Biome Read online

  Surging and crushing, the tornado of thoughts encircles me as I pull my knees up to my chest, cowering in the darkness. I feel the weight of distrust, unhappiness, and repeated mistakes, of passion and longing and hope. It’s a black hole, and I want to escape, but I don’t know how I can. I’m the only one who knows these memories were stolen. They’re mine now. I can see myself as the victim, the aggressor, the fool. It feels as if each memory is a piece of my past. An act I personally committed.

  “That’s not me,” I whisper to myself. Twisting, I grab my space helmet and gaze into the golden reflection just visible in the brooding light. Tears spring to my eyes after all. “I’m Lizzy. Those memories aren’t me. I’m Elizabeth Engram.”

  I’m Elizabeth Engram.

  And I remember everything.

  Chapter Five

  How long I sit in the airlock trying to sort out my thoughts, I can’t say. My mind feels dull, almost paralyzed by the weight it now carries. But I force myself out of the memories and back into the present, wiping my nose as I set the helmet aside.

  I can’t stay here forever. And anyway, I’m being pathetic. It won’t be long until Sarlow and McCallum return. I imagine how stupid it will look—Elizabeth Engram, threat to Dosset’s brainwashing empire, found sniveling in the airlock. I should be forming some kind of plan, not wallowing in self-pity.

  I decide to start with what I know.

  From what I’ve gathered, the doctors have been altering our memories for weeks. To be sure we don’t catch on to what’s really happening, they keep a close eye on our movements—and they accomplish this in a series of ways.

  First is the obvious. There are probably a few hundred cameras throughout the domes. With facial recognition software, they’ll only need one good shot of my face to peg my location and send someone after me.

  Second, there are dozens of cadets who will know me on sight. That’s not even counting the forty or so doctors who’ve probably been alerted to my absence.

  Third, they’ve got all my past memories. Dosset seemed to have a pretty good idea of what I’d do next—though already he’s made a mistake. If I hope to elude capture, I’m guessing I’ll need to be unpredictable. Which means returning to my pod is not an option.

  What options does that leave me? I can’t run away from the colony. And I can’t just stay on the move. I’m already exhausted from the headaches, the sprinting, the barely consuming any food or water. Not to mention crying. My eyes feel as if they’ve been rubbed in rock salt. Really, my only option is to lay low with someone they wouldn’t expect. Which begs the question: Who would I decidedly not go to for help?

  Terra Donahue. My teeth clench involuntarily at the thought. Even if I were willing to seek her out, there’s no chance she’d help me. But besides her, there’s only one other person I go out of my way to avoid.

  Noah Hartmann.

  Just his name brings up memories of the awkward conversations we’ve had. But there are other memories, such as the one from the Polar Biome, flitting around in my head as well. For the briefest of moments, I allow one forward. I think it’s of the first time we met.

  We’re in the Scrub recreation room, sprawled out on inflated chairs around the ping pong table. And again, I look… like a different girl. Like the kind of person who could change your life with a smile. At least that’s how Noah sees me. But he’s too nervous to speak. Instead, he just watches, taking note of how I bite my lip when I’m—

  I shake the memory off, my face growing hot despite the cold temperature of the airlock. Forget it. I’d rather not know. He doesn’t remember, so it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that he makes me uncomfortable, and, in my own way, I make him uncomfortable too.

  As far as places to hide, I’d say his sleeping pod is the safest place on the planet.

  So that just leaves the problem of getting there.

  Though I’m often aware of the cameras, I don’t have their locations memorized. Not even close. And yet, as I think about them, I seem to recall one right outside the airlock, above the door. It should have a blind spot along the wall. If I slide past, I might be able to avoid its viewing range. And if I move down the corridor, there’d be another one on the far wall. If I edged beneath it, I could use the access door to cut through a utility dome, past the water reclaimers, and then take the next hallway…

  As my plan unfolds, I gradually realize that I can visualize each and every dome along the path. And not just those domes, but others too—maybe all of them, as if I have a matrix of memories behind my eyes, forming an atlas of the colony.

  I shove the images away, unnerved. I don’t know whether I should feel exhilarated or terrified. Right now, I guess I don’t have time for either. I’ve already lingered in the airlock too long.

  Collecting my nerve, I press the button to cycle the airlock. I can only hope there aren’t any passing doctors.

  A few painfully loud thunks, and the door opens.

  There’s no one in sight.

  “So far, so good,” I mutter to myself.

  Instantly I know that I was hiding for longer than I thought. The ceiling tiles have been switched off, leaving the halls lit only by soft green runner lights.

  Every night after the cadets have gone to bed, all non-critical electronics get shut down: holograms, clocks, lights, everything. And it makes sense. With no power coming from the solar panels until dawn, we’ve got to regulate the biomes, the oxygenators, and other demanding systems on a limited energy reserve.

  I’m actually surprised that the airlock is still on. This late, Sarlow and McCallum must’ve already returned from their search. I’ll bet the storm drove them off course and they entered through another airlock.

  It’s all good news for me. Until sunrise, the halls will be dark and empty. And that means I might have a real shot at getting where I’m going, unnoticed.

  Since I’ve already visualized my path, it’s actually pretty easy to put it into action. Security is tight, but there are gaps. I tiptoe past the sterile gaze of the cameras waiting around every bend.

  My evasive dance probably looks ridiculous, but there’s no one here to see. I’m alone in these halls, each as familiar as if I’ve walked it a thousand times.

  Cadet sleeping pods are divided by gender and situated on the top levels of their lavatory domes, just down the hall from their subset’s biome. Though Noah is a medical cadet, he’s also technically a Xeri: one of the cadets assigned to the Arid and Coastal Desert Biome. I guess they’re named after xeriscaping, the scientific term for cultivating drought-resistant plants.

  All Xeri vegetation—buffalo grass, agave, succulents—is dug out into switchbacks that form a deep, irrigated basin. It may seem pointless to bring a bunch of cacti to Mars, but these species will be first to survive out in the bitter, freezing wind.

  In fact, many of the plants I tend will be last to adapt.

  Up the stairs, I arrive in a spotless hallway with doors on either side. Even without the nameplates, I know which pod belongs to Noah. Near the end on the left. As I draw closer, I can’t believe I’m actually about to go through with this.

  Let’s just hope he doesn’t sleep naked.

  “Four, four, one, eight,” I whisper, punching the code. Recalling the numbers makes my head throb. It seems as if every time I pull up a memory, it fuels a new round of headaches. I’ll have to make a note of that.

  The inside of his room is, like all cadet pods, mostly bare. A plastic cube table. A lamp of three stacked orbs. A single chair with tripod legs, cradling an inflated seat. On the floor lies a crumpled jumpsuit, and the bed is a lumpy mass of sheets. I close the door with a careful click.

  And then it hits me. Up until this moment, I haven’t really considered what I’m going to tell him. Because, of course, I have to tell him something. I can’t just sleep here and run off in the morning. What if he wakes first? Anyway, I’m in dire need of a friend now that the doctors have Chloe. But that leads me back to what I’m g
oing to say.

  Hey, I know you daydream about me, and it actually makes me super uncomfortable, but I was hoping I could sleep here tonight so the evil doctors can’t brainwash me. Cool?

  Yeah, Lizzy. Real convincing. You don’t sound like a psychopath at all.

  A clack on the ceiling makes me flinch. It’s shortly followed by another. Then all at once the downpour begins, hail drumming along the thermoplastic that forms the outside wall. I creep over to the porthole, staring out as tiny chunks of ice bounce off the transparent film. The sound becomes an acoustic drone, a sharper version of the rain back on Earth. It’s oddly soothing.

  By now I’m so tired I can barely stand, so I allow myself to sink into the chair. “Incredible” doesn’t quite cover how good it feels to rest on something other than the airlock floor. Just for a second I close my eyes, listening to the rattling cadence.

  When I wake up it’s still dark.

  At first I’m not sure where I am, and I struggle out of the chair onto tingly legs. My panic subsides as I see Noah still sleeping, his face turned toward me, serene in the soft glow of the moon. It’s not our moon. It’s one of the moons of Mars—Phobos or Deimos. Probably Phobos, the larger and closer of the two. Deimos is so small, you could almost mistake her for a star.

  I return to the porthole and see that the storm has ended. Since our colony is bordered by mountains, it’s shielded from the worst of the weather—but it also means our portholes look out on nothing but clumpy red dirt. And since I’ve never been outside the colony, I’ve never actually seen the Martian stars.

  It’s weird to think that, since leaving Earth, I haven’t seen the sky even once.

  I remember one night when my cousins and I went camping. My parents let us have our own tent, pitched not so far from theirs. After the adults fell asleep, we left the cocoons of our sleeping bags to stare up at the night sky.

  That was the first time I saw Mars. Even to the naked eye, it was red—a dancing ruby in a swirl of diamond white. Gazing upward, I lost my balance. It felt as if I were adrift in those constellations. As if I’d already left Earth behind for a home on another world.

  Then we heard a twig snap and a low growl. After hearing so many stories about coyotes, bears, and wolves around the campfire that evening, it took us exactly three seconds to get back into our tent, screaming as we went.

  The next morning we found out that my dad and uncle had followed us, just to scare us silly. Mother had not approved of their antics, or of my sneaking out.

  At the time I’d thought her fights with my dad were just part of being married.

  “Noah.”

  He doesn’t hear me the first time. I crouch and gently shake him by the shoulders. “Hey. Wake up.” Fluttering eyelids, then he sees me. He recoils and knocks his head against the wall, crying out at the sudden pain.

  “Shut up, dummy,” I say desperately. “It’s me, Lizzy.”

  “Lizzy?” he repeats, as if I’ve just claimed to be an alien invader.

  “Yes. Keep your voice down before you wake everyone up.”

  “What… what time is it?”

  I reach over to engage the backlight on his clock, but of course, it’s dead. It could be two hundred hours, or five. At least there’s no sign of dawn outside the porthole.

  “It’s late,” I say quietly.

  He’s staring at me again.

  “Okay. Uh… what are you doing in my pod?”

  “Well, at the moment I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” I say. Here goes nothing. I pull the chair over to his bedside and lean forward, fists under my chin, elbows on my knees. “I have some pretty heavy stuff to tell you, Noah.”

  “Now?”

  “Yep. Now.”

  He just watches me with those big brown eyes of his, one cheek still creased with sleep. Rubbing his face, he sits up a bit.

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “All right,” I say. “For starters, you should know there are things the doctors have been keeping from us. Intentionally.”

  “Like what?”

  “A lot of things.” How do I possibly say this? It sounds so outrageous. “They have this… device. It’s called a Stitch. They use it to scan your brain. And if they find memories they don’t like, they erase them. Well, technically I guess they steal them, because they keep a kind of copy in a Memory Bank. Are you with me so far?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Sure, he is.

  “Well, something happened to me last night after the Verced wore off. That’s the drug they use to knock us out. When I woke up this morning, I had all those stolen memories in my head.” Before he can laugh or shout for help or tell me I’m totally insane, I hurry on. “Yours, Chloe’s, everyone’s. At least the cadets. I don’t think I have any from the doctors. I haven’t remembered any yet. Which sort of makes sense. I mean, why would they be stealing their own memories?”

  I almost laugh at myself. None of it makes sense. Why would they steal our memories? The whole thing is entirely unbelievable.

  Noah has an incredible capacity for silence. He doesn’t even move. He just watches me, like one of those paintings where only the eyes are alive.

  “Look, I know it sounds crazy,” I say, taking his stillness as an invitation to continue. “But I can prove it to you. Um, hold on a minute.”

  Scrunching my brow in concentration I dig deep, trying to pull up anything I can find. It’s not easy to summon memories on command like this. It’s as if I’m whipping through a flip book, trying to stop on a specific page. When nothing useful presents itself, I decide to just work with what I’ve already remembered. “Okay, well for starters, you… think I’m pretty, right?”

  He blinks.

  “H-huh?”

  “I’ve got all these memories,” I begin, averting my gaze. “Of you and me. Well, mostly of you watching me. Like the time we bumped into each other in the Polar Biome, you got really nervous…”

  I risk a glance and see that, even in the darkness, his face is bright red. My cheeks are starting to burn as well. And my headache is returning. This is a disaster. Isn’t there anything about Noah Hartmann that isn’t so painfully awkward?

  I need something else, something less embarrassing.

  Again I try, and this time a new memory surfaces. At first, I’m relieved as the sensations take over. I find myself with a group of cadets in the Xeri cafeteria. I’m telling a story. Everyone is watching, having fun. And then it happens.

  Slowly I become aware of their eyes. They’re heavy, the way they hang on me. Then I become aware of my words. And suddenly I’m not thinking about what comes next in the story but fearing what will happen if I freeze up with everyone watching. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: First I go numb. Then my chest tightens, my words tumbling to a halt. And the terror continues to grow, multiplying like a deadly virus.

  Everyone is still staring, expecting me to go on, to finish the story. But the pressure is compounding, and the fear has become my reality. Smiles fade as they begin to look at each other, wondering what’s wrong.

  I want to run, or hide under the table—but I can’t move. I sit there with icy palms. Tunnel vision. Mindless panic. Feeling as if I’m in front of an oncoming train racing along the tracks. As if the whole planet has somehow twisted itself into a knife, and it’s pointed at my heart.

  It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. And I’m petrified.

  With a shudder I push the memory back, sweat breaking across my forehead. It takes a second to catch my breath. I’ve never felt anxiety like that before. It was as if… I felt as if my life were ending. As if everyone wanted to hurt me.

  And for the first time, I think I understand why Noah is so quiet in front of others.

  “Panic attacks,” I blurt. “You have… panic attacks. You had one during Group, when Doctor Hitch asked you a question. And the night before we were supposed to go out on First Expedition. And one when you got turned around in the Clover dome
s and were late to Briefing. And… well, you’ve had a lot.”

  Further silence. Then he sits up a little more.

  “Yeah. I just had one this morning, actually.” He looks at the floor, embarrassed again. “I don’t remember when they started. To be honest, I don’t remember the ones you just mentioned. But they sound right.” He hesitates. “You said those memories were taken?”

  “That’s right,” I say, nurturing a frail hope that he might yet believe me.

  “So… how did you get them?” he asks.

  “Doctor Atkinson, I think. I overheard some of the doctors saying he stole the Memory Bank. They think he had some kind of plan to put an end to the Revisions. That’s what Dosset called the brainwashing technique. Anyway, they captured Atkinson before he could pull it off. He must’ve been trying to use me in some way. But I never got a chance to find out how.”

  And then a bizarre thought hits me. Up until now, I hadn’t really considered why it was me that Atkinson chose. I’ve only been concerned with the fact that I have the memories and, as a result, I’m in danger.

  “Now the doctors are all looking for me, to stop me from telling anyone what I know,” I continue. “Dosset must be able to review the Memory Bank quickly, because he already knew who all my friends were. I think they got Chloe.”

  “Chloe Tindal?”

  I nod.

  For a minute the quiet is broken only by the steady, calming hum of the oxygenator vent. More of Noah’s memories are trying to surface in my mind, stirred up like the bottom of a lake bed, turning my thoughts cloudy. But I manage to keep them down.

  “So then, what’s next?” he asks.

  “Huh?”

  “If the doctors know everything about us, we’ll have to do something they don’t expect.” He pushes himself all the way into a sitting position. The sheets fall back, revealing a skinny white torso and arms. I look away as he grabs a t-shirt and pulls it over his head. “I mean, all those things you know about me, they know too, right?”