Dualed (2 page)

I frown at him. “Are you serious? You don’t think I’m capable of defending myself? You know I’m nearly as accurate with a blade as you are.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You still need to practice. Your aim sucks.”

“Hey, it doesn’t suck
all
the time, but fine, I’ll let you have
that. As long as you admit I’m good with a gun.” Better than good, even. Excellent.

A quick grin flashes across Luc’s face. “You always were a fast learner. But it’s not about that. I’m talking about the fact that having someone in your corner isn’t a sign of weakness, okay? So if you need him, you’ll ask. And you won’t shut yourself off from everyone, like I think you’ll want to do.” He’s thinking about Ehm’s and Aave’s deaths and how distance was what I sought out first.

“I don’t do that,” I lie.

“You do, West,” he says. Not unkindly. “C’mon.”

“I guess I can promise I won’t
not
tell him.”

He lifts an eyebrow at me, then laughs, shaking his head. “I guess that’ll have to do.”

The mention of Chord makes me realize he should be here by now.

“Where
is
he, anyway?” I ask Luc. “I know he was stopping by his place first but he’s not usually this …”

The expression on Luc’s face as he stares past me to the door leaves my words hanging. Only a handful of other times have I seen Luc look this way, a terrifying blend of shock and despair. And I know instantly that Chord is right behind me. The room seems to have shifted, the weight of what Chord now carries throwing everything off balance.

He’s gotten his assignment.

I slowly turn to face him.

Tall and lanky with just enough muscle so that he’s perfectly filled out. His face is all angles and planes, without a
trace left of the softness he had a few years ago. Thick hair almost as dark as mine, a mix of his heritage of black and white and everything in between.

One look in his eyes and I’ve never been more devastated to know I’m right. Dark brown and shot through with bits of amber, just as they were when we parted mere hours ago. But now they’re also the eyes of an Alt gone active, no longer an idle. Encoded on each pupil is a black spiral of tiny numbers. The sequence seems random, but their significance is huge—they are Chord’s assignment number. And somewhere else in the city, within the heavily guarded borders of Kersh, his Alt has the exact same sequence encoded on his eyes. Eyes that are the same as Chord’s, set in a face that’s the same, on a body that’s the same.

“Sorry I’m late.” Chord drags out a chair and sits down at the table next to me. He’s also still dressed in his blacks from my father’s funeral, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his pants as he leans back. His face is dark, already hunted. “I got … held up for a few minutes.”

“No.” The word bursts through the air so fast I don’t realize at first that it came from me. “Not yet.”

“No way,” Luc says, his words harsh with disbelief. “Taje just—how could they—”

“The Board can’t worry about that,” Chord says. His voice is flat. “It’s not a factor.”

Taje was Chord’s little brother. He died a couple of months ago, an incomplete at the age of thirteen. And Chord’s right. The Board’s system of activating assignments doesn’t take into
account their timeline within a family. The three of us right here are proof of that—Chord with Taje, me and Luc with Aave and Ehm. Names, ghosts, incompletes.

Bren is back with our food, and Chord only shakes his head when she asks him if he wants to order. As though sensing the tension surrounding the three of us, she’s just as quick to leave this time as the last.

“Can I see it, Chord?” I ask him as soon as we’re alone again.

He passes his cell to me without a word. I push my plate toward him as I tap open his assignment notice. The thought of eating has become impossible. My heart is racing too fast, the room closing in on me, bearing down so I can’t breathe.

The details I bring up on the screen are eerily familiar—except it’s Chord’s name and address and assignment number this time, not those of my siblings. Dread uncoils in my gut and spreads outward as I scroll and read, rereading what’s most vital.

The Board’s logo is at the bottom: the profiles of two identical teenagers facing each other, their features carefully left androgynous, ambiguous, open to being anyone. Each eye is a black spiral.

Thirty-one days for Chord to kill his Alt before his Alt kills him. If neither one completes by the expiration date, they’re both dead, the genetic timer in their shared embedded Alt code triggering it to self-detonate.

Chord’s Alt’s current address at the bottom. The PO—Point of Origin—is the one piece of information the Board freely gives to an Alt upon activation of an assignment. Just enough to get things started and still ensure there will be a decisive contest. Of course, Chord’s Alt has the same information about him.

I scan his assignment again, taking it all in. Such simple sounds and letters strung together to create such life-altering news.

Time is our only advantage.

It’s a hard stat that can’t be ignored. The majority of fresh actives’ responses are neither fight nor flight but freeze. Despite all the training, the initial combination of shock and fear still immobilizes people. Everyone secretly hopes they won’t get their assignment until a month before their twentieth birthday, the last possible day to receive it—and sometimes they hope so hard they come to believe it can’t be otherwise.

No guarantee Chord’s Alt isn’t one to break the mold, but odds are that he’s sitting in his living room right now, assignment in hand, mind blown into inaction.

I pass the cell to Luc and turn to Chord. “Fireton’s the boundary street that runs along the border, out on the east side of the ward,” I say to him in a rush. “It wouldn’t take us that long to get there, especially if we leave right now.”

Chord exhales, swears. “Give me a minute, West. I’m still thinking about what to do.”

I can feel my cheeks get hot. “You’re
thinking
? Are you kidding me?”

His face is tight, closed off. “I’m right in the middle of packing up Taje’s things. I was going to put them in storage; though for what, I have no clue. School admin needs all these documents signed and returned. I still have to talk to the parents of these friends of his, the ones who …” His voice trailing off, he turns the full force of his eyes on me. The numbers printed in their depths are jarring, alien, something I’ll never get used to. But now I also notice the bags under his eyes, how pale he is, the way his cheekbones are sharper than they’ve ever been. “I’m wiped, West, okay?”

I swallow my anger and try to inject some give in my voice, when all I want to do is grab him by the hand and start running. “You know you can’t just sit and wait for him. We’ve got to move.”

“Not ‘we,’ West. Whatever I end up doing, you’re staying out of it.”

“And you’re still in the clothes you wore to my father’s funeral, Chord,” I say to him pointedly. “No way you’re leaving us behind so we go crazy with worrying.” For a second, Luc’s words about not pushing Chord away ring in my head. I made a half-assed promise, and now here I am, begging Chord to not push
me
away.

For a long second, he looks elsewhere, watching without seeing the other people in the restaurant. Most of them are over twenty and complete, the safe ones who aren’t counting down the days, hours, minutes, wondering if their next bite will be their last.

“What if I told you a part of me just wants to go home, finish what I need to get done, and hope that fate’s on my side when he gets there?” Chord says. His words are soft bullets of defeat, somehow more unsettling than hard anger or fear would have been.

“You’d be as good as incomplete then, wouldn’t you?” I snap. “
This
is what you need to get done. What’s the matter with you, Chord?”

“I’m just thinking that we don’t always win.”

“We don’t always lose, either. And I’m not letting you give up.”

“When
do
you give up, then?” His face is a stark, hard mask, turning him into someone else. “When your entire family’s been killed? Is that when it’ll finally get too hard for you, West? When Luc is gone, and you’re all by yourself? Because I’m already there.”

I draw back from his hopelessness, wincing. I haven’t forgotten his parents’ death in a car accident—but it was so long ago, when he wasn’t more than a little kid, that I can’t remember it being any other way. Since then, guardianship for him and his brother has been a revolving door of other relatives. Up until Chord turned fifteen, at least. At that age, he was finally allowed to take care of Taje himself.

“It gets easier, Chord,” Luc says quietly, giving him back his cell. “About Taje, I mean.”

Chord shuts his eyes. When he opens them again, my heart twists to see the memory there. “It was my fault,” he says listlessly. “I should have known that school admin would never ask Taje to come back because he left something behind. You
know how strict they are about not having assignments completed on school grounds. I should have known his Alt was behind it.”

“It’s not your—” Luc starts.

“Did I tell you his Alt killed two of his friends?” Chord continues, his guilt too loud to ignore. “They stepped in front of Taje, and his Alt cut them down like they were nothing. He didn’t even care about racking up two Peripheral Kills, as long as he completed. It almost makes Taje seem responsible just for being his Alt, if that makes sense.”

I nod. It does make sense. Fair or not, Alts are seen as a reflection of each other. It’s our shared physical appearance, even if beneath the skin we’re not entirely the same. Because if we share the genes that make our eyes the same color, our faces the same shape, our bodies the same type, then who knows how far the overlap goes? However different we are, the Board has meshed together both identities so tightly that it’s impossible to see where one ends and the other begins.

“You have to know it doesn’t change what we think of Taje,” Luc says.

“It’s not you guys,” Chord says, his voice dull. “It’s just … I don’t know. I’m seventeen. I only had three years left for my assignment to happen, anyway. I knew it was coming. This is what we’ve been taught to expect. All the training in school, everything we’re ever told, just for this one month.” He shakes his head. Looks up at us with a bleak expression. “So why don’t I care more?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” I say, struggling to keep my voice from breaking. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.
I can’t believe we’re still in this stupid restaurant, when we should be on the road, racing toward his Alt. “Feeling guilty about Taje isn’t going to change anything. And I think he’d be embarrassed that his big brother is copping out.”

Chord’s eyes flash at me. They’ve darkened with some nameless emotion, nearly black now, and it’s a relief to not be able to see the numbers so easily. That they’re almost normal reminds me that, assignment or no assignment, this is the same Chord I’ve known nearly my whole life—someone with a personality all his own, an identity that goes beyond being classified as just another active.

“West.” Luc rubs his hand over his face. “West, just shut up.”

“No, I won’t. Someone has to wake him up. Or he’s dead. Simple as that.”

“West—”

“It’s okay, Luc, let her finish.” Chord’s watching me so intently that something flexes in my chest, sharp, almost achy. “Whatever she says can’t be worse than what I’ve already told myself.”

“I know it’s how the filtration system plays out,” I say to him, trying to ignore that startling sensation, the unsettling fact of who’s causing it. “That the stronger—better—Alt is supposed to win in the end. To be the one worthy of taking up space in Kersh and going all soldier out there in the Surround if it’s ever needed. But if you don’t even give him a good fight, then it’s already over. And no way am I letting you go out like that. That’s not who you are.”

His eyes narrow, and he leans forward, getting closer to me. “And who is it you think I am, West Grayer?”

“Someone who’s not supposed to die yet,” I say, scowling at him.

A flicker of a smile on his lips. Not quite his own, but nearly. “If this is your way of telling me you’d miss me, I’ll take it.”

There’s the sense of a weight being lifted—not a lot, but a bit—and I know Chord has turned some dark corner that exists only in his head. “All that to hear me say I’ll miss you?” I push his foot with mine. “You could have just asked.”

Now he’s grinning for real, and the sight is almost enough to obliterate the panic running through me. Almost.

Luc’s voice breaks the silence. “If you two are done, let’s go.”

Chord picks up his cell and gets to his feet. “You guys, you shouldn’t come with me. Not after what just happened with your dad.”

“You need a ride,” Luc says mildly, making sure to leave enough cash on the table to cover the bill before standing. “Faster to get to the other side of Jethro than taking an inner ward train.”

Chord looks from me to Luc. “You guys are coming no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Luc says. His grim determination is almost disguised by the lightness of his words. He would never let Chord go out there on his own. Chord is as much his brother as Aave was.

“Can’t you guys walk and talk at the same time?” I call back to them, already on my way out the door of the restaurant.

It’s impossible to miss what’s happening across the street. The last stage of an assignment is nothing new, but I pause
just the same. Surrounding the dead Alt for site cleanup are members of Jethro Ward’s clearing crew. They work in sync, their movements a symphony just as the completion was, flagging the body with a red claim tag, the gun a white. Both will eventually be collected by family, once the Board signs off on the updates to the Alt log.