J M Snyder Persistence of Memory

ERSISTENCE

EMORY

“It might take some time, Ashe, but he’ll remember who I

am. Who we are. I’ll help him remember.”

Ashe sighs, a lusty, exasperated sound. “They’ve erased

his memories,” he tries to explain, but this Tobin is stubborn,
thinking he can help me remember who I am when the chip is
still stuck into my brain. If only it were that easy, I want to tell
him. “You can’t just kiss them back. Your love can’t make
everything right.”

“Why not?” Tobin kneels by my bed, and I fight the urge

to laugh at him, to let them know I’m listening to their every
word. Because you just can’t, I want to say, as I feel his hand
slip into mine. His grip is strong and comforting, and for a
moment I almost believe he might do it, he might be able to
bring back who I was before. I can feel determination curled
in his fingers—he seems strong enough and stubborn enough
to stop the sun in its tracks if he sets his mind to it. So maybe
he can help me remember who I used to be.

He raises my hand and kisses my knuckles, his lips soft

against my skin. I feel his fingers trace the tattoo on the inside
of my wrist, his touch light and feathery. Did I used to love
this man? The way he touches me is so intimate, so familiar.
Has he loved me all these years I’ve been locked away,
knowing I was forced to forget him? And does he honestly
think after all that I’ve been through, I can remember how to
love him once again?

OOKS

J. M. S

NYDER

The Powers of Love

Persistence Of Memory

PERSISTENCE OF

MEMORY

J. M. SNYDER

MBER

UILL

RESS

, LLC

http://www.amberquill.com

ERSISTENCE

EMORY

MBER

EAT

OOK

This book is a work of fiction.

All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of

the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales,

or events is entirely coincidental.

Amber Quill Press, LLC

http://www.amberquill.com

http://www.amberheat.com

No portion of this book may be transmitted or

reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission

in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief

excerpts used for the purposes of review.

ISBN 978-1-60272-027-5

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PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For J & L.

Forever

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

CHAPTER 1

Free.
The word races through my mind, looking for something

to connect with, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard or even
thought it that I have no concept of freedom anymore. Even
now it amazes me and I can’t stop to think about it or I might
freeze and then they’ll catch me and I’ll lose this wind rushing
against my hot skin, this grass swishing against my legs, this
burning in my lungs as I run. I can’t stop, not now, not until
the smoky buildings that block out the night sky are just bad
memories. Not until the steel fencing that looms in the
darkness is behind me, miles in the past, and the alarms that
ring around me, raising the guards, are muffled screams I hear

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only in nightmares.

When the first shouts cry above the klaxons, I jump for the

fence. Even though I know it’s deactivated, I half-expect to
feel its electric bite as my fingers fold through the chained
links. How long will it take someone to realize the current has
been cut? Long enough for me to vault over the top, I hope.
With moves I’ve rehearsed over and over again in my mind, I
climb to the top of the fence, risking a glance back at the
armed guards who begin to pour from the building. The hard
echoes of boot heels on concrete ring through the courtyard,
and the first shots ping into the night as I reach the top of the
fence. There’s no wire, nothing keeping me in, nothing but the
way they tried to break my spirit and drag me down.

But it was all a lie. Everything—from the moment I came

here, I’ve been living a lie, their lie. And I almost believed it.
Almost.

My hands close over the steel rod at the top of the fence

and I’m free, I’m free… Below me the guards are shouting at
each other, their guns aimed at me, the shots loud around me
in the night, but I’m almost free—

Pain explodes through my leg, flames licking across my

thigh like a wildfire, and in a graceless heap I tumble over the
top of the fence. I can’t catch myself in time; my hands scrape
helplessly against steel as I fall. When I hit the ground, pain
shoots up my back, balls into fists behind my eyes, and
punches my mind so that I can’t think, can’t act, can’t breathe.
The voice in my head tells me to stop, stand still and await
directions, wait for the guards to take me back.

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Back inside, back in there. My body is numb, listening to

the reasonable, bland voice I’ve heard since they imprisoned
me. The voice that tells me the lies. The voice that keeps me
from being free.

The dull scrape of steel on concrete as the gate opens

goads me into action. Like one of their bullets, I fling myself
into the dark of night, stumbling across the tall grass, heading
for the trees and underbrush beyond. I’ve measured the
distance in my mind; I’ve calculated the steps. But I hadn’t
counted on the pain eating away at my leg, gnawing on my
bones like a hungry mutt, and as I run I try to shake it free
from my body. I tell myself I don’t feel the blood that
drenches my pants, I don’t feel the ache in my head. I don’t
feel anything, I don’t think, I don’t even breathe anymore,
because each breath is labored and gasped, flames that burn
down my throat and sting my lungs, filling them like a
dragon’s bellows. I just need to get to the trees, lose myself in
their growth and then I’ll be free.

A word I almost forgot existed. A concept I told myself

didn’t apply to me. The alarms fade in the distance, and the
angry shouts of the guards become lost in the rustling
branches I push aside as I tumble into the woods. I let the
word roll through my mind, looking for something to define it,
something to cling to.

Free.

* * *

I stumble to a stop somewhere miles from the facility—I

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

don’t know how long I’ve been running but it’s almost dawn
now, the air around me starting to lighten with a rosy hue that
I used to see from the window of my cell. A pinkish, bluish
tinge that will burn off as the sun rises, but right now it’s
cottony and clings to the trees with a low fog that’s hard to
navigate. At least in the darkness I could sense the trees
around me, I could dodge out of their way, I could open my
mind and feel the forest and know where the guards were, how
much distance I’d managed to put between them and me. But
in this fog, time is blurred, trees jump out from odd angles,
startling me into another direction, until I’m sure I’m running
in circles around the same patch of wood and the sun will rise
to find me frantic. The guards will catch up then—I feel them
breathing down on me like hell hounds, and the thought of
returning terrifies me.

No one has ever escaped before.
I don’t know what they’ll do to me when they find me. If

they find me. I have to keep that in mind, that if, because if I
can help it, I’m never going back. For five years I lived in
their prison, I ate their food and wore their regulation
clothes—the one-piece gray jumpsuit covers me now, even
though there’s a gaping hole torn at my hip, edged black with
my own blood. Five years I trained to become one of them,
one of the elite, one of the soldiers who kept the world in
check, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I tried to fight
back and they wouldn’t let me, they stuck the voice into my
head and erased everything I used to be, everything I used to
know, and made me anew. Or rather, tried to make me over in

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their image, but they didn’t know how stubborn I am. I didn’t
want to be created from their god. I clung to who I was, who I
was meant to be.

That’s how I managed to escape. Because I held onto just

one thing from the time before, the time when I was free, the
time I lost and don’t remember and don’t know if I can ever
get back. I held onto my name.

I’m not this series of bars tattooed into my wrist, this

universal personnel code they gave me to identify who I was
to the system, these binary digits they know me as. I’m not
that. I’m much more than that, than 23-854. That’s nothing,
just a number, just a soldier in their army they can now cross
off the books because he’s never coming back. He’s not one of
them anymore.

Because I remember my name. It’s Joah.
I don’t remember anything else—who I was before the

culling, who I knew, what I did, where I lived. But someone,
somewhere should remember that for me. They should
recognize my face and recall that we were once friends before
the soldiers came through to replenish their stock and picked
me. I just have to find that person, ask them to remind me, to
tell me who I am.

I’m Joah. I’m free. And right now that’s all I’ve got going

for me. I just hope it’s enough.

* * *

By the time the sun rises high enough above the trees to

blind me, I’m too tired to keep walking. The wound in my hip

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flares with fresh pain at each step, sending slivers stabbing up
my side and into my shoulder until every movement pinches
my neck and makes my vision swim. I last ate…when? Last
night, evening meal, gruel I devoured because I knew I’d need
my strength, but it didn’t help much. I’m barely trotting
anymore. The run in me is gone. If the guards found me now,
there wouldn’t be much of a fight. I might even go back with
them willingly if they promised the anesthetic touch of a
suture laser for my wound. Anything to end this pain.

But you’re free.
It’s a small whisper, barely audible above the whine of the

voice inside my head, the endless screaming that will drive me
mad if I let it. It’s like a headache almost, only it’s deeper than
that, deep in my brain and rattling my teeth until I want to sob.
I want to squeeze out my eyes and cram my ears but I know
I’ll still hear it because it’s inside me, in the chip they put in
my mind during the culling. We studied it in class, row upon
row of perfect human soldiers, learning about the cullings with
a disinterested glaze in our eyes because it happened to us but
we don’t remember anything before so it’s not personal
anymore. We were culled, taken from our homes, our families,
our lives.

Culled, stripped of our memories and our beings, leaving

only an empty shell waiting to be filled with war. Culled,
trained to be the best at what we did, and what they wanted us
to do was kill and cull and grow like a cancer, spread through
the land until we were all that remained, not men and women,
but a superior race of soldiers, a weapon of the government, a

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

weapon for the gods.

We learned all about the voice, the chip inserted right

behind our left ear, where a faint scar is all that marks the spot
on my neck. The voice was our god, our commander, our
conscience. It was who we were now, who we were to become
after the culling. It kept us alive in the battlefield, sane in the
trenches, and safe within the prison of their camps. No one
ever escaped before because no one survived the endless,
mindless screech of the voice when one ventured too far past
the boundaries. I knew what to expect—outside the
compound, the voice commands you to stay and wait for the
guards. I survived that because I didn’t listen.

Four hundred meters into the forest, the screeching had

begun. A sound like tires squealing over ice, and I tried to
ignore it. In the darkness last night it was all I heard, a steady
sound that I managed to block out until now. Every few
meters it goes up an octave, and I know the stories, I saw the
films. Too far out and the pitch gets so high, your blood
vessels begin to pop. Your nose bleeds, your ears, your eyes,
and then finally your soul shatters, you fall to the ground in a
heap, crash and bleed out as they say, dying because you
wanted to be free and they wouldn’t let you go.

But that’s not going to happen to me. I’ve got a plan.
I’ll only go as far as I can stand it. When the voice gets too

intrusive, I’ll stop. I’ll find a town and get my wound
cauterized, and I’ll see if anyone there remembers me. If they
don’t, I’ll wait until I get used to the voice and then I’ll move
on. I’ll stop again when I can’t stand it anymore.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Eventually I should be able to live with the constant

screech. I can get used to anything if I have to deal with it long
enough, I’m sure.

First I have to find a physician, a healer, someone to seal

up this wound. When I stop for a breath I take a look at my
leg, but all I see is black blood and angry red flesh and I close
my eyes as dizziness washes over me. It’s going to get
infected. It’s going to rot, I just know it, it already looks bad
and I’m sure it’s going to get worse if I don’t get it tended
soon.

The guards haven’t caught up with me yet, which makes

me think they’ve left me for dead. They know the voice will
shriek my life away. But they don’t know I don’t plan to let it.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

CHAPTER 2

My mind is a fury of white noise, a buzzing like bees

encircling my brain, stinging at my thoughts and leaving them
numb and swollen and useless. I don’t know if it’s the voice
anymore or if the sun has anything to do with it, beating down
on me through the thinning trees until all I hear is a high-
pitched hum, all I see are white spots. I stumble along, hoping
I don’t fall because I don’t have the strength to get up again. I
feel nauseous, the pain eating into my stomach, making me
swoon.

Did I go through everything for this, just to die here in this

heat, amid these trees? If I fall, at least I’ll die free. At least
there’s that.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

When the sun starts to sink in the sky, I trip out of the

woods and find myself on a road of sorts, crumbled asphalt
buckled into wrinkles like corduroy. The chunks of black
rubble cut into my thin boots and each step aggravates my hip,
so I stick to the edge of the trees, just out of sight. I can duck
out of the way if a patrol passes by, and if I keep to the stunted
grass, I won’t cut myself on the asphalt when I get too
delirious to continue on and fall.

Because the sun rose in front of me this morning, I put it to

my back now and follow the road as it stretches away to my
left. I figure the sun will set over the facility—to the right
leads back there, and I didn’t come all this way to walk into
their open arms. How far is the nearest city? I try to recall my
teachings but the voice is screaming at me now, not offering
any help whatsoever, and I can’t remember the maps of the
area I once knew as intimately as the tattoo on the inside of
my wrist. Most of the cities have been destroyed, shaken apart
by the last war, years before I was ever born—those who
aren’t culled live in sparse towns or sprawling farms, in shanty
homes and dingy shacks. They keep to themselves, away from
each other in a vain attempt to keep beneath the government’s
notice.

But that doesn’t stop the cullings. The soldiers come—they

always come. Into the makeshift towns to round up the strong,
the smart, the ones who threaten them the most. I can’t
imagine I was threatening, whoever I was before, but I was
among those culled somewhere near here, in one of these little
farming communities. For some reason, I was deemed scary

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

enough to wipe clean. They inserted a new memory into me,
turned me into one of them. A killing machine. Even now the
soldier they created me to be registers everything my
conscious mind barely notices—all possible hiding places, all
angles of trajectory, all flight paths, all escape routes. The
soldier refuses to die to the whine inside.

I only hope the person I used to be is equally as strong.

* * *

My throat is raw, my feet blistered, my face burnt by the

sun, now a flame against my back. My left side is completely
numb from my toes to my fingers, but where the bullet
scraped into me, my body buzzes in time with the noise in my
head. I can’t go on much longer. I can’t.

Just when I’m about to sit down and let death have its

way—I can’t walk anymore, I just can’t—I see a house.
Almost nothing but a shadow in the dying light, the rundown
shack is surrounded by meadowfoam in full bloom, low white
blossoms that stretch from the road across the flat fields to
edge the trees. There’s a light on in one window, and near the
road, a man bends over the crop, his back to me, a small
scythe in one hand. He wears nothing but a pair of denim
dungarees cut at the knee. His muscular back is tanned by the
sun, his shoulders strong and thin, his waist narrow. A fine
dusting of dark hair crosses his lower arms.

As I approach, I gasp out, “Please.” He’s the first person I

remember ever seeing who isn’t a soldier or guard, who
doesn’t have a tattoo on his wrist or scar behind his ear, and I

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

don’t want him to run. I want, I need his help. More than
anything else, I want him to turn and see me.

And he does. His hair is a close thatch that hugs his scalp

in burnished copper twists bleached from time spent in the
fields. He scowls at me for a moment, trying to see me against
the sun, the expression in his deep blue eyes unreadable,
unfathomable. I think of films we saw at the facility, movies
about oceans—his eyes remind me of those stormy waters,
they’re that dark, that wild. There’s something about the way
he stands slowly, the scythe forgotten in one hand as he stares,
that tugs at my memory. I feel like I should know him, as if
we’ve met before, but I can’t remember when or how or
where.

Then he frowns, his eyebrows furrowing together, and the

scythe falls from his grip. “Joah?” he whispers.

He knows me. Somehow he knows me.
Before I can reply, the noise in my head grows deafening,

my vision clouds, and I fall to the ground. My name in his
voice is the last thing I hear before the world goes black.

* * *

I awake to voices arguing low in the next room. I hear

them over the screech in my head, which has eased up a little.
Maybe I’ve already grown used to its constant presence. I
keep my eyes closed and listen to the new voices, the real
ones, because I know they’re talking about me. “It’s not him,”
the first says. A man, probably around my own age. Why does
he sound so familiar?

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“How can you say that?”
I know that voice—it belongs to the man I saw in the

fields, the one who knew my name.

“Ashe, it’s him. How can you not see?”
“See what?” Ashe asks. “That he’s a soldier now? He was

culled, Tobin. Culled. One doesn’t just recover from that.
They took him apart and put the pieces together again into
something new. It may look like Joah, talk like him, act like
him…but it’s not him. It’s not the same man you swore
forever to at your handfasting. Can’t you see that? Or don’t
you want to see it?”

Tobin. The name drifts through my mind like stray notes to

a tune I heard once but can’t place. When he speaks, I hear
barely restrained rage and energy mingled together in his
voice, and I know he’s thrilled to see me. I can almost feel his
excitement zipping through the rooms of the house like a
bothersome mosquito, never settling in one place for long.

“It’s him,” he says, his voice growing louder as he comes

into my room.

I keep my eyes shut; I don’t let them know I’m awake.
Lowering his voice, he adds, “It might take some time,

Ashe, but he’ll remember who I am. Who we are. I’ll help him
remember.”

Ashe sighs, a lusty, exasperated sound. “They’ve erased

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everything right.”

“Why not?” Tobin kneels by my bed, and I fight the urge

He raises my hand and kisses my knuckles, his lips soft

* * *

When I wake again some time later, there is a woman

sitting in a chair by my bed. She has pretty strawberry-colored
hair, a menagerie of crimps and curls and long, straight strands
like spun wine that looks windblown and unkempt. She’s
hunched over my hip, a healing laser held steady in one hand
while her fingers smooth out the torn skin around my wound. I
watch her work, detached—the pain has settled into a
rhythmic throb that aches in time with my heartbeat, and the

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blue light from the tip of the laser leaves behind an echo of
hurt as it weaves my muscles and skin back together again.
When she shakes her head to brush the hair back from her
eyes, she sees me staring at her and, for a second, her hands
freeze on my leg, her touch gentle and healing. Her eyes
widen slightly and, without turning away, she calls out,
“Tobin?”

Running footsteps shake the house, and then the door

opens and the man from the fields enters, a frown marring his
angelic face. “Naphalie, what—”

Then he notices I’m awake and that frown dissolves so

quickly, I wonder if it was ever there at all. “Joah,” he sighs,
falling to sit on the edge of the bed. His hands find mine and
his words tumble in a rush to escape. “Oh, God, I thought I’d
never see you again. My heart broke that day they came. Do
you remember me? Do you remember anything at all? The
farm, Ashe, Naphalie?” He clasps my hand to his chest and I
can feel his heart beat beneath my palm. His other hand
caresses my cheek, the touch so soft, so gentle, so unlike
anything I’ve ever felt before. “My God, what did they do to
you? How did you escape?”

“Tobin,” Naphalie chides, concentrating once again on my

wound. “Let him wake up first.”

Behind Tobin, someone else enters the room. This must be

Ashe, this large bear of a man with blonde hair that looks out
of place with his tanned skin, his dark beard. His brown eyes
watch me cautiously—he’s the only one here who knows I’m
not the same and he’s not giving me any chance to prove him

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wrong. He leans against the far wall and crosses his arms in
front of his chest, studying me, waiting.

“Sorry,” Tobin says, but the smile doesn’t fade from his

face. He glances at Ashe and when he turns around, I swear
his smile has widened. It threatens to split his face in half, and
right now I don’t think he’d mind that one bit. The way his
eyes sparkle when he looks at me leaves me breathless—I
could easily fall for this man if he keeps looking at me like
this, keeps touching me so softly. It doesn’t matter if I loved
him before, because I know I could love him again. “Do you
remember me?”

I want to tell him yes. I want to say that I remember him

and his hands and his lips, I remember the way it feels to hold
him in my arms and fall asleep in his embrace. There’s so
much hope shining in his face that I don’t want to say no, I
can’t say it—I don’t want to see that happiness turn to
disappointment. I don’t want to cause that smile to disappear.
But I can’t lie to him, so I look at Ashe when I whisper, “No.”

Ashe closes his eyes but not before I see the resignation

written there. He knows I don’t remember. He’s not holding
out on the belief that being here might trigger something for
me.

Tobin purses his lips into a pretty pout. Damn, I lost this

when they took me away? These hands, these eyes, these lips?
How could I have let them strip this man from my life? From
my memory? How did I live for five years without
remembering him at all? “I’m sorry,” I sigh, because I am. I
am so sorry that I lost him in the culling.

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“Well,” he says bravely, and there’s that stubbornness

again; at least one of us never forgot, “you must remember me,
you have to. Somewhere deep down inside where it matters,
Joah.” His smile is contagious enough to make me smile back.
“Why else are you here?”

I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t know where I am.

I escaped from the facility and ran blindly into the night. I
would never even have stopped if I hadn’t been sick from the
heat and my wound. I would have stuck to the road and passed
by this house without a second glance.

And because I don’t want to crush the hope he clings to so

desperately, I don’t answer his question.

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CHAPTER 3

Now that I’m awake, Tobin doesn’t leave my side. He

shows me pictures of the two of us in places I have never
been, and he tells me who we were before the culling. We met
when we were kids, he says, and he fell for me the moment he
first laid eyes on me. I’m beautiful, he insists, the most
beautiful man he’s ever seen, and the memory of our first kiss
still makes him weak.

Me? I want to ask. Are you sure you mean me? I can’t

imagine kissing him. I can’t remember what love is, let alone
what it feels like to kiss someone, and here he says he can
never forget my lips on his. I want him to kiss me now, just to
see what it’s like, but Naphalie’s still in the room, the wound

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on my hip almost sutured completely beneath her careful
ministrations, so I don’t ask.

“Do you remember the handfasting?” he asks, handing me

a stack of old photographs.

As I thumb through them, I shake my head. I don’t even

know what a handfasting is—that wasn’t necessary
information for a soldier to learn. He points to one of the
pictures, taken years ago. I’m standing beside him, both of us
dressed in what must have been our nicest suits, holding
hands. Ashe is behind him and Naphalie beside me, and we’re
all smiling at the camera. Naphalie has flowers in her hair,
beautiful white meadowfoam blossoms, and I look like I’m
holding my breath because I’m so excited, I can’t believe this
is happening to me, all of my dreams have finally come true.
They took that from me, too, didn’t they? That happiness, that
smile, those dreams, whatever they were.

“This is after the ceremony.” Tobin is so patient with me,

he wants me to remember so badly. “Right before Naphalie
tore her dress. Do you remember that?” He laughs at Naphalie
before smiling my way, his eyes crinkling in mirth. “Tore the
bottom of it all up, got caught in the combine when she was
dancing with Ashe. That was when we had a combine—”

“He doesn’t need to remember that,” Naphalie says, but

the grin on her face tells me that it’s a pleasant memory, a fun
memory, and I wish I had it in my mind so I could smile at it,
too.

Tobin shuffles a few photographs, looking at them

thoughtfully. “This isn’t helping you any?”

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I hand back the pictures. “No,” I admit with a sigh. “Tobin,

I’m sorry. Really, I want to remember. I want…” I don’t know
what I want. Something other than the last five years.
Something more than the whine inside my skull that has
dulled a bit but is still there. “I want what I had before.”

I don’t even know what that was but it must have been

wonderful because Tobin is ecstatic to see me, Naphalie is
comfortable beside us, Ashe is in the other room—he’s
brooding but he hasn’t said anything to me yet, so at least
that’s something. I want this homey feeling back, this sense of
belonging, this love I know was mine at one time because they
tell me it was.

I want that back. Is that too much to ask?

* * *

Because Naphalie says I can’t walk until morning, even

though all that remains of the wound is a ragged scar along my
hip and a dull ache that throbs down my leg, Tobin brings my
supper into the room. As I eat, he watches me with a faint
smile he can’t seem to suppress.

“This is good,” I say, diving into hot soup full of

vegetables and meat. It is good, like nothing I’ve ever eaten
before. In the facility food was meant to be energizing, not
tasteful.

Tobin beams. “Ashe made it. He’s a great cook. Don’t you

remember—” He catches himself and clears his throat, slightly
embarrassed. “No, I guess you don’t.”

I stir the soup, trying to think of something to say to take

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away the sudden awkwardness between us. “Where’s your
dinner?”

Shrugging, he says, “I’ll eat something later. You must be

starving.”

I am. As I finish the soup, he picks at the blanket covering

my legs and watches me openly. The way he stares makes me
think he’s starving, too, but soup isn’t going to be enough to
fill him up. Five years he’s remained faithful to me, five years
he’s kept hoping I’d return…and now I have, only I don’t
remember him at all. God, how can he even stand to look at
me when he knows he’s spent the last five years dreaming
about me and I didn’t even remember his name?

He glances at the partially shut door. Naphalie and Ashe

are eating in the other room and we’re alone for the first time
since I awoke. Scooting a little closer to me, he runs his hand
over my leg where it rests beneath the blanket. His touch is
warm and comforting through the thin fabric. Lowering his
voice, he asks, “So tell me what it was like in there.”

“I can’t,” I say softly.
He frowns at me. “Don’t you remember? Joah, don’t you

remember anything?”

I shake my head. “I remember it all,” I tell him. “Every

minute is etched into my mind from the moment they wiped
the rest of me away. But I’m not going to tell you about it,
Tobin. I can’t. I don’t want you to know what it was like in
there. I won’t let you know.”

For a minute I think he’s going to protest. He strikes me as

the type who doesn’t take “no” for an answer. But then he

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smiles again, his laughter boyish and free. “Oh, Joah,” he
sighs happily.

Did I miss something? He takes my hand in his. He can’t

seem to stop touching me, but I like the warmth of his touch,
the strength in his grip, and the way his smile lights up his
eyes when he looks at me. “That sounds like something you’d
say. You’re always trying to protect me. That hasn’t changed,
has it?”

I shrug. I don’t know the answer to that. How can I? I

don’t remember anything of my life with him. But there’s a
part of me that wants to keep him away from the facility, away
from the life I led. I want to go back to what I had before, and
I want him to take me there, because he loves me. I can see it
in his eyes, hear it in his voice, feel it in his touch. It’s in
everything he says, everything he does, and just being near
him intoxicates me. He’s waited for me for five years. Five
years. I can’t imagine it.

Gently I squeeze his hand and whisper, “For what it’s

worth, I’ve never had a lover.” At the frown that crosses his
face, I hurry on. “I mean, at the facility. I know you say we
were together but I don’t remember it. I don’t, I’m sorry. But I
just want you to know that I didn’t…I mean, I never…” I sigh.
This is hard. “We were assigned separate cells. Single bunks.
There were classes, meals, exercises, drills. Everything was
strictly by the book—we had nothing to ourselves. Nothing
but this tattoo, these clothes. Even if I don’t remember you, I
never loved anyone else.”

He kisses my knuckles, and the smoldering look in his

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eyes makes my stomach flutter. “You remembered your
name,” he points out. “I thought the culling took everything
away. Even that.”

“I hung onto it,” I tell him. “It was all I had. And because I

had it, I knew there was someone else I was supposed to be.
That’s what kept me going. I knew someone somewhere knew
who I used to be, and I wanted to find that person. I wanted to
remember who I was because it had to be better than who I am
now.”

“You’re Joah,” Tobin says, as if that clears things up. “I

know who you were, I know you better than you even know
yourself.” He runs a hand through my hair, smoothing it down,
before he pulls me towards him, his hand on the back of my
neck. Our foreheads bump together lightly and he stares into
my eyes with such an earnest expression, I can’t not believe
him. “I know that you like to be kissed back here,” he says,
wiggling his fingers along the nape of my neck. “I know that
you taste sweet like peaches in the summertime. I know you
like to be hugged close when you fall asleep. I know you get
breathless when you come. I know…” My cheeks heat up and
he grins at the pinked blush. “What?”

“I get breathless?” I ask, rolling my eyes.
He laughs again. “You do.” Then he kisses me, just a

quick peck, but I’ve never been kissed before and my lips
tingle when he pulls away. “I know this is all new to you,” he
whispers, “but I just want to tell you how much I missed you,
Joah. I don’t expect things to be like they were before, not
overnight, but God, I’m so glad you’re back. I can’t even

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begin to tell you…” He sighs. “I know you don’t know me,
not yet, but can I say I want to sleep with you tonight?”

Oh, God.
He must see in my eyes the fear that springs up at his

words, because he smiles disarmingly and turns away. “I’m
not going to push you,” he says, his voice sad. “Just knowing
you’re here is enough. It’s going to have to be.”

“Tobin,” I say, catching his arm as he stands. I wait for

him to look down at me and then I smile. But I don’t know
what to say—what can I say? That I missed him too? But I
didn’t. I didn’t know he existed until today. “I’m sorry,” I
whisper.

He smiles bravely. “I know.”
As he leaves the room, I touch my lips tentatively, still

feeling the hum of his kiss. This must be killing him inside.
How can he be so strong? Was what we had together worth
this pain I’m causing him now?

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CHAPTER 4

In the morning I dress in the jumpsuit I wore at the

facility—Naphalie mended the tear where I was shot and tried
her best to get out the blood that stains the fabric. It’s wearable
but I’ll have to see if Tobin still has any of my clothes from
before. He didn’t mention it yesterday—then again, he was too
excited at seeing me, so I’m sure it just slipped his mind. He’s
so damn sweet and cute. I think I’m going to like falling in
love with him all over again. I still can’t believe he hasn’t met
someone else in my place—five years is a long time. It’s the
only lifetime I’ve ever known.

As I’m zipping up the jumpsuit, the door to my room

opens and I turn, a smile already on my face because I think

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it’s him but it’s not. It’s Ashe, my breakfast tray in both hands
and a distrustful gleam in his bruised eyes. “You’re up,” he
says. It’s the first he’s spoken to me since I arrived.

“Yeah.” Were we friends before? I can’t tell. Of the three

of them, he’s the one least happy to see me. When he sets the
tray down on the end of the bed, I venture, “Thanks. You’re
Ashe, right?”

He laughs bitterly. “Not that you remember.”
“Is there a problem?” I ask. If I’m going to stay here, I

don’t want to have to creep around this guy just because he
can’t forgive me for something I had no control over. When he
gives me a half-hearted shrug, I add, “Did we have words
before I was culled? Are you still mad at me for something I
no longer recall?”

He looks at me with those deep, dark eyes like bruises in

his face and sighs. “Let me tell you something, Joah,” he says,
crossing his arms against his chest. “We were best friends, the
three of us. You, me, and Tobin. We grew up together. Not
that I expect you to remember that.”

“And you hold it against me?” I want to know. “I had no

control— ”

“I know,” he says, cutting me off. “You were culled. And

no one ever comes back from that. I don’t know what all they
told you in that place, but you must’ve learned that much at
least. Once a person is culled, they’re changed forever.
They’re not the same person you knew before. They never will
be.”

What he says is true. Or at least true until now, because I

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came back, didn’t I? And maybe I’m not the same person, but
I can learn who I was before. In a quiet voice, I say, “I know.”

He takes a step closer. I fight the urge to step back. We

were best friends once, him and me. I have to keep that in
mind. “When they took you away, Tobin cried for days. Days.
Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, made himself sick with misery.
Physically ill. Do you know how hard it is to have to live with
one of the people you care for most in the whole world, to see
them suffering to the point of wanting to die, and to know
there is nothing you can do to make them feel better? Not a
damn thing?”

I have to look away from the intensity of his gaze because

the idea of that bright, bubbly man I met yesterday weeping
inconsolably makes me want to stop the world to see him
smile again. “It would’ve been better if they killed you
outright,” Ashe tells me, anger flaring behind his dark eyes.
“Because then you’d be dead and he wouldn’t have the hope
of finding you again. Not in this lifetime. Do you know how
long he cried himself to sleep at night? Do you know how
many years he just went through the motions because the
person he was living for, you, because you were gone?”

“I’m sorry.” I’ve been apologizing a lot lately, but there’s

nothing else I can think of to say.

Ashe laughs again, a desperate chuckle that scares me.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “He finally started sleeping through
the night last year. And this past solstice was the first time he
smiled since you left. It was a small grin, a shadow of the way
he used to smile, but it was something. It gave me hope.

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Maybe he was moving on, maybe he was finally able to put
the past behind him and come to terms with the fact that you
weren’t coming back.” Ashe narrows his eyes, pinning me
with that steady gaze of his. “And then you do.”

Did Tobin really suffer that much? Did he love me so

badly that he couldn’t bear the thought of living without me?
“I didn’t know…”

Ashe finds that funny. “No, how could you? You don’t

remember anything from before, do you? You don’t remember
me, or Naphalie, or Tobin even. How could you forget him,
Joah? How could you ever forget someone who thinks the
stars shine in your eyes or the sun hides in your smile? How
can you just let them take that away from you?”

Now I’m angry. Who does he think he is, telling me what I

should have clung to when they culled me? “I had no choice.”
My voice rises slightly—I don’t need him to make me feel like
shit because I left. If Tobin loved me the way Ashe says he
did, if I loved him back even a fraction as much, I wouldn’t
have wanted to leave.

But it wasn’t up to me. “Don’t you get it, Ashe? I didn’t

choose to remember my name. Truth be told, it would’ve been
easier for me if I hadn’t remembered. Because these past five
years have been hell. I knew there was somewhere else I was
meant to be and I didn’t know how to get there. I couldn’t. I
was trapped in their prison and I had to be careful—I could’ve
been killed if they knew I still had my name. If they even
suspected I was planning to run, I would’ve been slipped
something in my evening meal and never seen the light of day

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again.”

He watches me carefully, weighing my words. Who is this

man? I don’t have to prove anything to him. “Maybe you’re
right,” I say, lowering my voice. “Maybe it would’ve been
better if they killed me. But then he would’ve never known,
and somewhere deep inside he still would’ve held out the hope
that I’d have come back. You know?”

Ashe thinks this over. I want to ask him where Tobin is

now, but I don’t. I let my words sink in. Finally he says, “I
won’t let his heart break again. If you leave—”

“I’m not planning on it,” I say. “I only wanted to find

where I belong. This is it.”

“Then I’ll kill you myself,” he swears, talking over me.

The look in his eyes says he’s not threatening me, simply
stating a fact. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you, Joah, I swear
it. Because if you leave again, he’ll die. I know he will.” He
sighs. “He loves you so much, you just don’t know…”

“I want to find out.”
Ashe gives me a long, hard look before he turns and walks

out, leaving me alone in the room.

* * *

Naphalie says not to let him get to me too much. “He’s just

worried,” she says as I help her put away the breakfast dishes.
Tobin still isn’t up yet and it’s almost noon, judging by the
sun. Ashe is out in the field already, harvesting meadowfoam
that’s ready to be picked, and I know he told Naphalie we
spoke because she’s the one who brought it up. I wipe one of

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the dishes from the drainer and hand it to her. As she stretches
to put it on the top shelf of the cabinet, she says, “You can’t
imagine what it was like, Joah, when you weren’t here. Tobin
wouldn’t even get out of bed most days. He didn’t want to.”

“And he’s better now?” I venture. Here it is, morning

almost over, and he’s not up yet.

She laughs, a faint sound like tinkling bells. “You just

don’t know.”

I wish people would stop saying that and explain it to me

already. Of course I don’t know—I was culled. “He sleeps in
late anyway. You don’t remember that, I know, but he wasn’t
getting up at all for a while there. He’d stay in bed until the
sun fell and then when we tried to get him up he’d say it was
time to go to sleep so what was the point?” She sighs and
smiles sadly at me. “That’s what he thought without you.
What was the point?”

I frown at my reflection in the dish I’m wiping down.

“Ashe said he was finally moving on,” I tell her, even though
I’m sure he told her that already. “He implied maybe…” I
shrug. “Maybe I should’ve stayed gone.”

“Oh, don’t listen to him,” Naphalie says with a dismissive

wave of her hand. “He’s just being Ashe. He loves Tobin to
death. You too, though you’d never know it how he acts. He
knows Tobin isn’t whole without you, just like you aren’t
whole without him.” When I start to argue, she cuts me off.
“You can say you don’t remember him, Joah, and that might
be true. But you knew there was somewhere you belonged.
There was something telling you that you weren’t meant to be

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locked away in a cell and forced into a life of warfare.
Somehow you knew there was more. You knew you weren’t
complete.”

“Yeah,” I admit, “but—”
“But nothing.” Naphalie’s good at stopping protests before

they start. “You need to be here. Call it fate or coincidence or
destiny or what have you, but it was simply meant to be. You
belong here. Ashe knows that. He’s a little bristly right now,
but he’ll get over it.”

I hand her another dish and sigh. “He thinks I’m going to

leave,” I tell her. I debate saying more, but I have to ask her, I
have to know the answer. “Was I that kind of person before?
The kind of guy to just up and leave?” When she doesn’t reply
right away, I press on. “If he loves me that much, how could I
be like that? How could he love me like that?”

“You weren’t that way,” she says softly, but she doesn’t

look at me.

“Then what?” I want to know. “Why does Ashe think I’ll

do that now?”

For a moment her lower lip trembles. She’s fighting back

tears; I can see them glistening unshed in her eyes. “When the
soldiers came,” she whispers, and I have to strain to hear her
words, they’re so quiet, “for the culling, they wanted to take
Tobin. You don’t remember this, do you? Any of this…”

“No,” I reply. Stepping closer, I place my hand over hers.

“What happened?”

“You wouldn’t let him go.” She sighs and blinks, looking

up at the ceiling, trying to will away her tears. “You made

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them take you instead. Tobin said no, he’d go, they wanted
him, but you wouldn’t let him do it. The soldiers didn’t care—
they just needed their quota.” She falters, and I squeeze her
hand gently, prompting her to continue. “You knocked him
down, jumped into the convoy, and before he could get back
up, you were gone.”

I did that? Me? I loved him so much that I’d lose

everything I had, all memory, all life as I knew it, just so he
could keep his? “He must have hated me…”

“Do you see how much you mean to him?” Naphalie

whispers. “Do you see why?”

God, Tobin, I think, even if I wanted to, how could I ever

hope to leave you again?

If it would bring back my memories, I’d kill the soldiers

who did this to me, I’d rip out the chip in my head, I’d cut it
out myself if I knew it meant I would remember all the times I
spent with the man still asleep upstairs. Right now I’d give
anything to have those memories back, because they must be
wonderful if I was willing to give them up just so he could
hold onto them forever.

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CHAPTER 5

I’m leafing through a magazine at the kitchen table when

Tobin finally comes downstairs, dressed in an old T-shirt and
a thin pair of boxer shorts. His curls are disheveled and he
blinks owlishly in the sunlight falling through the open
windows, but when he sees me he smiles through a yawn and
pads over to sit beside me on the bench. “Good morning,” I
say, surprised at how glad I am to see him. He slips his arms
around my waist and snuggles close to me, resting his head on
my shoulder. It amazes me how comfortable we are with each
other all of a sudden, but maybe Naphalie is right, maybe I’m
not whole without him. “Do you want something to eat?”

He shakes his head. “Last night I didn’t think I’d get to

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sleep,” he tells me, his voice throaty because he just woke up.
“I kept checking on you to make sure you were still here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I assure him.
His arms tighten around my waist. “I know,” he says.

“Ashe keeps telling me to be careful—he keeps saying to not
get my hopes up, you might want to go back, but every time I
look at you, my soul sings. I almost forgot what that sounded
like, how my whole body trills like a weed in the wind when
you’re near.”

I feel my face heat up at his words. He buries his head in

my arm and, without thinking about it, I let my hand trail
along his bare thigh. The downy hair fluffs beneath my
fingers, and I rub tiny circles into it—his skin is so impossibly
soft. I’ve never touched anyone like this before, and I keep
looking at the kitchen door to make sure Naphalie or Ashe
don’t walk in to see us like this.

“I’m guessing you fell asleep eventually,” I point out. “Did

you sleep well?”

He moves closer, his head now resting on my collarbone,

his breath tickling through the open zipper of my jumpsuit. “I
dreamed you weren’t really here,” he says softly. My heart
skips a beat. God, I’m tearing this man apart, aren’t I? He’s so
happy to see me, he’s having nightmares of my leaving again.
“I found you in a dream, everything yesterday was part of that,
and when I went to sleep I really woke up and you weren’t
here. I kept trying to go back to sleep, to dream you back
again, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

I ease my arm around his shoulders, hugging him gently.

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“Tobin—”

“When I opened my eyes this morning,” he continues,

“just now actually, I almost didn’t get up because I didn’t
think I was really awake. I thought I was still trying to get
back to sleep to see you.” His hands fist in my jumpsuit and
when he sighs it’s a sad sound that makes my throat close.
“Are you really here?” he whispers. “Not just a dream, but real
now? For good?”

“Yes.” There’s nothing else I can say. I’m not leaving him

again. I know that already.

He sighs again, a little more easily this time, and wipes his

eyes on my collar. “I love you, Joah,” he says, so low it’s
almost a breath, but I hear it over the buzz behind my eyes and
I know it’s the truth. I only wish I could say the same right
now. I can love him, I know I can, and I probably will soon
enough, but I wish I could say it right this second and take
away a little of the pain I see in his deep sea eyes.

* * *

Tobin holds my hand as he takes me on a tour of our

house. These rooms are new to me, this furniture strange,
though he says we picked it out together, we decorated
everything together. I don’t remember any of it. He shows me
the knickknacks in the den, scattered across the mantle above
the fireplace and filling bookshelves that line the wall, but
none of them trigger anything. They’re just ornaments of
blown glass that I’d see in a store somewhere and never look
at twice. He points out which ones I bought him, in various

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shades of blue resting like a pool of water on one shelf. He
shows me the knives he says I collected—daggers and bodkins
and poniards, beautifully crafted hilts with stainless blades of
steel.

“I bought you this one when we wed,” he tells me, picking

up an exceptional shiv with light mauve amethysts fastened to
the hilt. “I picked it out because the stones are the color of
your eyes when you first wake up.”

The thought makes me weak. “It’s gorgeous,” I say,

turning the blade over in my hands. So this is why I adapted to
the knife so easily at the facility, how I could understand and
use a dirk with an innate sense of grace and style that left my
opponents breathless with wonder. I set the knife back
carefully with the dozen or so others that are mine. Mine.

He lets me take my time, touching things I don’t

remember, trying desperately to find something in this house
that will help me recall the life I led here. There are more
photographs on the wall, these in heavy wooden frames, larger
pictures than the ones he showed me yesterday. I recognize the
two of us in them, the easy way we stand so close together, the
way Tobin’s always touching me or I’m always holding his
hand. I look over the photos and wish desperately to remember
some of that love, some part of it—even just a tiny sip would
be enough to fill me up.

“This is your mom,” he says, pointing at one picture. It’s

me and him and two women, smiling. In all these pictures I’m
always smiling. I don’t remember ever smiling at the facility.
Somewhere between here and there I forgot how. Maybe they

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took my smile away with the rest of my memories when I was
culled, and like everything else I’m just now getting it back.

“Is this your mother?” I ask, pointing to the other woman.
Tobin catches his breath, hopeful. “Do you remember

her?”

I shake my head. “You favor her,” I explain, and I hate the

crestfallen look that crosses his face for a moment before he
forces a grin. Taking his hand, I squeeze it gently and tell him,
“I’ll let you know, Tobin, if any of this comes back to me. I
promise.”

He nods. “Okay.” His arms find their way around my waist

again and he leans against my back as I study the other
pictures. Here’s one of me and Naphalie, laughing in a field of
meadowfoam. Here’s Ashe standing on an old, rusted combine
as if he’s king of the world. Here’s Tobin and me in a creek—
he’s on my back and I’m holding onto his legs, carrying him
as we smile for the camera. A collage of memories, each one
connected to the others in a way I’ll never know. What order
were they taken in? Where are these places?

At the end of the wall there’s one picture that catches my

eye. It’s of an old car, the kind that ran on solar energy when
they first outlawed gasoline, before they began using
meadowfoam oil for fuel. We learned about these vehicles at
the facility because a few of them still run, though most are
like the one in this picture, dilapidated hunks of metal and
junk that’ll never run again. The roof of this car is gone, lost
somewhere long before the picture was taken, and the torn
leather seats bleed springs and padding into the car’s interior.

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Tobin and I sit in the back seat, my head on his shoulder, his
arm around me. We’re only teenagers, not even twenty. How
long ago was this taken? I don’t even know how old I am now.

Ashe is beside Tobin, his head resting on Tobin’s other

shoulder, and from the way he’s winking at the camera, I think
maybe Naphalie’s taking the picture. It’s an audacious wink
that promises something more to come. Tobin’s grinning from
ear to ear like he could die happy at that instant, frozen in
time, and I’m looking so damn lovestruck it hurts to see the
sated look in my own eyes because I’ve never felt that good,
never.

“Do you remember this?” Tobin asks, grinning. When I

shake my head, he places his lips against my ear and whispers,
“This was taken the day after we first made love. By the creek
on a blanket when we were supposed to be at Ashe’s party. I
screamed your name into the night and the stars exploded
around us, showering you with stardust and light. You were
beautiful, Joah. You’re so beautiful.”

God, why can’t I remember that? I’d sell every last minute

of the past five years to recall that one moment, just to be able
to close my eyes and hear my name in his voice cried out into
the night, to see the stars showering us with love and beauty
and light. I’d give anything for that, anything to bring the
smile I have in the photograph to my face now.

He sighs against my hair and I frown at the picture, mad

because I don’t see what he sees. I see the two of us and Ashe,
and in the front seat of the car are two other guys, boys that
aren’t in the other pictures. One is a thin, gangly lad with

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puckish hair, a mix of brown and gold that looks almost
glittery in the photograph’s lighting. He’s got laughing blue
eyes and he’s grinning wildly, as if we pinned him down for
this shot and the moment the flash went off he flew away
again. “Who’s this?” I ask.

“Zeb,” Tobin tells me, kissing my shoulder. I feel his

warm lips through the thin fabric of my jumpsuit. “He doesn’t
live here anymore. He left after the culling.”

The guy next to this Zeb looks familiar…too familiar.

There’s an angry look in his icy eyes, like someone just said
something to piss him off. Long, thick dreadlocks frame his
face, a dirty shade of blonde that clashes with dark, polished
skin. Even though it’s only a picture, I feel him staring at me
through time, through the glass covering the photograph,
forcing me to remember… “I know him,” I say, pointing. I
know I know him.

“Micaiah?” Tobin asks, frowning. “You remember him?”
I shake my head slightly. “Not from before.” He wasn’t

Micaiah when I met him. He was… “Unit 36-722. He was in
the squadron I trained with my second year at the facility. I
remember his eyes.”

Tobin’s grip tightens around me. “You saw him?” he

whispers, and I turn in his embrace, nodding. “Jesus, is he
alright? Did he recognize you?”

“He was culled,” I remind him. “I didn’t know him, he

didn’t know me. We didn’t even speak. I just remember seeing
him there, that’s all.”

Sighing, Tobin hugs me close and kisses my forehead, his

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mouth damp on my skin. “I know, Joah,” he says. “I know.”

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CHAPTER 6

Upstairs Tobin points out the room Naphalie shares with

Ashe. As he leads me past the closed door, his hand once
again in mine, he tells me that without her, the farm would
have been gone long ago.

“Right after the culling,” he says, leading me down the

hall, “I didn’t do anything but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling
and cry. God, I missed you, Joah. I missed you so much. At
first I wanted to storm the facility and demand you back, but
Ashe talked me out of it. He said you’d never remember me
anyway, that you wouldn’t want to come back, and that
thought alone killed anything in me that wanted to find you
again.” His voice grows quiet in the unlit hall, and when we

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stop in front of a second closed door, he whispers, “I didn’t
want to believe you didn’t remember me.”

I rub my hand up his forearm and sigh. “I want to

remember,” I tell him. I do. I really, honestly, truly do. I want
to remember everything about this man, why I loved him in
the first place. Why he loves me. I want that love back. As he
pushes open the door, I ask softly, “But if I don’t, can we still
go on? Together?”

He frowns, unsure what I’m asking.
“I don’t want to lose you again, even if I don’t remember

the first time. I’m not going to lie to you, Tobin, but I want to
love you. I want to have what we had before. Can we do that?”

His brow clears like the sky after a summer shower. His

smile is all the reply I need. “This is our room,” he tells me,
and that says it all, doesn’t it? This is our room, not was, not
mine. Ours. Is. As in he expects me to be sleeping here, too.
As in my things go in this room, I go here. I belong in this
bed, in his arms. I grin back at him as he leads me inside.

It’s like stepping into a hall of mirrors—pictures of myself

stare at me from every table top, the dresser, the walls. Shrine
of Joah, remove your shoes at the door, bow down and, my
God, no wonder he never got over me. I looked out at him
from grainy photographs every second of every day and night.

“I’ve redecorated a bit,” he says shyly, and the faint blush

that colors his cheeks is so infuriatingly cute, I can’t help but
laugh.

“Just a bit?” I ask, teasing him a shade pinker.
“Yeah,” he replies. “I’ll take some of them down, if you

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want. I just…” He sighs. “They made me feel better, like you
were watching over me, like you were still here and still
keeping me safe. As long as I could see you, I could believe
you would come back.”

“Tobin,” I say, turning towards him. My hands spread

across the warmth of his chest, smoothing the wrinkles out of
his T-shirt. I don’t know what else to say, nothing comes to
mind, so I say his name again. “Oh, Tobin,” I sigh, and when I
lean my head against his shoulder, his arms tighten around me,
hugging me close. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “If I had even
known you were here, waiting, I would’ve chanced an escape
years earlier. I wouldn’t have waited so long, I wouldn’t have
let them take everything away from me. If I had only managed
to hold onto something more than my name. If only—”

“Shh,” he admonishes, rubbing my back as I take a deep

breath, trying to calm the whirlwind in my heart. “You didn’t
know, Joah. It’s not your fault. You’re here now. We can start
all over again. At least we have that.”

His arms are strong around me, comforting, and he’s right.

At least we have another chance. We can both be happy again.
Together.

* * *

“I saved everything of yours.” Tobin sits on the edge of the

bed, watching me riffle through clothes hanging in the closet. I
don’t remember any of these cotton shirts or denim pants, but
he says they’re mine. His are in the dresser drawers.
“Sometimes I wear your shirts,” he tells me, “because they

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still smell like you.”

“What do I smell like?” I pull out a faded chambray work

shirt and a pair of worn jeans and hold them up to me, trying
to see if they’ll still fit.

He shrugs. “Clean,” he says. “Like spring rain. And fresh.

And warm. I like the way you smell.”

I smile at that. “I like the way you smell, too,” I say,

because the musky scent of him still lingers on my arms from
where he held me. “You smell free.”

He laughs, a boyish sound. As I unzip my jumpsuit, he

asks, “Do you want me to leave?”

“Why?” I ask, frowning.
He shrugs again. “I just thought,” he starts, then sighs.

“Maybe you’d want to be alone.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” I tell him, slipping my arms out of

the jumpsuit. The cool air prickles my bare chest. “You’ve
already seen it all anyway, haven’t you?” When he doesn’t
answer immediately, I look over only to find him staring back
at me hungrily. “Haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” he whispers, but his gaze is riveted to my waist.
I push the jumpsuit down slowly, savoring the way his

eyes widen as I step out of the pants. It’s been five years, and
even if I don’t remember him, he obviously remembers me.
Desire and lust slacken his face and his lips part slightly, his
eyes darken like the sky before a storm. I’m wearing a thin
pair of briefs, but I don’t think he even notices. He’s too busy
devouring me with his eyes. If looks could kill…

“Jesus,” he sighs, and then he clears his throat and runs a

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nervous hand through his unkempt curls. “How’s your leg?”

I frown. “Okay,” I say, tugging down the waistband of my

briefs to look at the pink scar on my hip. “Not too pretty, but
I’ll live.”

Before I can stop him, he’s on his knees beside me, and his

hands cover mine as he presses his lips to the scar, kissing it
better. “Joah,” he sighs. My fingers go numb at the passion I
hear in his voice, the need, the raw emotion. “Oh, Joah, it’s
been so long, so damn long…”

And then he’s easing my briefs down and I can’t stop him,

I don’t want to stop him, his gentle fingers on my skin, his lips
kissing my hip, my groin, his tongue licking in places I’ve
never been touched before. My hands fist in his curls as he
takes me into his mouth, his tongue swirling down around the
hard length between my legs, his hands cradling my hips and
guiding me into him, deeper, farther.

He’s right…I am breathless when I come. I can’t believe

they took this away—how could I ever have let them take this
from me? This man holding me close, whispering he loves me,
kissing me with the salty taste of my own juices on his lips as
we lie together on the floor in a tangled heap of legs and
arms… How did I ever let memories like this one disappear?

* * *

After we dress, Tobin takes me outside to show me the

fields of meadowfoam in full bloom. The white flowers glisten
in the early afternoon sun and I follow him through the crops,
listening as he explains how this is the first year since I left

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that he’s actually done some of the harvesting. “It was just
Ashe and Naphalie before,” he says. I squeeze his hand where
I hold it in my own because I know it’s hard for him, talking
about when I wasn’t here. It’s hard for me to hear it, it pains
him so. “I thought maybe I should try to help out a bit, you
know?”

“I’m sorry,” I say again. I can’t say it enough.
Tobin shrugs. “That’s all over with. You’re here now.”

And then he kisses the back of my hand. I know it’s only been
a day but my heart swells every time I look at him. He’s more
alive than anyone I met in the five years I spent at the facility,
more emotional, more real, and I know I’m falling for him
again. I don’t want to stop myself. I want him.

We wave to Ashe, working out by the road, where Tobin

was yesterday when I stumbled upon him. He’s bent over the
crops and doesn’t see us, but Naphalie’s nearby, picking
nutlets from the plants Ashe uproots, and she waves back.
Then Tobin leads me to the edge of the field, where the trees
hem in the meadowfoam like sentries before the woods begin.
Smiling at me, he says softly, “A few nights before the
culling, we came out here, you and me. I know you don’t
remember it, but we lay in the fields and watched the moon
and talked about what we wanted out of life.”

Lacing my fingers through his, I ask, “What did I say?”
His smile brightens. “You said you only wanted me.”
Leaning back against the rough bark of the nearest tree, I

pull him against me. His arms encircle my waist and I let my
fingers play across his chest, finding the hard nipples beneath

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the fabric. I like the way he blinks slowly when I rub at the
tiny nubs, so I do it again, making them stand erect beneath
my palms. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s been nothing but kind
and gentle and loving since we met. Maybe we really do
belong together, like Naphalie says. Maybe it’s because I
knew I was incomplete and now that I’ve found him, time has
no meaning for us and it doesn’t matter that we just met.
We’ve loved each other before and it’s so easy to fall into that
again. Quietly I tell him, “I think that’s still true.” Looking up
into his eyes, I correct myself. “I know it is. Thank you.”

“For what?” I see tears in his eyes and know he’s happy

again. Finally.

“For waiting for me,” I say. “For believing I’d come back.

For giving me another chance when I did.”

“Oh, Joah,” he sighs, and then he cradles my face in one

hand and kisses me, his lips tender and sweet. He’s the best
thing I’ve ever tasted, and when his tongue licks at my lips
before slipping between them, I don’t know how I lived
without his kiss, his touch. I don’t want to know; I won’t. I’m
not going to lose it again. As we kiss, his hand eases around
my neck, his thumb rubbing gently behind my ear. Pulling
away slightly, he frowns and asks, “What’s this?”

“What’s what?”
His thumb rubs along the scar left from the culling. He did

say he knew me well. Enough to know I shouldn’t have a
mark behind my left ear that I didn’t have the last time we
were together. “That’s from the culling,” I tell him, turning my
head so he can look at the scar. It’s tiny—I’ve seen it on

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others, just a tiny, half-inch crescent of skin, almost
unnoticeable in most light. “They put a microchip inside.” I
speak softly, keeping my voice low because I don’t want to
scare him with the details. “It overrides the memories, erasing
away everything from before.”

“Does it hurt?” he asks, pressing the puckered skin lightly.
I shake my head. “Not anymore. It was sore for a while,

right after the implant, but I didn’t feel anything during the
culling because they kept me in an anesthesia ward. It doesn’t
hurt now.”

Rubbing his thumb over the scar as if trying to smooth it

away, Tobin asks, “Is the chip still in your head?”

Nodding, I rub my temple with one hand—the shrill

screech swirling around my mind has quieted a little, or maybe
I’ve grown used to it, I’m not sure, but it’s still there. I tell him
about it, about the voice and what it’s for in the field, how it’s
designed to help a soldier and enhance the senses. I tell him
how it acts like a denotation device, how I’m expected to
crash and bleed out when the high frequency hum shakes me
apart inside, and how I plan to not let that happen.

He stares at me in amazement. “You hear it now?” he asks,

and I nod again. “All the time?”

“Constantly.”
A slight frown crosses his face. “Maybe Naphalie can look

at it,” he tells me. It’s grown late, dusk settling around us like
a blanket, and with his arm draped over my shoulder, he leads
me back to the house. “Maybe if we remove the chip, your
memories will return.”

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“Maybe,” I mutter, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I

can live with the voice. I know I can. With Tobin beside me, I
can live with anything, I’m fairly certain of that.

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CHAPTER 7

Over dinner Tobin tells the others about the chip. I see by

the distrustful way Ashe watches me eat that our little talk this
morning didn’t change his mind in the least about me. As long
as I have this chip, as long as I don’t remember who I was
before the culling, he’s going to expect me to bolt. But he
wasn’t at the facility; he doesn’t know what it’s like. And he
doesn’t have Tobin fawning over him—he doesn’t feel these
small touches or see these covert smiles, these twinkling eyes
meant for me alone. I’m never going near the facility, ever
again, and I’m never letting Tobin out of my sight. But Ashe
doesn’t realize that.

Naphalie does. She smiles at us from across the table as if

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she knows Tobin’s hand rests high up on my thigh and the
touch tingles through my jeans, as if she can read my thoughts
and see I’m thinking back to this afternoon when he and I
cuddled on the floor, waiting for our heartbeats to grow even
again as we stared into each others’ eyes. She winks at me
when Ashe isn’t looking, just a quick gesture but it makes me
feel welcome, even if Ashe still glares at me. I smile back at
her and cover Tobin’s hand on my leg with my own.

“You can hear the voice still?” Naphalie asks.
With a nod, I tell her, “I’ll get used to it, I’m sure.”
Ashe snorts. “You can get used to anything, can’t you,

Joah?”

Scowling, Tobin demands, “What’s that supposed to

mean?”

Ashe shrugs, but his words are directed at me. “It took you

five years to escape?” He looks at me expectantly, waiting for
an answer.

Naphalie looks from him to me and back again. “Ashe,

stop it.”

“Five years,” he continues, as if he didn’t hear her or

doesn’t notice her frown. “And what did you do all that time?
You knew your name. You knew someone else knew who you
were. Why did it take you so long to break out?” When I don’t
reply immediately, he prompts, “You had grown…what’s the
word? Comfortable? With the soldier’s life. You didn’t want
to leave, is that it?”

Tobin stands up suddenly, anger clouding his face. “What

the hell’s your problem, Ashe?”

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Naphalie pushes back her chair, scraping it along the floor

with a loud screech that cuts the tension in the room. “Stop it,”
she says, glaring at Ashe. Then she turns to Tobin. “Sit down
and eat. Both of you just stop this right now, you hear?”

I tug at Tobin’s sleeve. “Please.”
He glances at me before easing back onto the bench. I

watch him for a minute, watch the way he stares at Ashe,
refusing to look away first. But Naphalie begins clearing the
table and when she leans down between them, his gaze shifts
to me and then to his plate. He’s fuming—I can feel the ire
radiate from him like waves of heat from an open flame.
When I look at Ashe, he cocks an eyebrow, waiting for me to
say something, anything, but I turn away. I won’t be bated by
him. I won’t.

We finish eating in silence that’s broken only by the water

running in the sink as Naphalie washes up her dishes. Finally
Tobin asks quietly, “Do you think you can take that chip out,
Naf?”

She laughs. “I don’t think I’m qualified…”
In his excitement, he cuts her off. “You can do it. You just

got the display on your scanner fixed, right? That should find
the chip. Just use your lasers to cut it out.”

“It’s not that simple.” Naphalie sighs. “I’m not a surgeon,

Tobin. I heal wounds—”

“Same thing.” Tobin shrugs. He’s trying so hard, I know

he is, but I can see from the slump of Naphalie’s shoulders
that it’s not the same thing. Not at all. “You can at least give it
a shot.”

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A dish clatters to the sink as it falls from her hand. “You

can’t do that to her,” Ashe says, sweeping his dishes up as he
stands. “You want that chip out? You remove it yourself.”

Tobin frowns up at him. “I don’t know how.”
“Well, figure it out,” Ashe says. Dumping his plates into

the sink, he runs an arm around Naphalie’s shoulders and hugs
her close. “What happens when she can’t remove the chip? Or
it breaks, or it slips, or something—then what, Tobin? Do you
blame her? I won’t let you.”

Beneath the table, I place a comforting hand on Tobin’s

knee. When he turns to look at me, I force a smile. “I’m sure I
can learn to live with it. It’s not so bad, really.”

But his pout tells me that as long as the chip is wailing

away inside my mind, he’s going to try and find a way to get it
out. How can I not love him for that?

* * *

After the sun sets, I stand on the porch and look out over

the white meadowfoam that glows faintly in the darkness like
a low fog hugging the fields. Just what is Ashe’s problem with
me? I’ve told him time and again that I’m not leaving. I’m not.
What else can I do to prove it to him? And why do I feel as if I
have to prove it to him?

Because part of me thinks maybe his skepticism will eat

into Tobin and then he’ll start to think I’ll leave, too.

Past the fields, the woods are dark and foreboding, the

trees black scratches against the night sky. Somewhere behind
them sits the facility—I can’t see it from here but if I close my

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eyes I’m there again, standing in the exercise yard lit with
large spotlights to keep it as bright as day at all hours. To deter
escapes, perhaps, though it didn’t stop me. I still can’t believe
I’m no longer in that life. I wonder if anyone at the facility is
overly upset about my escape. They probably think me dead
already, my body in the woods somewhere…

How far could I have traveled if I hadn’t been wounded? I

would never have found this tiny farm, and if I had, I would
never have stopped. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
When I left the facility I only knew my name, and I only
wanted to find someone else who knew it, too. I never
imagined that the first person I’d stumble upon once I escaped
would be the one man I needed all along who knows exactly
who I am and where I belong. I’m his husband, his lover, his
friend, and I belong here, in his house, in his arms.

Despite whatever Ashe might think, I’m not losing that

again.

The door opens quietly behind me, and before his warm

hands even touch my shoulders I know it’s Tobin. “Hey,” he
breathes against my ear. His hands rub down my arms until his
fingers entwine in mine. I wrap his arms around me and pull
him close, his chest against my back and an exciting hardness
at his crotch pressing into my buttocks. Kissing the scar
behind my ear, he asks, “What are you doing out here all
alone?”

“Just thinking.”
His heady scent fills my senses and I close my eyes,

leaning back against him as he hugs me tight. “About?”

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I shrug in his embrace. I don’t want to say anything about

Ashe because Tobin’s probably still a little sore about the
scene at dinner and I don’t want to come between them, not
when we were all friends once. Trying to change the subject, I
push my butt back against his hips and tease, “What’s this?”

He laughs. “Joah,” he sighs, kissing me again, his lips

brushing against the back of my neck so lightly that I catch my
breath. He did say I liked being kissed there, didn’t he? He
knows me better than I know myself. “Can I ask you
something?”

I nod, head down, chin to my chest as he kisses the back of

my neck just above my collar.

“Will you stay with me tonight?”
Fear blossoms in me again. I don’t know why I’m afraid—

I’ve loved him before, haven’t I? But I don’t remember it, and
I’ve never been intimate with anyone, not in my memory at
least. This afternoon still shines in my mind but I’m hesitant to
just give myself fully to him yet. At the facility I spent my
time keeping everything else out—the soldiers, the facility,
everything. I went along with the crowd, mimicked the
motions and repeated the words, and kept myself, my true self,
a secret. If I let Tobin in, what will I have left? What will be
solely mine?

He will, my mind whispers above the hum of the voice.

He’ll be yours, just as you’ll be his, and it’ll be better than just
having yourself. It’ll be so much better because you want him.

I do. I want him so badly right now. My body responds to

his touch in ways my mind doesn’t remember—I want these

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arms around me, these lips kissing me, these hands holding
mine.

Before I can answer him, Tobin murmurs, “I’m not

pushing you. I know it must be hard. Believe me, I do. But I
just want to hold you tonight. I just want to hear your heart
beat in the darkness, I want to feel your breath tickle my neck.
I want to wake up in the morning and see the sun play across
your face. Is that too much to ask?”

Turning in his arms to look at him, I whisper, “No.”
His face is so close in the darkness. His eyes sparkle like

the stars that shine down on the fields. I touch his cheek, and
his skin is so impossibly soft beneath my fingers, downy and
firm like the skin of a peach. “Can you show me how to do
it?” I whisper in the growing darkness. “How to please you?
How to be who I used to be? Can you show me how to love
you again?”

He kisses me tenderly, his lips as sweet as the breeze that

ruffles through the crops. It’s all the answer I need. I follow
him as he leads the way inside, past the den where Ashe and
Naphalie sit together and up the stairs to our room, our bed.
Ours.

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CHAPTER 8

Tobin closes the door to our room and pulls me to him,

unbuttoning my shirt nimbly as his lips find mine. He guides
me to the bed, discarding our shirts, our pants, our shoes, until
there’s nothing between our bodies, and our skin catches fire
where we touch. Gently he eases me down to the mattress, the
soft quilt like a cloud beneath me, his body an angel’s above.
With eager kisses, he closes my eyes; tiny bites prick my lips
until they’re tender and hungry and I’m moaning his name
because it’s the only word I remember right now.

With both hands I clench at his curls, soft like rough cotton

between my fingers, and his mouth trails down my neck. His
tongue dances in the hollow of my throat before swirling

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around each of my nipples. I arch into him, his hands strong
beneath me, cradling me closer as he kisses down my stomach
and farther. His hands cup my buttocks, his lips encircle my
hard length…his tongue is wet and hot and oh-so-firm as he
licks me in places I never knew felt so good. With tiny,
feathery kisses he covers my inner thighs, spreading my legs
apart as he remembers the contours of my body, the way I rise
to meet him, the tightness that draws him in when he enters
me.

Whatever discomfort I feel is kissed away when he takes

me into his arms and thrusts into me slowly, rhythmically. I
try to be quiet, keep it down, but my body remembers his, our
love, this pleasure, this feeling that’s part soaring, part falling,
and all him.

“Tobin,” I whisper, afraid to give in, afraid that if I let

myself fall into him I’ll never find my way out. But his kisses
tell me I don’t need to be afraid, not of this, not of him, not
ever. He’s holding me now, he’ll hold me forever, he’s
whispering that he’s never going to let me go, and for the first
time I can ever remember I know this is where I belong. I
know this is who I am. I know that he defines me, and I define
him, and together we are all that exists.

Together we’re all either of us needs to be.

* * *

After our bodies cool, the sheets smooth out around us,

and I’m snuggled in Tobin’s arms, I tell him I love him. I
don’t even think about it—the words just escape before

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they’re even fully formed in my mind. But when he turns my
face up towards his I see tears on his cheeks and his kiss is
salty on my lips.

“Oh, God, Joah,” he sighs, “I never thought I’d hear you

say that again.”

“Then I’ll say it every day,” I tell him, burrowing closer

into him beneath the quilt, “so you’ll never forget.”

Some time later I ask him to tell me more about who I was.

I want to know everything I don’t remember, every little
detail, because if it’s not going to come back on its own I want
to at least have it as a part of me. “Tell me what to remember,”
I say, listening to Tobin’s heart beat steadily where my head
rests against his chest. “Tell me the happy memories, and the
sad ones, and the ones you think I should know.”

He runs a hand through my hair, brushing it back from my

brow. “Like what?”

I kiss one of his nipples, taking the tender bud into my

mouth and tickling it with my tongue, waiting until he sighs
before I speak. “That picture downstairs,” I say, because it’s
the first thing I can think of. “The one with us in the car, and
Ashe, and those two other guys. Tell me about that day.”

He thinks for a minute. “Naphalie took that picture. We all

decided to hike into town, just spend the day at the heaps, see
what there was to see and goof off and have a good time. Our
parents hated the heaps—trash yards, your mom called them—
and because we weren’t supposed to be there, that’s the one
place we always went, you know?”

I laugh. I can imagine Tobin now, the gleam in his eye as

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he tried to convince me to go with him to the heaps. I’m not
even sure what they are but I envision a chained in area,
abandoned cars and castaway furniture, old refrigerators and
torn chairs and busted up vehicles piled like dust blown by the
wind. “It was six of us that day, you and me, Ashe and
Naphalie, Zeb and his friend Micaiah, who none of us knew
too well. He was a lot older than we were, and he didn’t like
Ashe very much—they were always fighting. He was the type
to pick a fight, you know what I mean? Just a scrappy thing,
always looking for trouble. I don’t know why Zeb hung out
with him, except maybe because he was a troublemaker.
Something different, something exciting, something
dangerous.”

“Were they together?” I ask. My hand smoothes between

his legs to rub over tender flesh. “Like us?”

Tobin shakes his head. “Zeb might have wanted to, but

Micaiah wasn’t that type, not at all. He and Ashe got into it
earlier that day because he couldn’t keep his hands off
Naphalie, just kept pawing her like a hungry lapdog. Ashe
almost decked him for it.”

I believe it wouldn’t take much for Ashe to deck

somebody. “So Zeb and Micaiah and the four of us,” I prompt,
“in the trash yard.”

Tobin shrugs. “Not much else happened that day.” He

thinks for a moment, then adds, “We wanted to get alone, you
and me, just a few minutes to ourselves, and you suggested the
car—we could make out in the back seat and wait until the
others found us, only it didn’t take them too long. I had you up

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against the door, my hand in your pants, and you were so close
to coming when Ashe jumped in the car, trying to scare us.”

He laughs a little and I smile at the thought, wishing I had

the memory. But I can picture it in my mind, at least. I saw the
photograph.

“He gets all cozy beside us, telling us he’s going to dump

Naf and hook up with us, make it a threesome and rock our
world.” Now that makes me laugh, and Tobin hugs me tighter.
“The others came up, Zeb jumping into the front seat, saying
he’s going to drive us all away and Micaiah scowling beside
him because he ran out of cigarettes and none of us wanted to
leave with him to go get more. Naphalie snapped the picture
and then we went home.”

“And then what?” Tell me everything, I want to say again.

Tell me everything from that day up until now, until this
moment. I want to know it all.

A sly grin crosses Tobin’s face and he kisses my forehead

tenderly. “Then we came back to my house. My parents had
gone out to a show, my brothers were at school, and we made
love on the floor of the living room. I got rug burns on my
knees that day but that didn’t stop us. We couldn’t get enough
of each other.”

I sigh. I can’t imagine ever having enough of this man.

“Did we make love often?” I think we probably did. How did
we ever keep our hands off each other? When we feel so right
like this, pressed together in each others’ arms—how did we
spend more than a moment apart?

“Every night,” he admits.

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I laugh. “You’re kidding.” When he doesn’t answer, I look

up at him and laugh again. “Tobin, every single night?”

“And in the middle of the day,” he says. His grin tells me

he’s joking, but he’s cute and I play along. “Sometimes in the
morning, too.”

“Damn.” Lying back against his chest, I pick at his nipple

because it’s right there and I like the way he gasps when I
touch it. “Good thing we have Naphalie and Ashe, or this crop
would never get picked. Who else would run the farm while
we’re making love all the time?”

“That’s not a bad idea.” I feel him hardening along my

thigh. “Let them have the farm. We have each other. That’s all
we need.”

As he rolls me back against the pillows and straddles me

again, I agree.

* * *

When I fall asleep, I dream I’m back in the woods. My hip

burns lividly from the wound, open and bleeding once more,
the skin pulling as I run, tearing a stitch up my side and
making me stumble. The trees hem me in, pressing down on
me with skeletal limbs that snake out, snatching at my
jumpsuit, my arms, my hair, reaching for my eyes, my face.
The guards are behind me, I can hear them running, their
breath hot on my neck because they’re almost upon me, their
guns aimed at me, my back filling their sights. I weave
through the trees, trying to widen the distance between us,
making it hard for them because I’m not going back to the

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facility. I know I’m not. I have my name and I have Tobin’s
face in my mind, and I’m not giving either of them up.

In the dream the alarms ring through the woods, echoing

off the trees and resounding through the darkness, confusing
me. Everywhere I turn, the alarm rings, the voice screeches,
wood snaps like fire crackling, and I don’t know which way
I’m going, where I am, what I’m doing. Am I running towards
the farm, where Tobin waits? Or have I turned around and am
now heading for the facility, back into their arms, back to
them? The alarm pulses in time with my heart, a loud klaxon
that reverberates inside my skull, stepping up another pitch
until I’m falling to the ground, my hands fisted at my temples,
trying to beat out the sound, trying to make it stop, make it
end, make it stop… I’m falling and the sound is getting higher,
it’s hurting now, threatening to drown out my name and my
lover and just please, for the love of God please just make it
stop—

“Joah?” Tobin’s voice cuts through the trees, the guards,

the alarm, jolting me awake. His strong hands hold onto my
shoulders, catching me as I fall. “Joah, are you okay? Wake
up. Please, wake up.”

“I’m up,” I mutter, but the dream clings to me like gauze

and I can’t seem to shake the images away. The trees, the
guards, the alarm— When I sit up, the voice in my head
screams in protest, louder than before, much louder.

I fall to the pillows and clench my head in my hands.

When I open my eyes slowly, I see the faint gray light of dawn
creeping in through the window, crawling over the rumpled

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quilt that covers our legs, but even that’s too much right now,
it’s too bright, and I close my eyes again. The buzz behind my
eyelids makes my teeth vibrate, it’s so shrill, so loud, so damn
loud…

“Joah?” Tobin asks again. Concern laces his voice. “Talk

to me. What’s wrong?”

“My head,” I manage. It’s all I can do to keep from

screaming in pain, from raising my voice in harmony with the
shriek in my head, because it’s going to shatter my mind. I just
know it. I’m numb from the pain and I can’t lift my head, it
hurts so bad, I’m going to die— “Tobin.” I claw at my face,
digging my fingers into my cheeks, anything to end this.
“Make it stop. Please, just make it stop.”

He pries my fingers loose and holds my hands away from

my face so I can’t hurt myself.

“Naphalie!” he cries out. Sitting on my chest, he holds me

down as I thrash my head from side to side, trying to shake the
voice away, trying to make it stop already. “Naphalie!”

Fear curls into her name. He’s terrified. I see his fevered

eyes, his flushed cheeks, and I want to tell him I love him
again but I can’t find the words. I can’t even think because of
this voice screaming away my life.

From far away I hear a door open, and then Naphalie’s

cool hands cradle my cheeks, her voice soothing as she tries to
calm us down. Ashe comes into the room and hands Naphalie
something, a healing laser? A needle? I don’t know, but then I
feel a tiny pinprick on my shoulder and the voice quiets a bit,
just a little, just enough to let the world slip away, the morning

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light and Tobin’s worried face and the tension in my arms. I’m
falling again but Tobin’s holding onto me and there’s no
dreaming now. Everything is far away and muffled, even the
infernal voice in my head, and I can finally get back to sleep.

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CHAPTER 9

When I wake, Naphalie’s talking low to someone and I

don’t open my eyes immediately. My head still aches with the
memory of the screeching voice. I’m afraid to wake up and
have that sound scrape into my mind again.

“We need to at least try,” Naphalie’s saying.
“He’s fine now.”
That’s Ashe. Of course he thinks I’m fine. He sees me

lying here on the bed and he thinks everything’s going to be
all right. As long as I’m down and out, I can’t go anywhere, is
that it? I don’t want to go anywhere, Ashe, I tell him, but he
can’t hear me, the words are spoken only in my head. I want to
have what I had. I want Tobin. I want him, nothing else. He’s

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all I want.

Naphalie’s laughter sounds bittersweet, like a sour piece of

candy that makes your lips pucker but it’s sugary so you don’t
want to spit it out. “He’s drugged,” she says. Now it makes
sense, why the voice is eerily mute, why my body is numb and
whatever pain I feel is only echoes of what it was this
morning. “The penth will wear off soon. He can’t live on it
forever.”

Penth. As in nepenthe. Oh shit.
The facility uses penth pellets when soldiers are wounded

in the field, when all the healing lasers and anesthesia wands
in the world can’t help them. Highly addictive, highly
unstable, and sold for obscene amounts of money on the black
market, or so I’ve heard. I never understood its appeal—the
drug dulls the senses until there’s nothing left, nothing but a
tiny spark of your soul hiding away in layer upon layer of
thick numbness. People speaking in the same room sound as if
they’re miles away, colors are washed out, bland; touch is
almost nonexistent. The hardest punch feels like nothing but a
gentle caress and a gash with a sword or knife, just a scratch.
With penth in the system, a wounded soldier forgets
everything but the heat of battle and fights to the death
because there’s no pain, no feeling. Not with that drug.

I must have scared Naphalie pretty badly if she didn’t

know what else to do but give me penth.

Ashe asks, “How much more do you have?”
“Enough,” she admits. I can almost see her eyes blazing in

my mind, even though she sounds so far away. “Ashe, he can’t

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live off it, you know that. He’s got to get that chip out.”

“You can’t do it,” Ashe says.
Why not? I want to ask, but when I try to open my eyes,

they stay shut, and all I succeed in doing is turning my head
slightly. They probably think I’m still asleep.

“Jesus, Naf, you know what will happen if you even try to

remove it. You saw what it did to Micaiah…”

Micaiah? Unit 36-722, Zeb’s friend from the picture?

What’s he talking about? I try to ask but my face is frozen, my
lips refuse to part, my mouth doesn’t want to open. Micaiah.

“You can’t let Tobin blame you if the same thing happens

to Joah,” Ashe continues.

What happened to Micaiah?
For a moment Naphalie doesn’t answer. I try to sit up but

something’s holding me down. I don’t know what. I can’t feel
it but I just can’t move. How long does penth take to wear off?
I’m not sure. The voice in my head is affected by the drug and
I can’t hear it now when I need it to sort through what little
memories I have and find what I know of the drug. I never
thought I’d miss the almost unconscious stream of data
flooding my mind throughout the last five years but where is it
when I really need it?

Finally Naphalie says quietly, “Zeb can do it.”
“Oh, God,” Ashe sighs, his voice so low I can hardly hear

it. “How do I explain that one? You know he’s going to hate
me. Tobin will want to know why I didn’t tell him about
Micaiah earlier, he’s going to be livid.”

“Maybe not,” Naphalie replies. I feel her cool palm rest

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upon my forehead, a light touch like butterflies through the
haze of the drug. “He’s so upset right now, maybe he won’t be
mad at you.”

This time I manage to blink open my eyes, and she’s

leaning down over me, concern written across her pretty face,
her hair pinned back from her brow. I see one hand caress my
cheek but I can’t feel it. I wonder where Tobin is—probably
asleep with the help of another drug, something to soothe his
nerves. I want him here with me but I can’t form the words.
The penth took them away.

“If we don’t get that chip out,” Naphalie tells him, “Joah

will die, you know that. It’ll tear him apart inside and one
morning Tobin will wake up to find him bleeding out beside
him. Do you want that, Ashe? You thought five years was bad,
because he kept hoping Joah would come back. How will you
live the rest of your life when Tobin dies a little each day
because Joah died in his arms?” She turns away from me and
sighs. “I don’t think there are words to comfort for that, do
you?”

“Jesus,” Ashe whispers.
I hear the indecision in his voice. If Zeb can remove the

chip, what’s the problem? I’m not understanding. What
happened to Micaiah?

“Naf, he’s going to wonder why we never told him

earlier.”

“Because we didn’t want to give him false hope.”
What kind of hope? Never told Tobin what?
“I’m behind you on this, Ashe,” Naphalie says. “We’ll tell

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him together. He’s got to see that we did it to protect him.”

Did what? I want to scream, but I can’t. I can’t. Naphalie’s

voice sounds so reasonable, so self-assured. “He wants Joah
with him, and this is the only way. Zeb is the only one who
can take that chip out, the only one who’s done it before. So
now is the time. You see that, don’t you? Now we have to tell
him.”

Oh God, Naphalie. Tell Tobin what?

* * *

When I wake up again the voice is back, but not as shrill as

before. It’s just a tiny cry compared to this morning, so maybe
the penth is wearing off a bit, letting reality bleed through the
drug’s numbing ward. I can move now, and when I shift in the
bed I feel someone squeeze my hand. Barely there but it’s
some sensation, at least. It’s Tobin, tears streaking his cheeks
and blurring his eyes, but when he sees my eyelids flutter open
he kisses my forehead, pressing his cool lips against my skin
until they warm at the touch. Smoothing my hair back from
my face, he sighs my name. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I choke. My throat is dry and I sit up slowly,

afraid to make any sudden move that will bring the voice
shrieking back at me. I hold my head in one hand while he
holds a glass for me to sip from. The water is sparkling and
stabs into my mind, but it soothes my throat and when I speak
again my voice is less ragged. “Where are they?” I ask,
glancing around the room. I mean Naphalie and Ashe.

“Naf’s resting,” Tobin tells me. A frown crosses his face

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as he adds, “Ashe went to find Zeb.”

Zeb. Their hushed conversation comes back to me in

snippets, so I guess that wasn’t a dream. Zeb can remove the
chip. Naphalie said he’d done it before. And Ashe was afraid
that Tobin would be mad…why was that? What happened to
Micaiah that would make Tobin mad? “Zeb?” I ask, still
confused. “Tobin—”

He scowls as he sets the glass of water down on the table

by the bed. “They said he can take the chip out.”

For a long moment I watch emotions struggle across his

face, hope and anger and helplessness mingling together,
pulling his pretty lips into a kissable pout. Gently I ask, “They
never told you, did they?”

“No,” he whispers. Raising my hand to his mouth, he

kisses my palm and sighs. “Remember Micaiah? You said you
saw him at the facility, remember?”

I nod, but Tobin’s eyes aren’t focused on me—he’s staring

through me, somewhere behind me that only he can see. “He
was culled the same day you were,” he says, his voice growing
distant, but it’s not the drug that’s doing that, it’s his
memories, taking him back in time. “I always thought maybe
Zeb had this thing for him, like maybe Zeb liked Micaiah
more than he was liked back, you know? We used to tease him
about that, make him blush, but only when Micaiah wasn’t
around. You said something like that to Micaiah, he flew into
a rage. He wasn’t that way, he told us over and over again. He
even got into a fight with Zeb about it, right before the culling.
When the soldiers came they still weren’t talking to each

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other.”

I wait, watching Tobin’s eyes turn a shade darker as he

frowns, and then his gaze shifts to me. “Zeb left after the
culling, just up and moved away. I don’t know where. But
apparently he and Ashe kept in touch.”

“Naphalie said he can remove the chip,” I prompt. “She

said he’s done it before.”

“They just told me that,” Tobin says softly. “I didn’t know.

I had no clue… Naf says they didn’t want to get my hopes up
any, but…” He sighs, a deep sound that tears at my soul.
“About a year or two ago, Micaiah was out in the field with
his squadron, at the wastelands just north of the city. Guarding
the borders, or fighting the Morleys, or something, I don’t
know what. She doesn’t know, either. Zeb didn’t say when
Ashe saw him.”

“What happened?” I think I know already, some part of me

knows, because I never saw Micaiah but once at the facility,
and where did Naphalie get the penth from in the first place?

Tobin sighs, his hands enveloping mine as he sits down on

the edge of the bed. “Micaiah was wounded in battle and left
for dead. Zeb lives out that way now, out where the skirmishes
take place, and whenever another fight is over he spends the
night combing the dead and dying, looking for you, for
Micaiah, for anyone he once knew. And that day—”

“He found Micaiah.”
I can see it now. “He found the penth left with Unit 36-722

and he, what? Nursed him back to health?”

Tobin nods.

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“And Micaiah didn’t know him. But he was still alive,

right? That’s why they didn’t tell you.”

He nods again—it makes sense. Sure, they didn’t tell

Tobin, because they didn’t want him scouring the battlefields
looking for me. They know him so well, they knew even the
thinnest hope would be enough, and he’d live out in the
wastelands among the dead, turning over fallen bodies in the
hope of seeing my dying eyes staring back at him one day.

I love this man.
As fresh tears fill his eyes, I pull him into my arms,

running my fingers through his hair as he hugs me tightly, his
hands fisting in the small of my back. “Tell me you’re not too
angry with them,” I whisper into Tobin’s curls. “You know
why they did it, right? You understand.”

“I know,” he replies, his voice muffled in my shirt. “But

still…”

I hold him close and let him cry. He’s scared, I know. I am

too. “But he can take out the chip,” I tell him. That’s
something, isn’t it? “Micaiah is still alive, right? Zeb removed
his memory chip, didn’t he?”

Sniffling, Tobin says softly, “Naphalie says not to get our

hopes up. She says he’s not the same as he was before, but she
doesn’t really know much about it herself. Just what Ashe
says. And he told her that he didn’t want Zeb to do it if there
was another way. He wanted you to live off the penth forever,
if you could.”

“Eventually,” I say, “the voice would overpower the drug.”
“I know,” Tobin whispers. “This is the only choice left.”

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Sighing, he adds, “I love you, Joah. God, I’m so scared of
losing you again. I’m just terrified.”

Brushing his curls back, I kiss his forehead and tell him I

know. I love him, too, I’m scared for both of us. I’m scared
I’ll lose him a second time and I don’t think I can do that.

I know I can’t. I won’t let anyone take him away from me

again.

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CHAPTER 10

Now I understand why Ashe is so angry. Not at me but at

the whole situation, my coming back, the chip in my head,
everything. Zeb must have told him about the chip and how he
removed the one implanted in Micaiah’s head, but something
terrible happened and even though Micaiah is still alive, Ashe
doesn’t want to put Tobin through that. Whatever removing
the chip does, he doesn’t want us to have to go through it.
He’d rather I live off penth the rest of my days…numbed, not
feeling Tobin’s softest touches, not tasting his sweet lips or
smelling the bright scent of his fresh curls.

But I can’t do that. I’d live with the shriek inside my head

before I give up those loving sensations I’ve found once again.

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As night falls I lie in bed, the voice coming through in

waves that wash over me sickly, and I hold Tobin in my arms.
He’s curled beside me, head on my shoulder, his body above
the covers that hide mine. Keeping my voice so low I can
barely hear it over the squeal in my mind, I ask, “How long
does it take to get to the wastelands?”

Tobin frowns. “Not too long.” Our soup bowls from dinner

sit on the bedside table, half empty. We’re both too nervous to
eat. “What do you think will happen when he takes the chip
out?”

“I don’t know,” I say, like I’ve said a hundred times today

whenever he asked that question. “Maybe I’ll get all my
memories back. I’ll have these past few days and the days
before the facility, too.” Hugging him closer, I whisper, “And
I’ll love you all the more. What do you think about that?”

He smiles and kisses me tenderly, his lips lingering, soft

and velvety, on mine like meadowfoam blossoms. I can’t live
off the drug if it means giving up this.

“Oh Joah,” he sighs, caressing my cheek. I blink back

tears—in all my five years at the facility, I never once felt this
much, not for anything, not for anyone. I don’t want to let him
go.

Sometime later, the door opens and it’s Naphalie, worry

written across her face. She has her lasers with her, a few
anesthetic patches, and some more penth pellets—I’d
recognize the flat sheets of small, round buttons anywhere.
They’re an obscene shade of orange that government issue
seems to favor, like reflective gear. Behind her is Ashe, his

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coat still on, and his gaze meets Tobin’s briefly before he
looks away. Another man enters the room after him.

I place Zeb immediately from the photograph downstairs.

His hair is longer now, his face covered with a scruffy, ill-
kempt beard that makes him look wild. With a nervous, wide-
eyed stare, he glances around the room, running a hand
through his hair in a poor attempt to straighten it. He looks
impossibly thin, as if he hasn’t eaten in days. Flashing us a
tight smile, he turns back to the hallway and whispers, “It’s
okay. Come on.”

Another man steps into the room and Zeb takes his hand.

This isn’t Micaiah, the hardened soldier I saw once at the
facility. And it isn’t the angry, troubled man in the photo,
either. This man looks like Micaiah, but his dredlocks have
been chopped into short spikes that stand up from his head as
if in shock. His face has smoothed out, rounding around the
edges and taking on a high sheen that reminds me of the
moon. He’s lost the scowl, the bitter look, the anger in his
eyes. When he smiles at us, it’s a shy, unsure grin, like he’s
been told to be nice and he’s going to try his best to do just
that, but he’s not entirely sure the reasons why.

Zeb pulls him closer, folding his hands around Micaiah’s,

and they stand together for a long moment, comfortable with
each other in an incongruitous way that makes my head spin.
This isn’t Micaiah, is it? Finally Zeb looks at me and says,
“So you escaped.”

I nod slightly.
“You must have kept something,” he says.

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Ashe and Naphalie stand by the windows, watching,

waiting. Micaiah looks around the room with interest, taking
everything in with a child-like wonder I doubt he had before
the culling. I tell them, “My name. I’m not sure how, but when
they were done, I still knew that.”

“Can you take out the chip?” Tobin asks suddenly.
Slowly Zeb nods. “It’s not what you want…”
Sitting up beside me on the bed, Tobin glares at Zeb

balefully. “I want the voice to go away.” I trail a hand down
his back to comfort him. “I want Joah to be able to live like he
did before, and I want him alive. If you can do that—”

“It won’t be the same.” Zeb frowns at me, then Ashe.

“You didn’t tell them what it does?”

Ashe raises his eyebrows, defeat written on his face as he

looks away. “I thought maybe you could.”

Zeb sighs. “Tobin, it takes away everything. It doesn’t

bring anything back, trust me.” He holds up Micaiah’s hand,
still in his. Micaiah turns from his study of the pictures on the
wall and flashes us a bright smile, a happy smile, something I
didn’t think the scowling man in the memory that Tobin
painted for me was capable of doing. “Micaiah had nothing
once the chip was removed. I’ve taught him all he needed to
know—I made him into who he is now.”

So it’s just that easy, is it? Zeb took the broken soldier and

made him into someone new, someone who could love him
now.

Tobin frowns. “Maybe it’s not the same with everyone.”
“It is,” Zeb assures him. “Tobin, I do this all the time. I

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find soldiers that the facility discards like broken toys and I fix
them back up. I take out their chips and send them on their
way as new people, brand new because they don’t remember
shit. Not from before, not from the facility, nothing. The chip
takes it all when it’s taken out of their heads.” Sighing, he
adds, “They can talk, they have that much. But who they are,
what they did, anything that once made them specifically who
they were vanishes. It’s gone when I throw the chip away.
They have to learn it all over again.”

“Like what?” I want to know. “How is that different from

what happened during the culling?”

“It’s not,” Zeb says. “I just don’t want you to get your

hopes up. Tobin, I know how you feel about Joah. I imagine in
the past few hours you’ve been helping him learn to love you
all over again. But he knew his name—he had that much
going for him. He won’t even have that this time. He’ll have
nothing, nothing at all.” In a quiet voice, he adds, “Everyone
thinks it brings back what you had before, but it doesn’t. I just
want you to know that, okay? Don’t expect a miracle. Those
memories are gone, that Joah is gone. And if you remove the
chip, this one will be, too.”

“Tobin,” I murmur. Zeb turns away as if he doesn’t want

to see the intimate way Tobin’s hand clutches at my thigh
beneath the covers.

Tobin looks back at me, tears glistening in his eyes. “The

voice will kill you, won’t it?”

I nod, and he sighs sadly.
“Joah, I want you with me forever. But I don’t want you to

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lose everything all over again. I know you don’t want that—”

“I want you,” I tell him, and it’s the truth. “That’s all I

want. So if this chip takes away all of my memories, fine. Just
promise you’ll help me make new ones. Promise to stay with
me…” I look at him expectantly. “I’ll do it for you, Tobin, if
you promise you’ll still love me when I have nothing left.”

“I will,” he swears, his teary kiss lending me a strength I’m

not sure I still possess.

* * *

“This is going to sting a little.” Zeb sticks the anesthesia

patch behind my ear, but the penth is still in my system and I
don’t feel a thing. We’re in the extra bedroom downstairs
again, Naphalie laying out her healing lasers by Zeb’s side as
they get everything set up. Ashe watches us, a terse expression
in his eyes that’s hard to read, and Micaiah sits beside him,
leafing through a magazine. Every few pages he finds
something he thinks is funny and he shows it to Ashe. This
Micaiah has a warped sense of humor, a way of laughing that
makes the rest of us want to join in the fun, and despite the
tension in the room, he manages to get a smile from Ashe
every now and then.

I’m in one of the kitchen chairs, trying to relax, but it’s

hard when Tobin’s holding my hand so tight my fingers have
gone numb, and not just from the drug anymore. The room is
quiet, too quiet, punctuated only with Micaiah’s low laughter
when he turns another page and says, “Hey Ashe, check this
out.” Ashe smiles down at the magazine, just because it’s

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something to do. I wonder what’s so funny about the faded
glossy pages. I want to ask Micaiah to show me, but Tobin’s
on one side of me, Zeb and Naphalie on the other, I hear the
faint hum of the scalpel wand come to life, and the moment’s
lost. Now I’ll never know. A few minutes more and I won’t
remember that I don’t know, and that saddens me.

“How long will this take?” I ask as Zeb removes the

anesthesia patch and pokes at my neck with the sharp edge of
the scalpel, right behind my ear, to make sure that I can’t feel
a thing.

“Not long.” With a sure and steady hand Zeb moves my

head to one side, until my cheek’s almost resting on my
shoulder, and I blow a kiss to Tobin. He looks so lost and
afraid. He smiles wanly back and kisses my knuckles, but I
can’t feel it because he’s squeezing the blood from my
fingers—his grip on my hand would be funny if he wasn’t so
scared.

The hum of the wand gets louder as Zeb puts the blade

against my neck. I feel a slight pressure but that’s it. “The chip
is close to the skin,” he tells me. “I just cut it out and then Naf
will suture the wound. It’ll scar, but I’m just going to use the
same marks as before, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

How did I hang onto my name the last time? I don’t

remember. I don’t know what I was thinking when I was
culled, how I managed to save that tiny piece of who I am and
nothing else. I don’t remember this sharp tingle at the base of
my skull, the hands on my head, the scalpel vibrating lightly
against my ear. I’m going to lose everything all over again.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Tobin, the farm, the facility even—those aren’t memories I
want to keep but at least they’re something, at least they’re
mine. And they’ll be gone, too. I won’t know these people,
Naphalie or Ashe or Zeb. I’ll be like Micaiah and have to be
told they’re my friends.

What hurts the most is I won’t remember Tobin.
Quietly, I say his name.
He looks up at me, his gaze shifting to Zeb before finding

mine. “I love you.”

“I know,” I say, trying to smile. Inside of my head, the

voice raises another pitch as if in protest to the scalpel cutting
it free. I want to hear his voice right now, I want it to be the
last thing I hear before I forget that it’s his. “Tell me
something. Anything. How we met. Our first kiss. Just talk to
me, Tobin. Please.”

He takes a deep breath and thinks for a minute, finding a

memory to share. “I was sixteen when I first told you I loved
you. You don’t remember, do you? I was terrified that day—I
just knew you’d laugh at me, or turn away, or hate me.” He
sighs, recalling something I no longer know. “You were my
best friend, Joah…you are, still, and I was so scared you’d tell
me you didn’t like me back.”

“Did I?” I ask, wincing at a sudden jolt of pain that flashes

through my brain and is gone.

“No,” he whispers. “We were lying on the floor, studying.

You were a grade ahead of me and aced trig so my mom
thought it would be great if you could tutor me.” He smiles at
the memory. “When you went to turn the page, I caught your

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

hand in mine and held it until you looked at me, confused, and
I was so sure you could hear my heart pounding, it was so
loud.”

The voice in my head shrieks higher and I close my eyes,

waiting for it to quiet down.

Tobin keeps talking. “I told you I loved you. You frowned,

and I got frustrated. I couldn’t tell you what I wanted to say,
all I wanted you to know.”

Behind my ear Zeb’s hand slips, cutting something, and

the voice dips shrilly.

Not much longer, I pray. Despite the penth and the

anesthesia, it’s starting to hurt. A low voice speaks gently,
soothingly, and I can hear happiness in it, no pain, nothing but
sweetness and love. “And then you smiled,” this new voice
says, “and kissed me, and told me you’d always felt the same
way and never really knew how to tell me.” I feel someone
holding my hand tightly, I feel the soft press of lips against the
back of my hand. “I’ve always loved you, Tobin…those were
your exact words.”

I’ve always loved you…
There’s a quick snap in my mind as something breaks free,

and suddenly the voices are gone, all of them. The shrill
banshee, the soft lover, the humming behind my ear,
everything.

I’ve always loved you, Tobin.
The world goes black and silent and cold before it’s

snuffed out like a candle’s flame, and I can’t think anymore, I
can’t see, I can’t hear a thing. It’s all gone.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

CHAPTER 11

I remember kisses.
Soft, gentle kisses that flutter across my lips like

butterflies. Refreshing kisses like a spring rain. Hungry kisses,
eager lips covering mine in a velvet crush that’s maddening
because I want more. I can’t get enough. I want to drown in
these kisses. I could live on them alone. I would die without
them.

Kisses like promises, each one a hint of something more.

Kisses like snowflakes, no two the same. Kisses whirling like
a hurricane through the blankness of my mind.

In the darkness I see two boys on bicycles, teenagers

laughing as they race against the wind. One of the boys is

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

myself, but I don’t know my name, not anymore. I had it once,
I think, and somewhere along the way it fell aside and was
lost.

The other boy knows my name. He’s beautiful, an angel

fallen to earth and captured in perfect flesh, perfect curls,
perfect smile and perfect eyes that flash when he looks at me.
I’m trying to catch up with him but his legs are longer, he
pedals faster, and he’s ahead of me, laughing over his shoulder
like a taunting sprite, urging me to follow. We’re on a hill
outside of town, miles away from anyone else, the trees
around us whispering as we pass, their leaves rustling with
autumnal secrets, their branches pointing the way to a place
where we can be together, a tiny thicket where we can be
alone.

I toss the bike aside as I jump off and it falls to the ground,

forgotten. He takes my hand and pulls the branches back,
exposing the soft grass hidden in the midst of the woods. “No
one will find us,” he whispers as he crawls in beside me,
easing me to the ground. His lips find mine, his hands roam
over my chest, my legs, unzip my jeans and fumble beneath
my shirt because we were in school all day long and we
couldn’t touch each other, we couldn’t even look at each other,
and now we’re finally alone for the first time in what seems
like forever and I can’t get enough of him. I love him, more
than I’ve ever loved anyone else before, a million times more.
I’m going to marry him one day, I just know it. I’ve already
asked him and he’s already said yes, so who cares that we’re
so young? We know what we want. We want each other.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

As his hands caress my body with a familiarity that excites

me, the trees around us begin to fade, their changing leaves
turning from vibrant reds and oranges and yellows to sordid
shades of sepia and gray. He whispers my name but his voice
is distant, lost in the rush of memory and the rustle of a bed
sheet. His hands on my chest become a restricting quilt,
tucking me into a bed I don’t remember lying down in. I don’t
know where I am, what this place is I’m waking to, or why I
can’t just stay with him forever in this scene in my mind.
There are a million similar memories, all crowding together
now, tumbling one over the other like water rushing from a
mill, the two of us locked in passionate embraces, him holding
me close, me kissing him in the rain. He’s all I know of life—
everything else is gone.

All I remember is one word, a name. Only it’s not my

name. It’s his. Tobin. Tobin.

That’s it—nothing else. He’s all I have left.

* * *

I open my eyes to find a pretty woman leaning over me.

She sees me wake and smiles at me sadly. “How are you
feeling?” she asks.

Her voice is quiet. Everything is quiet, this room I’m in,

this house, this world. For some reason I think it’s never been
this quiet before, but I don’t know because I don’t remember
ever being here before. I didn’t exist until just this second,
when I opened my eyes. I was nothing before. There was
nothing but—

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Nothing but Tobin. I’m not sure what that means but it

brings a smile to my face. I remember Tobin.

The woman asks, “Joah?”
“Is that my name?” I guess it is—when I look around

there’s no one else in the room. “How should I be feeling?”

She shrugs. “A little woozy, maybe,” she offers, and I

think about it. Yes, I’m a little woozy. “Any pain?”

I don’t think so. I shake my head. No, no pain.
Gently she asks, “What do you remember?”
“About what?” I don’t remember anything.
Except for Tobin.
The boy in my dreams, the only memories I have. Does he

exist? Is he real? I’m not sure I want to stay in this world if
he’s not in it—I’ll go back to sleep and dream of him again. I
don’t need to stay here if he’s not here with me.

“I’m Naphalie,” she says, like I’m supposed to know

already but because I don’t, her face looks beautifully sad. I
want to apologize because I think I should know her, I feel
like I should, but I don’t. She’s not in my memories at all.
“The others are out in the kitchen.”

Who is she talking about? Am I supposed to know them,

too? “Zeb and Micaiah left,” she continues. The names mean
nothing to me. “Ashe’s making dinner—he does that when he
gets upset, just cooks because there’s nothing else to do, you
know? And Tobin—”

“Tobin?” I ask, sitting up in the bed. I push her hands

away as she tries to hold me down. “He’s here? I didn’t—” I
didn’t dream him up? I almost say, but I catch myself.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Naphalie helps me out of bed and I run a nervous hand

through my hair. Tobin’s real? Those memories, those are
real? That love, those kisses, his touch? God, where is he
already? “Where’s Tobin?”

Naphalie stares at me, confusion mingled with a faint hope

that shines brightly in her eyes. “You remember him?”

I think for a minute. I don’t know my name—she says it’s

Joah but I’m not too sure about that one yet. I don’t know
where I am, or why I’m here with her, or why my head aches
slightly, a thin throb that seems to stem from somewhere
behind my left ear. When I try to think back to before I opened
my eyes, there’s nothing, my mind goes blank. It shuts down.
All I have are the dreams I dreamt while asleep, dreams of a
love that I can still taste on my lips, a man so tender I can still
feel him in my arms. I can still see the way his eyes sparkle
when he looks at me.

Only he’s not a dream, is he? He’s real. I wonder if we’re

lovers in this world I’ve woken up to. I wonder why I don’t
know if we are or not. “He’s the only thing I remember,” I say
softly, unsure if that’s a good or bad thing right now. I take a
deep breath—suddenly I’m afraid. I don’t know anything and
I’m terrified. “What’s going on here?” I ask. “Can I talk to
him? Where is he?”

Without moving, Naphalie raises her voice and calls out,

“Tobin?” When no one replies, she adds, “Come here a
minute. Please. Tobin?”

Her voice cracks—so I’m not the only one who’s scared

here, am I? She backs away from me, putting a little more

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

space between us. What’s she afraid of? She’s not the one who
doesn’t know what’s going on. She knows who she is, who I
am, and that’s more than I do right now.

The door opens, and when I turn I see him, the boy from

my dreams, grown into a man before me. I’d recognize those
burnished curls, those flashing eyes, those ruddy lips
anywhere. I know how he tastes, I know every inch of his
strong body, I know the way it feels to be held tightly in those
muscled arms and I know how tender those large hands are
when they rub along my skin. For a breathless moment we just
stare at each other, and I can’t dare to hope he loves me, can I?
Were those memories of what we mean to each other, or just
dreams that would eventually fade by the light of day?

He takes a step closer and I whisper, “Tobin? Oh, God,

please tell me what’s going on. Please…”

Behind me Naphalie says, “He knows you. He knows your

name. I didn’t tell him, I didn’t say a word, Tobin, I swear to
you. He remembers you, and only you. He doesn’t even know
his name and he knows yours.”

I watch as tears fill his eyes and then he grabs me into a

tight embrace, hugging me close, the scent of his musk filling
my senses and numbing my mind. “Joah, I love you,” he
whispers, the crush of his lips on mine vivid and real, not
some dream or memory but real. This love we share, this love
that swells inside me and threatens to swallow me whole, this
is real.

I don’t know where we are, but I know this is exactly

where I belong. In his arms. With him.

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

* * *

He tells me he loves me. Every few minutes, as if I’ll ever

forget. It’s the only thing I remember and he can’t tell me
enough, but I never tire of hearing it. I love him more than I
can even express in words. He’s the only thing I have in this
world because he’s the only thing I know. He’s the only thing
I want to know.

My name is Joah. He tells me that, and because I love the

way it sounds falling from his lips, I believe him. When we
make love he screams it into the night and it’s a beautiful
sound, my name in his voice. I could listen to it forever.

He tells me we were apart for five years, five long, endless

years that I don’t remember because he wasn’t with me. My
only memories are of him. When he asks if I want to know
what happened then I tell him no. If he’s not in those years, I
don’t need to know about them.

So I tell him what I do remember, all the times we spent

together, all the times we kissed, everything with the two of us
that makes up my memory, and he fills in the blanks for me.
The border wars forced the government to draft soldiers. They
culled people, taking them from their homes and inserting a
chip into their minds to suppress their memories and make
them into killing machines. I was culled.

I don’t remember that because Tobin wasn’t there. I

remember kissing him in the street, people all around us,
screaming children and crying women and men, families torn
apart by soldiers corralling a select few into convoys. I
remember telling him I didn’t want to lose him, I’d never let

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

him go, and then he’s on the ground, watching me with large,
teary eyes as I stare at him from the back of the moving
vehicle.

Then there’s nothing, just a period full of static and

emptiness like a blank video tape between two shows. He’s on
the ground, watching me—szznpt, that patch of empty space
where I didn’t exist, szznpt—and then he’s standing in a field
of heady meadowfoam in full bloom, frowning at me, concern
lacing his voice when he says my name.

There’s nothing in between. Nothing without him.
And that’s okay with me. I don’t want those memories if

he’s not in them. We’re together now, that’s all that matters.
We have everything that’s past and the rest stretches out
before us, memories waiting to be made, dreams meant to be
lived. We have each other, and I’m never going to lose him
again.

J. M. S

NYDER

An author of gay erotic/romantic fiction, J. M. Snyder began
self-publishing gay erotic fiction in 2002. Since then, Snyder
has released several books in trade paperback format and has
begun exploring the world of e-publishing, working with both
Aspen Mountain Press and Amber Quill Press. Snyder’s
highly erotic short gay fiction has been published online at
Ruthie’s Club, Tit-Elation, Sticky Pen, and Amazon Shorts, as
well as in anthologies by Aspen Mountain Press and Cleis
Press. A full bibliography, as well as free fiction, book
excerpts, purchasing information, and exclusive contests, can
be found at:

http://jmsnyder.net

* * *

Don’t miss The Powers Of Love, by J. M. Snyder,

Available June 2007, at AmberHeat.com!

With his shaved head, piercings, and tattoos, the muscular Vic
Braunson isn’t one who falls hopelessly in love at first sight.
But when he meets swim instructor Matt diLorenzo at the gym,
sparks fly…despite the fact that Matt is dating Vic’s co-
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Then a chance encounter months later brings them together.
When they finally consummate their relationship, there’s no
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wakes to find his mind crowded with a myriad of thoughts,
none of them his own. After their second night of making love,
Vic is filled with unparalleled strength. Oh, and now he can
fly.

Suddenly Vic is filled with questions he doesn’t know how to
answer. First, just what exactly is going on here? And how
does he tell Matt without alienating his new lover or ruining
their budding relationship? Or does Matt know something he
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