Authors: Erin Bowman
Why is he lying to me?
“I know what’s really happening here,” I say, looking between him and Jackson. “Why can’t you just tell me, Blaine?”
He laughs. “Tell you? I couldn’t tell you!”
What could be so terrible about admitting you’re scared of a dog? I pause, wondering if I’ve misinterpreted something, when he adds, “And you can’t tell anyone either. I won’t let you.”
Footsteps approach, and I turn to see a sleepy Emma walking to meet us. “You guys are going to wake the whole camp if you can’t keep it down,” she says.
What happens next unfolds so quickly I blink and nearly miss it. Blaine shoves Jackson aside and grabs Emma. He pulls her into his chest and brings the knife to her neck. All I can do is pull my bow up instinctively, an arrow already nocked, and aim at my brother.
“You figured it out, you sly little weasel,” he snarls at me. “How did you know?
When
did you know?”
“Blaine,” I say slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” he hisses. “You said so yourself:
I know what’s really happening here
. What tipped you off?”
“Blaine,” I plead. “Put the knife down.” He’s gone crazy. The dog must have been sick, and then he bit Blaine, and now Blaine’s sick, too. Emma is shaking, her hands clutching at Blaine’s bandaged forearm, which pins her to his chest.
“I kn-knew it,” she stutters. “They’re wrong. Both of them.”
“What?”
“It’s their pupils. They don’t dilate properly.”
“Shut up,” Blaine says, and he presses the knife to her neck.
“And the dog.”
Blaine shakes her. “That’s enough.”
“The dog hates them both. Neither of them are right.”
“I said that’s enough!”
Neither of them are right
.
Are they both sick? Are they—
And then, I see it. Blaine always passing off the dog’s aggression as a hatred of the spy. Blaine hugging me in Stonewall, his arms stiff. I didn’t notice anything odd about his pupils, or Jackson’s, but Emma must have, when she’d tended to them just earlier. Even still, I don’t want to believe it. It can’t be—not when Owen interrogated Blaine the way he did, checked for his clipping scar.
“Blaine,” I say, hoping that something in my voice will resonate with him. “Please?”
I take a small step forward, and he pinches the blade into Emma’s neck. Blood blooms against the weapon, against her pale skin, and when she cries out in pain, I know this is not my brother. Not really. Blaine would never force me into this position. He would never hold a knife to Emma or spill even a drop of her blood.
We’ve been deceived. We are not dealing with one spy; we are dealing with two.
And they are Forgeries.
I do the only thing I can think of: I let my arrow fly.
It strikes true. Blaine’s head whips back, and he falls, releasing Emma. She staggers to me, collapses against my chest. My arms go around her, squeezing, hugging tighter and tighter until it sinks in. What I’ve just done.
Jackson is standing over the darkening snow, a smile tugging at his lips. I shove him aside and then I’m yelling, screaming. I drop to my knees.
The camp is awake now. Someone is trying to nurse the fire to life. Owen is shouting orders. But my hands are moving of their own accord, checking Blaine’s neck, finding the same thin scar my father did. It doesn’t make sense. I pick up the knife and cut open the leg of Blaine’s pants. There is no scar on his thigh, no sign of an arrow wound when there absolutely should be. My brother was hit when we fled through the Great Forest over the summer. This thing, now dead in the snow, was made without knowledge of that injury. And whoever put the mark along his neck was not Clipper.
I throw a fist into his chest, curse him, start choking down sobs. Why couldn’t I see it? How could I not sense something so wrong in my own brother? I look at Blaine’s face for the first time, the arrow in his forehead. I throw up in the snow. I cough and pant and heave and scream until Owen drags me away from the body.
JACKSON IS SHOVED INTO THE
snow before the fire.
“Explain.” It is a one-word command from my father and Jackson yawns at it.
I lose control and punch him as hard as I can. “Blaine brought you to us with a gun to your head! And now you’re on the same side?”
Jackson smiles but doesn’t say anything. I hit him again and my knuckles split open. At least he’s bleeding now, too: a bloody nose. I hope I broke it.
“Answer us, Forgery,” Owen demands.
Jackson rolls his eyes, like we’re boring him. “Blaine brought me in because we planned it that way. He pretended I was the enemy because we planned that, too. Everything we did we planned, except for, well . . . this.” He jerks his head toward the body in the snow.
“But Blaine had a clipping scar,” my father says. “He was flawless when I questioned him. He even knew about the burn on Gray’s forearm. How could he—” Owen exhales sharply. “Our man! The one the Order captured.” His eyes snap to Jackson. “Your people got information from him. How much, exactly, do you know?”
Jackson shrugs and this time it is Owen who strikes him. He shakes out his hand, opening and clenching his fist repeatedly. “You will answer my questions without cheek or I will make sure you regret every moment from here on. Is that clear?”
Jackson spits a mouthful of blood onto the snow.
“Let’s try this again.” My father kneels before him and I’m struck by how terrifying he looks in the moment. I’ve never before seen this side of my father, a man who someone should fear. “Explain everything.”
Jackson glances at my father’s fist and sighs. “You’re right, okay? The Rebel we caught leaked information when pressed accordingly. He was willing to lose a few fingers, but not an entire limb.” Another coy smile, as though the Forgery finds this detail amusing. “He told us a small group of your people was heading west on a specialized mission. The boy who infiltrated Taem to steal the vaccine would be a part of the team, while his twin”—Jackson’s eyes flick my way—“who was still recovering from a coma, would not. We gathered as much information on Gray as possible—learned that he sustained injuries to his arm and that he wanted his brother with him on the trip, but Blaine had failed to pass conditioning tests. The prisoner was willing to die rather than divulge the goals of your mission, though, or the location of your headquarters, so that’s exactly what he did: He died.”
“And you were sent after us?” my father asks.
“Blaine and I were already out patrolling the Great Forest when we got the call. We were given orders to track your team, uncover your plans, and stop them as necessary, all while trying to determine the location of your headquarters. That was the main goal: getting the coordinates and relaying them as soon as possible.
“We picked up your trail easily enough. It was the hiking that was rough—ten days of nearly nonstop pursuit. When we caught up with you at Stonewall, infiltrating seemed smartest, especially since Blaine would be recognized, so we agreed on a cover: I’d be an Order spy in his custody. We each played a part, and he, clumsily, botched his.”
“And Blaine’s scar?” my father prompts. “The one on his neck?”
“Oh, he’s had that ever since Gray came back to Taem for the vaccine. Frank saw Gray’s neck, knew the Rebels had found a way to remove tracking devices. He marked some of us after that—anyone he suspected to have fallen into your hands.” Jackson’s eyes dart over each of us in turn, like he’s waiting for someone to congratulate him on how deceitful he’s been. He’s suddenly so different from the desperate spy we met in Stonewall. Cool, calculating, unfazed.
“If I’m smart about things, I can still complete my mission,” he adds.
“Like hell you can,” Xavier snaps from the other side of camp.
Jackson laughs. “Why not? I’ve already uncovered your mission details by simply listening. The whole thing’s ridiculous! Group A? Frank gave you too much credit—the way he assumed you’d try to extend your reach into the west, strike up allegiances. But fine, I’ll keep tagging along on your pointless crusade. And when the time presents itself, I’ll slay you. One at a time. Slowly. Until someone divulges headquarters’ location.”
“You realize you were one of us once, right?” I say through clenched teeth. “The real Jackson spent his childhood behind a Wall. He was Heisted to make
you
. You’re Frank’s puppet, and you’re doing everything the real Jackson wouldn’t want.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” he says quietly. “My mind can’t be changed. I know what I have to do.”
I believe him even though I don’t want to. Harvey told me as much. The difference between a Forgery that can think for itself and a Forgery that blindly does Frank’s bidding is a piece of code—software as smoothly integrated with the replica’s brain as the blood that runs through its veins.
“I can change your mind,” I say.
“I’d like to see you try.”
I have an arrow nocked before Jackson even finishes speaking.
“You won’t fire that. Not with what I know.”
“What you know?” my father echoes.
“I’m a soldier. A technologically enhanced soldier overloaded with secrets. Do you have any idea how much confidential information is swimming around in my head? City maps. Computer passwords. Access codes to safes and storage units and maybe even Outer Rings.”
No one says anything. Jackson’s grin grows wider.
“What were you planning to do when you reached Group A? Push the Outer Ring’s wall over?” he says. “It’s taller than the interior Wall—surrounds the whole place. You need me or you’ll just stand there, staring at a dead end.”
Bo steps between Sammy and Emma on the opposite side of the fire. “You said
maybe
,” he calls out. “Access codes to storage units and
maybe
Outer Rings.”
Jackson grunts. “I can’t very well tell you how to open the door now. It’s my only leverage.”
“Then maybe you’re lying and we should just get this over with,” I say, raising my bow.
“Shoot me now and you’re already doomed to reach a dead end. But if you keep me alive, things can go one of two ways: I open the Outer Ring for you and you actually have a chance to complete your stupid mission. Or, I was lying all along, you hit a dead end later rather than sooner, and shoot me then instead of now. Your pick.”
Bo shifts uncomfortably. Emma is shivering behind him—still in shock or maybe just cold. Sammy puts his coat on her shoulders. And Jackson keeps smiling. That arrogant, cocky smile that I want to wipe right off his face.
“The Forgery lives,” my father announces. “We believe Clipper can get us into the Outer Ring, but on the rare chance he
can’t
, this is a solid backup plan and we’d be foolish to waste it. If the Forgery is lying about what he knows, it’s just like he said: He’ll die then instead of now.”
Owen turns and asks Emma to show the team what she recognized in Jackson’s and Blaine’s eyes. Sammy is in the process of bandaging her neck, but she agrees to explain everything when he’s finished.
“I still can’t believe it,” Bree says next to me. “Blaine. Even after we interrogated him. It’s—” She stops, touches my arm. “Hey, are you okay?”
Sammy’s brushing Emma’s hair to the side so he can better see the cut on her neck. He must say something funny because she lets out a small laugh. Bree follows my gaze and frowns.
“Gray?”
Xavier shouts for Sammy to help him move Blaine’s body away from camp, and I feel nauseous all over again.
“I just need a minute,” I say to Bree.
I want to be alone right now.
Need
to be alone. She has the decency to not give me a hard time about it.
I wander away from the tents, slip between the trees. When I find a fallen pine, I sit on the trunk, cringe at the sting of an oncoming headache. The moment I close my eyes, I see it all over again: Blaine’s head whipping back from the force of my arrow, his body in the snow; the way he lay, broken, with one arm crushed beneath his weight.
A little while later, my father finds me. “How are you holding up?”
I want to tell him how sick I feel, but he seems so formal in the moment. More captain than father.
He sits beside me. “It wasn’t him, Gray. That wasn’t your brother.”
“I know. But I still . . . I feel like . . .”
I don’t know how to put it into words. Like I ate spoiled meat and my stomach is writhing? Like I have a headache that pounds at the slightest movement? Like the wind’s been knocked out of me and I can’t get an ounce of air into my lungs no matter how deeply I breathe?
“You did the right thing,” Owen says. “Emma would be dead right now if you hadn’t acted so quickly.”
“How is she?”
“Fine. Nothing but a nick on her neck. She’s showing the others how to identify a Forgery, although the sign is so subtle. Clipper’s the only one having any success.” A quick pause. “I don’t know what it means. Not even Harvey seemed to know about this giveaway, and he made the damn things.”
Owen leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. I run a hand over my bloody knuckles.
“I don’t get it,” I say finally. “What the Forgery said—Frank giving us too much credit for heading west. That’s
exactly
what we’re doing.”
“I think our final destination surprised him, that’s all. I’m sure when Frank heard we were traveling west he expected us to be gathering more supporters, and of course he has a reason to fear that. With more numbers we have more power, and with those numbers spread out, more people doubting him in more locations. He could have an uprising on his hands, one that would be difficult to fight if it broke out in and around all his cities at the same time. It’s his biggest fear: losing control over his people.” Owen pauses for a second. “Frank probably never mentioned Group A to the Forgeries when he briefed them, and why would he? The place is a wreck and there are no numbers there to help our cause as far as he’s concerned. Of course, that’s exactly why it’s so alluring to us. It’s under the radar. Never thought of or looked at twice.”