“I wonder what it’s going to be like out there,” he says finally, pretending oblivion. I appreciate the effort.
“Big, I guess.” I grimace at the edge in my voice.
To my surprise, though, he laughs quietly. It is the same old laugh, the one I used to be able to provoke whenever I wanted to. I haven’t heard it since our mission began.
“Probably big,” he agrees, smiling.
We sit in silence for another minute.
“I got you something,” I say, pulling the watch from my pocket and handing it to him.
“Thank you,” he says softly, looking surprised and sad all at once. “This means a lot.”
“You’re welcome.” I turn back to the view, feeling awkward.
“You know,” he says, then hesitates, seeming loath to share what’s on his mind. Finally, he continues. “I think we’ll like our new home, wherever it is. I think we’ll like these people. At least there, we’ll get to be who we really are.”
“I don’t know who I really am,” I confess.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” he murmurs teasingly. “You’re Naiya Barrigan and Naiya Legerdemain. That’s two choices, whereas the rest of us only get one.”
I smile. “Well, thanks for putting things in perspective for me.”
“Any time.”
“I used to think I knew who I was,” I say slowly, serious now. A single gnat flutters by in the cold night air. “There were things that I was sure about. Things I knew about myself. Things I knew I wanted.”
“Like what?” he says softly.
I shrug. “A job that made me happy, a family. A – a husband and children.” I blush at the last words, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“You shouldn’t only define yourself by what you want,” he says slowly.
“No?”
“No. You have plenty to be proud of, Naiya. You’re strong, brave, smart, beautiful … ”
Something catches in his voice. Turning to look, I see his eyes on mine, bleached gray as they always are at night. For a long, long moment we stare, and I feel hot blood deepening the flush in my cheeks. There is something different in his gaze, something I can’t define. I resist the urge to find meaning where there is none, but still, I can’t help hoping.
Nothing happens, and finally I look down. Perhaps he is confused or just feels sorry for me. Perhaps it is Tate, or the fact that we were raised together for half our lives, even if I could never ever ever think of him as a brother.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to ask.
He draws a shaky breath. “Naiya, I want – ”
“We should go,” I say quickly, unable to bear the thought of whatever he has to say.
He looks startled, and his face shutters. “Okay,” he nods. “Okay, let’s go.”
I wait one more beat, half wanting him to stop me, but he doesn’t. Exhaling sadly, I rise to a crouch, pulling myself up and over the ledge into the empty street above.
TWENTY-FIVE
Creeping like mice, we make our way to Amy’s house, about a fifteen-minute walk several streets over and down two levels. We see no one, even as we round the corner onto her shabby street.
“Nothing,” Enoch breathes.
“Are they really not here?” I inquire, peering around the doorframe of an abandoned pub.
“I’m not seeing anything,” he replies, power pack in hand. “That guard said something about letting the trail run cold, remember? Could be they’re not looking for us anymore.”
“No way that’s a good thing,” I whisper fearfully.
He shrugs. “Come on.”
Around the back of Amy’s small apartment, he melts into the shadows of a small patio, the link fence that once surrounded it broken. Quietly he seats himself beside a rusty box covering an old but still-used gas line.
“You don’t want to come inside?”
“I’m more useful out here,” he says, eyeing the small glowing screen. “I’ll see them soon.”
“Are you sure you’ll be warm enough?” I ask fretfully.
You’re dawdling, a voice in my head chides. For some reason the thought of seeing my adoptive sister makes me nervous.
“I’ll be fine, Naiya,” he says impatiently. There’s more bite in his voice than usual. “Just hurry, okay?”
Of course he’ll be fine. It’s Enoch.
“All right.”
Standing, I make my way through the murk to Amy’s front door, shivering in the cold air. A gas lamp burns despite the late hour, shining blue on my knuckles as I knock.
Almost at once the door flies open, and there stands John, Amy’s husband. He looks pale and bleary-eyed, the black shadows underneath so dark they look like bruises.
“Naiya,” he exclaims, shock breaking through his exhaustion.
“Shh,” I warn, waving my hand to indicate silence. “Please just let me in, John. I have to talk to Amy.”
I can see him wondering whether to comply, and resist the urge to simply shove past him. Standing out here feels unbearably dangerous. Then again, maybe he’s hesitating because of how dangerous it is to allow me in there. I’d probably feel the same way.
“Please, John,” I repeat, ignoring a wealth of more appealing phrases. “Please let me in.”
He stands back, holding the metal door wide on its hinges, then swings it shut after me.
“Naiya!” Amy exclaims from the couch, equally shocked. But if she is surprised, that is nothing compared to how I feel.
She looks terrible, and the baby that sucks at her breast is skinny and indifferent to its surroundings, even, seemingly, to its meal. The scene is pathetic, devoid of any shred of life or warmth. I want to cry.
“A – Amy.”
Covering herself and rising, she hands the brand-new baby to John, who walks from the room. She looks so different without her belly, and I realize I’d been thinking of her as pregnant this whole time. Yet by now, the baby must be about two weeks old. Ordinarily, this would be cause for joy: the baby had escaped the tithes. But I see no joy here.
“It’s so good to see you,” she says softly, enfolding me in a hug. “I’ve been so afraid. Where have you been?”
But I merely shake my head against her shoulder, unable to explain. “Have you ever seen guards outside your door?” I ask instead.
“No more than usual.” She gives me a strange look, then turns away.
“What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” she says, offers me tea. I accept, knowing it will give her peace to make it, fuss a little. A few minutes later we both hold steaming mugs in our hands, and she looks at me frankly.
“I know you’re in trouble,” she says simply. “Ever since Papa … well, I’ve been so worried about you,” she repeats. “How’s Enoch? And Pip?”
“They’re fine,” I lie.
She smiles slightly, looks a little happier. “Good. And really, how are you?”
I draw a deep breath, intending to tell her we’ll talk later, that we have to go. But before I can stop myself, I spill the whole story, all the confusion and pain of the past weeks bubbling to the surface. By the end, I’m crying, big choking sobs, and can barely get the words past my lips.
“Oh, Naiya,” she says finally, as my tale spins itself out. “I’m so sorry. Poor thing.” She does not question the strange story – unbelievable, really – but merely hugs me again. After a moment I force myself to pull away.
“I’m sorry too. For what happened to you.”
“It’s okay,” she shrugs, in that moment looking a lot like Enoch.
“Why did they take you?” I’ve never asked before, wanting to respect her ordeal. But now it feels like I have to know.
“I’m not really sure,” she says slowly. “I wasn’t really contributing at the time, right? Missing work, slow on the floor even when I was there … I was just so depressed about the first – the first baby – ”
“But that kind of thing usually gets people committed! The hospital, a f
ew treatments, that’s all. You were gone for almost six months!”
“Right,” she says, voice betraying the same uncertainty.
“So what were they doing all that time? What did you see?”
Something flashes in her eyes. Distaste? Fear? I realize suddenly how intrusive I must sound, that she would probably rather forget, and I flush.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “Never mind. Amy, let’s just go. Get out of here.”
“No, Naiya,” she says, placing a restraining hand on my arm. “It’s all right. I don’t mind talking about it. The thing is, I just don’t remember very much.”
I wait.
“See,” she sighs, “I was just so disoriented all the time. Disoriented and afraid, sure they were going to kill me. I’d seen it happen to others already, people they’d already used up with their tests.”
“What happened?” I breathe.
Our tea slowly grows cold as she tells her scattered tale. Days spent drugged into insensibility or wide awake and hungry. Naked much of the time. Locked in small rooms all alone, or spent surrounded by scientists with clipboards and gadgets and every top-of-the-line surgical tool except anesthetic.
“They said pain helps cleanse the body,” she whispers.
“Your body?” Horror makes me twitch involuntarily, and tea slops over the side of my mug.
“Sometimes,” she nods, gently taking my cup and setting it on the small coffee table. “And sometimes … the others.”
“What others?” I ask with trepidation, though I already know.
She shakes her head slowly, bending her head to hide her face. “The … copies they made,” is all she says. “They used pain as a way to … make a doorway, they said. They did the same … experiments … on us. As a control.”
A control. I feel a choked panic. A control.
“Amy … ”
She looks at me, eyes brimming with tears. At her expression, a sick feeling begins to brew in the pit of my stomach.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I say slowly.
“Naiya.” She reaches forward and takes both my hands in hers. “Here’s what you have to understand, all right? I never meant to hurt you. I never, ever would.”
I resist the urge to pull my hands away. “What do you mean?”
“The experiments, there were lots of different kinds. I don’t know exactly what they were trying to do, but basically, I think they’re trying to make new people by … well, I don’t know. New people who aren’t human, exactly. Births without mothers, you know? It would solve the population declines.”
Sort of, I want to say, feeling colder by the second. If you think soulless automatons are people.
But I say nothing.
“Eventually,” she says brokenly, crying in earnest now, “there were so many copies of me it was hard to keep track. But the thing is, they weren’t really copies of me.”
“No,” I gasp, ripping my hands away.
She nods, tears pouring down her face. “I never meant to hurt you,” she says again, brushing her damp hair back from her forehead. Only then do I notice that her scar is missing too. I’d never even thought to check.
“But you – you aren’t her,” I whisper, horrified. “That’s what you’re saying, right?”
She simply looks at me. This girl who fooled me for so long.
This girl who is not Amy. Another Not-Amy. And my Amy …
“So who knows where she is, even? She could be back in that lab even now, and I left her there!” I rise from the couch, losing it utterly.
“No, Naiya, listen,” she pleads. She tries to pull me back down, and again I recoil. “Listen, listen!”
“What?” I snap, eyes afire with loathing. She’s been posing as Papa’s daughter, a member of our family, for almost two years, and none of us noticed. “What could you possibly have to say that I’d want to hear?”
“You won’t want to hear it,” she admits. “But you need to. Your sister’s dead.”
“No,” I shake my head, the tears starting afresh. “You can’t know that.”
“I do know that. Naiya, she always talked about coming back to you. None of the others did, not even me. It was her, I know it. The one you saw a few weeks – ”
I whip my head back and forth blindly. “No. No, that’s not possible.” And it’s not. The Amy I saw weeks ago, empty and thin as a rail … that was not my Amy either. A lifeline occurs to me. “It couldn’t have been her, because she didn’t have a scar either!”
She looks at me pityingly. “That means nothing. They fix our bodies, make us perfect every time they experiment. Clean slates. It means nothing,” she says again.
The room feels very still. There is no air in it.
“You have to believe me,” she begs. “By the time I left to come back here, she was so used up she barely even remembered who she was, let alone you. But she insisted she had to leave, had to warn you. I helped her steal a keycard before they let me go, never thought she’d actually get a chance to use it. But all she could ever think about was the family … the break-in was the chance she was waiting for. Though how she managed to stay alive that long … ”
“No. No.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Papa came and told me what happened, after you left home. I knew immediately that it was her. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I never wanted to lie to you. But when I came home, Papa told me this was best, that you and the others needed to believe that I – that I was really – ”
She can’t go on, and I can’t reply.
The vision of Amy, splattered and helpless after jumping fifty feet, fills my mind. Her wide eyes and spent mind, barely able to form our names, were not because she was a copy, but because she’d been through hell for years, and only barely managed to make it out. Her dying wish was to talk to us one last time.
I remain silent, stunned.
“I wasn’t the only one, of course. There were others, too. Others sent back in place of the people they’d come from. It was supposed to be a way to implant spies around the City. Root out sedition.”
I dimly realize Amy – Not-Amy, I remind myself viciously – is explaining something.
“But I’m not a spy,” she continues, desperate to convince me, “and I never was. Whatever they’re trying to do, they’re failing. That should make you feel better about your sister’s sacrifice.”
“Shut up,” I choke, reaching up to wipe my eyes. It’s hopeless, the tears flooding down my cheeks unchecked. I can’t stop them, and suddenly want to be away from this place so desperately I can’t think of anything else. I reach for my knife, but it isn’t there. Standing unsteadily, I trip, knocking a lamp off a table with a crash of glass. John walks hastily into the room, scopes out the scene, and disappears immediately back down the hall.
Too stunned to do anything else, I simply stand and cry, batting her away each time she comes in for an embrace. Shuddering, I think of family dinners and holidays, laughter and hugs. I remember the long conversation Amy and I had when she returned, the apologies and promises.
That wasn’t Amy.
But wasn’t it, sort of? Slowly, my sobs begin to quiet.
“I have all her memories,” the woman in front of me whispers. “I love you, Enoch, Pip. I love Papa, and I miss him desperately. I am her, Naiya. Maybe a little different, but not really. Maybe a little less … ” She shrugs. It’s painful for her to admit what we both know to be true: the copies are less-than. They are not the same. But she pushes on, and I can tell it’s more for my sake than her own. “In every way that counts, I’m your sister. She’s not gone.”
I wipe my face, rubbing my nose against my sleeve.
“Don’t hate me,” she pleads softly, toying with a thin dark strand from among her mess of tiny braids.
“I … don’t hate you,” I say. Slowly I sit once more, wondering what to do. The idea of taking them with us seems ridiculous now, yet it isn’t really her fault. Torn with indecision, I merely sit.
“I’m sorry,” she says, over and over again. “I’m sorry.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I say, my voice muffled. “I thought the copies were supposed to be easy to spot, talk poorly, look different. I don’t know, confused and stuff.”
“Most of them are,” she says. “Most couldn’t learn, not really. All they did was cry, like little children. But they took … especial pains with me.” She shivers, and I notice for the first time how desperately thin she looks, despite her still-swollen middle. She pulls a blanket off the couch to wrap herself up just as John returns, slipping the baby into her arms and kissing her softly on the forehead.
“Goodnight, my dear,” he whispers, and she gives him a weak smile as she takes the child with one arm. He looks sadly at me as he leaves.
“Why you?” I ask eventually.
“I don’t know,” she says, sadly stroking her infant’s cheek. “I was … impressionable, I guess.”
“You mean you could fake it better than the rest of them.”
She nods, another tear escaping.
Clenching my arms around myself, I wonder how many people have been taken, their own bodies turned against them, used to make new copies that could go live the lives they’d started. I try to harden my heart, but the face before me is Amy’s face, and the pain on it is genuine.
“I’ve hated living the lie,” she insists.
“Then why have you? And why did she tell us she wasn’t our sister?”
“They said they would kill us all,” she shrugs. “Amy didn’t want that. She thought you’d be happier if you had her, at least in some form, if you believed that I really was her. She didn’t want you to know what had happened to her, not really.”
Grimly, I reflect how selfless Amy always was. I could never have had a thought like that.
“So why did they send you back anyway?” I demand. “Why not just kill you? You clearly weren’t accomplishing their goals. You have a mind, a consciousness.”
Broken Moon Page 24