For the rest of the day, my thoughts kept returning to my medical appointment and the strange, unfinished conversation I’d shared with Milo.
What was it he’d said? I’ve been waiting.
What did that mean? Waiting for what? He’d assured me he didn’t think I was weird and then said he’d been “waiting” for something just before the doctor came in and interrupted.
And his expression as he’d said it… there had definitely been something there. The way his eyes had held mine wasn’t like a stranger or passing acquaintance. I’d felt a sense of connection I couldn’t explain.
And then there was his silly parting advice about high-fiving myself in the mirror every morning. It sounded like some sort of be-your-own-best-friend-positive-vibes nonsense. Did anyone actually do that?
Downstairs, Dingo began barking loudly. I peeked through the blinds to see if we had a visitor. A delivery robot emerged from the overhang shading our front porch and scooted down the sidewalk away from the house.
By the time I got downstairs, Mom had already retrieved the package from the porch.
“Who’s it for?” I asked.
She rotated it in her hands, searching for the shipping information. There was none. Instead of the usual code-embedded sticker, there was only a name scrawled on top of the small white box.
Mireya.
“It’s for you.” She handed it to me. “No return address.”
Intriguing. Ketta must have ordered an early birthday gift for me or something. I opened the box, surprised to find a rose nestled inside.
My heart raced like a hummingbird’s wings. No one had ever given me flowers before—or in this case, flower. I seriously doubted Ketta had sent me a single pink rose, though.
So who could have sent it?
“Any idea who it’s from?” Mom asked with obvious bewilderment on her face. “Are you dating someone at school?”
“No, Mom. You know I’m not. Nobody at school dates anybody as far as I’m aware.”
“It better not be from one of the soldiers,” she warned.
I snorted with laughter. “Yeah right.”
There were strict rules against fraternizing with the soldiers on base. We saw them of course, and some of them appeared to be not much older than us, but they didn’t come near the high school students who lived here.
If one of them broke the rules and tried to speak to one of us, they’d no doubt be carted away by the MPs. As far as I knew, no one had ever dared.
“I’ve never even spoken to one of them,” I said. “I honestly have no idea who could have sent it. Maybe it was Dad? It’s not a special occasion, though.”
I turned the box, examining the rose. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Lifting the open box to my face, I inhaled. It smelled even sweeter than I’d imagined, sort of like spun sugar. In school we’d learned that bioengineering advancements had given rise to not only the creation of genetically engineered meat sources to replace extinct livestock but also allowed for far more creativity in horticultural design.
You could order flowers with huge blooms of pretty much any color you could dream up, and the scent choices went far beyond what occurred naturally. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what roses had smelled like in their original form.
This one was too beautiful to resist, so I reached into the box and pulled it out, intending to bring it to my nose for a deeper whiff.
“Ouch!” I yelped, nearly dropping the lovely gift. Instead I lay the rose gently on the kitchen counter and turned my hand palm up for inspection.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Mom asked.
I held my hand out to show her the tiny drop of blood welling from the pad of my middle finger.
“Thorns? Really? Seems like if you can select a flower’s color and scent you’d also opt for the non-lethal version,” she said.
I chuckled. “It’s okay, Just a teensy stick. I don’t even feel it anymore.”
Actually it stung quite a bit—not that I’d mention that to her. She’d probably cart me off to Dr. Rex’s office for a limb transplant.
“Anyway, it’s beautiful. I hope it won’t die quickly.”
Filling a water glass at the sink, I let the cool stream bathe my injured finger for a minute before carefully sinking the stem into the glass and carrying it up to my room.
“Going to do homework?” Mom called after me in that asking-but-really-telling voice.
“Already done.”
“That’s my girl,” she said. I could hear the pride in her voice.
——————
When I woke the next morning, my entire room smelled like cotton candy. The rose had opened further and was even more beautiful.
The sight and scent put me in a good mood instantly. I slid out of bed feeling energized, as if the day held all-new possibilities.
Would the sender of my mystery gift identify himself or herself during school today? Perhaps then I’d find out what it signified.
Even if I never found out who it was from, it made me feel good to know someone, somewhere was thinking of me and wanted to give me something beautiful.
In the bathroom, I sanitized my teeth and showered. As I got ready, I smiled at my reflection.
“You have a secret admirer,” I whispered and then giggled.
On a whim, I leaned toward the bathroom mirror and high-fived myself, putting Milo’s silly advice into practice.
The instant my palm touched the surface of the mirror, an electronic image of his face appeared, superimposing itself over my own reflection. It was as if a video screen had been imbedded in the mirror, glowing with electric light and realistic detail down to the unique color of Milo’s eyes.
When I reflexively withdrew my hand, the image disappeared. So… it wasn’t the mirror that had made the image appear out of nowhere—it was my hand.
I stared at my palm then slowly moved it back toward the mirror. As soon as my skin pressed against the cool, smooth surface, Milo’s face glowed to digital life again.
And then he started speaking.
“Mireya… Reya… don’t be afraid. It’s me, Heath. You may still be thinking of me as Milo, but somewhere inside you know my real name. You know me.”
My breaths were coming faster, louder, and I was shaking all over, but I didn’t move my hand away this time.
Because he was right— I did know him.
I wasn’t sure how. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I couldn’t have broken physical contact with that mirror even if my house was on fire and rescue-droids were trying to pull me away to save my life.
“I wish I could be speaking to you in person instead of through a recording,” Heath said. “But as you saw at his office, Dr. Rex watches me carefully—especially when it comes to you. I had to steal the nano-beamer from Gideon Corp’s research and development wing and figure out a way to get it to you, thus the rose. Sorry about that thorn, by the way. I couldn’t figure out a better way to get the device implanted in your hand so you could see this. The delivery droid was a factory recall I reprogrammed myself. Poor thing was instructed to repeatedly ram itself into a wall afterward and self-destruct.”
Blinking several times, I shook my head and willed myself to wake up from the absence seizure I was clearly experiencing. I didn’t wake.
Milo—Heath—was still there, the ultra-serious look in his ultra-blue eyes matching his dire tone.
“If you’re still watching—which I hope you are, I’m afraid I have some very bad news to deliver, and there isn’t much time for you to decide whether to act on it. The thing is, there really is no choice. You must act on it—your life literally depends on it.”
Needless to say, I was riveted to the image. Heath looked down then off to the side as if carefully gathering his next words.
“You’ve been taking the green pills for a few days now, and I hope that means your memories of us and what we’ve been through are starting to return,” he said. “I gave you a low daily dose so everything wouldn’t come back at once and overwhelm you. Or be too obvious to your parents and the other adults.”
His forehead creased. “Maybe I should have given you something stronger, because now we’re almost out of time. Until your memory is whole again, I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it—you’re in danger, Reya. You have to leave the base.”
