Waters of Lethe, Book 2

36. Busy Work

Fury and pain rose up in me, seeming to travel from my stomach to my heart to my head as I looked from Jai to Alex.

I ignored the fact that Alex still had his gun trained on Jai and knelt to pluck the dart out of his shoulder.

I tucked my hands on the other side of Jai's shoulder and stomach and rolled him over on his back, trying to keep his head from lolling around freely in the process. I felt Alex's eyes on us as I shook him gently.

"Jai," I prompted, my voice strong.

"Get away from him," Alex said, moving toward us.

I didn't look away from Jai. I said his name a few more times, trying to get him to come back to me.

"Get away, El."

I glanced up at Alex for one second, told him to go screw himself, and went back to Jai.

"He's dangerous!" Alex protested.

"He is not! He's no more dangerous than us!"

His gun was still pointed at us. "Then why was he one of the ones Scott told us to shoot to bring in instead of shoot to kill?"

We were talking fast, something I was glad about. Alex had come by himself, but, for some reason, I didn't want the others to come behind him and find us. Maybe because it would have been harder for Jai to leave if the others knew he was here.

I kept a hand on Jai's bicep, squeezing and shaking, and looked back at Alex, who now stood about fifteen feet away. I had a feeling that he wasn't about to come closer.

"Alex," I began, still talking quick. "We both know something's not right with Scott." I stopped for a moment, wondering if I should tell him that I had gotten my head back, that I knew how exactly I got here. I sighed. "I got my memories back, Alex. This guy-" I nodded down at Jai-"isn't a bad guy. He's so far from it..."

"You got your memories back?" Alex asked, sounding somewhat disappointed. His gun dropped a few inches but still hung in the air in case Jai suddenly woke up and decided that he wanted to kill Alex. Of course, that was what Alex thought. Far from the truth.

"Yes. I got them back. All of them. And you know what? This little piece of shit right here," I held up the dart that I got out of Jai's back, "isn't what's wiping out our memories. It's the brain wave monitoring. They don't want to make sure they got the right people. They want to erase us and create something they can work with. And I think you're right. I think they are planting fake memories in us."

He knit his eyebrows at me, his arm twitching. "Why is that?"

"Because, this is the guy that I kept seeing. Jai. This is Jai, and he was one of the only ones who I could remember. I mean, I didn't know who he was, but I saw him. And I wanted to hurt him on several occasions. I think they made me think that." Somehow I'd overrode the thought, my want to know him greater than my want to hurt him. "A great deal of the things I remembered about Jai were bad-bad things. But, Alex, I promise you. He's not the bad guy. Do you still trust me?"

His head was spinning, I could tell. His finger eventually let up on the trigger of the gun, and the arm holding the gun fell to his side. The other hand went to his face, running through his hair. He decided to take a few steps toward us when my attention went back to Jai.

"He's not going to wake up anytime soon," he said, regarding my efforts to try to wake Jai. "Maybe in about an hour. Remember Whitman? He's a big guy, a little bigger than this guy-"

"Jai."

"Right, bigger than this guy, and Whitman stirred around the forty minute mark."

I rolled my eyes when he continued, not wanting to know why Alex didn't want to speak Jai's name. I knew it was probably a lot to take in: the fact that someone he trusted for months, Scott, told him that Jai was as evil as they came, just to have someone else, me, come in and tell him that everything Scott told him wasn't true. The only thing that gained Alex's trust from me now was the fact that I remembered everything, and he took my word for it.