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I can’t let this happen.
“Riley!” I scream again. I twist my arm, hear the tear of muscle under my skin, but manage to free myself from the restraint. I grab at Dr. McCall, catching her by the lapels of her lab coat, and turn the fabric in my fingers until she’s gasping and choking for air.
Someone is pounding my chest while someone else hits my face over and over again. Dr. McCall’s face turns red then blue. There’s a knee on my shoulder, and a hand pushes against the device they put on my neck and head right before a pulse of electricity runs through me.
My hand shakes. I lose my grip, and hear Dr. McCall gasp before she drops to her knees, clawing at her throat. Another jolt goes through me, and everything in my head starts to merge together.
Inside myself, I begin to fall.
It’s a long drop. Images of my life fly past me. I see my parents sitting in the sun on our front porch—Dad is smiling, and Mom is holding my baby sister. I see my sister skipping home from school as I tend the dry fields. I see Riley’s face when I first wake up in the
lab. I see her beautiful smile as I lay her down on a soft mattress and press my lips to hers…
My eyes fill with a bright white light and then nothing but darkness.
Epilogue
I wake in a stark, white room.
“Caucasian male, one hundred and eighty-three centimeters, weighing eighty-nine kilograms…”
I turn my head toward the sound of the voice, but I can’t see much from where I am. I shift my shoulders, trying to sit up, but I’m strapped to the bed. I can’t move my arms or my legs. My heart begins to pound in my chest as adrenaline surges through my system.
I fight against the restraints, but they seem to hold me down everywhere—arms, legs, shoulders, and torso. I can’t get enough leverage against any one strap to free myself, and panic rises.
This is wrong. This is dangerous. Move. Get out. Escape.
“Relax.” A woman appears beside me, brushing her fingers over the inside of my arm.
Calm covers me like the waters of a warm bath, soaking into my skin from the point where she’s touched me. I drop my shoulders back to the mattress as I look into her soft green-brown eyes. My heart slows, and my breathing returns to normal.
“Where am I?” I ask. I try to look around the room from my vantage point on my back, but all I can see are tables and carts full of medical equipment. “I don’t remember how I got here.”
“It’s all right,” she says softly. “You’re safe.”
I twist my hand around so it’s palm up, trying to grasp something to hold onto, but there’s nothing there until I feel her hand in mine. I thread my fingers through hers and hold on tightly.
“Not too hard now.” Her quiet voice calms me, and I loosen my grip.
I look her over. She’s tall, athletically built, and dressed in a white lab coat with a medical insignia on the left breast. Her light brown hair is coiled around the back of her head in a simple bun, though there are a few stray wisps around her ears and neck. There’s a tiny white scar behind her right ear, just barely visible under her hair.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“That scar on your head.”
“Oh, that.” She touches the spot with her fingertips. “It’s just a childhood injury. I fell out of a tree and conked my head pretty hard. I don’t remember it very clearly.”
I think about her being young, hurt, and afraid. An overwhelming desire to wrap her up in my arms and keep her safe permeates my skin, my muscles, my very being. I stare at her as she takes my vital signs and taps them into a tablet computer.
Her skin looks soft, and I want to raise my hand to stroke the side of her face, but I can’t move. I want to kiss the scar on her head and promise her no more harm will ever come to her.
“I’m sorry you were hurt.”
“It’s all right,” she says, chuckling softly. “Like I said, I barely remember it.”
“I don’t remember anything,” I tell her. “Nothing at all. I don’t know who I am.”
