Before I can respond, a table to my right, full of loud, laughing Firsts distracts me. One of them, a young man only a couple years older than me, with curly blond hair and blue eyes, draws my attention. My breath lodges in the middle of my throat. It’s my cousin, Adrian. Or should I say, Thoreau.
As if it has a mind of its own, my body pushes up from the table and strides to where my cousin sits laughing and drinking a tall flute of champagne. Behind me, Eliot makes excuses for my behavior. I don’t care. All I see is my cousin smiling in merriment at something the young woman beside him said.
“Adria—Thoreau?” My voice, a weak croak, causes everyone at the table to cease their conversation.
My cousin turns around, and for the first time in two years, his gaze meets mine. A wide, confident smile stretches his face, nothing like the shy grin he used to have. I wonder if he still writes poetry. I suppose he’d have more time for it now. He stands up and pulls me into a tight hug before releasing me.
“Socrates, how good it is to see you! I was wondering when you’d come to call, since we’re technically related now. Should I call you cousin, or is that too much?”
A cold shiver snakes through me. We do share the same genetic material, but we’re nothing alike anymore. I can see it in his eyes. “Of course not. I’m glad we ran into each other. I was planning on visiting you, but when I saw you here, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.”
“Most assuredly. We are quite infamous now, you and I. Although”—Thoreau measures me with his light blue eyes—“your Second created quite a bit more of a splash than mine did.”
My chuckle sounds empty and forced, but Thoreau doesn’t seem to notice. “You almost sound jealous.”
“You know me, I always like a bit of excitement.”
I force a bland expression to my face and gesture around the room. “This is too much excitement for me. I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”
A merry grin tugs at the corners of Thoreau’s mouth. “And here I thought you were enjoying yourself up there. Are you sure it was an act?” He shudders dramatically. “Your procedure didn’t backfire, did it?”
I wink at him. “You’re not the first person to ask me that.” He chuckles. “But although I am responsible for many ghosts,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “the only voice I hear inside my head is my own.”
He claps me on the back. “Either way, I’m glad you’re back.”
Eliot walks up behind me, touching my elbow. “So this is where you ran off to.” There is a scolding tone in her voice. “I’m sorry to interrupt your reunion, but I need to talk to Socrates.” She smiles apologetically at Thoreau.
“Of course.” Thoreau clasps Ellie’s arm and steps back toward his table companions. “I didn’t mean to monopolize him.”
They exchange goodbyes before Eliot leads me to a small open space between tables on the far side of the room. Once there, I pull my arm out of her grasp and brush myself off. “What did you need to talk about?”
She scans the room to make sure we’re alone. “I just wanted to get you away from him before he figured it out. He and his friends have been suspicious based on your behavior both before the Exchange and afterward.”
My cheeks flush. “And I’m sure my speech didn’t help.” I touch one of the healing scars on my forehead.
She searches the surrounding faces, perhaps trying to make sure we haven’t drawn any notice, but no one’s paying any attention to us. “But that’s not the only reason I took you away from your cousin.”
Her words pique my interest. “What happened?”
“After you left I received word that your friend escaped.”
My heart jumps into my throat. Does she know? “Tanner?”
“Who?”
“Nobody, sorry.” My heart rate returns to normal. Phew. That was close.
She gives me an odd look, and her mustache twitches. “Lewis Carroll.”
I touch my neck. My mind skips back to that awful visit, and I can still feel his hands wrapped around my throat, choking me. “How did he escape?”
“Initial reports say Lifers helped him. The nurse assigned to him had her throat slit so badly she was almost decapitated and four of the security guards were eviscerated.”
Amy’s nervous smile flashes through my mind. I shiver. “Did Carroll do that?”
Eliot nods. “His prints were all over the scene.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s not the worst of it, though. He wrote something on the wall, too.”
My blood chills. “A message?”
“That I don’t know. I remember reading about it in an old story many years ago, but I don’t see how it’s relevant. He wrote Welcome to Wonderland.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
It’s not a thing, Alice. It’s a place.
“I don’t know.” Eliot grimaces. “It might be a reference to that story, but I have no idea.
“When did he escape?”
She searches the crowd for a long moment before answering. “They’re not sure. It was after your visit, of course, but it’s not unusual for the institution to have minimal contact with the outside world for days at a time. It was a delivery shuttle, dropping off some upgraded technology, that discovered the heinous act.”
The room starts spinning around me and I take a deep breath to steady myself. “Do they know where he is?”
She shakes her head. “No, but security is being doubled up all around the Smith, so he won’t be able to get in.”
“What if he’s already here?”
Her shoulders tense. “Then there’s nothing we can do except hope the guards catch him first.”
When we get to the door, another First, a woman about the same age as my mother, hails Eliot. “A word, please, if you don’t mind.” She smiles at me apologetically.
“Of course not. I’ll be back shortly.” Eliot squeezes my arm.
I let her hand fall away and give her an encouraging smile. “That’s fine. I’m just going back to my room.”
“You’re not going to stop anywhere along the way this time, are you?” She eyes me, suspiciously.
“No. I don’t think I have the energy, at least for tonight.”
“Good.” She turns to the other First. “Hello, Madeline, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Their voices trail away as I slip out of the banquet hall, closing the wide doors behind me. Once back in my room, I fall onto the bed. Ben hops up next to me and presses his wet snout against my cheek. He slurps my face with his tongue while I smile. “Cut it out, boy.”
After wiping Ben’s slobber from my skin, my fingers graze slowly growing fuzz on my head and the red patches where the needles bore into my skull. Even after the physical wounds disappear, I’ll always have the scars as a reminder of what happened. Adrian’s face appears in my mind. He has those scars, too. All Firsts do. Is that how Will sees me? Like I’m a stranger trapped in someone else’s skin? Sometimes, it's almost easier to slip into Socrates’s personality and pretend to be him rather than myself. I don’t have to feel when I’m Socrates. I can pretend that none of this affects me. My short laugh breaks through the silence. That hasn’t worked out very well for me so far.
Torn
Will
Later on that night, I sit on the chair next to the bed and watch Evie sleep. The blanket covering her twitches as our child prepares herself for the world outside. Don’t be so impatient, little one, I want to say. The world’s a cruel place. Enjoy the peace and quiet while you can. Once out here, life gets pretty complicated.
My hand hovers over the sheet as my mind shifts back to the night our baby was conceived. Evie wore a short white dress and danced so quickly her hair flew in long, dark waves around her.
I close my eyes, and a lump forms in my throat. Evie’s right. This is where I need to be. Evie and I can make it, I’m sure of it. We may not be in love, but we don’t really hate each other. Maybe with tim
e we could learn to love each other.
In my mind, Evie’s face becomes Mira’s. Not the cold, assessing version, but the one I fell in love with. She’s had me on my knees while I was still convinced I could keep my heart safe. What a fool I was.
If it were Mira lying in that bed, would we argue? Would we share secret smiles, and would she let me place my hands on her stomach to feel the life growing inside? What would a child of Mira’s and mine look like? Would it be a little girl with golden curls who loves collecting flowers, or a little boy who catches frogs in the garden and brings them home with a mischievous smile?
My heart breaks and instead of touching Evie’s stomach, I rub my chest. I’m so sorry, Mira. I wish I could have saved you. Another memory surfaces, this one of Socrates pretending to be Mira while he’s giving the speech. Bile rises in my throat, and feel myself on the brink of exploding with rage. He deserves to die for what he’s done.
Torn between the two warring images, Evie and Mira, I turn away once more and leave the apartment, letting the door click shut behind me. I don’t even know why I bother coming back anymore, it always seems like I’m on my way out.
A Job To Do
Mira
There’s a quiet knock on my door, and my heart races. For a second, I hope Will is on the other side, but I squash that feeling quickly.
“AVIS, off,” I say, and the screen showing the most recent protests and newscasts goes black. I roll off the bed, dislodge a grumbling Ben, and pad to the door. Just like I saw Will do when we were trapped in the storage room, I turn on the screen next to the door. It’s not Will. It’s that doctor, James Scoffield, and…I fling the door open.
“Tanner?” I squeak and clap my hand over my mouth.
James steps aside quickly as I throw my arms around my former betrothed.
“It’s okay, Mir. I’m here now.” I don’t have to look at him to recognize the smile in his voice. I collapse into his arms. I need this. I need him.
Realizing we’re still out in the open, I grab their hands and drag them inside my room. “I can’t believe it.” For some reason, Tanner’s wearing silver gloves, but I ignore it for now. He’s here, and that’s the most important part.
James holds a finger to his mouth. Then he pulls out an EG and sets it on his desk. Unlike Ellie’s, this one’s larger and instead of a slick silver color, it’s a deep metallic blue. It must be already on, because the top of the unit glows a bright white-blue. “There. We’re about as safe as we can be right now.”
“Is that like the one Eliot has?”
“Sort of. It disrupts both the sound and video feeds to your room, so if anyone isn’t paying strict attention, they’ll think you’re doing whatever you were doing about five minutes ago.”
Ben slides off the bed. He walks over and sniffs the two men before returning to my side. Apparently, he doesn’t see them as a threat.
“I still can’t believe you’re here.” Unable to help myself, I pull Tanner into another embrace.
He gently tries to put some distance between us. “It’s good to see you, too. I’ve missed you.”
I punch his arm lightly, trying to clear the growing sense of unease from my mind. “I knew I saw you in there. Why did you hide from me?”
He shrugs. “It wasn’t time yet.” He glances at his companion. “We wanted to get the speech over with, first.”
“How did you escape from the farm?”
He clenches his fists at his sides and then flattens them against his pants. “Things changed after you left, Mir. None of it good, either. The Chesanings brought in more security, put up a fence around the perimeter, and—“he pauses momentarily as sadness clouds his eyes—“tore down the playground and added another grain silo.”
A strangled cry escapes my mouth. “No. Rosie…”
Tanner winces. “I’m sorry. I tried to stay and help where I could, but I just couldn’t take it any longer.” Tanner runs one of his hands through his hair. It glints dull silver in the dim light.
I trace the side of his face with the tips of my fingers, and he captures my hand, pressing it to his cheek. “What happened?” My gaze travels from Tanner to James. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I tilt my head up and take in Tanner’s appearance. He’s wearing a weathered, completely forgettable maintenance uniform and plain, scuffed shoes. In fact, the only remarkable things about him are the shiny silver gloves on his hands. My gaze finds his wrist, but the tracking device the government issued him for being a Lifer is gone. I take his arm in my hand and trace it with my fingers. “What happened to your tracker?”
After plucking his hand from mine, Tanner pulls one of his gloves off and runs his fingers along the wrist edge of the silvery fabric. With a hiss, the glove deflates and drops away, exposing a reddened stump, choppy and uneven in a half-healed state. I gasp, but neither James nor Tanner show any emotion.
Tanner holds up the stump and studies it in the dim light. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”
I take a few seconds to assimilate this new image of the boy I grew up with to the more hardened young man standing before me. “Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?”
“So is living on the farms.” Tanner takes my hand with his good one and the corners of his mouth twitch. “They almost caught me a couple times, but after I cut myself loose”—he chuckles at his own pun—“I could move around more freely. This”—he gestures to the stump of his hand—“is a small cost for my freedom.”
“If you wanted to be free so much, why are you here?”
Tanner smiles crookedly, but it’s not the friendly, carefree grin of our youth. There’s an edge to him that wasn’t present before. “I have a job to do.”
As though we were the only two people left in the world, I trace Tanner’s face. The happy, optimistic boy I’d grown up with and pledged to marry was gone. This version was older, as though he’d experienced more in life since we’d been apart than he ever had in the years we’d been together. Does he see the same thing when he looks at me?
Tanner’s good hand caresses my face, and I close my eyes and lean into his touch. It feels so right, as though I belong with him. Will’s face flashes in my mind, but I shut it out, remembering his betrayal. Despite his secrets, at least I don’t have to worry about Tanner having a fiancé. No, that should have been my job.
“I’ve missed you so much.” He kisses me softly, tenderly, molding his lips to mine. “When he told me you were alive, I couldn’t believe it. I never thought…” His words break away and drift off into the silence.
Tears burn at the back of my eyes, and I blink them away. “Me, neither.” I take a deep breath.
He pulls me into his lap and I fit my body to his like it’s always meant to be there. “But I’m so glad you are.”
I nuzzle my head under his chin. “Me, too.”
Helpless
Will
I turn the corner just as James Scoffield and the man who hit me leave Socrates’s rooms. I duck into the nearest doorway and flatten myself against the wall so they don’t see me. James says something quietly to the other man, who rubs one of his silver-gloved wrists as they walk away. At the corner of the hall, James pauses, and the other man disappears around the bend.
As I approach him, James turns around with a grim smile. “This sneaking around business is becoming a habit of yours. You probably shouldn’t be found down this hall now that Socrates has fired you.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I rub my head. “But to be honest, I’m not sure I belong anywhere anymore.”
James claps his hand on my back and leans close to murmur into my ear, “Don’t worry. Everything is going according to plan.”
I cast a quick look behind us, but the other man is gone. “I wish I could do more.”
“Trust me. Taking care of Socrates is a full time job.” A faint buzzing fills the air, and I shake my head to clear it.
“But he fired me, re
member?”
He chuckles. “Then just keep your head down. There’ll be plenty of work to do soon enough.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders. “There’s always something to do when you’re trying to change the world,” he says as he leads me down the hall.
“What about that man you led me to? The one who drugged me and talked about killing Socrates.”
“He’s a visitor, nothing more, and he’s gone now. I doubt you’ll ever see him again.”
“But he seemed like he knew so much about what’s going on. Is he a part of the revolution?”
“There are many heads on this dragon. Some are less pleasant than others.” He walks me back to my apartment, and we stop outside the door.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. I might not be able to give you the response you want, but I’ll do the best I can.”
“Sometimes I swear Mira is still alive. It’s like no matter how hard I try, I can’t convince myself it’s only Socrates in there. It’s in his eyes, his voice, even the way he acts sometimes.” I scrub my hand through my short hair. “Am I going crazy?”
James pauses for several seconds, as though carefully considering his words. “I think it’s only natural. You cared for her deeply.”
I choke back a lump in my throat. “I loved her.”
“It’s all right to see her in Socrates. Mourning is normal. For you, the process of grieving was interrupted because you’re forced to see her body every day. You haven’t had the chance to say good-bye.”
“Could she be like Carroll?”
“No.” James’s eyes cloud with sadness. “You know, sometimes I think you have the most challenging assignment of all of us. You have to interact closely with the person you love, knowing she’s gone, but her corpse and your memories of her are still very much alive.”
The weight of what he doesn’t say overwhelms me for a moment. “She’s really gone, isn’t she?”
James stares into the distance, his eyes glassy in the low light. “Yes. I’m sorry, Will, but Mira is gone. Socrates is the only one who remains.”
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