Foreword
A couple of years ago, I created a pen name called Jazz Michaels. It was designed to be a creative outlet to help offset the early depression symptoms. While I loved writing the books, it also just added more pressure.
One of the difficult parts was how much it flowed for me writing as Jazz and then how it all sort of stuttered on all fronts. I didn’t write for almost a year, and then getting back in the saddle slowly, I focused on other projects as myself and every day I meant to come back to finish this trilogy. I’ve succeeded in finding that joy in writing again.
I’ve finished a few other books, and I’ve been deeply immersed in those. But again, I left many hanging and I decided that before I could write the third one, I needed to re-visit and re-edit the first two. I’ve also re-titled them and gotten new covers. Jazz’s readers made me feel incredibly welcome, but I am publishing these books under my primary name because as much as I loved the concept of her, I think I’m better just being me.
For those of you who may have read these before, ‘Paused’ was originally titled Their Memoriam, and ‘Rewind’ was formerly Their Sacrifice. The majority of the story remains the same, it has only been edited for clarity and to make it sharper.
What I had never done though was write the third and final book in Valda’s trilogy. It has taken me more than two years to be able to return to this trilogy and these characters, after so long an absence, it seemed almost too challenging to connect with these characters again. They simply weren’t who they were in the memoriam. Then it hit me, of course they wouldn’t be. When we first met them, Valda didn’t even know who she was, and in the second, she fought to free herself. This book is our first real look at them in the real world, and how their journey and survival over the last five years has left its indelible mark on them.
Thanks for coming on this dystopian journey. Valda and her guys are fantastic, an older heroine with a deeply scientific background and four different but amazing guys. I don’t think I’ll ever know characters quite like them again, but I am so profoundly grateful to have spent this time with them.
xoxo
Heather
Previously…
Previously…
Following Hatch manipulating the data in the memoriam to allow Valda access to all of her memories and previous frameworks, she had Dirk pull Hatch out of the memoriam because the system seemed to be mapping his cerebrum as well as the other guys. She wanted them safe.
Hatch, though, seemed in a special kind of danger because their thoughts had begun to mesh, as did their feelings. She wanted to protect them more than anything. Fighting her way free of the memoriam, she woke to find that their compound had been attacked, Hatch and Dirk were missing, and Oz planned to leave as soon as they were dug out of the rubble.
She had a long journey of healing ahead of her, and with Andreas and an escort of Dirk’s security forces, they fled New Zealand to the island where Valda had been born and grown up. With all of them torn apart, she had to put herself back together, and then she could work to fight and find the men who had never given up on her.
This, finally, is that story.
Chapter 1
“An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.” -Thomas More
ANDREAS
“No, Mr. Campbell,” Andreas informed him over the radio. It was short-wave, and the only way it could be intercepted was if someone was on the island. Dirk’s team kept them wholly secure, even if Andreas hadn’t stepped foot outside of the sterile walls of Aloria Bashan’s laboratory fortress. “I have no updates for you today. You?”
“Maybe.” Campbell had been highly resistant to the plan for Valda and Andreas to shut themselves in. He’d left a detachment on the island with them, however, while he kept in contact with his other men. “We think we may have at least identified how they were taken from Auckland.”
That was more than they’d had in the last several weeks.
“What are the chances they are still alive?”
“Solid,” Campbell assured him. “They sent proof of life once. When they reach out again, we won’t take the call without a second round of it. The time you arranged to have, however, is running out.”
That, he also knew.
“We’ll be ready,” Andreas assured him. “Signing off. I’ll check in tomorrow.”
“Understood.”
The radio went quiet, and he returned the handle to its cradle before he turned to look at the tank. Years of watching her languish in a coma, only to have to sit vigil a second time.
This time he was alone, without even the comfort of his brothers.
The hologram of Aloria Bashan flickered to life. “Are you ready to continue, Mr. Kenton?”
Well, almost alone.
“No,” he said. “I think I’ll read a little longer.”
The hologram programmed by her parents to provide feedback and information on her research disturbed Andreas on many levels. Not the least of which was the resemblance between her and Valda.
“The schedule you have maintained to review all the materials left by Dr. Bashan requires strict adherence.” Scolded by a hologram.
“And I said, I’ll read a little longer. Hologram off.”
The hologram blinked out. The one saving grace, he didn’t have to talk to her if he didn’t want to. Rising, he crossed the room to the tank where Valda floated. Liquid oxygen, she’d called it. Almost like being in the womb—which for her, it was.
Valda had written in her journal in the hours before she submersed herself and filled it with the liquid suspension.
“Don’t panic,” she advised in that cool, calm and precise way of hers. “Humans breathe liquid for nine months. It just takes the body time to remember that it isn’t drowning.”
“Will you panic?” He had to know. He had to know before he agreed to this.
“Andreas,” she murmured, cupping his face. “I’m explaining this so you can have a say.”
The fact that she addressed an unspoken resentment should have shamed him. A part of him wanted to be included in these discussions, even if he didn’t fully understand them. More…
Swallowing, he said, “I know you say this is necessary. That you need to repair a part of your genome. The only way to do that is to flood your body with stem cells programmed to respond to the damaged areas of both your chromosomes, your cells, and your brain.” She’d gone over that at length. “The last time you experimented on yourself…” Did he really have to finish that thought?
The last experiment cost them years together.
“I know,” she admitted. “This is different. First, I’ve had to do this before. I should have considered that when I went to work trying to fix what the virus had broken, not only in me but in so many. I have the unique privilege of being able to literally go back to where I started.”
An uncomfortable thought.
“Second, while this does incorporate some of the solution I was working on, the primary tasks are not experimental so much as the application of previously successful methods.” A hint of a smile ghosted her lips. “I’m damaged.”