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“I’ll be back for you in one hour,” Jeremiah told me from the passenger seat. He rolled up the window and drove away, leaving Ruel and me a block from the safe house. I kept my head down the best I could to avoid any cameras. Ruel ushered me into an empty hallway belonging to an old apartment building. I followed him up wooden stairs that sagged in the middle, polished with the wear of hundreds of years of tenants’ daily treading. He unlocked a door on the third floor and led me into what looked like a minimally furnished apartment. I wondered how long Ruel planned to stay here.
Once he locked the door behind us, his mouth was immediately on mine. We had talked enough on the ride to Kiev, and I happily returned his feverish kiss. We pulled off each other’s coats swiftly, the rest of our layers following so rapidly that I almost tripped over my boots. Ruel let out a laugh at this and dropped to his knees to untie them for me. He kissed my entire body on the way back up; I shivered at the sensation rather than the cold air of the apartment. He picked me up and hurried us to the bedroom, putting me down onto the twin bed’s rough, cotton duvet. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he entered me. The sex was raw, desperate almost. We varied positions for thirty minutes or so, and when we climaxed, I was on my stomach. Ruel collapsed onto my back, our bodies covered in sweat.
After a moment, his body became heavy and I flexed my shoulder blades into his chest to hint that he should roll off of me. He slid to my side, and I propped myself up to face him. He stroked my face lightly.
“Ruel,” I started. I knew I was about to ask an impertinent question, but I didn’t care. I needed to know. “Did you know about the bomb beforehand?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “I knew there was going to be a bomb at the US embassy, yes. But it was not supposed to be that day. I wouldn’t have taken us there if it had been.”
“Are you certain? Because we would’ve been inside of it if you hadn’t stopped at that ATM.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “Emma, I would never have let Andrew and Maria die like that.”
“You might be evil but you’re not that cruel?” I challenged, drawing on his words from our first date.
“The things I’ve done, Emma, I’m not proud of them,” he said. “I thought it was for a good cause, I suppose you have to in order to kill someone.”
“Or not know you’re doing it,” I said.
“You were programmed,” he said, looking me in the eye. “That’s different.”
“So were you.” I met his gaze with a meaningful expression.
“Not the same.”
“Brainwashing is brainwashing,” I said. Ruel sighed.
“Listen,” he began, “I need you to promise that you won’t come looking for me. It’s imperative that I find you, not the other way around.”
“Your brother is wiping my memory, Ruel. I won’t even know you exist. Why would I come looking for you?”
“Just promise.”
“I promise,” I said, even though it seemed pointless.
“And don’t take off your necklace,” he said, touching the blue pendant around my neck.
“Why?” I asked. I hadn’t planned to take it off, but now there was a reason beyond my own obsession with Ruel.
Ruel hesitated before finally saying, “It’s a tracking device.”
I didn’t say anything. I suppose that should have appalled me, but instead, I felt touched and safe, as if Ruel had just wrapped a warm blanket around me.
“But you must have the tracker with you. What if they find you?”
“No, there’s just a code,” he said. “Jeremiah knows it. He’ll program it in you as part of the procedure.”
“A code? Like a number series that just magically leads you to the pendant?”
“Precisely!” he said. “But it’s not magical, it unlocks a certain brainwave in you, triggering a chemical release that interacts with the pendant and sends me a signal.”
“So, there is a tracker.”
“Inside of me.”
“Another chip inside of you?” I asked. “You’re insane.”
Ruel grinned broadly and kissed my nose. “Says the bipolar girl.”
It was then that I realized I hadn’t taken my medication in two days and it was in my suitcase in the tunnel in Russia. Maybe Jeremiah could get me some.
“Okay. So, no looking for you and no taking off the pendant,” I said. “Do you promise to come find me?”
“Yes, I promise,” he said with a soft, certain voice before kissing me. We kissed for a while, our tongues interlocking in a smooth rhythm. Ruel pulled away and whispered, “We should get dressed. It’s almost been an hour.”
I gave him another peck, pulled myself from the mattress, and headed for the bathroom. I peed and washed my hands. I saw in the mirror that my face had a post-coital glow, and I wondered how long that would last before despair, loss, and fear set in. Not long enough, I decided.
When I walked back into the living room area, Ruel was already dressed. I pulled on my layers and the boots I’d kicked him with only hours before. I was tying the laces when Ruel’s burner phone buzzed. “Jeremiah’s here. He’s in a silver Mercedes Benz,” Ruel told me.
I closed my eyes. This was it. I felt Ruel’s arms around me, very tight. I breathed in his scent one last time. We walked to the door and faced one another.
“I will find you,” he said with conviction.
“Ruel,” I breathed.
He took my face in his hands and we kissed. It was tender. It was perfect. It was Ruel. We would never kiss this way again.
We pulled apart and my hand went to the door locks, reluctantly undoing them. I turned the door handle and looked at Ruel one more time. He grinned brightly at me, his wonderful grin.
“See you later, Emma,” he said.
I winked at him and he laughed. I smiled, opened the door, and left.
—
By the time I climbed into Jeremiah’s Mercedes, I was a complete mess. I wanted to hold it together, I wanted to be strong about things, to not put this emotion on Jeremiah, but I couldn’t. Had I been wearing makeup, it would have been running over my entire face. Jeremiah gave me a sad smile when I was securely fastened in the passenger seat. He pulled into the traffic, shifted into second, and reached over to squeeze my hand.
“I’m so sorry this has to happen. I know how hard it is,” he said. He sounded genuine. I wondered if he really did know how this felt? Perhaps not for me, but he knew how it felt for Ruel. Then again, I was the one going into hiding. I was the one who was going to die, and Jeremiah had already done so, twice.
I didn’t reply to him, it wasn’t necessary. We drove in silence for some time. Jeremiah pulled onto the interstate, and within ten minutes we were in the outskirts of Kiev. Eventually, the evidence of a city all but faded away, and Jeremiah pulled into a truck stop. Instead of stopping at one of the pumps, he parked in front of the building.
“Pit stop?” I asked. My tears and face had dried by now.
“No,” he began, “This is kind of awkward, but I need you to take a shower and get rid of those clothes. You have Ruel on you, and they can track Ruel. They are already tracking him.”
“What will I wear?” I asked.
Jeremiah pulled a navy blue duffel bag from the back seat and handed it to me. “Kalyna, my wife, lent some clothes for now. They’re in here along with soap and shampoo and such.”
I nodded and took the bag. He indicated I wait in the car a moment and reached across me to pull out a scrambler from the glove compartment. He turned it on and told me to hurry before the clerk noticed the cameras were out. We went into the service station together and he asked the worker at the counter for a shower stall. At least that’s what I assumed he said since they were speaking in Ukrainian. Jeremiah handed the man some Euros, and the man gave back a piece of paper. He asked the clerk something else and he pointed to the far left wall where a large word was written in what looked like Russian script, with an arrow pointing down. Jeremiah nodded and I smiled a thank you at the man. We went to the indicated wall, which opened into a hallway housing multiple doors. I could hear a shower running behind the second door. Jeremiah led me to the fourth stall. It had number pad on it and he punched in the numbers written on the paper without looking at it twice. I smiled at this. It was something Ruel would do. Something I would do. Something a spy would do, I mused. But I wasn’t a spy.
“Here you are,” he said to me while opening the door. “Don’t take more than five minutes, but scrub it all off. I’ll be in the store. Come find me when you’re done.”
“What do I do with my clothes?”
“Put them in the bag and leave the bag.”
“And my passport?”
He held out his hand.
“But isn’t it contaminated?” I asked.
“It’ll be fine,” he said.
“Ruel told me not to let it leave my body.”
“He also told you that you had to die. How can you be dead if you still have your ID?”
I sighed. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Not here,” he said quietly.
I nodded and took off my coat then dug into my pants for the passport, feeling slightly uncomfortable in front of Ruel’s brother. He showed no emotion, took the passport, and left me alone in the stall. I saw him hit the off button on the scrambler as he closed the door behind him.
The air was still somewhat cold, even inside the heated building. I left my clothes on while I started the hot water. I knew that part of me just didn’t want to part with Ruel’s scent, but I only had five minutes, so I shed the clothes into a clump on the dirty tile floor. I opened the duffel bag to find not only shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, and a loofa, but also face wash, deodorant, a hair brush, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. Ruel had been right about that, I really liked Kalyna already.
The water was barely over lukewarm and I figured that was as good as it was going to get, so I got in and pulled the shampoo through my hair. It had a fresh scent, nothing floral, probably something called ‘Cotton Harvest’ or ‘Linen Breeze’.
As I conditioned my hair, I tried to recount the events that had led me from business meetings in Moscow to a shower stall in a truck stop outside of Kiev. I remembered the ash pouring through the sky after the bombing, the rush of the car chase, and the cold barrel of the gun against my temple. I had left the Glock in the safe house with Ruel. I thought of Ruel’s body pressed to mine against the hotel room wall and again in the bed an hour ago. Then it hit me. If I hadn’t been taking my bipolar medicine, I hadn’t been taking my birth control. I cursed out loud into the water. I would have to get the morning after pill somehow. Hopefully, Kalyna would be able to help me. I had no idea what the laws were here regarding it. After brushing my teeth, something I’d never done in the shower, I pulled the towel from the duffel bag and thoroughly dried off. Kalyna had lent me long underwear, a bra, jeans, a shirt, and a sweater. The colors were muted and drab. I knew I would freeze without a coat, but it was a short walk from the store to the car. She’d thrown in cloth boots with a fuzzy interior that were unbelievably warm and a beige tight-knit hat with navy stripes at the base. I assumed she was slightly bigger than me since I looked a little frumpy in the get-up, but there was no one to impress. I was really just thankful the pants were too long rather than too short. I briefly wondered if these were clothes she actually wore. I tucked the Mjölnir pendant under the smooth cotton shirt, pulled the brush through my hair a few times, and threw everything into the duffel bag.
I quickly found Jeremiah in the store. He flashed me a tight smile when we met eyes and led me to the parking area in the opposite direction of the Mercedes. I didn’t protest, I trusted Jeremiah knew what he was doing. We arrived at a black Audi, the same model as my car, but with slight European modifications. He tossed me the keys, which I caught automatically.
“You up for driving?” he asked. “I hear you’re quite the driver.”
I laughed and walked around the car to the driver’s side. The car interior smelled new, and the layout was familiar. I adjusted the mirrors and had us on the interstate in under a minute. I figured that Jeremiah got the car on my behalf to help keep me calm. It worked. In my peripheral, I saw him hit the scrambler’s off button again.
“You steal this for me?” I asked, smiling for the first time since I left Ruel.
“Kalyna and I are well connected,” he said. “An occupational perk.”
Jeremiah navigated me to his property. He lived on a farm. The fields were covered in fresh snow and the barn light was on. In the darkness, I could see smoke rising from the house’s chimney. The sky was clear and, without the light pollution, the waning half moon shined brilliantly along with thousands of stars. The scene looked like something from a Christmas card.
I pulled into the circular driveway and parked in front of the house. The front door opened and Kalyna emerged to greet us. I realized the clothes she lent me were definitely not hers. The woman looked like a super model. Maybe she had been. Her long, brown hair cascaded in loose curls midway down her back, and she stood slightly taller than me. She wore a form-fitting, cream-colored sweater that looked like it was spun from sheep’s wool. Her face and body language showed relief. Relief that Jeremiah made it home, and that he wasn’t dead. They embraced each other and then introductions were made. She apologized for the clothes, explaining they had no idea of my size. I laughed it off and she ushered us inside.
Kalyna sat me by the fire and put a mug of hot tea in my hands. It burned slightly, and I put it down on the coffee table after she turned away. My stomach growled at the scent of stew in the air. Jeremiah brought me a bowl and sat in the chair across from me while eating from his own bowl. Kalyna brought in three glasses of water and then came back in with her own serving of stew. For five minutes, the only audible noises were from us eating and the crackle of the fire.
After the extremely late meal, exhaustion finally overcame me. It was somewhere around midnight, which was really one o’clock for me since I was still on Moscow time. Kalyna led me to the guest room.
“Extra blankets are in the wardrobe, and the bathroom is just around the corner. Feel free to use anything in there,” she said, pointing to the wardrobe. “I’ll let you get to sleep.”
“Kalyna,” I started. This uncomfortable conversation had to happen tonight. “I have a favor to ask. It’s time sensitive.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“I know we’ve just met, and it’s a bit personal, but my birth control got left behind in Russia and I need an emergency contraceptive.”
“Okay,” she said. Ironically, her accent was most noticeable when she said that word. “Not to worry. I have a pharmacist friend. I’m assuming you need it as soon as possible?”
“Yes.” I said. There was a 72-hour window and I hadn’t even hit three hours at this point, but the sooner I took it, the more effective it would be.
“Consider it done,” Kalyna said with a smile. “Good night.”
“Thank you. Good night.”
—
I slept for nine hours. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept for that long. My back was stiff, but I didn’t know if it was from the running or the bed. It didn’t really matter, it would pass. I got up and did a cobra backbend to stretch out. It felt so good, that I went through a series of poses ending in plank, which I held for about a minute before doing fifty push-ups. I rummaged through the wardrobe for better fitting clothes and settled on a pair of jeans and a tight, long-sleeve, dark teal shirt. There was a sweater nearly identical to the one Kalyna had on last night which had me wondering if they raised sheep.
I went to the bathroom and performed my morning routine as if I was back in Orlando. There was a packet on the counter with a note that read: The favor you asked. I opened it to find the contraceptive and promptly took the pill.
I wandered into the kitchen and found Jeremiah and Kalyna sitting at the table, the evidence of eaten breakfast still in front of them. Jeremiah had his tablet on and was reading the headlines of the morning. I laughed at the normality of the whole setting. It was surreal and completely absurd after yesterday’s events.
“Good morning!” he said cheerfully, looking up from the screen. “Coffee?”
“Please,” I said, and he got up to grab the French press pitcher and poured me a cup.
“Milk’s in the fridge,” he said. “I will warn you though, it’s sheep’s milk.”
“So, you do raise sheep,” I said, and looked down at the sweater I was wearing.
“Pays the bills,” Jeremiah laughed.
I found a metal pitcher in the fridge with plastic wrap over the top and a whitish liquid inside. I assumed it was milk and no one argued when I pulled it out, so I poured a little bit into my coffee. I’d never had sheep’s milk, and it tasted fine mingled with the coffee, but I didn’t think I’d like it straight.
I sat down at the four-person round table and asked, “So, how does someone die?”
There was a short silence in which all eyes turned to Jeremiah. He took a swig of his coffee and stared through the mug into nothing before looking at me.
“It’s a memory erasure procedure, then an embedding of new traits and a rationality as to why you have some memory loss,” he said finally.
“Rationality? You can embed rationality?” I said in disbelief. This was preposterous.
“Yes. It’s almost default in a way. The mind needs something to explain the unexplainable. It would happen regardless, but this way you will feel calmer about it. It will seem ‘right’ and ‘okay’ that you are lacking certain memories. Your mind will start to fill in the gaps on its own,” he said.
“It’s a bit like amnesia to an outsider,” Kalyna added. “Memories of ‘yourself’ will start to come back. Even though they never truly existed.”
“So, old me gone, new me piecing together,” I said. “Ruel said he would find me. How will I remember him once he does? Can I?”
“That’s the thing about memory, it doesn’t disappear. It just hides out,” he said. “You can always find it again if you try hard enough.”
“So, you’ll just reverse the procedure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, but his voice was uncertain.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. I will reverse it,” Jeremiah sighed, and scrunched up his nose in thought. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated!” I said, completely exasperated.
“Look, I’ve been through this two times already. You will be fine. It’s a little more in depth than the memory erasure that Ronaldo had done to you, but because you’ve been through that, well…” he trailed off. That must be an Alexander family trait, I mused, if that was even their actual surname.
“Well, what?” I demanded.
“I’m going to have to undo Ronaldo’s procedure which means that—”
“—I’m going to remember everything…” I finished for him tersely. He nodded. “Well, can I at least get drunk beforehand?”
Jeremiah let out a rich laugh, a Ruel laugh. I wondered how they could still be so alike even though they’d been apart for so long.
“No, no depressants before or during the procedure, but afterward, you can get as drunk as you’d like.” He smiled. “But, you’ll have to be fully sober again for the second procedure. And I’m not sure how much time we really have.”
“There will be enough time,” Kalyna said softly, but sternly. Her tone both calmed my nerves and overruled her husband. I smiled at her. Jeremiah ceded with a slow nod.
“Anything in particular you’d prefer?” she asked me.
I thought about it. Normally, I preferred scotch, but I liked to drink it slowly and enjoy it, which was absolutely not what I wanted in this situation. I wanted to feel numb.
“Vodka,” I finally said. “Something Polish or Russian that will go down smooth. And can you throw it out in the snow for a bit? I’ll want it cold.”
“Of course,” Kalyna said, as if the idea of drinking vodka at any other temperature was sacrilege. Perhaps it was. She headed towards to the door, and, I assumed, she was going to the store. It was Sunday and I wondered if anything would be open or if they even sold liquor on Sundays. Jeremiah’s words, “we’re well connected” came back to me. She had gotten the contraceptives for me, surely vodka would be easier to find.
“How much time does it take?” I asked Jeremiah after I heard the door lock behind Kalyna.
“You said you worked for him for how long?”
“Four years and eight months.”
“Probably an hour then, maybe a little longer. It depends on how you react to the drug.” He stood up and started walking around the house pulling out random items and setting them on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. I realized, with some amusement, he was going to do the procedure right there in the living room. I’m not sure why this surprised me. I guess I figured it’d happen in some sterile white and stainless steel room below the house. I downed the rest of my coffee and followed him around.
“What drug?” I asked.
“It’s an Ampakine.” He said simply as he pulled a bucket out of the hall closet. I gave him a look. He smiled at me and said, “In case you vomit.”
“So, you’re giving me a memory enhancer?”
“Right,” he said. “Based on what you told Ruel on the ride to Kiev, it seems like Ronaldo only used behavior modification on you. Which is pretty easy to reverse since no proteins were destroyed between the neurotransmissions. Basically, behavior modification simply closes off all but a small window of the memory. The Ampakine gives the window a push open.”
“Why do we have to even do this?”
“If we don’t, then you will still have these memories after the second procedure. The memory erasure is essentially a traumatic incident. The brain will compensate and trigger those memories. You might have already experienced it some in the past couple of days.” He looked at me and I shook my head. The memory of murdering that man had never been erased since I killed Ronaldo before he had the chance.
Jeremiah smiled. “Well, maybe you just run on adrenaline and not fear, then. Once they are triggered, you will have no clue what those memories are, or who Emma is, and it could cause your brain to just shut down into a comatose state. We don’t know.”
“But if I have the memories, can’t you just erase them while they’re still receded in the windows?”
“I could try, but there’s no guarantee it will work. It’s safer to recall them before erasing them entirely.” He gave me a look of remorse. “I’m really sorry this is the case.”
“Me too,” I said flatly. I wasn’t annoyed at Jeremiah, I was angry with Ronaldo. I thought about killing him. It had been unemotional and swift. I walked into his office, shot him in the head and again in the chest, then left.
The door unlocked. Jeremiah and I turned to see Kalyna come in with a bottle of vodka. It was already chilled, perspiration running down its side in the heat of the house. She put the bottle in the freezer and came into the living room.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
She smiled warmly at me then looked at Jeremiah and asked, “Are we ready?”
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