The Fandom

by Anna Day

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He squeezes my hand. “It’s what’s inside that’s more important.”

  Together, we circle it. It’s no bigger than my bedroom back home. No windows, no door.

  “There’s no way in,” I say.

  “There is for a squirrel.” He loops his hands together and boosts me up so I can reach the top of the bunker. My fingers close around the ledge of the flat roof, wet with moss and slime. I think I’m supposed to haul myself up, but it’s like that bloody tree all over again, and I just kind of dangle. I hate the way I’m so helpless sometimes. Ash jumps up beside me, catching the roof with his hands and using his feet to climb the wall. Within seconds, he’s peering down at me, his hair flopping over his forehead.

  “Show-off,” I mutter.

  He pulls me up, my wrists cracking from my own weight. This high, the woods look alien, the leaves thicker, the trunks narrowing into the black of the sky. We crawl toward the center of the roof, approaching what looks like a manhole cover.

  “The only way in,” Ash says. He pulls a pin from his overalls and begins to tinker with the lock. I hear a reassuring clunk. He looks at me and grins, his eyes glass-pale in the starlight.

  “Are you some sort of secret criminal mastermind?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Just an enterprising street rat.”

  I help him slide the cover to one side. A faint circle of light falls on a concrete floor below, but other than this, I see only darkness.

  He rests his hand on my arm and his voice suddenly changes, heavy with concern. “I know I said you needed to see this, but now we’re here …”

  “It’s OK. I want to.”

  “Are you sure? Because once you see this, you’ll never think about the Gems in the same way again.”

  He means Willow. I know I should probably just climb off this roof and run back to the Imp-hut. I know I should just stick to canon—safety, predictability, home. But when I stare into Ash’s open face, all soft and muted in the night, I realize it’s not just about taking a risk, it’s about truth. And I’m sick of all these secrets, all these lies, this bloody disguise. Katie’s letter feels like it’s on fire again, but I don’t care. I want to tell him who I really am. It’s like there’s an invisible wall between us, built from white lies and omissions and every type of deception known to man. I look at the weak shaft of light below and I decide one less secret can only be a good thing.

  “Let’s do this,” I say.

  Ash nods, and ever so gently, he lowers me into the bunker.

  ASH DROPS DOWN next to me. He swings the flashlight around the room. I see the odd shape, the glimpse of a reflective surface, and I get the sense of things surrounding me. “It’s OK, you’re safe,” Ash says. He can probably hear I’ve stopped breathing.

  I force my lungs to work again. The air tastes surprisingly clean—medicinal almost. I know that smell. Then there’s the earthy scent of coffee, the freshness of star anise. And I swear I can hear Dad’s voice. Goldilocks came upon a little house in the woods. She knocked on the door, and as nobody replied, she went inside.

  I spin around, staring into the darkness. “Did you hear that?” I ask.

  “What?”

  Silence. Just the strange sound of bubbles and the soft whir of machinery.

  “It’s nothing.” I must be losing my mind, all the stress, the change in sleep patterns.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m just tired.”

  He drapes a protective arm around my shoulders. “You ready?”

  “I guess.”

  He raises his voice. “Lights on.”

  The lights overhead hum into action. The bluish glare stings my eyes, especially after stumbling through darkness for so long. I blink several times, a combination of excitement and fear chewing on my guts, and slowly, I survey the room.

  A series of large cylindrical tubes line the walls, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Each cylinder is filled with transparent fluid. Judging by the lazy motion of the bubbles, it’s more viscous than water. It looks almost like a giant lava lamp, the way the fluorescent light catches the shifting globules of air. My brain struggles to make sense of the shapes suspended inside the fluid—limbs, hair, faces.

  Each cylinder contains a person.

  Lifeless. Naked. Eyes that stare blankly ahead.

  I can feel my stomach shrinking, my soft palate arching, my tongue pulling back in my mouth. I think I’m going to puke.

  “Violet, are you OK?” Ash holds me up and rubs my back.

  “Are they … ?”

  “Dead?”

  I manage to nod.

  “No, no, they’re not dead,” he says.

  I swallow down something foul-tasting and approach one of the tubes, my entire body trembling. I look at the floating person. It’s Willow. His tanned body completely limp. He has a tube going into his mouth and his nose, and his caramel hair wafts around his face, long and unkempt, disturbed by the bubbles that slowly drift by.

  “Ash?” is about all I can manage to say.

  “It isn’t Willow.”

  For some reason, this comes as a huge relief. My pseudo-boyfriend isn’t some weird alien hooked up to machines. But if he isn’t Willow, who the hell is he? As if in response, the floating boy blinks.

  I step back, a cry catching in my throat.

  “It’s OK,” Ash says. “They do that sometimes.”

  Drawn to that face—that slack, unfeeling face—I take a step closer, the tip of my nose connecting with the glass. Ash is right, it isn’t Willow. It just looks like him. But this floating boy’s nose is a little crooked, his lips not quite so full. My eyes flick down his form. His body’s less muscled and his legs look shorter.

  I can’t help but stare at his genitals. I’ve never seen a naked man before. Not unless you count that porn magazine Ryan left in my locker with the word virgin scrawled across it, or the time Mitchel Smith streaked across the football field. But up close, in real life, I’ve never seen a naked man. It looks kind of shriveled.

  “Are you staring at his dick?” Ash asks. My gaze moves to Ash’s reflection. He’s smiling, his eyes full of laughter. My cheeks start to burn.

  A plaque marks the base of the cylinder. DUPLICATE #1.

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “Willow’s brother.”

  “Willow doesn’t have a brother.”

  Gently, Ash takes my shoulders and turns me so I look at the next cylinder along. “No. He has three. They’re Duplicates.”

  Three floating boys. All so similar to Willow, just not quite so perfect.

  My stomach starts convulsing again, that foul stuff fills my mouth … Duplicate #3 has no legs.

  “His, his legs are missing.” I can’t tear my eyes away from the point at which his legs should join his torso. They’ve been removed at the pelvis, leaving his genitals intact. A perfect, surgical slice. No blood, no scraps of tissue, just sealed-up stumps. I can hear someone breathing heavily, a panting in my ear. I realize it’s me. I begin to feel dizzy, the scent of medicine returning. Coffee and star anise. One was too hot, one was too cold, but one was just right.

  I spin in a tight circle. “There it is again.”

  “What?”

  “That voice.”

  “Violet, there’s no voice.”

  Oh God. It’s in my head. The shock’s making me hear things. That’s just what I need, mental health problems.

  “Don’t worry.” Ash strokes my arm. “This place plays tricks on you, it’s creepy as hell.” The gentle motion of his skin against mine lifts me from the panic. He’s right, it’s just this creepy place.

  Slowly, I look at the other cylinders. Two versions of Willow’s dad, three versions of Willow’s mum. And lodged between Duplicate #5 and Duplicate #6, a control box—a dusty monitor and an array of switches and buttons.

  “What is this place?” I finally say.

  “Storage,” Ash replies. “
The Gems decide what they want their baby to be like—looks, talents, those kind of things. They preorder and grow them in artificial sacs.”

  I nod. I know this from canon. I cross the room to look at an almost identical Mrs. Harper. She has a fine red scar across her chest, and pink sores on her inner thighs. I look closer. It’s as if pieces of skin have been peeled away from her legs.

  Ash follows. He stands so close, I can feel his breath on my neck. “Genetic enhancement isn’t as precise as you may think,” he says. “It takes several attempts to make the perfect baby, so they grow several fetuses at the same time. The obviously flawed ones are flushed before birth.”

  “One was too hot, one was too cold, and one was just right,” I whisper to myself.

  “What’s that?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing, just a story my dad used to tell me.”

  Ash rests his hand against the glass, just above almost–Mrs. Harper’s face. A tender gesture. He sighs. “I’m guessing that these babies were too good to flush.”

  I trace her features with my gaze. She looks nothing like Willow. Blonde hair, pale skin, slender shoulders. But those lifeless, staring eyes are the exact same shade of copper.

  “They keep them for spare parts?” I finally say.

  “It’s the only explanation.”

  I look back to that fine scar, and I notice she’s hooked up to a small pump by a loop of bloodred tubing. Mrs. Harper must have had a heart problem. I guess the Gems didn’t eradicate all diseases like Sally King wrote, I guess they just found other ways of defying death and illness. And judging from those missing patches of skin, I’d say Mrs. Harper’s wrinkle-free face has had some help. I know from canon that she’s in her sixties, even though she only looks about thirty.

  I can’t help thinking of Frankenstein’s monster, assembled from different body parts, held together with coarse stitching. I’ve heard that comparison before. Nate called Alice a filthy, Frankenstein Gem on the way to Comic-Con. Such a strange coincidence, like Nate somehow predicted this. Unless it wasn’t a coincidence. Unless Nate somehow made this happen by saying it. Or maybe the phrase lodged somewhere in my unconscious and I made it happen. This reminds me of that sash, the one I wore to Comic-Con … Did I somehow create Rose’s belt of blood?

  I immediately dismiss the idea, partly because it’s ridiculous, and partly because I don’t have the headspace to process it.

  “Are you coping OK?” Ash asks.

  I shake my head. The shock, the disgust, makes way for a cleaner emotion—anger. How could they do this? How could they mutilate their own siblings? I look toward Willow’s truncated brother. I remember the backstory from canon now. Willow was in a terrible riding accident when he was twelve and spent several months in the hospital undergoing regenerative surgery. But King never mentioned anything about dismembering an unconscious sibling.

  I think about Nate—his pixie grin and his spiky hair and the way he always knows random facts about everything—and the anger intensifies.

  “They’d do that to their own flesh and blood? To their siblings, to their children?” I say.

  Ash’s fingers entwine with mine. “The dangers of playing God, I suppose.”

  I turn to face him. He looks pale, even for Ash. “So the Imps don’t know about this?”

  He shakes his head. “There’s rumors of big storage warehouses filled with Duplicates in secret locations in the Pastures. I’ve never heard of relatives keeping them on-site before. And as far as I know, nobody’s ever seen one, or at least admitted to seeing one.”

  My throat clamps shut, but I manage to force out one single word. “Willow?”

  “He may know.”

  “I could ask him?”

  “No.” Ash suddenly looks afraid. “Why do you think I haven’t told anyone? It will put you in grave danger. The government obviously doesn’t want this getting out. And according to the rumors, most of the Gems don’t even know. It’s probably just the wealthy, powerful Gems who can afford backups.”

  “They’re not backups, they’re people.” I wipe my face, the anger returning. “You should have told someone about this, someone who could help.”

  “Violet, sometimes it really is like you’re from a different universe. If I speak up about this, you can guarantee I’ll wind up dead in some alley, or dancing on those gallows. And then who would help Ma? Who would bring back the Gem coins for food? I’ve got to put my family first.”

  “So why did you show me this?”

  He looks sad for a moment. Remorseful. “I—I wanted you to know what the Gems are truly like. The lengths they’ll go to in their quest for perfection.” Unexpectedly, he wraps his arms around my neck and pulls me in really close so my face rests on his shoulder. The scent of sweat and soap stills my pulse, and for a moment, I feel OK again. When he speaks, I feel his breath in my ear. It doesn’t tickle like Willow’s did, it just feels amazing. “And I just had to tell someone—it felt like a weight inside me, the secret, that is. You’re the first person I’ve ever really trusted.”

  I begin to cry again. And not just because of those dead-eyed, floating Duplicates, or because of the empty space where almost-Willow’s legs should be, or the missing heart beneath that fine red scar. But because Ash will only ever know almost-Violet, the Duplicate, the player.

  He will never know the real me.

  I ROLL ONTO MY bunk. The sun is rising and I need to sleep. I only hope my dreams allow me to escape the glassy, dead eyes of the Duplicates.

  Tonight is a big night. The turning point, the midway twist. Willow must declare his love to me, and I must tell him that I love him but I’m returning to the city—the mercy dump, as Alice put it. I’m just about to let my eyes close when Matthew and Saskia duck under the mangy cotton divider, leaning on the end of my bunk and destroying any hope of privacy or rest.

  “Come on, sleepyhead, we’ve got a job for you,” Matthew says.

  I sit up, blinking heavily. “What?” This wasn’t in canon. Rose slept today, I’m sure of it. I think I may cry, I’m so tired.

  Saskia smiles at my discomfort. “While you were out canoodling with Gem boy, I’ve had me ear to the ground. Word is, he’s got another date with that pretty bit of fluff from the ball.”

  I don’t tell her the pretty bit of fluff is Alice. They obviously haven’t communicated with Thorn since we left headquarters, and I’m just too ashamed to admit my best friend might still sabotage the mission, intentionally or otherwise.

  “He’s taking her into town for a bit of shopping,” Matthew says.

  This definitely wasn’t in canon. The anger from my argument with Alice returns. She’s risking everything just so she can live out her fanfic fantasies, taking us further and further from the story. Further from home. I get this sick feeling in my stomach because, deep down, I know I’m partly to blame—I should never have gone to the bunker with Ash, I should never have let that butterfly flap its bastard wings.

  Saskia looks a little smug. “If you want to convince that Gem brat to give up Daddy’s secrets, you better be the only girl he wants to …” She makes an obscene gesture with her hands. Matthew bursts out laughing.

  “So what do you want me to do?” I ask.

  “You can work at the market today,” Saskia replies. “You and Nate.”

  Matthew nods. “The Gems love to visit the market, makes ’em feel all superior, watching us Imps toil. Just make sure you remind him who he really wants.”

  We travel on an Imp-bus through the market town. This set wasn’t in canon, so I see the sleek lines of the Gem town—forged from glass and steel—for the first time. They look like an artist’s impression of the future, all airbrushed and clean. Already, scents of garlic and caramel weave toward us as the restaurants prepare for lunch. I see Gems through the smeared panes of the bus, strolling by, making small talk, or stopping to absorb the window displays, tilting their chins and revealing their CGI-perfect profiles.

  Without permission,
my eyes dart up and down the boulevard, seeking a glimpse of Alice, her hand wrapped in Willow’s. But I can only see the signs that adorn every shop window, every restaurant door. A picture of an ape trapped behind a diagonal red line. No Imps allowed. My tongue sticks to my teeth as a stream of anger passes through me. They’re the animals, not us. They’re the ones that chop up their siblings, their children, all in the name of perfection.

  We follow the curve of the boulevard, which eventually leads into a market square. This must be the old part of town, where the glass and steel is yet to reach. The stone facades of the modernized Imp buildings surround us, and fixed to a nearby wall is a large sign boasting a picture of an ape. I’m guessing it’s a warning that we’ve entered a mixed zone. My muscles tighten and I feel a bit like a jack-in-the-box.

  Nate sighs. “It’s no fun being the ape, is it?”

  I consider telling him about the Duplicates from last night, but I promised Ash I wouldn’t tell a soul, and I don’t want to burden Nate with it. So instead, I just say, “No fun at all.”

  We file off the bus and join the throng. Imps move gracelessly between the stone pillars that demarcate the individual stalls, buying and selling goods for their Gem masters. There’s this wonderful smell of cooked meats and spices, and bright splashes of color as spools of yarn turn in the breeze. The Gems stand out immediately. Tall, lean, and self-important. Mostly soldiers, their rifles on display, but the occasional Gem civilian glides past, chin raised like a bad smell fills their nostrils, like we’re nothing more than animals. I twist my fingers together as though I can wring the anger from my body.

  “You can help me on the bread store,” Saskia says, gathering her streaked hair into a loose plait.

  We approach a wooden stall boasting an array of loaves. That warm, yeasty aroma reminds me of a family holiday in Brittany. Dad was always dragging us into the boulangeries, and Nate would laugh every time he tried to say it, pronouncing it with a hard g. I get this searing pain just thinking of Dad, baguette crumbs lodged in his stubble.