"I—I feel bad," I stumbled, "but I don't remember your name. I feel like I should, but I just... don't."

She cupped my cheek. "It's okay. It means the memory drug is working. It's Nancy."

More memories of our nights together flooded my mind when she said her name. My body flushed with remembered sensations of warm skin on skin and the scent of vanilla candles. Roaming hands and lips flashed in a flurry of images combined with the little sounds she would make when I did something she liked. I felt dizzy and unsteady.

"Whoa! Hey, Ethan, sit on the bed and take some deep breaths."

I did as she instructed, and the dizziness passed.

She handed me a hospital gown. "Here, you need to get undressed and put this on. Do you need some help?"

I shook my head, trying not to blush again.

"You can put your things in the locker over there," she said, pointing to the small locker in the corner. I was glad she left me to follow instructions as she read my chart and made some notes; I needed the time to work down my excitement.

After trading my comfortable street clothes for the awkward gown, she smiled and motioned to the bed.

I settled, and she took the wristband from the chart's clipboard and put it on my wrist. "So, Katie will set you up with an IV with a couple of medications to help flush the memory drug from your system. It'll make you sleepy, but your memory will start to come back, hopefully fully, over the next twenty-four hours. You might have intense dreams and emotions as the memories return."

My eyes burned, and my throat tightened. "Alex died," I croaked.

Her head snapped up. "What?"

"Alex. He died. I woke up beside him on the bed in a hotel room, but he was already gone. I don't know how or why or..." I trailed off, voice too strained to continue.

Nancy sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand. "Ethan, I'm so sorry."

I clung to her comforting touch, staring at the ceiling, blinking away tears. I was grateful when Katie bumped into the room with a med cart distracting me. I sniffled and shifted in the bed as Nancy moved to make room for her.

Katie worked quickly, inserting the IV expertly on the first try. Within ten minutes, orderlies asked what I wanted to eat and what other needs I might have. By the time they delivered my food, I was groggy. I ate as quickly as I could manage before succumbing to sleep.

~~~

The kitchen looked straight out of the 1970s with yellows, oranges, and avocado green colors. The smell of baking cookies wafted from the double ovens, and my mouth watered despite the danger I felt crawling through my instincts. Alex and I sat at the dark wooden table while Alex's contact bustled about the place, playing hostess. Or maybe host. It wasn't really clear to me.

"Do you want milk with your cookies?" Juno asked. "I hear it's a popular combination for humans."

Juno was a small humanoid creature from the Vega system. To look at him—it?—there wasn't anything different between him and a human other than a slight coppery sheen to his skin. It was only when you saw him naked that the differences stood out. But, since our interaction didn't dictate nudity, a fact for which I was thankful, it didn't matter.

"Yes, cold milk would be great," Alex replied. "But, we can't stay long. We must conduct our business and be on our way."

Juno slumped. "No time for a visit?" Juno prized himself on being a great "housewife" and baked cookies for guests at every opportunity. He was also obsessed with vacuuming.

Alex shook his head. "No, sorry, my friend. We have to gather our information and go. We're running out of time."

The oven dinged, and Juno brightened, spinning to grab the potholders and fetch the molten cookies from the heat. "Well, they're done now, so you must stay! But they need to cool just a little, or the chocolate will burn you terribly."

Alex sighed, and I knew he had resigned himself to eating the cookies and drinking the milk. It was the last thing we wanted to do. Getting the meet location for the artifact exchange was the priority, but Juno was difficult; if he felt any slight, the Vegan would clam up, and we'd not get the needed info. So, milk and cookies it was.

Juno regaled us with tales of baking successes and failures, a conversation that grated on my nerves. Alex was better at navigating such things and kept up the banter as the three of us munched through the half a dozen cookies. Granted, they were delicious, but cookies weighed against obtaining an alien artifact? My frustration at the delay rose.

I nudged Alex under the table and shot him a meaningful stare. Alex glanced at me but otherwise pretended to ignore the prompting. He did, however, engage the conversation.

"So, Juno, where can we meet the exchange team? What are they going to want as payment?"

Juno set his milk glass down carefully and sat back in his chair. My heart rate spiked; negotiations were finally starting.

Juno's expression slid into the perfect poker face, the perfect shade of neutral. "The Exchangers want memories, of course." The Vegans were memory vampires, taking them straight from the victim's mind and feeding on them like a drug.

Alex's eyes narrowed. "What kind of memories? We will need to time locate when you want."

"Childhood memories. You know... happy thoughts. Birthday parties and such. Pretty common memories. Should be very easy to locate."

I couldn't resist. "Why those?"

Juno's gaze swung to me, and my heart jumped. The Vegan might look harmless, but he was far from it. According to the latest intelligence, he was one of the system's most successful assassins and a consummate negotiator. I did not want to be on his bad side, but there was no taking my words back.

"Because they make us happy," Juno explained as if his words clarified the importance. They did not, but I was willing to leave things well enough alone.

Alex jumped in. "We understand that you need joy in your life. But, you must also understand what it is for us to lose our memories. How many hours are they asking?"

"One hundred," Juno stated. "We calculated that is likely to be one childhood's worth of happy memories for the average human."

Alex shook his head. "It depends on the person and their childhood, don't you think? Someone who has had a good childhood? Yes, they can likely meet that quota. For someone else? Likely not."

"Hmm," Juno contemplated. "It is better to have the memories from one person. It makes them more... flavorful."

I struggled to hide the shudder I felt. Dealing with the Vegans and their appetite for memories was creepy as fuck. I'd have done better with a regular old Earth vampire than with the memory suckers of the Vega system.

The Team's scientists were getting more skilled at recording memories, but so far, they hadn't been able to restore memories from the recordings when the Vegans had harvested them. Considerable research had been done on the front, however. Nancy and her researchers felt close to a breakthrough, I knew. Still, it wasn't enough, so the team's primary purpose was to limit the traffic of Vegans to Earth such that the crime of memory theft was kept secret from the public.

The artifact Alex and I sought was a remote activation key for a gate system that could help us travel from one planet, or, as referred to by the Vegans, one memory storehouse, to another. At the Team's request, the Vegans had engineered it to look like a watch, with each storehouse having its own watch face based on its location. Earth had just become the newest memory storehouse, something the Team desperately tried to undermine before the aliens rushed in to suck the planet's people dry.

But, as it always happened, unscrupulous people in power saw a money-making opportunity. They had been selling access to Earth, allowing the more affluent Vegans to build gates on private property. Since the existence of the aliens and what they did was secret, nothing regulated what humans could and couldn't do for them on their own land. The results were houses like the one they were currently visiting with a gate in the basement. It served as a place for the wealthy Vegans to portal through to access a veritable buffet of memories in the human population.

Yet, the Vegans didn't just come and sample a little from each person they encountered. No, they had voracious appetites and specific desires. My skin crawled; I couldn't imagine my childhood memories, what few good ones I had, having been in the foster system, being stripped from me.

"Fifty hours," Alex bargained. "Ten hours each from five individuals."

Juno scowled. "Unacceptable. Seventy-five hours from one person."

"That's impossible to find. You're asking for an entire childhood! That kind of thing will be missed and has to be carefully planned and curated," Alex protested.

"And, yet, it is what we demand in payment," Juno insisted.

"From one person, fifty hours is the best we can manage. You know that's a good deal. Human memory is fickle."

Juno stared at the table. I knew he was probably in contact with the Exchangers about the bargain. After a few moments, he looked up at Alex. "Fifty hours, from a specific person, of predominantly happy memories. That is our final offer. Take it or leave it."

Alex paused. "By when?"

Juno's grin wasn't bright and cheery. No, it was malevolent and spread across his face like an oil slick.

"One hour, in a room in the usual Vegas hotel. You have just enough time to get there."

My heart hammered. "You know we can't find whatever person you seek in that amount of time."

Juno chuckled low in his chest. "Ah, but you can." He stared at Alex.

Alex froze under his gaze. "You want...?"

Juno nodded. "Your memories. Yes. The childhood memories of someone we know are so much more savory." He rose and collected their plates and glasses. "I'll wash up while you think it over." He bustled away to the other side of the kitchen.

I reached out and touched my partner's arm. "Alex, you can't," I whispered, leaning in. Your parents both died last year. Memories are all you have left!"

Alex shot me a hot look. "I have no choice. We need that key. You know that. Besides, Nancy has been recording a bunch of stuff from me over the last several months. She can put it all back." His voice sounded less convincing than his words.

"You don't know that!"

"I'm willing to risk it."

"But, that many hours. The process could kill you!"

"I have to, Ethan. We need this key. You know that." He glanced back at Juno and lowered his voice even more. "But you don't. Nancy provided me with a drug that will make your memories inaccessible. It will give you amnesia until she administers the antidote."

My eyes widened. "But how will I help you if I forget everything?"

Alex set his jaw. "We don't have a choice, Ethan. This is the only way."

I stared at him and knew what he said was true. I slumped in my chair. "Give me the drug, and let's get to Vegas."

~~~

I gasped as I came awake and grabbed for the call button, smashing it repeatedly until someone answered over the intercom.

"I need to talk to the Director right now," I announced as I began to untape the IV, then thought better of it. "And I need this IV removed."

There was a paused and then the voice answered, "The Director's on his way, but you need to keep the IV in for another six hours."

"Come take it out, or I will do it myself," I threatened.

"Wait one," the voice answered.

After a few moments, Katie and the Director bustled into the room. She was in another set of sapphire blue scrubs and he in another immaculate bespoke suit complete with french cuffs and a pocket square.

"You remembered something?" he prompted.

I nodded. "We might be in trouble. It was Alex's memories that were trading for the key. They were only supposed to take childhood memories, but we have no way of knowing that for sure."

For the first time in all my time with the Team, the Director looked dumbfounded. "Shit. What they hell possessed him to do that?"

Katie had gloved up and now began untaping the IV without being told. She pressed a folded square of gauze to the sight and taped it in place. "Here, put pressure on this." I did.

"There was no time to find a suitable donor. The Vegans insisted on the exchange within the hour."

"So, Alex might have become a double agent and spilled all our secrets. That's a career's worth of secrets."

My heart ached. Losing my friend and partner was bad enough, but to now have doubts about his loyalty voiced? I scowled, and the heat rose from my collar. "He wouldn't do that willingly. You know that. He was loyal to a fault."

The Director turned away, pulling a phone from his pocket, swiping and tapping until he raised it to his ear. "Director Schmid. Emergency code two-eleven. Authorization Zurich Zurich Delta." He paused. "Do it."

He stabbed his finger at his phone and slipped it in his pocket. "I'm not saying that Alex would have revealed anything about the Team on purpose. But, we can't risk assuming he didn't have it stripped from him by force."

My ire lessened and I rolled my shoulders and neck to release the tension. "Yes, you're right Director. Apologies."

"None necessary. Your reaction is completely understandable."

His words were interrupted by a blaring claxon siren followed by an announcement. "The Zurich location will lock down in thirty minutes and counting. Implement withdrawal strategy Alpha. This is not a drill. The Zurich location will lock down in thirty minutes and counting. Implement withdrawal strategy Alpha. This is not a drill."