Free False Memory by Dan Krokos Page A

on his cheek. “Well, when you put it that way,” he says. Then he does the last thing I expect. He rises up and presses his lips against mine. I feel his kiss for a whole second before I break off and slap him across the face. He slumps against the wall again, but his grin shows through whatever pain he feels.
    I try for something biting and scathing, but there’s nothing. Just a flood of sickness coursing through me, like I don’t know what I should be feeling. Anger? Not quite. Annoyance?
    Definitely. But there is something familiar about his lips, something right. 
    It disappears the second I remember everything he did. I make sure my face shows no chink in my armor, nothing that says he can break through to me again. Hopefully he didn’t notice the something right part.
    Peter and Olive are next to us now, staring down at Noah, who measures our faces in turn. A child searching for the parent who will go easiest on him. 
    “What?” he says.
    Peter walks back to his bike, throwing his hands up in disgust.
    Olive sighs. “Come back with us. Searching for the rogue was an idea, but we can’t find him. Let’s go home and get the answers we should’ve had all along. Let’s be a pack again.” She has a nicer way of putting things, I’ll say that. Olive and I reach down at the same time; Noah takes our hands and we pull him up.
At our first gas stop, Noah wants to argue pros and cons again. We’re all pulled up to the same pump, straddling our bikes.
    “I feel a little coerced,” Noah says, as he finishes filling his scraped-up tank. “We could be leaving our best chance behind.”
“Don’t you want to know the truth?” Peter says.
    “Of course we do,” Olive says. “What Noah is trying to say, is that he’s worried about going home like we never left.”
    “Who said we’re going to do that?” Peter says. “We’ll go home, carefully, and find out the truth from Tycast himself. Like we should’ve done in the first place.”
    Noah touches the bruise on his cheek, then quickly lowers his hand. He is very interested in the gauge cluster above his handlebars. “I’m just saying, what if we’re making a mistake?”
    “Okay,” I say. “It’s clear Tycast was upset about the situation. It’s possible he’ll help us once he realizes we know the truth. How were you going to find the rogue, anyway?”
    Olive shakes the last few drops into her tank and passes the nozzle to Peter. “We were getting to that part,” she says. “Checking out places we would hide. If he’s a Rose, he should think like us.”
    “Sounds promising,” I say. “Go in search for a guy who kills Roses, on the off chance he’d help us.” At the same time, I can’t help but worry Noah is right. Maybe Peter is a little too trusting of Tycast.
    Peter holds up his hands. “So here’s what we do. We go back and explain that you never went rogue. We explain to Tycast what you heard, and he’ll have no choice but to come clean with us. We don’t even have to go into the base, that way no one can make us stay if we don’t get answers. And the first thing we ask him is what the dry run is supposed to be. Is that fair?”
    Noah turns his bike on. We all do. The combined growl echoes off the canopy overhead.
    Noah says, “If Tycast jerks us around, I’m gone. I’ll find the rogue on my own if I have to.”
    Peter nods. “If Tycast jerks us around, we’ll go with you.” He pauses, then almost smiles. “How many memory shots did you bring, exactly?”
    Noah’s cheeks turn scarlet. Even if they brought a ton, I doubt their supply is self-replenishing.
    One corner of Olive’s mouth goes up. “We’re...low. We’d have to come back for more soon anyway.”
    Peter laughs. “It’s settled, then.”
    Noah nods. “For now.”
    I toe the shifter into first and pull into the street; the others follow in a warbling harmony of engines.
    We don’t say more than a few words the entire way back.
    I think we’re