I should tell him no again, but I’m not ready to say goodbye. I want to know what life is like as a cadet. I want to know what he thinks about at night before he falls asleep. I want to know what he likes to eat and how he got the tiny scar on his thumb.
I want to know what these feelings mean.
Would I have this same attraction for any boy I got stuck in an elevator with, or is this attraction specific to Trigger 17? He must have felt this before. How else would he have known about kissing? How does his attraction to me compare to what he’s felt for girls in the past? Am I the only girl outside of his union he’s had a conversation with?
I will never have those answers if he doesn’t come with me.
I will never get to kiss him again if he stays behind.
“Okay. Come with me.”
He smiles, but I know I’ve made the wrong decision as soon as the words fall from my lips. I am damning him to my fate. I might also be damning his entire genome. “Wait. Will your identicals suffer for this?”
“No,” he insists as he drops a toothbrush into the bag. “I was trained to follow orders, but I was designed to think for myself.”
“Those seem like two conflicting concepts.”
“Sometimes it feels that way.” Trigger takes the third of four razors lined up on the counter and drops it into the bag. “Following orders is always our primary objective, but out in the field the method isn’t as important as the result. My genome is intentionally inventive and bold to help us survive on missions and in the wild. And those who think as individuals are treated as individuals.”
“So what will they think when you’re just…gone?”
“Management will tell the cadets I died in the wild on some kind of test or mission.”
“But that’s a lie!”
“Management doesn’t lie.” Trigger stands up straight and gives me a look that makes me feel very young. Very inexperienced. “Neither does Defense. They simply make strategic omissions, as authorized by the city’s official security bylaws. Anything necessary to protect the city is permissible. To keep everyone safe and productive.”
Safe and productive. Those words are printed on Lakeview’s official seal, displayed on the side of every CitiCar and on the floor of the Management Bureau’s lobby. Everything Management does is to keep the city safe and productive—including the rare recall of flawed genomes.
The recall is a normal, necessary process. Even in the wild, flawed plants and animals die. Right?
Yet again, I find myself inexplicably unwilling to die, despite the selfishness inherent in that thought. I’m not done living. I’m not done knowing, finding, feeling, seeing, and touching. I’m not done being.
I wish my identicals weren’t done either. I wish I knew how to help them.
Trigger zips up his toiletry bag. “We should go.” He opens the bathroom door to another very specific angle, then motions for me to make my way along the wall again. While I sneak toward the door, he glances around his dorm room from the middle of the floor, his brows drawn into a straight, determined line. “We’ll need more supplies.” He opens a closet door and lifts a worn olive-green backpack from the floor.
“Won’t we stand out if we carry a bag?”
Trigger shrugs as he shoves things into the pack from his bureau drawer. “If we’re seen together, we’ll stand out. I don’t think a backpack could make that much worse.”
I’m fascinated to realize that his entire life will fit into that one bag.
Mine would probably take up even less space.
“What are those?” I ask from my position beneath the camera as he tosses in a small cardboard box.
“Matches. It’ll get cold at night, and we’ll need fire to cook meat.”
I was taught the theoretical basics of cooking as it applies to my job, but I’ve never seen a match. I’ve never felt the warmth of an open flame. Those things have no relevance to the life of a hydroponic gardener.
With a disquieting bolt of surprise, I realize I am no longer a gardener. I will probably never pick up another pH tester or fill another water pan.
If I was designed for trade labor and trained as a hydroponic gardener yet can never be either of those again, what am I now?
Who am I?
Trigger shows me the pattern of steps and pauses needed to sneak past the cameras on his floor. I’m sure at least three of them caught glimpses of me—and probably of him—but if no one is watching the feeds live, our escape from the dormitory won’t be discovered until someone realizes he’s missing and examines the footage.
We hope to be long gone by then.
We are twenty feet from the stairwell when a familiar voice freezes me in place, my left shoulder inches from a glass window set into the stark white wall where the conservator’s office is on my floor.
“…wanted to personally thank you, Commander Armstrong, for volunteering two of your field medic classes to oversee the blood tests.”
It’s Ford 45. I’m certain it’s him. If I got any closer to the window, I could peek in and tell for sure. But that would be too much of a risk.
“The assistance has truly helped us speed the process along,” Ford continues. “Five thousand tests in two hours is quite a challenge.”
“We were happy to help increase your efficiency. Is the task well under way?”
“It’s just now completed,” Ford answers. “We only have preliminary results so far, but they are unprecedented. Dahlia 16’s genetic examination revealed two specific and very odd flaws, yet not one of her identicals has tested positive for either of them so far.”
The cadet instructor’s gasp drowns out my own. “How is that possible?”
“We don’t know yet. But we will get to the bottom of this.”
Trigger squats and tugs on my hand, trying to get me to crawl past the window, but I’m stuck in place, both horrified for what this revelation might mean for me and relieved for my identicals.
If they’re not flawed, they won’t have to be recalled. Right?
“How will you proceed with the identicals?” Armstrong 38 asks.
“We will carry on with the recall to maintain public confidence in Management, and in our geneticists, and in the entire system.”
What? My stomach begins to churn. I sink to the floor next to Trigger, and the tile feels cold against my knees through the stretchy material of my athletic pants.
“That is wise,” the commander replies. “Faith in the system is ultimately of far more importance than any individual within it.”
What about five thousand individuals?
They’re still talking, but I’m lost in my own head. In the senselessness of the loss. If none of my sisters are flawed, why recall them?
Trigger pulls on my hand again, and again I refuse to move. I have to know what’s wrong with me. Why my defects will mean doom for thousands of perfectly perfect girls.
“But there’s something else you could help me with, Commander,” Ford says. “This boy she was caught with. This cadet…” During the pause, I picture him consulting a tablet. “Trigger 17.”
Trigger stops tugging me.
“It turns out they got stuck in an elevator together a few weeks ago, and we think that was the beginning of this whole mess. Nearly an hour with no power or camera.”
Armstrong 38 grunts. “Yes, I remember his report, but he didn’t mention there was another student with him.”
I glance at Trigger and find his jaw tense.
“Interesting.” Ford clears his throat. “What kind of boy is he?”
Trigger tries to pull me forward again, but I tug free of his grip. I want to hear this too.
“He’s a capable student and an excellent fighter. They all are. However, Trigger 17 is particularly creative and determined. Until today he was a squad leader and a very strong candidate for leadership within the Defense—”
“Yes, I’ve seen his record. But what kind of boy is he?” Ford asks. “How is he…socially?
You heard how they were caught?”
Trigger scowls as he tries to pull me forward, but I am caught in this discussion like a fly in a web.
“Oh.” Armstrong clears his throat. “Most cadets are social. It’s a result of the otherwise vestigial hormones necessary to grow a fighter, both physically and mentally. You can’t get the increased bone density, musculature, and interest in the subject matter without also tapping into another kind of primal instinct.”
“I see,” Ford 45 says. “Your explanation is much simpler and less technical than that of the geneticist I just spoke to.”
Armstrong laughs. “It’s harmless. We allow the male and female units to fraternize in their free time. That lets them get it out of their systems so they can concentrate during class and training.”
Trigger tugs on my hand again, more urgently this time, and I notice that his face is flushed. Is he…embarrassed? Or angry?
I feel like he understands more of what we’re hearing than I do.
Reluctantly I begin to crawl slowly past the window.
“But she’s not Defense,” Armstrong adds. “Trigger’s influence on her will have been minimal.”
“Because the other bureaus aren’t saddled with the distraction of primitive hormones?”
“Exactly. She shouldn’t have much interest in him beyond idle curiosity.”
The commander is wrong.
Why is he so very wrong?
“I’d like to speak with this cadet, if I may.” Yet Ford 45 seems to be giving an order rather than making a request.
“Of course. I’ll call him in—”
“After the recall. We’re going to need the rest of your cadets a little longer,” Ford 45 says as I listen from beneath the window. “If you’re amenable, of course.”
“To help with the recall?”
“No, Management can handle that. But what’s left of your year seventeens will give us the manpower to double up on patrols in the training ward. Dahlia 16 has been officially labeled an anomaly, and between the two of us…she’s unaccounted for.”
“She escaped? That does sound anomalous for a trade laborer.”
Trigger grins at the surprise in his commander’s voice, as if I should be proud of what I’ve done. Of surviving this far. But I feel only guilt for the fate of my identicals.
The word anomaly rolls around in my head. I’m familiar with the concept as it refers to plants. To irregularities, which typically result in the destruction of the affected specimen. But I’ve never heard of an anomalous person.
Yet I’d never heard of a beautiful person either until Trigger introduced me to that concept, so maybe people can be anomalous too. Maybe people, like plants, sometimes inexplicably defy the cloning process that is supposed to render them genetically flawless and indistinguishable from their identicals. The process that is supposed to give them the comfort and security of familiar faces and a place to belong.
But when an anomalous plant blooms in class, we only destroy that one specimen. We don’t trash the entire crop yield! Euthanizing 4,999 flawless girls would be unbelievably wasteful and inefficient. Contrary to the very ideals Lakeview holds in esteem.
What could Management possibly be thinking?
Trigger’s grip on my hand tightens. His lips form my name silently as he begs me to come with him before we’re discovered.
“And our orders?” Commander Armstrong says, recapturing my attention. “Are you authorizing lethal force?”
My heart leaps into my throat and sticks there. What does that mean? They want Trigger’s identicals to shoot me?
“No!” Ford 45 sounds almost as horrified as I feel. “Dahlia 16 must be brought in alive for a thorough examination.”
Examination? Somehow that sounds much less agreeable than my yearly physical.
“We need to know how this happened so we can prevent future such disasters in the genetics lab,” Ford continues. “Your boys and girls are on a find-and-report mission only. Without a union to blend into, Dahlia 16 should be easy to find.”
Nausea washes over me. Is that why my defectless sisters are being recalled? To make it easier for Management and Defense to hunt me?
I follow Trigger toward the staircase. I’ve already heard too much, and I can’t process all the information clunking around in my head. Each bit feels like a jigsaw puzzle piece that doesn’t match the image on the box. The image of a city I thought I knew. A life I thought I understood.
We crawl several feet past the window before we stand, just in case, but then we race silently toward the end of the hall, heedless of the cameras.
Trigger opens the stairwell door slowly to keep it from squealing. I step inside and he uses his free hand to close the heavy door as slowly as he opened it. I can no longer hear Ford 45 and the commander talking, yet I can’t unhear what they’ve already said.
Anomaly.
Recall.
Examination.
Trigger takes the first three steps quickly and silently in his boots, and there’s years of training in each graceful motion.
I have no training. So far I’ve survived on luck. But that will have to change.
I take that first step, but I can’t feel the tread beneath my foot. I can’t feel the sweat that has gathered behind my knees and between my breasts. I can’t feel the air I inhale as I stare at our intertwined fingers.
“Dahlia, we have to go.”
I take another step, then another, and soon we’re flying down the stairs together, and it feels a bit like talking to him in the Workforce Bureau stairwell, only more dangerous and terrifying and somehow exhilarating. Because this time I’m not just supposed to be somewhere else.
I’m supposed to be dead.
After they finish examining me, Management will complete their recall and I will become the five thousandth brown-eyed, brown-haired, right-handed sixteen-year-old female corpse.
Trigger seems even more determined than I am not to let that happen to me.
But I can’t let that happen to anyone. I can’t let Poppy, or Sorrel, or Violet be…
How would they die? Gas, or injection, or one of the other supposedly humane ways governments put people to death in our barbaric past?
I stop several steps above the fourth-floor landing, and Trigger turns to look up at me. “We have to help them.” I’m breathless, not from the exertion, but from the horror of what’s about to happen if we can’t stop it.
“Help who?”
My best friend. My roommates.
“The four thousand nine hundred ninety-nine girls who look just like me, Trigger. Gardeners, electricians, plumbers, medical technicians, carpenters, mechanics, and dozens of other trade laborers. They’re going to die, even though there’s nothing wrong with them, unless we do something!”
He glances down the stairwell, and I can see urgency in the motion. “What can we do? Even if we could free them from wherever they’re being held, where would we take them?”
“There has to be somewhere we could hide them. I mean, if you can hack the security cameras and the communication feeds, couldn’t you type something somewhere and make it look like they’ve already been recalled?”
“Probably,” Trigger admits, yet his forehead is more furrowed than I’ve ever seen it. “But I can’t hack into people’s brains and make them remember doing something they never did. Like euthanizing five thousand identicals.”
“We have to try. Wouldn’t you try to save your identicals if they were being recalled?”
“My identicals are cadets. We know from the time we can walk that someday we’ll die in the service of this city.”
“So your friends would just line up to be killed?” That doesn’t sound much like the only cadet I’ve actually met.
Trigger’s frown deepens, as if he’s considering that question for the first time. “Well, no, if they didn’t believe their deaths would benefit the city, they’d probably fight. That’s what we’re trained to do. But no one in their right
mind would tell an entire division of Defense cadets that they’re about to be euthanized. They’d have to do it without warning us. Maybe while we were asleep.” He shrugs, and I’m pleased to see that he at least looks bothered by the idea. “But your sisters aren’t cadets.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t fight. If they know what’s about to happen—if they know that they’re not flawed and their existence is no real threat to the city—they’ll fight.” I grip the stair rail in white-knuckled determination. Poppy loves a good argument. I can’t believe she wouldn’t fight for her life. And if she would, others might. “Even five thousand untrained girls have a shot at overwhelming whoever’s in charge of the recall if those in charge aren’t expecting it.”
Isn’t that possibility exactly why the recall hasn’t been announced? To avoid panic that might lead to unrest. Insubordination.
Trigger takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Dahlia, do you understand what you’re suggesting?”
“I…” I’m suggesting the only thing I can think of that might actually save every friend I’ve ever had from pointless euthanasia, but I haven’t given much thought to the bigger picture: what that will mean for us afterward.
“You’re talking about a rebellion. A revolt, albeit with teenage girls rather than armed militants.” Trigger leans against the concrete stairwell wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “The city will never stand for that.”
“What do we have to lose? Management is going to kill them all anyway, so if we fight and die we’re no worse off than we would be if we didn’t fight in the first place.”
“No, they’re no worse off. If we run now, you and I might make it out. If we fight with your sisters, we’ll probably all die.”
I don’t even try to hide my disappointment from him. “I thought you were prepared to die.”
“I am. But I’m not prepared to see you die.”
My chest aches again. There is a strangely raw, vulnerable quality in his voice now that makes my heart feel as if my lungs are suddenly shrinking around it. “I don’t want to die either, Trigger, but I’m not sure I can go on living knowing that all my sisters died and I did nothing to try to stop it.”