the meadowfoam like sentries before the woods begin. Smiling at me, he says softly, “A few nights before the culling, we came out here, you and me. I know you don’t remember it, but we lay in the fields and watched the moon and talked about what we wanted out of life.” Lacing my fingers through his, I ask, “What did I say?” His smile brightens. “You said you only wanted me.” Leaning back against the rough bark of the nearest tree, I pull him against me. His arms encircle my waist and I let my fingers play across his chest, finding the hard nipples beneath 46

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the fabric. I like the way he blinks slowly when I rub at the tiny nubs, so I do it again, making them stand erect beneath my palms. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s been nothing but kind and gentle and loving since we met. Maybe we really do belong together, like Naphalie says. Maybe it’s because I knew I was incomplete and now that I’ve found him, time has no meaning for us and it doesn’t matter that we just met. We’ve loved each other before and it’s so easy to fall into that again. Quietly I tell him, “I think that’s still true.” Looking up into his eyes, I correct myself. “I know it is. Thank you.” “For what?” I see tears in his eyes and know he’s happy again. Finally. “For waiting for me,” I say. “For believing I’d come back. For giving me another chance when I did.” “Oh, Joah,” he sighs, and then he cradles my face in one hand and kisses me, his lips tender and sweet. He’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and when his tongue licks at my lips before slipping between them, I don’t know how I lived without his kiss, his touch. I don’t want to know; I won’t. I’m not going to lose it again. As we kiss, his hand eases around my neck, his thumb rubbing gently behind my ear. Pulling away slightly, he frowns and asks, “What’s this?” “What’s what?” His thumb rubs along the scar left from the culling. He did say he knew me well. Enough to know I shouldn’t have a mark behind my left ear that I didn’t have the last time we were together. “That’s from the culling,” I tell him, turning my head so he can look at the scar. It’s tiny—I’ve seen it on 47

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others, just a tiny, half-inch crescent of skin, almost unnoticeable in most light. “They put a microchip inside.” I speak softly, keeping my voice low because I don’t want to scare him with the details. “It overrides the memories, erasing away everything from before.” “Does it hurt?” he asks, pressing the puckered skin lightly. I shake my head. “Not anymore. It was sore for a while, right after the implant, but I didn’t feel anything during the culling because they kept me in an anesthesia ward. It doesn’t hurt now.” Rubbing his thumb over the scar as if trying to smooth it away, Tobin asks, “Is the chip still in your head?” Nodding, I rub my temple with one hand—the shrill screech swirling around my mind has quieted a little, or maybe I’ve grown used to it, I’m not sure, but it’s still there. I tell him about it, about the voice and what it’s for in the field, how it’s designed to help a soldier and enhance the senses. I tell him how it acts like a denotation device, how I’m expected to crash and bleed out when the high frequency hum shakes me apart inside, and how I plan to not let that happen. He stares at me in amazement. “You hear it now?” he asks, and I nod again. “All the time?” “Constantly.” A slight frown crosses his face. “Maybe Naphalie can look at it,” he tells me. It’s grown late, dusk settling around us like a blanket, and with his arm draped over my shoulder, he leads me back to the house. “Maybe if we remove the chip, your memories will return.” 48

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“Maybe,” I mutter, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I can live with the voice. I know I can. With Tobin beside me, I can live with anything, I’m fairly certain of that.

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CHAPTER 7 Over dinner Tobin tells the others about the chip. I see by the distrustful way Ashe watches me eat that our little talk this morning didn’t change his mind in the least about me. As long as I have this chip, as long as I don’t remember who I was before the culling, he’s going to expect me to bolt. But he wasn’t at the facility; he doesn’t know what it’s like. And he doesn’t have Tobin fawning over him—he doesn’t feel these small touches or see these covert smiles, these twinkling eyes meant for me alone. I’m never going near the facility, ever again, and I’m never letting Tobin out of my sight. But Ashe doesn’t realize that. Naphalie does. She smiles at us from across the table as if 50

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she knows Tobin’s hand rests high up on my thigh and the touch tingles through my jeans, as if she can read my thoughts and see I’m thinking back to this afternoon when he and I cuddled on the floor, waiting for our heartbeats to grow even again as we stared into each others’ eyes. She winks at me when Ashe isn’t looking, just a quick gesture but it makes me feel welcome, even if Ashe still glares at me. I smile back at her and cover Tobin’s hand on my leg with my own. “You can hear the voice still?” Naphalie asks. With a nod, I tell her, “I’ll get used to it, I’m sure.” Ashe snorts. “You can get used to anything, can’t you, Joah?” Scowling, Tobin demands, “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ashe shrugs, but his words are directed at me. “It took you five years to escape?” He looks at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. Naphalie looks from him to me and back again. “Ashe, stop it.” “Five years,” he continues, as if he didn’t hear her or doesn’t notice her frown. “And what did you do all that time? You knew your name. You knew someone else knew who you were. Why did it take you so long to break out?” When I don’t reply immediately, he prompts, “You had grown…what’s the word? Comfortable? With the soldier’s life. You didn’t want to leave, is that it?” Tobin stands up suddenly, anger clouding his face. “What the hell’s your problem, Ashe?” 51

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Naphalie pushes back her chair, scraping it along the floor with a loud screech that cuts the tension in the room. “Stop it,” she says, glaring at Ashe. Then she turns to Tobin. “Sit down and eat. Both of you just stop this right now, you hear?” I tug at Tobin’s sleeve. “Please.” He glances at me before easing back onto the bench. I watch him for a minute, watch the way he stares at Ashe, refusing to look away first. But Naphalie begins clearing the table and when she leans down between them, his gaze shifts to me and then to his plate. He’s fuming—I can feel the ire radiate from him like waves of heat from an open flame. When I look at Ashe, he cocks an eyebrow, waiting for me to say something, anything, but I turn away. I won’t be bated by him. I won’t. We finish eating in silence that’s broken only by the water running in the sink as Naphalie washes up her dishes. Finally Tobin asks quietly, “Do you think you can take that chip out, Naf?” She laughs. “I don’t think I’m qualified…” In his excitement, he cuts her off. “You can do it. You just got the display on your scanner fixed, right? That should find the chip. Just use your lasers to cut it out.” “It’s not that simple.” Naphalie sighs. “I’m not a surgeon, Tobin. I heal wounds—” “Same thing.” Tobin shrugs. He’s trying so hard, I know he is, but I can see from the slump of Naphalie’s shoulders that it’s not the same thing. Not at all. “You can at least give it a shot.” 52

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A dish clatters to the sink as it falls from her hand. “You can’t do that to her,” Ashe says, sweeping his dishes up as he stands. “You want that chip out? You remove it yourself.” Tobin frowns up at him. “I don’t know how.” “Well, figure it out,” Ashe says. Dumping his plates into the sink, he runs an arm around Naphalie’s shoulders and hugs her close. “What happens when she can’t remove the chip? Or it breaks, or it slips, or something—then what, Tobin? Do you blame her? I won’t let you.” Beneath the table, I place a comforting hand on Tobin’s knee. When he turns to look at me, I force a smile. “I’m sure I can learn to live with it. It’s not so bad, really.” But his pout tells me that as long as the chip is wailing away inside my mind, he’s going to try and find a way to get it out. How can I not love him for that? *

*

*

After the sun sets, I stand on the porch and look out over the white meadowfoam that glows faintly in the darkness like a low fog hugging the fields. Just what is Ashe’s problem with me? I’ve told him time and again that I’m not leaving. I’m not. What else can I do to prove it to him? And why do I feel as if I have to prove it to him? Because part of me thinks maybe his skepticism will eat into Tobin and then he’ll start to think I’ll leave, too. Past the fields, the woods are dark and foreboding, the trees black scratches against the night sky. Somewhere behind them sits the facility—I can’t see it from here but if I close my 53

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eyes I’m there again, standing in the exercise yard lit with large spotlights to keep it as bright as day at all hours. To deter escapes, perhaps, though it didn’t stop me. I still can’t believe I’m no longer in that life. I wonder if anyone at the facility is overly upset about my escape. They probably think me dead already, my body in the woods somewhere… How far could I have traveled if I hadn’t been wounded? I would never have found this tiny farm, and if I had, I would never have stopped. Funny how things work out, isn’t it? When I left the facility I only knew my name, and I only wanted to find someone else who knew it, too. I never imagined that the first person I’d stumble upon once I escaped would be the one man I needed all along who knows exactly who I am and where I belong. I’m his husband, his lover, his friend, and I belong here, in his house, in his arms. Despite whatever Ashe might think, I’m not losing that again. The door opens quietly behind me, and before his warm hands even touch my shoulders I know it’s Tobin. “Hey,” he breathes against my ear. His hands rub down my arms until his fingers entwine in mine. I wrap his arms around me and pull him close, his chest against my back and an exciting hardness at his crotch pressing into my buttocks. Kissing the scar behind my ear, he asks, “What are you doing out here all alone?” “Just thinking.” His heady scent fills my senses and I close my eyes, leaning back against him as he hugs me tight. “About?” 54

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I shrug in his embrace. I don’t want to say anything about Ashe because Tobin’s probably still a little sore about the scene at dinner and I don’t want to come between them, not when we were all friends once. Trying to change the subject, I push my butt back against his hips and tease, “What’s this?” He laughs. “Joah,” he sighs, kissing me again, his lips brushing against the back of my neck so lightly that I catch my breath. He did say I liked being kissed there, didn’t he? He knows me better than I know myself. “Can I ask you something?” I nod, head down, chin to my chest as he kisses the back of my neck just above my collar. “Will you stay with me tonight?” Fear blossoms in me again. I don’t know why I’m afraid— I’ve loved him before, haven’t I? But I don’t remember it, and I’ve never been intimate with anyone, not in my memory at least. This afternoon still shines in my mind but I’m hesitant to just give myself fully to him yet. At the facility I spent my time keeping everything else out—the soldiers, the facility, everything. I went along with the crowd, mimicked the motions and repeated the words, and kept myself, my true self, a secret. If I let Tobin in, what will I have left? What will be solely mine? He will, my mind whispers above the hum of the voice. He’ll be yours, just as you’ll be his, and it’ll be better than just having yourself. It’ll be so much better because you want him. I do. I want him so badly right now. My body responds to his touch in ways my mind doesn’t remember—I want these 55

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arms around me, these lips kissing me, these hands holding mine. Before I can answer him, Tobin murmurs, “I’m not pushing you. I know it must be hard. Believe me, I do. But I just want to hold you tonight. I just want to hear your heart beat in the darkness, I want to feel your breath tickle my neck. I want to wake up in the morning and see the sun play across your face. Is that too much to ask?” Turning in his arms to look at him, I whisper, “No.” His face is so close in the darkness. His eyes sparkle like the stars that shine down on the fields. I touch his cheek, and his skin is so impossibly soft beneath my fingers, downy and firm like the skin of a peach. “Can you show me how to do it?” I whisper in the growing darkness. “How to please you? How to be who I used to be? Can you show me how to love you again?” He kisses me tenderly, his lips as sweet as the breeze that ruffles through the crops. It’s all the answer I need. I follow him as he leads the way inside, past the den where Ashe and Naphalie sit together and up the stairs to our room, our bed. Ours.

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CHAPTER 8 Tobin closes the door to our room and pulls me to him, unbuttoning my shirt nimbly as his lips find mine. He guides me to the bed, discarding our shirts, our pants, our shoes, until there’s nothing between our bodies, and our skin catches fire where we touch. Gently he eases me down to the mattress, the soft quilt like a cloud beneath me, his body an angel’s above. With eager kisses, he closes my eyes; tiny bites prick my lips until they’re tender and hungry and I’m moaning his name because it’s the only word I remember right now. With both hands I clench at his curls, soft like rough cotton between my fingers, and his mouth trails down my neck. His tongue dances in the hollow of my throat before swirling 57

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around each of my nipples. I arch into him, his hands strong beneath me, cradling me closer as he kisses down my stomach and farther. His hands cup my buttocks, his lips encircle my hard length…his tongue is wet and hot and oh-so-firm as he licks me in places I never knew felt so good. With tiny, feathery kisses he covers my inner thighs, spreading my legs apart as he remembers the contours of my body, the way I rise to meet him, the tightness that draws him in when he enters me. Whatever discomfort I feel is kissed away when he takes me into his arms and thrusts into me slowly, rhythmically. I try to be quiet, keep it down, but my body remembers his, our love, this pleasure, this feeling that’s part soaring, part falling, and all him. “Tobin,” I whisper, afraid to give in, afraid that if I let myself fall into him I’ll never find my way out. But his kisses tell me I don’t need to be afraid, not of this, not of him, not ever. He’s holding me now, he’ll hold me forever, he’s whispering that he’s never going to let me go, and for the first time I can ever remember I know this is where I belong. I know this is who I am. I know that he defines me, and I define him, and together we are all that exists. Together we’re all either of us needs to be. *

*

*

After our bodies cool, the sheets smooth out around us, and I’m snuggled in Tobin’s arms, I tell him I love him. I don’t even think about it—the words just escape before 58

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they’re even fully formed in my mind. But when he turns my face up towards his I see tears on his cheeks and his kiss is salty on my lips. “Oh, God, Joah,” he sighs, “I never thought I’d hear you say that again.” “Then I’ll say it every day,” I tell him, burrowing closer into him beneath the quilt, “so you’ll never forget.” Some time later I ask him to tell me more about who I was. I want to know everything I don’t remember, every little detail, because if it’s not going to come back on its own I want to at least have it as a part of me. “Tell me what to remember,” I say, listening to Tobin’s heart beat steadily where my head rests against his chest. “Tell me the happy memories, and the sad ones, and the ones you think I should know.” He runs a hand through my hair, brushing it back from my brow. “Like what?” I kiss one of his nipples, taking the tender bud into my mouth and tickling it with my tongue, waiting until he sighs before I speak. “That picture downstairs,” I say, because it’s the first thing I can think of. “The one with us in the car, and Ashe, and those two other guys. Tell me about that day.” He thinks for a minute. “Naphalie took that picture. We all decided to hike into town, just spend the day at the heaps, see what there was to see and goof off and have a good time. Our parents hated the heaps—trash yards, your mom called them— and because we weren’t supposed to be there, that’s the one place we always went, you know?” I laugh. I can imagine Tobin now, the gleam in his eye as 59

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he tried to convince me to go with him to the heaps. I’m not even sure what they are but I envision a chained in area, abandoned cars and castaway furniture, old refrigerators and torn chairs and busted up vehicles piled like dust blown by the wind. “It was six of us that day, you and me, Ashe and Naphalie, Zeb and his friend Micaiah, who none of us knew too well. He was a lot older than we were, and he didn’t like Ashe very much—they were always fighting. He was the type to pick a fight, you know what I mean? Just a scrappy thing, always looking for trouble. I don’t know why Zeb hung out with him, except maybe because he was a troublemaker. Something different, something exciting, something dangerous.” “Were they together?” I ask. My hand smoothes between his legs to rub over tender flesh. “Like us?” Tobin shakes his head. “Zeb might have wanted to, but Micaiah wasn’t that type, not at all. He and Ashe got into it earlier that day because he couldn’t keep his hands off Naphalie, just kept pawing her like a hungry lapdog. Ashe almost decked him for it.” I believe it wouldn’t take much for Ashe to deck somebody. “So Zeb and Micaiah and the four of us,” I prompt, “in the trash yard.” Tobin shrugs. “Not much else happened that day.” He thinks for a moment, then adds, “We wanted to get alone, you and me, just a few minutes to ourselves, and you suggested the car—we could make out in the back seat and wait until the others found us, only it didn’t take them too long. I had you up 60

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against the door, my hand in your pants, and you were so close to coming when Ashe jumped in the car, trying to scare us.” He laughs a little and I smile at the thought, wishing I had the memory. But I can picture it in my mind, at least. I saw the photograph. “He gets all cozy beside us, telling us he’s going to dump Naf and hook up with us, make it a threesome and rock our world.” Now that makes me laugh, and Tobin hugs me tighter. “The others came up, Zeb jumping into the front seat, saying he’s going to drive us all away and Micaiah scowling beside him because he ran out of cigarettes and none of us wanted to leave with him to go get more. Naphalie snapped the picture and then we went home.” “And then what?” Tell me everything, I want to say again. Tell me everything from that day up until now, until this moment. I want to know it all. A sly grin crosses Tobin’s face and he kisses my forehead tenderly. “Then we came back to my house. My parents had gone out to a show, my brothers were at school, and we made love on the floor of the living room. I got rug burns on my knees that day but that didn’t stop us. We couldn’t get enough of each other.” I sigh. I can’t imagine ever having enough of this man. “Did we make love often?” I think we probably did. How did we ever keep our hands off each other? When we feel so right like this, pressed together in each others’ arms—how did we spend more than a moment apart? “Every night,” he admits. 61

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I laugh. “You’re kidding.” When he doesn’t answer, I look up at him and laugh again. “Tobin, every single night?” “And in the middle of the day,” he says. His grin tells me he’s joking, but he’s cute and I play along. “Sometimes in the morning, too.” “Damn.” Lying back against his chest, I pick at his nipple because it’s right there and I like the way he gasps when I touch it. “Good thing we have Naphalie and Ashe, or this crop would never get picked. Who else would run the farm while we’re making love all the time?” “That’s not a bad idea.” I feel him hardening along my thigh. “Let them have the farm. We have each other. That’s all we need.” As he rolls me back against the pillows and straddles me again, I agree. *

*

*

When I fall asleep, I dream I’m back in the woods. My hip burns lividly from the wound, open and bleeding once more, the skin pulling as I run, tearing a stitch up my side and making me stumble. The trees hem me in, pressing down on me with skeletal limbs that snake out, snatching at my jumpsuit, my arms, my hair, reaching for my eyes, my face. The guards are behind me, I can hear them running, their breath hot on my neck because they’re almost upon me, their guns aimed at me, my back filling their sights. I weave through the trees, trying to widen the distance between us, making it hard for them because I’m not going back to the 62

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facility. I know I’m not. I have my name and I have Tobin’s face in my mind, and I’m not giving either of them up. In the dream the alarms ring through the woods, echoing off the trees and resounding through the darkness, confusing me. Everywhere I turn, the alarm rings, the voice screeches, wood snaps like fire crackling, and I don’t know which way I’m going, where I am, what I’m doing. Am I running towards the farm, where Tobin waits? Or have I turned around and am now heading for the facility, back into their arms, back to them? The alarm pulses in time with my heart, a loud klaxon that reverberates inside my skull, stepping up another pitch until I’m falling to the ground, my hands fisted at my temples, trying to beat out the sound, trying to make it stop, make it end, make it stop… I’m falling and the sound is getting higher, it’s hurting now, threatening to drown out my name and my lover and just please, for the love of God please just make it stop— “Joah?” Tobin’s voice cuts through the trees, the guards, the alarm, jolting me awake. His strong hands hold onto my shoulders, catching me as I fall. “Joah, are you okay? Wake up. Please, wake up.” “I’m up,” I mutter, but the dream clings to me like gauze and I can’t seem to shake the images away. The trees, the guards, the alarm— When I sit up, the voice in my head screams in protest, louder than before, much louder. I fall to the pillows and clench my head in my hands. When I open my eyes slowly, I see the faint gray light of dawn creeping in through the window, crawling over the rumpled 63

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quilt that covers our legs, but even that’s too much right now, it’s too bright, and I close my eyes again. The buzz behind my eyelids makes my teeth vibrate, it’s so shrill, so loud, so damn loud… “Joah?” Tobin asks again. Concern laces his voice. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?” “My head,” I manage. It’s all I can do to keep from screaming in pain, from raising my voice in harmony with the shriek in my head, because it’s going to shatter my mind. I just know it. I’m numb from the pain and I can’t lift my head, it hurts so bad, I’m going to die— “Tobin.” I claw at my face, digging my fingers into my cheeks, anything to end this. “Make it stop. Please, just make it stop.” He pries my fingers loose and holds my hands away from my face so I can’t hurt myself. “Naphalie!” he cries out. Sitting on my chest, he holds me down as I thrash my head from side to side, trying to shake the voice away, trying to make it stop already. “Naphalie!” Fear curls into her name. He’s terrified. I see his fevered eyes, his flushed cheeks, and I want to tell him I love him again but I can’t find the words. I can’t even think because of this voice screaming away my life. From far away I hear a door open, and then Naphalie’s cool hands cradle my cheeks, her voice soothing as she tries to calm us down. Ashe comes into the room and hands Naphalie something, a healing laser? A needle? I don’t know, but then I feel a tiny pinprick on my shoulder and the voice quiets a bit, just a little, just enough to let the world slip away, the morning 64

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light and Tobin’s worried face and the tension in my arms. I’m falling again but Tobin’s holding onto me and there’s no dreaming now. Everything is far away and muffled, even the infernal voice in my head, and I can finally get back to sleep.

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CHAPTER 9 When I wake, Naphalie’s talking low to someone and I don’t open my eyes immediately. My head still aches with the memory of the screeching voice. I’m afraid to wake up and have that sound scrape into my mind again. “We need to at least try,” Naphalie’s saying. “He’s fine now.” That’s Ashe. Of course he thinks I’m fine. He sees me lying here on the bed and he thinks everything’s going to be all right. As long as I’m down and out, I can’t go anywhere, is that it? I don’t want to go anywhere, Ashe, I tell him, but he can’t hear me, the words are spoken only in my head. I want to have what I had. I want Tobin. I want him, nothing else. He’s 66

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all I want. Naphalie’s laughter sounds bittersweet, like a sour piece of candy that makes your lips pucker but it’s sugary so you don’t want to spit it out. “He’s drugged,” she says. Now it makes sense, why the voice is eerily mute, why my body is numb and whatever pain I feel is only echoes of what it was this morning. “The penth will wear off soon. He can’t live on it forever.” Penth. As in nepenthe. Oh shit. The facility uses penth pellets when soldiers are wounded in the field, when all the healing lasers and anesthesia wands in the world can’t help them. Highly addictive, highly unstable, and sold for obscene amounts of money on the black market, or so I’ve heard. I never understood its appeal—the drug dulls the senses until there’s nothing left, nothing but a tiny spark of your soul hiding away in layer upon layer of thick numbness. People speaking in the same room sound as if they’re miles away, colors are washed out, bland; touch is almost nonexistent. The hardest punch feels like nothing but a gentle caress and a gash with a sword or knife, just a scratch. With penth in the system, a wounded soldier forgets everything but the heat of battle and fights to the death because there’s no pain, no feeling. Not with that drug. I must have scared Naphalie pretty badly if she didn’t know what else to do but give me penth. Ashe asks, “How much more do you have?” “Enough,” she admits. I can almost see her eyes blazing in my mind, even though she sounds so far away. “Ashe, he can’t 67

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live off it, you know that. He’s got to get that chip out.” “You can’t do it,” Ashe says. Why not? I want to ask, but when I try to open my eyes, they stay shut, and all I succeed in doing is turning my head slightly. They probably think I’m still asleep. “Jesus, Naf, you know what will happen if you even try to remove it. You saw what it did to Micaiah…” Micaiah? Unit 36-722, Zeb’s friend from the picture? What’s he talking about? I try to ask but my face is frozen, my lips refuse to part, my mouth doesn’t want to open. Micaiah. “You can’t let Tobin blame you if the same thing happens to Joah,” Ashe continues. What happened to Micaiah? For a moment Naphalie doesn’t answer. I try to sit up but something’s holding me down. I don’t know what. I can’t feel it but I just can’t move. How long does penth take to wear off? I’m not sure. The voice in my head is affected by the drug and I can’t hear it now when I need it to sort through what little memories I have and find what I know of the drug. I never thought I’d miss the almost unconscious stream of data flooding my mind throughout the last five years but where is it when I really need it? Finally Naphalie says quietly, “Zeb can do it.” “Oh, God,” Ashe sighs, his voice so low I can hardly hear it. “How do I explain that one? You know he’s going to hate me. Tobin will want to know why I didn’t tell him about Micaiah earlier, he’s going to be livid.” “Maybe not,” Naphalie replies. I feel her cool palm rest 68

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upon my forehead, a light touch like butterflies through the haze of the drug. “He’s so upset right now, maybe he won’t be mad at you.” This time I manage to blink open my eyes, and she’s leaning down over me, concern written across her pretty face, her hair pinned back from her brow. I see one hand caress my cheek but I can’t feel it. I wonder where Tobin is—probably asleep with the help of another drug, something to soothe his nerves. I want him here with me but I can’t form the words. The penth took them away. “If we don’t get that chip out,” Naphalie tells him, “Joah will die, you know that. It’ll tear him apart inside and one morning Tobin will wake up to find him bleeding out beside him. Do you want that, Ashe? You thought five years was bad, because he kept hoping Joah would come back. How will you live the rest of your life when Tobin dies a little each day because Joah died in his arms?” She turns away from me and sighs. “I don’t think there are words to comfort for that, do you?” “Jesus,” Ashe whispers. I hear the indecision in his voice. If Zeb can remove the chip, what’s the problem? I’m not understanding. What happened to Micaiah? “Naf, he’s going to wonder why we never told him earlier.” “Because we didn’t want to give him false hope.” What kind of hope? Never told Tobin what? “I’m behind you on this, Ashe,” Naphalie says. “We’ll tell 69

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him together. He’s got to see that we did it to protect him.” Did what? I want to scream, but I can’t. I can’t. Naphalie’s voice sounds so reasonable, so self-assured. “He wants Joah with him, and this is the only way. Zeb is the only one who can take that chip out, the only one who’s done it before. So now is the time. You see that, don’t you? Now we have to tell him.” Oh God, Naphalie. Tell Tobin what? *

*

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When I wake up again the voice is back, but not as shrill as before. It’s just a tiny cry compared to this morning, so maybe the penth is wearing off a bit, letting reality bleed through the drug’s numbing ward. I can move now, and when I shift in the bed I feel someone squeeze my hand. Barely there but it’s some sensation, at least. It’s Tobin, tears streaking his cheeks and blurring his eyes, but when he sees my eyelids flutter open he kisses my forehead, pressing his cool lips against my skin until they warm at the touch. Smoothing my hair back from my face, he sighs my name. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” “Yeah,” I choke. My throat is dry and I sit up slowly, afraid to make any sudden move that will bring the voice shrieking back at me. I hold my head in one hand while he holds a glass for me to sip from. The water is sparkling and stabs into my mind, but it soothes my throat and when I speak again my voice is less ragged. “Where are they?” I ask, glancing around the room. I mean Naphalie and Ashe. “Naf’s resting,” Tobin tells me. A frown crosses his face 70

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as he adds, “Ashe went to find Zeb.” Zeb. Their hushed conversation comes back to me in snippets, so I guess that wasn’t a dream. Zeb can remove the chip. Naphalie said he’d done it before. And Ashe was afraid that Tobin would be mad…why was that? What happened to Micaiah that would make Tobin mad? “Zeb?” I ask, still confused. “Tobin—” He scowls as he sets the glass of water down on the table by the bed. “They said he can take the chip out.” For a long moment I watch emotions struggle across his face, hope and anger and helplessness mingling together, pulling his pretty lips into a kissable pout. Gently I ask, “They never told you, did they?” “No,” he whispers. Raising my hand to his mouth, he kisses my palm and sighs. “Remember Micaiah? You said you saw him at the facility, remember?” I nod, but Tobin’s eyes aren’t focused on me—he’s staring through me, somewhere behind me that only he can see. “He was culled the same day you were,” he says, his voice growing distant, but it’s not the drug that’s doing that, it’s his memories, taking him back in time. “I always thought maybe Zeb had this thing for him, like maybe Zeb liked Micaiah more than he was liked back, you know? We used to tease him about that, make him blush, but only when Micaiah wasn’t around. You said something like that to Micaiah, he flew into a rage. He wasn’t that way, he told us over and over again. He even got into a fight with Zeb about it, right before the culling. When the soldiers came they still weren’t talking to each 71

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other.” I wait, watching Tobin’s eyes turn a shade darker as he frowns, and then his gaze shifts to me. “Zeb left after the culling, just up and moved away. I don’t know where. But apparently he and Ashe kept in touch.” “Naphalie said he can remove the chip,” I prompt. “She said he’s done it before.” “They just told me that,” Tobin says softly. “I didn’t know. I had no clue… Naf says they didn’t want to get my hopes up any, but…” He sighs, a deep sound that tears at my soul. “About a year or two ago, Micaiah was out in the field with his squadron, at the wastelands just north of the city. Guarding the borders, or fighting the Morleys, or something, I don’t know what. She doesn’t know, either. Zeb didn’t say when Ashe saw him.” “What happened?” I think I know already, some part of me knows, because I never saw Micaiah but once at the facility, and where did Naphalie get the penth from in the first place? Tobin sighs, his hands enveloping mine as he sits down on the edge of the bed. “Micaiah was wounded in battle and left for dead. Zeb lives out that way now, out where the skirmishes take place, and whenever another fight is over he spends the night combing the dead and dying, looking for you, for Micaiah, for anyone he once knew. And that day—” “He found Micaiah.” I can see it now. “He found the penth left with Unit 36-722 and he, what? Nursed him back to health?” Tobin nods. 72

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“And Micaiah didn’t know him. But he was still alive, right? That’s why they didn’t tell you.” He nods again—it makes sense. Sure, they didn’t tell Tobin, because they didn’t want him scouring the battlefields looking for me. They know him so well, they knew even the thinnest hope would be enough, and he’d live out in the wastelands among the dead, turning over fallen bodies in the hope of seeing my dying eyes staring back at him one day. I love this man. As fresh tears fill his eyes, I pull him into my arms, running my fingers through his hair as he hugs me tightly, his hands fisting in the small of my back. “Tell me you’re not too angry with them,” I whisper into Tobin’s curls. “You know why they did it, right? You understand.” “I know,” he replies, his voice muffled in my shirt. “But still…” I hold him close and let him cry. He’s scared, I know. I am too. “But he can take out the chip,” I tell him. That’s something, isn’t it? “Micaiah is still alive, right? Zeb removed his memory chip, didn’t he?” Sniffling, Tobin says softly, “Naphalie says not to get our hopes up. She says he’s not the same as he was before, but she doesn’t really know much about it herself. Just what Ashe says. And he told her that he didn’t want Zeb to do it if there was another way. He wanted you to live off the penth forever, if you could.” “Eventually,” I say, “the voice would overpower the drug.” “I know,” Tobin whispers. “This is the only choice left.” 73

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Sighing, he adds, “I love you, Joah. God, I’m so scared of losing you again. I’m just terrified.” Brushing his curls back, I kiss his forehead and tell him I know. I love him, too, I’m scared for both of us. I’m scared I’ll lose him a second time and I don’t think I can do that. I know I can’t. I won’t let anyone take him away from me again.

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CHAPTER 10 Now I understand why Ashe is so angry. Not at me but at the whole situation, my coming back, the chip in my head, everything. Zeb must have told him about the chip and how he removed the one implanted in Micaiah’s head, but something terrible happened and even though Micaiah is still alive, Ashe doesn’t want to put Tobin through that. Whatever removing the chip does, he doesn’t want us to have to go through it. He’d rather I live off penth the rest of my days…numbed, not feeling Tobin’s softest touches, not tasting his sweet lips or smelling the bright scent of his fresh curls. But I can’t do that. I’d live with the shriek inside my head before I give up those loving sensations I’ve found once again. 75

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As night falls I lie in bed, the voice coming through in waves that wash over me sickly, and I hold Tobin in my arms. He’s curled beside me, head on my shoulder, his body above the covers that hide mine. Keeping my voice so low I can barely hear it over the squeal in my mind, I ask, “How long does it take to get to the wastelands?” Tobin frowns. “Not too long.” Our soup bowls from dinner sit on the bedside table, half empty. We’re both too nervous to eat. “What do you think will happen when he takes the chip out?” “I don’t know,” I say, like I’ve said a hundred times today whenever he asked that question. “Maybe I’ll get all my memories back. I’ll have these past few days and the days before the facility, too.” Hugging him closer, I whisper, “And I’ll love you all the more. What do you think about that?” He smiles and kisses me tenderly, his lips lingering, soft and velvety, on mine like meadowfoam blossoms. I can’t live off the drug if it means giving up this. “Oh Joah,” he sighs, caressing my cheek. I blink back tears—in all my five years at the facility, I never once felt this much, not for anything, not for anyone. I don’t want to let him go. Sometime later, the door opens and it’s Naphalie, worry written across her face. She has her lasers with her, a few anesthetic patches, and some more penth pellets—I’d recognize the flat sheets of small, round buttons anywhere. They’re an obscene shade of orange that government issue seems to favor, like reflective gear. Behind her is Ashe, his 76

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coat still on, and his gaze meets Tobin’s briefly before he looks away. Another man enters the room after him. I place Zeb immediately from the photograph downstairs. His hair is longer now, his face covered with a scruffy, illkempt beard that makes him look wild. With a nervous, wideeyed stare, he glances around the room, running a hand through his hair in a poor attempt to straighten it. He looks impossibly thin, as if he hasn’t eaten in days. Flashing us a tight smile, he turns back to the hallway and whispers, “It’s okay. Come on.” Another man steps into the room and Zeb takes his hand. This isn’t Micaiah, the hardened soldier I saw once at the facility. And it isn’t the angry, troubled man in the photo, either. This man looks like Micaiah, but his dredlocks have been chopped into short spikes that stand up from his head as if in shock. His face has smoothed out, rounding around the edges and taking on a high sheen that reminds me of the moon. He’s lost the scowl, the bitter look, the anger in his eyes. When he smiles at us, it’s a shy, unsure grin, like he’s been told to be nice and he’s going to try his best to do just that, but he’s not entirely sure the reasons why. Zeb pulls him closer, folding his hands around Micaiah’s, and they stand together for a long moment, comfortable with each other in an incongruitous way that makes my head spin. This isn’t Micaiah, is it? Finally Zeb looks at me and says, “So you escaped.” I nod slightly. “You must have kept something,” he says. 77

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Ashe and Naphalie stand by the windows, watching, waiting. Micaiah looks around the room with interest, taking everything in with a child-like wonder I doubt he had before the culling. I tell them, “My name. I’m not sure how, but when they were done, I still knew that.” “Can you take out the chip?” Tobin asks suddenly. Slowly Zeb nods. “It’s not what you want…” Sitting up beside me on the bed, Tobin glares at Zeb balefully. “I want the voice to go away.” I trail a hand down his back to comfort him. “I want Joah to be able to live like he did before, and I want him alive. If you can do that—” “It won’t be the same.” Zeb frowns at me, then Ashe. “You didn’t tell them what it does?” Ashe raises his eyebrows, defeat written on his face as he looks away. “I thought maybe you could.” Zeb sighs. “Tobin, it takes away everything. It doesn’t bring anything back, trust me.” He holds up Micaiah’s hand, still in his. Micaiah turns from his study of the pictures on the wall and flashes us a bright smile, a happy smile, something I didn’t think the scowling man in the memory that Tobin painted for me was capable of doing. “Micaiah had nothing once the chip was removed. I’ve taught him all he needed to know—I made him into who he is now.” So it’s just that easy, is it? Zeb took the broken soldier and made him into someone new, someone who could love him now. Tobin frowns. “Maybe it’s not the same with everyone.” “It is,” Zeb assures him. “Tobin, I do this all the time. I 78

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find soldiers that the facility discards like broken toys and I fix them back up. I take out their chips and send them on their way as new people, brand new because they don’t remember shit. Not from before, not from the facility, nothing. The chip takes it all when it’s taken out of their heads.” Sighing, he adds, “They can talk, they have that much. But who they are, what they did, anything that once made them specifically who they were vanishes. It’s gone when I throw the chip away. They have to learn it all over again.” “Like what?” I want to know. “How is that different from what happened during the culling?” “It’s not,” Zeb says. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. Tobin, I know how you feel about Joah. I imagine in the past few hours you’ve been helping him learn to love you all over again. But he knew his name—he had that much going for him. He won’t even have that this time. He’ll have nothing, nothing at all.” In a quiet voice, he adds, “Everyone thinks it brings back what you had before, but it doesn’t. I just want you to know that, okay? Don’t expect a miracle. Those memories are gone, that Joah is gone. And if you remove the chip, this one will be, too.” “Tobin,” I murmur. Zeb turns away as if he doesn’t want to see the intimate way Tobin’s hand clutches at my thigh beneath the covers. Tobin looks back at me, tears glistening in his eyes. “The voice will kill you, won’t it?” I nod, and he sighs sadly. “Joah, I want you with me forever. But I don’t want you to 79

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lose everything all over again. I know you don’t want that—” “I want you,” I tell him, and it’s the truth. “That’s all I want. So if this chip takes away all of my memories, fine. Just promise you’ll help me make new ones. Promise to stay with me…” I look at him expectantly. “I’ll do it for you, Tobin, if you promise you’ll still love me when I have nothing left.” “I will,” he swears, his teary kiss lending me a strength I’m not sure I still possess. *

*

*

“This is going to sting a little.” Zeb sticks the anesthesia patch behind my ear, but the penth is still in my system and I don’t feel a thing. We’re in the extra bedroom downstairs again, Naphalie laying out her healing lasers by Zeb’s side as they get everything set up. Ashe watches us, a terse expression in his eyes that’s hard to read, and Micaiah sits beside him, leafing through a magazine. Every few pages he finds something he thinks is funny and he shows it to Ashe. This Micaiah has a warped sense of humor, a way of laughing that makes the rest of us want to join in the fun, and despite the tension in the room, he manages to get a smile from Ashe every now and then. I’m in one of the kitchen chairs, trying to relax, but it’s hard when Tobin’s holding my hand so tight my fingers have gone numb, and not just from the drug anymore. The room is quiet, too quiet, punctuated only with Micaiah’s low laughter when he turns another page and says, “Hey Ashe, check this out.” Ashe smiles down at the magazine, just because it’s 80

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something to do. I wonder what’s so funny about the faded glossy pages. I want to ask Micaiah to show me, but Tobin’s on one side of me, Zeb and Naphalie on the other, I hear the faint hum of the scalpel wand come to life, and the moment’s lost. Now I’ll never know. A few minutes more and I won’t remember that I don’t know, and that saddens me. “How long will this take?” I ask as Zeb removes the anesthesia patch and pokes at my neck with the sharp edge of the scalpel, right behind my ear, to make sure that I can’t feel a thing. “Not long.” With a sure and steady hand Zeb moves my head to one side, until my cheek’s almost resting on my shoulder, and I blow a kiss to Tobin. He looks so lost and afraid. He smiles wanly back and kisses my knuckles, but I can’t feel it because he’s squeezing the blood from my fingers—his grip on my hand would be funny if he wasn’t so scared. The hum of the wand gets louder as Zeb puts the blade against my neck. I feel a slight pressure but that’s it. “The chip is close to the skin,” he tells me. “I just cut it out and then Naf will suture the wound. It’ll scar, but I’m just going to use the same marks as before, so it shouldn’t be too bad.” How did I hang onto my name the last time? I don’t remember. I don’t know what I was thinking when I was culled, how I managed to save that tiny piece of who I am and nothing else. I don’t remember this sharp tingle at the base of my skull, the hands on my head, the scalpel vibrating lightly against my ear. I’m going to lose everything all over again. 81

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Tobin, the farm, the facility even—those aren’t memories I want to keep but at least they’re something, at least they’re mine. And they’ll be gone, too. I won’t know these people, Naphalie or Ashe or Zeb. I’ll be like Micaiah and have to be told they’re my friends. What hurts the most is I won’t remember Tobin. Quietly, I say his name. He looks up at me, his gaze shifting to Zeb before finding mine. “I love you.” “I know,” I say, trying to smile. Inside of my head, the voice raises another pitch as if in protest to the scalpel cutting it free. I want to hear his voice right now, I want it to be the last thing I hear before I forget that it’s his. “Tell me something. Anything. How we met. Our first kiss. Just talk to me, Tobin. Please.” He takes a deep breath and thinks for a minute, finding a memory to share. “I was sixteen when I first told you I loved you. You don’t remember, do you? I was terrified that day—I just knew you’d laugh at me, or turn away, or hate me.” He sighs, recalling something I no longer know. “You were my best friend, Joah…you are, still, and I was so scared you’d tell me you didn’t like me back.” “Did I?” I ask, wincing at a sudden jolt of pain that flashes through my brain and is gone. “No,” he whispers. “We were lying on the floor, studying. You were a grade ahead of me and aced trig so my mom thought it would be great if you could tutor me.” He smiles at the memory. “When you went to turn the page, I caught your 82

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hand in mine and held it until you looked at me, confused, and I was so sure you could hear my heart pounding, it was so loud.” The voice in my head shrieks higher and I close my eyes, waiting for it to quiet down. Tobin keeps talking. “I told you I loved you. You frowned, and I got frustrated. I couldn’t tell you what I wanted to say, all I wanted you to know.” Behind my ear Zeb’s hand slips, cutting something, and the voice dips shrilly. Not much longer, I pray. Despite the penth and the anesthesia, it’s starting to hurt. A low voice speaks gently, soothingly, and I can hear happiness in it, no pain, nothing but sweetness and love. “And then you smiled,” this new voice says, “and kissed me, and told me you’d always felt the same way and never really knew how to tell me.” I feel someone holding my hand tightly, I feel the soft press of lips against the back of my hand. “I’ve always loved you, Tobin…those were your exact words.” I’ve always loved you… There’s a quick snap in my mind as something breaks free, and suddenly the voices are gone, all of them. The shrill banshee, the soft lover, the humming behind my ear, everything. I’ve always loved you, Tobin. The world goes black and silent and cold before it’s snuffed out like a candle’s flame, and I can’t think anymore, I can’t see, I can’t hear a thing. It’s all gone. 83

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CHAPTER 11 I remember kisses. Soft, gentle kisses that flutter across my lips like butterflies. Refreshing kisses like a spring rain. Hungry kisses, eager lips covering mine in a velvet crush that’s maddening because I want more. I can’t get enough. I want to drown in these kisses. I could live on them alone. I would die without them. Kisses like promises, each one a hint of something more. Kisses like snowflakes, no two the same. Kisses whirling like a hurricane through the blankness of my mind. In the darkness I see two boys on bicycles, teenagers laughing as they race against the wind. One of the boys is 84

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myself, but I don’t know my name, not anymore. I had it once, I think, and somewhere along the way it fell aside and was lost. The other boy knows my name. He’s beautiful, an angel fallen to earth and captured in perfect flesh, perfect curls, perfect smile and perfect eyes that flash when he looks at me. I’m trying to catch up with him but his legs are longer, he pedals faster, and he’s ahead of me, laughing over his shoulder like a taunting sprite, urging me to follow. We’re on a hill outside of town, miles away from anyone else, the trees around us whispering as we pass, their leaves rustling with autumnal secrets, their branches pointing the way to a place where we can be together, a tiny thicket where we can be alone. I toss the bike aside as I jump off and it falls to the ground, forgotten. He takes my hand and pulls the branches back, exposing the soft grass hidden in the midst of the woods. “No one will find us,” he whispers as he crawls in beside me, easing me to the ground. His lips find mine, his hands roam over my chest, my legs, unzip my jeans and fumble beneath my shirt because we were in school all day long and we couldn’t touch each other, we couldn’t even look at each other, and now we’re finally alone for the first time in what seems like forever and I can’t get enough of him. I love him, more than I’ve ever loved anyone else before, a million times more. I’m going to marry him one day, I just know it. I’ve already asked him and he’s already said yes, so who cares that we’re so young? We know what we want. We want each other. 85

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As his hands caress my body with a familiarity that excites me, the trees around us begin to fade, their changing leaves turning from vibrant reds and oranges and yellows to sordid shades of sepia and gray. He whispers my name but his voice is distant, lost in the rush of memory and the rustle of a bed sheet. His hands on my chest become a restricting quilt, tucking me into a bed I don’t remember lying down in. I don’t know where I am, what this place is I’m waking to, or why I can’t just stay with him forever in this scene in my mind. There are a million similar memories, all crowding together now, tumbling one over the other like water rushing from a mill, the two of us locked in passionate embraces, him holding me close, me kissing him in the rain. He’s all I know of life— everything else is gone. All I remember is one word, a name. Only it’s not my name. It’s his. Tobin. Tobin. That’s it—nothing else. He’s all I have left. *

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I open my eyes to find a pretty woman leaning over me. She sees me wake and smiles at me sadly. “How are you feeling?” she asks. Her voice is quiet. Everything is quiet, this room I’m in, this house, this world. For some reason I think it’s never been this quiet before, but I don’t know because I don’t remember ever being here before. I didn’t exist until just this second, when I opened my eyes. I was nothing before. There was nothing but— 86

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Nothing but Tobin. I’m not sure what that means but it brings a smile to my face. I remember Tobin. The woman asks, “Joah?” “Is that my name?” I guess it is—when I look around there’s no one else in the room. “How should I be feeling?” She shrugs. “A little woozy, maybe,” she offers, and I think about it. Yes, I’m a little woozy. “Any pain?” I don’t think so. I shake my head. No, no pain. Gently she asks, “What do you remember?” “About what?” I don’t remember anything. Except for Tobin. The boy in my dreams, the only memories I have. Does he exist? Is he real? I’m not sure I want to stay in this world if he’s not in it—I’ll go back to sleep and dream of him again. I don’t need to stay here if he’s not here with me. “I’m Naphalie,” she says, like I’m supposed to know already but because I don’t, her face looks beautifully sad. I want to apologize because I think I should know her, I feel like I should, but I don’t. She’s not in my memories at all. “The others are out in the kitchen.” Who is she talking about? Am I supposed to know them, too? “Zeb and Micaiah left,” she continues. The names mean nothing to me. “Ashe’s making dinner—he does that when he gets upset, just cooks because there’s nothing else to do, you know? And Tobin—” “Tobin?” I ask, sitting up in the bed. I push her hands away as she tries to hold me down. “He’s here? I didn’t—” I didn’t dream him up? I almost say, but I catch myself. 87

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Naphalie helps me out of bed and I run a nervous hand through my hair. Tobin’s real? Those memories, those are real? That love, those kisses, his touch? God, where is he already? “Where’s Tobin?” Naphalie stares at me, confusion mingled with a faint hope that shines brightly in her eyes. “You remember him?” I think for a minute. I don’t know my name—she says it’s Joah but I’m not too sure about that one yet. I don’t know where I am, or why I’m here with her, or why my head aches slightly, a thin throb that seems to stem from somewhere behind my left ear. When I try to think back to before I opened my eyes, there’s nothing, my mind goes blank. It shuts down. All I have are the dreams I dreamt while asleep, dreams of a love that I can still taste on my lips, a man so tender I can still feel him in my arms. I can still see the way his eyes sparkle when he looks at me. Only he’s not a dream, is he? He’s real. I wonder if we’re lovers in this world I’ve woken up to. I wonder why I don’t know if we are or not. “He’s the only thing I remember,” I say softly, unsure if that’s a good or bad thing right now. I take a deep breath—suddenly I’m afraid. I don’t know anything and I’m terrified. “What’s going on here?” I ask. “Can I talk to him? Where is he?” Without moving, Naphalie raises her voice and calls out, “Tobin?” When no one replies, she adds, “Come here a minute. Please. Tobin?” Her voice cracks—so I’m not the only one who’s scared here, am I? She backs away from me, putting a little more 88

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space between us. What’s she afraid of? She’s not the one who doesn’t know what’s going on. She knows who she is, who I am, and that’s more than I do right now. The door opens, and when I turn I see him, the boy from my dreams, grown into a man before me. I’d recognize those burnished curls, those flashing eyes, those ruddy lips anywhere. I know how he tastes, I know every inch of his strong body, I know the way it feels to be held tightly in those muscled arms and I know how tender those large hands are when they rub along my skin. For a breathless moment we just stare at each other, and I can’t dare to hope he loves me, can I? Were those memories of what we mean to each other, or just dreams that would eventually fade by the light of day? He takes a step closer and I whisper, “Tobin? Oh, God, please tell me what’s going on. Please…” Behind me Naphalie says, “He knows you. He knows your name. I didn’t tell him, I didn’t say a word, Tobin, I swear to you. He remembers you, and only you. He doesn’t even know his name and he knows yours.” I watch as tears fill his eyes and then he grabs me into a tight embrace, hugging me close, the scent of his musk filling my senses and numbing my mind. “Joah, I love you,” he whispers, the crush of his lips on mine vivid and real, not some dream or memory but real. This love we share, this love that swells inside me and threatens to swallow me whole, this is real. I don’t know where we are, but I know this is exactly where I belong. In his arms. With him. 89

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He tells me he loves me. Every few minutes, as if I’ll ever forget. It’s the only thing I remember and he can’t tell me enough, but I never tire of hearing it. I love him more than I can even express in words. He’s the only thing I have in this world because he’s the only thing I know. He’s the only thing I want to know. My name is Joah. He tells me that, and because I love the way it sounds falling from his lips, I believe him. When we make love he screams it into the night and it’s a beautiful sound, my name in his voice. I could listen to it forever. He tells me we were apart for five years, five long, endless years that I don’t remember because he wasn’t with me. My only memories are of him. When he asks if I want to know what happened then I tell him no. If he’s not in those years, I don’t need to know about them. So I tell him what I do remember, all the times we spent together, all the times we kissed, everything with the two of us that makes up my memory, and he fills in the blanks for me. The border wars forced the government to draft soldiers. They culled people, taking them from their homes and inserting a chip into their minds to suppress their memories and make them into killing machines. I was culled. I don’t remember that because Tobin wasn’t there. I remember kissing him in the street, people all around us, screaming children and crying women and men, families torn apart by soldiers corralling a select few into convoys. I remember telling him I didn’t want to lose him, I’d never let 90

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him go, and then he’s on the ground, watching me with large, teary eyes as I stare at him from the back of the moving vehicle. Then there’s nothing, just a period full of static and emptiness like a blank video tape between two shows. He’s on the ground, watching me—szznpt, that patch of empty space where I didn’t exist, szznpt—and then he’s standing in a field of heady meadowfoam in full bloom, frowning at me, concern lacing his voice when he says my name. There’s nothing in between. Nothing without him. And that’s okay with me. I don’t want those memories if he’s not in them. We’re together now, that’s all that matters. We have everything that’s past and the rest stretches out before us, memories waiting to be made, dreams meant to be lived. We have each other, and I’m never going to lose him again.

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J. M. SNYDER

An author of gay erotic/romantic fiction, J. M. Snyder began self-publishing gay erotic fiction in 2002. Since then, Snyder has released several books in trade paperback format and has begun exploring the world of e-publishing, working with both Aspen Mountain Press and Amber Quill Press. Snyder’s highly erotic short gay fiction has been published online at Ruthie’s Club, Tit-Elation, Sticky Pen, and Amazon Shorts, as well as in anthologies by Aspen Mountain Press and Cleis Press. A full bibliography, as well as free fiction, book excerpts, purchasing information, and exclusive contests, can be found at: http://jmsnyder.net *

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