Falls the Shadow

by Stefanie Gaither

  Eighty percent.

  “See, there was something terrifyingly brilliant about this particular mutagen,” President Cross continues. “The mutation, this syndrome that it caused . . . it’s not something that is so easily overcome, no matter the amount of nationalistic propaganda pushing us. It’s not a disease we can simply outlast as a population. Because not only is it autosomal-dominant, but its effects get stronger with each generation that it’s passed down to. A stuttering—or unstable—allelic trait: that would be the proper scientific term for it, if you care to know. And it is a frightening term to apply to something affecting nearly one-third of the remaining population—especially since even that is a low estimate of the number of people who suffered direct exposure.”

  I watch as the diagram continues to unfold in front of me, the diagonal lines darting out and crossing underneath the figures, which grow darker and darker as the calculations on display beside them show smaller and smaller numbers. Generation after generation, all the way down to almost zero percent.

  Funny, Huxley never mentioned this in any of their videos.

  “A crippling, drawn-out depopulation: assurance that this country never rises from the ashes of its defeat,” President Cross says, as though I really needed the explanation.

  I can feel her eyes on me now, but I’m too horrified by the last of the humans on the screen to say anything right away. My hand lifts on its own and traces through the air, circling that ominous number out beside them.

  “How do you know all of this?” I ask quietly.

  “Because Huxley was hired by the government to research the long-term effects of all this—and I was one of the head scientists involved in that project.”

  That snaps my attention back to her. “You worked for Huxley?”

  “What seems a very long time ago now, yes. I did. And so did Dr. Voss; he was a little more sound of mind back then, and we were partners.” I must still look skeptical, because she adds, “They were a very different organization when I signed on with them twenty years ago. For decades before that, they had been a highly respected research facility, and it was a lot of people’s dream to work for them—including mine. And I had the credentials, of course, but I was still shocked when they actually offered me a position. I suppose I made a good impression on Huxley himself in my interview; I ended up reporting directly to him. The two of us became rather close.” She pauses and glances around the room, her focus eventually falling on a few of the people filing robotically past us. Her mouth slips into an almost-smirk. “He’s taken my whole operation here rather personally, as you might imagine,” she adds with a grim laugh. She looks like she’s considering saying more on the subject but instead waves a dismissive hand.

  “Anyway, much of my work at Huxley was centered around finding ways to increase human longevity, through both gene manipulation and the study and prevention of deadly and infectious diseases. So, when the government was faced with a sickened population after the war, my former employer was the group they turned to for help. We were tasked with trying to find a cure, a way to undo the damage—and we only had so much time to do it, with the threat of every generation becoming sicker than the last hanging over us. Damaged DNA is very difficult to repair, though. Not to mention it was dangerous, working on actual humans without having time to run trials first; so some of the scientists in our group started teaming with members of Huxley’s controversial cloning division, growing test specimens and modifying and manipulating their DNA instead, in search of the answers they couldn’t find. At some point the focus shifted entirely to those specimens, and then to fully developed clones that were starting to turn out stronger and healthier than even the healthiest natural humans.

  “Some of the scientists started to talk about using the clones to supplement the population, to mix them in and gradually grow it back stronger than before. Then talk of supplementing turned to plans for more or less replacing; the idea being, I suppose, that sometimes it’s easier to just start over than it is to try to fix what’s broken. If you ask me, I think the cloning division had been waiting for this all along—for an excuse to unleash their creations, to test them out in the world outside the labs. And as soon as I realized that . . . well, that is when we reached a parting of ways, I’m afraid. I left. Voss and a few others came with me, and we’ve been fighting Huxley ever since.”

  “But what about what they were trying to do? What about the future?”

  “We had very different visions for it, I’m afraid. And still do. However grim things look, I still don’t think the answer lies in erasing the human element so completely as Huxley wants to. In the beginning, I think their intentions may have been pure enough—mine certainly were—but then, most of the things that are bad in this world started off as someone’s idea of good, didn’t they? I don’t think their goal now has anything to do with securing our country’s future. Securing their own future, maybe, but . . .”

  She goes back to the computer panel, and I watch as the diagram fades away and a series of folders take its place. She taps the center touch pad a few times, and some of those folders open, spilling pictures and words into the air. After a few seconds, they arrange themselves into profiles, and then there are a half-dozen young, smiling faces looking back at me. And stamped across each of their pictures is the same word: DECEASED.

  “This is a small selection of origins known to have died or disappeared under strange circumstances—circumstances we can link back to Huxley agents.”

  “What do you mean that you can ‘link back’ to Huxley agents?” I want to laugh at the impossibility of everything she’s saying. But there’s a heaviness on my chest that’s making it hard to breathe, and it takes me a moment to even ask the rest of my question. “You think Huxley is going around killing off all the origins?”

  “Not all of them, no. Just as many as they can get away with for now. We believe they’re creating a presence, a small army of clones among the general population—because they know it won’t take many for them to overpower the normal humans, especially when they already have fear working in their favor. It’s only a matter of time before they have everything in place and they’ve gained enough power and control to start carrying out their plans.”

  “Which are what, precisely?”

  “I told you. President Huxley has no faith in humankind, in its ability to survive, to keep evolving into a race that will make the most of this planet’s future; he sees only the flaws in people, and only the need for someone to fix them. And more important, he has convinced himself that he is the one destined to do the mending.”

  “By replacing the human population with his own manufactured, perfected clones.” I still can’t keep the incredulity from my voice, even though I know now that she has a reliable source for at least some of what she’s telling me; what else does she know about President Huxley, I wonder? It’s still weird to picture them in the same room, having any sort of civil conversation about all of this stuff—or about anything else, for that matter.

  She nods, her gaze drifting back to the diagram. “That’s what we believe their plan is, yes.”

  “But that could never happen.”

  “It’s happening right now.”

  “The government—”

  She laughs again. “Has been in Huxley’s hand from practically the beginning,” she finishes for me. “Think about it, Catelyn: our losses in the war were humiliating. Our future was uncertain. People were scared and desperate for quick answers. So all it took was a group of Huxley’s most brilliant, most persuasive scientists to corrupt the right government officials into believing that cloning was the solution already at hand—that with the right funding they could even develop more streamlined, efficient cloning methods that would allow them to make quick copies of those officials themselves. They promised them immortality. Supremacy over death. Is there anything more tempting than that?”

  “But it’s not supremacy over death at all if they have to kill the or
igins, is it?”

  “Well they don’t pitch it that way, do they? The body is just a throwaway instrument to them, one that can be molded, altered, replaced—whatever is needed to ensure that the mind lives on indefinitely. And they’re smart enough to have convinced others that this is the most important part; that actual life exists solely in thoughts, in memories, and that they can transfer these things to a new body—a physically superior body—over and over again, and thus the person being transferred never has to actually die.”

  Just like my sister never actually died?

  It seems like I should be nothing except horrified by everything she’s saying, but I mostly feel only a numbing confusion, a strange buzzing in my brain as it tries to make sense of all this. Can everything she’s saying be true? And if it is, then whose side am I supposed to be on? The CCA has always been the enemy. And Huxley . . . Huxley is the reason I still have a sister. It feels almost like a betrayal to her, to start thinking that everything they’ve done is all wrong. Because what does that make her, then?

  The thought makes my knees feel weak.

  “It’s such a tantalizing possibility, at least on paper,” President Cross is saying, “so of course most didn’t want to listen to scientists like me. Scientists who tried warning them what a slippery slope cloning and genetic manipulation and such was, even though it had its benefits. And who tried to warn them that there would be a cost. Because there is always a cost.” She lifts her eyes back to the projected faces and sighs. “And they’re too far gone to listen to me at this point. To most of the higher-ups, the officials with any power to put a stop to all of this, we’re the crazy ones now.”

  I follow her gaze, and suddenly my head is spinning, cold sweat shivering up and sliding down the back of my neck. There’s no way she can be right.

  This is too much. It’s too huge, too crazy even to think about. I don’t want to think about what her accusations might mean, about the impossible future scenarios she’s painting.

  It’s amazing how you can believe your life is so awful, but then something worse comes along, and suddenly you’d give anything to just have that normal, awful life back. I want my parents. I want my sister calling me names and breaking things and blaming it on me. I want those stupid people shouting, protesting outside my window all night, and I want that to be my only problem. Wasn’t that a big enough problem by itself?

  “You said you brought me here for my protection.” My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else, someone who’s accepted the impossibility of all this while the real me is hiding someplace far away. “Why?” I ask. “Do you think Huxley is planning to kill me too?”

  “We actually think they’ll be more interested in your sister’s clone.”

  Isn’t everyone?

  “I’m not an expert on clones or their programming, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that something about your sister’s replica seems to be off. She’s spent most of the time since her activation drawing bad publicity to Huxley, and while we’re thankful for it, somehow I doubt her creators are. And this latest deed that she’s committed—”

  “Supposedly committed,” I correct automatically.

  “—is a bit over the top, don’t you think? Huxley is looking for her along with everyone else now, I’m sure. I imagine they’re scrambling, trying to figure out where they went wrong with her, and they’ll probably see you as a potential link to figuring that out.” She hesitates, presses her fingertips to the corner touch screen again. The projections fade into the air, and the computer’s control panel makes a soft humming noise as it shuts down. “Jaxon tells me you and Violet are close,” she adds. “And that if anybody would know how to find her, it would be you.”

  Just his name is enough to irritate me all over again. What else has he told her, I wonder?

  “Which is why I’ve confided all of this to you,” she says. “I thought if you understood where I was coming from, you might help us do precisely that.”

  “What do you plan on doing with her if you find her, exactly?”

  “You’re very protective of her, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. She’s my sister.”

  The president’s smile is smug. “Is she, now? You’re sure of that?”

  Shut up, I think. But my mind is as far as the words get. However much I might want to shout them at her, something stops me. I lower my eyes, pretend to be very interested in a black scuff mark across the metal-grate flooring. I want this conversation to be over. If my father were here, it would be; this is the point in the conversation where he would say, No more questions—this interview is finished. In my mind, I can see him clearly: stoic and unyielding, looking straight ahead until the reporters and protestors finally get tired of trying to make him talk, and just move on. At least until next time.

  But President Cross doesn’t move on.

  “We only want to contain her, Catelyn. To keep her from Huxley’s scientists, because if she is a broken link in their experiments, then we want to do everything we can to stop them from figuring out how to fix it. She would be safer with us than she would be with Huxley, anyway. You have my word on that.”

  “Which is more or less worthless to me,” I say. After all, I took her son’s word for things, and look where that got me.

  “I’m sorry you think so.” She pauses thoughtfully, picks a loose thread from the cuff of her jacket and flicks it away. Somehow, she manages to make even that small movement seem oddly menacing. “Because I so wanted us to be on the same side for once,” she says.

  No more questions. This interview is over. Don’t speak to her, Catelyn. Don’t even look at her.

  She isn’t going to listen to anything I have to say anyway, because she already knows what she wants to hear. And I’m not telling her that, for the same reason I didn’t tell our mother where Violet was hiding that day my sister painted obnoxious words on the fence around the backyard—just because she was feeling “artsy,” she told me later. Mother was almost as menacing then as President Cross is now, and if Violet got in trouble, it wasn’t going to be because of me.

  It’s never going to be because of me.

  Secrets make sisters. Every time she asked me to cover for her, that’s what this new Violet would say. So I keep her secrets. Because this way, in the moments when she doesn’t seem so much like the old Violet, I’ve at least got some sort of connection to her left. Something that’s only ours and that no one can ever take away.

  The president is silent. Waiting for me to speak, to blurt out some sort of confession, maybe. But I could endure her incriminating stare all day if I had to. Furniture-girl, remember?

  “I will find your sister,” she says after another long moment, after I’ve apparently made it clear enough that I have no plans to talk. “With or without your help, her fate is already determined—all that’s left to be decided is yours. And as far as I’m concerned, you are either working for us or you are against us. I’ve no use for people who insist on staying caught in the middle.” She glances at the communicator on her wrist, jabs a few times at one of the buttons on the side. “And do keep in mind, Catelyn,” she adds, still messing with that button, “that I’m being exceptionally gracious in giving you the opportunity to be with us. Do you know they all laughed at me when I suggested we ask an origin to help us?”

  “I’m not going to help you.”

  She glances up at me with a smile.

  “Oh, we’ll see about that.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Deals

  Six hours.

  That’s how long I’ve been in here. And if I have to spend another six hours in here, I am going to go insane.

  I’ve been passing the time by watching the minutes slide by on my phone’s display; it’s about all I can do with it, because the solid concrete walls of this prison cell make it impossible to get any sort of signal. That’s probably why they didn’t bother to take it from me. I couldn’t call anybody for help if I wanted to.

>   Another minute goes by. I toss the useless phone onto the bed in the corner; the mattress is so stiff that the phone bounces several feet in the air after hitting it, then lands on the metal grate flooring with a sharp clang! that makes me cringe. I go to pick it up, to check the damage I’ve done, just as the door behind me slides open.

  I turn around, and Jaxon is standing in the frame.

  He doesn’t say anything at first, but I’m instantly, painfully, aware of how different things are between us now.

  Those eyes that used to be one of the brightest parts of my day are guarded now, and all they do is make me angry—because all I can think about as I look into them is how stupid I was to get into that car with him not once but twice.

  Twice.

  How could I have been so embarrassingly stupid?

  “What do you want?” The memory of that embarrassment—along with six hours of this cell—makes my voice a lot edgier than normal.

  “I just want to talk,” he says.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “Well, just listen, then.”

  “You know, I see your lips moving, but all I hear is white noise. It’s really weird.”

  “Cate, please don’t be like that.”

  My glare is so intense that he actually stumbles back a step.

  “I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” he says. “I swear I didn’t.”

  “But you knew your mother was the president of the CCA,” I say. “Or did that slip your mind too?” I force myself to unclench the phone from my hand and set it back down on the bed, so I’m not tempted anymore to throw it at him. I don’t want to break it for real this time.

  “She said she just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Well they always say that, don’t they? And then the talking turns to shouting, and the shouting turns into them throwing bricks through our window, and then—”