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Jeremiah rubbed an alcohol swab over the back of my hand, leaving a feeling of coolness as the moisture quickly dried off my skin. He skipped the bedside manners and silently stabbed the IV drip’s needle into the vein. He taped it in place and began to open the valve which would let the Ampakine compound into my bloodstream.
“It shouldn’t take too long to kick in, and then we will begin,” he told me in a calm voice. I nodded and leaned back in the chair. Jeremiah went into the kitchen and I could faintly hear him murmuring with Kalyna. I didn’t attempt to make out the words, which were likely Ukrainian, anyway. Five or so minutes passed before I started to feel the medicine’s effect. My mind became very alert, though my senses did not increase. It was a strange sensation. Usually, when my mind was so focused, my eyesight was at its peak. This was currently not the case.
“How are you feeling?” Kalyna asked. Her approach startled me a bit. I hadn’t heard her footsteps.
“Very alert,” I told her.
“Good,” she said. “We will start, then. I’m going to do the procedure, not Jeremiah.”
“Why?”
“I’ve done it before,” she said simply, before adding the actual reason. “Jeremiah’s voice may be too similar to Ruel’s. I don’t want the memories crossed for you.”
She sat down across from me. They had moved the coffee table so that our chairs were very close together. I looked at her in the eye. Here we go.
“Emma, tell me about how you first met Ronaldo. Where were you? What did he look like? How did you feel at the time?” she asked.
I recounted the story from the Atlanta coffee shop. Kalyna pushed for more details. Little things. I was amazed at how much I could remember. Things I had not thought of, ever. The color the sky had been that day, the direction of the stitching on his shirt, the sentence I had been reading when he sat down. She asked me about the first time I went into their offices, and then to describe the first training sessions I had.
I told her how everything had come very naturally to me, and how it almost felt like I was predestined to do that kind of work. I recalled that once I had overheard one of the fighting trainers telling Ronaldo it seemed like I had espionage training before. This part made Kalyna perk up a bit.
“Did you have any espionage training, or any training at all before Ronaldo? This is important, Emma,” she said as her face drew serious.
“No,” I said. I was remembering things extremely clearly now. Surely I would remember if I’d had previous training.
She then asked about my first heist. I gave her the story and without a pause she asked me about my first kill. The memory formed quickly even though I didn’t expect it to.
A series of dark figures morphed into a daytime scene. People were hustling below me in downtown Atlanta. It was windy. I was on the roof of a building looking at the street. A group of five men emerged into the plaza across from me, and I spotted him. Emilio Hernandez. My mark. Two of the men were bodyguards, and the other two must have been associates. I didn’t know who Emilio was, or why I was killing him, I just knew I had to.
I steadied my sniper rifle against the concrete wall of the roof and started my breath control to prepare. It wasn’t a difficult shot whatsoever. Suddenly, a feeling of annoyance swept over me as I felt my skills were being wasted on something so simple. I repeated in my mind the mantra, Breathe, relax, aim, and squeeze, and killed the bodyguards and Emilio in three swift shots. I quickly packed my gear and was back in the stairwell in forty-five seconds.
I felt disgusted with myself as I recalled the story for Kalyna. I had murdered three men, and all I could think about was how I wasn’t being challenged.
“Let’s move on,” Kalyna said calmly, sensing my emotion. “That mission was very detached. Tell me about a mission that was more hands on.”
I noted that she used the word “mission” rather than “murder”. She did not view me as a murderer. Sadly, she was wrong. Scores of people were dead because of me. Their scared faces continued to pop into my head. That split second before the end, a look of complete and utter fear washed over each face. Then they all went blank.
I couldn’t handle this. I felt vomit coming up and fumbled for the nearby bucket.
When I was done throwing up, Jeremiah handed me a glass of water. The way he did so was identical to the motions that Ruel had previously used in the hotel room. Their hands looked exactly the same. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to think about Ruel during this. I wasn’t supposed to associate waltzing with him with my memory of breaking a man’s wrist, or cross images of Ruel’s taut body with lines of blood trickling down from a freshly stabbed spleen. I needed to never connect the confidence of our almost ballet-like martial arts fighting with— I stopped myself. That wasn’t a memory. That wasn’t real. Ruel and I had never fought that way; but the image was so precise. I could feel our movement, our emotion, our synchronized agility, and his pride. It was like the strange snapshot of my parents that I had while waltzing on the dance floor in Moscow. I focused harder. Ruel’s face was younger in this image, much younger. His wrinkles were gone. He looked… I searched for the right word to describe his energy. He looked more alive. I put him in a hold, the checkmate of our sparring. “Good job,” he said, and pat my arm. We parted, bowed, and he smiled at me. An emotion overtook me, a giddy, embarrassing attraction to him. It could only be described as a schoolgirl crush.
Then the snapshot was over. Ruel’s image did not linger in my mind. It was gone. Like with the image of my parents before, I could not recall it.
“What were you just remembering?” Kalyna asked. I must have looked very alarmed.
“Another murder,” I lied. “A bad one.”
“Tell me about it.”
I pulled one at random from my mental archive. They were all at the forefront of my memory now, so it was easy to do. I decided on Marcus Villefort. He was the second to last person I killed, well, third if you included Ronaldo. I did not always count Ronaldo as a person. I began to tell Kalyna about Marcus’ murder.
It happened at night. Marcus was smart, very smart. He was constantly on the run from someone he owed something to, be it money, possessions, or, in one case, their wife. Because of this, he lived in perpetual paranoia, which made him more of a challenge to kill. In fact, as I reflected on the murder, I realized this was not the first time I had tried to kill Marcus. I fast-forwarded to the point when Marcus first saw me. The people I killed never knew who I was, because I was no one. That night, though, in the back alley, Marcus recognized me. That was the first time it dawned on me that my memory might be being erased. I didn’t remember Marcus’ murder until now, so I clearly didn’t become lucid until the next murder—the man in the parking lot.
When Marcus recognized me, it had triggered the memory of the last time I’d been with him. As I thought about the memory now, it felt like I was there with Marcus reliving that memory again. It felt as if nothing had been erased. The images were so clear. The scents were so strong. The noises were so loud.
The first time I tried to kill Marcus I had followed him for a good two hours, waiting for the right chance, before he’d sniffed my trail. That was when our urban chase began. We ended up on the top of a building. I was poised to shoot him when he started talking to me.
“You could get out of this you know,” he said. I hadn’t known what he meant, but he continued unprompted. “Whoever is making you do this, they don’t have a permanent hold over you. There is a way out. You don’t have to kill people.”
“No, I only have to kill you,” I told him. My voice was a little cocky.
He sighed. “You don’t know, do you?”
I stared blankly at him.
“They’re making you forget all the people you’ve killed.”
“No,” I said. “I’m a diamond thief. You are just a special circumstance.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” he said, actually sounding very pitying. Without another word, he ran and jumped off the building. I ran to the edge, but not exactly where he’d jumped from, in case he was waiting just over the ledge to shoot me in the face. He wasn’t. In fact, when I looked down, he was nowhere. I cursed to myself and swore that next time I would get him.
That was where the memory within the memory stopped, and I was back in the alley with him, months later.
“Oh, it’s you again,” he said to me. His breathing was heavy. We had been running.
“Why do you know me?” I asked him.
“You tried to kill me once,” he smiled broadly. “But you don’t remember that now, do you?”
“Actually, Marcus, I do remember when you jumped,” I told him. He grimaced. My energy was dark; Marcus would not get away tonight.
“So, you do kill just for fun, then? You’re not some kind of sleeper assassin?” he said. Then he added, to himself, “Oh, Christ, where have all the sane girls gone?”
I could see small creatures coming out of the shadows now, their claws and fangs gleaming. Their black bodies were smooth and dark; no light reflected off of their skin. They took all the light into their bodies and kept it festering inside, waiting to release it in bouts of lightning and fire. I knew these creatures well. They were my demons. They crowded around me, waiting for my command. Marcus seemed unaware that they were there, as if he could not see them.
“Haven’t you heard?” I asked him in a playful tone.
“Heard what?” he said.
“Girls just want to have fun.” I laughed and flared my nostrils to signal the demons to attack.
Marcus started screaming. I laughed at him, but his screams were so loud it was almost deafening. I felt myself shaking and started to hear my name being called over and over again.
“Emma! Emma, you’re safe. You’re okay. Emma, please stop screaming.” I realized it was Kalyna speaking and that I was the person screaming, not Marcus.
I looked at her sharply and said, “Are we done? Because I’m done.”
I peeled off the medical tape and pulled the IV needle out of my hand. I stood up, walked to the front door, went outside into the snow, and started to run. I wasn’t heading anywhere. I just needed to run away from that place. I ended up in the middle of the pasture, collapsed by some grazing sheep, and started to sob.
“Hey,” Jeremiah said, then sat down next to me a few minutes later. He had the bottle of vodka and a coat with him.
“Hi.”
“I’m sorry we had to do that,” he said. He handed me the coat, which I put on, then he held out the bottle to me. I took it, pulled off the cap, and drank a swig.
“I’m a monster, Jeremiah,” I said in hollow voice.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “You were made to do some horrible things, but that makes Ronaldo and his people the monsters, not you.”
“Have you ever killed someone?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“How many people, Jeremiah?” I took another drink of vodka. “I have been trying to forget this part of me for years—and that was when I didn’t actually remember it. I just knew it had happened. I knew I had been a sleeper assassin and could remember killing one man and Ronaldo. That alone was haunting enough. But now, with all these murdered people flooding my mind, it’s like I’m drowning in their blood. I’m not sure how to forget it, or if that’s even possible. Is it possible? Have you forgotten?”
I turned to look at him finally. His eyes went distant for a moment and then came back into focus.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Why do you love Ruel?”
I frowned. Why would he ask me that? I thought about it, but came up blank.
“I don’t know. I just do.”
“There’s got to be something more than that. Something real. Come on, Emma. Why do you love my brother?”
“He feels right. It’s right with him. It’s like…” I trailed off. A true Alexander trait. I laughed to myself about this, I was becoming one of them. I could see Ruel’s eyes in my head. They were warm, their brown irises almost glowing. The full memory was nothing special, just a shared moment in his cubicle one day last fall. I continued my thought. “It’s like, more than anything else in the world, I want him to accept me, to approve of me, to appreciate me. And he does. And no one ever does, no one has ever really accepted me. No one has really ever known me, not even my parents.”
I took another drink and held the bottle to Jeremiah to see if he wanted any. He took it from me and had a sip then handed it back.
“What do you mean about your parents?”
“Something happened. I guess I was eight. It’s hazy.” I paused. This memory was always hazy, but maybe with the Ampakine I would be able to recall it. I looked at Jeremiah. “Ask me about it. Like Kalyna did before with everything else.”
“I’m not sure it will work,” he said. “Especially now that you’ve been drinking.”
“Please try.”
“Okay, turn towards me.”
I turned my body towards his and he moved close to me. We both rearranged ourselves to be sitting cross-legged.
“Tell me about when you were eight. What is the most clear memory you have?” he asked.
“The most clear is just of this one moment. I’m not sure it’s even a real memory, but it’s the last time I saw my mom,” I said.
“Describe it to me. Where were you?”
“We were in our house, but it wasn’t our house. Like in a dream when you know something belongs to you, but when you wake up you realize that thing doesn’t exist. It was summertime. The air conditioning was broken or something, because it was really hot. My dad was begging my mother not to leave, which is odd.”
“Why is that odd?” Jeremiah asked.
“Because she was never around, anyway,” I told him quickly. As soon as I said it, though, I felt less confident about that statement. Was she never around? In and out of our lives until I was eight, and then she left for good. That was what my dad had always told me.
“What happened next?”
“She came over to me, she looked so scared. It felt like she was scared of me, like I had a contagious disease or something. She knelt down so we were at eye level, and she told me that she was sorry she wasn’t stronger. There was a single tear running down her cheek and—I can really remember this moment the most—when I reached out to wipe it off, she pulled away from my hand and stood up abruptly.” I stopped. I could feel the warmth of tears coming down my face and the cold air quickly stinging my wet skin.
“Then what happened?” Jeremiah asked. He placed his hands on my knees, as if to comfort me, but it felt almost like he was trapping me in place so that we could get to the bottom of this memory.
“Then she said sorry again, and walked out the door. She didn’t look back at me. My father was calling after her. He ran to her and left me alone in the house,” I said. “In the house that doesn’t exist.”
“So, you were alone in the house, what did you do?”
“Nothing. I did nothing.” I said this, but it didn’t feel right.
“Focus, Emma,” Jeremiah said. He looked earnest, almost eager. Clearly there was something wrong with this memory.
“Has my memory been tampered with?” I asked him.
“Just focus on remembering. When you were alone in the house, what did you do?”
I closed my eyes to help picture it. The walls were a muted yellow and there was a carpet covered in mud tracks leading away from the door. I could hear the noise of someone talking. Had the TV been on? I looked for the TV, but found it was off. “Someone was there,” I told Jeremiah.
“Who was there?”
“I don’t know. He was talking, trying to comfort me. Telling me it would be okay. But I can’t see him. I can’t see anyone else there.”
“And there’s no TV on? No radio?” Jeremiah asked.
“No. Just this man’s voice,” I said. “It feels good, though. Safe. I know him. I don’t feel threatened by him. But I can’t see him.”
“Do you recognize his voice?” Jeremiah asked.
I took a moment to really focus on it. It sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t place who it was. I let out a frustrated growl.
“I’m guessing that’s a no,” Jeremiah laughed.
“I have no clue who it is. But why can’t I see him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a real memory, like you said.”
I looked Jeremiah in the eye, suspiciously. “And who would plant a false memory in my head?”
“What, me?” he said. “No, Emma. I haven’t met you before yesterday. I promise.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Why shouldn’t you trust me?” he countered. “Emma, I am helping you because Ruel loves you. We just want to protect you from the organization and the anti-organization.”
“But you’re in the anti-organization” I pointed out.
“But my loyalty is to Ruel,” he said. “Ruel trusts me, and I trust him. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have believed him that you aren’t a spy. I let you into my house, Emma. No one but Kalyna and our local friends knows where I live. No one even knows I’m alive. They think I’m somebody else.”
“Right, because you died. Twice.”
“They found me the first time, so I had to kill off that identity,” he explained.
“I do trust you, Jeremiah,” I replied after a moment. “But I’m scared.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“These people are coming for me, but I’m not really certain why. We’ve all said it’s because of the weapon, but what if it’s not? What if it’s something else?” I took another sip of the vodka. “If someone has been tampering with my memory since I was a child, then why would they be coming for me now? Just because of a weapon I designed less than a year ago?”
“But Ruel’s order was to kidnap you specifically because of that weapon. The whole war was planned, and you are meant to make sure the United States wins,” Jeremiah said.
I took in what he said. I was meant to end the war. “But the war isn’t even between America and Russia. Not really.”
“No, not really,” he said. “But publicly, and through lives lost, it most certainly is. The anti-organization was going to hold you hostage with the ransom being that the organization ends the war and then disbands. They’re convinced the organization’s leadership just wants power. It’s complicated because of the organization’s global breadth, but originally this war was never supposed to happen. It was only intended to be a looming threat between politicians, out of the public eye. It was supposed to raise oil prices, which would force the U.S. to start pouring more money into alternative energy. But the communication line got lost somewhere, and, basically, the war is happening because the organization wants to prove its power to the anti-organization. It’s disgusting, really, which is why we are trying to disband the organization. No one should have to die over a pissing contest.”
“So, both sides were going to use me,” I said. “But, then, why would I have a planted memory from my childhood? It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I don’t understand it either,” he said.
We both looked at the sheep, which had slowly meandered away from us, and were heading back to the warmth of the barn. The sky was still clear, and the sun was shining from its afternoon position.
“You asked me earlier if I’d forgotten the people I murdered,” Jeremiah said, breaking the silence. “Last time I changed identities, I asked Kalyna to take the memories away.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes and no. Right now I can’t remember it. I know that it happened, that I killed a lot of people, but not any specifics,” he paused. “I still dream about it in full detail, though.”
“Does she know that?”
“Yes, we have no secrets between us. It’s safest that way.”
I nodded in understanding and added, “Your bond is very strong.”
“Same with you and Ruel,” he told me. “I asked you why you love him because Kalyna is what gets me through the day. If I didn’t have her, I would be quite literally lost, probably dead, in fact. I think that if you focus on Ruel, you will be able to look past the things you did before, to hold onto your core self, and get through it.”
“He’s all I have anyway. My parents are gone, and now Maria is dead. We had just achieved something, she and I. A real kind of bond. Now it will never grow past that.”
“I’m sorry.” Jeremiah said. The softness of his voice made me angry.
“But that’s so irrelevant,” I said harshly. “Because she is dead.”
“Is it? Is it really so irrelevant to have someone to offer you emotional interaction regarding the death of your friend?” he fired back to me, equally as harsh.
“No, you’re right. I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed. Who was I to say that to Jeremiah? He had been through so much in his life and, after all of it, he was still a kind person.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, Emma. It’s never fair, and it never feels better in time.”
I thought he would add a “but” clause after that with some sort of an upbeat message. Perhaps something like, “But you’re alive, and you have to keep living,” but he didn’t. I decided to change the topic.
“How did you meet Kalyna?” I asked. It seemed innocuous enough.
“Honestly?” he said, and quickly continued, “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? How is that possible?”
“It got lost, I guess.” He shrugged. “She was my surgeon, though, for my first facial reconstruction. That’s the oldest clear memory of her that I have.”
“How can you trust her, then, when you don’t even know how you met her?”
He smiled at me. “I can’t, can I?”
“But you said you do.”
“More than anyone in the world.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him.
“You will,” he said. “Let’s go back to the house. I’m freezing.”
—
After a dinner of chicken in some kind of cream sauce, Jeremiah announced that it was time to start my death procedure.
“We’ll begin with the memory erasure, and then we’ll do the facial reconstruction. Any requests?” he asked as he put the final washed dish from dinner in the drying rack.
“On how I’ll look?” I asked. “I’d not thought about it.”
“It’s okay. Kalyna’s very good.” Jeremiah looked over to her and winked. She laughed.
“He was easy to improve upon. Such a mess to begin with,” she said with a smirk before adding, “You on the other hand…”
I blushed.
“You won’t be awake for any of it,” Jeremiah told me. “We put you under a hypnotic for the memory part, and then just go into the surgery. You’ll wake up where I take you and just adapt from there.”
“How will I adapt?” I asked.
“There are people who owe me a favor. They will be taking care of you. There will be some story, some explanation. You won’t know any different because I’ll be putting memories in your head to go with it, and I’ll embed the local language. So, you’ll be speaking that fluently when you wake up, but you won’t realize it’s not your native tongue.”
“A new life,” I murmured. “What about the tampered memory I have?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said. “We’ll just have to go with it. I don’t know how to extract it, because I don’t know if it’s real with partial erasure or planted entirely. Plus, I have no clue what procedure was used to tamper with it.”
He motioned me to follow him. Kalyna came with us down the hall to a door that I assumed was a linen closet. It wasn’t. It opened up to a stairwell leading into the basement. When we got downstairs, I saw that the entire basement was a mini-hospital, complete with an operating room, lab, and even an MRI machine. I let out a chuckle realizing my earlier thought of a sterile room had turned out to be more than true.
“This is serial killer level creepy,” I told Jeremiah.
“Oh, I know,” he said with a grin. “It’s all Kalyna’s.”
“Hey, we have the healthiest village in Ukraine as far as I know,” she said with a mock indignant tone.
“So, do I really have to forget everything? I can’t just hide out here with you guys while Ruel loses his tail?” I asked as Jeremiah led me to the operating room. Kalyna went in a different direction from us, towards the shadows at the far end of the basement.
“You can’t stay here. It’s not safe for any of us,” he told me, then indicated I sit on the operating table. “And I’m certain this method will be more entertaining for you, anyway. I have no clue how long it’s going to take Ruel to recover.”
“Recover?”
“From the tracking chip removal,” Jeremiah said. He began setting up the IV for the hypnotics.
“He’s doing that now?” I asked. Ruel had left that part out. “But he could die.”
“At this point, if either side finds him, he will die.”
I sucked in air. I should have realized this, but I hadn’t thought about it until now.
“And if he does, in fact, die, I’ll just never know? I’ll never even know he existed?” I asked.
“Right. You’ll just live your new life out, not knowing any differently.”
This was clearly the real reason I was being sent away. This was my protection.
“That’s horrible,” I whispered.
“Is it?” Jeremiah asked. “I think it’s kind.”
“But what if I want to remember? Is it really up to you to decide that for me?”
“Whoever does the procedure is the only one who can reverse it. So, yes, it is up to me,” Jeremiah said. He lowered his voice, “If he dies, do you want to get your memories back?”
Tennyson’s famous lines of Canto 27 from In Memoriam echoed through my mind, perhaps more uniquely relevant in this situation than they had ever been before. I knew what I wanted. “I’d rather know that I loved Ruel and that he loved me.”
“You’re sure?”
“You will have to deal with losing him regardless of whether or not I can remember,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to go through that alone.”
Jeremiah stopped what he was doing and looked at me when I said this. Looked into me might be a better description. It felt like time moved in slow motion as he stared into me, searching for confirmation that my offer was real.
“Will you promise me?” I asked him.
“I promise,” he said softly.
Kalyna entered the room fully dressed in green scrubs with an assortment of surgeon’s tools. She placed them on a wheeled metal tray table and came over to double-check my IV.
She quickly put the needle into my hand’s vein and asked, “Are we all set?”
“I’m ready,” I said.
“This is it, Emma. When you wake up you won’t know any of us, so please, please do take care of yourself,” Jeremiah said to me softly, almost pleadingly.
“I will,” I assured him. I was more than capable of taking care of myself. Jeremiah cupped his right hand on my left cheek in an intimate way. I could feel Kalyna’s presence overwhelmingly at that moment. She wasn’t jealous or upset, just there. The bond between them was so strong that their energy was shared, so when he touched me like that, I could feel her through him.
Jeremiah stared into my eyes again. “Thank you,” he said, before putting his left hand to my other cheek. His index and middle fingers pressed to my temples, and his thumbs hooked under my chin. His face was very close to mine. I could have easily leaned out and kissed him, but that urge never occurred to me.
“Now, just relax,” he said. “And focus on my voice.”
I relaxed as he began to hum a tune. Kalyna must have opened up the IV drip then, because I could feel myself slowing. The hypnotics were about to send me under. The tune became extremely familiar, as if it was something I’d heard over and over as a child. The room changed to an office, somewhere I’d been before. I couldn’t place it. I became overwhelmingly upset and started to cry in frustration. I heard a man shushing me. Telling me it was okay. Not to cry.
“Don’t cry, Emma. Don’t cry,” he cooed.
“Who is Emma?” I wondered out loud. I looked for the source of the voice and saw Professor Cohen. I thought I’d feel relief, but I didn’t. It made me more upset, because I remembered why we were there. He was making me forget everything. I was being punished.
“What do you mean?” he asked me softly.
“I don’t understand,” I told him. “Why do I have to forget?”
“You have to do this to protect yourself. To protect Ruel.”
“Professor Cohen, why are you calling Professor Alexander by his first name?” I asked him.
His eyes widened. A woman dressed in scrubs emerged from the background.
“What did she just say?” the woman asked.
“She just called me Professor Cohen,” he said.
“Why would she refer to you as that? Do you think she means David?” the woman asked. There was a pause before they both looked at one another with the same horrified expression. They looked back to me, their expressions unchanged.
His eyes scanned my face desperately.
“It can’t really be her,” he whispered. “Can it?”
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