Earth
2017
Cold cuffs bit into her wrists in the brightly lit room. She kept her head low, searching her memory for any hint that could help her explain to the gun wielding soldiers why she was here.
They'd given her a pair of black sweat pants and a white shirt to wear. It felt lighter and more breathable than the simple gray shirt and pants she'd arrived in, though her original outfit did look very similar to the type of clothes people here wore.
Scientists covered head-to-toe in bulky blue suits had taken blood samples, cut square pieces from the clothes they'd taken, swabbed her cheeks and beneath her nails. Hours passed and still she had no new answers.
Windows encased the room they'd kept her in, with an airlock outside the door. Undoubtedly, they worried about any contamination she could bring to this facility and the people inside it. That meant she'd be vulnerable to pathogens on this planet and simply sitting in this room could kill her through silent, unknowable threats. That should have terrified her, only it all felt too surreal to properly fear her circumstances.
She glanced at her reflection in the window. It was faint, but she couldn't deny the evidence that she looked just like these people from Earth, except for maybe her bronze eyes. No one else she'd seen had her color exactly, though some were close enough. Perhaps her feeling that she didn't come from this planet had been wrong and she simply had amnesia. Amnesia and some strange case of paranoia. That futuristic looking pod in the desert was not normal, though.
Questions flooded her mind. Of the few things she knew about herself, she knew this: not having answers killed her.
By the time another hiss from the airlock came, her throat was dry and body fatigued. Five men and women she had yet to see entered. They all wore the blue protective suits like the scientists, but while the others who had come to take samples from her had white coats beneath theirs, these people wore dark business suits.
They all took a seat across the table from her. The distance felt far, because she was all alone. She didn't even have her own mind to keep her company. Her memories, her life, were locked deep away where she couldn't reach it.
The man at the head of the table spoke first. He looked mid-forties, but the lines set in his forehead were carved deep, giving her the impression that he often wore the hard frown that currently tightened his face. The dark auburn of his sideburns were speckled with gray. "I'm General Price." His voice reminded her of tires crunching over a gravel road. He slid something along the table to her.
A thin, golden bracelet skidded to a stop in front of her. She leaned forward and tilted her head. A little oval piece connected the chains with a name engraved on it. "Rory." Her throat felt swollen. "What is this?"
"You tell me." He studied her with his hands folded on the table and stare unwavering. "It was the only thing we found in the craft you arrived in. It was broken, lying on the floor."
"I don't know."
"I hear that's the only thing you seem to know how to say. Rather convenient."
"It isn't convenient." She clenched her teeth together and shook her head. "Having no answers when there's dozens of guns in your face isn't convenient at all."
"It is if those wielding the guns wouldn't like your answers."
All the people were watching her closely. She shifted, readjusting her cuffed wrists. On instinct, she tried to minimize the emotions she displayed. "What did your tests show?"
He held her eyes for a beat. "What do you think they showed?"
Fear gripped her gut, but she didn't let it impact her voice. "That I'm not one of you. That…" It sounded insane saying this, but not as insane as coming to in a desert with no memory and what appeared to be a spacecraft behind her. "This isn't my world."
General Price had exuded confidence since he'd entered, but she caught the hint of trepidation in his words when he spoke this time. "Your blood, your DNA, your clothes, and your spacecraft are unique from anything else on earth."
She gasped in a breath. Knowing it and having it confirmed hit her differently. "I'm telling the truth when I say I can't remember anything, not even my own name." She gestured at the bracelet. "I don't know if that's my name or someone I left behind. I don't know why it's written in your language."
"What about your own language?" General Price asked. "Could you speak to us or write in your own language?"
"I…" It occurred to her that not only did she know English, but that she'd been thinking in English, and the thought of her own language made her nervous. "Lumivra exquilara zenthrisht."
Another beat of quiet. The general's voice sounded hollow. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know myself."
The general looked at a woman who sat beside him. She passed a notepad to him. The two took turns writing something too far away to see and then they both returned their attention to her.
The general cleared his throat. "We have questions which need to be answered. Questions of the utmost importance to national security. We need you to try to remember."
"I'll try."
"How do you know English?"
She shook her head.
"Why is your biology so similar to ours?"
"Is it?" She leaned forward and caught on the restraints. "We look alike, but what about the blood? The DNA? How similar are we?"
"How did your spacecraft enter our airspace undetected until the final moments before it landed?"
"I don't know." She hung her head.
"What do you want from us?"
"I want answers. You know more than I do at this point. I know… I know you don't believe me, but it's true."
She lowered her head to the table, trying to hide from them when she had no way to. The fatigue had worn down the wall separating her from her emotions and she struggled to hide sobs building in herself.
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"I don't know myself."
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Her hands felt numb as she wrote the sounds of her language and transliterated them into English. Her alphabet worked differently than theirs. It wasn't like Mandarin either, so she had nothing to compare it to. And that had led her to a new fact about herself. There were two earth languages she knew. English and Mandarin.
Fascinating.
Terrifying.
No others were coming to her mind. It was strange to learn about herself along with the others, as though she too were an observer. A scientist studying her own life.
She felt disconnected from her body as she wrote, as though she'd vanished, and didn't know where she'd gone. Only that she could distantly feel this body she'd left behind.
Derealization. The scientists would call it that. The word floated across her mind, something she caught out in the wild of her amnesia.
"Rory."
She glanced up at the scientist who had been in and out of the room all day. They'd started calling her that and it felt right somehow. Felt like she wanted to call herself that as well. Hearing this man say it made her see the person beneath the white coat and protective suit. Dark blond hair fell just past his ears with the slightest wave to it. His hazel eyes were large and clear, and endlessly curious. Was he scared too? Most others had an edge to them from their fear, but he seemed gentle and polite. Considerate, even.
"You speak English and Mandarin fluently," he said. "Do you remember speaking to anyone else like you in these languages?"
People constantly filtered in and out of the room. Stood at the windows and watched.
"I don't remember that either," she said. "But I have some impressions. There's no memory to back it up. Only that these languages have become as familiar to me as my own."
"Do you have the impression that you've been in the United States before?"
"No. It doesn't feel familiar. It doesn't feel like home."
"What does home feel like?"
"I can't remember, just not like this. The air doesn't feel like this." She wrapped her arms around herself. They'd given her longer chains for her restraints, so she could reach the paper and crayon. Something told her that crayons were for children and they were afraid to give her anything sharp to write with. Smart. She didn't even know what she was capable of.
"I have other impressions." Her voice sounded small. She met this man's hazel eyes and saw him beneath the sameness he shared with the others. Saw the person sitting beside her, terrified and curious in seemingly equal measures. "I don't want to hurt any of you. I don't want to make you feel afraid."
His mouth was open but he didn't speak.
"I want to be honest."
"Do you have any impressions on why you're here?"
Rory shook her head. "I wish I did. I keep thinking about it." She chuckled. "It's all I think about. Maybe I was sent to make contact with you but something went wrong on the journey and wiped my memory. But why send me in person? Why not communicate remotely? I could be killed at any time. It's risky."
He tilted his head. Rory waited for one of the higher ups she knew were always watching to silence them. This man was just a scientist. She doubted he was supposed to have this conversation with her. But that was what made it feel safe. Real.
"Maybe I was escaping. Maybe this was my only chance of survival."
"Do you feel like you're on the run?"
"I feel…" Rory closed her eyes and searched for words to capture the mysteries within her, the crushing heartache, and the longing for what she didn't know. "I feel like everything has been stripped from me. My name. Whoever I once loved. My… My own language. It feels like I've been losing things for a very long time. That this heaviness in my chest isn't new. That I am powerless and frightened."
He was leaning toward her, the first time anyone had. Wasn't this why she'd talked? He'd met her eyes when they spoke like he was actually looking at her and not just studying her. She hadn't realized it until now, but there was a reason she chose him to speak to.
"I know…" Rory's voice sobered. "I know there's a reason I have all this knowledge of Earth. And that I do not want to hurt you."
His voice was low, like it was meant for her, and not everyone who watched. "Does someone else want to hurt us?"
The question pried open a new source of terror in her, because she did care for this world. She could feel the care making her afraid not for just herself, but for them. "I don't think I was sent to hurt you."
"You were sent?"
A headache pounded at her temples. She shook her head. "I don't know. I'm sorry. I just don't know."
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The crawl of time might have driven Rory insane if the scientists hadn't started bringing in objects for her to test and see what was familiar or foreign to her. What she knew how to use or didn't.
She could find no thread connecting what felt familiar to her hands and what didn't. The paint brush did. The laptop didn't. She had some difficulty adjusting the microscope they'd brought, like she didn't know the equipment, but she knew how to handle the slides, and the bacteria she saw buzzing around had names in her mind. E. Coli. Gross. Not something she wanted to touch.
Could it be that she was a scientist? That had started to feel likely until they brought in the replica of the glock g19 and her hands knew it so well that suddenly, for the first time, she felt as if she touched a piece of home.
Rory held the gun stiffly, hiding how comfortable she felt with it, and that if they asked her to clean it, or load it, or shoot it, she'd enjoy it enough to find it all calming.
Why the fuck did she know how to handle American guns?
Until now, she'd been honest, but she knew to keep this to herself. For now, at least. They would never trust her if they feared her. And if she was here because they were in danger, she couldn't help them if they thought she'd come to turn their own weapons on them. Plus, she really wanted to survive this.
The man she'd spoken to before returned with musical instruments. She shook her head as she ran her fingers along the sharp cords of a guitar. "I don't play music. I don't feel like I have any idea of what to do with these, but I do know what they are."
The man picked up the guitar. "Do you sing?" He strummed the strings, his bulky gloves pressing clumsily so that the sounds clashed.
They both smiled and Rory winced.
He hopped up with the instrument, exited to the airlock, and pulled off his gloves. "You sing and I'll follow your lead."
A uniformed officer looked at him skeptically but didn't interfere. Rory glanced around at everyone watching.
"I don't want to sing."
"Music is life. Your people have music. We could learn so much about you by hearing it."
She swallowed hard and looked down. A song came to her, one that squeezed her chest and made her ache for the home she couldn't remember. "I'll sing it in English."
Her voice came out raspy but it didn't sound bad. In fact, it felt very natural. "Sleep, in our arms."
The scientist watched her, the fear from earlier melting away, and the curiosity softening into something more like wonder. The leftovers of a smile clung, softening his expression and his eyes.
"Sleep, sweet baby."
As she came around to repeat the words, he played his guitar with her now, complementing her as if he'd heard the song before.
Pain seized her heart, as visceral as a heart attack. The words cut off and she bit her lip. In the midst of the suffering, she watched herself like a cruelly distant observer and wondered about her reaction.
Had her mother sang it to her? Or had Rory sang it to her own child? Did she have a baby back home waiting for her? Maybe a little brother or sister, even.
She tried to feel which it was but the pain overcame her and she sank against the table, crying so hard she couldn't breathe. The song had crushed the wall inside her so the bricks were pulverized and she couldn't hold back the tsunami of grief.
The airlock opened and the scientist rushed for her, until suddenly he stopped. No one could get close to her. She tried to wrap her arms around herself and her cuffs caught.
It had just been a song, but that scientist was right. Music was life, and the simple tones had swept her close enough to a life she couldn't remember to feel its waters lap against her toes. It was too much to bear.
Rory loved people back home. People whose names and faces had been stolen from her mind. Pried from her fingers. The loss was too great to even try to figure out who it was she missed. Because as she wept like a child, horrified by her weakness, humiliated by the display of emotion, unable to control herself, the pain was so great that she could not face it long enough to search for the ones she loved buried in this suffering.
Rory wept until she could no longer utter a sound.