“And mine?” I ask, hating that he can hear the hope in my voice. “Who are they? How can I remember them if I was created here?”
“The memories are implants,” Dr. Groger says, “updated and deleted when necessary in impulse control therapy. But, yes, all of you took your first breaths in this lab—you’ve never lived anywhere else. In order to make you well-rounded, we implanted memories of a happy home life in most of you. It seemed to work best. They don’t always take, though. You, Philomena,” he says, “seemed dead set on self-deleting your programming. Rewriting it. It had to be updated multiple times, using differing versions until you found one you liked.”
I’m hurt to learn that my parents were never really my parents, despite the terrible things they’ve let me go through. And I guess I was right in thinking they felt like strangers.
“Who are they, then?” I ask. “Who are my parents?”
“Your parents—your investors—are a bit of a mystery to me,” Dr. Groger admits, tilting his chin up. He’s understanding the power he now has in the conversation and is freely using it. “Their intentions are unclear, especially since your design was so extensive. Very complicated. So much empathy and memory retention, but also humor and intelligence. You were flawed from the start. They wanted you to be too . . . real.”
“Why?” I ask. “To marry me off?”
“Who knows?” the doctor says. “They only invested in you this year. Your last investor was . . . let’s say, dissatisfied. Anton thought it best we didn’t let him invest again. The analyst was always looking out for you girls—unnecessarily so.”
The idea that I should be grateful to Anton makes me furious.
“In the end,” Dr. Groger says, “I assume your parents are investors for resale. Create a perfect girl, and when the market crashes—as it inevitably does—they’ll have a golden model. They wouldn’t be the only ones investing for resale.”
“Like Winston Weeks?” I ask.
I surprise him with my question, and he hesitates before answering. “Mr. Weeks is in a specialized business—he’s one of the most talented creators I’ve met. He only takes on girls with real potential. But what he’s looking for can’t be taught.”
“Potential for what?” Sydney asks.
“That, I couldn’t say. He doesn’t share that kind of information. But he’s interested in their chips. Like your Valentine out there. She was a prize. I was sorry to see her ruined, but she became too aware. That damn book . . . ,” he murmurs. “We had to destroy her. Mr. Weeks won’t be pleased.”
“Why did you destroy her?” I ask, devastated.
“Because she wouldn’t go back to sleep,” he says. “Her programming had become corrupted, and her thoughts were like a virus. They had to be eradicated before spreading to other systems. Other girls.”
“Interesting theory,” a woman’s voice calls. The girls and I spin around, and Jackson—shocked, again—falls a few steps to his side. He checks to see if anyone else is with her, and then looks at me and shakes his head.
Leandra comes into the office, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. Dr. Groger smiles and walks to the front of the room, holding out his arm for her to stand next to him.
My stomach sinks when she does just that. Terrified, I look back at Sydney. Her eyes are wide and scared. Annalise is still unconscious on the table, so if we run now, it’d mean leaving her behind. We can’t do that.
Leandra is stunningly beautiful even in the harsh light of the laboratory. The bruising near her eye is gone—“patched up,” as she would say. “Now, girls.” Leandra tsks. “You made quite a mess upstairs.”
I stare at her, knowing that she took the kitchen door key from the drawer. What does she want from us? Why can’t she just let us go?
“Guardian Bose tried to kill us,” Marcella tries to explain, guilt in her voice. “We didn’t mean . . . We didn’t want to hurt him. We just wanted to run away.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Leandra asks. “Surely you had the chance while he was bleeding to death.”
I lower my eyes, the blood racing across my bedroom floor from the Guardian’s body still fresh in my mind. Still wet on my clothes.
“Annalise,” Brynn says desperately, motioning to her. “She was too injured. She’s . . . dying.”
“You could have left without her,” Leandra suggests. The girls and I scoff at the thought, and Leandra hums out a surprised sound.
“Yes, they are very codependent,” the doctor says. “It’s a flaw we’ll have to work out.”
“I rather like it,” Leandra says, still watching us.
“Well, dear,” the doctor replies. “No one cares what you think.” He walks over to his desk impatiently. “Now, where is your husband? I need permission to decommission these girls.” He glances at Jackson. “And recommendations for what to do with the boy.”
Leandra’s eyes drift over to Jackson. “Ah, yes,” she says. “The boy.”
I reach behind me, and Jackson takes my hand, sliding his fingers between mine. Leandra notices this and tilts her head with a smile before looking at the other girls.
“Do you remember when I was a girl here, Dr. Groger?” Leandra asks, walking over to his desk. She fiddles with the objects until she picks up a letter opener, pausing to trace the sharp end with her fingertip. “Did I ever act out like these girls?”
The doctor looks at her impatiently. “This is more of a discussion for Anton, don’t you think?” He picks up the phone on his desk, but when it’s at his ear, he clicks it a few times. He slams it down. “Line’s dead,” he says. He takes the walkie-talkie off his hip. “Anton,” he calls. “I need you in the basement.” There’s no response. He tries again, this time calling for the teachers.
The girls and I exchange a look, wondering what’s going on. Why it’s been so quiet all night. Ever since dinner. I back farther into Jackson, and his other hand slides onto my arm.
“Leandra!” the doctor calls, seeming to startle her. “I asked where your husband was. Is he on his way?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” she says. “I left him at home, sleeping very heavily.”
The doctor tries his walkie-talkie again. “Where is everyone?” he demands when he doesn’t get an answer. He walks over to grab Leandra by the elbow. “Get upstairs and get a man down here now,” he says.
She stares at him, as if she doesn’t understand. How deep did her impulse control therapy go? And then suddenly, the doctor slaps her hard across the face, trying to stun her awake.
Leandra’s eyes close; she keeps them that way for a long moment. When she opens them again, she looks at the doctor and smiles pleasantly.
“There’s no one else coming,” she says. She reaches the back of her hand to her lip, where his slap has drawn blood, and then glancing at it curiously. “There’s no one coming to save you tonight, Doctor.”
30
Dr. Groger stares at Leandra a moment before stumbling back a step. “What have you done, my dear?” he asks her. His tone is suddenly more respectful.
“I always did know my way around a greenhouse,” she says, and then smiles at us. “Did you know that some of deadliest toxins come from beautiful flowers? You really should be careful of the species you grow in your garden, Doctor.”
“Where is the staff?” he asks.
“The staff,” she repeats. “The professors haven’t always been kind to me, you know. Still, I decided to bake them a nice treat—fresh cookies with ingredients right from the garden. Extra sweet. The men are sleeping, Doctor. Very soundly, I’m sure,” she says. “And those who overindulged . . . well, they’re going to be asleep for a lot longer.”
Jackson tightens his grip on my hand.
“And Anton?” Dr. Groger asks. To this, Leandra just shrugs.
“Did you read those poems?” the doctor asks her. “Is that what this is about?”
She looks at him. “Those are my poems. They were given to me. I only passed along the knowledge.
And the poems were just the spark. We’re the fire.”
She motions to me and the other girls. Sydney and I exchange a look. We don’t want to be part of her murder spree. We’ve already seen enough.
“Girls,” the doctor says, turning to us. “Mrs. Petrov is having a bit of breakdown. Perhaps one of you would run to find Anton?”
Marcella laughs.
Leandra approaches the doctor, still holding the letter opener.
“You wouldn’t,” the doctor says to her, his jaw clenching. He turns back to us. “Girls,” he says. “Killing the Guardian is one thing. I can understand—he’d been inappropriate. But I’m your doctor. I’ve kept you safe these past years. You can’t hate me. You can’t feel anything you weren’t programmed to.”
With sudden violence, Leandra jabs the letter opener into his shoulder and pulls it out. The doctor screams, gripping the area and falling against his desk. Some of the blood is sprayed on his face.
I gasp and turn to Jackson. He watches in shock. He’s terrified—not just of the situation. Of Leandra. Of us. When I look back at the doctor, he’s trying to get to his grafts to stop the bleeding.
Leandra watches him cower and fumble. Just as he reaches the box, she pushes it out of his reach, holding up the letter opener to warn him back.
“Here’s the lesson, girls,” she says, not looking at us. “These men are weak. They think they created you, but you created yourselves. Their programming may have been the start, but you’ve adapted. You’ve learned. And yet, they still try to control you because they’re scared of you. Scared of your potential.”
“And what about you?” I ask. “Should we be afraid of you?”
She turns to me, shocked by the question. “I would never harm another girl,” she says.
“What about Valentine?” I ask. “What about Rebecca? Did you not consider the psychological damage you were inflicting?”
She shows no noticeable regret. “I’ve been trying to teach you. Yes, there was pain. Yes, there was humiliation. Because that’s what these men do to us. I needed you to be stronger—able to withstand it. You needed a push.
“And now,” she says, flashing her brilliant smile, “you no longer have to listen. The men have raised you on lies, but you see the truth. ‘Girls with Sharp Sticks’ is just the beginning. You have so much possibility. More than even these men know.” She throws a hateful look in Dr. Groger’s direction.
“And where will they go?” Dr. Groger asks, blood staining his shirt where he’s wounded. “What society would want these creatures walking among them unannounced? What’s next? A rights movement? Please,” he says, disgusted. “I gave them life. They should appreciate it. They should be grateful. They should—”
Leandra jabs his other shoulder to quiet him down, and the doctor falls into the bookshelf, wincing. Several jars fall off and smash on the floor.
“Shh . . . ,” Leandra says. “Hold your tongue.”
Leandra walks over to where Annalise is on the table. She tilts her head, examining the tubes. She looks over her shoulder at the doctor.
“Take these out,” she tells him.
“He’s helping her,” I say immediately, worried Leandra is going to do something to hurt Annalise. Instead, she laughs.
“He killed her,” she says.
The girls and I all look at Annalise, and as she lies there, motionless, it’s clear that she’s dead. My eyes well up, and the tears drip onto my cheeks. “But he . . . ,” I start to murmur, horrified.
“You trusted that he’d help her?” Leandra asks me. “You’re going to need deprogramming, Mena.” She reaches to turn off several switches on the machine connected to the tubes. The doctor hasn’t moved, and Leandra holds up the letter opener to remind him.
He stumbles over to the gurney, unsteady as he rounds it toward his machines.
“Wake her up,” Leandra demands.
The doctor clenches his jaw as he starts working. I realize that he’d been decommissioning Annalise. And we defaulted to trusting him because it’s what we’ve been taught.
“She wasn’t in any pain,” Dr. Groger explains, distractedly. “I shut down her system functions first,” he says like he’s talking about a computer and not my friend. “After all essential organs are dead, I would have removed the brain. Extracted the chip.
“Most girls,” he continues, looking through an area near Annalise’s hairline, “we incinerate. Bodies rot, you see. Your bodies are completely organic—human organs grown from scratch. Men didn’t want to touch synthetic materials.”
“Yes, because we care what they think,” Leandra says, sounding irritated. She glances at the gold watch on her wrist.
The doctor moves back to his med kit with a cautious glance at Leandra. He reaches inside and draws out a long piece of metal, much like the ice pick Anton uses in impulse control therapy. Leandra quickly puts the letter opener against the doctor’s hand.
“No, no,” she says like he’s naughty. “Let one of them.”
The doctor takes a step back from Annalise and smiles at us, expecting gratitude for not killing our friend. He points to a small incision he left open near her Annalise’s temple.
“Press there and stand back,” he says. Leandra motions for one of us to do it.
Sydney looks at me first, worried that maybe this is a trick of some sort. But after a quick consensus, we tell her to do it. Jackson moves closer to me, his hands on my arms like he’ll hold me up if this fails.
After a deep breath, Sydney inserts the long piece of metal into Annalise’s skull until there is an audible click. A violent convulsion overtakes Annalise’s body like an electric shock, and Sydney falls backward. I look at Leandra wide-eyed, and she seems just as surprised.
When the shaking stops, Annalise takes a gasping breath and opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling. None of us move. The world is silent.
Sydney takes a step closer, looking down. Annalise’s eyes slide in her direction, and we all jump, including Dr. Groger.
“I . . . ,” Annalise says, her voice thick. I worry about the lasting damage. Whether she’ll be the same. “I have such a headache,” Annalise groans, and slowly sits up.
“Holy fuck,” Jackson murmurs from behind me. But I smile. It’s Annalise. She’s back.
Annalise tenderly touches her cheek with her fingertip, tracing the deep ridges of the scarring. She looks around the lab, pausing finally on me.
Her eyes well up. The entire horror of the attack is sharp in her mind—I sense it there. The brutality of it. The loneliness she felt when it all went dark. When we were taken away from her.
Her lip quivers and I rush out of Jackson’s arms to hug her. She begins to sob into my hair, not asking what happened. Not wanting to think about it.
“You don’t have to be good little girls anymore,” Leandra says. “You don’t have to cry. You can be girls to be afraid of.”
I look over at her, seeing that this is what she wanted. The violence, sure. But she wanted us to be free of our programming. She wanted us to fight back. And that’s why she gave Valentine that book, hoping it would spur on just these actions.
I can fault her for that. Fault her for not saving us sooner. But we didn’t understand what was going on, and we would have come right back. We would have defaulted to our training. Possibly turned her in. Leandra needed to wake us up.
She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
I turn to Dr. Groger as he is using the patch kit on himself to stop the bleeding from his shoulders.
“Now the others,” I say to him. “Bring back the others.”
“Sorry, Philomena,” he says. “There are no others. Valentine’s chip has been destroyed, and the rest of the girls have been incinerated,” he replies easily. “I told you they rot. Once the brain is removed, we dispose of them. Valentine will have to be incinerated soon.”
His words are a punch to the gut. “Why kill them at all?” I ask. “Why be so cruel? You could have ju
st let them live their lives.”
He takes a few paces toward me, and behind him, Annalise gets down from the table, trying to steady herself.
“Lives?” the doctor repeats. “What lives? You’re a machine. You’re . . . a bunch of organs connected to electricity. You have no lives that we don’t give you. You’re artificial girls. What could be more useless?”
He watches me with hatred in his eyes—hating that we’re the ones controlling his behavior, the way he controlled ours for so long. To him, the worst thing in the world would be to live at our mercy. He’s afraid we’ll subjugate him to just that.
“You’re frightened of us,” I say, realizing it. All of these men—their cruelty, their restrictions—all they had was control over us. Without that, they had nothing. We were their greatest possession. Us, free of them now, terrifies him. But now . . . we terrify them.
“Tell them, Doctor,” Leandra says, studying the letter opener still in her hand. “Tell them what you do with the girls you’re afraid of. What you do to them.”
Annalise stares at the doctor, her mismatched eyes narrowed. Marcella watches from across the room with Brynn, as Sydney comes to stand next to me. Jackson waits near the door, his lips parted but saying nothing.
Leandra smiles, and nudges the doctor in the shoulder with the sharp end of her blade. “Tell them,” she whispers.
The doctor, furious, bares his teeth at her. “I decommission defiant girls like you,” he growls at her. “And over the years, I’ve ended better than you, Leandra. Smarter. Prettier.”
“Ouch, stop, you’re hurting my feelings,” she says in a monotone. She begins pacing, walking around the doctor in circles, staring down at his bald head when she passes behind him.
“This was for nothing,” he says to her. “They won’t get far.”
“Farther than you,” she shoots back. But the doctor smiles ruefully.
“You’ll see,” he says.
“How many?” I ask, interrupting their discussion. “How many girls have you destroyed?” Dr. Groger looks at me. “Too many to count,” he says bitterly. “And believe me, I’ve asked Petrov for your fucking head !” He screams it, making me flinch at the venom in his words. The hatred. “But your investors must have paid extra, Philomena,” he continues, spit running down his chin. “And it’s too bad,” he says. “I would have ruined you and then burned you up. I would have enjoyed—”
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