Page 12 of Redstone
Sigurd knew better, he did, but his mind had brought her to him, and it would be disrespectful not to face her now. He reached for the top of the cloth and pulled it back in a rush, and …
“You have to drink.”
Faying shook her head weakly. “I won’t.”
“This is ridiculous.” It felt like he’d been saying this forever ever since he realized that she wasn’t going to do another round of Regen. “There’s no need for you to do this. There’snothing wrong with prolonging your life! Why shouldn’t we take advantage of our own technology?”
“You … know why.”
It was about what had happened to him. Of course, it was. “That was a one-off. A problem with the machine. They assured me it’ll be fine next time.”
Faying’s eyes welled with tears. “Oh, my dear. You asked me not to tell you before, but I have to now. I know I have to.”
Sigurd felt his heart speed up. “Tell me what?”
“It wasn’t … wasn’t the first time.”
“What …” He shook his head. “What do you mean?”
Her breath rattled on a sigh. “It wasn’t the first time you’ve been subjected to Regen. It was the third, with me. The first time we did it together, and when you came out, and you didn’t remember anything, I thought …” She paused to breathe. “I thought it had to be an accident. A terrible accident. You did another round right after to try to fix things. It didn’t work.” Her hand tightened around his for a moment before she couldn’t maintain the pressure any longer.
“You were worse. You couldn’t remember the simplest things, my darling. That’s when we moved out here. I taught you everything again, how to speak, how to read. You only remembered a few things, a few people, and none of them—” Her voice caught in her throat. “None of them were me.”
“No,” Sigurd said, uncomprehendingly. “No, that’s not possible.”
“It is.” She wept. “Itis. We swore it would be the last time, that we wouldn’t use Regen again. And then we aged but not together. No matter what I did, I grew old faster than you. You knew how it bothered me, and you asked me to regenerate again with you, and I …” Faying squeezed her eyes shut around the tears. “And Idid, for more time was all I wanted. But it happened again, and it will keep happening, and my darling …I can’t go through this again. I just can’t. I can’t watch you lose everything and everyone and lose all memory ofme. I just can’t.”
“That’s … how can that be possible?” He felt gutted. “Why don’t I remember this?”
Faying sighed. “We’ve been trying to figure that out for three lifetimes, my dear. I’m tired. Too tired for another one.”
“Faying—”
“You didn’t speak my name,” she said sadly, staring at their clasped hands, hers spotted with age, his … not. “You only spoke his.”
“Whose?”
She pressed her lips together and turned her face away. Sigurd leaned over to ask again, to demand she tell him, to beg her not to die, but instead …
He fell onto the floor. The gray cloth lay crumpled in front of him, no box of truth beneath it, just emptiness. He stared at it but didn’t dare touch it again. He didn’t want to see her, to see the hurt in her wrinkled face, too many years of devotion and dedication to him, all subsumed by fatigue and a deep pain from the knowledge that she wasn’t the closest thing to his heart.
“Hey.” A new hand stroked over his head, cupping the back of his clammy neck. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Sigurd forced himself to nod as he got to his feet. “I know.”
“You ready for the last level?”
He smiled mirthlessly. “I suppose. Although,” he added as he headed for the stairs, “I don’t know why I keep trying. It’s been so long, I don’t see how I’ll ever add something new to this room.” The walls of the stairwell were pure black, dark like the heart of a black hole, only it was Sigurd’s own heart they were heading into. The closest thing he had to a representation of it, at least.
The hand rested against his back, warm and supportive, and he wanted nothing more than to turn into it and look at the manit belonged to, but … it never worked. He never saw him, and when he tried to force it, his memory evaporated. He couldn’t make demands; he could only visit time and again and hope that someday he would see the reality that time and technology had stolen from him.
Inside the room was … nothing. Emptiness, not even a dust bunny in the corner. But the walls echoed with words, words that fluttered through the nothing and made it feel welcoming. The air was filled with the voice that haunted Sigurd’s dreams, the voice that he’d programmed every machine he owned with, that belonged to the arms that wrapped around him now. Soft lips pressed gently to the back of his neck, and Sigurd closed his eyes, then turned around into the embrace and laid his head against the shoulder of the man who held him.
“I don’t remember your name,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember your face or what we were to each other. But I know I must have loved you fiercely then to love you so well now. And you must have loved me because otherwise, I wouldn’t want to keep you so badly.”
“I do,” the man said fervently. “I do love you, more than anything. More than everything, I promised you that. It’s still true. It’s always true.”
Sigurd nodded, his throat tight with emotion. “I’ll be back soon.”
