by Debra Driza
After passing two more doors, he performed the pass-code ritual.
Once the beep sounded and the door lumbered open, I walked inside without prompting, taking unenthusiastic note of my surroundings. It was tiny; smaller even than my room back at Greenwood Ranch.
Dimensions: 7 ft. by 7 ft.
This time, I couldn’t drum up enough feeling to get annoyed by the voice. Even if, once again, I could have lived without knowing the exact dimensions.
Not much to see inside. A narrow cot against the far wall, one olive-green blanket folded in a neat square on top. Small steel toilet attached to right wall. Barren concrete floor. And the pungent scent of bleach, burning away any traces of previous occupants.
It was a room without pretensions, a room unconcerned with masquerading as something fancier than what it actually was: a prison cell.
Possibly the last place I’d ever “sleep.”
Weariness settled over me, my reminder that humans—even pretend ones—needed rest. I walked the two steps to the cot and sat down. I wondered if it was real fatigue, or if somehow my brain knew when to trigger a fake signal. Maybe it was based on the amount of activity my body performed—like an exercise equation—because it certainly varied too much to be based solely on time.
I no longer cared enough to ask.
Ignoring the way Lucas hovered in the doorway, halfway in, halfway out, I collapsed onto my side. My eyelids closed. Wetness pooled beneath them, but I didn’t bother wiping it away this time.
A harsh, indrawn breath. Hesitant footsteps. The sound of a joint cracking. “Mila?” Lucas’s voice, soft, like he was afraid to startle me. Emitting from very close by. “Are you okay?”
I opened my eyes, unsurprised to find him squatting beside the cot.
When he reached out this time, his hand didn’t stop, not until his fingers touched the traces of wetness left on my cheeks. I froze in place, unmoving, feeling the gentleness, the warmth, of his skin on mine. If I had any real air in my lungs, it’d be catching right about now. “You were crying,” he said, in a hush.
I stared. Did that mean he actually cared? That someone in the world, besides Mom, besides a boy I’d probably never see again, thought of me as more than an expensive piece of machinery? Because I was starting to lose faith myself.
He wiped first one cheek, then the other. Just that simple act, that tiny show of compassion, felt like a miracle.
And then he shattered the illusion by looking over his shoulder and stiffening, before lifting his hand up to eye level, staring at the liquid, and rubbing it beneath his fingers. As if to assess the liquid’s physical properties.
Which was exactly what he was doing. Lucas was awed by what an amazing work of science I was, no more, no less.
I rolled onto my other side and faced the wall. Hoping he’d take the hint, run along, and examine his data.
When the door slid shut behind him, I tucked my knees up to my chin and hugged them tight. The fetal position; something I’d never known firsthand. The womb I’d experienced hadn’t been a living body but a lab, one probably as cold and sterile as this room. I should feel right at home.
I closed my eyes, hoping for reality to fade away, at least for a little while. I imagined that I was protected. Safe. Imagined I could smell Mom’s rosemary lotion, feel the soft slide of her hand down my hair, hear her heart beating above me as a gentle reminder that I wasn’t alone.
I didn’t want to be alone.
Footsteps approached down the long corridor leading to my room, much sooner than I’d anticipated. Lucas’s lopsided strides, along with two more even sets of steps.
I jerked into a sit. Was this good? Bad? Indifferent? Surely Lucas couldn’t be finished analyzing data on that last test so quickly. And if he was . . . what did it mean?
The door beeped and slid open to reveal Lucas’s tall frame. In addition to the wrinkles and mud I’d inflicted on his shirt, the tips of his collar now flipped upward, as if mauled by stressed fingers. But in spite of that, his expression was carefully blank. No hint of emotion in those hazel eyes.
“General Holland is waiting,” he said in clipped, precise syllables.
Holland. Holland was waiting. I wasn’t ready to face him. I’d never be ready. “You finished the report?”
He shrugged and stared at the blank stretch of steel wall behind my cot.
I stood on heavy legs, commanded myself to walk. Every step felt impossible, like my feet had morphed into granite.
Lucas seemed strangely cold, distant. Not that it mattered.
I had more pressing worries.
Namely, my survival.
Thirty-Four
Our march down the hall was both nerve-rackingly long and unbearably quick. The thought that this dank, barren hall might be one of the last things I saw filled me with such an overwhelming bleakness, it was a wonder my legs functioned at all.
As I followed Lucas and the pair of soldiers followed me, I remembered a documentary we’d watched in civics class, about death row prisoners. I wondered if this was how they felt on their march. Knowing that on the far end of the walk, death awaited. Yet still, in a tiny recess of their minds, they clung to hope that a last-second pardon would buy them more time.
Unfortunately Holland didn’t seem like the pardoning type.
The extra-wide metallic door Lucas led us to was familiar. Too familiar. I watched, rigid, as he performed the Q-tip security ritual and punched his code into the security box, hesitating two full seconds before he punched the last number. I stood, unmoving, as the door whirred open.
I stumbled, numbly, when the blond soldier nudged my calf with a booted foot.
And then I was inside the repair room.
If hope were an object, it would be made of mesh, I decided, as I took another small step inside. Like a net, a sturdy one. One you expected to catch you from a free fall. But just as your body was inches from landing and bouncing exuberantly back into the air, someone came and ripped the fabric right out from under you.
All you’d hear as you fell through the gaping hole was that shredding sound.
For me? My shredding sound was in the form of a hum. The one emitted by the machine straight ahead, the one Lucas had programmed to perform my repairs.
The one he had told me they used to terminate us.
Lucas turned right, and there stood Holland and Three, facing a large computer monitor overhead. Holland, with his silver-streaked hair and his hands clasped behind his back . . . and my counterpart. The eerily similar follow-up version of me that was both better and worse than its predecessor, depending on whom you asked.
Three acknowledged our presence by glancing over her shoulder. Not Holland. He had to have heard us enter, but he didn’t turn. A petty show of power, and a completely unnecessary reminder of his place in the hierarchy.
Lucas cleared his throat. “General Holland? I’ve brought Mi—Two,” he corrected in that depressingly detached voice.
Holland forced us to wait one, three, five seconds before replying, while anxiety twisted my insides into a tightly coiled ball. Then he said, “Power off.” Overhead, the computer monitor went black.
He pivoted, and Three echoed his movement fluidly.
He didn’t say a word—just tapped his index finger against his mouth and stared. His hand was creased even more deeply than his face and sun-spotted with age, but immaculately clean, with neatly trimmed fingernails. Appearances were important to him.
Appearances, but not lives. At least, not mine or Mom’s.
Beside him, Three’s lips lifted into a hesitant smile. Then she glanced at me and her smile widened, as if inviting me to share it.
I shuddered and looked away, struggling with the disconcerting reality of being repulsed by the sight of my own face. When I looked at Three, I didn’t see a teenage girl. I saw my inner ugliness, the freak inside, staring back at me.
Of the four of us, the only one who waited expressionless was Lucas. “Sir, did you
finish reading the summary I sent?”
“I did. Do you have anything you want to add?”
Holland stared at Lucas with one silvery brow higher than the other. Behind us, one of the soldiers coughed.
Finally Lucas’s frozen mask showed signs of cracking. He glanced at me, and in his hazel eyes I saw uncertainty. He shifted his weight onto his good leg, and his chest rose and fell before he answered.
“No, sir.”
“Nevertheless . . . I read your report.” Holland shook his head, and suddenly his eyes narrowed. “Exactly what kind of crazy bullshit are they teaching in colleges these days? I asked for a summary of how Two’s emotional programming affected her performance in these tests, not on her—what did you call it? ‘Ingenuity.’”
Lucas’s left hand twitched, but other than that, he stood very, very still. “But sir—”
Holland smacked his hand onto the desk, and the sudden, sharp slap made the soldiers jerk into stiff postures, made me flinch. “I’m talking, not you. Your father always was too easy on you. I kept telling Joanna that he’d never be able to raise real men, but she didn’t listen. And look what happened. One son I had to rescue from a dishonorable discharge, and the other—” His contemptuous gray eyes slithered over Lucas and landed on his foot, and he didn’t need to finish the statement for anyone to know what he meant.
Worthless. His look said it all.
And wait—Joanna? Was that Lucas’s mom? Was protecting his brother from a dishonorable discharge the way Holland had roped Lucas into this mess?
Beside me, I felt Lucas stiffen, watched his lips tighten and his fingers curl into his pants legs. Despite all that, his voice was amazingly calm. “You asked for my honest assessment, and I gave it to you. I can’t help it if it doesn’t mesh with what you wanted me to say.”
Was Lucas actually defending me? But that didn’t make any sense. The momentary stun of his words morphed into a flicker of disbelief, followed by a rush of warmth.
Lucas.
I couldn’t do more than think the name, because Holland breached the distance between us with two swift strides. When his thick hand clamped on my shoulder, I was prepared. This time I didn’t so much as flinch. Even though that same revulsion crawled over me at his possessive grip. At the feel of those old, wrinkled fingers, trying to claim me as a thing. At the overpowering stench of peppermint and alcohol.
The revulsion was there, but the celebration of emotions inside me was far more powerful.
I tilted my chin up and met his eyes, fighting to keep my expression neutral. Even as the incredible realization continued to warm me from head to toe.
Lucas had tried to save me.
“Lucas might be impressed by your little antics, but I’m not.”
Holland’s nostrils flared as his hand squeezed tighter.
“Well, here’s the thing. . . .” He released me to expel a long-suffering sigh.
“Sir?” With my peripheral vision, I could see Lucas’s hands twitch. A tiny motion, but I caught it.
Three remained in her same spot. Calm. Neutral. Unfazed by any of this. But her careful gaze was assessing.
“Good for you, Lucas, for sticking to your guns. You’re tougher than your father already.” Holland’s gray eyes bored into mine, as if trying to drill a hole through my lenses and see what made me tick. “However, I’m sorry to say that I don’t share your views. Two’s inability to keep emotions out of the task at hand makes her a loose cannon in the field, and that kind of uncertainty can translate into dead operatives. Not something I’m willing to risk.”
He gave me a brusque nod. Terrifyingly enough, the logic behind his reasoning was inescapable.
The thing was—I didn’t want to work for the government. I just wanted to live. But he’d never understand that, not in a million years. Military was his life. When he looked at me, he saw a huge liability. A reminder that he’d screwed up. And to a man like him, appearances were everything.
“I’ll forward your summary to my superiors, but I have the ultimate veto power. And I’ll be letting them know that my first assessment was accurate.”
Holland’s tiny, smug smile said it all. Forget the tests, the talk of second chances—he’d never let his superiors suspect he’d blown it, not after the failure of MILA 1.0.
He’d rather scrap me and be right than save me and be wrong.
And honestly, I couldn’t even say he was wrong. Based on his criteria, I had failed. Mom had warned me, made me promise, not to show my emotions, and I hadn’t been able to do that.
And now it was costing us both.
“Sir?” Lucas said.
“Don’t worry, Two won’t go to complete waste.”
A crazy hope flared.
“We’ll be removing her nanobrain and implanting a new one—one exactly like Three’s.” And with those words, Holland snuffed the hope dead.
Even though I’d prepared myself for this moment—for hours now—the reality threatened to break me.
Remove my brain. They were going to remove my brain. Strip away everything I was, everyone I’d ever cared about, with one procedure. No more phony Dad, Clearwater, or even Kaylee.
No more Hunter or Mom. No more Lucas.
No more me.
I’d been so focused on the horror of being less than human that I hadn’t stopped to appreciate the humanlike qualities I did possess. Sure, maybe Three’s existence would prove easier: no worrying, no caring, existing only to follow commands. But it wouldn’t be living.
And now it was too late.
I waited for Lucas’s protest, but none came. He stood stiffly, fists balled, but silent. Not surprising. I’d been a novelty for him, nothing more. Still, I couldn’t fault him. Overall, he’d been more than decent.
I drifted off as Lucas and Holland discussed specifics.
“When will this procedure occur?”
I’d miss Lucas’s inimitable multicolored eyes.
“We’ll strap her into the machine, but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow, when Lieutenant Barry gets back, so he can perform the procedure.”
I’d miss the slippery-rough sensation of Bliss’s mane under my hands.
“I see.”
I’d miss the anticipation that had filled me when Hunter lowered his lips toward mine.
Most of all, I’d miss Mom: her fierce hugs, the way she fidgeted with her glasses when she was stressed, the rosemary scent of her lotion.
Mom.
That final thought snapped me out it. I lunged forward, grabbed Holland’s sleeve. Screw decorum—let him be as disgusted as he wanted over my shortcomings. None of that mattered now. “My mom, can I please see her again? Just one more time? Before . . .”
. . . you terminate me. But that sounded so cold, so impersonal, that I couldn’t force the words out.
“She’ll be okay, right?” I demanded instead.
I saw a rush of movement on my right, then tumbled backward to the floor when Three jerked hard on my shoulder. “Don’t touch General Holland without permission.”
I regained my footing and surged forward, only to have her push me back again.
My eyes narrowed, and my hands curled into fists. “Move,” I said. Nothing could deter me from this one crucial answer.
She shifted her feet so they were shoulder-width apart, bracing herself.
We eyed each other much like we had during the first test, each waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Holland smoothed the fabric on his sleeve back down before clamping a beefy hand onto Three’s shoulder. “No, no, it’s okay, Three. Step aside.”
I didn’t know if it was just me, but I swear it took an extra second for Three to obey Holland’s command. And her expression definitely looked less than pleased. But then I wondered if I was mistaken, because after I blinked, she’d shifted to the side, looking completely neutral.
Holland smiled, that smug curling at the edges of his lips. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Nicole
did you a disservice. No matter how you feel, you’re not real. You’re not a girl, you’re a replica of one. You’re nothing more than an extremely accomplished mimic—one that I helped create. The fact that you can’t tell the difference is a huge liability.”
I held my breath and waited for a bomb to drop.
“Nicole Laurent isn’t your mother, she’s your creator. It’s unfortunate, but she leaves us no choice. Given her act of treason on a highly classified military project, she’s to be execut—”
It was like rage slammed me and gave my hands a life of their own. His sentence ended in a strangled gasp when I lunged and wrapped them around his throat.
I squeezed, hard. The same instant he started to choke, I slithered behind him, slipping one hand under his jaw and shoving it to the right in one smooth motion. My other palm cupped the back of his head.
All this before Three could so much as move.
He jerked against my hands once, and I dug my fingers in mercilessly. “Move again, and I break your neck.” His entire body went rigid.
The two soldiers in the background jerked to attention, but there was nothing they could do. Beneath my fingertips, I felt his pulse soar and his skin dampen with sweat. “Take one step this way, and he’s dead.” I should do it anyway. My fingers tightened.
He deserves it.
My fingers tightened.
This awful man is going to kill Mom.
My fingers tightened.
The soldiers exchanged panicked glances but didn’t dare move.
Three frowned. “Let him go. Even if you kill him”—I felt Holland twitch at that—“it won’t change anything. Why bother?”
Why bother? Because, you completely ignorant half-sister, it will feel good.
Sweat poured from Holland, making his shirt cling to mine. Its sour smell gave me a triumphant rush. Screw logic. I didn’t care about logic. At this instant, all I cared about was seeing Mom, and barring that, making Holland pay.
“Mila, no!”
I turned my head an inch, keeping one eye on Three and the soldiers. Lucas eased toward me, like he wanted to whisper in my ear.
