The Apocalypse Emperor

Chapter 13: The memory that wasn’t mine

The phone had gone silent, but Adrian could still hear his own voice.

I want my life back.

It had the calm certainty he used when scheduling a drone run or calculating how long a shipment would last. It hadn't sounded like a threat. It had sounded like a man reclaiming something that had been taken.

He turned to Hale. "Call him back."

Hale stayed against the wall, one hand pressed to his ribs. "I can't."

"Then give me the number."

"There isn't one. That call came through the old internal switchboard. Only someone inside the project could route it." He swallowed. "I don't know who's on the other end."

Adrian gripped the front of his shirt. "You answered it like you did."

"I answered because I was afraid not to."

For the first time, Hale looked frightened of the man in front of him.

"I don't know what you are," he whispered.

Adrian let go.

The words went deeper than they should have. He had spent three years surviving by reading rooms, measuring hesitation, knowing when someone was about to run. He had never considered that his own existence might be the one thing nobody could explain.

A sharp electronic beep sounded overhead. The emergency lights flickered back on, bathing the terminal in weak red.

Evelyn checked the entrance. "We need to leave. Someone knew we'd be here."

"You called Hale from the road," Adrian said. "Who else did you tell?"

"No one."

"That's what worries me."

Hale pushed himself upright with a grimace. "She's right. They'll collect all three of us."

From outside came three short beeps, a pause, then two more.

Hale's face drained. "That's an old access signal."

"From whom?"

He didn't answer. He crept to the narrow window beside the door and looked through a gap in the curtain.

A black vehicle stood across the road, headlights off, a driver silhouetted behind the wheel. Another figure stood beside the passenger door. Even in the poor light, Adrian knew the posture. Straight back. Hands loose. No weapon in sight.

The figure lifted its head toward the terminal.

For one impossible second, Adrian saw his own face reflected in the glass.

Then the figure stepped away from the car and was gone.

"Who was that?" Adrian whispered.

Hale backed away from the window. "Now," he said. "We go now."

This time, Adrian didn't argue.

They left through a maintenance passage behind the ticket offices. The corridor smelled of damp concrete and old wiring. Hale leaned on the wall whenever his injured side gave way. Evelyn stayed close enough to catch him if he fell. Adrian kept several steps between himself and both of them.

Trust had become an expensive habit.

At the end, a rusted door opened onto a service lane. The engine across the road was still running.

"My safehouse is on the east side," Evelyn said. "It's clean."

"No."

She stopped. "Adrian."

"Someone knew about this meeting. If they follow you, they know your safehouse." He checked the street. The black vehicle had gone, but fresh tire marks cut across the wet asphalt. "We go somewhere none of you has heard of."

Hale gave a weak, bitter smile. "You really don't trust anyone."

"I've stopped confusing answers with truth."

He led them toward the old shipping district, taking three turns before slipping into an alley between abandoned warehouses, avoiding the cameras mounted above newer buildings. For a while, nobody spoke. Hale's breath rasped. Gulls wheeled overhead, crying over rotting nets.

He stopped beside a rusted loading door and set his shoulder to it. Behind it was a dry storeroom he'd noted two days ago for exactly this reason, a place with no windows and one exit, a place he'd meant to keep for himself.

He let them in anyway.

Hale sank onto an overturned crate. Evelyn stayed near the door, arms wrapped around herself.

Adrian looked at her. "Why do I only hear you when you're afraid?"

"What?"

"Earlier, at the terminal. You were silent all day. Then you thought not the first, and I heard it." He kept his voice flat. "Now you're standing there as quiet as a stone."

She didn't answer. A muscle twitched in her cheek.

He stepped closer, and the ache behind his eyes sharpened into a hot, bright line. He pushed against the silence the way he'd push against a locked door.

It gave, just slightly.

A flash of white light. A metal table. A man's hand resting on a glass panel.

And a voice that sounded exactly like his own.

You promised you wouldn't bring him back.

Pain tore through his skull. His knees buckled. He caught himself against the wall, and warmth ran from his nose across his lip.

"Adrian." Evelyn's hand closed on his arm. "What did you see?"

He yanked free. "A voice. My voice. It said you promised not to bring someone back."

She went still. "That wasn't supposed to be possible."

"What wasn't?"

"That you could hear it." Her voice broke on the last word. "I never told anyone that."

"Told them what?"

For several seconds, she said nothing. In the dim light, he could see her trembling.

"The night before September twelfth, a man came to my office," she said slowly. "He looked exactly like you. He asked me for one thing. He said, "You promised you wouldn't bring him back."

"Bring who back?"

"I thought he meant himself." She met his eyes, and the fear in them was no longer something she could hide. "I thought he was afraid of dying. I told him I didn't understand."

"And now?"

"Now I think he was talking about you."