by Mara, Alex
And that deceptiveness—the ability to pretend—was the scariest thing about our kind. "Pick your tanto,” she instructed.”
"So you've got a handler, too," I said, stepping past her and surveying the rack of knives. "Did he make a good first lay during your seduction training?"
"I'm afraid that's irrelevant to the current module, 8024," Scarlet said, and I could feel her fury in her words. If it wouldn't get her recycled, she'd probably have a knife at my throat. "Pick your blade."
My finger slid over the gleaming metal of five different options, testing the sharpness of each one. "It's interesting you've chosen to include me, even though I just failed the seduction module."
"There's a process, 8024. I have to recommend the failures for recycling before they go to it, and in the meantime, we keep training them. Sometimes they get second chances."
Or, I thought, you subvert the whole process by setting up a sham training.
"What are the rules?" I asked.
"Three minutes in the room. No tap-outs."
No tap-outs was code for a survival duel—we literally could not escape, could not tap out—which meant she'd probably instructed 8023 not to hold back.
My gaze flicked to him. The one upside of looking at yourself all the time: you could convey entire messages in blinks and micro-expressions. And his two rapid blinks confirmed what I'd thought: she'd told him it was him or me.
Even if I beat 8023, the outcome wasn't in my favor—it was in my Scarlet's. If 8023 killed me I'd be dead, and if I killed him I'd be recycled for hyper-aggression against another infiltrator.
It was a no-win.
But Darcy had given me my orders: I needed to survive. She was coming for me. So I felt sorry for 8023, the poor bastard. I wasn't the one who was going to die in this fight.
I'd finally found my first blade—the one I'd used to nick 8013's neck. I slipped it from the rack and into my hand. When I turned, found 8023 and Scarlet staring at me, and I lifted the blade so the fluorescents glinted off it. "I'll take this one."
Then I started to disrobe.
Two minutes later I stepped into the sparring room with my blood singing, flipping the tanto grip over blade in the air, catching it with my opposite hand. I lowered it to my side. “Two seconds lead.”
Across the room, 8023 stood in a fighting stance, his feet spread. The point of his tanto glinted at me. “Are you positive?”
My upper lip twitched. “If you don’t come at me right now, I’m going to take your head off.”
8023 didn’t like that. He dug in, kicked off the floor into a sprint. He came at me fast—faster than I’d expected. He was halfway across the room before the buzzer had even sounded for us to begin.
One second.
My thumb hitched over the butt-end of the weapon. He strafed left of me, came on with the blade in his left hand as though he would confuse me, as though he would switch at the last moment to his good hand.
But the trick was in keeping it in his bad hand, staying left of me and spinning left, swinging the blade around behind him to connect with my neck. I knew because I had pioneered that trick on my second day.
When he spun left, I ducked under. The tanto whistled above my head, and as I rose, I realized he hadn't been holding back; he would have taken me right in my carotid artery.
So I drove the length of metal into his exposed side as though I were cutting into a cake.
I skipped the vital organs, and when I'd finished I left the blade in like a plug. I didn't want him to bleed out, but the wound would be enough to make him stay down, which was exactly what I wanted.
Just like that, our fight was over.
“Nothing personal,” I whispered to 8023. And I meant it.
* * *
9:14 a.m.
When it came to punishment, the Ides facility operated with amazing speed. Within twenty minutes I sat in a narrow, bare room with a single fluorescent light shining down on me.
This was the interrogation room I'd stood in with Darcy. Except this time, I was in the chair.
I tested the arm and head restraints. They were tight, secure. 8013 had seen to that before he stepped into the hallway.
"You know," I'd said to him as he tugged the restraints tight, "this isn't really becoming of you, 8013."
His green eyes met mine, and then he'd strapped the head restraint on. "Funny you say that—I never knew how unbecoming I looked with my head strapped into an interrogation chair. Gives me a little double chin."
"That's the best you've got?” I said. “Must be tough on the psyche, doing a lackey's work."
And then, as 8013 and I stared at one another and his eyes simmered with latent violence, I'd thought: Worth it.
His lips curled. "You still don't get it, Blaze," he intoned, yanking my restraints so hard my hands tingled. "We were never equals. You've been on a meteoric path toward death since you woke up, and now you’ve finally crashed into the earth. How does it feel?”
He straightened, and because I couldn't lift my chin, only my eyes raised to meet his. "I'd rather be down here than a puppet like you.”
He stood silent a moment. “The truth is, I have nothing against you," 8013 finally said, turning toward the door. "But you sure do make it a pleasure to cut off the circulation in your hands."
And then he was gone.
Now the door chimed, slid open. It wasn't 8013. One of the Scarlets stepped in, this one bearing a massive V of a scar across one cheek and eye. She had the same appearance as the others, except the combination of the scar and a certain cruel set of her mouth.
“Hello, 8024,” she said. Even her voice sounded different than my Scarlet's: this one had modified hers into something cold, precise. Torturous.
And I understood then that even clones, given enough time, would be shaped by their predilections. That those traits would appear bodily over time, in the same way Darcy’s face bore a softness, an eternal regret around the eyes.
Darcy. I had to protect her. I had to survive.
“Hello,” I said. One of my eyebrows went up. “I was told I’d get a pretty one.”
The Scarlet rolled her good eye. One of her hands went to the belt at her waist, and she lifted a small black contraption, thumbed it so two prongs appeared. “You’re attempting humor. That’s cute. Seeing as how you tried to kill another one of your own model, I have the honor of shocking that out of you before you go to the recycling bin. Courtesy of Luther Ides.”
And then a sizzling blue beam activated between the prongs.
Luther Ides. I wouldn’t ever forget that name. In fact, I promised myself I'd pay him a visit someday. After I'd gotten Darcy to the surface, and picked up some guns. Lots of guns.
I nearly smiled, but resisted; this woman was an infiltrator, after all, attuned to any deception. “Give it your best go, One-Eye.”
And she approached like she would take me up on that.
I sat tense, ready. 8013 hadn't fully secured one of the leg restraints—he was damn right about us not being equals—and I was ready to show One-Eye the bottom of my foot. And the heel of it.
But as soon as she came within striking distance, the intercom by the door sounded. Three chimes, which meant a direct line to this room.
One-Eye and I looked at each other. Between us, all three of our eyes meant business.
"Going to answer that?" I said.
Finally she sighed, deactivated the prod. She crossed to the intercom, stabbed a button with her finger. “Scarlet 7450.”
The novice from my training had been 10015, which meant One-Eye was old old. That explained all the scars.
“7450, what’s your status?”
I recognized that voice.
“Proceeding with the ordered interrogation of male infiltrator 8024 for hyper-aggression and attempted murder of iteration 8023.”
Interrogation. Torture. One and the same in the Ides facility. Luther Ides, I thought again. I will remember that name. And I will make good on
my promise.
“Cease and desist, 7450," Darcy said. “I am overriding the order. Bring 8024 to my office immediately.”
And One-Eye looked like she might cry a whole tear from her unscarred eye down her unscarred cheek. She paused for a mutinous moment, and then she touched the intercom. “Understood.”
Thirteen
Thursday, May 7, 2053
10:28 a.m.
Darcy
The door to my cabin hissed open, and light fell onto my back and the wall. A shadow hovered in the doorway. The projected snow around me disappeared where the light hit it, and I set one hand to where it had been, my fingers touching the cold metal.
“You’re late,” I said, and my eyes drifted up to the skyscape on my ceiling, a million white seeds in the blackness.
Silence. The door closed, and for a moment I considered not turning on the light. But then I snapped my fingers, and we both came into stark fluorescence: he at the door, me at my desk.
He wore nothing but the white sparring cloth at his waist and sweat on his brow. I tried to keep my eyes on his face, where I spotted concern edging at his eyes. “Sorry, Doctor—I had to be escorted from an interrogation room. Turns out it’s on the far side of the facility from where the humans live.”
That solemn voice still made my insides flutter in the exact way it had the first day. How long had it been—only a week? Impossible. More had happened in this week than in the past five years. Both in the facility, and inside me.
He was still alive. I wanted to shove my chair from the table, to run across the room and wrap my arms around him. To bury my face into his neck and smell that scent.
Instead, I did what Darcy West does best: I lifted my pen and clicked the nib on the desk. “Why were you in one of the interrogation rooms, 8024?”
“Hyper-aggression and attempted murder of model 8023.” He said it with such perfect calmness I nearly shivered.
“Why?”
His eyebrows went up, and I read his face perfectly: Am I safe to speak freely?
I shook my head, gestured with my pen at the door where, on the other side, the Gale who had escorted him—maybe even the interrogation Scarlet herself—would be standing. Listening via an infiltrator's genetically enhanced capabilities in the name of security.
I waved him over, set a finger to my lips.
He came to me soundlessly, so much so that I found it terrifying. I had designed this man. Even so, the kind of noiselessness he was capable of surprised me.
And when he lowered himself to his haunches beside my chair and looked up at me with most of his body uncovered, I wasn't sure if I wanted to lean closer or away.
He was a killer. A seducer.
"Whisper," I whispered, leaning close. "There's a Gale outside."
He nodded, those green eyes never leaving mine. "That I can do." And his whisper was a velvet stroke, so soft I'd hardly heard it and yet each word had been perfectly understood. “I want to touch you,” he said. “Just once more.”
After a moment, I let a sharp breath, nodding. His hand came up, the fingers just barely hovering over my hair. He pressed it aside with a feather stroke to reveal my neck, and I lifted my chin, angled my face left.
When I closed my eyes, his fingertips felt like a brand on my pulse. My lips parted, and I inhaled fast as my insides clenched. His thumb came to rest at the fore of my throat, right over my airway.
At first he didn’t move his hand at all, and I didn’t want him to; both of us absorbed this new sensation, his hand in a place it hadn't been before.
After a moment, his thumb stroked a few degrees up along my throat, and then a few degrees down. My mouth closed, and my head fell farther right as his fingers traced the line of my neck from shoulder to jaw and back again.
This week, I'd finally understood the touch of a man designed for seduction. And as the heat fluttered in my belly, I knew I was a goner.
“So smooth,” he murmured, his index finger tracing the length of my jawline to my chin. And then his whole hand enfolded my cheek, his thumb rubbing the apple of my cheekbone, his fingertips along the outer ridge of my ear and below the lobe.
I shivered. I said nothing. If I moved, I might have dissolved into a puddle on the floor.
But I had brought him here for more than just this. I forced the chair to roll a few degrees away from his hand, rubbed my fingers over my brow bone to clear my mind. “Hold on.”
The moment was broken. His fingers retreated to his side, and I already regretted stopping it. But this was his life—his only life.
“What is it?” he said.
“First I need to do something,” I said, pushing my chair over to the far wall. I opened an invisible panel, entered the six-digit key code. Above us, the blinking red light in the black dome jutting from the ceiling went dim.
Blaze’s eyes followed mine. “So you don’t go unseen either.”
“It just listens, and I can deactivate it if I choose to. We have that liberty.”
“Who's on the other side?”
I shrugged. “Some of the Gales. They’re on a rotating shift, monitoring about a hundred different microphones. They’re only supposed to keep an ear out for particularly egregious stuff.”
“Like me touching you?”
“That I might be able to explain away as part of your training. What we’re about to discuss, though, I definitely can’t."
He leaned on the corner of my desk in the same way I’d done back in the viewing room after his seduction training. Except he appeared effortless, natural. “Illicit stuff. You’re not as much a brown-noser as I’d thought.”
“Excuse me, did one of my infiltrators just call me a brown-noser? Where did you even hear that?”
“Colloquialisms.” He tapped the side of his head. “I’m a quick learn, as you know.”
Too quick. He was beginning to sound indistinguishable from a complete smartass. But we didn’t have time for this right now. “Listen, Blaze—”
“That’s the first time you’ve called me by my name.”
I paused, my mouth open. “Well, that’s what I’m going to call you from now on.”
He smiled, this time a genuine one. “Continue.”
My eyes flicked to the dome on the ceiling. I’d turned it off, but I fully expected to see the red dot blinking anyway. Definitely something Ides would program in. But I didn’t see it flash once.
"First, what happened?" I said. "Why the hyper-aggression?"
"My Scarlet put 8023 and me into a three-minute survival duel. It was kill or be killed."
“But you didn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t want to kill him, but I made it so he wouldn’t get back up.”
I exhaled. "Shit."
A smile touched his lips. "Exactly. Thanks for busting me out of that torture chamber, by the way. Your timing couldn't have been better."
I shook my head, dropping my face into my hands. "I didn't think things were this bad. That the Scarlets would be this vengeful. This cruel."
His fingers touched my wrist, and he gently pulled one hand from my face. When he caught my eyes, he'd half-ducked his head to see me better. "She wasn't being vengeful—she was just protecting herself. When you put people's necks on the line for missing their quotas, then you get attempted murders and torture and the most ruthless depths humanity is capable of."
I stared at him with wide eyes. He had to explain this to me. And he was right, except...it was so easy to collectively forget, to take one step and then another and before you knew it you were halfway down the road to hell.
And when you're halfway down the road, it's easier to continue on than to double back—to witness the destruction you've left behind you.
"So," he said, "what's the plan?"
"The plan is to get you out of here tonight."
"How are we going to do that?"
I shook my head, said nothing. "I can't say."
One eyebrow lifted. “You can’t tell me what’s hap
pening, or why?”
He’d probably surmised the plan already. But even as I felt drawn to him in an inexplicable way, I didn’t quite feel yet like I could trust him with all my cards, that I could spill all my plans to him.
He was, after all, engineered for ultimate loyalty to the Ides facility. Hell, he even had an Ides-design chip in his neck.
He might unwillingly betray me, which would only turn out worse if he knew our plans.
So I kept shaking my head. “It's safer for you not to know. You just need to trust me.”
His shoulders lifted, dropped. “Okay.”
My mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Okay?”
"I can trust you.”
A seed of guilt started in my stomach. I didn’t think I could fully trust him, but he hadn’t even taken a moment to consider whether he would do what I asked. It was just automatic. “Thank you."
It got quiet, and I wished he would caress my neck again.
But his hands remained folded across his chest, his biceps bulging. A killer's arms. “Will I be headed back to One-Eye after this?” he asked.
I blinked, refocused. “One-Eye?”
“Ms. Scarlet with the taser.”
“Oh.” I shook my head. “No. That won't be necessary.”
“Shame. I was looking forward to the newfound joys of electric stimulation. So what's in store for me when I leave this room?"
I swallowed. "Recycling. Maybe arbitration first, if we're lucky."
He didn't even seem fazed. "Why would they interrogate me if they're going to recycle me anyway?"
The 'process,'" I said, my fingers quoting in the air. "Mostly it's to put fear in the infiltrators in case they're considering hyper-aggression against one another."
"Fits the general hellish vibe of this place," he said. “Why did you stop the ‘interrogation?’”
That question had such an obvious answer, I wouldn't have imagined he'd ask it. He was smart, after all. There was only one reason, I thought, watching the smirk pull at the left corner of his mouth.
I shifted in my seat. Because I’d seen him in a dream? Because some cosmic force told me I needed to save him? Because, when I’d found out what had happened, I couldn’t stop my fingers from touching the keys on the intercom?