The Package

The package wrapped in brown paper was nothing to fear.

I noticed it sitting in the corner of the safe house where we were hiding and then proceeded to ignore it in favour of more pressing concerns.

Like the beautiful woman sitting beside me with the long black hair and the lovely dark eyes indicated her heritage was Asian. Well, she was another story.

If she wasn’t to be feared, she certainly required respect and a healthy dose of wariness.

She could throw knives.

Accurately.

That was good to know, seeing as every other minute I had the urge to kiss her. I probably should get permission for that if I was going to try. And I definitely should not startle her.

She threw that knife right into the shoulder of the man who was chasing us. On purpose. That was no frantic throw based on fear. I was watching and it had the grace and precision of someone who knew knives intimately and loved them.

No telling what she would do to me if I tried to kiss her.

I ran my hand through my short copper coloured curls, trying to think.

“So if we don’t belong here,” she was saying. “Then what do we do next? We can’t go Outside.”

I took a breath and blew it out, turning my head to look at her.

“I think we should try unscrubbing you,” I said, my eyes darting to the package again.

What was that package doing here?

This was a safe house for those who opposed The Citadel’s oppressive rule. I wouldn’t call it a rebellion yet. Right now all I had was a bunch of baby rebels whose worst offence was swearing. But if I kept cultivating it, maybe it might reach the point where we could call it a rebellion.

Maybe not.

People sure liked their safety.

I couldn’t really blame them when the alternative was cannibalistic madmen who would kill you, a wasteland filled with chemicals that if you tried to cross would kill you, and clouds of poisonous gases that sometimes blew in and you guessed it… would kill you.

And if you survived all that, you had to somehow feed, clothe, and shelter yourself.

Their reluctance was understandable.

But what the people running The Citadel were doing wasn’t right either. There must be a better way.

“Unscrubbing?” Her thin eyebrows drew together above her lovely eyes. Huh. Even her frowns were pretty.

Suddenly the package drew my attention again and I felt concerned.

“Yeah. There’s a device that reverses the scrubbing procedure. Gives people their memories back.”

That package didn’t belong here.

I kept this safe house and it was empty except for furniture, clothes, and food for if somebody had to hole up here. That package wasn’t here yesterday. No one had set off the booby traps I had around the place to me tell whether it had been entered.

How did it get in here?

“You have something that can do that? You’ve seen it work?”

I stood up and walked over to the package. She followed me.

When I didn’t answer, she waved her hands in front of me.

“Hey. Red.” That got my attention. Every time she called me Red, I felt a jolt go through me. Like the nickname was a memory or a connection between us. I wasn’t sure what. But my reaction seemed significant.

“Yeah,” I said, meeting her eyes.

“Have you seen the unscrubbing device work?”

I walked around the package examining it. What if it was dangerous?

“Yeah, of course I’ve seen it work,” I answered, my mind only half on her question. “A few times. It’s not complicated science. The scrubber breaks the connections between certain neurons so that your brain doesn’t have access to those memories. The unscrubber reverses that process so you can get to those memories again.”

Did I dare open it?

“What’s that?” She asked, finally picking up on my concern about the package.

“I don’t know,” I said, getting down on all fours in front of it and inspecting it closely. “It shouldn’t be here.”

She observed me for a minute.

“Is it dangerous?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the unscrubbing?”

“Oh right. Let’s do that and then I’ll deal with this thing.”

“You have the device here?”

“Sure,” I said, getting it down from a cupboard with a false back. A men who joined our little almost-rebellion had stolen it from the lab where he worked, which specialized in scrubbing new citizens.

He was still around so we figured that The Citadel either hadn’t noticed that he had taken it or they didn’t know it was him. If they had known it was him, he would have already disappeared. Like any of the other people who didn’t follow their ridiculously rigid rules. Dissension wasn’t tolerated in The Citadel.

My guts clenched as I realized that both of us were now on their list of people who needed to disappear. That’s what the man in the alley had wanted. To make us disappear.

I needed to figure out what to do. I had a strong urge to protect her, though there was no reason why I should feel that way about a stranger.

“Have a seat,” I pulled one of the chairs into the middle of the room.

But first let’s see what memories this woman had once she was unscrubbed.

***

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said, straightening her spine.

“Why do you trust me to do this to you?”

“I have no reason to,” she told me. “But my guts tell me that you’re trustworthy. Just like they told me that man was bad.”

“Hm.” I said, setting the device, which looked like a bowl, on her head. “Okay, just relax.”

Then without thinking I put my hands on her tense shoulders. She looked surprised but then I felt the muscles relax under my hands. I set the device to the lowest setting. Then I sat down on another chair and folded my arms across my chest to wait.

When it was done it beeped and showed 100% on the screen.

“Well?”

“My name is Yumi,” she told me, her eyes alight with wonder and the name gave me another jolt, like when she called me Red. “I know it. I’m sure of it. I haven’t been sure of anything lately. But I know that.”

“Nice to meet you, Yumi,” I said with a grin. I leaned forward. “What else do you remember?”

She shrugged.

“Nothing else.”

I sighed and reset the device.

“That’s alright. The lowest setting is enough in certain people to unlock everything. For others, it isn’t.”

“Okay,” she said, her face determined. “Turn it up, then.”

It finished and I lifted my eyebrows.

“Your name is Chad,” she told me and I lost my breath at the sound of my own name. I don’t know how I knew it was my name but it felt right in a way that nothing had in a long time. “But I call you Red sometimes.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Why would I kid about that? Wouldn’t that be a weird thing to make up?” She said, giving me an annoyed look that I somehow recognized. As if I had seen it a million times.

“Before when you called me Red, it seemed… familiar,” I told her, feeling my face heat.

“Yeah, I felt that too.”

“So we know each other.”

“I guess so.”

“Holy shit,” I said, clenching my fists in excitement. “This is big.”

“Not big enough,” she said, pulling back her shoulders and giving me a serious look. “I don’t remember anything else. You need to turn it all the way up.”

“I don’t know about that.” I gave my head a shake. “I’ve never used it all the way up.”

“Turn it up, Chad,” she said, and my heart beat a little faster at the sound of my name on her lips.

“Yumi,” I said, trying hers out. A flood of emotions rush through me, too many to sort out. “It could be dangerous.”

An impatient sound escaped her.

“I don’t know who I am, Red. But based on the knife incident, I’m sure that danger is something I am familiar with. Turn. It. Up.”

“Fine. But don’t blame me if it melts your brain.”

“Can it do that?” She said, pulling away from my hands, which were reaching to set the device.

“No,” I said, mostly sure. “We’ve had it up pretty high and it never did any harm that I know of.”

“To hell with it,” she said, her eyes widening at her words. Even mild swearing wasn’t allowed in The Citadel. It was particularly frowned upon in women. People still used it when they could, though. It was one of those small defiances that I tried to cultivate in my rebels. “Just do it. The risk is worth it. We need to know who we are.”

***

I studied her carefully when the unscrubber finished.

“How are you?”

Yumi stood up in frustration, tearing the device off her head and putting it on the table.

“Hey, how do you know that it isn’t harmful to take it off before it’s powered down?” I asked.

“Is it?” She demanded.

“No. But it could be. You didn’t know.”

She rolled her eyes.

“What did you remember?”

“Only fragments,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “Bits and pieces of memories. People mostly. A redheaded woman, maybe the one in your locket. A tall, handsome guy. Some older people who might be my parents, though I didn’t look like them.”

“Damn.”

“What?”

“I was hoping you’d remember more.”

“Do most people remember more?”

“Most people remember everything.”

Suddenly a thought occurred to her.

“What happened when you used it?”

“Same as you,” I admitted. “I didn’t go all the way up but I turned it up pretty high.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I remembered that the woman in the locket is my sister and a couple other things.”

“Why doesn’t the device work on us?”

“I have a theory about that,” I said, rummaging through the cupboards. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “We never did order at the restaurant. And we didn’t get any of that chocolate cake either.”

I pulled out some bread and butter, cutting thick slices and spreading them with butter. We both reached for a piece at the same time and our fingers touched. My eyes locked on hers and for a second I forgot to breathe.

Then time started again and she tore her gaze away.

“So. Your theory?” She prompted, taking a large bite from her bread.

“Well, we know we’re different. That we somehow don’t belong here.”

“Right.”

“But what if it’s not just that we don’t belong in The Citadel…” I hesitated because the idea was completely preposterous. “But that we don’t belong on Earth?”

“That’s insane.”

“Maybe. But one of the other things that I remembered…”

“Yeah?”

“Is that I know how to fly a spaceship up there in the stars.”

“What’s a spaceship?”

“Exactly,” I said, taking a bite of bread. “I have no idea.”

“You should open the package.”

“What if it’s something terrible?”

“At least we would know.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not opening it.”

“I’ll do it,” she offered.

“No,” I held up my hands. “I’ll do it.”

I unwrapped it, untying the string and removing the paper. It was an ordinary box. When I peeked inside there was nothing but a card with gold writing on it, glinting in the light.

“What the….?” Yumi said, looking as bewildered as I felt.

“It’s an invitation,” I said, my jaw clenching as I read it.

“To what? For who?”

“It’s addressed to Yumi and Chad. We’re invited to dinner at the Governor’s residence.” I couldn’t believe what I was reading and Yumi’s eyes were wide.

“And when is this dinner?”

I met her dark, worried eyes.

“It’s tonight.”