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by Robison Wells

Page 10

 

  “So what about the others?” I asked, watching them as they worked. “Mouse was back at the school, but what about Birdman? Where’s his dupe?”

  “He has one,” Jane said. “It just isn’t active. A lot of people are like that. The school has dupes of everyone here, but they only use them when they need them. ”

  I sat down on one of the benches, exhausted. I still hadn’t slept. “I bet you’re glad to have it out of your head. ”

  Jane exchanged a quick look with Lily.

  Lily plopped down beside me.

  “It’s not like that,” Lily said, her voice hushed even though we both knew Jane was listening. “They say it sucks when your dupe dies. It’s like you die. ”

  Jane looked over with a slight smile. “Well, it’s not exactly like that. But it sucks. ”

  Lily put her foot up on the bench in front of us. “You have to understand—you feel everything they feel. When your dupe is afraid, you’re afraid. When it’s sad, you’re sad. And you can’t do anything about it. ”

  “That sounds awful. ” I rubbed my hands over my tired face as Jane came over and sat in front of me.

  “It’s not always bad,” she said quietly.

  There was a pause. She wanted to say more, and I could guess what it was.

  Lily jumped in. “Someone told me it’s like a drug. ”

  Jane laughed—finally, a real laugh. “It’s not like a drug. But it’s like … I don’t know. You have this other life, where you have other friends, and whenever you’re with them things are really intense. And then, suddenly, it’s all gone. It’s over. You’ll never see—” She looked at me and stopped.

  “I’ve only seen dreams so far,” Lily said.

  I looked over at her, and I was surprised to see a tear in her eye. She rubbed it away and made a face.

  “There’s a dupe of you?”

  She nodded. “Yep. I told you, they don’t keep you here unless they’ve made a dupe of you. ”

  “So where is it? What’s it doing?”

  Before she could answer, the door opened. Cold air blew into the room and people began to walk in.

  I recognized a lot of them. Mason looked at me long enough to open his mouth like he was going to say something, but then passed my bench and moved up to the front. Joel actually waved before moving on, and I wondered whether he knew that I’d been the one who’d killed him—well, killed his dupe after he’d turned on us. I’d stabbed him with a pair of garden shears.

  I noticed that several who were coming in were holding gauze on their arms. Someone must have been at the door, checking everyone with a box cutter.

  Laura entered the room, and I turned to Lily. “Is that the real Laura? The one who went to detention?”

  “She’s true blue, the same one you knew,” Lily said. She lowered her voice even more. “We were in detention together—she showed up the day after I did. The little princess thought she’d get rewarded for what she did to … well, for what she did. ”

  Laura wasn’t like Dylan. She didn’t look depressed or guilty. Instead, she held her head high as she made her way to the front of the room.

  I knew she was goading me, but it was working. Dylan thought he was guilty because his dupe had done something, but Laura actually had—she’d been there. She’d tried to kill me.

  Jane put her hand on mine, and I realized it had been clenched in a fist.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly.

  “I was there,” I whispered, my chest tight.

  “So was I. ” There was bitterness in Jane’s words, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because of me or Laura.

  Lily leaned over. “Don’t worry about Laura,” she said. “Look. ”

  I hadn’t noticed while she’d walked, but as Laura turned to sit, I saw her wrists were wrapped tightly in chains. Mouse strung another chain from Laura’s shackles to a round metal loop in the wall.

  I didn’t have time to ask who had punished her—Maxfield or this town—because Birdman was standing up now, glaring for the room to quiet down.

  I glanced around, getting a full look at the crowd. I counted about forty, and I recognized maybe half from the school. I noticed Jelly and Walnut sitting together in the back, which now made, at most, four people who I actually knew from the school—four people who were humans there, not dupes.

  “Pipe down,” Birdman shouted, and the room quieted almost instantly. He looked at Harvard, who was standing by the door. “Who’s missing?”

  “Carrie. And we’ve got Lance, Chris, Kaitlyn, and Trena out on watch. ”

  Birdman nodded and scanned the crowd. He laid a large piece of cloth over the podium and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket.

  “You all know Benson Fisher and Becky Allred are here. Let’s get one thing clear: no one is going to say a word about them outside this room. They’re valuable, and anyone who screws that up will regret it. Got that?”

  No one said anything, though I saw a few heads nodding.

  “Okay,” he continued. “Let’s hear today’s reports, and we’ll see if he can fill in a few gaps. Anyone pop since last night?”

  One girl, sitting near the front, timidly raised her hand. I recognized her from the Society—Taylor. She was one of the younger ones. The only thing I remembered about her was that she was always smiling. That was how the Society was—they were either smiling and carefree or scowling with disapproval.

  Birdman pointed to her, and wrote on his cloth. “What happened?”

  Her voice was small. “It was late last night,” Taylor started. “I saw it all—I was scared. Everyone was getting herded into the detention room. ”

  Lily whispered, “After the fence last night, they rounded up the survivors and sent them back to school. We figured they were going down to detention. ”

  “What’s down there?”

  Lily smirked. “It’s where the magic happens. You go there and they stick an implant in your head and make your dupe. ”

  Taylor spoke again, her voice quavering. “Not everyone could fit in the room at once, so they were taking them down in shifts. ”

  “Who was?” Birdman asked.

  “Ms. Vaughn was there,” Taylor said. “And the other dupes who had popped. Tapti, Hog, Mash … and I think Grace? Anyway, everyone had gone to detention and I was in the final group. There were about ten of us. It was … It was scary. ”

  Birdman was taking notes on all this, and there was no emotion in his voice when he talked. “Then what?”

  “One of the dupes went down to detention with each group, so only Mash and Ms. Vaughn were left with us. Four of us—of them—tried to jump the dupes. ”

  “Who?”

  “Me and three V’s,” she said.

  It felt like the air got sucked out of my lungs. Jane’s grip on my hand tightened.

  “Hector, Anna, and Catherine,” Taylor said.

  Birdman wrote the names on the cloth, and then looked up. “And?”

  “Anna had a knife. I don’t know where she got it. She stabbed Ms. Vaughn. ” Taylor paused. The room was completely silent. “That’s all I remember. That’s when I popped. ”