The Alien Agenda (#Wattys2018)

[Chapter 25: Recall]

"Does your mom know that you brought me into your room?" I asked as I skimmed through Axel's large collection of books.

This room felt so familiar. From the look of it, to its cedar smell, and that strange comfort. I must have spent a lot of time here with Axel, before I lost my memories.

"She's not at home. So, no, she does not know I brought you here. But she will be okay with it anyways. You often come over," he replied, pulling open a drawer under his desk.

It felt weird to know that I spent plenty of time with Axel, and well... not know anything. My heart ached at the thought. I felt really distant from Axel at the same time itching to be closer.

"Imagine the look on your dad's face, if I brought you back to your place, unconscious and all. He might have buried me alive in the snow," Axel said, jokingly.

I chuckled,"Yeah..."

Axel shut the drawer, then walked over to me.

"Okay, Laila. Listen. I've told you, how far we've come in cracking this conspiracy. We've received all the vital information from our time-traveler friend. So here's the catch," he said.

I embraced myself for the worst.

"This information was relayed to you via telepathy. And, you did not have the time to tell me any of it. Now we have no way to access this information thanks to your memory loss," he said, aggravated.

I groaned in frustration, then slumped back onto Axel's bed. I stared up at the ceiling, lying on my back. Axel was right when he said, I lost the memories of the most important month of my life.

"Hey, do you think hypnosis might bring back my memories?" I wondered.

"Maybe," Axel replied, nonchalantly.

I sat up on the bed.

"Well...?" I looked at him expectantly.

He looked at me puzzled,"What?"

"Go teach yourself some hypnosis," I said, in a matter-of fact tone. Axel looked at me like I'd grown another head, then shrugged.

"Worth a shot," he said pulling out his phone.

He sat on the bed with me, and we Googled 'Ways to reverse amnesia'. We spent the rest of the day, testing out a bunch of crazy methods to recover from amnesia.

Some methods seemed to be almost effective, others were plain stupid. We did all of them nevertheless.

I would often get visuals of broken images, but nothing I could put together to form a memory.

Though I could conclude, that regaining your memories can be seriously fun, putting aside the gravity of the situation.

Some of the method were so hilarious, even Axel's cool composure cracked.

I laughed way too much, for anyone to think the world was going to end in four months. Though I really felt like I needed it.

"Hey Axel it's getting pretty late. I think I better head home," I said, wiping of a tear from laughing too much whilst staring at the orange sky from the window.

He nodded,"Yeah, we'll continue tomorrow. I'll walk you home," he said while slipping on his coat.

I relished the cold air as we stepped out of his house. The orange sky, painting the white snow in a soft illumination. Together we trudged through the snow, heading home.

------------------
After reaching home, and convincing my dad that I simply went out and it was nothing to worry about, my phone rang.

It was Lin.

I immediately picked up the call, and Lin's trembling voice responded on the other end of the line.

"Laila... oh thank god you picked up," she said.

"What's wrong!" I asked, worried.

I figured that she would have woken up just like me, with a serious headache and some lost memory. But her grave voice said otherwise.

"I'm under house arrest. My butler's not letting me out of my room. Dad's home. And.. and the place is swarming with agents. I don't know what's going on."

"Lin, do you feel like you lost some memories of the past month. Like it was supposed to be still November or something?" I asked.

"Yes! Oh my god, how did you know?" She exclaimed.

I let out a frustrated sigh. I could only imagine what was happening at her place right now.

Axel did tell me that we used one of Lin's dad's connections to help us infiltrate Area 51. And the fact that two of the agents died in the process.

The agency must be furious, or worse, the government knows about their covert operation to break into a secret base. It must be terrible. And what was worse, Lin's father had to do all the answering, who knows what might happen.

And Lin could not even cover for him, because she does not remember anything.

"Laila..." Lin said, snapping me out of my train of thought.

"Yeah I'm still here. I'm sorry Lin, it's more complicated than you think," I told her.

"What do you mean you're sorry? You know what's -"

Lin stopped talking. I heard the sound of people talking in the background. I heard Lin arguing about something to someone. Moments later she said she had to go, and hung up.

Just like that.

I stared at my phone dumbfounded for a moment, before immediately dialing Axel to tell him what happened.

He told me that this was beyond us, and we could not interfere. He told me not to feel guilty about it as well. Right now he simply asked me to focus on regaining my memories.

We had even more important things to handle. I could not do anything but agree.

After dinner, I searched through my room for anything that could help regain my memories.

There were a bunch of papers of some research I was doing, but it made totally no sense to me. I could not remember anything.

Once in a while, images would flash in my head when I saw something familiar. But just before I could grasp onto it, it would fade back into the oblivion of my hidden memories.

It was so frustrating. It seriously sucked to have amnesia!

After hours of searching, I finally gave up and decided to just go to sleep.

Giving myself over to the unknown tiredness I was harboring, I slipped into the subconscious. Little did I know, that I was tapping into the lost chamber of memories.