Forged (13 page)

BADGER'S HOUSE IS SPOTLESS: MINIMAL
furniture, and even less personality. It's like he owns the place as a front and nothing more.

We survey our path to the docks from the second-floor windows. A few buildings obstruct the view, but from the commotion in town, it seems the Order is still congregating around the bookshop.

“Put this on.” Harvey throws me a lump of cloth from Badger's dresser.

I shake it out. It's a dark hooded shirt. The hood is oversized, and when I pull it up, I feel completely shielded from the world. Harvey puts on one of Badger's hats in an effort to hide his own face.

When we're ready to make our move, Clipper sticks his head outside, scanning the streets. A quick nod and we're on our way, racing through the rain. It's now pouring so hard I can barely see more than a wingspan in front of me, but we make it to the wharf without incident. If there are Order crews keeping watch from their boat, they can't see any better than we can.

As soon as we're onboard, the boat lurches to life.

“Wait!” I cry to May. “The rest of the team.”

I glance at the shore like I expect them to appear there, but all I see is a thick sheet of rain and a plume of smoke battling it. Right around where the bookshop stands.
Stood
.

“What are you staying out here for?” May snaps. “Head down. They'll be happy to see you.”

“They'll . . . ?” My eyes trail to the nearest stairwell.

“In the crew quarters.”

I take the steep stairs too quickly. They're slick with rain, and I tumble down the last few, catching myself on my hands and knees. In the narrow hallway, I call out for them.

Bree appears first, darting from one of the bunk rooms so quickly she has to pull herself to a stop by the jamb of the door.

“You idiot!” She shoves me in the chest with both hands. “Ducking out”—another shove—“and we had no clue where you were”—another—“and I thought . . . I thought . . .” She
slumps against my chest and hugs me around the middle. “Damn, you scared me, Gray. You scared me so much.”

“Sorry.” I fold my arms around her.

Sammy steps into the hallway and Bree straightens, puts a formal distance between us.

“Nice of you to join us,” he says.

“How'd you guys know to get to the boat?” I ask.

“Adam wasn't checking with the hotel owner about chores. A tip came in during the earlier morning hours—from one of Bleak's team—that the Order was in town. Couldn't have been more than five minutes after you left that Adam told us to pack.”

“He thinks they're searching for you and Harvey,” Bree adds. “I knew that Forgery would be nothing but trouble.”

“We're heading for Bone Harbor,” Sammy explains. “There will be no going back to Pine Ridge. Hiding will be impossible, and the Expats probably won't even make a stand against those Order members tossing town. Vik won't want to waste resources or lose supporters to a fight. We need them.”

“For what exactly?”

“We'll have a tough time getting that info from Adam now.”

I eye the crew quarters behind him. Emma stands in the doorway, but no one comes to join her.

“How?” I ask.

“He hung back at the hotel and promised to slow them
down, wanted to give us a head start,” Sammy says. “If we'd known what he had planned . . .”

“He detonated something,” Bree says. “Manually, from the inside, once the Order filed in. There's no way he survived the blast.”

I wonder momentarily if the smoke I saw came from the hotel, not the bookshop. All those times I gave Adam a hard time about not being committed to this fight . . .

“And Charlie? Badger?”

“No word yet,” Sammy responds. “Looks like it's our cozy little team again.”

At a predetermined location on the Gulf, May's trawler meets a second. September waves to us through the rain, a small smile on her lips.

After securing the boats together—a near-impossible task in the choppy conditions—our crew climbs the railings and leaps over to September's ship. She introduces us to Daley, an AmEast fisherman who she claims is one of Badger's best clients. We're cutting across the water again before I have a chance to shout a good-bye to May and Carl, but maybe this is best. Good-byes lately have seemed so permanent. And this isn't good-bye. I hope not, at least. We'll just be walking different roads for a while.

Before we're in sight of shore, September ushers the team
belowdecks. She lifts a panel of flooring in the crew quarters to reveal a hidden storage compartment for smuggled goods. I imagine it's often filled with drinking water, but today, it holds spare fishing gear.

“You expect us to all fit in that matchbox?” Sammy says.

“Course not. Inspection crews know about this compartment. It's standard on a lot of ships.” She hauls out the gear. “You're going below.”

This is when we realize the floor gives way again, to a space no less cramped. We'll fit, but only if we all lie down, shoulder to shoulder, and are shut in like corpses.

“Come on,” September urges. “I don't have time for fits of claustrophobia. I might have a few people in my pocket in Bone Harbor, but I can't escort you in plain sight.”

“Will there be enough air?” Bree asks.

“It's ventilated,” September assures her. “And it's not for too long.”

“But
long
can be so subjective,” Sammy muses.

“Just get in.”

I go first. Bree follows. Then Sammy, Emma, Clipper, and Harvey, until we're lined up like game on a rack.

“Not a sound until I lift this door back up,” September warns. “You have to wait out the inspection, and then for the port to clear. I'll get you when it's safe.”

The panel comes down, trapping us in and leaving us blind.

“I'm in a coffin,” Sammy says. “I've been buried alive.”

“Shut up,” Bree hisses.

The second panel is secured overhead with a muffled thud.

“Could be worse, I suppose. At least I'm sandwiched between two pretty girls.”

Bree elbows him. “Shut your face, Sammy. You're wasting air.”

“It's ventilated,” he mutters, but he falls quiet after that.

We wait for what feels like forever. The rig eventually slows. I feel the ship scraping against a dock, hear the muffled shouts of the crew securing it. Footsteps follow overhead.

“I told you, already,” September says. “We're clean.”

“We'll be the judge of that,” a gruff voice responds. Feet pound nearer, stopping right above us. Another stomp. “Hear that? This model's got a standard storage compartment, no? Garrett! Check this.”

The first panel is ripped away. Gear is riffled through. I have never felt so helpless in my life. Beside me, Bree reaches for the gun at her waist. The space is so tight, she has to draw it with her left hand and awkwardly pass it to her right. She switches off the safety, presses the barrel to
the wood above our noses.

“Just spare rope and netting, sir,” the second inspector—Garrett—says. He sounds young.

“Fine. Close it up.”

The gear is thrown against the board separating our compartment from the dummy one. The top slams shut. A bit of dust floods our space.

And Clipper sneezes.

We all go rigid.

“Damn dust,” Garrett says, sniffling overhead. The floor creaks as he stands. “Well, aren't you gonna say bless you?”

“Kid, you better watch your mouth with me. Get out of here.”

One set of boots leaves.

“This is the second time you've come into port on Daley's rig in the last week. You got a thing for married men?”

“Just like being on the water, sir,” September answers.

A grunt. “I'm watching you.”

He leaves. I breathe a bit easier. But then September leaves, too, the sound of her boots following the footsteps that have already faded.

Confinement like this makes you lose track of time. What feels like hours pass, and we are still in the dark. The compartment seems to grow smaller with each inhale. The walls
are collapsing. The air getting dirty, heavy, thick. Bree is pressed firmly against my right side, wood against my other. My legs are cramping. My back aches.

“I'm regretting those jokes about coffins,” Sammy says. When no one humors him, he adds, “Tough crowd.”

“Sammy,” Bree hisses, “I am miserable and cranky and uncomfortable. Do you really want to piss me off?”

Before he has a chance to answer, we hear footsteps returning. September.
Finally
.

The first panel is removed. The gear yanked up and cleared aside. Then, at long last, our ceiling is lifted away. I'm temporarily blinded. Everything seems large and my depth perception is off. When things make sense, I spot a face above us. Young and wide-eyed and frozen in fear as Bree brings her weapon to his forehead.

“The only reason I haven't pulled this trigger is because it will be loud,” she says. It's then I notice his Order uniform.

“I'm Garrett,” he says frantically. “I work with September.”

“Sure you do.”

“You think I couldn't see the second door? I'm no idiot. And I covered when one of you sneezed. I'm on your side.”

“Where's September?”

“Distracting my boss so I can get you guys into town.”

Bree's eyes narrow. “There are six of us and one of you. Do anything suspicious that might compromise our safety and
it will be your last act.” She lowers her weapon but keeps a finger near the trigger.

“Does she always show gratitude this way?” Garrett asks as he extends a hand to pull me to my feet.

“Pretty much.”

Bree punches me in the arm. My limbs are too cramped to bother fighting back.

IT'S WEIRD TO BE BACK
in Bone Harbor. I never thought I'd see this place again and I'm almost shocked to realize I missed the smell of it—the salt and wet wood and smoking chimneys.

Garrett leads us to a two-story house that looks as dreary as most homes in town. The west side of the building has aged twice as fast as the others. The paint peels from the Gulf's salty mist, and some of the boards are rotting, but inside, the place is dry and warm.

The first floor is shared by Garrett and his older siblings—one brother and one sister—who happen to be the same Expat-friendly citizens September mentioned working with
when she visited us at the bookshop. She and Aiden rent out the upstairs floor.

“Did you want to see the basement?” Garrett asks the group after a round of introductions. “I heard you might need access to a computer while you're here.”

Sammy lifts his shoulder, showing off his backpack. “I'm dropping this gear first.”

“You, then?” Garrett says, nudging my arm. “I want to show you something.”

Clipper offers to take my bag up for me, so I stay with Garrett. The main hallway is fully carpeted, but he grips a corner and strips back the material to reveal a trapdoor. I follow him down a rickety set of stairs and into a basement filled with computers, radio scanners, map-strewn walls, and enough crumpled wads of paper to fill several books.

“Bea's real picky about getting the stories right,” he explains, kicking some of the paper aside. “Says people count on the
Harbinger
and we can't release anything but the finest. It would be irresponsible.”

I eye a bulky contraption in the corner where most of the papers seem to congregate.

“You guys print it right here?”

He nods.

“But you work for the Order.”

“I've had to do things I'm not proud of,” Garrett admits. “I cover for folks as often as I can, but sometimes there's no alternative. If we want eyes on the most precious information, this is the way to do it. I have to be truly inside, and convincing.

“Bea started the
Harbinger
a few years back, before I even began this undercover stuff. She's always been the one with initiative. Our dad worked for the Order in Haven, and she fought with him every damn day because she didn't agree with his values. One day she took me and my brother and hopped a boat south without telling him. Dad'd probably call her a crazy conspiracy theorist if he saw what she was up to now. How she's got me working inspections to pick up stories, Greg listening to radio scanners and hacking into any Order database he can manage. That or beat the living crap out of her. Moral codes aside, it's probably good we ditched him. He wasn't right in the head.”

Bea didn't look much older than September when we were introduced. She's probably been acting as a mother for more than half her life.

“Here.” Garrett flattens out one of the crumpled pieces of paper. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

My face fills the majority of the page.
Alive and Well Despite Order Rumors
, the headline reads.

“It's great, isn't it?”

I say nothing.

“The Order released some horrible photo of you the other day. Slumped against a wall. Stomach bleeding.”

Of course they did. My Forged counterpart may be dead, but the corpse could still serve a purpose.

“You don't look like you took a bullet to the stomach,” Garrett adds.

“That's because I didn't.”

I could tell him about the Forgery, but it's too much—too heavy, too complex, too personal. The image of Blaine, slack and lifeless on the Compound floor, flashes through my mind.

“It's really good to meet you,” Garrett says. “I've been . . . Well, it makes me braver. Each day I have to go down to the docks and search boats, never knowing when I'm going to find something I might want to hide, not sure if I'm going to have to turn someone in. It's easier to face that knowing you're doing the same thing. That you're my age. That you're fighting it all despite the odds.”

“I'm not doing anything, Garrett. Your sister's really good at spinning things to fit her needs.”

He glances at the wrinkled document.

“It's not true, then? That you stole a vaccine from beneath Frank's nose? That you outsmarted his troops in the Western
Territory and then crossed the border despite his best man being on your tail?”

“It's all true, but I didn't do it alone. I had help, and when I didn't, I had luck. I'm just a guy trying to get by. I'm nothing miraculous.”

“People need to believe in miracles.”

“But not lies.”

He crumples the paper in his fist. “You repeat any of that to Bea and I'll punch your damn teeth in. People need this.
She
needs this. And so long as one person is still hopeful, nothing she prints is a lie.”

He pushes the balled article into my chest as he leaves.

Upstairs, it's obvious September is treating her floor of the house as a temporary home. Bare walls. Mismatched chairs around a kitchen table. Little to no furniture beyond the mattresses in the bedrooms, and two sagging couches in the sitting area. Aiden's camped out there now, playing a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with Emma as Rusty dozes at his feet.

“Again!” Aiden bobs a fist up and down, waiting for her to join in another round. He greeted her like a puppy when we arrived, bounding to her, hugging her around the legs. And she let him. Before I could even make eye contact with her, shake my head in a small cringe as if to say,
Don't tell him the
truth
, she had already decided as much.

As I watch them sit on the couch together, her flattening her palm only to have Aiden snip it with his scissor fingers, I feel like I'm watching him play with her Forgery. Some pieces of Emma were in that thing. So many pieces. Especially her way with others, her temperament and caring nature, her desire to set everyone at ease. It's both amazing and profoundly terrifying.

“All right already. You've lost the last five rounds. It's my turn.” Sammy grabs Emma around the middle, hauling her backward on the couch. She laughs. Aiden grins. The game continues. It continues like it never ended. I get a rush in my chest as I realize that it never has to. That if things go right—if we figure out a way to fix everything—moments like this might never have a reason to end.

September steps up behind me. “Stubborn as a cockroach, huh?” For a minute, I think she's talking about people, how they never give up, not even when every last odd seems stacked against them, but then she shakes a thumb at Harvey. He's digging through his bag, Clipper at his side.

“I told him he should eat first, get something in his stomach, but he insisted on heading right to work.”

“You know Harvey. Setting goals and refusing to let up until they're accomplished.”

“Passionate,” she says, bobbing her head.

“Plus a touch of crazy.”

September pulls her disheveled hair loose, smooths it back, and resecures it.

“Hey, thanks for everything earlier—the boat and inspection crew. What did you have to do to distract Garrett's boss?”

“He thinks I have a thing for married men. And he's, well,
married
.”

My eyes widen.

“No, geez, Gray. I kissed the guy, but I didn't sleep with him. I've got my limits. I'm gonna have to wash my mouth out with soap later, though. I swear I can still taste the cigar he'd been smoking.” She waves a thumb at the kitchen. “You hungry? I could go for dinner.”

I feel like I'm always underestimating the women on our team.

After shoveling down some food, I take a shower. I am coated with days-old sweat, salt from my swim in the Gulf yesterday, and grime from the tunnel beneath the bookshop. To wash it all away feels like shedding a layer of skin.

Aiden and Rusty are asleep on the couch when I come out of the bathroom, but otherwise, the top floor is empty. I pull on my hooded shirt and head downstairs, where I find the team
huddled in the sitting room with Garrett and his siblings. September is running some sort of debriefing meeting, but Harvey and Clipper are not in attendance.
Downstairs
, Bree mouths when she catches my eye.

I make my way to the basement. They look like father and son at the computers, both staring intently at the screens.

“Gray!” Clipper says, waving me over. “You won't believe this. It's amazing. It's—” He waves more frantically, and then grabs my wrist and tugs me toward the computer. The screen is filled with line after line of code. A forefinger against the screen, he says, “See?”

“Clip, you know I have no clue what I'm looking at.”

“This is the core program that runs in all Forgeries,” he explains. “It was on the stolen hard drives.” Harvey gives me a queasy sort of smile, like he's moments away from being sick. “He's not feeling too well,” Clipper adds in a hushed voice. “I think showing me all this is conflicting with his . . . internal orders.”

“What's so special about having this code?” I ask.

“It's the building blocks of the Forgery,” Clipper says. “It's what makes them loyal to Frank, what gives them purpose.”

“And we can change it somehow?”

“Sure, we can rewrite this however we want but that doesn't do us any good. It's not like what we do here is
tied to all the Forgeries already in existence. This is just a backup.”

“What's important is this function,” Harvey says, motioning to a section of the code. “I wrote it—well, the original me wrote it—ages ago, when I was working on the earliest versions of the Forgeries. This function is buried within a bunch of other functions, all of which make a Forgery loyal. It's been used in every model since the first.

“During my time at the Compound, as I worked on creating a limitless Forgery, or as the Order's been calling it, an F-GenX, this function always stood out as odd. It was sloppy. Nested in too many conditionals. It seemed almost unnecessary, but I never deleted it. I was worried removing it might break the Forgery's loyalty. And any time I tried to truly understand the function's purpose, the logic surrounding it would get all fuzzy, like I was trying to read the code without my glasses. But after Mozart brought all my memories back, I knew I had to take a second look at it. And this one little function . . .” He taps the screen again. “I know what it means now.”

“It's like how Jackson's mind cleared once he broke,” Clipper says. “Harvey couldn't understand this bit of code because his greater programming was telling him to ignore it, that it was nothing but lazy coding and he shouldn't
overthink things. But now . . .”

“This is a fail-safe,” Harvey says. “Frank didn't want one, but you should
always
have a way to pull the plug, no matter what you're building. I wrote this in secretly, hiding it in the code, and once I started doubting my work for Frank, I was glad I did.”

“And this helps us how?” I ask, staring at the screen.

“The fail-safe function exists in every version of the Forgeries today, and it will run when they hear a certain audible phrase.”

“Like a verbal order?”

“Not exactly. More like a very precise string of sounds,” Harvey says. “Emit them in the right order, for the appropriate duration, and this function will be tripped, and the Forgeries' programming aborted.”

“Which means they break down like you and Jackson?”

“No, when I wrote the fail-safe, it was with the intention of no loose ends, no room for second chances. This function will initiate an endless loop of conflicting orders, to the point that it will fry everything—the Forgeries' programming, their minds. It's sort of like inducing a massive stroke. Their brains will hemorrhage.”

“So Harvey and I were thinking,” Clipper says, “that if we played the right bit of audio somehow—say over the alarm
system in Taem—every Forgery in that city would be disabled.”

Disabled
. That's a nicer word for it.

Is that how Frank justified his massacre of Burg's people when he feared them too volatile to benefit the Laicos Project? And does every Forgery truly deserve to be
disabled
? Jackson once helped us. Harvey is helping us now. Does this solution mean killing—
murdering
—thousands of innocent people?

I picture my own Forgery holding a gun to Blaine's head, and know the hard truth: Unless they malfunction, the Forgeries are the enemy, working against innocent people on Frank's behalf. We can't wait around hoping they cross paths with something that will cause their programming to flicker, not to mention that the Gen5s can't be tripped at all.

“You're sure this will work?” I ask.

“If the right audio is played, it should,” Clipper says. “We've checked the function a couple dozen times.”

“Well, shouldn't we tell the others? This is huge.”

“There's just one problem,” Harvey says. “I can't remember the audio combo. All I know is it's obscure, something random a Forgery wouldn't come across unless we meant to pull the plug.”

“So how do we find it?”

“That brings us to what I do remember: I hid the answer in the code.”

Harvey scrolls through it. I watch for a few minutes, and still the lines don't stop. It might as well be endless.