Yesterday Page 23

  “Directions,” I remind him. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a straight run down Yonge Street to Dundas but we should probably ditch the car somewhere and switch to the subway. Once she calls the cops they’ll be looking for the car.”

  We dump the car a block from Eglinton Avenue, about ten feet from a NO PARKING sign. Garren has the gun down the back of his jeans and the box of bullets tucked into the satchel he’s carrying on his back. We walk briskly, rather than run, in the direction of the subway so as not to call attention to ourselves. I’m ultra-conscious of the knife in my bag and the lethal weapon in Garren’s possession. We’re bona fide criminals now.

  “That must’ve been really weird for you with Janette’s mom,” I say.

  “I never met her mom before,” Garren tells me, his breath visible in the air. “Just her brother, but I could see the family resemblance in her mother. She and Janette have the same eyes.” I don’t specifically remember Janette’s eyes, just her strawberry-blond hair and that she was pretty. I watch Garren’s eyebrows pull together as he adds, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll give a really shitty description. Otherwise, if Janette puts it all together we could be in trouble. My photo could be flashed all over the news.”

  “The cops were looking for us before this anyway,” I point out.

  “And here you still want to risk hitting this major downtown shopping mall.” Garren shakes his head. “We should just leave Toronto right now. Forget meeting your mom’s friend.”

  “I won’t blame you if you do.” Then I wouldn’t have to worry about him.

  But Garren’s silence makes his decision clear.

  “I’ve been thinking you shouldn’t be with me when I meet her,” I add. “Maybe just stick close enough to watch. That way, if they’re coming you’ll have an advance view.”

  “And cover you?” Garren suggests, like we’re in a TV cop show.

  “Right.” I picture me and Nancy meeting surrounded by books. I concentrate hard and the layout of the store begins to take shape in my mind. Unfortunately, there’s nothing beyond that. No sense of danger and no feeling of well-being or satisfaction either.

  I rub my eyes as I turn towards Garren.

  “Anything?” he asks. “What can you see?”

  “Just the bookstore itself so far.”

  We descend into the subway where I imagine people are staring suspiciously our way. Garren keeps his gaze pointed at the floor space between his feet, like he’s giving me room to think and hopefully see something that will help us. The bookstore, the bookstore, the bookstore. That’s all I see. Shelves full of paperbacks. The sleeves of Paula Resnik’s coat as I approach the magazine stand.

  I break away from the vision and graze Garren’s knee. “I’m still not getting much. Maybe it’s too early.”

  “I wish you weren’t going to do this,” he says.

  “I know. And I hope I don’t regret it. But if there’s more to know, I have to hear it. This could be our last chance for our entire lives.”

  Garren nods tiredly. “I’ll be watching you. If you have a premonition about being in danger, don’t wait. Get out of there right away.”

  We arrive at the Eaton Centre stop early and wander the nearby PATH, a network of pedestrian tunnels filled with shops and services that link various parts of the city. I wasn’t aware of its existence before and Garren says he’s never been down there himself but he figures we’re less likely to be spotted there than wandering the mall or out on the street.

  Most of the people we pass on the PATH look like office workers and pay little attention to us but I’m increasingly nervous and just want to get my meeting with Nancy over with. At seven minutes to twelve Garren and I part company across the street from the Yonge and Dundas entrance to the Eaton Centre. He whispers in my ear that he’ll be right behind me.

  I feel numb as I stride through the shopping center, scanning for the bookstore. Garren told me it was on the top shopping level, right in the middle of the mall. As soon as I spot it another image comes into sharp focus in my mind, one of a man my father’s age. I’m walking through the mall with him, listening intently to whatever he’s telling me. Nancy’s nowhere to be seen.

  I snap back to the present and survey the bookstore, looking for Nancy or the man from my vision. Bookstore employees aside, the only person in the store is a gray-haired lady thumbing through a slim hardcover.

  As I step inside the store someone touches my back. “Freya?”

  I twirl to face Nancy. She has an envelope in her hand and thrusts it towards me. “This is for you,” she says. “I’m sorry it couldn’t be more but I hope it will help.”

  I slip the envelope down into one of my front pockets. “Nancy, you have to tell me what you know. How we got here. What’s happening at home. Whether the U.N.A. has fallen.”

  Nancy’s top lip quivers. “I told you I couldn’t discuss any of that. It’s out of my hands.”

  “What about my mom? How is she? What’s Henry been telling her?”

  Nancy glances worriedly over her shoulder before returning her attention to me. “You can guess how she is but there’s nothing you can do about it. Look, Freya, this place is too exposed. You should go now.”

  “The Toxo—what happened?” I can’t let her disappear without a word about what’s happened to the world I’m from.

  “No matter how you ask, I can’t say anything about any of it. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  I clutch her arm, feeling wild. “I’m not going to let you go until you tell me. Do you understand?”

  To be thrust out of my own time and dropped down in the past without warning. Minus a brother. Minus a father. Now minus a mother too. Forced to run for my life. I deserve to know why. I deserve more than whatever amount of money is inside the envelope she gave me.

  “I think that’s a conversation you and I should have instead,” a clipped male voice declares. The man from my vision, in a gray suit and matching vest, pries my fingers from Nancy’s arm. “I’ll take it from here,” he tells her.

  “Believe me, I didn’t know,” Nancy says with a pained expression. “I’m sorry, Freya.” She scurries away without another look. My gaze follows her out into the mall but I don’t have enough time to search out Garren. I can only hope that he’ll continue to remain hidden because I can’t read the man’s intentions yet.

  “Who are you?” I demand.

  “We’ve never met. I think we should leave the store before we attract too much attention.” He motions to one of the bookstore employees who is staring at us from behind the cash register across the room with a decisive frown. “I don’t think they liked the look of you grabbing Nancy.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are,” I insist.

  “The police could be here in a few minutes if that’s what you’d like,” the man says dispassionately.

  “I can’t believe that’s what you’d want yourself.”

  He smiles tepidly. “All right, Freya. If you want to play it that way, it’s fine. We’ll have you in the end anyway. I think you know that.”

  He’s so sure of himself that my stomach drops. I step slowly out of the store with the man and pause in the hallway. There are too many people. Surely he wouldn’t want to cause a scene.

  “I’m not leaving here with you,” I tell him. The words are barely out and I’m flashing headlong into the future. Along the hallway other suited men are waiting for us, through the crowd. As I near them a shot rings out. I spin around, searching frantically for Garren. We have to get away.

  The premonition cuts to black. I don’t know how this will end.

  “It’s either us or the police,” the man says. “We can’t afford to let you go.”

  “Why?” I lean over the railing and stare at the bustling levels of shopping mall beneath us.

  The man stands next to me, his posture stiff. “Tell me, how did you remember?”

  “Why should I tell you that? Why
shouldn’t I just throw myself over the railing right now? That way no one gets me. Not you and not the police.”

  The man rests his arms on top of the railing, his chin drooping. “We’re not going to kill you, Freya. You just can’t continue to remember.” He raises a finger and points to the left and then the right. “They’re waiting for you in either direction. There’s no escaping this. But I need to know everything I can about how you remembered.”

  “What happens if I don’t tell you?” I imagine the worst torture. Broken bones and severed limbs. My blood runs cold.

  “Nothing as dramatic as what you’re probably thinking. But we need to do the wipe and cover again and that will be dangerous in itself. We don’t have the proper equipment here to perform as thorough a job as they thought they’d done back in the U.N.A. It might be a bit rudimentary and leave you a different person than you could’ve been.” He sounds apologetic. “If you tell me what you know about how you remembered in the first place it might help us to do a better job.”

  “You’re going to butcher my mind.” A different person than I could’ve been. That’s like a death of its own. I think of the wipe-and-cover victims I’ve seen on the Dailies, their personalities rubbed out and replaced with devotion to the state. That’s the kind of powerful result a W + C is capable of, when they can control it. Uncontrolled, it seems that anything could happen. At best, I’d forget the truth—have my brother, my father and my real past stolen from me a second time. At worst, I could come out of this a vegetable, forever damaged. And not just me … If they get Garren I’ll never forgive myself.

  But I wouldn’t remember anyway. All of this would be gone.

  That’s what I first sensed at Henry’s but had no name for—the things they would take from me. My memories and maybe more, the very essence of who I am.

  I gaze down at the miniature shoppers below me, going about their business, oblivious to the decision I’m facing. It would be worth it to jump and save Garren, save the person I am now.

  “You don’t want to do that,” the man admonishes. “It’s not what we want either. We’re not the bad guys, Freya. We wanted to help. We’ve helped other people like you and your family but there’s a more important aim. Global survival.”

  “What do you mean?” I lift my head. “How is any of this possible?”

  “You know about the wipe and covers,” the man says quietly. “We’ve seen some that have taken quite a toll on young people—the neurological immaturity increases the risks—but I’ve only heard of one person who remembered his past after a wipe. He was a seventeen-year-old identical twin back in the U.N.A. and his twin hadn’t been wiped.”

  “So I’m a scientific oddity.” If I can keep the man talking long enough maybe another vision will stream through my mind and help me decide what to do.

  The man nods pensively. “You want to share your thoughts on that?”

  “How about you tell me more first. You’re the only person I’ve come across who hasn’t told me they can’t talk about it.”

  “It’s true. The others can’t talk about it. It’s a programmed Bio-net fail-safe. The second they begin to transmit information about the future and what we’re doing here, a wipe sequence is triggered.”

  “Why?” I glance to the left, at the Special Forces–type duo in the distance who are probably itching to charge over here and haul me away if only I wasn’t in such a public place. They’re as human as I am but I know they’ll do whatever they have to in order to take me, the same as the SecRos would’ve.

  “Can you imagine the trouble it would cause in the present if it was known there were people who’d been sent back from the future living among the population? News of future environmental instability—and now the plague—could potentially be enough to significantly destabilize this society.” The man looks at me from the corner of his eye. “It’s the guardians’ job, people like Nancy Bolton, to make sure those sent back settle in successfully. We couldn’t reasonably expect that everyone who has come across time would be capable of remaining quiet about their experiences. Besides, the wipe and cover makes the adjustment easier—for most people anyway.”

  In the secret sliver of my mind’s eye that I suspect helped me remember in the first place I see Garren and me running. Alive. Intact. Running scared through Toronto streets. There’s still a chance for us. The vision proves there must be.

  “What did you mean by a more important aim?” I ask, stalling. Garren must be waiting too. There are too many of them, too far apart. Five of them that I can see, including the man next to me. Even if I could get to my knife in time, there’s no chance I could escape them all.

  “Environmental legislation,” he replies. “We waited too long last time. Global warming has been catastrophic for the entire planet. We have a chance to slow its pace. There are several other units like us in the United States, infiltrating the political system there, poised to make the changes we need that hopefully will have a profound influence on policies worldwide.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “In the United States, ten years. We’ve had a few key people up here in Canada since then too, as support resources, but it wasn’t until the nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India that a select group of very important people in the U.N.A. who were aware of the project began to wonder if life, even in the U.N.A., would soon be doomed. So we began a second phase of the project, settling a limited number of well-connected U.N.A. civilians up here in southern Ontario.” The man strokes his nose and pauses. “With the plague outbreak there were requests for immediate resettlement, including that of you and your mother. I tell you all this so you know that none of this is being done with the intention of hurting you. We just have too much to protect. If this plays out the way we hope, we’ll be changing history. Everyone will be better off. Even you.”

  Future me. The person who’ll be born sixty-two years from now.

  “I’d like you to try to understand, Freya. And I’d like it if we could start walking now.”

  I cast a look ahead of me. There are still two security types beyond us and two behind.

  “You think I should understand?” I say as I take a series of snail-paced steps in the direction the man’s indicating. “You think I should approve of the big picture enough that I won’t blame you for what you’re planning to do to me.”

  “I’d like that,” he replies. “I realize it might not be realistic. Especially for someone your age.”

  I bristle at the fact that generations before me ruined the planet but that I’m expected to willingly sacrifice myself. “I could’ve already told someone what I know if I’d wanted to. You could let me go. I won’t say anything. I’ll just disappear.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Freya, but I’m going to do everything I can to help you, I promise. I need to know anything you can tell me about remembering. It’s important. Not just for you but for anyone else sent back.”

  “Anyone else?” I’ve been walking as slowly as humanly possible and now I stop entirely. “You mean they’re still sending people back? The U.N.A. is still out there?”

  “Some of it is.”

  Some. “My father?”

  The man nods impatiently. “Last I heard, yes. The SecRos have helped slow the spread of Toxo but there’s still no cure. The survivors have been falling back to the north, your father and President Ortega with them.”

  So there’s still hope, even for those left behind. My heart leaps at the knowledge that my father’s still alive. “Can we get back again? How did we get here?”

  “Keep going, please.” The man cups my elbow and guides me forward. I wrench my arm away from him but continue to walk beside him. “There’s no returning to the future and you wouldn’t want to be there now even if it were possible, believe me. Tell me what you know about remembering and I’ll explain.”

  I shoot him a look of angry disbelief.

  “I’m not in the habit of lying,” the man says. />
  “I don’t even know who you are,” I snap.

  “My name doesn’t matter but I’m a director. There are only a handful of us on either side of the border. I came here today to make sure this was handled properly. You’re important to us. I want you to know that. We want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. There’s also the matter of your friend Garren. Has he remembered too?”

  I shake my head. “He doesn’t know what’s going on. I kept telling him that I felt like I knew him, even before my memories really returned. He thought I was crazy. I haven’t seen him in days. He thinks this is all some diplomatic conspiracy involving the murders of our fathers. You’ve scared him off. He’s gone.”

  “We’ll find him too,” the man says.

  “But he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t need a wipe. You could just let him go. There’s nothing he could tell anyone, even if he wanted to.”

  “So you say but you might lie for him,” the man declares.

  “I might but I’m not. I don’t have to.” The gap between us and the director’s allies is shrinking. Two of them are standing in front of the Eaton’s department store at the north end of the shopping mall, eyeing us up. I’m running out of time and I stop again. “I’ll tell you why I think the W and C didn’t work—I’m not your average person.”

  The director’s so intent on what I’m about to say that he doesn’t berate me for stopping.

  “I have a kind of second sight,” I admit. “Since I was very young.”

  “That wasn’t in your file,” the director says.

  “It wouldn’t be. I hid it from my parents. But it’s the only thing I can think of that would interfere with the wipe and cover. I sensed there was something wrong from the moment I started to physically recover from the journey here. The feeling got stronger when I ran into Garren but I didn’t have a real breakthrough until I went to a hypnotherapist.”

  The director squints, unhappiness spreading across his face and creeping into the slope of his shoulders. “Hypnotherapy shouldn’t have had any impact. Your procedure was performed faster than usual because of the Toxo threat but the nanites neutralized the neurons associated with your old memories.” He straightens his spine, twin lines of concentration forming between his eyebrows. “You could be right about the link with your second sight. I don’t understand the nature of the relationship between the two offhand but we’ll investigate that.”