them. The taste was fiercely metallic in her mouth. And there was the new sense, the fifth sense
I'd never had, that took the particles from the air and transformed them into strange messages
and pleasures and warnings in her brain–scents. They were distracting, confusing to me, but not
to her memory. The memory had no time for the novelties of smell. The memory was only fear.
Fear locked her in a vise, goading the blunt, clumsy limbs forward but hampering them at the
same time. To flee, to run–it was all she could do.
I've failed.
The memory that was not mine was so frighteningly strong and clear that it sliced through my
control–overwhelmed the detachment, the knowledge that this was just a memory and not me.
Sucked into the hell that was the last minute of her life, I was she, and we were running.
It's so dark. I can't see. I can't see the floor. I can't see my hands stretched out in front of me. I
run blind and try to hear the pursuit I can feel behind me, but the pulse is so loud behind my ears
it drowns everything else out.
It's cold. It shouldn't matter now, but it hurts. I'm so cold.
The air in her nose was uncomfortable. Bad. A bad smell. For one second, that discomfort
pulled me free of the memory. But it was only a second, and then I was dragged in again, and
my eyes filled with horrified tears.
I'm lost, we're lost. It's over.
They're right behind me now, loud and close. There are so many footsteps! I am alone. I've
failed.
The Seekers are calling. The sound of their voices twists my stomach. I'm going to be sick.
“It's fine, it's fine,” one lies, trying to calm me, to slow me. Her voice is disturbed by the effort
of her breathing.
“Be careful!” another shouts in warning.
“Don't hurt yourself,” one of them pleads. A deep voice, full of concern.
Concern!
Heat shot through my veins, and a violent hatred nearly choked me.
I had never felt such an emotion as this in all my lives. For another second, my revulsion pulled
me away from the memory. A high, shrill keening pierced my ears and pulsed in my head. The
sound scraped through my airways. There was a weak pain in my throat.
Screaming,my body explained.You're screaming.
I froze in shock, and the sound broke off abruptly.
This was not a memory.
My body–she wasthinking!Speaking to me!
But the memory was stronger, in that moment, than my astonishment.
“Please!” they cry. “There is danger ahead!”
The danger is behind!I scream back in my mind. But I see what they mean. A feeble stream of
light, coming from who knows where, shines on the end of the hall. It is not the flat wall or the
locked door, the dead end I feared and expected. It is a black hole.
An elevator shaft. Abandoned, empty, and condemned, like this building. Once a hiding place,
now a tomb.
A surge of relief floods through me as I race forward. There is a way. No way to survive, but
perhaps a way to win.
No, no, no!This thought was all mine, and I fought to pull myself away from her, but we were
together. And we sprinted for the edge of death.
“Please!” The shouts are more desperate.
I feel like laughing when I know that I am fast enough. I imagine their hands clutching for me
just inches behind my back. But I am as fast as I need to be. I don't even pause at the end of the
floor. The hole rises up to meet me midstride.
The emptiness swallows me. My legs flail, useless. My hands grip the air, claw through it,
