by Meg Collett
Bode cursed. “I’m letting Hazen know she needs to be on more than just a management inhaler. He can bring the meds when he arrives this afternoon.”
“Until she—”
“She’s dying,” he snapped. Wren cringed, and the muscles in her neck twitched in anticipation. She knew enough to sense a fight brewing. “How long do her tests say she has?”
“Twenty-three days.”
Give or take a few hours.
Bode put a finger on her chin and tipped her face back toward him. “You’re going to be fine. I’ll make sure you get the medicine to treat that cough better.”
“But it won’t cure me?”
“Not until you hold up your end of the contract,” Hutton said. “The new medicine is just a glorified pause button.”
“Hutton, lay off,” Roman snapped from behind Wren. “You’re scaring her.”
“The pill will be stronger than the inhaler we planned to give you,” Bode explained. “But it won’t cure you. That will be Pacem’s job.”
“So this pill I’ll be taking every day isn’t Pacem, but it’ll keep me from dying?” It sounded wonderful to Wren. It sounded like a miracle.
“Exactly. After the show, we’ll get you on Pacem. It has proven to be ninety-nine percent effective in the South American clinical trials,” Bode said. “Even on terminal patients.”
“What about that one percent?” Wren asked. She’d always been unlucky.
“You’ll be fine.” A small smile crinkled the corners of Bode’s mouth. “Ready to stand?”
Only after she’d dipped her chin in agreement did Bode scoop her up, cradling her body against his chest, and set her feet on the floor. She braced herself to sway as she stood, but she was solid on her feet. As she grinned at Bode, her eyes caught on a brown smear across his white shirt.
Heat spread up her cheeks, and she looked away.
“Good?” Bode asked.
“I’m fine.”
“She probably needs to rest.” Unable to meet Roman’s gaze as he spoke, Wren’s eyes traced a line over the floor to his feet.
“You’re probably right,” Hutton said, her voice dangerously sweet. “She can have a nice, relaxing shower before her alterations start this afternoon. Bode, why don’t you go grab her a smoothie from the kitchen?”
Wren wanted to tell them not to go to the trouble, but right on cue, her stomach gurgled with hunger.
“On it,” Bode said, disappearing deeper into the penthouse.
“It was good to meet you,” Roman said.
For a second, her eyes met his, and a blush wrapped around her neck. “You too.”
“All right, then.” Hutton clapped her hands. “Follow me, Wren. We don’t have long before the medical team arrives.”
Effectively dismissing everyone, Hutton strode out of the room, her long strides quickly carrying her away. Wren scuttled after her, with Roman’s eyes hot on her back.
What he thought of her, Wren couldn’t begin to imagine, but her opinion of him drastically differed from the crush-like one she’d formed while watching him on television.
Wren and Hutton walked down a white-paneled hall off the entry. Elaborate molding ran along the seam between the ceiling and wall, and a side table with silver trays and pink flowers sat in front of a window. Outside, a million lights lit up the sun-soaked sky. Wren peered out at the city teeming with people, silently buzzing trams, and cars that zipped down the barely used streets.
This high in the sky, she felt untouchable.
Farther down the hall, Hutton stopped in front of double doors and said, “This is you.”
Not knowing what to say, Wren forced herself to move away from the window. Hutton swung the doors open to reveal a master suite.
Wren placed a boot on the cream carpet inside and was amazed by how her weight sank into the deep weave. She ogled the massive bed topped with mounds of cushy pink pillows like a frosted birthday cake. The walls were painted a deep, soothing gray, with more of the rich, white molding along the ceiling. Windows spanned the length of the side wall, displaying more of the city skyline.
“Wow,” Wren murmured, taking it all in.
“It’s just a bedroom.” Hutton cut across the room in three quick strides and jerked the curtains closed.
“Who owns this place?” Wren couldn’t comprehend anyone having enough money to buy all this. But then, she didn’t own anything either. Almost everything in her life—her Sunshine Heights life—was borrowed from the government.
Ignoring her question, Hutton opened a door to the right and flipped on the lights. Wren caught a glimpse of sleek tiles and a massive shower, which Hutton turned on. She then retrieved a robe from a linen closet beside the shower and shook out the wrinkles with a flick of her wrist. She hung it on a hook.
“You can shower before we get started,” she said as she strode into the bedroom. “You’re going to have a long day.”
It had already been the longest day of Wren’s life.
“Or,” Bode said from the doorway, a tall glass of green smoothie goo in hand, “you should probably wait and start the alterations tomorrow, like my brother thought you were going to, Hutton.”
“Why wait when we can start today?”
“Because Hazen would like to meet her first.”
Hutton scoffed. She rounded the room like a whirlwind, folding down the covers on the bed, straightening a heaping stack of magazines on the desk, and dusting a hand down the curtain fabric.
Wren’s attention fell to the glossy magazines. Even from across the room, she spotted Sloane’s alluring blue eyes staring up from the cover. “Will I learn how to act like her from magazines?”
Hutton stopped in the middle of the room, hands on her hips as she examined her work. “Those and my personal training. I have methods.”
From the doorway, Bode snorted. Hutton ignored him.
Behind the beautiful smirk and expensive clothes Sloane wore in the photographs, she’d had a real life, one Wren would have to take over. She needed more than just a few magazines. “Won’t I need something a little less … superficial than magazines?”
“There’s one thing you’ll soon learn about Sloane Lux,” Hutton said. “She was only superficial because no one cared to see anything deeper. She became a walking husk, a shell that directors, producers, and photographers used to sell their shit. There was nothing more to her than what you see in those magazines because that’s all people wanted her to be.”
“That can’t be true. She was alive.”
“It’s not that she was superficial, Wren,” Bode said. He and Hutton exchanged some silent communication. “Nobody asked her deeper questions, so Sloane gave shallow answers. Nobody knew her real life or who she really was. You don’t need to know either, at least not to do this well.”
Hutton nodded, and Wren thought Bode, like Hutton, had once been close to Sloane.
“There was certainly more to her,” Hutton added, “but she didn’t show that side to anyone. Even Roman and her closest friends knew nothing about her toward the end. Like Bode said, don’t worry about that side of her. Just focus on the shell. Getting Sloane’s knack for contempt and disdain down perfectly will be harder than you think.”
“We know there will be an adjustment period after your alterations. These first few days of training will start slow in order for you to acclimate.”
“Not too slow. The show’s red carpet is less than three weeks away, and there will be approximately a thousand reporters hurling questions at you. You’ll need to be perfect.” Hutton walked briskly over to Bode. He handed her the green smoothie, which Hutton, in turn, offered to Wren. “This is a smoothie paste specially formulated to your nutritional needs since you’re a bit malnourished. Please drink as much as you can. We need you to look curvier.” Delicate wrinkles crinkled her smooth brow. “Of course, don’t drink too much. Otherwise, you’ll get fat.”
Wren took the chilled glass, her mouth open to ask how much was too
much and how perfect was perfect enough for the red carpet, but Hutton spoke first. “If you need anything, use the intercom to buzz for me.”
“See you in a bit, Wren,” Bode said and gave her a small wave as he walked away.
Hutton prepared to close the doors on her, but Wren panicked at the thought. “Hutton?”
“Yes?”
“How does Roman know I’m replacing Sloane? I understand how Bode knows, since he’s connected with VidaCorp, and you were Sloane’s assistant, but why Roman? Is it because I’ll be working closest with him on the show?”
Hutton’s hand tightened around the door handle, but not before Wren saw how her fingertips trembled. “He had to be in on the secret from the start. There was no way we could keep him out.”
“Because he was Sloane’s boyfriend?”
“No. He was a last-minute addition to divert attention away from Sloane’s temporary absence around town while we found a suitable replacement.”
“Then why did he have to know?”
“Because he found her body.”
7:
Hutton pulled herself together with a quick hand over her hair and a sharp squaring of her shoulders. “Anyways, chop-chop. Come out when you’re ready.”
She closed the door, sealing Wren inside.
Her breathing hitched in her chest, but she couldn’t afford another attack. Her eyes darted from the closed door to the lavish room around her, and her thoughts spun just as fast. Roman had found Sloane’s body. She couldn’t fathom how awful that must have been for him, but she couldn’t shake the look in his eyes or the anger in his voice. If he’d loved Sloane, why was he here, allowing them to use Sloane? Had he cared so little for her?
She bit her lip and turned her attention to the smoothie in her hand. Stomach growling, she tip-toed over the sea of carpet to the table and perched on the edge of the chair nervously, as if Links might burst in and arrest her. She took a tentative sip of the smoothie; it was chalky and blander than the food packets she normally ate, but she drank it all.
When she was finished, Wren pushed away from the table, her stomach straining against her skin.
A glint of silver on the glass-fronted dresser caught her eye. It was a picture frame.
The picture was of Sloane smiling on a red carpet. She wore a body-hugging, low-cut black dress with a high slit. Her hair was a mess of blonde waves. She practically melted into Roman, his wolfish gaze pinned on the photographer as if he’d been caught unawares and didn’t like it. Sloane’s eyes were cast upward at him, a natural smile on her lips.
Wren felt like the biggest fraud in the world.
She’d mistaken the apartment for a VidaCorp safe house, but it was likely Sloane’s personal home, if the picture was any indication. On one hand, it made sense Wren would stay here to maintain appearances and keep people from noticing that anything was awry. But her heart sped up and sweat coated her palms. Sloane’s body had been found in her apartment. Wren didn’t know which room. Maybe it had been this bedroom.
Wren’s mind flashed to the rust-stained floor in her apartment building, and she scurried into the bathroom. She slammed the door like Sloane’s ghost was on her heels.
Inside, she froze. The bathroom was bigger than her entire apartment back home. Steam poured from the running shower, water wastefully slipping unused down the drain. White granite topped the counters, and the gold-infused heated tiles activated beneath Wren’s feet as she turned to take in the opulent room that had been scrubbed of anything Sloane.
Wren avoided her reflection in the mirror above the counter and peeled off her dirty clothes. She scrunched them up into a tight ball on top of the commode. She could have thrown them out, but she worried she might need them if Hutton realized her mistake in choosing her. Just thinking about returning home to Sunshine Heights chilled her so much that not even the heated tiles could warm her.
She fumbled with the shower’s glass door until she figured out it slid, not swung. Dipping her toe first to test the water, she stepped under the hot massaging stream. As soon as the water drenched her hair, Wren counted down the seconds out of habit. But she didn’t have to worry about water quotas here. She could stay beneath the water for hours if she wanted to. Even as the thought entered her head, she began to work in the pre-programmed shampoo that mingled with the water. Her hair clumped and tangled around her fingers. She tried not to look down, but she felt the dirt and grime swirling around her toes and down the drain. She washed her hair twice, switched the setting to a conditioner, and scrubbed her body pink. All the while, the water remained hot and the muscles in her neck relaxed beneath the massaging jets.
When she stepped out onto the bathmat, Sloane’s scent filled the bathroom. Wren took a deep, full breath. A person’s clean, washed scent was intimate knowledge.
Wren retrieved the robe Hutton had hung on the wall beside the shower and wrapped it around herself. She wandered to a set of French doors off the side of the bathroom and discovered the walk-in closet. The bathroom was grand, but the closet was bigger, grander, and completely stocked. Evening gowns and dresses and pantsuits and an entire wall of shoes and purses and a rack of jeans and a display of shirts rolled up and arranged by color and a spinning rack of hats and a pop-up table full of sunglasses. It was enough to clothe an entire suburb.
This was one room that hadn’t been scrubbed of Sloane. It practically screamed the celebrity’s name.
Wren retreated, easing the doors shut on Sloane’s ghost, and returned to the bathroom. She retrieved her old clothes and washed them out in the sink. The water instantly turned brown, but she washed until it ran clear. She hung them on the shower door to dry.
At least now, if they sent her away, she would have something clean to wear home.
Before she left the bathroom, Wren forced herself to look at her reflection. That morning, she’d stared at Sloane on a billboard. A few hours later, Wren was standing in Sloane’s bathroom, possibly in her robe. By the end of the day, Wren would be wearing her skin too.
Her eyes were wide, pale, and afraid. Everything was about to change.
For the better, she told herself and walked out of the bathroom.
Out in the hallway, Wren gently closed the bedroom door behind her. Heavy curtains had been drawn over all the windows lining the hall, but through the narrow cracks, sunlight poured through, casting a slender sunbeam across the floor. She padded down the hallway, back toward the center of the penthouse, where murmuring voices sounded.
“—shouldn’t have called in the alterations team without consulting with me first! We agreed that I should meet the girl to approve of her before moving forward.”
Wren paused in the hallway. The man’s voice was one she hadn’t heard in person before, but she recognized its rich, velvet quality from all the VidaCorp commercials.
Hazen Bafford.
“I told her to wait,” Bode said. Wren’s brows rose.
“Both of you are being overly cautious,” came Hutton’s contemptuous tone.
“For good reason!” Hazen said. The others hushed him. He lowered his voice and added, “We don’t even know if this girl can handle the pressures of being Sloane. We should have started with the training first.”
“You haven’t met her. She’s a field mouse,” Hutton said. “I can mold her into whoever she needs to be, but we need all the time we can get for her to heal from the alterations.”
“This is exactly my point. Sloane was a tiger. We can’t fool the world with a mouse.”
Wren grimaced, but she also felt a spark of anger. She might be a mouse, but they needed her.
“People will go to any length to survive. She’ll do whatever it takes. Trust me.”
Hazen laughed at Hutton. “What do you know about surviving? You’ve lived in Sloane’s lap of luxury your entire life.”
“You don’t know anything about my survival,” Hutton growled.
A beat of silence echoed through the penthouse. Someone—Bode, Wr
en guessed—coughed.
Wren had heard enough. If they were going to talk about her life, then she should at least be in the room. She stepped out of the hallway, making certain her last few steps were loud enough to draw their attention, and entered the sprawling living space with vaulted ceilings.
“Hello,” she said.
Hazen was golden-haired and fair-skinned, and his suit was a crisp gray; a stark contrast to his brother, who stood beside him like night beside day. Next to the two brothers, Hutton smiled at her, her teeth blinding against her dark skin. “Hello, Wren. Did you enjoy your shower?”
Wren pulled her lip between her teeth and bit the skin as she walked forward a few more steps. “Yes, thank you.”
“You certainly look refreshed. Wren, I would like you to meet Hazen Bafford III, the chief executive officer of VidaCorp.”
“And my brother,” Bode added.
Ignoring Bode, Hazen angled to face her fully, his smile more welcoming than Hutton’s plastic one. Wren noted the similarities in the brothers’ features—the wide, easy-to-smile mouth and long lashes. But where Bode looked weathered and tested in the rugged quality of his features, Hazen looked charmingly pretty and soft.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, then quickly added, “Sir.”
“We’ll be seeing too much of each other for formalities.” He spread his arms wide, the sleeves of his suit jacket riding up to reveal diamond cuff links. “You must be quite unsettled after today, Wren. Is there anything I can answer for you? Any concerns?”
“I have one question.”
“Fire at will.”
“If the alterations can change me so drastically on a physical level,” Wren said, picking her words with care, “can they fix my lungs too?”
“The alts don’t go that deep—and they aren’t permanent. You’ll have to start an alt maintenance dose after the procedure.”
Wren had no way of knowing if Hazen was telling the truth, but his gaze was steady, his eyes clear. If he was lying to keep her dependent on a pill only he could supply, he had a poker face to rival Mak’s. Wren’s heart stuttered at the thought of her best friend. What would Mak say about all these promises VidaCorp was making? Probably nothing kind. “Okay. Thank you.”