The Labs (The GEOs Book 2)

by Ramona Finn

  My stomach grumbled as I imagined how marvelous the vegetables in that dome must taste. A feeling filled my entire body—a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was happiness. This is what it felt like to be truly happy.

  Ben brought the transport to the other side of the dome and turned us around. We faced an opening in the Sky Lab. Very slowly, a tunnel stretched out toward us.

  “That’s the landing dock,” Ben explained. “Once it’s fully extended, we will fly in and land. It’ll be the smoothest landing you’ve ever experienced.”

  After my experience with flight, I was sure that any landing that wasn’t an emergency landing would be the smoothest one I’d ever experienced. But I said nothing. I sat back in my seat and held my breath. Even Kev looked a little pale.

  The tunnel stopped extending outward and Ben expertly maneuvered our half-transport inside. Less than a minute later, the tunnel opened into an enormous cavern. We passed over several other transports that were parked neatly in a row on our right. Small looking people in bright yellow outfits ran around, waving their arms at us. Ben received instructions for landing over the comms before putting us down onto a platform that had been prepared for our arrival. And he was right. We barely felt a thud as the transport made contact with the landing pad.

  “Landing clamps engaged,” Ben said. His co-pilot repeated his words, confirming what they’d just done. The engines roared once again and then all went quiet.

  The bridge was silent for about three long seconds. Then, someone exhaled loudly, and everyone clapped.

  “Well done.” I breathed out my relief and let go of the armrests I didn’t know I’d been gripping.

  Ben came to my side and offered me his hand.

  “Welcome to the Greens, Tylia,” he said. “You’re going to love it here.” He was laughing. I took his hand and stood up. My heart was racing again, but this time with relief and a bit of happiness. I had reached the Labs, and I had this incredibly good-looking boy to be my guide through it all. I felt like the luckiest person alive.

  Before I could say a word to him, the bridge doors swished open. In walked two very official looking Farrow Corp personnel. They were dressed in reflective silver coats, had badges attached to their coat pockets, and, strangest of all, had the exact same short, platinum white hair, and dark eyes that were rimmed in red. Up close, their pale skin was almost translucent, so that their veins showed through.

  I blinked and did a double take. It wasn’t just the hair, eyes, or skin. These two people looked exactly alike. Even the way they moved—their walking was synchronized. I couldn’t stop staring. There had never been any twins in the Geos since every family was only allowed one child, if that. My parents had been permitted to have me much later in life than most people, and I imagined that, if twins had even been a possibility for them, the Farrows would’ve made sure it didn’t happen.

  “What is this?” Ben asked.

  “We have orders to take the female winner to Dr. Farrow’s quarters.” They spoke in perfect unison, as if they’d rehearsed it a hundred times.

  Ben let go of my hand. “But I intend to escort both our victors to Father personally.”

  “Orders have changed, sir.” This time only one of the twins spoke. “There’s been a slight complication.”

  He handed a small computer pad over to Ben, who read it with a frown. I watched Ben, hoping what was on the pad wasn’t the news that I’d cheated my way into the Acceptance. I thought about telling him the truth, someday, but definitely not now. Maybe Ben would use his position to tell them to go away. Was that possible? He was the favorite Farrow, after all. Surely, he had some power. But all he did was return the pad to the twins, looking puzzled and a little annoyed. Then he stepped back, as if to give them room to do what they were ordered to do.

  When I turned back to the twins, they were standing within inches of my face. They obviously didn’t believe in personal space.

  “You’re to come with us,” the second one said. “Immediately.” His voice and expression were flat, emotionless.

  “Immediately,” the other repeated

  The first one took me by the arm.

  “Ouch! Not so hard!” I cried, looking back to Ben for help, but his face had gone as blank as the twins’ expressions. I looked over at Kev. No one had come for him, and he was looking just as baffled as I felt. I thought for a second that he would say something, but he too stepped back, dropped his head, and kept quiet. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure I would’ve done anything different if things had been the other way around.

  They must know about my cheating. That was the only possible explanation. I was being taken to R.L. Farrow so he could publicly shame me and kick me out of the Greens. I should’ve seen this coming. Stupid.

  Ben showed no emotion and did nothing to intervene. It was as if he’d been hypnotized to be as still as a statue. The twin guards each took one of my arms and marched me off the bridge.

  “What’s going on?” I protested. I wanted to fight, to wriggle out of their grip, but a weakness came over me. I was like limp lettuce in their hands, and even worse, I couldn’t protest anymore. My voice was stuck in my throat.

  Chapter Four

  “Could you please loosen your grip on my arm?” I wriggled in the twins’ grip, hurting myself even more. I could almost feel the bruises beginning to form. “I’ll go with you peacefully. I promise.” It wasn’t as if there was anywhere to run.

  The twins looked at each other. Some secret message passed between them, like telepathy, and they let go. At the same time.

  “I apologize,” the one on my left said. “We are simply following orders to escort you to your next station.”

  “Then why treat me like a prisoner?” I grumbled.

  “We weren’t sure how you would react,” the one on the right said. “Our orders were to be swift, and we couldn’t risk any arguments.”

  I wanted to start an argument right there, but we had just walked off the bridge and were making our way past the damaged back end of the transport. Just seeing it again made me feel weaker than I already did.

  Looking up instead, I could just make out the metallic beams that supported this enormous landing area. All around us, people in yellow overalls and helmets worked on transports. Carts pushed past us carrying piles of crates as we walked on toward what I assumed was an exit. The grated flooring was hard and metallic looking, much like the original level of the Geos—the level no one used anymore.

  “Look out!” the left twin yelled just as a small vehicle carrying two yellow-clad workers whooshed past us. The right twin pushed me out of the way and I almost tripped over my own feet.

  “Do look where you’re going,” the right twin said to the left twin.

  “They were driving over the speed limit,” the left twin replied. “And I couldn’t anticipate its trajectory, could I?”

  The twins went at each other for a few more seconds. They must’ve been quite agitated because their pale skin actually turned pink. It gave them a more human look. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” the left twin asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, wondering how I could be laughing at this moment myself. “You two sound like the same person arguing with yourself. It’s just a little strange, that’s all. Are there a lot of twins in the Greens?”

  We’d come to a large silver door. It looked heavy. The left twin let go of me and spoke into one of the speaker panels at the side of the door. The right twin glared at me with a sneer that made me worry I smelled bad.

  “We’re not twins,” he said.

  Before I could ask another question, the heavy door creaked open. A cold wind brushed up behind us as we stepped through. The door slid shut. I hadn’t realized how noisy it had been in the landing bay until I was enveloped by the sweet silence of the corridor I now stood in. To my left and right, the path stretched out endlessly. Beneath my feet, a lush, pale carpet cushioned my steps
as calming blue lighting snaked along the low ceiling. I couldn’t get enough of the feeling of the carpet as the twins—or not twins—led me forward. As the walls beside us looked solid and grey, I assumed we were in the section of the Greens that had translucent walls, even though they looked completely opaque to me now.

  “Are we going far?” I asked after a minute of silence.

  “Why?”

  “I kind of need to…use the facilities.”

  The twins, or whatever they were, sighed in unison. “Fine,” they said.

  They turned into one of the many doors that dotted the corridor. It opened up into a room the size of our entire home quarters in the Geos. The pale carpet extended to every corner in the room. In front of me was a window that stretched from floor to ceiling. Facing the window was the shiniest brown sofa I’d ever seen. It was brand new, as if not a single person had ever sat on it.

  “You live with this every day,” I said to the twins as they let go of my arms. I moved toward the window and pressed my face against the cool glass. I was looking out into an atrium of some sort. Rooms that were exactly like this one lined the perimeter of a giant circle. Similar circles stretched out above and below us. I couldn’t see what was at the bottom of this atrium because it was too dark, but looking up, I saw what looked like a huge solar tube. We had solar tubes in the Geos, mostly near the medical center, but they were so dirty that they barely let in any sunlight anymore. Still, the tubes were one of the few places where we in the Geos could imagine what sunlight looked like. Here, the opening was almost invisible, and so clean that every drop of sunlight gushed in like water from a broken pipe.

  “You must be the happiest people on the planet,” I said. “To be surrounded by so much light and beauty.”

  The twins chuckled. It sounded sarcastic, if that was even possible.

  “The facilities are to your right,” one of them said.

  “Right.” I headed to a smaller room. This one had a bed in it. Only one bed. Whoever this home had been made for, they must be important, because they’d get all this space to themselves. The bathroom was through the bedroom and was so luxurious. Every surface was made of a white stone with thin grey lines that made swirly patterns in it. The floor, the counter, and the walls all shined as if they’d existed only to be polished.

  If I hadn’t been so desperate for relief, I would’ve been a lot more afraid to use the facilities. It was too clean. I’d never been in a bathroom that was so roomy, either. There was an entire stall with two shower heads. Four people could’ve fit in there. There were two sinks, so you could wash your hands in one and soap up in another! I didn’t understand this kind of waste, but it felt glorious to be inside of it.

  I walked back out to the main area of the home to find the twins whispering nervously to each other. They stopped as soon as they saw me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We should get on our way,” they said together.

  “You twins are amazing,” I said, following them to the door.

  “We’re not twins,” they said together again. “We’re clones.”

  Clones? I’d heard of that. We’d learned about that in classes. Sometime a long time ago, humans who’d lived on the surface experimented with creating people from one parent instead of the usual two. The offspring turned out to be exact replicas of the parent. But it was considered unethical to make humans that way, so it had been banned.

  Apparently, it wasn’t banned here in the Labs.

  We continued our walk down the corridor. I tried to ask the clones questions. I had a lot of them, but they wouldn’t say a word in reply, so I stopped talking altogether. But that made me think about the fate I was heading toward. My stomach twisted tighter.

  The corridor changed after a while. The walls became transparent. We had crossed into the open section, as I liked to think of it. The clones led me into an elevator. Again, this was the most luxurious elevator I’d been in. The last one that I’d taken had led me to Wallace in the old section of the Geos, and that one had me standing away from the walls in case I’d touched something I couldn’t identify. This elevator had mirrored walls and warm lighting that made me want to ride it forever. It even had soft music playing from somewhere in the walls. One clone pressed a button and we headed up to the second highest level.

  We stepped out onto a floor that looked almost exactly the same as the one we’d begun on. Everything was stark and clean—even the air smelled pure. This world was clinical, and I liked it. It presented such a difference from the grime and dank underground world that I’d grown up in. It wasn’t the Above like where the Rejs lived, either, but there was something comforting about living in a place where you didn’t have to think about disease being around every corner.

  Elites dressed in white lab coats hurried back and forth, tapping at the screens of handheld computers. These were the scientists on The Cure. We paused to let a large group of busy looking scientists walk past. I glanced over one shoulder to catch a glimpse of their tech. I’d never seen a computer so compact. Their technology was so far ahead of ours. I itched to get my hands on one of them, even just for a few minutes.

  I looked at the clones, and down at the pad in one of their hands. He must have noticed because the one holding it moved it behind his back. That’s when I noticed his badge. It had a number on it, and then his name below. He was Max and the other was Dax.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Your names rhyme. Is that a clone thing?”

  “Yes,” Max said, rolling his eyes. “We enjoy rhyming our names. There’s Lax, and Fax, and Gax…”

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” I said, surprised that I’d upset the clone. “I get it.”

  Dax nudged Max with his elbow and Max frowned. “There are about seventy-three clones in this city alone,” Dax said. “We all have three-letter names and mostly respond to each other’s if people mix us up.”

  “So, you’re all from one parent?” And they all looked alike? All seventy-three of them? That would be confusing.

  “We are made from the same gene pool—made of several human donors mixed together. We’re manufactured, if you wish,” Dax said. “We are genetically identical.”

  “Manufactured? You weren’t born of a human?”

  “We were born outside of a human host,” Max said with a little more attitude than his brother. “In a laboratory; gestated until we were mature, and then programmed with our life’s vocation. All natural-born humans are busy working for the Farrows, doing the work to find the Cure. We clones perform routine work to keep the cities functioning, freeing up everyone else to concentrate on their vital work.”

  “But you’re human, right? Not androids?”

  “We are genetically human,” Max said. “Although we do not mingle with others. We have our specific functions.”

  “Did they make you with pale skin and white hair on purpose, to make you different?” I blurted without thinking. The way Dax looked at me made me regret asking.

  “It’s a generational thing,” Max answered instead. “There’s been some degeneration in the genetic pool they use to create us. The later-made clones are much lighter than the older ones.”

  “And by older, we don’t mean octogenarians,” Dax said, almost spitting out the words. “We only survive about twenty years.”

  “That’s awful!” I felt sick. To know you only had twenty years to live—how must that feel? “I’m sorry.” There were no other words.

  Max and Dax shrugged at the same time. It was strange how some of their movements almost felt choreographed.

  My curiosity was still unsatiated. “You look alike, but you aren’t exactly the same person. Do you feel everything that the other feels at the same time?”

  Dax frowned. “Of course not. We are individuals.”

  Max picked up the pace, Dax followed. We passed a floor-to-ceiling door with a sign reading “Film Studios” on it. That must have been where they filmed the show. Viv would’ve been so jealous. We walked
on, and the path led us to an atrium. This was different from the one I’d seen from the room. This one had a floor—and this floor was smooth, hard, and white with tiny grey swirls all throughout. It had an open ceiling, much like a window that just looked into the sky above. I’d say that this atrium was three times the size of our Union Hall. If I ran its circumference at full speed, it would take me a good ten minutes to get all the way around. I loved its airy feel, and it was so clean.

  It was crowded in here, too, with some people mingling while others kept their focus on their computer pads. This place must be the Elite version of our Union Hall down in the Geos. I wondered if they gathered here to watch The Cure on TV, but why would they? I assumed that Elites had their own TVs and didn’t need to gather as we did. Or maybe they could watch it on their pads. That would be something. A portable TV.

  I wanted to ask the clones about that, but they picked up their pace again. I had the feeling they were trying to leave this atrium as quickly as possible.

  They led me down another corridor at the other end of the atrium. This one had solid white walls all the way around. There weren’t even any windows here, and the ceiling lights were fluorescent, like in the nicer parts of the Geos. I immediately missed the natural lighting of the atrium. Judging by the growing frowns on the clones’ faces, I could bet I’d seen the last of the sunlight for a while.

  Max stopped abruptly in front of a door. It, too, was white, with no visible handles.

  “Place your hand here,” Dax said, pointing to an almost invisible panel to the right of the door. When I hesitated, he lifted my hand and pressed my palm against the panel. A red line appeared across my palm. It went up and down several times.

  “Scanning,” a flat, robotic voice said. “Welcome, Tylia Coder.”

  It knew my name already. I was really in trouble.

  “You have now coded yourself to this room,” Dax said. “Place your hand on the panel again, and say ‘Open.’ ”