Free The Anathema by Zachary Rawlins

of Alice’s memories, and then somehow stored them in his own mind for future use.
    “You won’t remember everything, but you will know the important things. You can use the diaries to help you recall anything that doesn’t come back to you.”
    Rebecca kept pumping Alice full of contentment and optimism. She knew that Alice’s memories weren’t actually erased by her Black Protocol, but rather, she simply lost her access them. With sufficient time and explicit reminders, Alice could recall some of things she had forgotten. However, she seemed to remember less and less with each passing year.
    “If I have your permission, Alice, I have something that I have been holding, something that’s rightfully yours. Something that belongs to you. May I return it?”
    Rebecca’s eyes were screwed shut, concentrating on keeping Alice happy, secure, and calm. But she could feel, through the empathic link, the weight of memory descending on Alice’s fragile mind, years of thoughts and experience making her gasp like cold water hitting her skin, like flame tearing through dry summer grass. Rebecca absorbed the pain and terror that Alice felt, the horror of her past and its resurgence, and replaced it with peace and serenity, while Alistair labored beside her, tethering the memories to Alice’s psyche, forcing synapses to fire and activating dormant neural pathways. It was psychic surgery, with Alistair holding the scalpel and Rebecca acting as the anesthetic, and they worked at a fever pitch, trying to stop Alice’s mind from hemorrhaging its way back into blankness.
    The process went on for a little bit more than an hour, and at the end of it, Alistair was white-faced and exhausted. Rebecca was half-blind by a migraine, with Alice resting peacefully in her lap, mercifully rendered unconscious by the final moments of the procedure. Rebecca didn’t bother to ask if they had been successful, because she was afraid that they hadn’t been, afraid that saying that aloud might actually make it come true. She didn’t say anything when Alistair rose to his feet and stumbled out of the room, punch-drunk and weaving. She waited there, the migraine slowly receding into a pulsing pain in the back of her neck. Alice’s eyes fluttered in a slow, sleepy movement, and then closed again. A moment later, they snapped open in wordless horror, and Rebecca had to calm her again, drawing from her almost depleted reserves.

    “Oh, God,” Alice said, her voice thick and rough from lack of use. “Fucking hell. What – what happened? What happened to me? Why is my head all – ah, Rebecca? Why are you crying?”

5.
     
    “It seems possible that I made an ass of myself back there.”
    “Do you think so?”
    Alex looked away while the nurse swabbed his forearm with iodine, prepped a needle, and then, without so much as a warning, gave him a numbing injection. Alex yelped in protest, but the nurse ignored him, collected her tray, and informed them that the doctor would be there shortly, and then left, the door swinging slowly shut behind her.
    “Well, the thing is…” Alex continued, kicking his heels against the examination table. “When we first met I may not have done everything I could to make a good first impression.”
    “Oh?” Katya asked, her face pleasant and serene from where she sat in the uncomfortable molded plastic chair that haunts every doctor’s office. “That would be when you referred to me as a ‘bitch’, right?”
    “Um, yes, technically,” Alex said, hanging his head. “But I wasn’t really talking about you as much as I was…”
    “You were pointing at me when you said it,” Katya noted.
    “Okay, that’s true,” Alex admitted. “I wasn’t actually upset at you, though. It’s just that, you know, I’ve had issues with Anastasia, issues with the girls at this school in general, and…”
    “Which is it? Do you have a problem with my boss? Or is it a problem with girls in general?”
    “Uh, well, it