Page 29 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

“I’m not saying it’s on purpose. But the chances are high that you lost your memory due to… what they put you through.”

She looks out the window at the last part. Stays silent.

“I know what they put me through. My friends through. My brother and…”—it takes me a second to spit out the word—“sister too. And none of it’s good.”

“You have a brother and sister?” she asks, taking the conversation in a new direction.

“Yes. Sort of. My brother, Atticus, and I were in Prodigy together. My sister, Molly, was there too, but she and I were never close.”

“They’re… still alive? You saved them?”

“No,” I say, changing lanes on the freeway to get off at the next exit. “No. Atticus never needed saving. Our father didn’t want him in the program like me. He was the… heir, right?”

Her lips make a tiny o. “And your sister?”

“I tried to kill her but Lincoln, my friend, he was… attached. So he helped her escape. She made it. Barely, but she did. She’s still around, at any rate.”

She’s quiet after that. Even when we get to the restaurant. She looks at the menu like she’s never eaten at a restaurant before, but orders pancakes by pointing at the picture. I expect her to scarf them down since she’s obviously in need of food, but she doesn’t. She eats slowly. Watching me. Almost mimicking my motions. She says no to coffee, tea, and juice, but drinks the ice water they have on the table.

When we get to the mall a few miles closer to town, she looks utterly lost and doesn’t protest when I take her hand and place it on my arm as we walk across the parking lot. When we step through the door, she grips me. Tight.

I don’t bother asking what kind of clothes she prefers. She obviously has no idea. Instead, I take her to the women’s department and begin to choose. A salesperson helps us, a young girl who looks at Sadie like she’s a homeless person who just walked in off the street. But then she looks at me, and pastes the fake smile on her face as she helps her make decisions.

The two of them disappear into a dressing room and an hour later she’s wrapping up the packages.

We leave the mall with Sadie clutching my arm again.

“Well,” I ask. “How was it?”

Sadie takes a deep breath as she looks over her shoulder at the department store entrance. “Frightening.”

“You did good though,” I say, holding up the packages. She got a few shirts, a few pairs of jeans, and a new pair of shoes. Sneakers. Which is almost cute. But she refused to change into anything new, so she’s still wearing her uniform.

“That lady called me Phil the entire time.”

“Your name tag says Phil.”

“It does?” she says, looking down at her shirt. “Oh. It does.”

“Did you correct her? Tell her it’s your boyfriend’s shirt?”

When I look down, her eyebrows are all scrunched together. Like she’s thinking about this very hard. “No.”

“It’s OK. Work shirts are kind of… in vogue.”

She bites her lip, making me smile, but only says, “Mmm-hmmm.”

Grocery shopping is a similar experience. Sadie is wide-eyed with either fascination or fear, I’m not sure which. She walks alongside me as I push the cart, grabbing things off shelves and placing them inside. I wait for her to grab her favorite foods, but the only item that catches her attention are the oranges stacked in a neat pyramid in the fresh food section.

We buy a whole bag of them.

“You didn’t want juice at breakfast but you like oranges?” I ask, fishing for insight.

She doesn’t answer. In fact, she’s silent the whole time I check out at the little kiosk in the front of the store. She watches me scan items one at a time with such intensity, I find myself smiling.

I should not let my guard down. In a few hours she will get her memory back and want to finish her job. In a few hours I might have to kill her.

But I like her.