Emilia Vanguard hadn’t considered that she might die until Mr. Lear said so.
“You might die,” he said conversationally, as one might remark about the turning of leaves in autumn. They walked in stride toward the massive hangar. It was dawn—the kind of cloudless, purply dawn that paints skylines in swaths of shadowy light—and Emilia thought she would very much like to avoid dying, if she could help it.
“Does that frighten you.” His questions always seemed like statements, especially when he talked of life and death (which was quite often, times being what they were).
“No,” Emilia answered. Her tone sounded like a shrug even though she hadn’t shrugged.
“Of course not.” He put a steady hand on her shoulder as they marched toward the row of cars in the hangar. “How could it. You’re special.”
There’s that confounded word again. She rolled her eyes. Special.
Emilia wasn’t special. She was just Emilia.
And I would kindly thank you to remember that.
Now in the high-ceilinged hangar, they briskly walked toward a black ’86 Audi Quattro at the center of the lineup. It was a beautiful specimen, unblemished by fingerprints or smudges of any kind; its black sheen was supremacy-like, a boastful proclamation to the rest of the sports cars that here lay—for all to behold—the Superior Vehicle.
Now that’s special. Emilia clicked her tongue.
“Envelope’s in the glove box,” said Mr. Lear. He reached for the driver’s-side door, but Emilia said thank you and opened it for herself. Once seated, she turned the key in the ignition and the vehicle growled, a great beast disturbed from hibernation and now hungry—starved, frothy at the mouth—for the road.
We’ll get you there soon enough. Emilia wondered if this was how cowboys felt before mounting their stallions and riding across the desert, the sun bearing down on their leathery necks.
“You know your route, yes?”
“Yes,” Emilia replied, shutting the door. She caressed the steering wheel reverently, familiarizing herself with the reins. Then she saluted Mr. Lear with two fingers, put the Quattro in Drive, and shot out of the hangar and across the abandoned airfield. She watched Mr. Lear shrink in her rearview mirror until—like an extinguished afterimage—he was gone, poof, out of sight.
The sun was a half thumb at the horizon. One hour from now Emilia would reach the interstate, where her path would turn precipitous as it snaked through the mountain. There, Mr. Lear’s words would finally catch up with her: You might die.
* * *
“She’s a woman of few words,” said Ashley Molaison, greeting Mr. Lear as he approached. They turned and stood, practically shoulder to shoulder, on the top floor of the empty air-traffic control tower and watched as Emilia Vanguard sped off toward the horizon. As the sun continued its slow-burn ascent into the sky, Mr. Lear caught their reflection in the dusty glass.
He noted the streaks of gray in his brown hair, which had seemed to double since he last observed his reflection in a mirror. I’m getting old.
Ashley consulted her wristwatch. “The Transference is set to begin in ninety minutes.”
“Yes.” Mr. Lear sighed. When Emilia and her vehicle were completely out of sight, he turned from the view. Godspeed, Special One. “Everything’s in motion.”
“All we can do now is wait and pray.” This would prove difficult, as Ashley did not possess a proclivity to waiting or praying.
“And drink tea.” Mr. Lear flattened his tie as he walked over to the column at the center of the octagonal room. Here, beneath the hanging first-aid kit and portable defibrillator, was a small cart upon which sat an electric teakettle, two porcelain mugs, and a straight-sided glass jar containing several tea bags.
And one of those tea bags contained tiny yet effective traces of benzopint, a concoction of Mr. Lear’s own making.
It’s for her own protection, Mr. Lear thought in a tired, desperate attempt to convince his conscience. He asked, his back to Ashley, “Have a cup with me, won’t you.”
“I’m convinced you drink your weight in tea every day,” she said in a good-natured tone, still gazing out the dirty, tinted windows of the control tower. She fingered her cognition wheel idly, tracing the tattoo on her right palm with her left pinky.
Mr. Lear prepped two cups. “There are only two basic tenets of Philip Lear, the first being: A day hasn’t actually begun unless it’s marked by a hot beverage. For some, that’s coffee. For me, that’s—”
“Lavender chamomile.”
Mr. Lear joined Ashley at the windows and handed her one of the two mugs. The other he raised toward the cigarette smoke–yellow ceiling tiles. “To Emilia Vanguard and the Transference.”
Ashley
, too, raised her cup, the wispy steam dancing between them in the dawning light. “And to Joshua Cohen . . . may he receive the message and act.” Before it’s too late, she seemed to imply.
They both sipped their tea.
In minutes, Ashley Molaison would drift into a deep sleep. She would awake hours later to find herself in her apartment with no memory of the last twenty-four hours and only vague images in her mind of the previous two weeks. Depending on how much benzopint she had consumed, even those vague images would eventually be snuffed out, like a candle burned down to the base of its wick.
But, for now, the two continued sipping mutely.
What tragic irony, Mr. Lear reflected solemnly, that in the age of Memory Killer, I still need to take matters into my own hands and delete this poor girl’s memories.
It felt plain wrong.
The memories Mr. Lear was trying to erase from Ashley’s mind could possibly be recovered and then archived onto memory tapes for her to play back and remember. But it was a risk he had to take; paper trails, especially paper trails of the mind, had to be expunged where possible.
“What’s the other basic tenet of Philip Lear?” Ashley asked, clasping the warm mug at her chest.
Mr. Lear smiled, perhaps for the first time in days, and answered—knowing full well she would not recall this conversation: “That Arnold Schwarzenegger movies are the greatest of all the movies.”
She let out a soft chuckle. “I’m not familiar with his work. Where should I start?”
“He’s only starred in a few,” Mr. Lear replied, playing along, “but I’d start with The Terminator, a modern classic about a time-traveling soldier sent to the past to protect mankind’s only hope for salvation.”
“It sounds . . . epic. I’ll have to remember to rent it,” she said, hopelessly unaware she would not remember.
“Yes.” Mr. Lear forced down the guilt that welled up in his throat and reminded himself that this was, after all, for Ashley’s own protection. “You should.”
* * *
Emilia clicked on the radio. “Rhymin’ and Stealin’” by Beastie Boys came on.
She smiled and turned up the volume so loud that the plastic speaker encasings rattled in the car doors, the rearview mirror shook, and her bones vibrated. It was like she had her own personal earthquake inside the cab of the Quattro, looping continuously. She absorbed the noise, rapt with wonder and determination.
She needed Earthquake Loop in the sort of all-consuming, life-giving way that Fish needs water.
No, Emilia thought, like Bird needs air.
She sped up and passed an eighteen-wheeler on the narrow highway. On the shoulder, a sign indicated that Interstate 24W was up ahead. Two miles. Almost go time.
Stay sharp. Emilia soaked up the blaring rap music. Be sharp.
Emilia slammed her foot on the gas and crested the uneven on-ramp. Interstate 24W reached out before her—a long, concrete frontier that narrowed to its vanishing point with innumerable skyscraping trees on each side. A few cars and SUVs rode the interstate already, morning commuters. Early birds trying to get the worms, as it were.
Emilia prayed none of them would get seriously hurt.
With flagrant disregard for blinker etiquette, she swerved in front of a shuttle van and sped across two lanes toward the passing lane, inciting a barrage of angry honks. She gripped the steering wheel, the taut leather squeaking beneath her sweaty fingers. Her eyes darted from the interstate to the rearview mirror and then back to the interstate a few times, as if trying to spy some phantom pursuer.
Seventy miles per hour.
Eighty miles per hour.
At ninety, she closed in on a white Toyota 4Runner in the passing lane. The driver remained put, annoying Emilia greatly. Yet rather than honk or flash her headlights, she checked her blind spot and then jerked out of the passing lane. She flew past the SUV just as the sun appeared over the tree line, just as the faint sound of police sirens rang out in the distance, just as the semitruck with the red cab came into view. On the back of the gray tractor trailer, written into the dust and grit by someone’s finger, were the sloppy words, “To Forget Is to Die.”
“Here we go,” Emilia said, turning up the music in her cab even more.
* * *
Milo Pruitt had driven tractor-trailer trucks (without incident, he’d proudly say) his entire adult life. No parking violations. No speeding tickets. No accidents. In fact, his was a life fraught with many nos: no friends, no hobbies, a no-frills existence with no events of real importance.
That all changed that November morning.
Interstate 24W was awash in the magic, glowing light of sunrise. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky; the cool, crisp air legally guaranteed a fair-weather day—the kind of wonderfully perfect day that gracefully straddles summer and autumn.
Milo hunched over the wide steering wheel, adjusted his posture, then glanced at his side mirror. In the middle lane, a black Audi Quattro approached at an alarming speed.
That was Milo’s cue.
He sucked in a deep breath through his nose. He pictured the briefcase of cash that had been promised to him by the Man Who Smelled Like Lavender—the man in the paisley tie who’d approached him last week. How and why he’d selected Milo was still a mystery, though Milo was willing to leave it unsolved. The sum of money awaiting him on the other side of this was . . . well . . . it was enough to make Milo Pruitt—a man plagued by nos—say yes.
He exhaled.
He winked at the Dale Earnhardt bobblehead mounted to his dash.
He pulled the steering wheel hard left and slammed on the brakes.
The lumbering semi jackknifed, sliding across all three lanes while it folded in on itself.
Rubber burned against asphalt; rancid smoke filled the cab and rose in the air outside the semi in foglike plumes.
And the black sports car deftly dodged Milo Pruitt and his tractor-trailer truck a fraction of a second before chaos ensued.
* * *
Emilia quickly took to the left shoulder of the interstate in anticipation of the semitruck’s maneuver. Whoever Mr. Lear had hired did their part with marvelous skill. In fact, the truck driver actually managed to steer the massive vehicle as it slid across the interstate.
Then the cab and tractor trailer toppled. Cars screeched to wild halts. Horns honked. A cacophony of metallic crashes, booming collisions, and shattering glass resounded.
In total, only six seconds had elapsed.
Emilia shouted and laughed, her heart threatening to burst like an overblown balloon. She glanced at the rearview mirror: traffic was completely stalled behind the mangled semi. Tendrils of smoke began to rise in the blue sky.
Pedal to the floor, she accelerated, passing a sign that warned of a steep grade and another that read beware falling rocks.
* * *
Miraculously, she encountered no other drivers. Twice she almost swerved out of control as she barreled around the sharp bends. But she managed to right the Quattro and maintain control each time, her tongue clamped between her front teeth.
Mere minutes after she left the semitruck behind, the helicopter came into view, swooping down near the craggy cliffside up ahead.
Nice of you to show up. Emilia allowed her body to go slightly lax. And just in the nick of—
Colorful, flashing lights caught her eye in the side mirror: a small fleet of highway patrol vehicles were closing in on her, as if they’d appeared out of thin air.
Emilia swore.
Wild-eyed, she kept her foot on the pedal and pushed the Quattro to its limits. The next bend in the interstate was a sharp one—nearly a switchback—but Emilia didn’t slow down as she approached.
C’mon, c’mon . . .
She checked her side mirrors again: it was working. She was managing to open the gap between herself and the highway patrol. In truth, she was only buying herself seconds, but seconds were a precious commodity, and right now Emilia Vanguard was in the business of buying seconds.
Here came the hairpin.
Emilia eased off the gas at the last second and compensated with the brake, pulling back on the steering and gliding around the sharp turn. She only narrowly missed the railing on the left side and the nightmare-inducing drop-off and the acres of treetops beyond. As Emilia came out of the bend, she exhaled—morning sunlight coloring her in a warm-orange glow.
She merged right, sliding off the interstate and onto a slim shoulder, where she ground to an abrupt halt. She put the Quattro in Park, yanked open the glove box, and snagged the envelope. With the car still running, she leapt out the passenger door, stuffed the message into her back pocket, and began to climb the side of the cliff—hand over hand.
A sudden, loud whirring of helicopter blades tousled Emilia’s deep brown hair. She was halfway up the cliff, nearly twenty feet above the interstate, and did not look down once.
* * *
The highway patrol finally arrived, encasing the Audi Quattro in a semicircle and demanding—through loudspeakers—that the driver show themselves, put their hands on their head, and all that business.
The helicopter’s loud rotor blades drew their attention upward, and the officer in charge would later describe the scene thus: A midtwenties woman in a dark T-shirt and gray pants scaled the side of the cliff toward a rope ladder that hung out of the cabin of an unmarked helicopter. The woman pushed herself off the side of the cliff and leapt toward the rope ladder, only barely catching one of the rungs, and hauled herself up as the helicopter flew toward the horizon.
Highway patrol never identified the woman, and the reason for her reckless stunt confounded them. The vehicle, purchased anonymously secondhand and unregistered, was not stolen. Nor was any contraband discovered in the trunk. So why the daring, theatrical escape?
The patrolmen who filed the report had no substantial theories, and so the event remained a mystery
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