We both stare at Realm, and before he can answer, the server comes by and refills our coffees. The three of us sit in active silence, waiting for her to leave. She asks Wes if the ice cream is okay, and for her benefit, he takes a spoonful and tells her it’s delicious. When she’s gone, he sets the spoon down on the table with a loud clank.
“He didn’t turn himself in,” I tell Realm, jabbing my finger at the box. “He was taken from his house. I was there.”
“You were there,” Realm agrees. As he starts talking again, his voice grows serious, steady. It reminds me that he’s not a regular guy, not someone you meet at school. He’s a hardened handler, having spent years manipulating people. I realize he’s someone I should never trust. But that doesn’t mean I think he’s lying.
“I told you there was a deal,” Realm begins, looking at me. “When I met you in The Program, I was on my way out. I had been under contract with them for years, but after getting involved with Sloane and James, seeing the true horror of the system, I was trying to escape. Trying to stop it.
“But I couldn’t just disappear. If they found me, they would’ve had me lobotomized. I tried to stick it out, but my mind wandered. I began to research different organizations that could help. Tried to find Marie Devoroux, who was one of the first doctors I worked with. And then you showed up, Tatum.” He smiles at me. “You showed up, and you refused to cooperate. You were defiant. I loved it.”
Wes doesn’tlovehis word choice, and he clears his throat before sipping from his coffee. Realm nods to him and continues.
“After we talked,” Realm says to me, “I realized that your memories had already been tampered with. Something about your past had been changed, altered. You processed things differently, saw things for what they were. I thought... I thought that could matter down the line. I couldn’t let The Program erase you, not in any significant way. I tracked down Marie and told her about you. At the time, I didn’t believe in her cure, but I did believe she could keep you safe.”
“This is all great,” I say. “But that doesn’t explain how I got out of The Program. What deal was made?”
“I went to Dr. Warren with specific memories you had given me—willingly given me,” he adds. “You and I had made a plan: You would give me your memories to pass on, and once you got out, Marie and McKee would give them back to you. It should have been simple.” He scrunches up his nose. “Fucked up, but simple in implementation.”
He steadies himself, seeming uncomfortable in his skin, a little twitchy. He meets my eyes. “I went to Dr. Warren, and I told her you weren’t a candidate for The Program. I told her the intake form was wrong, that Weston’s mother’s statement was wrong, vindictive even. I believed that because in the memories you gave me, there was no illness. Just... a broken heart. But Dr. Warren wasn’t easily convinced. She didn’t want to make a mistake. She was under the impression, thanks to Dorothy Ambrose, that your and Wes’s relationship was the problem. She said it couldn’t continue.”
Realm’s mouth pulls taut, and he looks regretful when he says, “I agreed. At that point, I did. So Dr. Warren told me to interview Wes and to present an offer. I called him and asked him to meet.” Realm turns to Wes, but Wes won’t look up from his file page. He’s seething, not enjoying this conversation one bit.
“We went over all the options,” Realm says, turning back to me. “And I told Wes the deal Dr. Warren wanted to make.” Realm swallows hard. “She agreed to let you go if Wes turned himself in for erasure. The deal was that both of you would be erased from each other’s pasts. That was all that was supposed to happen. When I told Wes this”—Realm puts his elbow on the table, his fingers rubbing roughly at his forehead like it hurts—“he agreed without even a second thought. He said he would do anything for you. He just asked... he said he wouldn’t go until he made sure you were safe.”
My heart is racing, banging painfully. Wes could have been free. I’m devastated by the decision he made. But I’m humbled by it too. He saved my life.
“Dr. Warren agreed to his terms,” Realm says, watching me. “You were sent home immediately. Once there, you were secretly given the Adjustment based on the files I supplied Marie with. Wes didn’t want to stay with his parents, so he hid out, waiting for you to recover. It was another week before I called him and told him he could see you. See you one last time. He went immediately to your house.
“You remembered him,” Realm says, his voice cracking. “Tatum, he was so happy that you remembered him—it was all he could think about, right up until the moment they erased it in The Program.”
There’s a tickle on my cheek, and I swipe at it, realizing I’m crying. Wes’s missing week was spent waiting for me, waiting on a deal that would ruin him. He had given up everything for me. Just like Wes said before The Program took him: “I’ll make it right, Tate.” That’s what he thought he was doing.
“So that was how you got out of The Program,” Realm says. “Wes traded his life for yours. And the deal was you’d stay apart, forever. Dr. Warren was convinced it would send you spiraling otherwise. And after Wes’s Adjustment failed, and Dr. McKee and Marie realized you’d lied about the actual breakup, they agreed with her assessment. They worried rekindling would lead into a full-blown crashback—the kind you couldn’t get over. No one, and I mean literally no one, wanted the two of you together.” He pauses. “But I knew you would be anyway.”
Realm takes a deep breath. “It didn’t help that Wes lied too,” he says, sipping from his coffee. “Seems neither of you wanted to talk about the end of your relationship. Just skipped right over all the Kyle Mahoney bullshit.”
“Who’s Kyle Mahoney?” Wes asks.
“Nobody,” Realm and I say at the same time, and then look at each other. I almost laugh. I would if I wasn’t so completely and utterly heartbroken right now.
“But I’ll admit,” Realm says. “I wasn’t a great handler at the end. I was doing incomplete work. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to get Wes’s true memories about you—who knows. But I left soon after, and The Program erased more than just you.” He looks at Wes. “I’m sorry about that. I brought you in; I should have stayed.”
Realm turns to me. “And even with all that,” he continues, “I know I was right to send you to Marie. She thinks you hold the key to the cure, and I think she’s right. And selfishly... I need you. I need the cure.” He swallows hard, and I notice the swelling in his neck, just under his jaw. It occurs to me that he’s unwell.
“But, sweetness,” Realm continues in an earnest voice, “I’m so sorry for whatever part I’ve played in your story. I wish I could go back and make it right, but at this point, what is right? Wrong? Is there even such a thing?”
“We’re right and you’re wrong,” Wes says quietly, his eyes downcast, and he pokes the spoon into his ice cream. What could he possibly be thinking right now? I may not have asked him to give himself up, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty about his decision.
A thought occurs to me, and I turn to Realm. “Why did Dr. Warren flag me again?” I ask. “Why now?”
“You broke the deal,” he says. “You demonstrated over and over again that you’d keep going back to him. That he’d keep coming for you. But more than that, you told her about your memories, and she realized what she learned in The Program was false. She figured out that you lied, that I lied. Fuck—we’re all liars. And she knew that the only reason we’d all go so far to protect you was because you’re the cure. She was running out of time.”
“How do we stop her? I ask.
“The only way to stop The Program is to make it obsolete,” Realm says. “Cure it and make it irrelevant. Attack the bottom line.”
“Then Marie needs you,” I say. “She asked me to find you.”
“Everybody’s always trying to find me,” Realm says under his breath, and then coughs, grabbing a napkin to wipe his mouth. I furrow my brow.
