by Kristen Pham
About halfway through class, the door opens and Headmaster Hunter comes in. Everyone sits a little straighter, but Crew continues to lecture as if nothing has changed.
I turn and find the headmaster staring at me. I lower my eyes and my head as my cheeks flush. I hope he thinks it’s from shame at my behavior, and not pure rage, which is the reality. I’m going to get my hands on his whip and beat him with it one day. I’ll watch him beg me to stop.
I’m distracted from plotting my revenge when Crew has us partner up to practice crying on cue. I cheat when Crew comes by to check my progress, flexing my tender back so my eyes well with tears of pain.
“I expected more than that,” he says, immediately guessing what I’m up to. Then he leans closer to me. “Dr. Hunter has requested that you stay after class today. I trust that you will remember your place in his presence.”
His words are accompanied by a quick squeeze of my arm, and I understand that this is a command from the leader of the Throwback rebellion.
“It’s what I planned on, sir,” I say, my stomach churning at the thought of talking to the headmaster.
It’s hard to concentrate for the rest of class, and I’m almost relieved when it’s over because the anticipation of facing my worst enemy is eating me up.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Harriet says. “Break a leg.”
Her words buoy my mood, reminding me that I’m only playing the part of a beaten-down student. The class clears out quickly, and I shuffle to the front of the classroom, my shoulders slumped. The headmaster and Crew examine me.
“I hope you understand that your punishment was for your own good,” Headmaster Hunter says. “Better that I teach you your place than the police. They wouldn’t be nearly so lenient.”
How hard would it be to choke him with my bare hands? But instead, I recall the humiliation I felt kneeling before this man, begging for his mercy, so that when I reply, my humility will appear authentic.
“Thank you, sir. I was raised thinking I was Evolved, and your lesson has helped me to better understand how to behave as a Throwback.”
The headmaster is quiet, and I’m confident that I laid down just the right amount of bullshit.
“I see potential in you, Joan. Perhaps you could even be an actress at the local museum someday, teaching kids about history,” he says.
“You really think so?” I let my eyes shine as they meet his.
He gives me a small smile. “Indeed. Your progress encourages me. If you manage to reform your ways, this week’s incident will not appear in your permanent record.”
“I’m so grateful for your generosity,” I gush, and Crew leans forward and makes eye contact, warning me not to go overboard. “Thank you, sir.”
The headmaster nods and pats me on the head like a good dog before leaving. As soon as he’s out of sight, I punch the wooden stage, and then stifle a scream at the resulting pain in my back from the motion.
“Well played,” Crew says, crossing his arms.
“I hate him.”
The intensity of the feeling almost chokes me. I thought I’d hated people before, like Elizabeth or my parents’ dealer, but I didn’t know true hatred until now.
“Good. He’s worth hating,” Crew replies, and I remind myself that this is Genghis Khan giving me advice.
“I’m sorry for drawing attention to you and possibly the rebellion.”
“Nothing occurred that can’t be corrected. Hunter always keeps a close eye on the Historicals,” Crew replies. “He’ll back off soon enough, if you stay out of trouble.”
“I will.”
Crew cocks his head, and I squirm under his gaze. “I know it was you who came to the theater the other night when I was meeting with students in the library. You should have stayed.”
“I was caught off guard,” I reply, cautious.
“I was talking to a few students I thought might cause problems. We need their skills, but they must be kept in check. As Sun Tzu says, ‘The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.’”
“Do you think they’re problem students because of their clone type?”
“I know what it is to battle with a darker side. I needed help to overcome it,” he confesses.
It’s a relief to let go of one of my worries. I was wrong to judge him.
“The person who helped me overcome the darkness in my genetics was Jo Macson, the last woman to bear your clone type,” he continues, and my heart beats faster.
My voice rises with excitement. “You know her?”
“Knew her,” he corrects me. “And loved her, too. She was murdered years ago by Strand, not that I can prove that.”
An unexpected loss weighs on my heart. I try to shake it off, since she’s a stranger to me, but I feel cheated, like my only genetic family has been taken from me. It makes me sick that the leaders of Strand can destroy us as if we’re defective parts of their product line.
“I wish I could have known Jo. Does she have any living family?”
Jo’s last name, Macson, means that her dad was a Mac, so I know she was raised by Throwback parents, unlike me.
“Her parents were retired for petty crimes years before I met her, and she doesn’t have any siblings,” Crew says.
I wince at his use of the word retired. “Why don’t you call it what it is—murder? Retiring sounds like they’re on a farm somewhere, playing big tablet bingo.”
Crew grunts in acknowledgment.
“Come with me,” he says as he walks to the corner of the room where the concealed hallway is located.
We go to the little library tucked away from the rest of the theater, and I’m reminded of how Justus was here, looking through Crew’s things. The memory makes me squirm uncomfortably, but I don’t say anything to Crew about his uninvited visitor, especially when I see that the library isn’t empty. Nic is carefully putting books back on the shelves.
“You brought her back here?” Nic asks Crew incredulously. “How about inviting the headmaster while you’re at it?”
I grit my teeth instead of immediately snapping at Nic, since he did carry me to my room and help take care of my back after the headmaster beat me.
“I didn’t understand—” I try to explain, but Nic interrupts me.
“You never do! I don’t know if you’re an idiot or if your character has been completely destroyed by your spoiled upbringing, but either way, you’re a liability.”
His eyes still have hints of gold in them, so he’s taken Amp in the last twenty-four hours. His nails aren’t turning black yet, so he’s not as far gone as Mom and Dad were before they got clean, but he’s a little gaunt. Mom told me that Amp destroys your appetite.
“I’m a liability? What about you? You’re an addict.”
“You know nothing about it,” Nic spits.
I’m about to set him straight when Crew pulls off several books from a low shelf and slides back a wooden panel behind the shelving, revealing a hidden safe.
“Enough bickering,” he says, and his tone echoes with a finality that shuts us both up.
Opening the safe requires a pass code, thumbprint, and a drop of Crew’s blood. I’ve never seen a vault this secure. Nic returns to shelving books, but his eyes absorb every detail of my interaction with Crew.
Crew pulls out an ancient tablet with a worn purple cover and then shuts the safe. His fingers tremble when he hands me the scarred metal tablet.
“It was Jo’s. I’ve never been able to open it. It’s voice-activated.”
“Then maybe I could open it, since our voices must be close to identical!”
“We need the password or phrase, and she left a clue about what it is inside the case,” Crew says. “She told me to give it to you if she wasn’t around to mentor you herself.”
“She knew about me?” I ask, clutching the tablet to my chest.
“Oh yes. She chose this year’s class of students with me when we influenced th
e embryo selection. But I’m the one who insisted on cloning another Joan,” he says, his voice faraway. “It’s strange to see you now that she’s gone.”
Crew waves his hand, dismissing me. “If you are able to access the data on her tablet, inform me immediately.”
I turn and run out of this haunted library, hoping that at last I’ll get some answers about Jo.
Chapter 17
Harriet is waiting for me when I leave the Little Theater. “It’s time you meet the Lab rats. I have some food I’ve saved for them that I want to deliver.”
“You trust me that much already?”
She nods, and her faith in me puts a little bounce in my step, in spite of the protest from my stiff back.
“Then we better stop by my room first. I’ve been hoarding treats for this occasion.”
“Good thinking,” Harriet says. “And guess what? Justus will be there. He made sure I knew, probably so I’d bring you along.”
“I doubt that. He’s more interested in gathering information for his dad’s rebellion than he is in me.”
“He asked me a million questions about you, and he hasn’t asked me once about Crew or what he’s up to. Sounds to me like his interest is obvious,” Harriet says.
We stop at the dorm, and I grab the pillowcase full of treats from my closet. When I come back down, Harriet is holding a small bag of goodies, too.
“It’ll be a feast,” she says. “Everyone will be bouncing off the walls from all the sugar.”
“Is a kid named Maverick one of your Lab rats?”
“Not exactly. I don’t know his story, but he hangs around the Lab all the time, and he knows how to get around down there. But he sleeps at home, or so he says. He told me his dad is a Mac who works at Seattle Secondary.”
We’ve reached the grate leading down to the Lab, and we quickly climb down into the tunnels. I’m about to turn my phone’s torch app on, but Harriet stops me.
“There’s enough light down here to see, and you look like a tourist holding that thing up.”
I tuck my phone in my pocket and follow her as she jogs from tunnel to tunnel. Occasionally, there are grates or semitransparent stones on the ceiling that allow some dim light in, but it’s impossible for me to avoid tripping over pieces of trash that Harriet neatly avoids. It’s like she can see in the dark.
“You know I’d die down here if you abandoned me now, right?” I joke as we take yet another fork in the tunnel.
“You better be careful not to piss me off then,” Harriet teases.
The tunnel widens and gets lighter as bigger grates line the ceiling. Above us, we occasionally see the bottom of people’s shoes as they scurry across. Not so long ago, I was one of those ignorant people, completely unaware of the world beneath my feet.
There’s a low chatter that increases in volume when we round the corner to a wide room filled with kids and piles of trash.
“She’s here!” someone shouts.
Harriet is immediately surrounded by a pack of five skinny, dirty kids who are all no older than ten. They fight over who gets to hug her, and she tickles them until they laugh.
Upon closer inspection, the piles of trash turn out to be a crude table made out of a mismatched collection of boxes and boards. It’s filthy, covered in stains and stale crumbs, and a rat scurries across it, grabbing scraps as he goes.
A dozen older kids sit around the table and lean against the walls, watching me warily. My breathing quickens when I spot Justus. He’s talking with a young Mac clone type about a head shorter than he is. His gaunt profile and shaggy haircut make me suspect that he’s the Mac who overdosed on Amp in the bathroom on my first day at Seattle Secondary. He looks much better now, with a little flesh on his bones and no traces of gold in his irises. My staring catches Justus’s and his friend’s attention, and the friend tugs Justus over to meet me.
“This is her?” the boy asks Justus, nudging him.
“I’m Joan.”
“Mason. I hear that I owe you a thank-you for helping me keep my job, and possibly my life.”
“Thank me by staying away from Amp.”
“I’m off for good, now that I have a legitimate job and this,” Mason says, holding up his arm, which is freshly tattooed with a lavaliere. “No more fake IDs and taking any job I can scrounge up. After my training, I’ll be legally eligible to work.”
I’d love to believe Mason, but knowing how many times my parents relapsed on Amp, I’m doubtful.
“Good luck.”
As I turn away, Mason whispers to Justus, loud enough for me to hear. “I see what you mean. She’s way out of your league.”
Before I can process Mason’s comment, a little force of nature hurls into me.
“Mav!” I say. “Now that you’re here, it’s a party!”
Maverick turns red at my words, but his smile is so big that it splits his face in two.
“I brought sugar!” I tell him.
His eyes get big. “Chocolate? Please, please, please say yes.”
“Yes.”
Mav pumps his fist and pulls me toward the table, where Harriet is already unloading her goodies. The smaller kids squeal when I dump the contents of my pillowcase next to hers.
Everyone goes quiet at the sight of so much food, and I clear my throat awkwardly. “It’s not all from me. My roommate contributed, since she’s on a never-ending diet, and thought someone should get to enjoy her desserts.”
“Dig in!” Harriet says, and everyone starts sorting the food.
Instead of grabbing or fighting for treats, like I expected, everything is neatly lined up and distributed. The best items go to the littlest kids. I watch with a lump in my throat as Mason gets on one knee to open a package of cookies for a little girl who jumps up and down in excitement.
“This is nothing like I thought it would be,” I admit to Harriet.
“What were you expecting? Oliver Twist?”
“Kind of. Definitely not everyone taking care of each other.”
“It wasn’t always like this,” Mason says, overhearing our conversation. “It’s Harriet who brought some order around here.”
“I had help,” she says, putting her arm around Mason’s shoulder, not noticing how he beams at her friendly touch.
“Eventually. But at the beginning, we were all stealing from each other and getting into fights on a daily basis. Then you wrote the Lab Constitution and forced us to hear you out. Thinking up that system of rules was the hard part,” he says. “I was just the muscle when the time came to enforce your ideas.”
I want to hear more, but Harriet is shifting from foot to foot, refusing to make eye contact. She hates the spotlight almost as much as I love it.
“Where does everyone sleep?” I ask, and Harriet relaxes.
“There are some spots tucked away in the basements of a few of the old buildings around here where we hole up. We jacked power into a couple of places, too, so we can plug in heaters when it gets really cold.”
I imagine all the kids heaped together with their blankets, like a pile of kittens.
“I think you’d be surprised how cramped and miserable it is,” Harriet says, guessing my line of thinking like the mind reader she is. “It’s loud and someone’s always rolling over, waking you up. Sometimes, I slept in the cold just to have some peace.”
I’m quiet as I try to fathom Harriet’s life down here. Her attention is caught by a small boy huddled in a corner, and she immediately goes over to him and kneels down so they’re eye to eye. She speaks to him in a soft, gentle voice, and the boy uncurls from his fetal position and talks to her.
Justus interrupts my thoughts by handing me a brownie. “Eat, so they feel like it’s a meal among friends, instead of charity.”
His closeness is making it hard to concentrate, and it’s worse when his fingertips graze mine. The spark between us hasn’t fizzled. It’s grown. The urge to touch, to explore the physical chemistry between us, is overpowering.
; “May I?” he asks.
I have no idea what he wants, but whatever it is, he can have it. Gently, he pulls my wrist toward him, and the sensation is tender and thrilling in the same heartbeat. He traces the pattern of my lavaliere with his finger. His touch is as intimate as a kiss, and I hold my breath, not wanting to disturb the moment with the slightest movement. His finger stops on the rapid pulse beating on the underside of my wrist. Does he guess that it’s his touch, his proximity, that is making my pulse jump so fast?
“The entertainment industry. Not what you were planning on, right?”
I shake my head, almost in a trance.
“Dr. Fasces,” he says, giving me a tentative smile. “You would have been a good doctor. But you’re going to do even more right here.”
His stare is intense. It makes me feel seen. Known.
“What about you, Justus? If you were free to be anything, what would it be?”
His eyes cut away. “I’d heal people, too. I volunteer at a free clinic, and there is so much pain in this city, and not nearly enough Evolved doctors willing to help Throwback patients. One day, I hope the laws will change and Throwbacks can become doctors, too.”
“Sounds like a battle ahead for you. But one worth fighting.”
His eyes widen a little in surprise. I see him, too. And I want to know him. The realization pings through my brain, my heart. There’s something in Justus that I recognize because it’s in me, too.
“We’re going to have to run to make it back to the dorm before curfew,” Harriet interrupts.
In spite of having a much better idea of the consequences if I’m caught out after curfew, I’m tempted to stay, even if it’s only for five more minutes of arguing with Justus.
“I have to go, too,” Justus says, and his eyes are guarded.
Is it confusion or anger or something else I see in his eyes? As I watch him make his way through the crowd, I choose to believe what I saw was “something else.” Or the beginning of something else.
Harriet and I race down the maze of passageways and climb out of the Lab. It’s twilight, and we run to the dorm, making it inside without being spotted by the police. I say goodbye to Harriet in the elevator, and she’s already yawning.