POSSESSION, Book 1 in the Possession Trilogy

Chapter 21

21.

Memory modification is an extremely advanced form of control. Much more than suggestion, which is what the transmissions do. MemMod is only done to those who have a memory They need them to forget. I know, because the one time Ty came home, she’d told me she couldn’t find her way. She’d suspected They’d been performing MemMod on her, but she couldn’t remember what for.

Her eyes were cloudy—like Zenn’s. Ty said she couldn’t see, and I’d had to lead her to her bedroom. I brought her lunch and then dinner. And the whole time, all I could think was how I was going to kill the Thinker that had erased my sister’s memories.

I begged her not to go back, but she said she had to. I’d never see her again. After that, I stopped plugging into the transmissions. I dyed my hair. Zenn and I snuck out and stayed up all night just to watch the sun rise the next morning. We skipped rocks in the lake. I went to parties and stole shoes and anything else I could think of to show that no one—and I mean no one—could control me. Through it all, Zenn had been there with me, my silent partner. My perfect match.

But now I wasn’t sure of anything. My memory of that day in the park had been modified, stolen. They’d taken my memory of Zenn and his birthday present—and I use that term loosely. Even boiled cabbage is better than a kiss of betrayal, a gold-plated tracker, and a whispered word of MemMod.

And who’d done that to me? My match, the person I loved and trusted the most after my dad disappeared.  

Jag stood straight, his eyes boring into mine. So cold. Finally, the agents pulled him away.

Zenn pushed and prodded me in another direction. Two agents walked with him and they joked about how easy it had been to find us. I tuned them out, and thought about what might happen to Jag.

“Worried about your boyfriend?” Zenn asked when he caught me looking back.

“Yeah. When did you go all Green?”

Shock colored his eyes, but he wiped it away quickly. “Please. I saw you with him.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Sleeping in a tree with him. Vi, are you really so desperate?”

“At least I didn’t kiss him to cover my ass.”

He flinched like I’d slapped him. He blinked a couple of times and fell back with his squad. The thing is, the words hurt me as much as him.

The facility was a lot farther away than it looked. It took most of the night to get there, mostly because I kept tripping on purpose.

“Knock it off,” Zenn said, pulling me to my feet once again. “My mission needs to go smoothly.”

And there it was. I was Zenn’s mission. Probably his first, and he needed to make a good impression for the big boys in the Association—for Thane.  

#

The facility stood five stories tall, shiny and silver, made with seamless tech. Zenn led me inside with his traitorous hand on my shoulder. He kept glancing from left to right as if he expected an ambush, but none came.

Icy air blew in my face. It didn’t cool the heat spreading from my chest into my limbs. The tech felt different here. New. Bad.

The stark walls lay bare; no art, no color, no hint that anyone had ever been here before. An alarm sounded, and four Mechs whizzed out of a door in the far left corner.

“I thought you said she was clean,” Zenn hissed to another agent.

“She is.”

“Where’s Jag?” I demanded.