Remember Me (ONC2020) ✔

Chapter 15

A woman in baggy clothes that hung from her gangly limbs like hand-me-downs on a poor child stood beside them and scrutinized them through glasses thick like beer bottles.

"What's your business here?"

"I'm here about my sister."

"Runan, right?" the woman asked. Once he nodded, she dismissed the guard. "I'm Tunia. You should follow me inside."

The mix of silvers, crystals and golds in the lobby left Runan clenching his fists. If they could afford this, why come after his farm? An eye scanner opened the elevator for the three of them.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"You'll find out when we arrive. Until then silence is safest."

Something in her tone and her indirect glance at the camera in the elevator's corner reassured him. They were being watched, and she didn't want Mem-Stem to know what was happening. Once they reached the twentieth floor, they disembarked into a drab, poorly lit hallway.

"Only the best for our finest technicians." Tunia winked. "We're close."

After closing the door, she sat at a desk cluttered with wrappers, devices of different shapes and sizes. Walls of blank screens surrounded them instead of windows. She clicked something on her watch then smiled. "So, Messita sent you. What has she gotten herself into now?"

Solara and Runan sat opposite the woman with a bean-shaped birthmark on the left side of her face. A number on the back of her screen caught his eye, matching the one Messita had given him. "It's a long story," he said before he and Solara spent the next twenty minutes sharing their series of misfortunes.

Tunia ran her hand over her buzzed hair and shook her head. "I can't believe she jumped successfully."

Runan drummed his fingers on Tunia's desk. "She was complaining of headaches. I'm worried about her lasting in that body."

"It's impossible to predict long-term outcomes. We've never had a case with an exposure time longer than twenty-five minutes."

Runan ran his hand through his thick hair. "She'd been there for four days."

Tunia's eyes widened, and she grinned. "I wish she'd reached out. We could learn so much from her now."

He ground his teeth. His sister wasn't a bloody experiment. "I want her returned to her body and safe in Lower Caldozza."

"Ru, we agreed to support with—"

"I don't care. I want her home and alive," Runan snapped, making Solara stiffened at his side.

Tunia browsed through her tablet. "That's an ambitious dream. We could send her mind elsewhere, but her body has been dead far too long."

"And they would kill her the second they found her, Ru. We have to act bigger. Even if we don't succeed with Ita's plan, it may create enough chaos to gain allies up here. Tunia, what made you break regulations and reach out to Messita?"

Tunia scratched at her short hair again with bright orange nails. "Right after she and Ju'rah were chipped, we had access to all their live experiences before the recording controls were developed. That's why I recognized you earlier, Runan, from your interactions with Messita."

He sighed with a heavy heart. "We fought a lot after she did that."

"But those fights were so raw. In my years of exporting memories, I'd never experienced such powerful emotions and from a Lower. She was a fearless badass we all revered. How she got her way with chipping and redirected your anger to Ju'rah was brilliant. I wanted to be that in control of my life. She wasn't a ruthless, uncaring, or stupid woman like our society led us to believe about Lowers. After we got to know each other, she taught me so much about Lower culture, about your sad living conditions."