“What are you talking about? A breach of what?”
She looked over at Lexi, hesitant. “There are some things I can’t tell you yet, but there is a barrier we need to maintain. In some ways, it is our one and only job. It’s why Hildegard is here.”
“What kind of barrier?”
“A fortification,” said Aspen, and I could tell she was searching, choosing her words very carefully. “It’s expansive, meticulously constructed—a Hadrian’s Wall, if you will.”
“Where?” I asked, but she just shook her head.
“I can’t tell you that yet.”
“All you need to know,” said Lexi, “is that there was an accident and part of that barrier was damaged. We need to repair it, but we can’t without the code.”
“Does any of this ring a bell?” asked Aspen.
I looked around the medical suite at the sterile equipment, the sharps container on the wall, the harsh fluorescent lights.
“No. It all sounds completely fucking crazy.”
Lexi let out a peal of laughter, and I nearly joined her. The entire thing felt unbelievable, like an uncanny dream where the world is almost as you know it, but something indefinable had suddenly changed. And yet what Aspen said about the code sounded right to me on some deep level. I didn’t know any code off the top of my head, but I did have—had always had—a sense of hidden knowledge somewhere inside me. And I could almost feel that night. The sirens. The howls. The screams. I looked at Aspen, something cold and commanding coming to the fore.
“Clarity,” I snapped. “I need clarity. This fortification, what’s its purpose? We’re in the middle of nowhere. What are you trying to keep out?”
“There she is,” said Lexi. “The bitch is back.”
Aspen smiled. “You are starting to seem more like yourself, but we need to be careful. If we tell you too much, it could jeopardize the reacclimating process, possibly even irreparably damage your cognitive function. We aren’t even supposed to have told you this much. You’ll have to remember on your own.”
“Where is Charles?” I had seen him in the woods that night, but I thought it was a hallucination. Nothing about it felt real, and yet it could have been, couldn’t it? For now, though, I would keep it to myself. I didn’t trust these two, not completely. Not yet. But if Charles was here, it meant he wasn’t the Charles who had betrayed me. He was still my best friend, and the only person I was going to trust. I just needed to find him.
“We have no idea where he is. We haven’t seen him since that night.”
“Exactly how long have I been gone?”
“Since February.”
A sudden paroxysm shook me, and I started laughing. It wasn’texactly that I thought this was funny. It was more like someone was poking some receptor in my brain that induced uncontrollable laughter.
“You need to get yourself together,” commanded Aspen. “You are partially responsible for getting us into this, and you have to understand that there are stakes involved.”
“I’m not responsible for anything. I just met you people.”
“She still thinks she’s Robin,” said Lexi, sounding defeated.
It was only half true, though. I knew that they weren’t lying to me. I was Isabelle Casimir, and yet in my bones, I still felt like Robin.
“You need to cut it out,” said Aspen, her voice suddenly firm. “You need to start getting your memory back because we are all in deep shit if you don’t.”
I breathed deeply, trying to contain my bizarre urge to laugh. “But why exactly? I don’t understand why this is happening to me.”
She looked over at Lexi, uncertain, but Lexi shook her head. “Not yet. Too risky.”
“Look, all I will say is that there is an evil here, and it is imperative that it stay controlled. Right now, there is a chance that we are about to lose control, and we need you to help us have that not happen.”
“Could you please be clearer?”
“We can’t, unfortunately,” she said. “We all have different security access here, and our disciplines are siloed, but no one knew as much as you. All we know is that you need to remember the code. We aren’t supposed to be involved in that aspect of the memory retrieval. We are only supposed to provide familiarity and direction with your research.”
“Okay, but who did this to me and why?”
