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Only a few lanterns flickered, and the fire on the hearth had burned down to coals. Harvard guided me to the couch, where Shelly sat wearing a pink hoodie and flannel pajama pants. Lily stayed by the front window, watching the road.
“First things first,” Shelly said. “I won’t say a word until you unchain her. ”
Harvard glanced at me. “You’re going to make a big deal about this in front of Benson?”
She ignored me. “That has nothing to do with it. If you want my help, you unchain her. ”
Harvard glanced to the far end of the room, and I stood to see what he was looking at.
It was Laura, her hands wrapped tightly in heavy chains that were padlocked to the wall. She was staring back at me, quiet. Her eyes looked black in the darkness.
Harvard sighed, but lightly. Nothing seemed to really concern him. “She’s a murderer. ”
“I don’t want to get into it again,” Shelly said. “Let her get off the floor or this is over. ”
Beds creaked as other kids rolled over to watch what was going on.
“Birdman won’t like this,” Harvard said, his smile eerily glued to his face.
Shelly cocked her head. “Do you think that carries any weight with me?”
“She stood trial. ”
Shelly laughed coldly.
“Fine,” he said. “But only her hands, not her feet. ”
I watched him walk the length of the room, all eyes on him as he bent over Laura and loosened the chains from her hands.
She deserved to be in those chains. I’d been there. I’d seen what she’d done.
Obviously in pain, Laura stood, her fettered feet clanking against the wooden floor as she took the few steps toward her bed. Harvard kicked her in the butt and she stumbled to the mattress.
As she lay down, she flipped Harvard off, and then looked at me. “Looks like you chose your friends as well here as you did back at the school. ”
My muscles tensed. She was small, frail, and chained, and I wanted to punch her in the teeth. She deserved everything she got.
Harvard plopped onto the couch, grabbing the poker and jabbing at the fire.
Shelly finally looked at me. She was tense, uncertain.
“How’s Becky?”
“Alive,” I answered, sitting down.
“Shelly has some interesting news,” Harvard said, sitting on the edge of the couch and slapping her knee. “Since you’re the most recent to come from the school, we wanted to run it past you. ”
“It’s probably nothing,” she said, obviously annoyed with Harvard, “but something seems weird. ”
“Everything seems weird,” I said, and she heaved a sigh.
“We”—she gestured around the room, but I assumed she meant the whole camp—“try to keep track of exactly what’s going on at the school. Like the meeting today—Birdman gets us together every day and we write down what’s been happening with our dupes. ”
I nodded. “So, what’s the weird stuff?”
“Two kids,” she said. “They’re in the cells in the underground complex. It seems like they were there before my dupe got there. ”
“Isn’t the underground complex full of kids?” I asked. “Everyone from the school?”
“I’ve never seen these two before,” Shelly said. “I’ve asked around. No one who still has an active dupe has seen them before. We were wondering if you knew anything about them. ”
“How would I know?”
She scowled. “We only see snippets. You were there—you saw everything. ”
“Unless you can draw a picture of them, I have no idea how I’m supposed to know who they are. ”
Harvard poked the fire again. “No new students came after you, right?”
“Right. ”
Shelly ran her fingers through her hair and sighed, tired. “They’re sisters. ”
That didn’t sound right. “I never knew any sisters. No one at Maxfield had any family. ”
“These girls don’t talk much—they’re in the cell across from my dupe—but they’re obviously related. They look almost the same, both blond, same face, same mannerisms; one is just older than the other. They’re terrified, and the younger one clings to the older. ”
“How old?”
“Maybe thirteen and sixteen? I don’t know. My dupe has tried to talk to them, I think. But they almost seem to have a pact of silence. ”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe they were scheduled to come to the school before we all tried to escape. ”
“We’ll know them soon enough,” Harvard said with a smirk. “They’ll end up in the town once Maxfield gives them implants and makes dupes. But that’s not the point. We can’t figure out why they’re bringing in new people and taking them straight underground. It seems like they have plenty of us humans already. Why would they need more dupes? And why sisters?”
That did seem weird. “So we’re assuming that everyone in the school—everyone who tried to escape with me—is getting an implant and coming here?”
“That’s probably why they’re having us build more barracks,” Shelly said, and stood. “Speaking of, I need to go to bed. We’ll have to get to work tomorrow morning. ”
She looked down at Harvard, something in her eyes. Annoyance? Disgust? “I hope Birdman will be sending us some help this time. ”
“I haven’t heard,” he said with a carefree shrug.
From the back of the room a voice called out sarcastically, “Well, you can count on Benson to help. He’s always thinking about everyone else. ”
I jumped to my feet and took a step toward the bed. “Excuse me?”
Shelly grabbed my arm. “Don’t. ”
“You’re actually claiming that I don’t care about people? I tried to get everyone out. ”
Laura sneered. “Nice job, too. ”
“At least I tried. I’m not a killer. ”
“I was trying to prevent deaths,” she snapped.
I laughed, because I wanted to break her jaw and I had to force myself not to. “You were trying to prevent deaths by beating Jane to death with a pipe?”
She paused, but her face only got colder, more vicious.
“How many died at the fence? Sixteen? And I’m the bad guy?”
I jumped at her, but Lily was in front of me in an instant.
“Slow down, big boy,” she said. “You’re gonna hit a girl?”
“She killed—”
Laura was on her feet. “That Jane was a robot. ”
“You didn’t know that!” I shoved Lily out of the way, but Harvard caught me from behind.
“Let it go,” he said. “She’ll get hers. ”
Shelly had moved to Laura’s bed, standing between us.
“This isn’t over,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” Laura snapped. “You’re not the only person who lost friends yesterday. ”
I threw Harvard off my back, but didn’t move toward her. “Everything you did,” I said, stabbing my finger at Laura, “every kid you hauled to detention, everybody you stopped from escaping, every rule you enforced—that didn’t matter to the school at all, did it? When they hauled you underground—when they drilled into your head and crammed a bomb into it—they didn’t give a damn who you were. Did they?”