“Can you hear it yet?” Dr Emmerson had asked me, back when this had all begun, and I nodded in response.
I’d been unable to remember barely any of my degree and now I knew why. In my first year studying psychology we’d gotten credit for participating in studies organised by the professors. The one run by Emmerson had offered a medium amount of credit normally but this was doubled if you came ‘from a musical background.’ I’d told her truthfully that I could play several instruments and the second she’d confirmed that counted her study seemed the most enticing. She’d put some headphones on me and gotten started.
“Okay then. Now I’m going to play a note through these headphones and I want you to select which note it is from the options on the lower half of the screen. If you want to at any time then you can press the counterpart of the note on the upper half of the screen in order to hear that specific note as a tuning device. The notes will be from a variety of different instruments throughout the test. Does that all make sense?”
“Yes.”
The first few notes went fine. One the fifth note, I turned to face Dr Emmerson.
“What if it’s none of the notes provided?” I asked.
Dr Emmerson frowned.
“Every note in this test is in the range provided. If you don’t recognise it then just give your best guess.”
“No, sorry. I understand that. I mean what if the note is a bit out of tune, if it’s too sharp or flat to perfectly be the note provided?”
Dr Emmerson paused for a second and then tore a piece of paper out of her notebook.
“Select the nearest note on the screen but also write down the question number and if the note is sharp or flat on this piece of paper.”
I did as she asked. The note was only a little flat so I wasn’t that surprised I was the first participant to spot it. A few notes later I had another question. I did debate keeping quiet, aware I might be messing up her research, but for whatever reason I spoke up.
“What if there are two notes? In this one there’s one main note but there’s also a quiet second note. Honestly I don’t even think it’s from a second instrument, I think the string is just still vibrating from a previous note and they didn’t wait for it to stop. But do you want the average or what?”
“Write down both notes if you can, select the dominant note on the screen.”
Again, it was only a small error. The second note wasn’t particularly loud but I could pick it out. I’d not been amazing at actually playing some of the instruments I’d learned as but I’d always had an excellent ear.
When the experiment had finished Dr Emmerson said she might have a future project she wanted me for and to keep an eye on any emails from her. Three weeks later she emailed me with the only other candidate who had noticed which notes were sharp and flat as accurately as I had. And that was the first time I met Anna.
_______________________________
At the text from my wife I’d frozen up and then through myself back down onto the bed with such force that the headphone cord nearly snapped before being yanked out of the laptop. The strange, disjointed music was now playing outside of the headphones where I could only just hear it but I made no attempt to either turn it off or to plug myself back in. Anna and I had helped to develop music that could wipe memories and keeping an invention like that secret would certainly be worth killing for to the right people. I now had no doubt in my mind that if I couldn’t fool Robin perfectly then I’d be a dead woman.
I’m not a spy. I’m not a fighter. I’m not even smart in any way that felt relevant to this situation. I didn’t rate my chances of fooling Robin for the rest of my life particularly highly and the second I slipped up then what was I going to do? Fight off a trained assassin with my two whole karate lessons worth of combat knowledge?
A new sound made its way through the headphones as somebody knocked on the door. I turned off the music and opened the door to see Sam and Cassie looking troubled.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
Cassie couldn’t meet my gaze but Sam stared at me with burning intensity.
“What music were you playing?” he not just asked but demanded.
“I think I helped make it at university.” I answered, too exhausted to think of a better lie.
“I think you did too.” Sam said quietly. “When I heard it I… Amy, did you tell us everything?”
I had to think about it. Parts of the years I spent working on this project were still fuzzy or outright missing and I remembered that I’d been too nervous to email or call anyone about the truth in case I was being bugged but I had taken some chances, I’d made this antidote song after all. There were a few weekends I’d have come home by myself. Telling them would have been sensible, in a way.
“You told us we needed to get you to go through your emails,” Cassie mumbled, “That you’d left yourself a code.”
I could see the fear on her face as she said it and wasn’t sure if she was scared that this was true or that she was no longer as sane as she’d thought.
“I did leave myself a code.” I confirmed. “You both know?”
“Actually,” Sam said, “I think your parents do too. They had similar expressions to us when we came in. I’m sorry we couldn’t remember.”
“That’s my fault.” I said.
“No, none of that. We’ve all made mistakes. Now, how do we stop your mistakes from killing you?”
A shaky plan was formulated. The only advantages we had were surprise and numbers. The element of surprise was likely to disappear not long after Robin first spoke to me and as soon anyone who has resources to send a spy to monitor a suspect for years to the extent of marrying her probably has access to other agents, which meant as soon as Robin was able to call someone the advantage of numbers was likely to disappear as well.
“I hate to say it but I think only one of you can get out of this alive.”
Cassie was the one who said it but none of us disagreed. I wanted there to be a third option where I found out that Robin really did love me but, was that likely?
“If I go to prison for murder then they’d just kill me there anyway.”
“Then don’t go to prison. We’ll think of something. Cassie, if she had to run then could you help with that?”
Cassie nodded and as we waited for Robin to arrive we tried our best to refine our plan. We didn’t do great but we came up with something.
___
I heard Robin knock on the door and my mum greet her warmly and loudly. Because our plan relied almost entirely on luck, Sam and Cassie were hidden behind the bedroom door where Robin wouldn’t see them as she came in. None of us are exactly trained but Sam is very strong and Cassie had sections of rope that were not made to be restraints ready to assign new purpose.
“You look terrible, are you o-” Robin began as she walked in and then Sam leapt into action.
The plan was to restrain Robin and find out what she knew. Maybe even reach an agreement, though I was uncomfortably aware that would be a risky option as we’d have no way of knowing if she was telling the truth. I thought that the point of holding Robin still enough to tie restraints on her was likely to be the riskiest point in our entire plan.
Sam seemed to have understood ‘keep her still’ slightly differently than I had though, in that I didn’t expect him to grab Robin from the side in a massive bear hug and simultaneously crack his head into hers so loud that Robin struggled to stay standing and even Sam looked a little disorientated. Cassie had tied rope firmly around Robin’s ankles and I came over to help. We’d gathered every rope, belt or cable tie in the house and given that we had only googled ‘best knots to restrain’ a couple of hours ago, we were making up for quality with quantity. When we were finished Robin looked less like the captives in action films and more like a particularly kinky caterpillar but it’d have to do.
“We know.” I told Robin, “We know everything.”
It was a little hyperbolic but if Robin knew there were gaps in my memory then that’d just be something that she could exploit. As it was she just looked heartbroken.
“What are you doing?” she asked, beginning to tear up.
Even if it was pretend, this was still the woman that I loved. Seeing her distressed made me doubt everything much more than the fact that what had happened to me was frankly insane. Sam’s hand squeezed mine gently and Cassie took over from me.
“We all know about the memory song. Not just us either. And honestly, fucked up as it is that someone made that we are willing to keep quiet as long as you tell us what to do to get Amy off these people’s radar. But if you aren’t willing to work with us then we already know you’re dangerous.” Cassie leaned over, “We’ve already discussed how we’d kill you. Your co-workers wouldn’t even get suspicious.”
The use of ‘not just us’ wasn’t anything we’d discussed and to my knowledge wasn’t even true but it was a smart move. If Robin was alive we couldn’t ever fully trust her again. The idea that there were random outsiders who knew just as much as we did might be enough to buy our safety. Robin turned away from Cassie and looked over at me.
“Did she tell you this? You’ve told me that she used to be crazy! Whatever she’s said is just more of that. I don’t understand what any of you are talking about!”
Robin threw her head back and let out a piercing scream for help but my parents knew just as much as those of us in the room. They weren’t going to come to Robin’s rescue. It all looked far too real for me though and it didn’t seem logical, that someone would push aside all of their friends and family to foster an entirely pretend relationship with a woman that they felt nothing for.
Wait.
Robin was the perfect candidate. I’d never met any of her friends from uni or earlier and she told me she didn’t speak to her family. She’d told me her uni friendships had sort of just drifted away and her family hadn’t had a huge dramatic falling out but just an argument that they never apologised for or reached out after and she didn’t feel she should have to be the one to do all of the work. And all of that could be true, but what if it wasn’t?
“Keep her here.” I said and then ran downstairs.
I ran past my parents who asked me how everything was going as if we were playing a board game upstairs instead of interrogating a spy. I told them it was fine as I grabbed the laptop and headed back upstairs. I opened the music folder and I swear that in the moment before I pressed play I saw a brief flash of fear in Robin’s eyes.
With the benefit of hindsight, Robin must have believed that the song was the original, the one which erases memories. She had no reason to believe anything else. Robin redoubled her efforts to escape when the song began but as it continued she stopped and listened. Finally, the track finished.
“That bitch.” Robin hissed venomously.
Her voice sounded different somehow. There was no change in accent, pitch or anything quite as obvious as that but this still didn’t sound like the voice of the woman who’d lied to me throughout our entire relationship.
“She took something from you as well then?” I asked.
“Years. I’d have watched you anyway, I genuinely believed that there are rare circumstances where just muddling someone’s memory is more humane than going in with force. But I guess she didn’t see any reason to trust me, or any reason to reserve power like that for rare occasions.”
Even with this revelation, I was struggling to see Robin as the victim. She wasn’t against power that could delete people’s memories, nor had she exactly been manipulated into overseeing me.
“Who else is involved?” I asked.
“I report directly to Dr Emmerson. She has access to other agents through her military contacts but they don’t work for her so much as she’d be able to call them in. There was another student who helped in the research, if you remember Anna. As far as I know though she’s had her memory wiped and probably has a romantic partner or close friend or housemate or something who watches her for unsual behaviour, same as you.”
Sam sat down and cursed indistinctly under his breath.
“How can we help her?” Cassie asked.
Robin looked at her as if she was stupid.
“You can’t. Like I said, there will probably be another agent there. If Anna learns anything about what she did then orders are probably just to terminate.”
Cassie looked sickened.
“If we agree not to kill you, would you leave Amy alone anyway?”
“No,” Robin said, “but only because it’s the wrong call. The last things I’ve said about Amy have made her sound really suspicious so if I leave or die now, it’d be the worst point possible for her for either of those things to happen. They’d bring in professionals to find out what she knows or just kill her to remove any risk whatsoever. Maybe I can think of a way to leave eventually but not right now.”
She was right. Now that she was almost on our side, killing her would be far riskier than leaving her alive. Maybe it always would have been.
“It wasn’t anything personal,” Robin said, “It’s bigger than you. People have been killed for knowing things they shouldn’t, this could have stopped all that.”
The problem being, it depends on your version of ‘things they shouldn’t.’ Sure this song could be used to stop an evil, lone spy who is determined to share details of other secret agents to get them killed but why stop there? Why not project it over crowds of protestors after the way they’ve been dealt with was a bit too violent? Why not use it to delete everything you wanted?
I wish I could tell you that one of us in the room then came up with something better. A perfect solution where Robin could leave and I could begin a life without constant lying and observation. I wish I could say that the guilt got to Robin and she decided that she was well trained enough to deal with whoever was with Anna and that she figured out a way to find her. I wish I could say that I chose to play the track I’d composed one last time and that finally all of the memories I’d been missing flooded back to me and I got to be complete again.
I wish I could, but instead we untied Robin. We agreed that it was safest to go along pretending that nothing had changed for now. We explained things to my parents and then after a few more days of staying with them, Robin and I went back home.
I can’t find Anna right now. I don’t know enough about her to find her and even if I could reach her, I wouldn’t know how to save her. Given that we created the song that brought my memories back together, it doesn’t seem fair.
So instead, each night I retrieve the violin that I’d brought back home from my parents house. I choose on of the songs mentioned in my emails and dig out the correct sheet music. I whisper a dedication to Anna, the friend I still can’t fully remember.