Пинтип Данн - Remember Yesterday

Before I can formulate my next question, he stops at an open air vent and scoots to the side. I crawl up next to him, wedging my shoulders against his, and we both look through the slats into the room below.

A little girl lies in a narrow hospital bed.

Me. Jessa. When I was six years old.

I lie on the bed, my head propped on some pillows. There are white sheets all around me, and a white teddy bear with a red bow sits on the windowsill.

I fidget, turning left and then right. Looking at the closed blinds and the bear. Drumming my feet against the mattress. Clearly bored to death.

I don’t know how right I’m about to be.

The other me, the one who’s sixteen and perched in the air shaft, shudders. “I…I can’t see this,” I whisper to Tanner. “I’ve relived this moment hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my memory. I don’t know if I can live through it again in real life.”

He wraps his hand around my wrist. I don’t know if he’s restraining or supporting me. Either works. Pain snakes up my arms, and I look into his deep, bottomless eyes, searing even in the dim light.

“One second at a time,” he says. “All you have to do is exist, from one second to the next.”

His next words are unspoken, but I can read them clearly in the creases of his forehead. If I can survive six months of torture, then you can get through this.

I only have time to nod, and then the door opens. Callie comes into the room.

I freeze. It’s here. The moment that changed all of our lives.

Every rational thought flees, and all of a sudden, I’m struggling, pushing, shoving. Doing everything possible to wrench out of Tanner’s grasp.

“Think of Remi,” he growls in my ear.

I know these words should mean something. I know this name belongs to someone important to me. But right now, the words are nothing but noise. The only thing I want is to get into that room. To stop my sister from what she’s about to do.

I struggle harder. He winds his arms around my torso and clamps his legs around my knees, locking me in place. My pants hike up, and my leg scrapes against a seam in the metal shaft. His hands clasp around my waist, his grip digging into my skin. I fling my head back and arch my spine, but it’s no use. I can’t get free.

A burst of laughter pierces my consciousness. Callie’s laugh. It is high-pitched and hysterical. And shuts off an instant after it begins.

“Callie! You came!” I hear her voice. My voice, but so young, so strange. Like the voice you hear on a holo-mail. The voice that could never be you—but is.

“Of course I came,” my sister says.

Tanner loosens his hold on me, and I look through the vent to see Callie pick up little Jessa’s hand.

I want to nail my eyelids closed. Anything not to see this scene from a new perspective. Anything not to have another angle to my nightmare.

But I’m as helpless to look away as I was to stop my sister ten years ago.

“How are they treating you?” Callie continues.

“The food is gross,” the younger me says. “And they never let me play outside.”

“When you leave, you can play as much as you’d like.” Her voice cracks, and so does my heart. “I love you, Jessa. You know that, don’t you?”

Tears geyser through my body, filling every space, every cavity with hot, stinging liquid. Please, Callie. Don’t do this. It’s been so hard without you. We’ll find another way. Just don’t leave me. Please.

“Forgive me,” Callie whispers. Her arm whips through the air, and she plunges the needle into her chest.

A hole rips in my own soul, and I open my mouth to scream long and loud and lost.

Before I can make any noise, Tanner’s hand slaps over my mouth, turning me to face him. I resume my struggle. I don’t want this. I need to see what’s happening below. Need to live the worst moment of my life all over again. But he presses his forehead against mine and his eyes swallow my despair.

The door clatters open. I hear Logan’s voice. “No, Callie. Don’t do this. Don’t—”

Tanner’s eyes pierce into mine. This is the past , they tell me. We are here now. You will survive today because you survived it yesterday.

“What have you done?” Logan pleads. “Oh dear Fates, what have you done?”

The tears spring from my soul, spilling onto my cheeks, dripping onto Tanner’s face.

Callie’s response comes more from my memory than from anything I actually hear. “This is the only way,” she says. “The only way to save Jessa. The only way to save the future.”

Those were the last words I heard her say as a child.

Fates help me, they will not be the last words I hear now.

Tanner eases back, and I look into the room, my vision blurry with sorrow.

Below, Logan cries like somebody reached into his chest and ripped out his soul. The little girl who is me is hysterical, ripping tubes out of her arm and flinging away the bedsheets. “What happened? Get up, Callie. Get up .”

Logan lays Callie’s body on the floor and places a kiss softly, reverently on her lips. He straightens, tears streaming down his face.

“Jessa.” He catches my younger self as I claw off the last tube, lifting me up before I can reach Callie’s body. “Do you remember me? I’m a friend. Your sister’s friend.”

“Of course.” My younger self calms momentarily. I remember those arms. I remember how safe they made me feel. “You’re the boy from the park. We made roses out of leaves together.”

Little Jessa flails, trying to get down. Logan continues to hold me, as if he knows that if I touch my sister, I’d never let go again.

“Callie needs to rest,” he says hoarsely. “And we need to get out of here. Before they come back.”

“Who?” Little Jessa asks.

“The bad people. You want to get away from the bad people, right?”

“Yeah. They locked me in a nightmare cage. And they wouldn’t stop, even when I begged them.”

“We’re leaving,” he says. “They’re never going to hurt you again.”

“What about Callie?”

“Callie can’t come with us right now.” His face crumples for half a second. Then, as I watch from above, he puts his mask back into place, feature by feature.

My six-year-old self doesn’t notice. But I do.

“This is what Callie wanted,” he continues. “She wanted those bad people never to hurt you again. Can you do this for her?”

Little Jessa nods. In three large strides, Logan crosses the room and wrenches open the laundry chute. He deposits my younger self inside and then climbs in himself. The flap bangs shut. And then they’re gone.

Leaving Callie’s body lying inert on the ground.

We have less than a minute to act.

“Come on,” I say to Tanner, the sadness gone, the adrenaline kicking in. “We have to hurry.”

Moving quickly, the steps familiar from my multiple lab break-ins, I remove the vent and stow it in the air shaft. Next, I lower myself feet first through the opening, dangle for a moment from the ceiling, and then drop onto the floor.

Unlike the labs, this room isn’t armed with motion sensors. If it were, Callie and Logan would’ve set them off long ago. Tanner drops beside me, and we go to Callie’s body. Without missing a beat, he takes the antidote from his pocket, finds a vein in her wrist, and injects the syringe.

Or, at least, he tries to. Callie jerks at the last second, and the red formula ends up all over the tile, mixing with the antidote she smashed on the floor.

My heart stops. “What happened? How did she move?”

“The formula must still be working through her system,” he says shakily. “It’s a good thing we brought the second needle.”