I stare, stunned. How has he…?
My gaze catches on the doorjamb, and I see a strip of white over the hole, which has prevented the latch from sliding into place and locking. It’s some kind of tape, which he obviously pressed into place during his struggle with the soldiers. Did he grab it on the way out of his lab when the soldiers came for him? How did he know he would need it?
Wexler 42 steps into the hallway and glances in both directions, his frame tense. He’s ready to run.
Instead he crosses the hall toward me. A light flashes green over my door and he pulls it open; he’s unlocked my cell with the bar code on his wrist. Scientists evidently have very high security clearances.
Wexler and I stare at each other, this time with no glass between us. A small smile haunts his mouth as he studies my face.
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I try to speak. “Who—” I inhale and try again. “Who are you?” I whisper.
“I’m the man who got you into this.”
“What? I don’t understand.” Trigger 17 got me into this. I got myself into this.
The scientist’s gaze drops to the embroidery on the front of my jacket. “Dahlia.” He says my name as if he’s tasting it. Then he looks right into my eyes and whispers one more word. “Run.”
Wexler 42 turns, and his footsteps whisper down the hall, opposite the direction the soldiers went in.
My stomach flip-flops. I catch the door before it can close and stick my head into the hall in time to see him disappear behind a door labeled with an image of a staircase.
Wexler 42 is gone, and my cell is unlocked.
My legs itch to move, but what good would running do? I have nowhere to go. But if I’m here when they find whatever genetic flaw is swimming around in my DNA, I will be euthanized along with my identicals for the good of the city.
Before I can decide what to do, loud footsteps echo toward me, accompanied by voices.
Panicked, I reach into my pocket and am relieved to find the roll of baton tape still there. I tear off a piece and use it like Wexler did to keep my door from latching as I ease it silently, carefully closed.
The steps and voices come closer. Another soldier appears in the hallway with a man in a suit and tie. The name tag pinned over his suit jacket pocket reads FORD 45, MANAGEMENT BUREAU CHIEF.
He is in charge of the entire Management Bureau. Which means he answers only to the Administrator.
When Ford sees that the room across from mine is empty, his face turns an alarming shade of red. “Send out an alert ping for Wexler 42 to all patrol units,” the manager barks. “Include his genome code and a photograph, but withhold all other specifics. And strip his clearance,” he orders.
The soldier pulls a small tablet from his pocket and begins typing on it, and I understand that the scientist’s bar code won’t unlock any more doors for either of us.
“And get Wexler’s supervisor in here to explain what we’re dealing with,” Ford 45 adds. “All that ‘helix’ and ‘allele’ talk from the genetics lab sounds like nonsense to me.”
Genetics lab? Wexler is a geneticist? Why would Management detain a geneticist within minutes of my arrest?
Ford turns to study me through the window in my door, but based on the utter lack of emotion he may as well be looking at a piece of furniture. Then he marches down the hall again, with the soldier on his heels, still tapping and swiping on his tablet. Just before they move out of earshot, I hear Ford say, “If I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with her in ten minutes, you’ll be scrubbing toilets in the barracks for the rest of your life.”
My pulse races so fast the small room begins to spin around me. I sink onto my heels to keep from falling.
Wexler isn’t just a geneticist. He’s my geneticist. The scientist who designed my genome. Management took him into custody in case they find a flaw in my DNA, which he will be held accountable for.
Which five thousand of my identicals—including me—will be recalled for.
I’m the man who got you into this.
Suddenly his declaration makes a certain strange sense.
Why would Wexler run unless he already knows what the genetic exam will uncover? Why would he tell me to run unless he knows we’re both about to be recalled?
Something is wrong with me, and the only man who knows what that is has just fled for his life.
And given me the opportunity to run for mine.
Heart pounding, I push my cell door open and peek into the hall. When I’m sure it’s empty, I run for the stairs as quickly and quietly as I can.
The door to the stairwell closes behind me with a soft whoosh of air, and the sudden silence around me is unnerving. Wexler is long gone.
I take each stair carefully and slowly to keep from tripping or making any noise, but by the time I’ve gone down three floors my footsteps have become the cadence of my fear, racing like my heartbeat. What’s wrong with my genome? What will happen if (when) I am caught? What will euthanasia feel like? Will my identicals get any warning, or will someone just round them all up?
My hand clenches around the stair rail with that thought. Other than the carpentry students who saw me marched out of the shed with Trigger, none of my identicals have any idea what I’ve done.
None of them have ever acted on whatever flaw we share. They don’t even know about it. Their ability to efficiently serve the city of Lakeview has not been compromised. So why should they have to pay for my mistake?
I can’t run to save my own life and leave them behind to be recalled. But turning myself in won’t save my sisters.
Tears blur my vision and I trip over my own foot. I fly forward, grasping for the railing, and my hand catches it at the last second, saving me from a tumble toward the next landing. For a moment, I am paralyzed here in the stairwell, my heart racing even faster than my thoughts, yet I come to that same inevitable conclusion over and over again.
I can’t save them. I can’t even warn them. Whether or not I escape, they will submit to the recall without ever understanding why they’ve been sentenced to death.
Poppy will die without ever knowing how badly I betrayed her. How badly I betrayed them all.
My sob echoes through the stairwell. Startled by the sound of my own grief, I slap one hand over my mouth, but I can’t hold back the tears. Violet will never take the relay baton from me again, nor smack me with it when she anchors our team victory. Sorrel will never again refuse to trade her tomatoes for my beets by telling me to respect the wisdom of our nutritionists. And Poppy…
My eyes fill with tears, blurring the stairs beneath me.
Poppy will never again whisper to me in the dark from her top bunk, fantasizing about the huge gardens we’ll oversee after we graduate. Or the two-person bedrooms and lounges rumored to exist in the adult residence halls. Or the grafted plants we’ll one day revolutionize hydroponic gardening with.
Every friend I’ve ever had looks just like me, but we are each different people, and I will miss every one of them in a different way. To a different degree. For a different reason.
I will mourn them as individuals, while the city euthanizes them as one.
Or I will get caught and die with them.
I force myself forward again, and with every step I expect to hear alarms ring out, announcing my escape. They will sound something like the weather siren, I imagine, but I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never heard any other kind. Things like this don’t go wrong in Lakeview.
Somehow I am the only thing that has ever gone wrong in Lakeview in my lifetime.
After another half a flight, metal squeals over my head as a door opens on the top floor. Panicked, I pull open the door on the sixth-floor landing. A quick glance reveals the end of another empty hallway, so I step into it and pull the door closed as softly as I can.
The soldiers who’ve come after me don’t hear the door, because they’re talking. Heart pounding, I face the open end of the sixth-floor hallway
so I can see if anyone approaches, then press my ear against the door I’ve just come through. I’m not sure I’ll be able to hear anything over my rushing pulse, yet soon I hear footsteps. Then the soldiers’ voices.
I press my cheek harder against the door, the metal cold against my skin, and strain to make out what they’re saying.
“Why can’t we just raise the alarm and get the whole city looking for her?” the first voice, a woman’s, asks.
“Because a recall of five thousand identicals takes some time to set up, and we’re not prepared for the panic that would ensue in Workforce if they found out about it before Management had an opportunity to release an official statement,” a second female voice replies as their steps clomp closer to the sixth-floor landing. “That, and Ford 45 doesn’t want anyone to know he lost not one but two prisoners in a five-minute span until he can also report that they’ve been recaptured. But even that probably won’t save his job.”
I exhale slowly. There will be no alarm, and my fellow identicals aren’t yet being rounded up. Which means that the best place for me to hide, at least for the moment, is among the 4,999 other girls who look just like me. Without the name embroidered on my athletic jacket, no one will be able to tell me apart from my friends.
When the footsteps and voices have faded, I take off my jacket and stuff it into a trash can halfway down the hall. Once I am sure the soldiers have had time to reach the bottom floor, I carefully ease the door open again and listen closely. I hear only silence, so I sneak into the stairwell again and continue my quiet descent.
The soldiers’ words play over and over in my head. Recall. Panic.
How will Lakeview weather the loss of five thousand of its upcoming trade laborers? Aren’t we all needed? Who will our teachers teach? Who will our dorm supervisors supervise?
Will it hurt when we die?
My feet pause on the steps when the devastating reality finally hits me. My escape is a far-fetched dream. I still have nowhere to go. I’ve never even been beyond Lakeview’s city walls.
I can’t reasonably expect to avoid my fate. But before I die, I have to know what Wexler 42 knows.
In what way are we defective?
And if he knew about that defect from the beginning, why was my genome put into production in the first place?
I huddle in the shadow of the mirrored Management Bureau, staring out at a neatly manicured lawn divided by gently curving sidewalks. As anxious as I am to be moving, I’m terrified to take that first step. On my own I feel unsettlingly conspicuous and vulnerable.
Even without my name embroidered over my heart, I can’t simply stroll across the city, much less through the gate into the training ward. The soldiers are looking for a solitary girl who looks just like me. I need camouflage.
My thoughts racing, I glance at the clock tower in the square at the center of the administration ward. Less than an hour has passed since Trigger and I were apprehended. The gardening unions—both landscape and hydroponic—will be back in class already, but because it’s field day, several of the other unions should still be in the middle of their exercise unit. Once I make it back to the training ward, all I’ll have to do is find another class of my own identicals and blend in until they return to the dormitory to shower.
Getting out of the administration ward will be the real challenge.
I scan the square, and frustration amplifies my fear. Other than soldiers on patrol and the occasional pair of managers headed to or from their bureau, the square is deserted. Is it always like this?
The training ward is always bustling with students. Why are there so few adults out and about in the rest of the city?
Panic closes in on me as I peer out over the nearly empty lawn. Then the familiar rhythm of pounding feet catches my attention. I peek around the corner of the building to see a long cluster of Workforce students jogging along the sidewalk toward the Management Bureau. They’re boys—completely useless to me. But behind the boys’ class is a girls’ class, and behind them is an evidently endless line of jogging students.
And finally I realize what I’m seeing. These are the unions that came in last place during their field day. Rather than victory cupcakes, they get a team-building jog around the training and administrative wards, and their misfortune is my saving grace.
One of these unions is made up of my identicals. And I’m still wearing my athletic uniform.
I watch from my hiding spot as class after class pass me, huffing with exertion. Sixteen year-twelve boys with pale hair and dark eyes. Sixteen year-fourteen girls with red curls and freckles. Sixteen year-seventeen boys with light brown skin and bright greenish eyes. Sixteen year-sixteen girls with…my very own face.
My heart beats so hard it hurts.
Because the late fall day has grown warm, my identicals are not wearing their jackets, and with any luck no one will notice one extra.
I steel my nerve and run in place in the shadows until my heart races not from fear but from exertion. Until sweat forms on my forehead. Then, when they pass my hiding place, I slip into their ranks near the end.
As we round the end of the square, I scan the administration grounds and I notice that there are more soldiers out than there were even minutes ago, patrolling in pairs. They’re looking for me, yet none of them look at me. Alone, identicals stand out, but together, we are never truly seen.
I’ve never been more grateful for that fact in my life.
I hold my breath as we approach the gate into the training ward, but the guard just waves us through. There are too many of us to bother scanning.
Halfway across the common lawn, the instructor—not one of Belay 35’s identicals—calls for a rest. My heart slams against my sternum as the class around me breaks into small groups, talking and drinking from bottles of water.
I don’t have a bottle. I have no one to talk to. If I join a group, will they be able to tell I don’t belong?
Would I be able to identify an identical stranger among my own classmates?
I would definitely know if anyone tried to impersonate Poppy, Violet, or Sorrel. And I would suspect something if Calla 16 were suddenly friendly. But the rest?
We have assigned desks, gardening stations, and dorm rooms. We tend to sit with the same friends every day in the cafeteria. How much of recognizing my identicals is actually just knowing where they’ll be at any given time?
“Blanch, what do you think that’s about?” a girl to my left asks.
Blanch. This is a cooking union. The girls around me will have names like Julienne, Simmer, and Braise.
I turn to follow Blanch’s gaze and nearly choke on my own tongue. Two identical soldiers are talking to the athletic instructor, gesturing toward the other end of the training ward. Toward the dormitory.
“I don’t know,” the girl next to Blanch says.
My heart thumping painfully, I casually move closer to the instructor, stopping every few steps to stretch. When I’m a few feet away, I bend to touch my toes and rise with an unattended water bottle.
“…a security issue. Nothing to worry about,” one of the soldiers is saying. But of course it’s something to worry about. Defense doesn’t dictate the Workforce Academy’s schedules.
The instructor frowns. “I don’t understand. We still have two laps of the ward before—”
“You’ll have to cut the exercise short today,” the second soldier interrupts. “We’ve been instructed to escort your class back to the dormitory, where you’re to lead them to their cafeteria for a snack. Management’s orders.”
“A snack? But they—”
“Now, please,” the first soldier orders.
The instructor nods stiffly. “Thank you for your service.” Then he turns to the rest of us. “Class, we’re going to cut the run short.” Can the others hear how nervous he sounds? “It seems that Management has an impromptu treat for you in the cafeteria. Please grab your water bottles and follow me.”
The girls around me murmu
r excitedly as we fall into a rough line, and I pass right by the poor girl stuck looking for her missing water bottle.
In the dormitory, when everyone else gathers in front of the bank of elevators, I slip into the stairwell. By the time I reach the eighteenth floor, I’m breathing hard and my quads are on fire. But there is no one on our level to see me sneak from the stairwell into the room I share with Violet, Sorrel, and Poppy. Presumably my union is in class at the academy.
I feel sick thinking about how worried Poppy must be about me.
What has Sorrel 32 told her? What has Sorrel 32 been told?
My chest feels like it’s caving in. How much time do they have before the recall?
Alone in my dorm room, I feel so jittery that I nearly jump out of my shoes when the air-conditioning suddenly blows my hair from the vent overhead. I strip out of my recreation uniform and toss it down the laundry chute. Since I’m on camera and someone could be watching, I can’t spare the time for a shower, so I just change into a clean school uniform. But instead of my own jacket, I take Violet’s spare. Her jacket won’t fool a scanner held over my wrist, but hopefully wearing her name will prevent my wrist from being scanned in the first place.
Dressed, I glance from bunk to bunk and drawer to drawer. I have no idea what my life will be like from now on, even if I manage to escape the recall. I can’t imagine an existence with no identicals. No hydroponics. No classrooms, cafeterias, or group recreation. I can’t believe I’m never going to sleep in this room again. I can’t believe I’m never going to see my roommates again.
I can’t believe my moment of weakness in the equipment shed has led to the imminent euthanasia of five thousand girls. Of every friend I’ve ever had.
I’m supposed to believe that’s inevitable. If a genome is flawed, that flaw will eventually show itself, allowing Lakeview to purge the inferior workers for the benefit of those who remain. Yet that doesn’t feel like the case.
Yes, I am attracted to Trigger 17, though doubtless I should not be. But if the elevator hadn’t broken down, that attraction would never have had a chance to develop. I would have continued with my life and my work, unaware that such a possibility existed.