Forgotten (FADE Series #3) (A Young Adult Dystopian Thriller) Page 4

  I stand up, ready for whatever confrontation he has in mind, when a much smaller figure steps past the Senator. It’s a small boy, probably no more than seven or eight years old, with messy brown hair, blue eyes that make it clear whose son he is, and a broad smile. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

  The boy moves over to the games consoles and they spring into life. He looks at his father, and Senator Hammond nods indulgently.

  “My son, Johnny,” he says, by way of an explanation. “He never does seem to be able to resist a round of Battlewar.”

  “It’s hard to blame him,” Grayson says. “It’s a good game. Hey, Johnny, I’m Grayson. Can I join in?”

  I can’t help smiling at that as Grayson settles down next to the giant armchair, playing the game along with the senator’s son. He’s good with the kid, but then, he’s always managed to get along with just about everyone. That’s what made Grayson him, the track star, and my former long-term boyfriend. Senator Hammond and I are left watching while the two of them blow up imaginary alien enemies for a while. Eventually though, the senator puts a hand on his son’s shoulder.

  “I think that’s enough for now, Johnny. It’s time for you to meet Celestra.”

  “Celes,” he says. “She prefers Celes.”

  I do, but I’m not sure how he knows that.

  “She’s the one, isn’t she dad?”

  Senator Hammond shakes his head. “It’s best if you don’t know that, Johnny.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “But she’s special, right?” Johnny asks. “She’s special like me?”

  I look at Senator Hammond sharply. What does his son mean by that?

  “I guess you would know better than anyone, Johnny,” the senator says. His son looks up at me with those big, blue, excited eyes and for the first time since I’ve gotten here, it doesn’t feel like everyone is afraid of me. Johnny just looks fascinated.

  He frowns slightly. “Why is she handcuffed like that, Dad? Did she do something wrong?”

  Senator Hammond ruffles his son’s hair. “It’s not like that, Johnny. That’s to protect us. Celes here is potentially very dangerous, and I have to make sure that she doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  “I don’t think she’d hurt me,” Johnny ventures. “I don’t think she likes being locked up. I wouldn’t.”

  Senator Hammond looks at me long and hard. “I don’t think she would hurt you either, but she might hurt other people. Maybe without even meaning to. And we don’t always get to do things we like. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like, because that’s what’s best.”

  Johnny nods, but I wonder if he really understands it. He’s just a kid, after all. A kid whose father is talking about wiping away his memories. Why would he do that? Why would any father do that to his son? I guess for an answer to that, I’d have to ask Sebastian Cook. It’s what he did to Jack, after all.

  “Does doing things you don’t want to include having your men beat us unconscious?” Grayson asks, standing up and moving to join us.

  Senator Hammond looks at him sharply. I can guess why. He isn’t going to want his son to hear what he had done. Most fathers want to be heroes to their sons for as long as possible. It’s hard to stay a hero when you’re having people hurt.

  “My men were… overzealous,” he says. “It seemed like the most efficient, and least risky, way of moving you. You have my word that it will not happen in quite that way again.”

  His word. I guess we’re all relying on his ability to keep his word. He’s said he’ll let me and Grayson go when Jack gets back. He’s said we won’t be hurt. It would be so easy for him to lie, but right now, we just don’t have any choice other than to trust him. There’s one thing I have to know, though.

  “You didn’t answer Johnny before,” I say. “Am I special like him? Are we both special the same way?”

  “Is she, Dad?” Johnny demands, pulling on his father’s arm. “Is she special like I’m special?”

  Senator Hammond doesn’t look pleased by that either, but he nods. “Almost, Johnny. She isn’t quite the same as you are, and nor is her friend, but they’re both special in their own ways.”

  “Then why am I the one who has to forget?” Johnny asks. Either his father has told him what is going to happen to him, or he has overheard it the way kids hear so much. “If I’m so special, why do I have to stop being special?”

  “Trust me, Johnny,” his father says, “it will be easier this way. Your gift is very powerful, but it will hurt you. You’ll live every day knowing things that will only cause you pain. It’s better if you forget all about it.”

  “But I don’t want to forget,” Johnny says. “I don’t want to stop being me.”

  “I don’t want that either,” Senator Hammond says, “but I said it before. Sometimes we have to do things that we don’t really want to, because they’re the best things.” He looks up at me and Grayson in turn. “I brought Johnny here so that you would understand what this means to me. You won’t be here for long. Come on, Johnny.”

  With that, he leads his son from the room, taking his guards with him and leaving me and Grayson alone there. I watch them go, and I can barely stop myself from saying something. What he’s planning… it’s wrong. It was wrong when Sebastian did it to Jack. It was wrong when Richard did it to Grayson, and it’s no less wrong now. The trouble is, I don’t think that there’s anything we can do about it.

  SEVEN

  Maybe ten minutes after Senator Hammond leaves, his men come back into the room. One of them is holding a pair of blindfolds.

  “What are those for?” Grayson asks.

  “We’re moving you to your quarters for tonight,” the bodyguard says. “Would you prefer it if we did it the same way as before?”

  The threat is obvious, so Grayson and I both stand there while they blindfold us. One of the men takes me by the arm, leading me along a complicated route I can’t keep track of. I guess that we’re going back to our cell. Except that, when we stop and one of the men pulls my blindfold off, that’s not where we are.

  This room is almost on the scale of the one we’ve just come from, and a couple of doors in the far wall suggest that there is more space beyond. The whole place is furnished like an apartment, from the big white couch and TV to the small kitchen space at the back of the room. It actually reminds me a little of the place I briefly shared with Jack when I was pretending to be Celeste Channing, except that apartment had a view, while this one is windowless so that we can’t tell where we are.

  “The senator says that if you don’t cause trouble, you’re to be treated as guests,” one of the bodyguards says.

  “Does that mean I get un-cuffed?” I ask.

  He answers that with a quick shake of his head, and the two of them leave. The door shuts firmly behind them.

  “Guests don’t get locked in,” Grayson says, moving around the place, looking it over.

  “But I guess prisoners don’t normally get places as nice as this,” I point out. I shake my head. “They must be pretty scared of me if they’re making me leave the cuffs on here. It’s going to make things tricky.”

  Grayson moves close to me. “I’ll help you as much as you need. You know that.”

  I do, but it’s going to be strange relying on someone, even Grayson, that completely. Of course, when I was living with Jack, I relied on him in a different way, with my safety completely in his hands. I guess it still kind of is.

  In the next few hours, I’m grateful Grayson is there. With my hands still cuffed, even the most basic things become almost impossible. He has to feed me again, and I can barely manage to change the channel on the TV without him. Without him, I would be almost helpless.

  Yet I’m not sure that’s enough of a reason for him to be there. I still don’t get why Senator Hammond didn’t send him out to get help from his father. That or just let him go completely, because that would surely have sent a goo
d message. It would have told Jack and his father that he was serious about letting us go when he could.

  I eventually ask Grayson that question outright. “Why do you think the senator is keeping you here?”

  Grayson shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s not like he can think it makes it more likely Jack will come back. Jack’s going to come back anyway for you. He doesn’t even like me that much. I guess it could be a tactical thing, so that I don’t try to lead any kind of rescue, but even that doesn’t make much sense, because having me here makes it more likely that the Others will try something. If he let me go, I’d just have the Faders helping, the same as Jack.”

  It’s hard getting used to this version of Grayson; one who can talk about tactical ideas as well as any Fader. It’s him, but it’s not him somehow. It’s not the boy I grew up with, and I find myself wondering if we’ll ever get that boy back. If Grayson will ever go back to having a normal life; maybe go off to college. It’s weird. I think that about Grayson, but I don’t think it about myself. Maybe it’s because whatever is happening to me is a part of me. I can’t get away from that, even if I want to.

  The hardest part about those hours there with Grayson isn’t the cuffs on my wrists. It isn’t the way he has to help me so much. It’s being so close to him in a situation like this. Even though we’ve been forced into it, even though there’s nothing we can do to change it, we’re effectively sharing an apartment together. And I already know how well that can push people together. Just look at me and Jack.

  If I hadn’t met Jack, and none of this had happened, would we have ended up like this one day? Not captured by some senator with an agenda of his own, but in an apartment somewhere? Would we have shared a place when we went to college? We were planning on it, but that seems like years ago now, even though it has just been a month or two.

  We sit together on the sofa, not quite pressed together, but not quite apart, either. The news is on the TV. There’s so much pain on there. There’s news from half a dozen warzones around the world, a couple of disaster relief efforts in places that have been struck by earthquakes or floods, as well as news on a famine caused by drought in Africa.

  “It kind of makes you appreciate what you have,” Grayson says, flipping the channels.

  I nod. “I guess so. I mean, we live in a wealthy country, which hasn’t been affected too badly by things like climate change. When you look at all the other people in the world suffering, I guess we aren’t doing too badly.”

  “Except for the handcuffs,” Grayson points out.

  “Except for that.” I shrug. “I guess even there… well, we’re in a nice apartment, and we don’t know that anyone’s planning on killing us. There are a lot of places people would do worse things.”

  Grayson keeps channel hopping, and something catches my eye.

  “Grayson, wait.”

  He stops, and we watch as a news piece starts to go on about Senator Hammond’s efforts in disaster zones. It’s spliced together footage of him in Ethiopia, in Japan… in just about every spot in the world where people are suffering. There are speeches from him promising not just that he will talk to the Senate about getting help for them, but actively promising chunks of his own vast fortune to help.

  “It would be kind of impressive if he didn’t have us locked up,” I say.

  Grayson nods. “You know they say he’s certain to win the presidency now? I’m not sure what to think about that. I mean, he does all this in the world…”

  “But he still has us locked up.” I nod. “I know. It was easier with the Others. At least they were just there to try to kill us. Me, anyway. The worst part…”

  “Go on,” Grayson says.

  “The worst part is, what if he’s right, locking me up like this? I burn people, Grayson. I burn them to ashes. What if he’s right to take all these precautions? What if they’re all right, and I’m nothing but dangerous? Half the time, it doesn’t even feel like I’m in control of what I do.”

  There’s so much that has happened in the past few weeks. So much that has changed. It hits me in a rush. I’m determined that I’m not going to cry, but it’s hard not to when we’re stuck there like that. Especially when Grayson, seeming to sense my mood, puts an arm around me to comfort me. I still don’t cry there, but there isn’t much difference. I hold onto him and I just try to forget the world for a while. It’s always like this around Grayson. He’s always had the knack of making me feel safe, and calm, and…

  I look up and he’s so close. Close enough that it just seems natural to move that little bit closer. To kiss him. He kisses me back, our lips meeting and moving, while his hands stroke through my hair. He pulls back for half a second, then kisses me again, harder this time, and we fall so that we’re lying down on the couch now, with him above me.

  “Gray, no. Wait.”

  I pull back from him, moving out from under him and standing up.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I can’t. I just can’t. I’m with Jack. I mean, we haven’t really confirmed anything, but…”

  “If it isn’t official, then you can do what you want,” Grayson says, moving to kiss me again. I dodge him. He doesn’t look happy about that. “Don’t try to tell me that you don’t feel anything for me after all we’ve been through, Celes.”

  I don’t answer immediately. Instead I step away. “Look, this isn’t the right time, or the right place. I need to go wash up, and then I think I’m going to go get some sleep. Please don’t make this awkward, Gray.”

  I hurry off, finding the bathroom. I won’t be able to undress properly when I’m still cuffed, so a full shower or bath is out. That means doing the best I can with a washcloth. Except that, after a minute or two, it becomes painfully obvious that I’m not going to be able to wash myself like that, because I simply can’t use my hands well enough. That means that I either forget about cleaning myself up completely, or I ask Grayson for help. So soon after what has just happened, that feels so awkward that I actually have another try at washing up on my own. It doesn’t work any better than the first try did.

  “Gray?”

  He hurries in, and his eyes linger on me for just a moment, but he manages to recover well when he sees my predicament. “Here,” he says, “let me help.”

  He takes the washcloth from me and manages a kind of sponge bath with it. “I’m sorry about before,” he says. “I know that it’s a really awkward position for you, and I know you have a lot going on. Even if you don’t feel the same way about me as I do about you, then I still want to be your friend.”

  Well, that doesn’t make things any more comfortable. In fact, the whole thing is one of the most awkward few minutes of my life so far. I’m so close to Grayson, but I’m about as far from him in that moment as I’ve ever been, even though we’re physically touching.

  I guess the sensible thing to do then would be to stay away from him once we’re done, but I can’t even do that. I go to sit with him on the sofa after a while, and we watch TV together again. That is a bit like being with the old Grayson, because we’d sit together on each other’s couches forever, just being close to one another. I don’t even notice the moment when I fall asleep.

  I wake with Grayson shaking me.

  “Celes, wake up.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “You don’t remember? You were screaming. You were yelling for people to take shelter.”

  I start to say that I don’t remember, but I do. The dream comes back to me as he says it. Something was coming, and I was the older me that I’ve seen so many times in my dreams before. The man whose face I can never see was there too, except that now, now it seems so obvious. I look at Grayson.

  “You were there. You were there with me all the time.”

  EIGHT

  I get the bed in the room’s adjoining bedroom for the night, while Grayson takes the couch. Not that I sleep that well with my hands still cuffed. In the morning, Senator Hammond
’s men come to fetch us, blindfolding us again so that they can take us back to the entertainment room they left us in yesterday. Breakfast is waiting for us, in the form of fruit and pastries, coffee and juice, all laid out on the counter at the side of the room. We eat, and before long, the door open, letting in the senator. His bodyguards stand back in the corners of the room, watching.

  “I’m not going to ask if you slept okay,” he says. “That would be hypocritical of me. I hope your night here wasn’t too bad, though.”

  “So long as you get what you want, do you even care?” Grayson asks.

  One of Senator Hammond’s bodyguards starts forward, but the senator raises a hand to stop him. “I’m not going to lie to you. I need access to the device used to fade memories. I will do whatever I need to do to achieve that, but I won’t hurt either one of you unnecessarily.”

  That isn’t exactly comforting. Especially not when he’s already kept us here as prisoners for the night, and his men have beaten us both unconscious once. I have to ask the obvious question though. “Is there any news of Jack? Has he gotten back to the Faders yet?”

  Senator Hammond looks a little uncomfortable in that moment. “Ah. That’s the thing, Celestra. We dropped Jack back near the Location where we took the three of you an hour or two after he left here. I should have heard something from him by now. At least if he’s taking me seriously.”

  “What are you saying?” Grayson asks.

  “I’m saying that I think your friend is playing games with me,” Senator Hammond says, “and I don’t have time for that. None of us do. So I’m going to have to find a way to persuade him to hurry things up a little.”

  I don’t like the sound of that. Especially not when one of the bodyguards steps forward, reaching into his jacket. I’ve seen movies before, so I can guess at the kind of things a kidnapper might do to hurry Jack up. My stomach clenched and I can feel my body stiffen, getting ready act if necessary. So much for saying he didn’t plan to hurt us.