by Melissa Faye
“Never mind that,” she said after a long silence. “There are hundreds of us in the same situation. It sounds like you and I are on the same page. I can work with you. It would be nice to have a friend here. I was never part of the Underground in my community but I think I sort of have to be now. What should we do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I felt a heavy weight in my chest, like all the new information was piled up and crushing me. I felt the safety pin in my pocket and pulled it out to show Mallory.
“Have you seen these people?” I handed her the silver teardrop. “They’re talking about how we’re here because we’ve been chosen by the gods. They think we deserve what we have, and the NBs need to work for us. It’s our destiny.”
“What does it mean?” Mallory said. She turned the pin over in her hand and felt the rough edges. “Who made this?”
“I think it’s supposed to be blood. They think ours makes us better than everyone else.”
Mallory immediately shoved the pin back towards me.
“That’s repulsive,” she said. “How could anyone believe that?”
After fertility rates dropped to zero hundreds of years ago, religion fell to the wayside. We learned about it in history classes. The crisis felt like a plague descending upon mankind. People stopped attending churches and temples, certain that their god had failed us. Or perhaps that we failed him. Some people still followed spiritual practices, but religion in the UCA had been wiped completely away.
“I don’t know how many people are part of this,” I said slowly, “but there were a lot of people listening to a man preaching about it. That’s where I got the pin.”
“Did they all wear those pins?” Mallory asked. Her face held the same disgusted look as before.
“Yeah. All of them.”
“They must be happy to be here,” said Mallory. “If they truly think this is their birthright...”
“I don’t know who we can sway to join us,” I said. “I don’t know what we can do if so many people are part of this group.”
“I don’t know what to do exactly,” Mallory said. “We need to learn more about the NBs. I doubt they think any of this is deserved. If we can talk to them and understand how they live...”
“Then that’s a start.”
Chapter 7 – Yami
I remembered the look on Etta’s face when she first saw her clone, Etta 2. She was surprised, of course, but welcoming. No one ever met their clones. It was probably kept that way so the Chancellor could hide the fact that career assignments were predetermined by birth. All the other Yami’s out there were in medicine, just like me. If the Grays and Bronzes found out that any hard work they did would result in the same career assignment, there would be an uprising.
Yet here I was, standing before my own clone. She was older, but I recognized myself in every part of her. She had a small mole below her right ear, just where I had one. The shape of our lips – the same. The way our noses turned up just at the very end – the same. I stood at exactly her height. Her hair had more gray, and with it seemed to come just a little bit more independence. So this Yami had uncontrollable curls as well.
She had a scar on her wrist that was only visible when her sleeve rolled up a few inches. I didn’t have one of those, but I had my own scars. We were genetically identical, but had lived different lives. And now we were here together.
The other people in HQ looked at Other Yami with a mixture of respect and awe. Her presence was somehow impressive. I had met many strong leaders over the last year, but there was something else about this Yami. She exuded confidence and warmth. She stood tall; her posture was impeccable. Her energy radiated outwards.
I was the opposite. I curled up in a ball when I was nervous or defeated. I folded my legs and crossed my arms in defiance when someone annoyed me. I spent the last month trying to be a better organizer for the Underground, but I was still too short with people all the time. Now I was torn. Being a leader seemed to be part of my very genetic code. But already I felt less than this version of myself. Already I felt like this was a version of myself I couldn’t live up to.
Though we were genetically identical, our life experiences must have changed us deeply. I spent so many years hiding behind the walls I created, trying to avoid losing someone like I lost my mentor, Alexis, at fourteen. Everyone was my enemy, especially when Etta’s life was in danger when she got pregnant. I liked to think I was getting softer around the edges, but since I left Gentle Acres and ran away from Charlie, it was harder to keep from slipping into that old version of myself.
I was desperate to learn everything about this Yami that I could, but right now, everyone was staring at us. Or rather, they were mostly staring at her, waiting for a signal indicating what they should do. Gianna stood closely to me, transfixed.
“Hello,” she said with a gentle nod in our direction. “We heard you were coming to help us in our work.” She approached and shook our hands. Then she looked me directly in my eyes. “Before we do anything else, though, you and I should talk.”
YAMI, MY CLONE, GREW up in a community on the west coast of the UCA called Fifth Lake. Just like me, she had a quiet, happy life growing up. She told me she didn’t experience anything specific that made her want to join the Underground. She just always knew that the privileges she enjoyed in a Gold career were unearned.
Unlike anyone I’d ever heard of, she maintained friendships with most of the people her age despite their separate color assignments. Her friends loved her, but the community leaders didn’t like what was happening.
Yami’s supervisor in the Med found ways to dock her pay or prevent her from getting the promotions she earned. It always corresponded to her relationships. When she dated someone in Bronze, she was demoted at work. When she threw a party for friends from her grade and people from all four colors attended, there was a malfunction in her TekCast and two months of pay disappeared from her account.
Yami joined the Underground in high class, and by the time she finished her internship years, she was in charge. This was thirty years ago, though, so the Underground didn’t have a name and had no idea what was or wasn’t happening across the country. They came together to discuss grievances and study history texts about how society was structured before the fertility crisis. Yami was able to recruit many of her friends to the group; they were eager to join her cause.
They decided that something about the cloning system was off. There were too many secrets about how it worked, and no one felt like they could trust what they were told. Yami was adamant that the color assignments weren’t right. Many of the Underground members were Bronze and Gray, and Yami did all she could to share resources with them. She convinced her friends in Gold careers to buy food for the others, and invited her Gray friends to stay with her when their apartments were overrun with roaches or they couldn’t afford to pay their heating bills.
They spent years trying to communicate with likeminded groups around their region. Not long after I was born, Yami was finally caught and banished. If she had been caught sooner, they would have retired our clone line and I wouldn’t have been born. I’m the last Yami, I thought. Our genetic materials have been destroyed and I’ll never have a younger clone.
Yami started what many thought to be the first ACer camp in the country. After she was banished, dozens of people from her community joined her as she hiked into the noncomm and found a place to set up their camp. Regional leaders sent groups to find them and destroy the camp, so they had to create a transient community. Yami led the camp for years, always insisting on elections and always getting elected.
It was seven years ago when Yami and her friends knew they had enough support to build something bigger that could serve as a hub for all the Underground activity in the nation. They found a community with a large Underground population and helped overthrow the town leaders. They maintained a large armory, making it almost impossible for the community to be overthrown. Until now. With the Chancellor’
s insistence on testing everyone and the creation of the Gray Suit army, HQ wasn’t safe.
“What’s next?” I asked after sharing my own story with Other Yami. “If the government has built an army, and Underground communities and camps are being destroyed, not to mention fertile people being dragged into breeding camps – what comes next?”
Other Yami leaned back in her chair. She had shown me into a separate, smaller room away from the prying eyes in the Hub, as they called it, where all major meetings and planning took place. The room was quiet and breezy thanks to open windows and curtains no one had bothered to remove. We sat on leather armchairs; again, I wasn’t sure why they were removed. Maybe they wanted a room like this for small, private conversations.
“What do you think we should do next, Yami?” my clone asked. I studied her face.
Ann, the Director of Gentle Acres, let me be part of her leadership team. Matana, the leader of the ACer camp where I spent many months, scolded me when I jumped into conversations or pushed my own agenda but ultimately valued my opinion. Omer tolerated my help. Sometimes he asked for it, and sometimes he was just putting up with it. But here, the scope was enormous. This was the fate of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands.
Other Yami was serious. She wasn’t placating me or putting up with me. She wanted my opinion. I felt a hint of that awe and respect that the rest of her team showed.
“I came here because I want to break my friends out of a Breeding Camp,” I said. Other Yami remained quiet, so I kept thinking this through aloud. “But that’s just one camp. If we break them out – when we break them out, the government can just make three more. We need to take the country back for the people. Everyone should have a say in who they partner with, where they live, what jobs they do, whether or not they have children. So if this is the center of the Underground movement, it’s our responsibility to make things right. We have to do more.”
“Like what?” Other Yami asked. “Remember, the Chancellor has a hundred times more men than we do. And hundreds of communities worth of food and weaponry.”
I bit my lip. The odds were not in our favor, not one bit.
“We cut off the heads,” I muttered. Other Yami raised her eyebrows. “The Chancellor once told me that he’s like the Hydra. All his clones are scattered across the country working together to gain power and control. If we kill one clone, two more could easily take his place. The only way to defeat the Hydra is to cut off all of the heads. We need to take down all of the Chancellors. At once. Before he creates more.”
Other Yami bit her lip, and I couldn’t contain a small laugh. She was a time-lapsed version of myself; all the mannerisms were so similar. She smiled when she realized what I was laughing about.
“I agree,” she finally said. “The only way to stop this is to take down the Chancellor and each of his clones. So what’s stopping us?”
“We don’t know where they all are,” I said. “Even if we found one, or five, the others would still be out there. We don’t even know how many there are.”
Other Yami nodded encouragingly. “You won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve come to the same conclusion,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “He has some loyal followers, but most of his control comes from fear and bribery. If we take him out of the game, the game ends. But like you said, we don’t know where he is. Where is he operating from? We haven’t had a national capitol building in hundreds of years. There’s no master Chancellor mansion.”
“Then what’s next?” I asked again.
Other Yami smiled more broadly this time. I thought of Etta and Hope. Is this what it would be like to have a mother? A daughter?
“This is the most challenging part,” Other Yami said. “We’ve spent so many years fighting for control of our own choices that the Chancellor has had time to create a stronghold over all of us. We don’t know enough about him. I believe that the more we can loosen his grip on the people, the more we’ll be able to learn about how he works.”
“How he works?”
“Yes. How he works.” Other Yami leaned forward now; there was an excited energy in her voice. “Let’s say there are fifty of him. All over the country. Some are leading individual communities who may not even know what’s going on in other regions. Some are running Breeding Camps. Some are running fertility testing. Some are overseeing training of the Gray Suits.”
“So he’s everywhere.” I couldn’t see how that helped us.
“Exactly!” Other Yami cried. “He’s everywhere. So he must know exactly where he is at all times. We don’t know how. Maybe some sort of tracker. Maybe some messaging system – which theoretically we could hack into, if we knew what it was. But there’s a way he is keeping track of himself and all of his other clones, and we have to find it.”
“So once we figure out how he keeps track of all the heads, we can devise a plan to cut them all off?” I liked the sound of it.
“Exactly.”
BACK IN THE HUB, ALL eyes were immediately back on Other Yami and me. I felt like I could stand a little taller now that I was a part of her inner circle. After all, how could I not be? We were clones.
Gianna had already made friends with half the room and proved her worth by showing everyone the results of Omer and Ann’s communication tracking. People were impressed by the progress we’d made, and we even had a few extra details to add to their database.
Other Yami called a few people over to the center table of the room, including myself. I stood awkwardly behind someone’s chair, unsure how I would fit in.
“We’ve been looking for more manpower, and now we have more,” Other Yami announced. “We’ve heard from a dozen communities in the past few days that they want to be more involved. What do we do next?”
I wasn’t expecting a roundtable discussion. Other Yami had seemed like someone who brought ideas to the table. Instead, she carefully identified the best ideas and put them under the spotlight.
“We could send a group to try to infiltrate the breeding camps,” a man to Other Yami’s left said.
“Too risky,” a woman replied. “We don’t have enough people to fight the Gray Suits. And if we send people in as spies, they’re going to be set up as non-breeders. NBs. I don’t think we can get the technology needed to let NBs communicate outside of the camps.”
“We could if we had a Breeder inside the camp,” someone else said.
“Do we have anyone who’s fertile who can manage the technology?” Other Yami asked. People swiped through lists on their holoscreens. No one responded.
“Someone work on that. If we have someone fertile who’s prepared to take the risk and who can be trained on the programming piece, then that could help.” A woman volunteered and ran off to talk to someone else outside of the Hub.
“What about the Gray Suit training facilities?” a different man spoke up. “We’ve talked about turning people before. Gray Suits have the least inherent loyalty and the most to gain from joining us. And their recruiting numbers are increasing.”
“Don’t we have a few people at HQ who defected?” Other Yami asked. A quiet woman in the corner raised her hand.
“I was a Gray Suit, ma’am,” she whispered. She took a deep breath before continuing. “I was recruited from my town while they did genetic testing. I used to work in a manufacturing plant, and I’m not fertile. It was a better option than being an NB at a breeding camp, and they promised that after the government took back all the communities and organized all the breeding camps, I would end up in a better job.”
“Janessa, right?” asked Other Yami. Janessa nodded. “Thank you. How did you end up here?”
Janessa shrunk down into her chair, embarrassed by the sudden attention.
“I – I ran,” Janessa stuttered. “I overheard some of the trainers talking. They said it was all a lie, that we’d never get good jobs. We’d just end up with our clone lines retired and working for breeders. Something about how he said it...I believed it. So I ran.”
“Thank you, Janessa,” Other Yami said. “We should send some people into a training facility. They aren’t under high security so we should be able to stay in contact with them. They can turn people while getting more information about the trainers. If the trainers know the truth, we can find out what else they know. They may have connections to the Chancellor.”
“I’ll do it,” I spoke up. It was just what I needed. A way to get into the action. Take my mind off Charlie and the others while still helping.
“I’ll go with you,” Gianna said.
Other Yami nodded. “Good. We’ll get you set up with the right technology so everything can happen safely and quickly.”
WHILE THE REST OF US were trying to figure out who was on our side and who wasn’t, Other Yami’s team at HQ was developing technology I never knew was possible. The Tech Director, Anika, showed Gianna and myself around the tech center, which used to be a cloning lab.
“The country has spent years developing new technology, but it’s been the wrong kind,” she explained as we toured the building. “Every advancement has focused on ending the fertility crisis. New machines to analyze fertility data, updated cloning equipment, automized food dispensers so more people can work in research, TekCasts to minimize the need for printing paper books or maintaining cellular calling technology. Since HQ hasn’t been concerned with any of that for years, we’ve focused more on the equipment we’ll need to take the country back.”
The building was a jumble of large, cluttered rooms with row after row of lab tables. A dozen people were working on a dozen different projects. Someone was working on a strange two legged robot; it ran up and down an aisle of tables awkwardly carrying a box full of reams of paper.
“This is the section Yami wanted you both to see,” Anika said, eyeing me when she said Other Yami’s name.