Vicious Memories

Chapter 102

I could barely look at the people arrayed before me, but I knew I had to try.

"You were about to tell them what happens next," I said. I didn't recognized the voice that came out of my mouth. "You were going to explain how they'll be sent to new lives back in the world, free to start over."

"Right, of course," Bev said, then laughed lightly. "Was I, though? Liam, would you mind?"

The world seemed to shake as several sets of strong arms grabbed me from behind. I twisted instinctively, trying to break their grip, but there must have been two or three people holding on. Several of the villagers cried out in alarm. Before I could do more than growl, a set of what felt like plastic field ties snapped shut around my wrists and I was wrenched a few steps away from Bev, out of easy arm's reach.

"What is this?" I spat. "We had a deal."

"We only have a deal if I feel like having a deal," Bev answered. Her face had gone cold again, any trace of mirth evaporating like morning mist. "I told you. I control everything here. You tried to break our project, to sow chaos into everything we had worked so hard to build. And why? Because you grew a conscience? Don't make me laugh. I've seen your redacted file.

"You tried to ruin everything. For that, and for all the trouble the rest of you—" she turned back to the villagers, "—have caused, you're going to be wiped clean from this earth, which is what you deserve. You were originally going to have a choice, to either lose your memories again and be placed back in society or to stay here. This project serves a need in the world right now, so it'll be put into use for others like you. They'll have their memories wiped, lose their identities, and be given new ones. But nobody is going to complain if the trial participants didn't survive the end of testing. And believe me, if the world didn't need the other people like you for their labor, they could be destroyed, too, for all I care. This project is a stepping-stone to greater things for me. Control over human memory? That is something special."

Everything was happening too fast. I tried to process what Bev was saying and found that my mind couldn't keep up. I needed to slow everything down, at least for a few minutes.

"And what about me?" I asked. "You promised to give me my memories back."

"Your memories back? After what you did? Absolutely not. I just wanted to show you that even here, now, when you've forgotten everything you've done in the past, when you thought you were so much better than I was because of your newfound morality, we're not so different after all, are we, Ollie? We're the same in the end. You're no better than anyone else here, willing to betray these friends of yours just to claw back your old life and the memories you so desperately need."

The beginnings of panic showed themselves not in the stampeding feet of a mob or the cries of the hopeless, but in the taut energy brimming behind eyes rolling like those of animals in a cage. It showed in the minute shaking of hands clenched into fists. I saw Finn and Cooper stare at each other numbly, shoulders trembling. Tana's eyes darted around far too quickly for her to possibly process everything she was looking at. Mads, who had probably never hit anything in her life, had her hands curled into claws.

The matter-of-fact knowledge that we were all about to be killed was delivered too directly to be believed at first, but after a moment it began to sink its teeth in. The villagers began to mill around, and the men behind me shifted nervously.

"We'll kill her and be done with it." Arun's voice wasn't meant for us, standing several yards away, but we heard it just the same. "She's not an unarmed prisoner. I have no qualms about skipping her trial. But if we're going down, she needs to go down, too."

"Weapons ready," Bev said to her men, and for the first time she actually sounded nervous.

Events were moving far more quickly than I had envisioned. I looked wildly from one side of the conflict to the other, thinking through my options, wondering what I could possibly do to avert the coming catastrophe.

And just as I opened my mouth to try to delay the inevitable, it finally happened.

Bev coughed.