Nico broke down. “I’m so sorry,” he said, crying into my chest. “This is all my fault.”
I was scared, but I held Nico as tightly as I could. “They can scoop out chunks of my brain with a spoon, and I will never forget you.”
“You’re the best thing in my life,” Nico said. “Even if my memories aren’t real, you’re real. You will always be real to me.”
“I love you, Nico. Forever.”
Those were the last words I said to Nico before Teachers took him away. I waited alone in the cell for hours or maybe days. I don’t know. When they came for me, I figured they were going to drag me to a room with a creepy medical chair like the one I’d seen in the orientation video. Instead, a Teacher escorted me to a cozy office where I was instructed to sit on a comfortable leather couch and wait. A few minutes later, a familiar woman entered the room.
“Hi!” she said. “I’m Jenny Perez.” She offered me her hand, which I only shook to make sure she wasn’t a hologram. She looked exactly like I remembered, only she was wearing a pink suit instead of blue. “You have been a naughty young man.”
Jenny took a seat across from me and poured us each a cup of tea from a ceramic teapot, smiling warmly, as if we were two old friends. “Sugar?” she asked.
“Two,” I said, though I had no intention of drinking anything she gave me. “What are you going to do to me? Punishment?”
Jenny Perez slid the cup and saucer across the table, and lifted her own tea to her lips. She closed her eyes as she sipped. All I’d been given since arriving at Fomalhaut had been Nutreesh and Hydrophoria, and the citrus aroma wafting from my teacup was tempting.
“That depends on you, my little chickadee.”
“Me?”
“You very nearly escaped. No student has ever come as close as you did.” Jenny Perez’s smile was tight. “As a result, you have given the other students hope, and we certainly can’t have that, can we?” She continued to sip her tea. “If I must, I will strip out your memories, stuff in a few new ones, and have you reeducated to make you more pliable. But I would rather you be punished in a way that serves as a warning to anyone else imagining they might escape. For that, I need your cooperation.”
I felt a small surge of pride in knowing that Nico, Karen, and I had nearly outwitted the school. That others at Fomalhaut High knew what we had done, and that our attempt might inspire others to try. “Why would I help you if you’re just going to punish me anyway?”
Jenny flicked her hand at the wall, and a screen lit up, resolving into a live video stream of Nico. He was in a room like I’d imagined ending up in, strapped to a chair, fighting against his bonds.
“Every program that’s broadcast has a minder,” Jenny Perez said. “A person, like you, who retains their memories and the knowledge that they’re on a program. Their job is to remain in contact with Production and to steer the narrative when necessary.”
“Like a spy?” I finally couldn’t resist the tea anymore. I was already at Jenny’s mercy. If she’d wanted to poison or drug me, she wouldn’t have needed to spike my drink. It was a delicate black tea with hints of lemon and orange. It took all my strength not to gulp it.
Jenny tilted her head to the side. “You could look at it that way if you choose, though a minder’s job is also to protect the others from themselves.”
“Okay?”
“Production is working on a new program. A meta reimagining of Murder Your Darlings, the most popular program ever broadcast. The star is a young woman named Jenny—after me, of course—who finds herself aboard a ship named Qriosity.” Jenny spoke about the show with a reverence that was strangely endearing. “Jenny, along with two young men—one her best friend, the other her rival—will travel from world to world, solving small whodunits while attempting to unravel the biggest mystery of all: where they came from and how they get home.
“Jenny will, obviously, have help in the form of the witty and clever ship’s hologram—me! And each adventure will follow a similar pattern. Jenny will stumble upon a mystery; the three of you will investigate; the best friend, played by Nico, will get hurt; the rival, you, will cause problems; and Jenny will follow the clues to the solution.”
This sounded like a joke, but Jenny Perez was dead serious. “So my punishment is to watch Nico get hurt over and over?”
Jenny Perez smiled gleefully. “And to be trapped aboard a spaceship with the love of your life who has no idea who you are, who has no memory of your past together, who doesn’t feel about you the way you feel about him and never, ever will—we’ll make certain of it.”
The idea of looking into Nico’s eyes and seeing a stranger was unfathomable. It was one thing to be threatened with the erasure of both of our memories, but to remain whole while Nico forgot? I didn’t know if I could survive that.
“What if I say no?”
On the screen, two Teachers detached from the walls and closed in on Nico. He struggled harder against the restraints, but he would never break them. Jenny said, “We’re going to rewrite his memory regardless, but if you refuse to play your role, we’ll simply arrange for Nico to die tragically during the first episode—to motivate our heroine, of course—and introduce a different companion to take his place. Nico will be sent to a school far away, and you will never see him again.”
I didn’t want to cry in front of Jenny Perez, but I couldn’t hold back the tears. I was helpless. If I agreed to her terms, I would lose Nico. But I’d lose him if I told her no too.
Asking me to choose had always been part of my punishment.
“Why are you doing this?” I wiped my nose with my sleeve. “All of this? What’s it for?”
Jenny Perez laughed. “Ratings, silly.”
* * *
Our program was called A Complicated Mystery Set in Space. Karen became Jenny Price, teen sleuth, cat fan, and Nutreesh addict whose parents moved frequently when she was a child, making her well suited to a nomadic life in space. Nico was rewritten as Noa North, a Seattle teen who loved baking, hated math, and had trust issues due to a secret trauma from his past. And I would play DJ Storm, a schemer from Florida who was constantly causing problems, and who screwed things up as often as I fixed them.
I watched them march Karen and Nico onto Qriosity. Except they weren’t Karen and Nico anymore. They were you—Jenny and Noa. Your lifeless eyes, the way you stared without seeing me. It hurt more than I had imagined it would.
Production had decided our program would begin in the middle of a crisis. Qriosity would be on the verge of exploding. I would be in Reactor Control, Noa would be in a spacesuit outside the ship, and Jenny would be in Ops, where she would seize control of the situation, tell us each what to do, and save the day.
The hologram of Jenny Perez stood over me after the Teachers left the ship. “Once Qriosity reaches its destination, you will need to dress Noa in his spacesuit and get him into position outside the ship. Jenny is already in Ops.” She smiled at me like a predator. “I’ll be watching you personally, DJ.”
I was going to go along with it. Come up with a plan to free us while our program played out. But when I went to the airlock to put Noa into his suit, I realized I couldn’t do it. It was really Production’s fault. They had dressed Noa in an ill-fitting jumpsuit that had Nico’s name on it. Just one of the small ways they meant to punish me. But seeing Nico’s name on Noa’s outfit reminded me that Nico wasn’t really gone. His memories might’ve been gone, but he wasn’t. And maybe there was a way to remind him that he had loved me.