Nothing. She continued to the next roof, moving with intention and trying to stay out of sight. On every new roof she stopped to look for Lucy, who was somewhere down there. She was approaching the last roof. Down below, parked on the other side of the street, was their Jeep.
She rushed to the roof’s far edge. A thin metal ladder was melded to the side of the brick. Glancing in both directions, Zoe hopped over and started her descent.
Her feet plopped down onto the grass and she started for the Jeep. Just as she reached the street, Lucy stepped into view at the opposite end. Zoe pushed forward as Lucy started toward her.
She reached the Jeep, swung around the back end up to the driver’s side, yanked open the driver’s door, reached into the middle console, and withdrew the gun she’d seen stowed there earlier. She whipped it out and around the open car door, aiming it right at Lucy.
“Please, Lucy, stop!” Zoe yelled, her hands shaking.
The girl just drilled her with an intense, unblinking stare and kept coming.
“Lucy, don’t! Number Nine, stop! I don’t want to hurt you.”
Lucy continued, her resolve frightening, her stride unaffected.
Zoe cocked the weapon, her fingers almost shaking too much to hold it, and she used her free hand to steady it. Lucy would kill her. Zoe was certain of it, but could she shoot Lucy?
“Number Nine, I don’t want to hurt you. Just stop!”
Lucy marched on.
Panic, fear, and anguish met on the battlefield of Zoe’s mind. She should shoot the machine coming toward her. That’s what she was at this point, wasn’t she? Was there any of Lucy even left? If Zoe didn’t shoot her, then she might as well hand Lucy the gun because it would be a death sentence.
“Stop! Why are you doing this?”
Lucy stopped a foot away. “I have orders.”
“To kill me?” Zoe asked.
Lucy nodded. “You’re an enemy of the state.”
“From Director Hammon?”
Lucy didn’t say, but Zoe knew it couldn’t be anyone else.
“Lucy, I am not your enemy,” Zoe said.
“My title is Number Nine. Lucy is gone.”
“No, I don’t believe that.”
“You will when I kill you.”
Zoe fought through her fear and forced the gun steady. “Olivia gave you the name Lucy because she knew you were more than what they taught you to believe. I know it too. I am not your enemy. I am your friend.”
“I have orders,” Lucy said.
Zoe didn’t understand. “But you helped me escape Xerox. You could have killed me already. Why now?”
“I was following another set of orders. To get you to safety, which I did.” She was like a computer, processing commands one after the other. Programmed to execute orders. But to Zoe she was more.
“You’re more than what they programmed you to be.”
Lucy thought for a moment and then said, “Shoot me, or I will take that gun from you and make you regret it.”
Zoe didn’t doubt her, but even with her instincts screaming at her to listen, she knew she couldn’t pull the trigger. She’d already risked everything to save Lucy. Even if it meant dying now, there was no way she could shoot the girl.
She had been holding her breath, so she released all the built-up air from her lungs and slowly lowered the weapon. Then she tossed it to the street and accepted her fate.
“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”
Lucy glanced down at the weapon but didn’t move for it. “Why?”
Zoe swallowed. “Because I care about you.”
“No, you care about Lucy.”
“You are Lucy.”
“That was only a name given to me by a delusional woman, but it is not who I am. This is who I am,” Lucy said, another cruel streak flashing across her face.
“This is what they programmed you to be, but I have seen you be kind. You’re good, Lucy. You help people. You helped me. You’re human.”
Lucy paused, then said, “You’re human. And I’ve watched you make all your choices out of your programming. How is that different?”
Zoe was struck by the truth coming from Lucy’s lips. “The fact that you’re even asking that question is proof that your programming isn’t everything.”
“Our pasts make us who we are,” Lucy said. “Our pasts are our programming, and mine made me a weapon. I was built and programmed to be this way.”
Zoe could see her childhood home looming in the distance behind Lucy. “And I was taught by my mother to fear everything and to trust no one. I was built this way too.” Even as the words came off her own tongue, she felt like she was hearing them from someone else. Like they were a truth someone else was saying. A truth coming from a place deep inside her she had long ago silenced.
“And we can’t change how we were built,” Lucy said.
Zoe thought she agreed, but there Lucy stood in front of her, a girl she knew, acting like someone she didn’t. The Grantham Project had built her to be a certain way, but then Olivia had given her a simple name and a different identity.
A thought bloomed inside Zoe’s mind. “Olivia changed your programming.”
Lucy’s eyes began to soften, and a curious tint colored them.
“She gave you a name and cared for you. She loved you, and because of that you changed.”
“Olivia changed me?” Lucy dropped her eyes and seemed to be searching the thoughts playing out inside her mind. “Grantham built me into a weapon, and Olivia changed me into something good?”
Silence filled the air, Zoe watching her attacker and friend wrestle with things unseen.
“What if I don’t want to be Number Nine or Lucy?” the girl asked. “Do we get to choose who we are?”
Zoe opened her mouth to say, “Of course we can choose,” but then stopped.
“Am I trapped by my past,” Lucy asked, her voice quiet and mournful, “like you?”
Zoe felt the weight of her question bear down on her like an anvil. As if all the pain that filled the houses and buildings around her had suddenly risen into the air above her and was smashing her with its fists. And for the first time in her entire life, something new opened up inside her gut.
“I don’t want to be trapped,” she said, a fresh wave of tears collecting behind her eyes.
Lucy was contemplating again, her face twisted in deep thought as she tried to find sense. Zoe let her have her space. She had nothing to add. What could she say? She was just like Lucy.
The thought dawned like the sun, and it disturbed Zoe to her core. Lucy may have been built and programmed by the government, but wasn’t Zoe programmed by the world around her? The stories she’d grown up with, the rules she’d been taught. By that same logic, wasn’t everyone just a product of their own personal programming?
“Maybe we don’t have to be trapped,” she posed. “Maybe we can change, choose a different programming.”
“Like rewriting the past?” Lucy asked.
“The past is done, but maybe going forward we can tell ourselves a new story.” Zoe wasn’t sure what was coming over her. Maybe it was something about being back here in this place, but a childlike energy washed over her. Similar to the kind her brother Stephen once had, long ago on this very street.
“If you could pick any story you wanted,” Zoe said, “what would it be?”
Lucy was quick to catch her meaning, and the darkness that had been clouding her vision faded. “I’d be a regular teenager, in a cool place like high school.”
Zoe chuckled. “You’re the only person to dream about being in high school.”
“I’d play on the soccer team and know what a Beyoncé is,” Lucy continued.
Again Zoe chuckled.
“I’d just be a girl, with a family and friends and homework.”
Zoe wanted to wrap the girl in her arms and make those simple dreams come true. There was a moment of silence before she sliced it open. “I’d have grown up in Mon
tana. On a farm, where I learned at a young age to ride a horse and worked with my father until the sun went down. We’d go inside for hot dinners, and all we’d ever talk about was the goodness of the world, so that by the time I was an adult I’d believe in it.”
“I wish they were true stories,” Lucy said.
Zoe nodded, her mind telling her that dreams were just that, but the new feeling that had blossomed in her chest pushed her to believe there was more truth to this than they yet knew.
She began to speak, but Lucy’s face went rigid. She swept the gun off the ground and placed a finger to her lips. Zoe jumped away from the armed girl.
“There’s an engine coming this way,” Lucy said. “Someone’s here.”
THIRTY-FIVE
SEELEY DROVE THE truck up the final rise to where Haven Valley was marked on the map. He breached the top of the climb and looked down into a small town dropped into the middle of the valley. He’d heard plenty of stories and remembered the news coverage well, but to see it with his own eyes was something else.
He carefully guided the truck down toward the valley and spotted McCoy’s Jeep. They were here, which brought a sense of both dread and relief. He’d wrestled with his predicament for the duration of the drive and felt no differently now than he had when he’d driven off Xerox’s campus.
There had to be another option. He’d considered driving straight to Cami, but they’d never make it out of the country before Hammon caught up with them. He thought to warn her, but if she was being surveilled, then they were listening too, and he couldn’t risk putting her in more danger. He didn’t have a single ally who Hammon didn’t control or a card to play that Hammon wouldn’t see coming.
This only choice was clear, and heartbreaking. It shouldn’t carry so much weight, he’d reminded himself over and over. Cami was his daughter. Zoe was just a woman who had snuck in and manipulated his heart. Lucy was a science experiment they’d grown in a lab. Neither was worth his daughter’s life. It should not feel so difficult to execute an order that protected his own flesh and blood.
But the implications of silencing Zoe and Lucy were haunting him. They had touched his life, forced him to examine who he was, and tricked him into believing he was not the sum of his sins. They’d given him something. Hope. With their deaths, he’d resign himself to darkness. Which would cost him his soul. But Cami was worth his soul. After all he’d put her through, she deserved at least that much.
If Zoe is still alive.
He couldn’t help but wish Lucy had already killed her, and that he’d show up, collect the prize, and leave without more blood on his hands. That would be easier than pulling the trigger himself.
As he drove his truck into the valley, he switched his mind to the execution. He knew Lucy would hear him coming. The rest would play out after he assessed the situation. After he assessed Lucy.
He parked beside the black Jeep and shut the engine off. He grabbed his handgun from the passenger’s seat and shifted so he could tuck it into the back of his jeans. It was loaded with the same tranquilizers they’d successfully used on Lucy in the past. He just needed to get close enough to fire.
He stepped from the truck onto Haven Valley soil. A strong breeze chilled him to the bones. An eeriness fell over him as he stepped around to the front of the truck and surveyed the strange, hidden town. It was haunted by the past. He could feel it seeping up from the dirt, and it made him wish he wasn’t there. It set his nerves on edge.
He walked down the middle of the road a few feet before he caught movement in his peripheral vision. Lucy stepped out from between two stores, pistol raised, Zoe behind her.
“Lucy,” Seeley said. The girl didn’t falter in her stance. He couldn’t get a shot off before she took one first. She was too fast. Even if he could get her to lower her weapon, she’d have the advantage as long as she held the gun. He’d have to get her to discard it.
Zoe stepped out in clear view. Her lip was cut, the side of her face bright red, already starting to swell. The injuries looked fresh.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “How did you find us?”
“A contact told me they spotted McCoy’s Jeep crossing into Tennessee,” Seeley said, then swept his eyes up and down the street. “Not a bad place to hide out.”
“How did you get away?” Zoe asked.
“I created an opportunity and took it but had to lie low for a couple hours while they finished their full perimeter sweep. Then I needed transportation and money. I came as soon as I could. What happened to your face?”
Zoe ignored him, her eyes searching his face. Something felt different about the way she was watching him. Still hesitant, still afraid, still suspicious, but there was also an innocence there peeking around the corners. A new lightness, as if she’d begun to let go of the weight the world had stacked upon her. It was intriguing.
What had happened between her and Lucy?
“Is he alone?” Zoe asked Lucy.
Seeley could see Lucy’s unique abilities working. “If others are with him, they’re too far away to hear.”
“I’m alone,” he said. “But if I found you, so can Hammon.”
“Can we trust him?” Lucy asked Zoe.
Time to assess.
THE ORDERS HAD been clear. If I ever encountered Zoe Johnson again, I was to kill her. Her face was the first thing I’d seen when I came to in that dark stone hallway, and she’d driven a blade into my thigh. Killing her would have been easy. She even provided the weapon.
Then one of my training officers gave me different orders. Orders that conflicted with my previous ones. So I quickly calculated and prioritized the commands, with the intent to fulfill them both. First get Zoe Johnson to safety, then kill her.
But something happened in the course of my execution. I hesitated. I didn’t remember hesitating before. But there, standing before Zoe, her weapon aimed at my face, I had a strange, unexpected reaction. I was uncertain.
My orders were simple, but my mind wasn’t sure I wanted to carry them out. Suddenly all the things that had been clear were clouded by Lucy. I thought she was dead, but she had just been turned off. Shut out. Standing in the strange place called Haven Valley, she wanted back in. And I felt powerless to stop her.
But she was me. Wasn’t she?
Who was I? What was I? The question started to unravel what I had just moments ago been so certain of. And the world shifted slightly. I was still in Haven Valley, standing before Zoe in the middle of a street, a gun pointed at my face. But I was also back inside the deep reaches of my mind, where I had spent so much time trying to remember who I was. After all of that work, I was still standing here asking the same questions.
I saw the place in my head differently now. With new perspective. A city divided in two. One blissful neighborhood, one towering city. With the shuffle of my feet I could be in one or the other. Stand just right and I could have a foot in both.
That place represented me. One side Lucy. One side Number Nine.
Zoe’s words drained into my ears, and I responded, but part of me was also caught up outside of time. Maybe Lucy was trapped in that strange place where Dr. Loveless’s drugs had taken her. Maybe Number Nine was here with Zoe?
Maybe it was the other way around.
“Better figure it out,” a small voice said. I turned toward the looming city and saw the little girl with the unicorn shirt I had long ago started to hate.
I didn’t get the chance to ask her why I was here or what was going on, because it seemed as soon as my personality had been divided, it was back together and I was standing in Haven Valley.
“What if I don’t want to be Number Nine or Lucy?” I had asked Zoe. “Do we get to choose who we are?”
She didn’t respond, but she had that same look she’d had many times before. She was trapped. Was I trapped too? But I already knew the answer, and like Zoe I didn’t want to be.
She wanted to play a game. Pretend we coul
d have any story we wanted, and for a moment the atmosphere around us lightened. Both Number Nine and Lucy seemed to fade into the background as a different idea took root.
Then he came. Just the sound of an engine at first. I retrieved Zoe’s discarded weapon for protection, and we sought cover by the brick buildings. Then as he got out of his vehicle and I saw his face, all the moments I’d had with him in the past washed over me.
Moments in the training gym, in the surrounding woods, on the obstacle course, in the boxing cages. He’d been strict but kinder than some. He and Olivia had taken special interest in me because of my skill level.
I also remembered him after my memories were taken. He’d betrayed us. No, he’d betrayed Lucy. Lucy wanted him dead for that.
I aimed the handgun at him. One clean shot was all it would take.
I also remembered he was there when Zoe broke me free. Or took me from my home. The conflicting messages spiraling in my mind were treacherous.
I needed direction, so I turned to Zoe to give it to me, but Seeley spoke. “Why are you asking her? You have your memories back. Don’t you remember me?”
Of course I did. Both sides of me remembered, but we had very different experiences with him. “Yes.”
“Did you trust me before?” Seeley asked.
Number Nine would have followed him into war. Lucy had followed him into an ambush. “Yes.”
“Good. Nothing has changed, Number Nine.”
The two sides of me that had faded into the background came back into full focus. Number Nine led the charge. My body tensed. I corrected my posture, made sure my eye contact was strong. I was speaking with an officer who commanded respect.
“What’s going on, Seeley?” Zoe asked.
“I remember you too,” Seeley said to Number Nine. “I remember how much quicker you were than the others. I remember how precise and diligent you were. Always succeeding where the others failed. Do you remember?”
“Yes. I was special,” I said. Number Nine said. She had been perfect then.
“You still are,” Seeley said.
Zoe stepped in front of me and said something I didn’t hear. The halves of me that had seemed equal before had been tipped in favor of the powerful city.
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