“Oh my god,” he says in between spits of blood. “What is with you Bensons and this need to punch me whenever I’m just trying to help?”
“Help?” I sidestep to avoid the blood he is showering over the floor. I would apologize for causing it, but I am too busy glaring suspiciously at him and edging toward the peeled-back door. “I don’t need help. I need to—”
“Yes, you do,” he says, positioning his body in front of me and grabbing my arms again. He’s surprisingly brave for someone still bleeding profusely from the mouth as he speaks. Surprisingly strong, too. But he isn’t stronger than I am, and if he doesn’t let go in the next few seconds, I will give him a painful reminder of that.
“Get out of my way. Now.”
“You can’t go in there.”
“Watch me.” I try to jerk my knee up into his stomach, but somehow he’s quick enough to let go of me and jump backward, avoiding the blow. “I’m going in there,” I say, voice nearly cracking with frustration. “I need to find Catelyn.”
“Catelyn is fine.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not—she’s with Jaxon, and I just talked to him and they’re both fine. And why the hell would I lie about that, anyway?”
Instead of answering, I squint in the darkness, sizing up the narrow bit of space between Seth and the door. Just enough of an opening to slip past, so long as I am fast enough.
And I am more than fast enough.
I take a few backward strides to give myself enough room to gain momentum.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Move.”
“Don’t.” He steps forward to stop me, and I see my chance. I sprint, and in a flash, I’m past him, through the opening and into the fluorescent-lit room on the other side. I dart to the left. But I make it only maybe five steps before Seth slams into my side and sends me to the floor. He falls with me, and in the next motion, his hand is on my shoulder, pinning me in place. I struggle, but even the smallest movement is much more difficult than it should be. And I should be angry, frustrated by the way he’s managed to stop me—but all I can think is, How?
He shouldn’t have been able to catch me.
He shouldn’t be able to hold me down like this.
It’s one thing when I’m in a training session and I am purposely holding back my strength and speed to even things out. But right now? I am holding nothing back, and it’s all I can do to fight my way out from underneath him and get back to my feet.
What is going on?
What is wrong with me?
And why is he looking at me like he’s the one who’s been caught?
My head is swimming with questions, but before I can ask any of them, we hear voices heading in our direction. Seth grabs my arm. And maybe because I’m still so stunned at the strength in his grip, he manages to pull me back into the destroyed security room. He presses me against the wall and out of sight just as two CCA members round the corner outside. He places a finger against his lips and makes a soft shushing noise. I stare at him silently. There is too much going through my brain for it to form words right now, anyway, between my confusion and that creeping, violent humming that always fills it when someone gets this close to me. Because he is entirely too close. Our shoulders are touching, and he’s turned in toward me, near enough that I can feel the heat from our struggle radiating off him. His right hand is close enough to my arm that with every deep attempt at a silent breath he takes, his fingertips brush my wrist.
I find a focal point—a drop of blood that’s stained the collar of his shirt—and force myself to focus on it until the people outside pass by us.
“I recognized their voices,” I say, still staring at that drop of blood. “Those were CCA members. Why were we hiding from them?”
“There were clones wreaking havoc through there, a dozen of them at least. Mostly contained now, but they made an ugly mess of things before they were stopped.”
I realize he hasn’t answered my question, but what he’s said makes me think of another one: “How did they get in?”
“They didn’t.” His voice is barely a whisper. “They were let in. This broken door here? It’s the only damage anyone’s reported—every entrance from the outside is fine. No destroyed alarms, no wounded guards—nothing. They didn’t have to force anything until they got all the way in here.”
My confusion officially overwhelms that vicious hatred of his closeness, and I abandon my focal point and jerk my eyes up to meet his instead. “Who would have let them in?”
He laughs: a small, savage sound without humor. “Does it matter? Who do you think they’ll blame first?”
I want to look away, because I don’t want him to see the slow realization dawning across my face. Because it seems so obvious now. I should have seen this coming.
Who would let a bunch of clones in, if not another clone? One who the rumors were already saying had gone crazy or something. Who tried to rip off Emily’s arm after everyone else had already stopped fighting.
“Come on,” Seth says. “You need to get out of here—at least until the dust settles.”
I don’t move. “I’m not like those other clones.” I am whispering. I don’t know why.
Who am I afraid will overhear?
And since when am I afraid of anything?
“The president knows that,” I mutter. “Everyone here knows that, whether they want to admit it or not; they can’t—”
“Everyone here does not know that, or think that, or whatever,” Seth interrupts, “which is exactly why we were hiding from those CCA members you heard. They weren’t members you want to be anywhere near right now.”
“I don’t care what they think,” I say, as much to remind himself as me. “Or what they want to accuse me of. I don’t care about any of them.”
“But you might care if they put a few bullets in the back of your head, right?”
I have always been an expert at keeping my face impassive, unreadable—but this time I almost don’t manage it. My silence must give away my shock, though, because it makes Seth sigh, and then try to convince me with one last, hurried explanation.
“Listen,” he says, throwing a cautious glance through the broken door, “things are changing in this place. And I don’t think the president’s orders are going to keep you safe much longer—especially not after what’s happened tonight.”
I think of my conversation with Catelyn. About the city above, and the activated clones, and all the things they’ve burned and ravaged. That city knows I’m a clone. They know my face, and my former politician “father,” and all the well-publicized exploits of my former self. So if I left here, I would be walking into that entire city full of fear and uncertainty about me, into those hordes of people who really know nothing about what has happened to me since the events of seven months ago. They don’t know that I am any different, or that I have been freed from Huxley’s grasp.
“Do you actually think leaving here is going to be any safer for me?” I ask.
I don’t really want an answer, but he gives me one anyway. “At least the air is clearer up there,” he says. “Which is why I’m leaving myself.”
And then he turns and he disappears into the hallway before I even have a chance to ask why.
CHAPTER FOUR
I don’t follow Seth.
I’ve made a point of following as few people as possible these past months. I follow President Cross’s orders. I listen to Catelyn—when I’m in the mood. But Seth? I don’t trust Seth. Not enough to follow him through the dark. Not enough to leave the familiarity of this place—of everything I know—and run with him into a world above that doesn’t promise to be any better than this one.
Even so, every moment that happened in the security room keeps playing over in my mind as I sneak toward Catelyn’s room. Those still bodies. The way Seth moved, too quick and too strong for me to make sense of.
His concern about the CCA members we overheard.
Seth has a tendency to exaggerate, but is that the case this time?
And even if it isn’t, maybe he is still right about the city above being clearer, safer, for now. Because there will be some sort of backlash from what is happening here tonight, I’m sure; all that extra fear and anger that tonight has caused will have to go somewhere. Once Huxley’s clones are gone and their dust has settled, I will be the only place left for it to go—and there isn’t much room in here to hide, even if I decide I want to.
So why am I still here?
I don’t like the next answer I come up with, but it surfaces before I can stop it anyway: Catelyn. I set out to make sure she was okay, and I am not taking Seth’s word for that, either. I don’t trust words. I trust what I can see, and right now I want to see her.
That need to see her is making me feel stupid and human, but I can’t seem to get rid of it, even though I am usually remarkably good at that sort of thing. At minimizing things I don’t want to think about, or “compartmentalizing” things, Catelyn calls it. Usually with a hint of distress, or perhaps jealousy, in her voice.
Most people can’t just shut off the things they don’t want to think about, she tells me. I imagine it is because most people are not like me. Most of them can’t so easily picture each of their thoughts and memories existing as tidy little files, ready to be closed and stored in a brain made of wire and circuit. And they can’t do what I do now, and pull up one of those files—the one that shows me the way to Catelyn’s room, in this case—and bring it to the front center screen of their vision, maximizing it so that all other distractions fall behind it.
Even with my mind focused on that path, my heightened senses are still picking up a frenzy of sounds that don’t seem safe to simply ignore: sounds like frantic voices and steps that still number far too many for this late at night. I haven’t heard gunfire for a while now. I refuse to let myself guess at what that last bit might mean, good or bad. It doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is one foot and then the next. Down this hallway and then that one. Melting into the shadows here to avoid people, darting into a storage room there to avoid more. And all the while I am quiet, so quiet, footsteps falling soft, silent, sure. It’s an odd thrill, being able to move through these halls unnoticed while the remnants of pandemonium echo around me. To know that I am aware of any of the CCA members long before they could possibly notice me.
But it is something of a curse, too. Because hearing everything within such a large radius makes it hard not to at least notice even the sounds I would rather miss—sounds like the muffled crying that makes me pause as I round the next corner. I’m on one of the railed walkways now, a bridgelike path that stretches above the first floor of the main control room below, and from this angle I can easily see where that crying is coming from: There is a desk surrounded by high privacy walls, and underneath it, a person, curled up and whimpering softly in the dark. A girl, I think. Her face is buried in her huddled knees, long dark curls cascading over them. She must feel my eyes center on her, though, because after a moment she glances up with wide eyes—eyes that take me a moment to recognize, because I have never seen them look frightened.
Emily.
I shrink back against the railing behind me, away from the overhead lighting and any chance of her scared and searching eyes finding me.
Compartmentalize, I think. Don’t worry about what she’s doing down there. About why she looks so afraid. And I succeed, again, in pushing Catelyn’s room back to the forefront of my mind. I start back on my interrupted path without a second thought—just as the bridge shakes with the lightest of vibrations. The tremble of footsteps, coming from behind me.
I turn and find two people facing me, standing shoulder to shoulder. Silently. Still as stone. A male and a female, both a little older than me, maybe, and wearing identical smiles that look as though they’ve been painted on.
I didn’t hear them coming. I don’t recognize them either, and they wear none of the symbols the CCA members often have: no bright red emblems stitched onto their jackets, no torches of truth hanging from their necks. The silence stretches on as they look me over, and I have the same uncomfortable feeling I get when I am walking through one of the dozens of security scanners that grant access to the rooms around this place—like I am being taken apart, all my inner workings put on display for everyone to see.
They stop scanning, as suddenly as they appeared out of nowhere, and they exchange a glance.
The female dives.
My body evades her without thought, legs rocketing me to the top of the tall bridge railing and out of reach. But the railing is wickedly narrow, and my balance teeters dangerously for several seconds. I crouch, press the tips of my fingers into the cold metal, and find my center. When I glance down, both of the bridge invaders are staring up at me. Neither of them looks especially surprised that I just leaped six feet straight up to land on this railing. They look almost . . . amused by it. As though I’ve just signaled the start of some sort of game.
And they make the next move: Just as quickly, just as effortlessly as me, they both jump and land on the railing opposite. They stand facing me, balanced on tiptoe and still without speaking. But they don’t need to say anything. I realize now why they were scanning me so closely. Why that girl dived at me.
Because she wanted to see how I would react.
She wanted to make sure I was like them.
They’re clones. And I couldn’t see it immediately, even though they obviously noticed I was different from the start. To me, they were only strange—but normal—humans that I didn’t recognize. This is the first time I’ve encountered others like me, and it makes me feel odd and uncomfortable to have not seen them for what they are. Like I’ve betrayed them, somehow.
Maybe you didn’t recognize them because they aren’t like you at all, that voice from earlier reminds me. And that’s right, isn’t it? I didn’t want to be like them.
The boy has dark splotches of what looks like blood on his sleeve.
I don’t want to be like them.
How strange it is to actually see them, though. To see how human clones really do look to the unexpecting eye. So strange that I am mesmerized, my normally reliable computer of a brain refusing to pull up my original objective for crossing this bridge.
The universe feels as if it has shrunk to nothing except the three of us.
They don’t stay as mesmerized by me, though. Maybe because they don’t know what to do about me now that they’ve realized what I am. And because, a moment later, something in the room below catches their attention anyway, and both their heads turn toward it, instead. Without their gazes locked on me, the universe again expands outward a bit. I become aware of more of the sounds and sights around me—including the one that must have caught their attention below. Emily. She’s asking for help now, talking into the com-bracelet on her wrist, her voice hoarse and interrupted by the occasional whimper that she tries desperately to stifle. Still trying to be proud, even as she crouches under a desk.
Stupid girl, I think, watching the two clones watch her. Doesn’t she realize they hear her? But then I remember that even I didn’t notice them until they were dangerously close to me.
Suddenly I am shivering, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the air vents that just kicked on above me. I feel my balance slipping. I grip tighter, just as the other two clones tumble backward—deliberately and gracefully—off the railing.
It has to be at least a fifteen-foot drop to the ground floor below, but I don’t hear them landing. All I hear is Emily’s loud gasp.
Stupid, stupid girl.
I fall back to the bridge, maybe not as gracefully as the other two but just as quietly. And from it, I watch those other two close in on Emily, and I scan the rest of the room below and see that it’s empty. No one she was so desperately calling has come to help her yet. By the time they reach her, it will likely be too late. Not that I know what those clones are planning to do to her, ex
actly. Because I am not like them. I don’t think like them.
Am I CCA, though? Should I be answering Emily’s cries? She wasn’t calling to me, but I heard her all the same. And I could swear she is looking directly up into my eyes now, even though I am still hidden in shadows and I don’t think she could possibly, truly be seeing any part of me. Why would she look to me, anyway? To her, I am the same as the ones that have cornered her. No, she hasn’t seen me. She is only looking up in desperation—to the heavens, maybe. Saying a prayer to the god Catelyn has tried explaining to me so many times. Looking for one of his angels, perhaps.
But I am not an angel. I am only thinking it, but I feel my mouth moving in sync with the words, as if she was close enough to read my lips. As if I want to make certain she hears my thoughts, even if something is keeping me from saying them aloud.
I close my eyes, and I am back in that training room suddenly. I feel the cut in my neck. The blood trickling down it. I hear her mocking voice. I feel her and all the others pressing close to me. Too close.
I am not your savior. My mouth forms the words slowly, relishing the release of each one in a terrible sort of way.
I am a monster, remember?
I am not coming to save you.
But I have moved. Pressed closer to the railing again. Because from my higher vantage point, I can see something the ones below can’t: a bit of fluorescent light spilling into the far corner of that room below. A door opening. I watch as person after person slips quietly through it, all of them armed, their guns casting giant shadows on the wall beside them. The CCA, answering Emily’s call. More than a dozen of them.
I press my hand to my left temple as my head begins to throb and the room pulses in and out of focus with it.
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