I throw him off, hurling him toward a nearby boulder. He hits it and bounces back, quick and smooth, as though the stone were made of rubber. Too quick. I can’t dodge, and next thing I know, he’s hit me hard enough that I can’t keep my footing in the slick soil. I land on my back. I taste blood on my lips, feel it warming a path down my chin. The ground I sink into is cold, and I expect burning in my mind—that searing, deadening buzz of noise—to counter it. But it doesn’t come. Not yet.
Seth looms over me a moment later, looking entirely too much like he thinks he’s won.
I hook a foot around his ankle, and jerk. He drops like a cat landing on its feet, his hands catching him lightly against the ground. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He springs up and back in the same instant I spring forward. He’s fast enough to deflect my next attack, but I’m the one with the momentum now, and so he doesn’t manage more than deflecting; over and over again my fists meet his hands as they catch my strikes just in time to spare his face. I don’t let up. I keep him moving backward, and the two of us are a violently graceful blur as we press deeper into the woods, navigating through trees and over roots without missing a step.
A crash of thunder distracts me for a moment, and he finally manages to escape my driving attack. He ducks, and then lunges behind me, and by the time I spin around, he’s somehow already disappeared into the fog.
The rain is pounding down now. Even under the canopy of trees, enough of it pours into my face to near blind me. I start to reach up to block it, but decide I’d rather keep both my hands free, and so I close my eyes and focus my other senses instead.
And I can focus them, I realize in an exhilarating rush. Even with the taste of blood on my lips, and with the fog pressing in and making me feel trapped, vulnerable, as anxious as if that gray and rolling mist were a solid wall. Even as my muscles throb, and violent twitches clench and unclench my fists, anticipating. Ready for a fight, as they always are.
But it’s different this time.
This time, I am not afraid of myself, or of what I might accidentally do if my mind were to slip into that black and empty place.
Because my mind isn’t slipping, no matter how hard I try to push it.
And the feeling that I am completely in control for once causes a surge of something incredible; some beautiful combination of relief and happiness and . . . power. And it makes me even more sure of the plans I discussed with Angie, just as I hoped it would.
I focus my senses even closer, just because I can. Just because there is nothing in my way now. Soon I hear quiet breathing. A too-fast heartbeat, a foot lifting quietly, cautiously from the mud.
There.
To my left.
I turn just as Seth explodes through the fog.
I don’t bother to evade this time; I just let him hit and push me against the trunk of the nearest tree. He’s drawn a tranquilizer gun from somewhere, and he presses the tip of it against the hollow of my throat, while his free hand braces against the trunk and he leans in closer. The added threat of the gun doesn’t trigger even the slightest tingling in my brain, and even his closeness doesn’t seem to be bothering me as much as it normally does. “Enough,” he says. “I don’t know what sort of frustrations you’re trying to work out here, but we both know how violent confrontations tend to end for you, and I don’t particularly want any part of my body broken today.”
But he’s so perfectly wrong this time that I can’t help but laugh.
A genuine laugh too—one that, for once, isn’t laced with contempt, which makes it feel foreign and strange in my throat. Seth must find it equally strange, because the pressure of his gun slips a little. “Oh my god,” he says.
“What?”
“I was kidding before, but it’s true, isn’t it? You really have gone insane. Completely out of your mind.”
My smile turns to a scowl as I grab his wrist and twist the gun away from my neck.
“That’s better,” he says, wincing a bit as he tries to pull his wrist free. “That kid-in-a-candy-store grin you had going on was really freaking me out.”
“Don’t you understand?” I say, exasperated. I slide out from beneath him and step away, pacing several feet before turning to see him still giving me a confused look.
“Clearly I do not.”
“It wasn’t going to end the way it normally does.” I rush back, grab his gun too quickly for him to protest, and press it against my throat again.
“Insane,” he repeats.
“This? This didn’t even faze me. And it could have been something much more deadly than a tranquilizer, and I don’t think I would have lost control over it, either.” He’s still just staring at me, so I spell it out as clearly as possible: “Leah fixed whatever was causing those blackouts. So if I break any part of you now, it’s because I want to.”
“. . . But you don’t want to, right?”
“Not at the moment. Though it could change.”
“Right. So, maybe give me my gun back? Just in case.” I roll my eyes but throw the gun at him—hard enough that he has to draw back to catch it. He holsters it at his hip and pulls his shirt back down over it. “There was probably an easier way to test this, you know. A more normal way.”
“Well,” I say, smirking, “so much of my life is already easy and normal, I thought I needed a change.”
My sarcasm brings his easy smile partway back. “Understandable,” he says, tilting his face back and letting the rain wash over it. He sweeps away a streak of mud across his cheek, revealing a dark purple bruise underneath. I cringe a little at the sight of my handiwork, even knowing that he likely barely feels it and that it will be healed within hours.
“That looks terrible,” I say.
“My face never looks terrible,” he replies, and then turns and starts back toward the house.
I follow without really thinking about it, in a silence that feels simple, more comfortable than anything I’m used to with him. It’s so strange that I almost have to stop, to try to process and understand it. The second I slow down, though, he glances back and says, “Angie said the two of you had an interesting conversation last night. Told me I should ask you for the details. Is this what it was about?”
“It’s related.”
“Well?” He glances over at me. “The suspense is killing me.”
I feel suddenly . . . hesitant. Nervous? Something about the way he is watching me makes me worry that I haven’t thought this plan through enough, that I won’t be able to convince him. And as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t want to do this without him.
So I have to try.
“You said we were the same last night,” I tell him, “and we aren’t completely, maybe, but there is something that sets us apart from Huxley’s clones, isn’t there? You managed to spend the past twelve years at the CCA because Angie had disabled the mind-control program in your brain, and so you could control your actions, make yourself human enough to fit in. And that’s the difference.”
“The difference?”
“Between humans and monsters. It all comes down to control. Free will.”
Everyone has monstrous thoughts, but it’s what you act on that makes the difference.
“Have you been reading Angie’s philosophy books or something?”
“That’s what makes Huxley’s clones so terrifying,” I say, ignoring his attempt to turn this into yet another joke. “They aren’t choosing their actions for themselves. Some of them fight the mind control, but most can’t break it at all, and so their constant existence is just like me in one of those blind rages.”
Seth gives me another sidelong look, but doesn’t seem to think I’ve said anything particularly revolutionary. My mind is racing again, though, all the parts of my ideas and plans popping up almost faster than I can compute them. It’s a long, confusing moment before I manage to slow my brain enough to continue our conversation.
“But what if that wasn’t the case
?” I ask.
He stops walking then, his interest looking a little more piqued—though still tentative.
“Imagine if they were completely in control,” I say. “Like you. Like . . . like me now.” The end of my sentence trails off, my voice turning almost anxious in a way that makes it sound like it isn’t my own; I think I’ve somehow managed to frighten even myself with this ambition I am feeling, with the thought that maybe this is who this Violet Benson is supposed to be.
Because I am already picturing it now: a world where people actually can’t tell the difference between someone like me and the other, normal members of that family I was supposed to help put back together. I could exist in that world. Freely. Unafraid. And without violent clones urging it on, maybe the fighting between the CCA and Huxley could stop—at least enough that I could avoid getting caught up in it.
“I can imagine it, I guess,” Seth says slowly, “but what are the chances of that ever actually happening?”
I cut in front of him and force him to stop. “This is what I talked to Angie about. She can do this—write some sort of program that could disable the mind control in the clones, same as she did you all those years ago, minus the memory wipe.” The look he gives me is wary, uneasy. But I’m used to making people uneasy, so I don’t back down. “So those clones will be what Huxley actually promised their families: stronger, healthier humans. Not remotely controlled machines.”
We reach the edge of the yard in silence, and then the porch in silence, and then the front door still in silence, before I finally lose my patience. I grab the sleeve of his shirt and pull him around to face me. I expect him to fight, but he doesn’t. He just looks at me.
The porch creaks. Through the old wood planks with their barely intact joists, I can feel his weight shifting from foot to foot.
“There are a lot of ways it could go really badly,” he finally says. “You realize that, right?”
“But what if it goes really well?”
He holds the door open for me and then follows me inside, to where most of the safe-house group is gathered around the kitchen table. Their conversation stops abruptly. Angie’s eyes rove over the bruise on Seth’s face, the mud on his clothes, and then to the trail of dirty footprints he’s tracked in.
And she may not be his actual mother, but she still looks as if she is considering grounding him.
“What in the world?”
“She started it,” Seth says with a nod at me, before slumping down into a chair in the corner.
“I thought you two were going to talk,” Leah says.
“We did.”
Angie clears her throat purposefully. “Perfect,” she says, throwing one last stern look at Seth before turning to me. “So you’ve told him your idea?”
I nod.
“And I’ve told everyone else, so now we’re all on the same page.”
“Are we?” James says, frowning. “I don’t think we landed on the same page at all.”
I somewhat expected him to disagree with anything I might have come up with, just based on the way he acted toward me before. But I’m a little surprised to see Tori—who struck me as more reserved—agreeing so quickly and enthusiastically with him.
“We were done with this sort of thing, Angie,” she says. “You said it yourself: no more playing god.”
“People come out of retirement all the time,” Angie says with a dismissive wave. She seems much more cheerful, much more confident, than she did last night—though her eyes are still distant, not really meeting anyone else’s.
“But what if something goes wrong?” Tori argues. “These are sentient brains you’re talking about messing with, whether for their benefit or not. What if you end up doing irreversible damage?”
She is looking at Angie, but an answer surges out of me before I can stop it. “I would rather be damaged—I would rather be dead—than a mindless slave in Huxley’s army.”
“And what makes you think you get to speak for all clones?” James asks.
I don’t feel a blackout coming, but I have to move my fingers to the count of ten all the same, trying to come up with a civil answer. In the end I don’t have to say anything, though, because Seth answers for me.
“If anybody in this room is allowed to speak for them,” he says quietly, his eyes shifting toward James, “it would be her.”
He leans back against the wall and folds his arms across his chest, but James doesn’t say anything to that. I don’t really know what to say either; I’m not used to anyone other than Catelyn sticking up for me. And I may be getting more and more used to Seth doing things like this, but I still avoid his gaze, and I turn back to Tori instead.
“Something has already gone wrong,” I say. “I . . . I’m proof of that.” Somehow I manage to keep my voice soft—because I haven’t forgotten the way she was so quick to jump at my every move when I first arrived. And because, this time at least, I actually care about not making an enemy. We’re going to need all the people on our side that we can get.
Tori’s frown doesn’t budge. But at least she manages to meet my eyes—even if she says nothing when she does. It might be a silent understanding passing between us, I’m not sure; I don’t know her well enough to read her.
“So, I still vote we go for it,” Leah says, interrupting that silence. “Because she’s right: I don’t know if things can get much worse than what Huxley’s already done.”
“There are plenty of worse things that Huxley can do—particularly to us,” James says. “Even if we did manage to pull this off, what do you think Huxley’s retaliation will be? Do you think they’re going to give us a medal for helping them see the error of their ways?”
“Of course I don’t think that, idiot.”
“I would have thought that you of all people would know better than to do anything to make them angry again.”
I don’t understand what he means, but the words make Leah jump to her feet. “Shut your mouth,” she warns, and she looks like she might be thinking of shutting it for him—but Angie steps between them first.
“Enough,” she says. “Both of you.”
James doesn’t argue with her; he just turns and leaves the room. Tori hesitates for only a moment before following him.
“They’ll come around,” Angie says to no one in particular. “They always do.”
Leah is still breathing hard, whatever enraged her making her face flush even brighter than her wild hair and makeup. I find myself wanting to distract her, to calm her down somehow. Maybe because she took my violent rages away first. I don’t know. But whatever the reason, I hurry to pull her away from her anger and back into the conversation. “Angie said she thought the two of you could write the virus,” I say, “but then we’ll need a way to spread it. What do you know about the way Huxley manages to remotely control its clones?”
She grabs on to the question like a drowning person who’s just been tossed a life preserver. “A lot,” she says, taking a deep breath and bracing her arms against the computer desk before continuing in a rush. “Huxley has its own secure network, hosted on controller servers spread throughout, and in between, all the cities it operates in. And all those controllers are linked together to provide uninterrupted access to the clones. Think of each clone as like an access point—a node on the Huxley wireless network that these controllers host. Because Huxley had to be able to access them constantly for their mind-uploading sessions. . . . Or, that was the original reason for the extensive network, at least.”
“So if the virus was unleashed on this network, there’s a chance it could spread to each of these . . . access points?”
She doesn’t immediately dismiss the idea, but she doesn’t look especially convinced, either. “It won’t be that simple,” she says. “Even if you could somehow break into that network, there are a lot of security measures in place, in each individual clone computer-brain, that this uploaded virus would have to outsmart.”
“It’s lucky for us, then
, that you’re one of those first-rate programmers from Huxley, right?”
She stares at me for a long time, almost as if she is surprised that I was listening when she said that the other day. A slow, wry grin starts to spread across her face. “I learned from the best,” she says, exchanging a look with Angie. Then she sighs.
“So, I guess we’d better get started, then. This could take a while.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The day after the meeting in the kitchen, I corner Seth as soon as he steps out of his room. “You can’t avoid Jaxon forever,” I say.
“Actually, I probably could.”
“I know you’re worried about him.”
“I still have contacts at the CCA. I know he’s fine.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to see that for yourself?”
He scowls at me. But then he gets lucky, because Leah sticks her head around the corner and calls for him, and so he manages to slip away.
On the second day I try a more honest approach, and I tell him the real reason I want him to contact his brother.
Because while Angie and Leah are working on their part, I argue, Seth and I should be figuring out other details—such as what we’re going to do after this virus has done its job. Because once we manage to successfully free the clones from Huxley’s control—assuming we do—that won’t change all the years that came before. This city is stained with violence, marred with the fear and uncertainty that’s come from living in the shadow of its unpredictable clones. If there is ever going to be a chance for me to live a normal life here, the people of Haven will have to be convinced of what we’ve done, shown that they don’t need to be afraid anymore.
And this is where we need Jaxon to help us. Jaxon and his mother both, if we can convince them to trust our plan. Because the CCA has the resources, the public reach, we need to help transition the city toward peace.
It seems obvious and worth trying, to me, but the entire time I’m attempting to make my case for this part of the plan, Seth doesn’t move; he stays the same as I found him on the front porch: leaning back in a wicker rocking chair with his feet propped up on the splintered porch railing, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up and down over his eyes.
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