by Kristen Pham
“We’re done with your ideas, Joan,” Elizabeth says.
“Get the hell out,” Sacajawea adds.
“I knew Joan would make a mess of things, but I didn’t think she’d do it so completely,” Joseph says.
“Silence,” Crew shouts. The muttering in the room ceases as all of the students watch Crew with wide eyes. He’s never raised his voice before, and the hairs on the back of my neck rise at the timbre of absolute authority in his tone. “We will hear her.”
I launch straight into my plan before he can change his mind. “The screening of Strand’s promotional vid, To Each, His Place, is on Circe Night. Instead of showing their piece-of-crap propaganda, we show the audience all of the proof we’ve collected against the Strand executives. If we take them down at their own event, not only will their illegal activity become public, but it will also show the strength of our rebellion that we are able to take on Strand on their home turf.”
My classmates’ expressions of irritation begin to thaw. They exchange glances, assessing each other’s reactions.
Finally, Rob speaks up. “If we don’t challenge these bastards at their homes, they’ll have a chance to run before they pay for their crimes.”
Sal and Mary nod along with Rob. The bloodlust in their eyes reminds me of the plans I overheard them making. Jail time is not what they have in mind when they imagine the Strand executives paying for their crimes.
“We could live-stream the confrontations with the Strand executives at the screening,” Marie suggests. “That kind of vid would go viral in hours, even if none of the major news outlets carry it.”
“The plan could work,” Elizabeth concedes. “But we don’t need Joan to execute it.”
“Between Nic and me, we have four tickets to this event, two of which are already in our names. We need at least that many of us inside the venue to make this succeed.”
“We’ll find another way,” Elizabeth seethes, her eyes narrow.
“It’s a Strand event, and the Darwin herself is attending. No one is getting past security without a ticket,” Nic says, speaking up for the first time.
I appeal to the only person whose opinion ultimately matters. “What do you say, Crew?”
“If you had been less obsessed with the headmaster and more involved in the strategy of our rebellion, you would know that I have my own plan for Circe Night that would publicly shame Strand and launch our rebellion,” Crew replies.
My heart sinks at his words, and I imagine myself pacing around the safe house on Circe Night instead of helping start a new era of Throwback rights.
“But your plan is better,” Crew adds, and his toothy smile flashes before his face grows serious again. “I will speak to the other leaders of the rebellion at the Chrysalis tonight.”
For the first time since I found Sparkle hanging in our bathroom, a sliver of excitement squeezes past my grief. “I’ll get it right this time, sir.”
“You’ll follow orders this time, Joan,” he corrects me.
Elizabeth is ready to demand my beheading, but the other students are murmuring to each other, passing along comments about how my plan might work. The energy in the room has turned from anger to possibility.
“Glad to see you’ve got a little of your spirit back,” Harriet says.
I collapse into a chair next to her. “I was sure that I was out of this rebellion for good.”
“Instead, you’re the star of it, as usual,” Elizabeth says from behind me.
She has a right to be mad, this time. But I refuse to drown in my regret right now. There will be time for that later, when the first battle of our rebellion has been won.
After a long day of planning the details of Circe Night, running scenarios over and over, I’m ready to return to the safe house and collapse on my bed.
“Wait up,” Harriet calls.
“What is it? Do you think the vid montage will be too—”
“It’s not about that,” Harriet interrupts. “Justus asked me to invite you to his Morph party.”
“What’s that? Is he spinning in the Lab again?”
“Throwback parents throw their kids Morph parties a few days before their Status meeting. It’s to celebrate his last days before he’s labeled as a Genetic Replicant and the rights and freedoms of childhood end.”
In all of the painful chaos, I’d forgotten that Justus turns eighteen soon, and will have to be tested and receive his lavaliere, like every other Throwback.
“Of course I’ll come,” I reply, though the idea of coming face-to-face with Justus’s family makes my palms sweat.
“Good. Justus made me swear to walk you to the safe house and call if anyone tried to follow you,” Harriet adds as we make our way out of Crew’s classroom and into the Lab.
Nic stands in our path. “I’ve got something to say to you.”
I give Harriet a nod, and she ducks back into the doorway that leads to the passage beneath Crew’s classroom. I might as well let Nic vent his rage now and get it over with.
As soon as she’s out of earshot, I expect Nic to explode, but he stares at me, his expression unreadable in this dim underground world.
I can’t take the suspense any longer. “Go ahead. Let me have it.”
Nic stops in his tracks. “You’re an idiot.”
“Try something new.”
I’m ready for the public shaming portion of my punishment to be over.
“It is new.”
“Elizabeth already said that.”
“But she said you’re an idiot for going after the headmaster without an approved plan by Crew and the rest of the team. I’m calling you an idiot because you didn’t ask me to help you.”
My mouth opens and shuts a couple of times. “You would have said no.”
“Wrong. I would have known you would go after the headmaster no matter what anyone said, and I would have been there to make sure you succeeded.”
“Well, thanks, I think.”
“Did you even think to come to me?” he asks, staring into my eyes with an intensity that makes me uncomfortable.
“No.”
“You could have been hurt. Killed. You should have let me be there in case anything went wrong. You had no one to back you up.”
“I had Justus. I’m okay.”
Nic’s face contorts, and I wait for his biting reply. Instead, he shakes his head and walks away, leaving me standing alone in the tunnel until Harriet joins me.
“Let’s go,” she says.
Our walk to the safe house is silent, as I turn my conversation with Nic over in my mind. I have the uneasy feeling that I said something wrong, but I’m not sure what it was.
After Harriet drops me at the apartment and leaves to check on the Lab rats, I pace the small room, trying to calm my breathing. But memories of Sparkle and Adam and the headmaster and Lexi cycle through my mind on endless repeat.
Enough.
Now that I’m officially still part of the rebellion, I can spend as much time as I want inside the Chrysalis instead of the safe house. At least there are endless hallways to pace instead of the tiny circumference of the apartment.
On the third floor, Marie’s workspace is empty. It’s close to curfew, so the floor is pretty quiet, except for a few muffled voices nearby. I follow the sound to a room with glass walls on every side of it.
Inside, Marie is using a shiny silver device covered in buttons and smiling at Harriet, who is doing an old dance called the electric slide. Her moves are stilted, as if she’s lost her ever-present grace. The two look at each other and burst out laughing.
Seeing Harriet and Marie bonding without me makes my heart squeeze. I shrug off my petty jealousy and join them inside. The wooden floor is scratched and burned in places. This space must have been created to safely test the weapons and gadgets made by scientists working in the Chrysalis.
“It was supposed to be a surprise. We were going to wrap it up and everything,” Marie says, handing me the silver devic
e she’s holding.
“What is it?” I ask, turning the strange contraption over to examine it.
It looks like a retro video game controller, the kind kids used before holographic, virtual reality technology made controllers obsolete.
“In the right hands, it’s a powerful weapon,” Harriet says. “Marie has perfected the Manipulator that Dennis has been trying to develop.”
“Once Harriet gave me the idea to make this more like a remote control than a gun, everything fell into place,” Marie says.
“Try it,” Harriet urges me.
I point the device at her and push the thumb pad in a slow circle. Harriet spins with it. Marie shows me the different functions that the Manipulator can perform on an individual.
“You can’t control fine motor skills, like writing, but basic movements, like walking or dancing or freezing in place are all possible,” she explains, her voice rising with her excitement.
“This is incredible. Has Crew seen it? Think of the possible ways we could use technology like this!”
Marie takes the Manipulator back from me. “Harriet thinks we should keep this to ourselves.”
“For now,” Harriet adds. “While we figure out who to trust.”
“It would be dangerous if Rob and his buddies got their hands on this,” I agree. “But we could secretly show it to Crew, so he knows what we have to work with.”
A wary glint flashes in Harriet’s eyes. “Something about how Jo questions his values in the recordings on her tablet rubs me wrong. We’ve only known him a few months.”
I’m about to disagree, not wanting to let the vague misgivings of a paranoid actress guide our behavior, but Marie nods.
“Let’s field-test it first,” she says. “I don’t want to make a promise we can’t deliver.”
“What did you have in mind?”
Marie hands the Manipulator back to me. “You’re the creative one. The executives at Strand are all going to be confronted. But we still don’t have anything on the headmaster.”
“It’s time to change that,” Harriet says.
That’s when I understand that this is a gift. My cheeks burn at the memory of my earlier jealousy as my thumbs stroke the smooth metal device. My friends have been working for hours, all to help me.
“I thought I ruined our chances of ever taking the headmaster down,” I say softly.
“You were wrong. It happens from time to time,” Harriet says.
Tears fill my eyes. There is so much the headmaster has to answer for. And now I have the means to make sure that happens.
Chapter 43
It’s the final day of shooting for the Strand promotional vid, an event that I planned to skip to avoid bumping in to Lexi and facing her wrath. She must know that I escaped Adam’s clutches, and she is definitely aware that I was planning to use the video footage I collected to expose her and the headmaster for their illegal prostitution ring. But she’s made no effort to find me, so Crew thinks it’s safe for me to assume that she’s leaving me alone for a reason.
For the Circe Night plan to work, I need to be sure that the vid is polished and that my invitation to the screening is still valid. That means showing up on Strand’s set to tape any final footage needed for the vid.
As Nic and I wait for the car to pick us up, I try to even out my shallow breathing.
“Relax. I’ve got your back this time, so everything will be fine,” Nic says.
“Are you sober?”
Nic’s body tenses at my question. Our car pulls up, and he stares straight ahead as he climbs inside. On the ride over, I run potential scenarios over and over in my mind if Strand security tries to carry me off. This is a mistake. I know too much. Lexi will retire me if she gets the chance.
My breathing comes faster again. Nic’s warm hand covers mine, and I nearly jerk away in surprise. Why is he being nice after I insulted him? His touch is oddly comforting, a reminder that I’m part of more than a rebellion; I’m part of a group that watches out for each other. I turn my hand so that our palms touch and squeeze his hand back.
“Joan, there’s something I should have said a long time ago,” Nic says, leaning toward me.
“What?”
“Thank you,” his voice comes out in a hoarse whisper.
“Thank me by staying clean.”
“That’s not what I’m thanking you for. Well, it is, sort of, but it’s more than that. You’ve given me something to believe—”
Nic’s clumsy speech is cut off when our car stops at Strand’s studios. I watch his face, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn’t. Nic, at a loss for what to say, stumbling over his words?
I disconnect my hand from his and give him a half shrug, as uncomfortable with the fervent sincerity in his eyes as he seems to be.
We walk onto the Strand lot, and my fear falls away as I prepare for another performance. Not the one Blake needs me to deliver, but the one that I have to provide for Lexi. I am whole, unbroken in spite of her best effort. I have to hide the terrible pain I’ve endured over the past few days because it will only give her satisfaction to see me suffer.
The set is crawling with actors and stagehands. Blake presides over it all, enjoying his complete control of all of his minions. He deigns to give Nic and me a brief nod as he notes our arrival.
There’s a new Sofia managing the actors on set. She’s much younger than the one who helped me access the list of Strand executives. She walks over to Nic and me, her finger tapping nervously on the edge of her tablet.
“Blake needs final up-close shots of each of you. Stand by. He’ll call you when he’s ready.”
Her eyes connect with mine, and I follow her as she makes her way toward the back of the set.
“I have a message for you,” she says when we’re a little distance away from the crowd.
“Is it from the stage manager who was here before you? Is she okay?”
The Sofia shakes her head. “My message is from the Darwin.”
I stop breathing.
“She says thank you for helping her root out the traitor on set,” the Sofia says. She gulps. “She’s been replaced by me. My predecessor has been taken out with the rest of the trash, as I will be if I betray my betters.”
Tears swim in the Sofia’s eyes. She must be repeating exactly what Lexi told her to say. Likely Lexi is watching my reaction to this encounter from a camera somewhere nearby, so I keep my face immobile.
“Anything else?”
I want to offer some kind of comfort to the shaking girl in front of me, who Lexi clearly terrified, but showing her any kindness will only put her in danger.
“Every move you have made has been in service to Strand, even if you don’t know it. The Darwin is glad to see that you are such a well-crafted marionette, but when your usefulness ends, you will end,” the Sofia says, before fleeing my company.
I tap into my acting training and access a moment when I felt in complete control. I recite my winning speech from the year I won the national debate championship under my breath as I push the implications of what the Sofia told me out of my mind.
The rest of rehearsal must go well because Blake gives me an approving pat after he gets the final shots he needs for his vid. Nic leads me to the car that takes us back to our dorm.
As soon we arrive, I run. My feet slam against the concrete sidewalk, and I focus on the sound. Another death on my conscience, this one even more directly my fault than Sparkle’s. I don’t even know the name of the Sofia who gave up her life to give me the names of Strand’s senior executives.
Miles later, I notice that someone is running beside me. Nic has kept pace the entire time, and from his heavy breathing, he isn’t used to this much exercise. I’m about to tell him to leave me alone when a headache slams into me with the force of a sledgehammer. Another gift from Lexi.
It stops me as surely as if I’d been hit by a train. I curl up in a trembling, sweaty ball on the sidewalk.
“Headache
,” I croak.
I’ve been expecting this punishment from Lexi ever since the night I was sold to Adam, but I’d hoped maybe she’d already sent the signal for my headache while I was holed up in the safe house where my chip wasn’t accessible.
“I’ll take you to the Chrysalis for the painkiller,” Nic says, hauling me to my feet.
“Twenty-Fourth and Madison,” I whisper, unable to explain why I need to go to the safe house as the pain in my head increases.
Nic nods, not questioning my cryptic instruction. I stumble, half-conscious, at his side. After a few blocks, I’m forced to let him put his hand around my waist so I don’t collapse.
“I owe you.”
Nic huffs out a laugh. “You never owe me anything. You’ve already given me something I can never repay.”
I slip in and out of consciousness as the pain zigzags through my brain like lightning strikes. We finally reach the corner where the safe house is located. I tell Nic the apartment number, and he has to lift my hand to the pad on the door that unlocks it because I’m too weak to raise a finger.
He crosses the threshold, and the pain is wiped from my head like someone pressed the “delete” key. I sag in relief. Nic puts me on the couch and collapses beside me.
The absence of pain makes me warm and drowsy. Even the guilt festering in my gut can’t touch me. My head lolls backward. Right before I fall asleep, I crack an eye open.
“Thanks. We’re even. And you need to work out more.”
A low sound that I think might be Nic’s laughter is the lullaby that sends me straight to sleep.
The light in the room is dim when I crack my eyes open. Nic is sitting in the only chair in the apartment, watching me.
“You stayed.” The pain in my head is gone, but the leftover dullness remains. “You should have gone home. I’m fine here.”
“This is where I wanted to be,” Nic says. “Your phone beeped a lot. You might want to check.”
I rub my eyes and check my phone to find it full of holographic messages, and one message from Justus reminding me about his Morph party tonight. I’m almost as nervous to officially meet his family as I am about Circe Night.