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by Robison Wells

Page 9

 

  “So the Jane I knew wasn’t you. ”

  “We started at the same point,” Jane said, exhaling long and slow. “They put this thing in your head and make your dupe, and they transfer memories to the dupe. Not everything, but the big things. ”

  “Like Baltimore,” I said. “And were you really homeless?”

  “Off and on,” she said, and quickly moved on, not wanting to talk about it. “So, two and a half years ago, we were pretty much the same. The only thing that I had to do with the dupe was give her emotions. ”

  “She felt what you felt? Feel?”

  “Harvard’s guess is that when the dupe needs to feel an emotional response—fear or anger or sadness—the implant in my head tells it what to do. ”

  “So when the dupe saw something scary, it would ask your brain how to react, and you’d tell it to be scared?”

  “Pretty much. But it’s weirder than that. She felt what I felt, but I felt what she felt. ”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jane laughed, a fat tear rolling down her cheek. “I don’t know what I mean. I can only tell you how it feels. When that Jane was really happy, I could feel her happiness. That’s when I’d see things in the school. Whenever the emotion was really strong. ”

  “How does that work?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes it was like seeing through her eyes—like I’d go blind and see only what the dupe could see; that happened when the emotion was the strongest. Other times I was just kind of … aware of what was going on. I would know something was happening, but I couldn’t really see it—like I’d be lying here in bed, but I’d hear conversations my dupe was having, or I’d know what she was doing. And sometimes I wouldn’t see anything, but I’d dream about it later. And when all of us get together and talk about the dreams, there are similarities, so some things in our dreams are real, too. ”

  “So what did you see?”

  “A lot,” she said. “It went in waves. There were some good times, and a lot of bad ones. During the war, I was aware of my dupe almost all the time. ”

  I leaned my head against the wall. It was hard to imagine—that so many of the people I’d known there hadn’t been real, but someone was inside of them, somehow.

  “I remember you,” she said, finally. “Those times with you were my favorite times there. I was aware of you a lot. ”

  I didn’t answer. Becky was on the other side of the fort, sick and hurting.

  “There were times—” Jane said, and then stopped.

  “What?”

  “It’s stupid. ” She was still leaning against me, but she straightened up a little.

  “What is it?”

  She looked down again, at our intertwined fingers.

  “I just sometimes wished I was back at the school. ”

  I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. So I changed the subject.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  I could feel her stop breathing. She seemed to be frozen, long enough that I started to wonder whether Iceman had come back. But when I pulled back to look at her she just wiped her red eyes.

  “I remember almost everything from that night, from that whole day. I remember when we found out Lily was gone, and getting ready for the dance. ” She laughed, embarrassed. “I remember you asking me—my dupe—to the dance. ”

  “And the end?”

  She just nodded. “All of it. I was with you, and then Laura and Dyl—” Her voice broke on his name.

  I squeezed her hand and waited.

  “That’s why they killed him,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She looked up at me, our faces inches apart as she spoke. “We were friends here, me and Dylan. He hated what his dupe was like, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Dylan—the real Dylan—was angry sometimes; he had a temper. And his dupe turned that into something awful. His dupe was a murderer. ”

  She paused, trying to collect herself.

  “I wasn’t the first,” she whispered. “He’d killed others. During the war, working for Isaiah. ”

  “I didn’t know. ”

  Jane shook her head. “No one at the school did, except Isaiah. But the real Dylan—the Dylan here—knew, and it was eating him up. It was a cycle—he hated what his dupe was doing, so he’d get angrier, and his dupe would feed off that anger and do worse and worse things. When his dupe killed me, Dylan couldn’t handle it. ”

  She let go of me to rub her face with both hands.

  “We told him that it wasn’t him, but he wouldn’t believe it. He said that if his emotions had made the dupe commit murder, then it was his fault. He left the fort. Sometimes he’d sleep outside, sometimes in the barn. And he wouldn’t talk to anyone. He stopped eating. ”

  “They didn’t have to kill him. ”

  “Did you hear Iceman today?” she asked, her voice gaining some strength. “We only have two rules. We’re supposed to stay out of trouble, and we’re supposed to live our lives. ”

  I nodded. “I thought that was weird. ”

  “That’s the most important thing here. ” She wasn’t crying anymore. She was angry, filled with rage. “They killed Dylan because he was so depressed, almost catatonic. We warned him—we tried to help him, but he wouldn’t take it. ”

  “Why do they care?”

  “Because they can’t make a dupe out of you unless you’re emotionally healthy—at least enough so that your dupe can act normal. The school couldn’t do anything with Dylan anymore, so they killed him. ”

  CHAPTER SIX

  We stepped outside and Jane closed the door. The snow had stopped, but wind was rushing across the courtyard, throwing powdery specks of ice through the air like glitter. Jane said there was a meeting we had to go to.

  “Benson!”

  I turned to see Lily coming out of a door on the other side of the fort. She ran across the courtyard, kicking up snow as she went.

  “Causing trouble wherever you go, huh?” she asked, grinning.

  I paused. “Are you …”

  “The real deal,” she said. “I was human there; I’m human here. ”

  “So you went over the wall?”

  She nodded. “Made it a lot farther than you did before they caught me. ”

  I smiled. “They haven’t caught me yet. ”

  Lily had been the best paintball player at the school, an expert at camouflage, fast and clever. If anyone could have gotten out of the forest, it was her.

  “The school told us you died. ” I stepped forward to hug her.

  “I know,” she said with a smirk. “I hear it caused all sorts of problems. ” She looked at Jane, who smiled quietly.

  “C’mon. ” Jane nudged me. “Let’s get out of the cold. ”

  The meeting room was near the front door of the fort. It looked to be about the size of four or five of the bedrooms put together, with heavy timber beams supporting the roof, and eight wooden benches facing a podium at the far end. It reminded me of a church.

  We were the first to arrive, and Lily set about lighting the lanterns. Jane adjusted the small drapes that covered each window. They didn’t look to be decorative as much as functional—heavy dark wool to cover each of the narrow slits.