Strange New World

by Rachel Vincent

  I believe her.

  Finally, I believe her.

  I look over at Trigger, and he nods.

  “Waverly, we’re leaving,” I say. “Trigger and me. Tonight. We have to go back to Lakeview and find a way to tell them what the Administrator is really doing.”

  My clone frowns. “There are, like, a million reasons that won’t work. She’ll kill you. And even if she doesn’t…there are hundreds of thousands of clones spread all over the compound, right?” I nod, trying to follow her thoughts. “And none of them have tablets or wall screens?”

  This time Trigger and I both nod.

  “So you’ll have to tell them all in person. How are you possibly going to get to them all and convince them that this is real”—she opens her arms to indicate the entire world, outside of Lakeview—“before the Administrator sics her clone army on you?”

  “I…” I frown.

  “Do you have a suggestion?” Trigger asks.

  Slowly, Waverly smiles. “I might.” She shoves the last half of her tiny cake into her mouth and makes us wait while she chews. “The problem isn’t just that clones don’t understand the true nature of the rest of the world. It’s that the rest of the world doesn’t understand the true nature of clones. Julienne’s living proof that they’re normal people. That the Administrator is lying.” She sucks in a deep breath. “So am I.”

  “You’d do that?” I feel like I’m meeting Waverly for the first time. “You’d expose yourself?”

  She shrugs. “I think the Administrator’s going to do it anyway, eventually. I think that’s why she’s been keeping our identicals alive. So we may as well use that to our advantage. Maybe if people here knew the truth, they wouldn’t be able to justify buying other human beings.”

  Trigger stands and sets his nearly untouched plate on the comforter. His frame is tense. He looks…excited. “So let’s tell them.”

  “No.” A smile blooms across my face. “Let’s show them.”

  “A livecast?” Waverly says.

  “Mm-hmm. For when you want to tell the world something that can’t wait for editing. You taught me that, remember?” I frown, remembering something else Waverly taught me. “Wait. Lakeview has a cyber-blackout. They’re run on a…um…closed network system.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Trigger says. “If it were, the Administrator wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone outside the compound. Which means the necessary infrastructure is in place to open things up in Lakeview; it’s just an issue of flipping the right switch, so to speak. I might be able to help with that, if I can get hold of a tablet connected to the Lakeview system.”

  “Any instructor would have one,” I say. “Or just about any adult.”

  “Wait.” Waverly shakes her head, as if to clear it. “You want to go to Lakeview?”

  “Well…yeah.” I shrug. “We’d have to, in order to record the livecast.”

  She frowns. “I thought you wanted to do that here, with me. We could show the world that we’re clones, and that clones aren’t any different from anyone else. We could answer questions side by side, to prove to the world that what they’re seeing is real. And live. The ratings would be unreal.”

  “But the Administrator could always claim you’re normal because you were designed and cloned using your parents’ normal DNA,” Trigger says. “This would have a much greater impact if we could prove that you two aren’t the exception. That thousands and thousands of clones are being produced every year, and that all of them—of us—are normal people, until the Administrator lobotomizes us with that drugged, prepackaged food.”

  “People won’t want to hear that,” I say. They won’t want to believe they’ve been complicit. That’s become clear during my weeks in Mountainside.

  Waverly shrugs. “It doesn’t matter what they want. This is going to change the world. Again.” She nods slowly, thinking it through as she speaks. “A livecast, breaching the Lakeview blackout. Featuring hundreds, maybe thousands, of clones acting like normal people.” Another nod. Firmer this time. “I can do that.” She glances around the gray room, as if she’s just woken up and isn’t sure where she is. “This will be huge.”

  I glance from Waverly to Trigger, to Julienne, and back to Waverly. “When should we…?”

  “The sooner the better,” Trigger says. “We were going to leave tonight. I see no reason not to.”

  “No!” Waverly frowns. “Hennessy will want in on this. And we should plan it for sometime when the Administrator is off the compound. It’ll be harder for her to react if she’s not on-site.”

  I frown, thinking over my conversations with the Administrator’s daughter. “But Sofia says she never leaves….”

  “Well, she will be leaving next week, for three days.” Waverly smiles. “She’s coming to my wedding.”

  “You look beautiful, sweetheart.” My mother brushes my freshly curled hair over my shoulder and smiles at my reflection in the e-glass. “I’m sorry it has to be this way. But at least you get to wear the dress.”

  My gaze wanders over the strapless sweetheart neckline of the satin bodice, cinched with a diamond-studded silver satin belt. Layers and layers of white starched organza bell out from my waist, over the full satin skirt. This is exactly how I always pictured myself on my wedding day.

  But this is not my wedding day.

  Tonight is the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, but before that…

  “Are you ready?” My father knocks on the door, though it’s already open, and I turn to him with my arms outstretched. Showing off my dress. Tears shine in his eyes as he folds me into a careful hug. “You look stunning, honey. It looks even better on the real you than it looked on virtual you.”

  Which is a miracle, considering that Dahlia had to stand in for me during the final fitting because of the ink on her arm.

  “Thank you.” I sniffle back tears of my own, because we’re minutes away, and I will not walk down the makeshift aisle with red eyes.

  Finally, my dad lets me go. “They’re ready for you.”

  My mother adjusts my hair again, and there are tears in her eyes now. “I’ll see you in there,” she says. Then she and my father walk out, hand in hand.

  The closer we’ve gotten to the wedding, the nicer she’s been, until—during moments like this—it’s hard to keep in mind that while she’s throwing me the best secret wedding ever, she’s also planning to execute five thousand girls who share my DNA. I can’t let that happen. Which is why this may be the last normal day of my life.

  Alone, I walk down the hall and continue carefully down the curving front stairs, because there are no wedding planners or bridesmaids here to help. I can hear the wedding march playing from the house system, since secret weddings don’t warrant live music, but the whole thing doesn’t truly feel real until I see my father waiting for me at the foot of the stairs.

  I take his arm, and he pats my hand with a smile. He swallows thickly, as if he’s holding back more tears. Then he walks me slowly down the center hallway and into the formal dining room. This part is just as it should be.

  I have to give my mother credit—she made amazing things happen with no one to help her but our household staff.

  The table is gone. The room is covered in flowers—tulips of every color, since she couldn’t find enough red and white ones without placing a conspicuous order.

  Hennessy stands at the end of the room in his tuxedo, wearing a red rose boutonnière. A wealth of emotions flickers behind his eyes when he sees me, and for a moment, I can’t believe how lucky I am that he was willing to do this, without his family and friends here. Without any of the food we chose or the guests we invited.

  For me.

  He’s doing it all for me.

  God, I love him.

  Trigger stands at Hennessy’s side, in place of Sere
n as the best man. Across from them, Dahlia stands as my maid of honor, in a red silk dress and matching shoes from my closet. I’m not entirely sure they understand this moment or what it means to me, but they’re all in. They have been since that night in the gray room.

  There are only two chairs set up for “guests,” and my mother sits in one of them. When we enter the room, she turns in her seat and watches my father walk me down the makeshift aisle with fresh tears in her eyes.

  We stop at the front of the room, beside Hennessy, in front of a table draped in a white silk cloth. The table holds only a single sheet of paper and a very expensive ink pen. There is no minister. My mother was right: you don’t actually need one, outside of the ceremonial tradition.

  All you need is a bride, a groom, two witnesses, and the official documentation.

  My dad laughs a little when he takes my hand and places it in Hennessy’s. “I know no one’s asked, but I’m still going to deliver my line.” He stands a little straighter and stares at the empty space where the minister should be. “Her mother and I do.”

  I give him a smile as he takes his seat.

  No minister. No guests. No cameras. But we still have vows, though they’re a little different from the ones we wrote for the official ceremony.

  “Hennessy.” My voice cracks on his name. Somehow, though I thought I’d feel cheated without all the details I spent so long planning, this moment feels more intimate and real without the crowd and the cameras. As if for once, an event in my life doesn’t belong to the entire world. This moment is ours.

  “Hennessy, I love you with every cell in my body. With every beat of my heart. And I promise to be there for you like you’ve been there for me from the beginning. I promise to try to deserve you. Though you make that pretty hard, because you’re basically perfect.”

  He chuckles, and my laugh in response is half-choked with happy tears.

  “Waverly Whitmore.” Hennessy takes my other hand so that he’s holding them both. “I’ve loved you from the moment I met you. Every second with you is an adventure, and I have no reason to suspect that will stop once we’re both wearing rings. I promise to love and cherish you. To stand by your side. To have your back. No matter where that adventure takes us.”

  My parents have no idea what he’s really promising, or how soon he’s going to get to keep that promise.

  Hennessy turns to Trigger, who hands him the custom wedding band. It’s our initials, cut from platinum, repeating around the width of the band, bound with thin rings of platinum at the top and the bottom. From a distance, it looks like platinum filigree, but up close the significance of the letters becomes obvious.

  Hennessy slips the ring onto my finger, next to my engagement ring. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

  I stare at my hand for a second. Then I look up into his eyes. I’m floating in this moment, so caught up in it that I don’t remember the rest of my part until Dahlia taps me on the shoulder and hands me Hennessy’s matching band.

  “With this ring, I thee wed,” I echo as I slide it onto his left ring finger.

  He squeezes my hand. Then he leans in for our first married kiss.

  “Wait!” my mother cries out from her seat. “You have to sign.”

  “Oh yeah.” Hennessy laughs as he picks up the pen and hands it to me.

  I lean over to sign the marriage certificate. Then I give him the pen, and he signs. Next, Trigger and Dahlia sign as our witnesses. They leave the numbers off, at my request, but their signatures still look strange with no surnames.

  “Now may I kiss my bride?” Hennessy asks.

  My father nods. My mother smiles. I can practically feel Dahlia watching us as Hennessy leans in and kisses me, softly at first. Then his hands find the waist of my dress and his head tilts, deepening the kiss. Prolonging the moment.

  I want to live in this second. This one perfect second, before we bring the world as we know it crashing down around us. I have no idea how this day will end for either of us. For any of us. Changing the world could make it worse, not better. But I have to take that chance. And Hennessy has sworn to take it with me. With us.

  I let him end the kiss. But I can’t stop staring at him.

  I’m married. For better or for worse.

  I just hope he understands how bad “worse” might get.

  * * *

  “It was beautiful, honey,” my father says. “And no matter what happens tonight at the rehearsal or tomorrow at the ceremony, this is the one that counts. This one.”

  “I know. Thanks, Dad.” I can’t let go of Hennessy’s hand. I don’t want to. “You’re both going over early?”

  “Yes.” My mother smooths one hand over her pale yellow dress. “We’re going to meet with the minister and make sure everything is set up for tonight. Can you get Dahlia ready on your own?”

  “Yes.” I’ve been doing that for a month now. “I’ll put her in the car with Hennessy in a couple of hours.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to patch a feed through for you?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t watch.” And if she tries to patch a feed through to my screen, she’ll figure out what we’re up to. “We’re already married. That’s all that matters.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure.” My father takes my mother’s hand and tugs her toward the front door. They’re running late.

  “The kitchen staff made you a small wedding cake. You should feed each other a bite. It’s tradition,” my mother says as she walks backward through the foyer, careful in her heels. “But take the gown off first,” she adds. “It still has to appear tomorrow.”

  When they’re gone, Hennessy and I each cut a huge slice of cake, alone in the kitchen except for Julienne. Dahlia and Trigger are upstairs, disabling the entire house system, so the cameras won’t see or hear us. So that even when my parents discover us missing, they won’t know at first what happened.

  “Mmm,” Hennessy mumbles around the bite I feed him, and I laugh. “It’s delicious. Julienne, you’ve outdone yourself.”

  She gives him a small smile from behind the counter.

  “My turn!”

  Hennessy uses his fingers to break off a chunk of white cake with raspberry filling, very similar to the one we ordered for tomorrow’s ceremony. I open my mouth, and he places it on my tongue. For a second, I just let the sugar melt in my mouth. It’s delicious.

  “All done,” Trigger announces as he follows Dahlia into the kitchen. “We can say and do whatever we want.”

  “We need to go.” As I stand from my barstool, I brush cake crumbs from the organza on the front of my dress. I haven’t changed out of it, because my mother’s wrong: this dress doesn’t have to appear tomorrow.

  There will be no other ceremony. No wedding episode.

  No one else will ever wear my wedding gown.

  Our car speeds down the road, driven by a clone with the number twenty-four behind his name who has no idea what we’re up to. Who wouldn’t be able to understand even if we told him, thanks to the sedatives he’s been ingesting for six straight years.

  Trigger turns away from the car window—from field after sunlit, empty field—to look at the rest of us. “We need a fail-safe.”

  “A what?” I ask.

  “A backup plan, in case this doesn’t work. In case I can’t break through the Lakeview blackout. Or in case we get caught before I can even try. We need a way to make sure our message gets out there in some form, even if our plan doesn’t succeed.”

  “A video,” Waverly says from the bench seat across from us. “We can record it now and schedule it to go up in a few hours. If we turn out not to need it, we just cancel it before it posts.”

  “Yes.” Hennessy holds his hand out to her. “Give me your tablet. I’ll record you two.”

  “Here?” I asked. “Now?”
/>   Waverly shrugs. “We’re only half an hour away from Lakeview.”

  My pulse leaps at that thought. Half an hour from my home. From the city that lied to me for my entire life, then ripped every friend I’d ever had away from me.

  If the Administrator had caught me, would she have killed me? Would she have tried to “transition” and sell me, along with my identicals, even though I’m not a clone?

  The fact that those seem to be the only possibilities only underlines how important what we’re about to do is. Including the fail-safe. “Okay,” I say. “How does this work?”

  “Switch seats with Hennessy.”

  I climb past Waverly’s new husband to sit next to her, while he sits next to Trigger. The ribbon-trimmed filmy layers of her white wedding dress fall over the comfortable pants I changed into, and I can’t help reaching out to touch them. Coming down the center of the repurposed dining room, Waverly had looked like she was floating on a white cloud.

  Now she looks happy to be back in the familiar territory of…videos. “Just look there and follow my lead.” She points at her tablet, which Hennessy is now aiming at us from across the car. “Focus on me. Then zoom to show us both,” she instructs. “Give us a countdown?”

  He taps something on his side of the tablet. The number five appears on the side of the tablet facing us, and through it, I can see his shoulders and neck. The number flashes once, then becomes the number four and continues counting down.

  At two, Waverly takes a deep breath and smiles.

  One…Live.

  “Hey, everyone, this is Waverly Whitmore with an exclusive for you. This is huge, guys, so pay attention. As you can see, I’m in my wedding dress. Because Hennessy and I just eloped. I know I promised you all could see the wedding, and I’m really sorry that didn’t work out, but in a second, you’ll understand why. I’m here in the car with Hennessy and a couple of very special friends, headed to the Lakeview clone compound to try to get some even better exclusive footage for you. If you’re seeing this, something went wrong. We didn’t make it out. So listen up.