Forged (20 page)

THE CROWD SURGES TO ACTION
and almost as quickly, the Forgeries push in. Order members on the roof fire tear gas into the square. From windows, additional shots ring out, more of Ryder's people springing to life from their posts.

I bring my eye back to the scope. Harvey is ushering Frank toward an armored car just off the side of the platform.

I reach for the trigger.

Come on, Harvey
.

He bends.

A little more
.

Just enough.

Before I can pull the trigger, a bullet clips Harvey in the arm, missing Frank altogether. There is shouting, more
Order members swooping in. Frank is hurried into the car. Eyes snap up to where the shot came from: Bree's post. They point. Something is shouted.

Swearing, I tear my sight away from the scope. These buildings are going to be searched. I need to move.

The fighting is deafening now. Popping gunfire and exploding blasts and screams. Too many screams. The alarm is finally tripped, but it's the standard one, an emotionless, looping drone. Does this mean Harvey couldn't get ours uploaded, or that he
chose
to not bother with it?

No time to dwell on it.

I leave the rifle and flee the way I entered: the elevator shaft until the first floor, then an air duct to the basement and back to the sewers.

Around the very first corner, I collide with Bree. We both fall into the shallow filth. She scrambles to her feet and immediately takes the lead.

“Why did you take that shot?” I ask as I run after her.

“I thought I had him.”

“But now Harvey's hit and if he didn't get to the virus yet . . . if he's hurt and can't—”

“I messed up, okay? I'm sorry! Will you pick up the pace?”

I bite off a retort. As we race through the water, we take turns I don't remember from the way in. Actually, I have no
idea where we are, but I know one thing: We should have joined up with Sammy by now.

“Bree, what about Sammy?”

She doesn't slow.

I grab her arm. “Hey!”

She turns, and this section of the sewers is so poorly lit, I can't make out anything but the whites of her eyes. Beneath my fingers, I can feel the cuff of her shirt.

“Where's your jacket?”

“I had to shed it.”

“Why?”

“Will you quit it with the interrogation? We have to get to the rendezvous point.”

She tries to break away and I don't let her. “We said we'd meet in the sewers. Where Sammy first split off.”

This shirt. The familiar material. How she's leading me somewhere.

It's not right.

My heart plummets.

I know what's happening, but I don't want to admit it, because it means having to reach for my handgun, the spare on my hip, and what if she beats me to the shot? Hers is already drawn. She's had it out the whole time.

Something explodes on the streets, and a flash of light
makes its way into the sewers through the drainage grates. It illuminates her for a second, from the neck to the waist. She's wearing an Order uniform.

“Why are you wearing that?”

“Gray, you're scaring me,” she says.

“Why are you wearing that uniform!”

“To blend in. I got the jump on this young Order kid around my size. Shot him and took his top.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where did you get the jump on him?”

“In the square.”

My hand goes to her neck, and I shove her into the wall. She drops her gun on impact.

“Shit, what is wrong with you?” She thrashes in my grip.

“You wouldn't have had time—to fire the shot that hit Harvey. To also be in the square. To still get to the sewers the same time I did.”

I draw my gun with my right hand, keep her pinned against the wall with my left.

“Gray, it's me, dammit! I fired the shot, and ran into an Order member on the half-block stretch back to the sewers. I swear it's the truth. I
swear
!”

“You just said you crossed the kid in the square.”

“I meant the street! How can I think straight when you've got a gun on me?”

It sounds just like her. Feels just like her. I don't have this in me. I can't put a gun to her face and pull the trigger. What if I'm wrong?

I reach for her cheek, desperate to feel a bandage, to find proof that she is
my
Bree. Before my fingers can graze her face in the darkness, a voice freezes me solid.

“Gray?”

It's her, but distant. Somewhere else in the sewers.

I shout her name.

“Don't move.” Her response echoes, bouncing off the tunnel walls. “I'm coming to you.”

It's her. The
real
her. Unless the girl rushing to meet me is a Forgery, and the one I'm about to shoot is Bree. Using my momentary break in concentration to her advantage, the girl in my hands knees me in the gut. My grip slips. She scrambles away on all fours.

“What's your favorite bird?” I say, wheeling on her. “Answer immediately or you're dead.”

She pauses, straightens. Something glints in her hand. The gun. She found it.

“She's coming, Gray. That thing. Please, we have to—”

“Answer the question.”

“Herons,” she says.

“Herons?”

“Yes, herons. Always.”

Another blast on the streets, another flash of light. This time I see a flicker of her face—Bree. Beautiful. Scowling. And not a single flaw on her skin. She looks like the girl I met months ago in Crevice Valley.

I exhale and squeeze the trigger.

Footsteps pound up the tunnel behind me. “What the heck are you doing all the way out here? We need to grab Sammy.” She has a flashlight. The beam falls on the crumpled body. I turn away and nearly lose what little food is in my stomach.

“Shit,” Bree says, staring at the corpse. “Gray . . . ?”

She touches my shoulder, and my hands again act on their own. Her neck. Her neck in my hands. Doubles. Limitless numbers at his disposal. I can't trust her. Can't trust anyone.

“Loons,” she says. She doesn't struggle in my grasp, just lets the flashlight trail up at the ceiling and answers calm as anything. It's enough light for me to see her bandaged cheek, the scar above her eye. “Herons then. Loons now.”

I release her immediately. My hands shake.

“I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be.” She touches her holstered gun. “And you?”

“Saying we wouldn't work.”

She doesn't draw it. No need for flashlights now, for checking scars or eyes or anything else. I gather her in my arms. Pull her into my chest. Her leather jacket is cool against my skin.

“There's no time for this,” she says, and I know she's right.

We backtrack, and I try to ignore the visuals replaying in my mind. How it looked just like her. How I put a bullet in the mirror image of the person I love more than anything in this world. It makes my breath short. And I'd been ready to choke her—
my
Bree.

“You hit Harvey,” I say, to distract from the madness raging in my head.

“I thought I had a shot and I took it. I was off by a fraction of an inch. Rehashing it won't change anything.”

We round a corner and nearly collide with Sammy.

“Where have you guys been?” he shouts. Bree shoves her forearm to his windpipe and knocks him against the wall. “Shit, Nox! What the hell?”

She checks his eyes, lets him go. “We have to keep moving.”

“What about the plan, the alarm?” he asks. “Where's the shutdown sequence?”

Bree shakes her head. “Maybe Harvey really
is
working
with Emma. They're the only two we can't account for right now.”

A clatter to our right makes us turn. A canister, lobbed into the sewers, starts leaking gas. Almost immediately my eyes are burning.

Bree yanks the collar of her leather jacket over her mouth and nose. “This way,” she says.

We flee.

Only to greet more gas.

Backtracking, we return to the junction and take the only open route left.

“They're trying to smoke us out,” Sammy says.

“They're leading us where they want,” I correct, which, not surprisingly, is back toward the dead Forgery. To wherever she was trying to bring me originally. My stomach coils. We pass Bree's double, take a few more turns. Ahead, gas looms. Behind, the same. We have one remaining option: the ladder leading aboveground to our right.

“Shoot,” Bree says, skidding to a halt. “I know where this leads. We're only blocks from Union Central.”

“How is that possibly a bad thing?” Sammy says. “Everyone's down at the square.”

“
We
should be in that square,” I say, the guilt creeping over me. This was our plan, and none of it is working. People are dying because of it. We might end up dying. I can barely
breathe anymore, and my eyes feel on fire.

“Just climb,” Sammy urges. “I have absolutely no desire to die in this filth.”

We scramble up the ladder, push aside the grate. It dumps us in a narrow alley, directly in front of a set of wheels. The vehicle is a standard Order model—like the ones that ambushed the
Catherine
a few months back—but the driver is not. It's Clipper. He yells at us to get in and we don't argue. As soon as Bree slams the door, we're flying.

“How did you find us?” I ask.

“Harvey.” Clipper's driving is rough and twitchy. About as horrible as mine. “The Order thought the shooter was moving by the sewers, and they wanted to guide him toward Union Central. Harvey told me where to get you.”

The gas must have been a last resort, thrown in by the Order after the signal from Bree's Forgery stopped transmitting.

I twist around. Through the rear window, I watch another few Order vehicles skid to a stop and surround the sewer access point. The drivers glance in our direction right when we turn a corner. They could assume our vehicle is filled only with other Order members. Then again, I feel like we're bound to run out of luck eventually.

“You should see the feeds, guys,” Clipper says. “Everyone's rioting. Not just in Taem, but the other domed cities, too.”

“But the alarms,” Bree says as the vehicle swerves around another corner and onto the main road. It's eerily deserted. Union Central looms ahead, looking stoic behind its majestic gate.

“They'll update,” Clipper promises. “It takes a few minutes.”

“Harvey never mentioned a delay.”

“That's because—”

A cobweb blooms over the windshield and Clipper slumps forward. The weight of his arm yanks the wheel left and we collide with a building. My head hits the seat in front of me. Smoke billows from the front of the vehicle.

“Clipper!” Bree shrieks. She leaps from the car and pulls open the front door. “Clip. Dammit! Help me, guys. Help me!”

Sammy is clutching his middle and drawing shallow breaths. He's not bleeding—not that I can see—but he seems incapable of moving. I crawl over him and am in time to help catch Clipper's weight as Bree pulls him from the front. There's a gurgle of blood at the boy's lips, a surge of it on his chest.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Bree mutters.

“Clipper, you hang in there.” I put a palm against his chest. The blood doesn't slow. “You stay with us.”

I glance up at the bullet hole in the windshield. The angle,
the aim . . . There's a gunman in one of the nearby buildings right now. Probably with us still in his sights.

I take Clipper's hand in mine. He tries to tell us something, but coughs instead. Bree screams words my ears don't register.

Clipper looks young. He looks so young.

“We're going to make this okay, Clipper. You're going to be fine.”

But already, his grip on my hand is slipping.

Damn, he looks like a kid.

Cars screech to a halt behind us. Order members spill into the streets. I yank the twine bracelet off Clipper's wrist.

The boy's head is slack against his chest as we're dragged away. He looks directly at me, but there is no light in his eyes.

BREE CLENCHES HER JAW AS
the car speeds up the street. The bandage on her cheek is dark and wet, stitches pulled from her screaming.

I feel the coarse weave of Clipper's bracelet with the pad of my thumb.

Thirteen.

I was just coming into my own as a hunter at that age. I spent my evenings terrorizing Maude by pulling the Council Bell and my days flirting with Emma. I goaded Blaine whenever possible but silently wanted him to think the world of me. Anything was possible. Even in a world where life ended at eighteen, I thought I could do anything.

All the things Clipper could have done, all the things he
might have been . . . They've been taken from him. Stolen. Stripped right out of his hands.

He was a kid. A damn kid. Still growing. Looking a little different each day.

Thirteen
.

The rage in my chest threatens to take over.

I reach for Bree, thread my fingers through hers. She squeezes back.

It's just enough to keep me from shattering.

In Union Central, the alarm flashes red, its cry as standard and plain as ever.

We are dragged not to a holding cell, but to the enclosed and vacant training field. The oblong stretch of grass is surrounded by screens, each filled with chaos. In the downtown square, flames dance from building windows and smoke trails domeward. Where people have fallen, their bodies are trampled by those still fighting. The forces wearing dark uniforms outnumber the rest. Additional vehicles are driving into the square. From every angle, the Forgeries look endless.

Though I don't recognize all the locations, I see similar uproars on other screens. Haven, perhaps. Radix, Lode.

We are outnumbered. Outsmarted. Outmatched. Without the fail-safe, the people are doomed to be overrun.

The Forgery guiding me pushes between my shoulder blades, urging me to walk faster. We are brought to a line painted on the grass and told to kneel.

“I can't . . . breathe,” Sammy gasps, “let alone . . . kneel.”

He is kicked in the back of the knees. Bree and I submit without a fight.

From an observation deck, Frank and Harvey watch the whole thing. The scientist's shoulder is bandaged from Bree's misfired shot, and when he sees us kneeling and beaten, his mouth twitches. Into a smile? A grimace? I can't tell.

“Traitor,” Bree snarls.

I'm about to admit that she was right all along, that Harvey was never working with us. His plan existed to pull all the Rebels and Expats from hiding, to draw us out for the slaughter. But then . . .

The alarm changes.

The blaring cuts off and morphs into a staccato mess. It is not a song but a cacophony. The notes seem to surge and soften in all the wrong places, to pulse and spasm. Frank clasps his hands over his ears. The Forgeries do the same. I would, too, if they hadn't bound my hands together upon exiting the car. The noise is nothing but a deafening, convulsive fit.

“What the hell is wrong with it?” Frank yells.

“Not sure, sir.” Harvey tilts his head as he listens, like he's admiring the madness of it all. “I'll go check.”

He slips inside. Frank returns his attention to the Forgeries on the field and draws a finger across his neck.

I feel the muzzle of a gun press to the back of my head. In the corner of my vision I see Bree tensing as well.

My last thoughts are funny. I've been in this situation before and I could think only of the present, of the things I would miss, of questions left unanswered. That's not the case this time. I know Sammy and Bree are coming with me, so I don't linger on them. I know Clipper will be waiting wherever we go. And Blaine, too.

For a fraction of a moment I am undeniably content. If everyone I love and care about isn't in this world, why the heck am I fighting to stay in it? But the thought brings up a memory: Emma and me at a window in September's apartment. She sounded just as resigned, as hopeless.

So when I hear the safety flick off, I'm thinking about her. About her choices. Her still mysterious goals.

Even after everything, I hope she finds some level of happiness. I can't imagine it will be easy to cope with the guilt once she's facing this world friendless.

The alarm fades, then spasms back to life, looping as planned.

Behind me, the Forgery barks out a cough. I feel the
muzzle drag across my skull, then break contact altogether. The coughing fit grows worse, and when I turn, the Forgery is writhing on the ground. They all are—the two that had Bree and Sammy at gunpoint, and the other two standing guard. I snatch up a dropped gun, and spin. My hands are still bound, but I can aim well enough. My finger can pull a trigger. But when the balcony comes into my sight, Frank's eyes are rolling back in his head. He staggers a moment, hand on the doorframe, and then collapses just like his Forgeries.

Like he
is
a Forgery. Or was.

I can't tear my eyes away from the place where he fell. Did I ever meet the real man? Was it a Forgery down in the square just earlier, addressing the public while the real Frank cowered in safety?

I twist, taking in the screens that surround the field. The Forgeries are dropping everywhere. In Taem's public square, in the streets, beneath other domes. It's like watching a tall grass blow in the breeze, a visible wave crashing.

Harvey staggers through a ground-level door and onto the field. He looks breathless. Shocked, but very much alive.

“You're fine! It didn't . . . Clipper's going to be—”

I bite off my words, but Harvey looks us over—Bree's bleeding cheek, the bracelet still clasped in my hand, Sammy slouched in the grass—and knows.

“That kid,” he says, fighting back tears. “God, I loved that kid.”

This is the second Forgery I've heard make a declaration of love. Something that should be impossible. How fine is the line between human and not? Have we done something both necessary and wrong with the fail-safe?

Bree offers Harvey her palm. “I'm sorry I doubted you. That probably doesn't feel like much now that you've proven yourself, but I still need to say it.”

As they shake, panic flashes over his face. He doubles over, landing on his knees.

“Harvey?” I rush to his side.

He coughs, spattering the grass with blood, then rolls onto his back. It's happening. Was the fail-safe delayed for him because he'd broken through his own programming already? Because his sacrifice made him more human than Forgery? He dissolves into a coughing fit and I realize I'll never know the answer. The only thing I know for certain is there is no stopping this, no way to help him, and it brings me to my knees.

Harvey's back arches. Bree and I each grab one of his hands and try to hold him still as he flails. The screams coming out of him are so much worse than anything the other Forgeries went through.

Bree glances at the gun in the grass, then at me.

“Do you want a bullet?” I ask Harvey. “It would be quick.”

He shakes his head in a spasming rock. “Just you two.”

So we hold his hands, even when he squeezes ours to the point that our skin goes white beneath his grip. He begs for it to be over, cries shamelessly, and then, as quickly as it began, he shudders and is still. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

Bree feels for a pulse along his neck and frowns.

An Order member bursts onto the field. “Weapons down! Step away from him.”

“He's dead,” Bree says.

“Weapons
down
!”

Emma follows the guard. She's wearing a medical smock over her dress, and her right hand clenches a handgun.

“Which one first?” the Order member asks her.

She brings her gun to his temple. “Neither.”

“But you said . . . I thought . . .”

With her spare hand, Emma pulls a syringe from the pocket of her smock. The needle is buried in the soft flesh of the guard's neck before he even registers the threat. He frowns, and then his face goes entirely slack a second before he collapses.

Emma turns to us and frees our bound hands. “Crap,” she says, her eyes falling on Sammy. “He looks even worse in person than he did on the cameras. Here.” She shoves
a small piece of blood-covered metal into my palm. “His office,” she says. “Use the wrist chip to get there. Then the bookshelf. There's a false room.”

I notice the bloody bandage on Emma's arm. She cut her wrist implant out. She cut into her own arm to retrieve this chip.

“Whose office?” I ask, completely baffled.

“Frank's,” she urges. “I figured it out a while ago, before they planted me in Pine Ridge to wait for you. He'd visit me in the hospitals a lot.
I was gifted
, he said.
Had talent like Harvey
. Sometimes his eyes were perfectly human. Other times they weren't right, like the Forgeries'. I got good at spotting the difference in the glare of operating lights.”

Bree's eyes drift back to where Frank's crumpled form sits, and she swears.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” Emma continues. “I wanted Frank to trust me, which meant making sure none of you did. I was going to do it myself, two days ago when we got back, but I was worried if I killed him first, the Gen5 would suspect everything; and if I killed the Forgery first, I
knew
Frank would. One of them was always watching. So I waited.”

“And now?” I ask.

Emma drops beside Sammy and pulls one of his arms behind her neck. “And now Sammy needs medical attention, so you two will have to do it for me.”