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I didn’t care. “Do you have a weapon?”

“No.”

I didn’t believe him. One of the other guards was very obviously carrying a baseball bat, and another had a claw hammer hanging from his hand.

“Mason,” I said, “I don’t care about what your dupe did. That wasn’t you. But this is you, and I need help.”

“You don’t get it,” he said, suddenly looking older, tougher, as I looked into his face. “It didn’t work. Sixty people tried and only two made it past the fence. What makes you think you can go another fifty miles by yourself?”

“I’ve killed other robots. It’s not impossible.”

I walked to the outside wall of the fort and looked down at the snow twelve feet below. He followed me. “Becky’s getting better,” I said. “And the deal was, they take care of Becky and I help you escape.”

“You’re not doing this for Becky,” Mason said coldly. “You’re doing it for you.”

I turned back to give him one final look. “You’re not the same Mason I knew back at the school,” I said. “I get that. And I’m not the same Benson. I’ve changed.”

With that, I swung a leg over the low wall, and then jumped down to the frozen ground outside the fort.

Shelly answered the door of her barrack, wearing the same pajamas she’d had on the other night. I pulled down my scarf long enough for her to recognize who I was. She looked surprised to see me.

“Can I come in?” I asked quietly, looking past her at the room of curious faces. “We need to talk—privately.”

She nodded, stepping aside to let me in. She closed the door behind me, and then motioned for the rest of the room to get back to whatever they’d been doing.

“Lily told me something,” I whispered. “And I didn’t believe it until now.”

“That Birdman’s full of crap?”

“Pretty much.”

“I don’t trust you, Benson,” she said, her voice firm.

“I can cut my arm for you.”

She shook her head. “It’s not that. You’re human. You’re courageous. And you’re stupid and impatient.”

I paused, surprised. That wasn’t what I’d expected.

“I think you’re trying to escape,” I said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because you don’t act like you’ve given up.”

“That’s not a lot of evidence.”

“I think it’s true, and I want in,” I said, “but that’s not what I came to see you about. I just need your help.”

She stared at me for a long time. She looked old for her age, tired and strong.

“What?”

“I need a new coat, one that no one will recognize, preferably white. I’d love a ski mask.” I pointed to the woodpile next to the fireplace. “And I want that hatchet.”

She smiled, uncertain.

“I’m not going to murder Birdman.”

Shelly laughed quietly. “Wait here.”

The fort was silent when I got back, but my breath was heaving, and my heart was pounding out of my chest. They checked my arm when I came in—I was almost getting used to that by now—and I jogged to Harvard’s room, pounding on his door. After a moment he answered. His grogginess dissolved instantly when he saw the blood on my coat.

I panted for air. “How long does it take Maxfield to get here when there’s trouble?”

“About twenty minutes,” he said, already pulling on his shoes. “Depends on how mad they are.”

“Then you have about eighteen minutes to dissect Iceman. He’s sitting on the road in front of the fort.”

A grin broke across his face, and he was out of his room in an instant, banging on Birdman’s door but not waiting for an answer before he ran to the heavy fort door and out into the road.

I was exhausted, frozen to the bone. It hadn’t been a hard fight, but I’d spent an hour facedown in the snow, stalking him. When I finally got close enough, it had taken only two hits—one aimed for his neck, and then another flailing, desperate blow that smashed through his metal spine.

He’d never even seen me. It was over too fast for him to turn around.

Maxfield would be here soon. I jogged back to Carrie’s room. She didn’t stir when I entered, or when I slid a chair across the rough wooden floor to the wall. I lifted the cloth drawing, removed the panel, and climbed in.

Becky was asleep, the short lantern wick just barely holding a trickle of flame.

I took off my shoes and pulled my black Steelers sweatshirt back on. It was filthy and crusted from my time in the cement, but it was dry now, and warm.

I lay down next to her. The room was too narrow for me to avoid touching her, not that I wanted to avoid it. I wanted to hug her, and hold her, and tell her what happened.

“Hey, Bense,” she whispered sleepily.

“Hey, Becky.”

I did something, Becky. We’re in danger
. I wanted to say it, but all I did was blow out the lantern.

Lily had to be right. The Greens were the fighters, not Birdman. I needed to find out for sure.

She reached over with her good hand and touched my arm. “How are things?”

“I don’t know.”

A few minutes later the warning bell rang. I heard the outer door creak open and then slam shut and lock. A moment later, the roar of the truck engine filled the night air.

I’d put people in danger. But maybe it would help. Maybe Harvard would learn something.

I’d definitely learned something. I needed Shelly more than I needed Birdman.

I woke in the morning to the sound of voices. They weren’t shouting, or laughing, or yelling. They were just talking. I sat up, but Becky was faster, peeking out the vent toward the courtyard.

“Are they having another meeting?” I asked.

She shrugged and turned back to me. “I don’t see anything.”

I moved to the other vent.

“Oh, Becky …”

CHAPTER TWELVE

B
ecky and I hadn’t made it five steps out of Carrie’s room before Birdman shouted at us.

“Get back inside,” he snapped, striding across the courtyard to me.

“They’re here,” I said, still moving toward the door.

“Dammit, get back in your hole,” he said. “We haven’t checked them yet. Half of ’em could be dupes for all we know. And don’t think Maxfield’s not going to double security after your stunt last night.”

Becky looked at me. We both knew he was right, but from the look on her face I almost thought she couldn’t survive the wait.

“How long will it take?”

He started for the door. “As long as it takes. And I’m sure as hell not bringing them all in here. This fort is secure, and I don’t bring anyone in that I don’t trust.” He shook his head. “Except you, I guess.”

Becky stood in the cold morning air, staring at the gate, hopeful and scared.

She didn’t look guilty—that was all me. I’d led them to their deaths, not her. She was probably thinking more about them now, about how they’d suffered and how she could help them. I was thinking about how I needed to beg for forgiveness.

More people in the fort were spilling out of their rooms now, eager to greet their friends they’d never actually met.

I put my arm around Becky’s waist and pulled her toward me.

“I have to see them,” she said, hardly above a whisper.

“We will,” I said. “We just need to be safe.”

Our eyes locked for several seconds before she nodded and we walked back to Carrie’s room.

Carrie was anxiously brushing her hair, trying to see herself in the broken shard of a mirror she kept on her table. She turned to look at us, nervous and embarrassed.

“You look beautiful,” Becky said, breaking into a smile.

“He’s here,” she said. “I saw him through the window.”

I’d seen Curtis, too, actually walking on his injured leg. Just two days ago they were saying he might lose it, but he was walking without a crutch. There was a noticeable limp, but that was hardly something to complain about. Whatever advanced medicine the school had supplied us with that was healing Becky’s arm must have also saved Curtis’s leg.

“Is this a new shirt?” Becky asked, touching the thin yellow linen that was the cleanest fabric I’d seen since getting here.

“I’ve been saving it. I wanted to look nice.”

Becky turned Carrie around and looked at her. “He’s going to love you.”

Carrie’s face contorted for a moment, like she was going to break down and sob, but she pulled it back and took a deep breath.

“Go get him,” Becky said.

Carrie nodded and left, leaving her coat on the bed.

“Please, Curtis,” Becky whispered. “Don’t freak out.”

I pulled Becky to me and held her tight.

We watched out the window as the disheveled group gathered. Becky had her journal and was quickly scribbling a list of everyone she’d seen. Last we’d heard, sixteen had died at the fence. We knew Hector had been killed back at the school. What we hadn’t been prepared for was how small the group of survivors was.

Thirty-three. When I’d gotten to the school, there were seventy-two. Sure, many of those had turned out to be androids, but that didn’t do much to make me feel better. Seeing the thirty-four of them here, rounded up in a confused circle as the people in the town spoke to them, made my stomach turn. Half the school was gone.

Birdman stood in front of them and talked for a while. More than once I saw him point to his head. He was explaining. No one was freaking out, not like I was expecting. Some were crying, some were hugging each other, but they weren’t scared or enraged—they were tired and defeated.

I could see Carrie standing away from the crowd, shivering in her new short-sleeved shirt. Curtis was staring at her, stony faced.

He thought she’d betrayed him. Her dupe had popped, and the robot Carrie had taken the gun from Curtis and she’d killed Oakland. It wasn’t like me and Jane. Jane had broken my heart and messed with my brain, but I’d known her for only a few short weeks. Carrie and Curtis loved and trusted each other, and maybe this very moment was the first time he realized she wasn’t just a robot—that there was a real Carrie. And Carrie—the real Carrie—was in love with him.

Birdman finished his speech and directed them away from our view, off toward the Greens.

“Twenty Society,” Becky said, setting her journal down. Her voice was pained. “Seven from Havoc. Six from the V’s. That’s all that’s left.”

“A lot of them were dupes,” I said. “I mean, Carrie and Mason and Shelly and all the others.”

Becky sighed and stood up, moving away from the window. “That’s the problem.”

“What?”

“Look at the names,” she said, gesturing to her journal and walking to the door. “Almost all of the dupes were from Havoc and Variants.”

“So what?” If anything, that meant that more of her friends were just who they thought they were.

“
We
had the security contracts—the Society,” she said, staring out at the empty courtyard. “We were running the school, and guarding the walls, and enforcing the rules. And it was all voluntary.” She turned her head, looking at me over her shoulder. “When I found out about the androids, I’d almost hoped …”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

Isaiah had been out there, in the group of tired survivors.

Not that it mattered. Even the dupes got their personality from a human. We couldn’t blame anything we’d done to each other on androids. It was all us. We’d fought and killed each other, and it was all us.

I built a fire in the pit, and Becky and I sat together, a blanket draped around our shoulders. It was snowing again, tiny crystal flakes that weren’t sticking to anything but that seemed to make everything colder and sharper. We were almost the only ones left in the fort—everyone else was out talking to the new arrivals.

With all that was going on, I hadn’t heard anything about the dissection of Iceman. I needed to talk to Harvard when things calmed down.

The heavy door squeaked, and Birdman entered the fort, Mouse and Harvard in tow. Becky was on her feet instantly.

“They’re all clean,” he said, pointing to us. “Come with me.”

He disappeared into his room for a minute and then came back with an armful of old cloth. We all followed him to the meeting room.

“You haven’t been here for a new arrival,” he said. “We have procedures we usually go through. And now we’ve got a ton to process.”

He laid the cloth out on the floor of the meeting room. I recognized some of it as what he’d written on during our last group meeting, but there was a lot more here—drawings and floor plans and lists.

“We keep track of what’s going on in that underground complex,” Birdman said, pointing to what looked like an amazingly detailed floor plan. “Like I was telling you yesterday—one day they’re going to take us out of here, and I want to know what I’m dealing with.”

Harvard peeked out one of the windows, and then turned back to us. “We know you guys want to talk to everyone you knew at the school, and we kind of want to see what they have to say to you. Maybe they’ll tell you something they’re not telling us.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll find out.”

There were six of us seated in the room—me and Becky, Birdman, Harvard, Mouse, and Shelly. She’d been added at the last minute, when the Greens figured out what was going on. Our six chairs faced three empty ones. It looked like an inquisition.

Most of the town was at the windows, trying to peek or listen, but Birdman was fiercely regulating the fort, and no one was allowed in without his permission. The thick curtains were pulled down, and the only light in the room came from the few dim lanterns. The town was on lockdown.

Birdman motioned to the kid at the door. “Bring in the first group.”

I took Becky’s hand, and after a moment she had to make me let go—I didn’t realize how hard I was squeezing.

Isaiah was the first one in. His head was held high, but it was an imitation of the pious confidence he’d always had at the school. There was fear in his eyes.

He took a seat on the bench opposite us and stared straight ahead, a prisoner.

Behind him was Skiver, Oakland’s right-hand man before he was shot. He stopped just inside the door, staring at Mouse. He wasn’t scared—not like Isaiah—but something was going on in his head.