Read Undiscovered: An Unremembered Novella (The Unremembered Trilogy) for Free Online

glanced at the wall. The sun was starting to set. I would have to leave soon. “Some puzzles are better than others.”
    We sat in silence for a long time. And then I felt her move next to me. Close enough that our arms were touching. I turned my head and she was right there. Her eyes were piercing giant holes in me.
    “Can we keep going?” she asked, and I felt her fingertips brush against mine as she removed the slate from my hand.
    My body was too numb to say no.
    Not that I ever would have.

8: Testing
    One thing kept me going.
    It was time.
    Not the time that we spent apart. And not even the time that we spent together (which was always over too soon). But the time it took me to earn her trust every day. The time it took for her to move from twenty feet away to ten feet to shoulders touching.
    After two months, I noticed that it was shrinking.
    Gradually, little by little, she was opening up to me faster.
    It was almost as though she was beginning to remember me. Despite what they were doing to manipulate her mind. Like some small part of her was holding on, refusing to forget.
    And that was the part I clung to. The part I pulled my strength from.
    Because I knew, without ever having to hear the words from her mouth, that it was the part that loved me back.
    Some days I would get lucky. She would be waiting for me, a smile brightening her entire face. One time she remembered me for four days in a row.
    These were the days that terrified me the most.
    Because Diotech never did anything by accident. They didn’t make mistakes.
    They were sustaining her memories on purpose. And that purpose—whatever it may have been—gave me nightmares.
    As the months wore on, these “lucky” days became more and more frequent, making me feel as though they were leading up to something, preparing for something. I decided I needed a more concrete way to track their movements. I needed some data of my own.
    “Sera,” I said, lightly touching her arm.
    She looked up from the story she was reading, her eyes warm and inquisitive.
    “I want to try something.”
    She stayed silent, her eyebrows raising ever so slightly.
    I glanced around the sparse front yard of her house, and my eyes fell on the marble bench. The one she’d lifted over her head one day to show me her strength. I pointed at it. “You see that bench?”
    She nodded.
    I struggled, trying to figure out the right way to word it. “Every time you get home, I want you to put something under that bench.”
    I used the phrase “every time you get home” because I knew that’s the way she remembered her mysterious daily trips. As “outings” with the man she referred to as her father. I was beginning to wonder if she ever really went anywhere at all. Except maybe a lab somewhere in this sector.
    But regardless of what really happened each day, she always seemed to remember going somewhere.
    An artificial memory to hide the truth. To hide whatever Diotech didn’t want her to know.
    She studied the bench. “What do you want me to put there?”
    I shrugged and leaned back on my hands. “Anything you want.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I promise to explain it later. But for now, will you just agree to do it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Repeat it back to me,” I told her.
    “Every time I come home I will place something under the bench. For you.”
    I smiled. “Thank you.”
    The next day, I was anxious to see if there would be anything there. If there was, it meant her memory of me hadn’t been tampered with. If there wasn’t, it meant I would be starting over yet again.
    It was a small enough memory. One line out of a four-hour conversation. I knew it could be easily missed in a review. And that’s what made it the perfect test.
    When I climbed the wall the following afternoon, I found the space under the bench empty.

9: Departure
    I arrived home that night to find my mother sitting at the kitchen table with her usual heaviness draped around her like a blanket. I