Kei

  The trip to the office and the nurse tells us – and them – absolutely nothing.

  But lunch is in the quad between the gym and the science building, after a quick stop to pick up food at a food cart on our way over.

  We stop at the giant chessboard, mid-quad. Christopher leans against a white knight, while Anton sits on the crown of an alabaster rook. I put my back to the ebony queen and leaned against her, sipping my giant smoothie as the guys tear into their sandwiches. Free food always tastes better, but this tastes amazing.

  A tall, graceful black teen with his own bag and drink wanders up behind us and takes his perch on an ebony rook facing Anton.

  “Morning, all,” he greets us.

  “Morning Eric,” Christopher greets him. “Kei, this is Eric. He’s on the genetics track, I think, at least for now. Eric, this is Kei. Focus to be determined, if any.”

  “Totally unfocused for now,” I clarify.

  Eric waves a cheeseburger at me as he unwraps it. “Woman of mystery, or so I hear.”

  “Mysterious to myself, at least,” I admit. I take another sip of my smoothy as an excuse not to say anything further. I kind of feel like a near-virtual-death experience in VR gives me an out for skipping small talk, but if I mention it, the whole thing'll probably blow up into a much bigger conversation.

  So I sip artfully, and hold my peace.

  “Aren’t we all?” Eric asks. “Self-knowledge is a tricky thing.” He glances over at Christopher and Anton. “So, I hear the VR thing went… strangely today. Please don’t take her out before the rest of us can even say ‘Hi.’ Seems rude.”

  “Not our plan,” Christopher emphasizes. He looks over at me and looks a bit stricken. “Seriously, Kei, we would’ve never—"

  “I get it,” I say, waving off his further apologies before more people can spread and we can sink deeper into this quagmire of a conversation. “Things happen. And it’s not like you guys weren’t stuck right in there with me.”

  “You know it’s going to drive Andrea crazy, though,” Anton says, rubbing his temples and grinning. “Something throwing a monkey wrench like that in, when she’s in charge.”

  “Bad choice on someone’s part, then,” Eric observes, sipping his drink. “If it wasn’t some kind of 1-in-a-billion glitch, then whoever’s responsible now has Andi tracking them down. I’d pick a hundred bloodhounds over Archangel on a warpath.”

  “‘So say we all,’” Chris and Anton murmur in unison. Some family in-joke, I guess.

  Eric looks over at me. “So how does it feel to be the New Shiny Thing on a campus filled with shiny things? Annoying? Amusing? What?”

  “I’m not that unusual at all,” I tell him. “I had an accident, sure, but I’m nothing special. Just look at me.”

  They do. Three blank, unbelieving stares take me in. Then they all shake their heads slightly and look back and forth, blinking in disbelief.

  “Seriously?” Eric asks. “You think you’re just an average kid? Trust me, you don’t look that way, and that’s without even knowing your test scores.”

  “The scores you got while suffering from major amnesia,” Christopher adds pointedly.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Yep. Totally normal. Look at those eyes,” Anton says to Eric, grinning at me over his gyro. “Like another Andrea. Or a Brynn.” He shakes his head ruefully. “Only more so.”

  Christopher rolls his own eyes. “Leave it, Anton.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  Anton snorts, and shakes his head. “You first. Your hair, that’s not a dye job, right? No roots. And you’re not wearing contacts. That’s your real eye color, isn’t it?”

  I shrug. Something nibbles at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t begin to think of what it might be. “Right. Those are my natural colors.”

  Anton nods. “Which are unnatural. And no big deal. Which is why it’s weird you don’t know it’s no big deal, and why it’s such a big deal that it’s no big deal. Amnesia or no.”

  I take a long sip and cock my head as I stare at him. “You’re talking in riddles.”

  “To you.”

  “Kei,” Christopher interjects, “how much do you remember about the last five years? Even the last two? Like, about the world, not your own life.”

  “Bit and pieces,” I say. “Glimpses of my life, what my dad and I were doing.”

  Christopher is watching me. He nods slowly. “What do you think this school is for?”

  “Gifted kids?”

  Christopher shakes his head. His smile is a little wry, and a little sad. “There’s a euphemism,” he says. “Or a dodge.”

  “We’ve got a very ‘select’ set of students,” Anton says. “Officially, just savants. Not ‘Tweaks and Freaks.’ Except almost everyone is.”

  “Say what now?”

  “You have been out of it.”

  “They’re just names,” Christopher cuts in. “They can tweak your genes, now. People do it all the time. Genes for better health, better eyesight, better looks, better brains.”

  “Better at everything. At least, that’s what your clinic’ll tell you.” Anton’s tone says he doesn't agree, and he doesn’t make a secret of it.

  “So this is a kind of Hogwarts for superhumans, then?” I cast my mind back to children’s books, since I have nothing else for reference. “Are there houses? Factions?”

  “Factions?” Anton echoes. “There are kids with abilities we have names for. Then there’s the rest of us. Like you. But no ‘factions.’”

  “Like me?”

  “We’re guessing you might not be the average transfer.”

  “Which is saying something,” Eric advises, “in a place like this.”

  “Why not average?” I’m fairly sure I’m not, but more data helps, especially when most of what’s in your brain has been scrubbed clean and then bleached into oblivion.

  “Kei,” Eric says gently. “You’re coming to us after a traumatic event that took almost all the memories of your life. After physical trauma that almost took your leg. Yet you’re testing in the top percentiles in a school built for savants and geniuses – even though there’s an inner circle of even more extraordinary, genetically engineered geniuses living here as well. And a few… Well, let’s call them Anomalies. It’s how the faculty classifies them.”

  “Sooo… my test scores were too high.”

  “Unless you’re already an Anomaly, yes,” Chris agrees. “Which is fine. But while they didn’t push you in physical tests at the hospital, they did keep track of your performance when you worked out in their gym. And like a lot of places affiliated with us, they had the facilities to serve physically Enhanced as needed.”

  My face is a frozen mask. I have no idea what a simple workout at the gym might have told them. I didn’t push myself that hard. But I have a sinking feeling it told them a lot. As in, I might as well have been firing signal flares. But I have no idea what that would be.

  “And?” I ask finally.

  “Your numbers weren’t too crazy,” Eric assures me. “If you hadn’t been on the edge of death – not to mention losing your leg – just three weeks prior.”

  Anton spreads his hands. “But you’re a six-foot-tall Japanese-American girl with purple hair and purple eyes showing cardio stats which make sense for an Olympic sprinter, bench presses like an Olympic weightlifter, and frankly ridiculous academic scores for someone who’s had most of her memories deleted.”

  “Anyone looking at you who knows about the Enhanced will guess you’re one of us,” Chris adds, softly. “They won’t imagine you could anything but.”

  I think. “Will that be a problem?”

  “That’s the question,” Anton acknowledges.

  “An unclaimed, full-on Anomaly with no agenda of her own?” Eric taps his forgotten cheeseburger on his palm. “There will be a ton of people interested in you, but since you’re already under Waycross’ protection, and everyone will be watching, including the government, there are limits to what they’ll try out of the gate.”

  “And they have no idea how I’ll react.” Like me, they have no idea who’s really underneath this veneer of pleasant confusion.

  “And the point of an Anomaly,” Anton explains, “is someone with abilities so far off the charts we have no idea what they might be capable of. So you’re not a game most people want to play. Most sane people want to play.”

  “How much have you forgotten, Kei?” Chris asks. “If you don’t mind my asking? Everyone keeps saying you don’t remember your whole life, but you obviously know tons of memorized facts when you’re tested on them. Is it really –?” He waves a hand dismissively, suddenly. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry. I’m just trying to work the problem.”

  “It’s fine,” I tell him. And it is. “I could use the help.” And I can. “I’ve had a few memories of my childhood, but other than that, up until about a month ago – nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Andrea says suddenly. She is standing by the white queen, having arrived unannounced on our chessboard. And she is watching me with a strange intensity. I feel again like I’m looking into a mirror of myself as our gazes lock.

  “But that’s… your whole life,” Christopher shakes himself. “Bringing that back…”

  “Might be possible, given what you are,” Eric remarks. “But if this amnesia really was caused by trauma, I hope we don’t inflict more by bringing back memories you’d rather have suppressed.”

  “I may not have a choice,” I tell him. And I don’t. I need these memories, in the end, if I’m going have my own life. If I’m ever going to find out what happened to my father. And I’m sure, ultimately, they’re going to come back whether I wish it or no. So it might as well be on my terms."

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