Read Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition for Free Online

outside. Eight’s senses fixed themselves on the trembling. With each step the monster took outside, it jostled free a rain of dust and dirt from the windows and bannisters.
    Eight silently begged for the monster to lose interest, to decide that they were too much work for too little reward, and when the trembling lessened she expelled a breath of terror. As the monster gave up and wandered away, stability returned. Thanks in part to the dust jostled loose from the windows, the light grew and revealed the interior of the room to the newcomers.
    Sloping rows of colorless chairs led to an old wooden stage, draped in dusty gray sheets. Chairs, tables, fallen chandeliers, and broken desks were gathered on the stage, probably looted from the lower levels and secluded rooms of the building.
    The ransacked items were shoved aside to clear room for a lone, round table etched from white granite. Bright and clean and new, the granite table was unlike the ancient essence of the building in every imaginable way.
    “What is this place?” Eight asked.
    “The Befrir Opera House,” Seven answered. Eight marveled at his knowledge, her mouth agape. “I read it in on a sign in the hallway,” he gave her a wry smile. She smirked.
    Eight took the lead and wandered up to the stage using the stairs to its left. There she examined the white table critically.
    “Look,” she hissed.
    Twelve notches in the surface of the table were indented at equal spaces. Of the twelve spaces, eight held roses. Of those eight roses, seven were dead and wilted. One was still alive. Eight laid the roses belonging to her and Seven in empty indents, so that ten roses occupied their spaces on the table. Two were left empty.
    “Strange,” Seven muttered.
    “Well,” Eight sighed, unable to discern the meaning. “At least the monster is gone.”
    “It doesn’t like this place,” a third voice announced. Sitting amongst the old furniture was a man who appeared to be in the same age range as Seven and Eight. His hair was long and dark, his skin was pale, and he lay stretched across a dusty sofa. “It chased me in here a few hours ago.”
    This was the owner of the other living rose, Eight deduced. “Why did you stay in here?” she asked him.
    “Because a few minutes later I heard music. I thought if I stayed, I might hear it again,” he said bitterly.
    “Music?” wondered Seven.
    “What music?” Eight pressed, walking towards the man on the couch.
    “A stupid tune I can’t remember and words that don’t make any sense,” his bitter voice recounted. “I’m an artist! Not a songwriter! But I feel obsessed with it. Like I need to know the music to know myself.” When he hummed the tune it was like being hypnotized, and before Eight knew what was happening Seven was speaking:
    “Day of wrath! Oh day of mourning!”
    “See fulfilled the Founders’ warning,” continued Eight.
    “Haven and Earth in ashes burning!” the other man chanted, snapping his fingers victoriously.
    “The song. We each know a piece of it,” Eight observed, assembling the clues. “We had roses. Each of us.”
    “Why would we know parts of the same song?” Seven demanded. “And what do roses have anything to do with it?”
    “We’re meant to find each other,” the man said. “The song. The roses. They’re the only things tying together the people still alive in this city.”
    “What I don’t understand,” said Eight, her mathematical mind spinning to work, “is that I assume you had a rose?” The other man nodded diligently, pointing to the third, living, rose. “Ours are alive. The seven others are dead. Unless I’m looking too much into the symbolism, seven others came but don’t seem to be around. Two are unaccounted for.”
    Bothered by something, Seven spoke up.
    “What’s your name?” he snapped at the other.
    “Two-Five-Two-Zero,” he replied automatically.
    “Can we call you Twenty?” Seven asked. The tall and wiry man shrugged indifferently