Strange New World

by Rachel Vincent

  “I meant, turn the whole thing off,” Trigger says. “It’s time to finish this.”

  “Oh.” I turn back to the camera as he bends to examine the scanner built into the lab’s entrance. “Guys, I’ve gotta go. But remember what I said. Share this video with everyone you know. Forward it to your local police headquarters. And if we don’t make it out of here tonight, raise hell on our behalves. I love you guys! And I hope to see you again….”

  Hennessy ends the stream and hands my tablet back to me. “Nearly one and a half million viewers by the end,” he whispers. “I can’t believe the connection lasted that long.”

  “That’s only because they don’t have many people trained to cut it off. Most people here don’t even know the network exists.” Trigger pops the cover off the scanner and uses the knife from his pocket to cut through two of the wires. The dead bolt disengages with a raspy sliding sound. “We’re in. Let’s end this.”

  “I’m sure the Administrator was watching,” Waverly whispers as we sneak down the dark, narrow back hallway of the genetics lab. “She’s probably already got soldiers on their way.”

  “Then we better hurry,” Trigger says.

  We follow him in silence, and I search for a familiar landmark, but the tour my class took didn’t include this part of the building.

  “Are there a bunch of underground levels or something?” Hennessy whispers, and I turn to see him holding Waverly’s hand as they follow us. “This doesn’t look big enough to produce all the babies that must be born here every year.”

  “Embryos are produced here,” I explain softly. “They don’t take up much space. The babies are produced in the nursery, across town. In a very big building.” I snort. “Did you actually think we were going to blow up a building full of babies?”

  Hennessy shrugs, but looks embarrassed. “So what are we looking for, exactly?”

  “Cold storage. The cache of DNA. It’s a room at the back of the—” Trigger stops, and I nearly run into him. “That’s it. But there’s another scanner.” He pulls his knife from his pocket again and in seconds, he has the door open. “If they really expected anyone to try this, they would have invented a better lock,” he murmurs as he pulls the door open.

  I pat him on the back. “Lucky for us, the city of Lakeview trusts its soldiers.”

  “Not for long,” Waverly whispers as she and Hennessy follow us inside. “Holy crap…”

  I second her astonishment.

  Cold storage is smaller than I expected, and a lot…warmer. In fact, it’s not cold at all. But it’s kind of amazing.

  The room is round with a tall ceiling, and except for the three other doors leading out, every inch of wall space is covered by a series of glass-doored refrigerated shelving units that curve along with the shape of the room. A rope of lights around the ceiling and the floor are the only illumination, and while it’s enough to see by, the glow is a soft blue in color.

  In the center of the room stands a long, narrow table divided into eight microscope stations, each furnished with a bunch of equipment I’ve never seen before and have no idea how to use.

  “I thought it’d be bigger,” Waverly says as she turns a slow circle, eyeing the refrigerators. Which are probably actually freezers.

  “DNA doesn’t take up much space,” I remind her. “There are millions of genetic samples in here.”

  “What’s the plan?” Hennessy asks.

  Trigger sets his backpack on the end of the table and opens it. “Everyone take two. Stick them straight to the glass doors, and try to space them evenly.”

  “What is this?” Waverly asks as she pulls two gel-filled rings from the bag.

  “Explosives.” I reach into the bag and take the next two.

  “Shit!” She holds hers away from her body, as if they might spontaneously blow her to bits.

  Trigger huffs. “They’re very stable.” He pulls the two pen-like devices from the front pocket of the bag. “That’s why we have detonators.”

  Hennessy presses one of his rings to the door of the nearest freezer unit, and it sticks on its own. “Awesome,” he breathes. Then he moves down a few feet and places the second.

  I follow his lead across the room, and Waverly stakes out a spot between us.

  Trigger places the remaining four rings, then presses the end of one of the pens into the last one. He pushes the button on the end, and the tiny screen lights up.

  “I’m setting a three-minute timer, so we’re going to need to run. Dahlia, will you set off the alarm, so anyone working knows to get out?”

  “Sure.” I glance around the room, but find no obvious alarm switch. “How do I do that?”

  He shrugs. “You can probably just smash one of the glass doors.”

  I grab a stool from the nearest microscope station. “Ready?” I ask. He nods. So I swing the stool as hard as I can at the closest freezer door.

  The legs smash through with a loud crash. Glass flies everywhere.

  Red lights flash from the ceiling and a high-pitched alarm skewers my brain.

  Trigger smiles. Then he presses the button on the end of the pen again. It glows red, and a three-minute timer appears on the small screen. Seconds begin to count down. “Let’s go!”

  Waverly kicks off her shoes and we race for the open door, then skid to an awkward stop when someone steps into the doorway, blocking our path. It’s a soldier, a few years older than Trigger. The name Ren 22 is embroidered over her left shoulder. “Stop right there!” She shouts to be heard over the alarm. She’s aiming a gun at us.

  Trigger calmly steps in front of me, and I stare at the soldier over his shoulder. “I’ve just activated a detonator in one of ten gel-pack charges,” he calls in an even, clear voice. “This building is going to blow up in less than three minutes.”

  The soldier glances past him to where the pen is still blinking an angry red. “Turn it off,” she commands.

  “I can’t do that,” Trigger says. “And if you don’t let us out of here, we are all going to die.”

  “I’m prepared to die for my city,” Ren 22 declares. “Are you?”

  “I was until I found out my city was a lie. Show her, Waverly.”

  “Don’t move!” the soldier shouts again, shifting her aim.

  “It’s just a tablet!” I call out as Waverly slowly pulls it from her pocket. She taps on the screen to wake it up, then plays a video I’ve never seen before. In it, she and Hennessy are kissing in a field of flowers.

  “What is that? Where is that?” the soldier demands. “Wait, aren’t you…? Weren’t you recalled?”

  “There’s more.” Waverly plays a video of her mother blowing out candles on a birthday cake. The crowd around her—all individuals—claps, and Dane Whitmore pulls her close for a kiss.

  “Wh-what…?” the soldier stutters.

  “That’s the real world,” I tell her. “The world the Administrator hid from all of us. A world full of individuals, and parents, and houses. The Administrator lied to us for our whole lives. Let us go,” I beg her. “Come with us, and this will all be over. We can all live in that world.” Or what’s left of it, now that we’ve shown them all what they’ve been doing.

  “Now,” Trigger says. “Or we’re all going to die.”

  The soldier blinks. Then she turns around and runs.

  We take off after her, racing through the hallway toward the door still standing open. All five of us burst into the night and keep running parallel with the street. Hearts and legs pumping as fast as they can.

  I have just a second to register the long parade of headlights streaming toward us from the Defense Bureau when the world explodes at my back. Trigger throws me to the cold ground and lands on top of me, pinning me to the prickly grass. He shouts something—I can feel his breath on my neck—but I can’t hear him. I can�
�t hear anything.

  I’m totally deaf.

  I peek beneath his shoulder to see Waverly and Hennessy lying on the ground a few feet away. Bits of burning building fall all around us. A flaming bit of insulation lands in Waverly’s hair and Hennessy slaps it to put out the fire. A smoldering hunk of metal lands to his left, and he rolls toward her, screaming silently.

  I stare, my heart pounding, as the rain of fire slows to a few floating embers. And when Trigger stands and pulls me to my feet, there’s nothing left behind us but the smoking husk of the genetics lab.

  That, and a line of trucks, from which soldier after soldier is emerging.

  They aim guns at us. They’re shouting something, but I can’t hear anything except the roar of my own pulse in my ears and a strange, high-pitched ringing.

  Trigger shouts something at me, but I can’t hear him either. He raises his hands in the air, nodding for me to mimic him, so I do.

  Another line of trucks races toward us from the west, led by a long black car. The Administrator must have called in every soldier at her disposal.

  Terrified, I scoot closer to Trigger. In my peripheral vision, Hennessy has his arms around Waverly, his back to the soldiers. He’s shielding her with his body, and they can’t hear the orders being shouted at them either. In the flickering light from the burning building, I can see that her wedding dress is covered in grass stains and dirt.

  The flash of light in her hand tells me she’s livecasting again.

  If the Administrator is going to kill us, she’s going to do it in front of a live audience.

  A woman gets out of the long black car stationed at the front of the line of trucks. She’s wearing a calf-length white coat and her dark hair is twisted into a severe updo. I’ve never seen her in person, but I would recognize the Administrator anywhere.

  She motions toward us, and the soldiers start forward, shouting more orders we can’t hear. Aiming rifles at us.

  I’m breathing too hard. Too fast. The world is starting to look hazy.

  Then the new line of troop trucks arrives. The first one stops in the middle of the street. A door in the back of it rolls up, and more soldiers pour out. They have rifles too, but they’re wearing a different uniform. They point their guns at…the Administrator.

  What? Have her troops rebelled? Did they somehow see Waverly’s livecast?

  A man and a woman get out of the car in front of the first truck. The woman runs toward us, and my ears pop just in time for me to hear her shout for Waverly, though her shout sounds more like a whisper.

  It’s Lorna Whitmore. Dane is behind her, yelling at the Administrator. Waving his fist in her face, his cheeks bright red with fury.

  The new soldiers fan out around him, pointing rifle after rifle at the Administrator and her troops. They’re from Mountainside. They’re not here to arrest us.

  They’re here to save us.

  Trigger pulls me into a hug. “It’s over!” he shouts into my ear, holding me so tightly I can hardly breathe. “We’re free, Dahlia!”

  But I can’t let myself believe that until I see the Mountainside soldiers force the Administrator back into her car at gunpoint. Until I see them confiscating guns from her troops. Until Lorna Whitmore begins to herd all four of us toward the safety of her car, and the shield of her stature and her credits and her influence.

  Until I see that she is mad—she looks furious—but she understands that Waverly’s livecast has tied her hands as surely as it tied the Administrator’s. Lorna can’t get rid of me now. She can’t hide my identicals from the world. And she can no longer deny that I ever existed.

  Screw Lorna Whitmore.

  The world has seen me. The world knows my face and my name.

  I am here to stay.

  “Please stop pacing,” Waverly groans from her seat on the dormitory steps. “You’re going to wear out the grass.”

  “I can’t help it. He’s late.”

  “He’s not late,” she insists with a glance at her tablet. “He’s just not here yet.”

  But this doesn’t mean to her what it means to me. She doesn’t understand, and despite the fact that we share DNA—that we’re friends now—she probably never will.

  “Leave Dahlia alone,” Margo says without looking up from her tablet. “She’s earned a little impatience.” Margo has taken the whole thing surprisingly well. Maybe because diving in to volunteer at Lakeview has brought her a ton of good press. But maybe because she’s actually not a bad person.

  I know. I was surprised too.

  “Have either of you heard from Sofia?” I ask as I sink onto the steps next to my identical.

  Waverly shakes her head. “She and Seren are still out of the country and totally off the grid. They’re not answering messages. This is hard for them.” She shrugs. “I mean, they lost their legacy, not to mention their home. And their mother was utterly humiliated live on camera. They might need a little quiet time.”

  That’s understandable. And while I know they can’t be held responsible for what their mother did, it’s hard for me to feel very sorry for them, considering that they’re still unreasonably wealthy. At least until the court rules on damages awarded to the hundreds of thousands of clones who haven’t yet gone into organ failure at a premature age.

  But Waverly says that court case could take years because first the clones have to be declared actual people, with rights, before they can sue for damages.

  I find it bizarre that the fact that clones are people is something everyone in the world acknowledges now—some more readily than others—but they aren’t considered formally real until a panel of people in white robes writes it down in some official record. But that day’s coming fast, thanks to the Whitmores’ lawyers. Because it turns out Waverly’s marriage isn’t legally binding until she’s declared not just a citizen, but an actual person, and they’re pushing for speed from the judiciary. They’re pushing hard, because until someone develops a gene therapy to extend her life, she’s still facing a miserable death at a young age, and her parents are not willing to let that happen without a fight.

  Neither is Hennessy.

  Waverly pushes up her sleeve and scratches absently at her tattoo. It’s new enough that it still itches, though her skin has healed, and she’s always staring at it with this oddly endearing smile. That tattoo symbolizes her bond with Hennessy, even more than her wedding rings do, because she got it a month after our broadcast. After the world found out she was a clone, and nearly half of her followers turned into vicious “trolls” determined to make her feel less than human. After she gave up her show, under pressure from the network for a civil end to their partnership. After Hennessy stood by her side, with his parents’ lukewarm support.

  Waverly’s parents…They understand what we did and why, but I think they secretly blame me for most of the fallout. Not-so-secretly, in Lorna’s case.

  Not that it matters. Legally recognized or not, Waverly is married. She and Hennessy have a house of their own in Mountainside, and they’ve insisted that Julienne 20 and I stay with them. As guests. It’s not a permanent solution, but I’ve been happy to accept so far, if for no other reason than to drive Lorna nuts.

  I still hate her, but Dane is growing on me.

  “Hey,” Hennessy says as he comes out the front door of the dormitory. “Still not here? He’s late.”

  “I told you,” I tell Waverly, and she sticks her tongue out at me.

  Hennessy glances out across the common lawn and smiles. “It’s still so weird to see them all holding tablets.”

  I follow his gaze to the class of year-thirteen mechanics sitting in a cluster on the grass, in spite of the cold breeze, scrolling and tapping on the tablets DigiCore donated to every Lakeview resident over the age of twelve. They’ve learned the technology very quickly, but they still use it different
ly than Waverly, Margo, and their friends do. The clones laugh and talk and point to things on each other’s tablets. They explore the network as if it were a team sport, instead of living in their own private tech bubbles, as most individuals do.

  “What’s really weird is seeing them in mismatched clothing,” I say. Margo’s parents donated those from one of their clothing factories, and when Network 4 heard that she was here personally distributing the garments, they offered her a contract to star in the first show ever shot on the Lakeview grounds. She’ll have to live in the dorm for six weeks while it films, under the same circumstances as the clones, but she seems to be thinking of that as some kind of intrepid adventure.

  I don’t think she’ll make it a week without her wall screen.

  “Margo! Waverly! Dahlia!” A gaggle of little girls with dark pigtails spots us and comes running. Their instructor laughs while they surround us with eager little hands pulling at our clothes and a barrage of questions about when they can have tablets.

  The little ones have adjusted amazingly well to the changes in Lakeview in the months since our broadcast and the Administrator’s arrest. They’re too young to really understand how badly they were betrayed, or what their fate would have been if none of that had happened. But many of the year sixteens and seventeens are…bitter. Confused. They thought they were about to graduate and start adult lives in a world that never really existed.

  Instead, they’re in a strange kind of limbo, waiting to hear how the world will decide to embrace and care for hundreds of thousands of orphans with unique medical needs. Their new access to the network lets them see what the world thinks of them—both the good and the bad—and that’s a lot to take in for kids who didn’t even know a couple of months ago that the rest of the world existed.

  But watching the young ones gives me hope. They could truly be okay, especially if hormone and gene therapy find success while they’re still small. Before the hormone deficiency has a chance to affect them.

  Waverly answers their questions with a sad smile. She understands the same things I do—that their chances of a long, happy life are much greater than her own. And I think that’s the real reason Seren and Sofia haven’t come back. They can’t face her, knowing that every credit in their accounts was put there by the system that robbed her of everything she should have had.