Forged (9 page)

I'M IN A NEW ROOM
, with a panel of glass separating me from my Forgery. I'm only vaguely aware of the guards behind me because I can't take my eyes off Blaine and Emma. They are sitting on wooden stools, each bound and blindfolded. I pound on the glass, yell Blaine's name. They both flinch at my voice.

“Do you think this is a game, Gray?” my Forgery asks. I can hear him as clearly as if he were in the room with me. I reach for the knife I tucked into my waistband only to find it gone.

Forged Me draws his gun and motions between Blaine and Emma. “Pick one. Who lives?”

“What?”

“You seem to think there aren't consequences for your actions—for attacking me, for threatening Harvey's life, for trying to
escape
. Not the case, and I want to make that crystal clear.” He jerks the gun again between Blaine and Emma again. “So choose.”

There's a dull throb in my side from where he shocked me earlier, and while I've heard his words, I can't seem to process them.
Choose
?

“I'll select for you then.” He takes a step toward Blaine.

“No! Wait!” I slam a palm into the glass. I hate him, this version of myself, this horrible thing I can't believe is somehow built from
me
. I hate myself even more for what I have to say. Because there is no choice. I knew the answer the moment he first made the threat. I feel a tear trail down my cheek.

“I'm so sorry, Emma,” I whisper.

I can see the shock on her face even though her eyes are covered by the blindfold. Her entire body tenses.

I hate myself.

“Okay then,” Forged Me says. “The girl goes.”

But he doesn't move toward Emma. He turns on Blaine, puts the weapon to the back of my brother's head, and pulls the trigger.

The stool kicks out from beneath him and I'm screaming before Blaine even hits the floor. My fists are against the
barrier, banging, punching, willing the glass to shatter. But there is so much blood beneath his head. It's done. It's done and no matter how many times I blink, it's not changing.

“This was a reminder,” Forged Me says. “You cross me, and I cross you. But if you work with me, Gray—if you are honest—I'll be sure to keep my word. Here: an example.” He turns the gun on Emma. “Tell me what the man named Badger was planning, and I'll spare her.”

I can't find my voice. I see the gun and the threat but I can't find my voice, can't stop staring at Blaine. And I certainly can't bear to look at Emma. Emma who I just handed over like she meant nothing.

“Three . . . two . . .”

“We wanted to know what the Compound was,” I manage. The words come out hoarse and ragged from how much I've screamed. “I saw everything we were after downstairs.”

Forged Me looks pleased. “Good, good. This is progress. And when is your team coming?”

“Gage would have killed them by now, and if not, they should have been here yesterday.”

He lowers his weapon. “That was perfect, Gray. You see how this works? You give me what I want, and I don't have to shoot anybody. Remember that. It will make tomorrow's session go much smoother.” He holsters his weapon and hauls Emma to her feet. “Take him back to his cell, Maldoon.”

Harvey waits for them to leave. Then, rather than dragging me out, he opens a door that connects the two rooms.

“It'll be your only chance,” he says, “if you want to say good-bye.”

I step through the doorway in a trance. Blaine's just lying there and already the sobs are clawing their way up my throat. My hands are shaking, my legs unsteady. I sink to my knees beside my brother.

“I'm so sorry,” I manage. “I love you and I'm sorry. I didn't mean it—what I said in Pine Ridge. I never mean half the things I say and I just—” I pull him to my chest. “I don't know why this happened,” I choke out. “We put each other first. Always. And that's what I did. I put you first and now . . . and now . . .”

My throat's grown too tight and thin, my breathing completely erratic. I rock with Blaine in my arms and cry into his hair and keep mumbling his name over and over like he might hear me and wake up. Like he's just dreaming. Like I saw it all wrong.

Harvey steps into the room and says it's time to go. I tell him I'll go when I'm ready. He insists, and that's when I lose it. I bolt up, shove him. When he advances again, I grab a wooden stool by the lip of the seat, holding the legs out to fend him off. As Harvey backs away, I notice the blood. Blaine's blood. Coating my hands. Staining the front of my shirt. Splattered
against the stool's wood grain from when . . .

I throw the stool at the glass window. It bounces off like a toy. I pick it up and try again. And again. And again. But the window won't break.

Still, I keep trying.

Even when it's pointless.

Even though I'm powerless.

Even though Blaine won't come back no matter how much I scream.

I give up eventually. Throat ragged, lungs heaving, I glance toward the doorway. Harvey is still standing with the guards, surveying me like I'm a rabid animal that needs to be put down.

They take me back to my cell.

Harvey slips something into my hand: a scrap of paper, folded so it's no larger than the pad of my thumb.

“For tomorrow,” he whispers.

I slump to the floor, my head against the wall and my arms around my middle like I'm holding in my organs. Maybe I am. Maybe if I move I'll fall apart and never come back together.

I feel small and helpless and scared and alone.

Like a child.

Like a little boy.

Blaine saved me when I was nine.

It was late fall and we were at the lake so he could practice setting snares for rabbits. Xavier Piltess had spent most of the summer teaching him how to hunt, and because I still believed I was a year younger than Blaine, I could only daydream about joining the lessons the following year. The bellflowers that usually carpeted the tall grass beyond the lake had transformed into brittle spokes with the changing temperatures. No purple petals remained. No green flushed their stalks. They were dirt brown and crunchy, like the leaves littering the forest floor.

“This is boring, Blaine. I wanna shoot your bow.” It was lying behind him, the quiver stocked.

“You can catch things without wasting an arrow, you know,” he said. “And it's important to practice both.”

“Xavier said you can reuse arrows if your shot's good enough.”

“When did you hear that?”

“When you guys came back yesterday. Xavier said not to worry about that shot you took that broke the shaft. Said when you get better you won't waste an arrow or an ounce of meat, that's how good you'll be.”

Blaine kept his eyes on his work, trying to cover his embarrassment with a stern look.

“You're a nosy rat,” he said.

“You're a boring slug.”

“At least I know how to set a snare.”

“I'll know next year, when Xavier teaches me.” I toed Blaine's quiver, watching the arrows rock with the motion. “I hate waiting. It's not fair that you get to do everything first. I'm just as big as you.” It was true. In size, we were shoulder to shoulder.

“Not in years. And stay away from my arrows.”

I nudged them harder and the quiver spiraled away from me, spilling its contents as it rolled down the hillside.

“Hey!” Blaine jumped to his feet. “Pick those up.”

“I'm not old enough to touch them, remember?”

Blaine folded his arms over his chest like he was our ma. “Gray, pick them up and quit acting like a baby.”

“I hate you,” I shouted. “You think you know everything.” I kicked over the snare he'd been working on for good measure and fled. He chased me.

I didn't hold my lead long. Somewhere between the lake and the village, beneath the canopy of shedding trees, Blaine was practically breathing down my neck. He didn't have to pick the path—around a thicket, over rocks, beneath low-hanging branches—only follow me. I hopped a fallen tree, but having judged it poorly, my back leg caught on the trunk and sent me tumbling. I hit earth hard. The wind went out of my lungs and I felt a terrible
heat in my chest, not far below my collarbone.

I coughed and gulped for air, but none came. My shirt grew damp. Blood, I realized.

“Gray!” Blaine crouched down beside me. “Oh,” he said, taking in the wound, one hand on my shoulder. “Um . . . it's . . .”

The air had finally returned to my lungs and I risked a look at what was stinging my chest. I'd landed on an angry branch still attached to the tree trunk. Not just landed on, but impaled myself. I kicked my feet, trying to stand, and the pain reared through me. The branch was like a fishing hook, holding me against my will.

“Easy, Gray,” Blaine said, like I was livestock he could tame with enough patience. “Easy.”

I think with anyone else it would have been impossible to relax in that moment, but something about the way Blaine was looking at me told me he was going to make everything fine, that the worry was a weight I could pass to him. He would carry it for us both.

I looked up at the trees' limbs, bony fingers scraping a white sky, and tried to steady my breathing. Blaine sawed me free of the branch with his pocketknife. Then he pulled one of my arms around his neck and together we staggered out of the woods and into town, a small spike of wood still wedged in my chest.

Blaine took me directly to the Clinic. Carter ushered us in with anxious eyes but steady hands, and not much later I was bandaged and well, being told the branch hadn't been long enough to puncture my lung, but it had drawn plenty of blood. There would be a scar. And a tender recovery period.

“Why'd you help me like that?” I asked Blaine. He was beside me on an empty bed, our reclined positions mirrored. “Right after I said I hated you?”

“Because you didn't mean it.”

“How'd you know?”

He sat up. Even back then Blaine was good at big brother looks. “If it had been flipped—me saying it to you—what would you have thought?”

I understood, but still felt like I had to make it obvious and undeniable. What if I'd been hurt worse? What if my lung
had
been hit and this conversation never happened?

“I don't hate you at all,” I insisted. “Not the tiniest bit. Even if you
are
boring sometimes.”

“Rat,” he teased.

“Slug!”

And then we went back and forth, tossing every insult we could imagine at each other until we were shooed home and Ma became our audience instead of Carter.

As I bang my head against the cell wall, tears still streaming down my cheeks, it's this memory that haunts me. The
puckered scar on my chest, and how Blaine saw me to the Clinic, and the indisputable truth that I could never truly hate him. I love him. I love him with the deepest parts of myself, and I'm horrified—ashamed—by my final words to him.

Screw you
, I said in Pine Ridge.

I wish I could make it right. I wish I'd had the chance to speak the truth, even if he already knew it.

I don't sleep, but I cry.

Even after I am empty of tears, the ache remains, overwhelming and endless, like my bones are built of grief.

SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, I
unfold the paper from Harvey. Like it matters. Like there's anything he could possibly say that will make things better.

Using the sliver of light seeping beneath my door, I can barely make out a list of names. I recognize two. Christie, the woman who swiped us through to the vaccine when we stole it months ago, and Sammy's father, who forged water ration cards in Taem.

There's a note from Harvey at the bottom:
All already deceased, so you can give them up without consequence. Destroy once read
.

Leaning against the door, I wonder if I should trust him.
We'll finish this later
, he said yesterday. I thought he meant
my examination, but after his words to me in the production lab, the pain that registered on his face as though his thoughts were conflicting with his programmed orders . . . Was my mention of Clipper, paired with the music the boy had helped Harvey select, enough to jolt his senses?

I don't understand how it's possible. Not unless . . .

The Forged version of Emma could have been one of the first fives. Perhaps the
only
five at the time she joined our group. A test, a trial. Frank wouldn't have wanted to risk something going wrong with Harvey. Ironic in hindsight, because it's the fours that are flawed. If Harvey is an F-Gen4, he could be like Jackson—changing his motives, fighting his orders. Malfunctioning.

I clench the paper in my hand. I'm positive two of the people are safe to disclose. If Harvey
hasn't
cracked, if he
isn't
trying to help me, why would he give me even one name that might help me avoid torture?

I study the list until I've committed it to memory. Then I fold the paper back up and swallow it like a pill.

Harvey acts as though nothing has changed overnight. I'm back in his interrogation lab, strapped down to the chair, the tool tray waiting. It is only when Forged Me enters that there is any indication of new loyalties. Harvey grows very interested in double-checking my restraints. I hope for the
both of us that he doesn't give something away.

Forged Me flips a switch and the mirrored wall flickers to life. Glass that only reflected the room during my previous visits is now alive with video of the entire Compound. I can make out the glowing aisles of the production lab, the busy docks of the shipment center. In another feed, Order members sit at workstations in a control room, punching buttons, jabbering into headsets, and examining surveillance feeds. No wonder I was caught so easily when I tried to escape.

“Looking sharp, Gray,” he says, eying the Order uniform I'm still wearing from when I switched our outfits yesterday. He hasn't bothered to change either. It's a reminder, probably. A way to pull the image of Blaine's murder before my eyes without saying a word.

“A new day of questioning,” he continues. “Today you will cooperate, or everything Harvey does to you”—he walks to the glass wall and taps a feed that shows Emma slouched in her cell—“will also be done to
her
. Understood?”

I can't look at him. If I do, I'll break down or start cursing him, and I don't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that I'm in pain. And broken. And hate him with every fiber of my being.

He moves back to his chair and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt—my old shirt, one an Expat lent me when I first arrived in Pike. His left forearm is still without burn
scars, and the fact that he hasn't been marked to match me yet is the only thing that keeps me sane. Otherwise, I feel like I'm staring at myself. It's like I held the very gun that killed Blaine.

“Let's start with the
Harbinger
,” he says. “Where is it being printed?”

“I honestly don't know.”

“And I honestly don't believe you. Maldoon?” He motions for Harvey, who selects a knife.

Even with the knowledge that what's done to me will be done to Emma, I wait until the blade is resting against my pinky—a threat of removal—before I give in. I want the moment I fold to look convincing.

“Wait,” I gasp out. “I can't help with the paper, I swear it, but there's a Rebel spy in Taem who works for the Order. Christie something. She helped me get the vaccine in the fall.”

“We already know about her,” Forged Me answers. “And she's been dead for months. Cut his finger off, Maldoon.”

The blade slices skin. My heart rate jumps.

“Flynn! Nathan Flynn. He forges water ration cards for Taem citizens. I heard some Rebels talking about him once.”

“Dead, too. Executed years ago.” He squints at me. “You know where his son is?”

“I didn't know he had a son.”

“Samuel, according to our records.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Then none of this is useful to me.” He motions for Harvey to continue and I realize that these names might not help me at all. Harvey's eyes look heavy behind his glasses. Even if his loyalties have changed, he has to continue in order to not raise suspicions. The knife again touches my pinky. He
will
cut off my finger if he has to.

I give another name. Forged Me says it's already known, so I give another. Again worthless.

“Are you toying with me?” he says, jumping from his seat and pushing Harvey aside. “Every single one of these names is old news. Give me something I don't know. Supporters in Bone Harbor. You say you don't know
where
the paper's printed, but what about
who
? Who's running it?”

“You asked for names and I'm giving them. I can't help that I don't have the exact ones you want.”

He grabs the chair beneath the armrests and heaves upward. I flip back, and when my head strikes the ground my jaw clamps shut on my tongue. I taste blood.

The Forgery leans down so his nose is inches from mine, our eyes locked. Before he can speak whatever threat is surely waiting on his tongue, there is a knock on the lab
door. The Forgery steps away and I'm left staring at the ceiling, my limbs still bound to the chair. I hear the door open.

“Isn't it obvious I'm busy?”

“You'll want to see this, sir,” someone says. “Inspection team's here a few hours early and they found something down on dock 1B. A tracking device attached to the
Embassy
.”

“Of course there's a tracking device,” Forged Me snarls. “Tell them not to bother me unless—”

“Not one of our tracking devices, sir. Something else. Foreign. Slapped on to the hull like a hack job.”

“Have Tambe see to it. He's above me.”

“He's already down there, sir. And he asked for you specifically.”

There's a groan from the Forgery, and then: “Maldoon! See if you can get anything useful out of him. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

The door clicks shut and Harvey rights my chair but doesn't free me from the restraining belts. He walks out of view and then Mozart is sweeping through the room.

“So anyone listening won't overhear,” he whispers as the melody builds.

“Who's listening?”

“Someone is always listening.” He points at the mirrored wall. I catch Forged Me darting down a stairwell in one of the feeds. In another, a large rig is surrounded by frenzied
workers. Dock 1B, I imagine.

“The image in the top row, two from the left, is just outside this room,” Harvey explains. In it, I can see two Order members standing guard in the hall. “I'm going to go on acting like I'm interrogating you—give a good yell every few minutes—but watch that screen. If you see someone approaching, let me know.”

He pulls out the pliers and goes for one of my nails. Acting is easy. It's impossible to not flinch after what happened last time we were in this scenario. The pressure is far less intense when he pinches the pliers shut though. He doesn't pull back, but his hand seems to shake like he wants to.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “About the interrogation and your brother and . . .” Harvey swallows. “I gave Frank Headquarters' coordinates, Gray. I had trouble remembering certain details when I woke up, so he had me go straight to work on the Forgeries. Code, genetics—that was second nature. But when Crevice Valley's location finally surfaced in late January, I gladly revealed it. I thought the Rebels were the enemy. I was actually angry when Frank said he was waiting for the right moment to act. And now all those families and kids—Did anyone survive?”

“I'm not sure.”

Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose like a headache's coming on.

“You truly want to help me now?” I ask. “After yesterday I thought—”

“Yesterday,”
he says, “changed everything. What you said about my work and how I hoped a victim of the Laicos Project might one day be thankful for it . . . I vaguely remembered saying that. Felt like it was years ago, but I knew the words were mine once you repeated them, even if some voice in the back of my head was telling me to ignore you. Then you mentioned Clipper.”

He gives a pretend tug at my fingernail. I fake a scream.

“That boy is the closest thing I have to a son, and when you said his name, I could feel my chest cracking. Mozart was playing, filling the room with these glorious notes and it was like a spike of truth had drilled through my skull. Suddenly I remembered that the piece playing was the same exact piece Clipper helped me select in Crevice Valley prior to our mission, the piece Bree was going to use to stage the diversion. All our plans came surging back, all my work for the Rebels, the reason I joined them—it woke me up, Gray. I remember now, and I am so, so sorry.”

And he looks it. There is pain written in the shape of his brows, regret in the creases surrounding his eyes.

“I want to help you,” Harvey says, cringing through the words. “And do right by Clipper. That thought is like a spear
between my eyes, but pain I can deal with. My goal was always to undo the work I started, to right wrongs. I bailed on Frank once, and I can do it again.” He coughs, and takes a deep breath before continuing. “Whatever the real Harvey did, I can do, too.”

“If you're thinking like the real Harvey, then you
are
the real Harvey,” I tell him. Almost exactly what I said to Jackson once, as we sat in a dark, musty boiler room beneath Burg and struck an alliance.

Harvey manages a smile and it makes him look years younger.

“You said you had a plan?”

“An
idea
. . . a way to possibly stop the Forgeries.”

“What about me and Emma? Is there even the slightest chance that we can get off this island?”

One side of Harvey's mouth pulls into a grimace. “I don't know. There's a guard at nearly every stairwell, usually a few more per hall. Doorways to the docks open only to key cards or wrist implants, and then there's the security booth that lets boats in and out of the channel itself.”

“What about the limitless Forgeries? You made them, right?” His grimace intensifies. “Maybe we can sneak out with a shipment.”

“It's a thought,” he says, cringing as he considers it. When
the pain seems to ebb a little, he adds, “Most shipments are heading to the capital and the other domed cities. A few are even going to exposed towns. Their numbers will increase the Order's presence tenfold, help silence people with wavering loyalties. In the end, I think Frank will march the Forgeries on AmWest. He's tiring of the Expats' antics, and he'll soon have the numbers to overwhelm them. And when he runs low, he can always build more. Because of this facility. Because of me.”

I shake my head, trying to make sense of
why
. What is Frank really after? I remember a story September and Sammy told around a fire in December—about Frank's goal of avenging his family, whom he lost to AmWest bullets. Is this still about revenge? Somehow, it feels bigger.

A video feed on the mirrored wall cuts out unexpectedly, its picture replaced by static. I grab Harvey's arm, and he turns, following my gaze. The Order members in the control room continue to go about their work, not yet aware of the lost signal, but as we glance through the other visuals, we spot movement adjacent to the dead feed.

An Order member walks briskly through a hallway, a gun in hand. Two guards at the far end of the hall see him and nod in greeting, but the approaching Order member doesn't slow or acknowledge his comrades. He takes aim and shoots them dead. The shots are soundless on our end—just a
flash,
flash
at the end of the barrel—and then the shooter looks up, aiming directly into the camera, and fires.

The picture goes dead, but not before I see her face.

Her
.

Because it's not an Order member.

It's Bree.