“And who would sabotage it? The bogies?”

“No. We would. One of us might have already crippled it beyond repair. We wouldn’t even remember doing it.”

Which, again, was pretty much what Hubbs had said. That the city could rewrite their minds, making them forget things that had happened and implant false memories. Whatever served its end. It was absolutely insane, yet, despite what his rational mind told him, he could not disregard any of it.

The big problem, of course, was proof. In that, there was none. Both Javy and Hubbs made some fantastic, distressing claims, but there was no verification of any of it. The Exosuits kept a video log of everything, but the feed and backup of it was completely blanked out from the time they entered the city to the time they came back out. Nothing but static.

And what did that say?

That some outside agency had blacked it out? Bell didn’t for a minute doubt that was impossible. What he was having trouble with was their sketchy—very sketchy—version of events. If what Hubbs was saying was even partially true, then their memories of events could have been completely distorted.

Like yours aren’t.

He thought about telling her a few things, one of which was what Murph said happened with the attacking faces…but, no, he wasn’t going to do that. This particular blaze was burning just fine without him feeding it.

“You really believe all this?” he asked her, because he had to.

She stared at him a long time. Her eyes were wet with fear. “Yes, and I think, deep down, you do, too. We’ve all been contaminated by the city. There’s something wrong with all of us now. Hubbs is seeing things and I’m not sure they’re hallucinations. I heard what Murph was saying over the radio, that he was attacked by something.”

“And you?”

She chewed at her lower lip. “I’m being tormented by the worst thing I can imagine—my mother. She’s been dead for years. But down here, she’s not dead enough.” Javy sipped from her water bottle. “How about you, Chief? What’s that damn city doing to you?”

But that was something he dared not admit to anyone.

23
MEMORY LANE

Later, Bell got on the comm and had a chat with Orr, for all the good it did him. He told him everything. What was true to the best of his knowledge, what might be true, and those things he could not substantiate (namely, the claims of Murph, Hubbs, and Javy). He laid it all out as linear and systematically as possible, the way he would have in any report to his superiors.