Falls the Shadow

by Stefanie Gaither

  But this is different.

  And the deeper it all sinks in, the more I wish I’d put up a better fight in the elevator.

  Our footsteps echo throughout the dome-shaped room as we walk farther inside, a metallic ting ting ting against the grate flooring. The blinding fluorescent lighting and the sterile recycled air reminds me of the last place I want to think about right now: Huxley. The memory of the day we brought my sister’s replacement home crowds its way into my mind, and it feels like I’m walking through those winding halls all over again. It’s sort of ironic, these two places filled with people who hate each other and their beliefs so much—but all I can think about is how they’re the same. And I wonder: Am I here because of Violet again?

  Did they bring me to this place because of what people are saying she did? Because they want information about her that I don’t even have?

  Almost everyone stops what they’re doing and glances up at us as we pass. I’m used to stares, though, and to whispers and poor attempts at trying to look subtle. I keep my head up and walk on, telling myself that this is just like at school—that there’s no difference between people like Lacey Cartwright and the people in here. Last spring, I played the lead role in the school’s production of The Scarlet Letter, and that’s who I try to imagine myself as now: Hester Prynne, with that bright, ostracizing letter sewn onto her clothes, surrounded by hypocrites whose favorite pastime is judging her.

  That role would be easier to slip into, though, if the grip on my arm wasn’t getting tighter with every step. At school I may be a shunned villager, but right now I feel a lot more like a criminal being dragged in for sentencing.

  A few hallways later, we come to a set of tall, imposing steel doors. The woman steps from my side, places her hand on the panel outside them, and announces our arrival. A computer voice grants us access, the doors slide open, and we step into a dark room. Dozens of pictures in antique wooden frames wrap around the walls. The floor actually has carpet instead of metal grating—a shaggy off-white carpet that matches perfectly with the throw pillows on the leather couch that’s taking up most of the right wall. The whole room has an old, traditional feeling to it, and it reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of my grandparents’ old house. I never went to that house, but I can imagine it smelling similar to this: a mixture of cedar and old paper books with a faint overlay of dust.

  My escorts all stop at the door, arranging themselves so the exit is blocked, and Jaxon pushes his way past them and to my side. I force myself not to look at him. Or slap him.

  Because I am seriously considering slapping him.

  How could I ever have trusted that jerk?

  There’s a huge desk in the corner opposite the couch, and Samantha’s father—Atticus Voss himself—is sitting at it, staring at a computer that seems too new to belong in this room. My pulse jumps and my knees go weak at the sight of him, at the thought of all the nasty things he’s said about my family since my sister’s replacement. And it’s one thing to hear those nasty things he had to say secondhand, or to read them in the political editorials he’s written about my father, or to have to endure his nasty remarks and glares at social events—but to be face to face with him like this? Alone, without any of our hired bodyguards?

  I would rather tell my parents I’d been suspended from school. For life.

  He tilts the computer monitor toward him, studies something on the screen for a moment before he says, “Mr. Cross, your presence is no longer needed.”

  “Right,” Jaxon says, “but I just wanted to tell you—”

  “I sincerely appreciate your help.” Voss’s tone is louder but still perfectly calm. Eerily calm, almost. “But you can go now. I will be handling things from here.”

  Jaxon still doesn’t move. Voss rises from his chair and gives him an irritated look, his nostrils flaring slightly and his tiny blue eyes glaring. He’s a monster of a man, really, with a thick neck and a hulking, well-muscled frame. I don’t remember him being so imposing, or so terrifying to look at; maybe it’s the lighting in here. Or maybe it’s just because so many of the memories I have of him are from those dinner parties and political outings my parents used to drag me to, where he was much more civil looking, dressed in those fancy suits and ties.

  He doesn’t say anything else to Jaxon. Instead, he turns to me, and his face lights up like he’s just now noticed I’m standing here.

  “Hello, Catelyn. It’s very nice to see you again,” he says, stepping around his desk and crossing to me. His still overly polite tone makes me even more nervous. “And how are your parents? Well I hope?”

  “They’re fine,” I say, frowning. I know he didn’t bring me in here just for small talk. “But they might be a little concerned about what’s going on here.”

  He plasters on a smile. “And what, precisely, do you think is going on here?”

  I look from Jaxon to the people behind us and then back to Voss. My hands try to shake, but I force them to be still, then clear my throat. “It . . . it looks a lot like a kidnapping,” I say. My voice doesn’t carry as impressively as his, but at least it doesn’t tremble.

  Voss laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “I only want to talk. And I believe you’ll agree that the outside world is rather hectic for you right now, isn’t it? This just seemed simpler to me. No cameras or reporters or any of that nonsense. Here it’s just you, me, and a few of my closest friends.” He motions to the people standing guard at the door. One of the men snickers.

  “My parents will come looking for me,” I say, and this time my voice does shake. Not because I’m afraid of how close he’s standing, or of the way his lips curve cold and cruel as he brings his face even nearer to mine. No. What I’m afraid of is how long it’s going to be before anybody actually does come looking for me. My parents think I’m at school. And maybe they’ll notice when I’m late this afternoon, but even then, they’re so busy worrying about Violet that who knows how long it will be before they do anything about it?

  “Let’s hurry this up, then, shall we?” Voss says, his smile abruptly disappearing. “Your sister. She was the last person anyone saw with my daughter. Where has she run off to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It’s the truth, but still the wrong answer, apparently. He grabs the collar of my shirt and jerks me toward him. I duck away, and my forehead brushes the unshaven stubble of his throat. “Where. Is. She?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  His face is blood red, teeth clenched into the terrible smile of a madman. His calmness is way past gone; now he sounds more like a man who has lost his child, and who’s desperately trying to find somebody to blame for her death. I really don’t want to be that somebody. And I don’t want Violet to be that somebody, either.

  Though for a brief, unpleasant moment—as my ears are ringing with the threats he’s half shouting directly into my ear—I’ll admit I find myself wondering. If I did know that Violet had anything to do with it all, would I tell him?

  I know all the places she hides when she runs away. I could find her if I had to. If anybody could find her, it would be me. Especially if I had the CCA’s help tracking her down.

  Would I find her, though? If it meant that all of these people would leave me alone and let me go back to blending into the scenery?

  I’d like to say no. But I don’t know. My head is spinning, and everything that’s happened this morning is crashing in around me, and to tell you the truth I’m not sure of anything anymore. I just want to get back to yesterday. To before I threw that punch. To before I talked to Jaxon and thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d found someone I could trust.

  “Get your hands off her, Voss.” It’s Jaxon speaking, I know, but it’s weird to hear him sound so angry, so dangerous—so far from the easygoing person I thought I knew.

  Voss spins around, jerking me with him. “This has nothing to do with you anymore—I don’t care who your mother is.” He k
eeps his teeth clenched, and little flecks of spit push out with his words and shower the side of my face.

  “If the president knew what you were doing, you know she wouldn’t approve. She would—”

  Suddenly, the door behind us slides open. And for a moment, everything stops. Then Jaxon mutters, “Guess we’ll see what she would do,” under his breath, and Voss slowly, finger by finger, unclenches the grip he has on my shirt. I push him away as hard as I can and turn around just as the people behind me part respectfully to let a woman step into the room.

  My first thought when I see her is of a movie I remember watching as a child: a fairy tale set in ancient times, with castles and royal palaces and balls. I don’t remember the story, but I remember the way the queen of the castle carried herself from room to room, because the first Violet and I used to mimic it: chin lifted, steps falling quick and purposefully while her eyes saw everyone but bothered with none of them. This woman is wearing a tailored, dark navy pantsuit, but it’s not hard to picture her in a flowing gown, or with a tiara perched on top of her smooth black hair.

  “What is going on?” she demands in a brisk, business-like tone. “Atticus?” Her gaze is leveled at Voss, but it’s Jaxon who answers her.

  “I did as I was told,” he says angrily. “But if I’d known you were going to let this bastard”—he jabs a finger toward Voss—“treat her like this, then I never would have brought her back here.”

  “One of these days, that mouth of yours is going to push me too far,” Voss growls, taking a step toward him.

  The room goes very, very quiet.

  “Are you threatening my son, Atticus?” The woman’s voice, sharp and quick, shatters the silence. Her eyes shine with dark amusement, and her thin lips part, just barely. And I imagine this is the look a queen might get just before she commands someone to be executed.

  “Madame President—”

  “Oh, I so sincerely hope you are not threatening my son in front of me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good.” She turns to Jaxon, and I see the resemblance between them now; they have the same fair skin, the same jewel blue eyes. “However,” she says, “I did not raise my son to be so disrespectful. Apologize.”

  Jaxon’s eyes narrow. He opens his mouth and starts to say something, but then he just turns around and leaves, slamming the door on his way out.

  “Temperament just like his father’s,” his mother says wistfully. She looks back at me and gingerly places a hand on my elbow. “We have other things to worry about at the moment, though. If you’ll follow me please, Catelyn?”

  I think about protesting, but she seems more rational—or at least less crazy—than Voss; so maybe if I cooperate a little, she’ll listen to reason and get me out of here.

  She steers me toward the door without so much as a backward glance, though she does pause at the door long enough to tell Voss—Dr. Voss, she calls him now—that he should go on home for the day. He doesn’t say anything, and I don’t turn around, either. But I can feel him staring after us. The back of my neck burns, like the fire in his eyes leapt from them and is now trying to burn its way through my skin.

  “You’ll forgive him, won’t you?” President Cross asks once we’re safely outside that room. “He’s taking the death of his daughter very hard. I’m afraid it’s unhinged him a little.”

  I nod, thinking of how the news of her death had affected me, even though I barely hung out with her anymore—so I can’t imagine what he’s going through right now. But I’m willing to bet he’s miserable enough that he deserves a few free act-like-a-jerk passes.

  “Although to be honest,” the president continues, talking more to the air than to me, “his performance over the past year or so has been growing steadily less satisfactory. I had actually been planning on disposing of him soon—by which I mean firing him, of course, so there’s no need to widen your eyes like that—but with the death of Samantha . . . well, I’m afraid I may not be able to find the heart. The whole thing is just so tragic, isn’t it?” That last part sounds like an actual question, as if she herself hasn’t quite decided how she feels about the whole thing yet. I don’t know why she’s asking me, though; I’m not here to help her sort out her feelings. I’m having a hard enough time with my own.

  “I wish there was something I could do to help with that,” I say pointedly. “But what I was telling Dr. Voss was the truth. I don’t know where my sister is, or why she was with Samantha that night, or if she even was with—”

  President Cross stops so quickly that I almost step on the back of her shiny beige stilettos. “It wouldn’t be in your best interest to lie to me right now, Catelyn.” She smiles down at me. It’s not the same as Voss’s frigid smile, but there’s no warmth behind it either. “I just want to make that perfectly clear.”

  “I . . . I’m not lying. I swear.”

  “Glad to hear it.” She turns and walks on, more quickly now. I almost have to jog to keep up with her long-legged strides. But even as I focus on not losing her, I can’t keep my eyes from wandering around the spaces we pass through. There’s plenty to take in, from the people typing away on their computers to the others with pensive faces and arms folded across their chests as they watch the monitors mounted on the walls. Various news reports flash across those monitors, and almost all of them are focused on the same story: Samantha’s death. Or—more specifically—the persons responsible for it. Because I guess they’ve decided to stop calling it an accident now; words like “foul play” and “suspected homicide” probably make for better ratings.

  The scenes keep jumping back and forth from panoramic shots of the local Huxley laboratory compound to the abandoned railroad tracks where they found Samantha, and then to a roundtable discussion going on between reporters. I’m not close enough to hear exactly what they’re saying, but I don’t need to be. I know what they’re debating. The safety of cloning, the choices of families like mine, the morality of companies like Huxley and the existence of people like my sister.

  All of these topics are such endless fun, after all.

  Scenes from the press conference outside our house flash on one of the nearby monitors. Inset near the bottom right corner is a picture of Samantha, smiling and chillingly unaware, of course, that anyone would ever be discussing her death like this. The picture fades into a close-up of my father, and I slow to a stop, caught up in the tired creases around his eyes and the determined vagueness in his expression. Even though I know that really is what he looks like most of the time now, splashed up there on that screen it seems . . . off, somehow. Like they’ve got the wrong guy. Because the person up there looks like he’s always been like that, but I know better; however worn and worked over the old memories of him are, I still have them.

  “Things seem to have gotten a bit out of control for Huxley with this one,” President Cross says, stopping and turning around to follow my gaze. “The cloned daughter of a politician doing something like this? This won’t be swept under the rug for a while now—chances are it will be brought up at every press conference and town hall meeting that your father attends in the foreseeable future.” She gestures toward each of the monitors as she speaks, looking a little too pleased about it all in a way that makes my stomach curl. I feel like I should remind her of the whole a teenager was just murdered thing, but she walks on and changes the subject before I can.

  “But I didn’t bring you here to discuss politics, so—”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  “A couple of reasons,” she says, holding up two fingers, but not stopping again or even glancing back at me. “One, for your own protection. And two, because there’s something I want to show you. We’ll say it’s an olive branch that I’m extending to you. Take it, and I think we may be able to help each other. Or at least come to some sort of understanding.”

  She halts abruptly then, in front of a wide control panel with a complicated-looking mass of buttons and dials and touch screens.
Her fingers rest for a moment on one of those touch screens near the bottom, and then a series of holographic command prompts flicker up into the space directly in front of us. Her hands move over the panel, quickly and expertly shifting through password prompts and navigation options until a series of images take shape in the space instead: four identical 3-D humans suspended in the air.

  “This is a model I began working on some years ago,” she explains. “And I’m still working on it, to be honest; there is still plenty of research to be done, and there are loose ends to be followed up on, of course—but I’m confident enough in its accuracy that I don’t mind sharing it with you. Hopefully it will help you appreciate exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “What is this a model of, exactly?”

  “Of the effects of the mutagens introduced into our food and water supplies by the bioagent weapons used during the war. The ones that caused the marks on your mother, and on so many others? What the government doesn’t want people to know is that the long-term effects of said mutagens are going to be considerably more serious than just a few recovered people with some rather nasty-looking scars.”

  She types in a few more commands, and two of the human figures change from black to a pale, pinkish red color. “The infected,” she says, pointing to them. “The infection the bioagent unleashed targeted the chromosomes containing genes crucial to reproduction, causing mutations in most of the people exposed to them.”

  “Which is why the birthrate has gone down,” I say, thinking of that stupid video. “That isn’t a secret the government is keeping from anybody.”

  “Right, because your parent’s generation is still producing a fair amount of healthy children—you and your sister are proof of that. So, no need to be alarmed just yet, right? Your mother may have mutated genes, but they aren’t completely defective. Just an unfortunate side effect of war that, if the government’s pacifying lies are to be believed, we will overcome. It’s a nice sentiment, but . . .”

  Two diagonal lines strike out from beneath the pinkish-colored human models and cross, and two more figures appear at the end of each of the lines. They are a much bolder red; the color of blood, almost. And out beside them is a calculation, a percentage labeled HEALTHY RATE OF BIRTH.