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“Isaiah’s not coming,” I told her. “Isaiah’s not in charge anymore.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“We left him back at the school, tied to a radiator.”

Becky stopped. “You did what?”

Her eyes were different now; her whole face was different. It was like I was looking at a different person.

Jane had promised they could help Becky. I had to trust them. I had no other choice.

Becky’s eyes were drooping, and I was carrying more of her weight now. “Can’t you hear Isaiah?”

I peered into the forest. “We’re almost there,” I said. I still couldn’t see the town, but it had to be close. She stumbled, and I tightened my grip around her waist.

I’d done this to her.

I’d done it to everyone. Isaiah had been right. He’d told me that I was playing a numbers game—that I didn’t care how many died, as long as I was one of the lucky ones who got out. I’d told him he was wrong. That we would all make it out. That if we left as a group they couldn’t stop us.

More than fifty had tried to escape, but only Becky and I made it. Some had died right there at the fence—I could still see the images of Oakland being shot in the chest, of Gabby lying on the ground in a pool of blood.

And they’d all gone to the fence because I talked them into it.

“Stop,” Becky said, and pulled away from me. “Stop it. Stop.” Her words were slurred, but for a moment her eyes focused on mine.

“We have to—”

She put her hand up. It looked like it took all the effort she could muster. “Listen.”

I could hear my own breathing, steady and low, and hers, rapid and shallow. I almost thought I could hear my own heartbeat, but that had to be in my head.

Her eyes popped open and she pointed, but I heard it now, too. The engine of a four-wheeler, somewhere in the distance, behind us.

“Damn it.” I dropped the tarp and picked Becky up in my arms. She buried her face in my chest as I hurried forward. I didn’t bother trying to hide my tracks. The only thing that could help us was to get as far away from that four-wheeler as possible, to hope that our path was covered by the storm.

The moment Becky lost consciousness was obvious. Her body went limp, one of her arms falling off my shoulder and hanging loosely down.

There was a flash of red up ahead, the faded paint of an old chicken coop.

“We’re almost there,” I whispered.

CHAPTER THREE

I
stopped at the tree line, gasping for air. The town lay before us, silent and still in the rising light.

Jane stood in the doorway of the barn, just where I’d left her. It didn’t look like she’d seen us yet.

The Jane at the school had been pretty, with soft, creamy skin and perfect makeup. This Jane—the real, human Jane—was harder and stronger. If it was possible, she was thinner now, the softness of her arms replaced with the muscle of years of daily manual labor.

She was still beautiful. More so, maybe.

Two more people appeared at the barn door. The first was a stocky guy with a rough goatee and a shaved head. He couldn’t have been much older than me. He was arguing with Jane, gesturing fiercely.

The second, standing quietly beside them, was someone I couldn’t forget. Unlike Jane, Mouse looked exactly like her robot version. Tall, tan, brown hair. Gorgeous and dangerous. She stood quietly with arms folded, ignoring the others and staring out at the forest. The last time I’d seen Mouse she was lying on the ground, her robot chest impaled by a machete.

They didn’t seem to have any kind of uniform here. All three wore jeans and heavy work boots, but Jane had an apron on that fell to her knees and a thin cotton coat. Mouse was bundled in a leather jacket that was too big—her fingers didn’t reach the end of the sleeves. The guy didn’t even have a coat—just a thick long-sleeved shirt.

Mouse reached over and touched the guy’s arm, and then pointed to me.

I took another gulp of air, and jogged out of the trees toward them.

As I approached, Jane put a finger to her lips.

“Let’s get inside.”

I nodded.

Jane’s smile faded as she looked back at Becky. “Is she alive?”

“Yeah.”

Jane walked in front of me, trying to inspect Becky’s bandage while we moved.

“How bad is it?”

“I don’t know. She landed on a broken log, and a branch tore her arm up pretty bad. Lost a lot of blood. And I think it’s infected.”

I expected the guy to help me with Becky, but he didn’t even look at her.

“Are they following you?” he snapped.

“They’re out there,” I said, breathing heavily. “We could hear the four-wheelers. I don’t think they’ve found our trail, or they’d be here already.”

He swore and turned to Mouse. “Get the cows out and see if you can coax them into the woods to mess up the tracks.”

Mouse nodded and jogged back to the barn.

I watched Jane’s face as she fiddled with Becky, taking her pulse and feeling her head. She was acting like a paramedic, but I knew it was mostly an act. The robot Jane had been sixteen—this Jane looked maybe a year or two older. She wasn’t a doctor.

“How long has she been unconscious?” Jane said, looking up at me. Everything about her was different except those eyes—bright, vibrant green. I looked away.

“Just a few minutes,” I said. I felt a tear roll slowly down my cheek. With Becky in my arms, there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t even know what caused it—was it Becky? Jane? Was it that I’d accomplished nothing?

The guy pointed to my arm, his face cold and stern. “Roll up your sleeve.”

I paused for a minute, confused.

“Put her down,” he said, talking to me like I was an idiot.

I didn’t respond. We were in six inches of snow, and Becky was unconscious. I wasn’t going to lay her down.

“Do it,” he said, taking a step toward me.

“Let’s get inside.”

His voice was steady and firm. “Those four-wheelers are coming.”

Jane glanced up at me, and then at the guy. She didn’t say anything.

Carefully I knelt down, wishing I hadn’t left the tarp back in the woods. Jane’s eyes met mine, and she sat in the cold, wet snow, cradling Becky’s head.

When I stood back up, the guy was holding a box cutter. “Roll up your sleeve.”

I nodded. I’d expected this—he was going to cut me just like Jane had done to herself. They needed to make sure that we were real, too, and not some infiltrators from the school.

I tugged at my sweatshirt, pulling it back to my elbow.

His face darkened and he swore.

“Are you stupid?”

“What?”

He grabbed my wrist and shared a look with Jane.

“What?” I asked again.

“The watch,” Jane said, her voice hollow and small.

“You led them right here,” he said angrily.

I stared at the beat-up watch, thinking back to when Becky had clamped it on my wrist the first day I’d arrived.

“I thought they just opened the doors.”

“They track you,” he snapped.

“We don’t know that,” Jane said quietly. She was talking to him, not me. “We’ve always assumed that, but we don’t know it for sure.”

“Of course it tracks you,” he said.

“So cut it off,” I said. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid.

“It’s too late.”

I looked back at him, suddenly hopeful. “Maybe Jane’s right. Maybe it doesn’t track you. We were in the woods all night, but we’re probably only a mile or two from the wall. If they knew where we were they would have found us in minutes.”

He stared at me and then at Jane. It felt like forever. We didn’t have time to argue. Mouse was herding the cows—five of them—past us. The four-wheelers could be here any minute.

I tapped my watch, pleading with him. “We’ll cut them off, and then when they come looking for us you can say that we stopped here and kept going.”

He lit a match on his pants and held it to the blade of the box cutter. “Tell me why we should put our necks on the line for you.”

I stammered for a moment, not sure what to say. I’d just made dozens of others risk their lives, stupidly, and they’d all suffered for it. But if these people didn’t help us, then Becky would die.

I took a breath.

“You’re trapped here,” I said. “Right?”

“Of course.”

“What keeps you here? There’s no fence, no walls. You all have a tracker like this? If you leave the town they’ll chase you?”

The guy ran his hand over his shaved head and looked out into the woods. “Worse. So what?”

“So whatever it is, Becky and I don’t have it,” I said. “Cut off my watch, and I can help you escape.”

“You can help us by leaving, now.”

Mouse rejoined us, a heavy pair of gardening clippers in her hand.

“Here,” she said, taking my wrist.

The guy held my hand steady. Mouse slid one end of the clippers under the metal watchband and then sliced through. It fell silently into the snow at my feet.

She then crouched beside Becky and cut through her necklace gently. Becky never stirred.

I picked up both the tracking devices.

“If you help Becky, I’ll work on finding a way out.”

He didn’t move, just stood his ground. I could understand everything he was feeling—the paranoia, the anger—but I couldn’t back down.

“She’s human,” Jane said, breaking the silence. She’d pulled back the bandage around Becky’s upper arm enough to examine the gaping wound. I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but I knew Jane was inspecting Becky’s bone and muscle.

The guy looked down for a moment, watching Jane, and then finally crouched beside her.

I wanted to say something, but it all sounded too argumentative in my head. I needed their help, so I needed to shut up.

Mouse bent beside him. “Where will we put them?” she said, her voice quiet and nervous.

He stared at Becky’s wound for several seconds, deep in thought. Finally, he stood back up and grabbed my wrist.

“Don’t move,” he said, his face unchanged. He held the box cutter to my forearm, where the bone was closest to the skin. “This is going to hurt.”

Mouse and the guy walked straight down the dirt road, which was visible through the snow only because of the deep ruts now frozen in the mud. Jane and I followed behind, Becky again in my arms. Maybe I was filled with adrenaline, but she felt lighter.

We passed farm buildings, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, and a few sheds before getting into the heart of the complex, where there were five green rectangular wooden buildings that reminded me of too many war movies—they looked like barracks for POWs.

Past them were two squat cement buildings, both of which looked several decades older than the five green ones. The larger of the cement structures had a sign on its plain steel door that read, MAXFIELD COMMISSARY. The other, which had a row of narrow windows running along the top of each wall, read, WASHROOM. Steam was trickling out through a broken pane of glass.

“What’s a commissary?” I whispered.

Jane paused, only for a moment, her eyes darting nervously from door to door. “It’s an old word for
cafeteria
. Everything here is old.”

As she moved in front of me, all I could think of was that night, only weeks ago, when the beaten and broken android of Jane had stumbled away from me and I’d learned the truth about her.

The truth
. The concept seemed impossible now. What was the truth, and how would I ever know? I’d thought she and I had something. And then she was dead. But she wasn’t dead—she’d never existed at all. I’d been friends with a computer program. I’d kissed a machine.

But now she
was
real. I didn’t understand it at all.

The door of the washroom opened, and two girls appeared. They stopped instantly, and one reached for the door frame for support. I knew them both—Shelly and Tapti. Tapti—a Variant, like me—had revealed herself as a robot last night. Shelly was in the Society, and I thought I’d seen her fighting on our side last night.

The girls stared at us, gaping. I didn’t know what to do.

“It’s okay,” the guy said to them, his voice hushed as we walked past. “Keep it quiet. We’ll have a meeting later.”

“Tapti was one of them,” I whispered to Jane once we had moved past the washroom. “Like …” I stammered for a moment.

“Like me,” she said, her eyes on the road.

I nodded, uncomfortable. “But I don’t think Shelly was. She wasn’t fighting against us last night.”

“They went one at a time.” Her voice sounded pained. “As they were needed.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Shelly you knew was a robot. She just hadn’t popped yet.”

The guy shot back an angry look. We were being too loud.

Jane stood closer to me, her voice barely a whisper. “Most of the robots popped at the fence.”

“What’s ‘popped’?”

“It’s when the link between us and the robot is broken, and someone else takes control.”

I nodded slowly. I’d seen it happen—the blank look on Mason’s face when he attacked Becky, and when Carrie shot Oakland. They suddenly weren’t themselves anymore.

In my arms, I could feel Becky’s muscles tense and then relax again. It wasn’t much, but I took it as a promising sign. She wasn’t completely gone.

“Where are we going?” I asked. The road was dipping down into a dense row of trees.

“It’s safer on the other side of the stream,” she said. “Warmer, too.”

I bent my neck, my head touching Becky’s. “We’re almost there,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”

She didn’t respond.

The trees were hiding a small creek, maybe fifteen feet wide, and shallow. There was no bridge, just a ford, and the water wasn’t entirely frozen over.

Jane ran across it easily, hopping from stone to stone like it was second nature. Carrying Becky, I didn’t dare attempt balancing on the slippery rocks, and stepped through the icy water. It was only a few inches deep—just enough to seep into my shoes—but it sent shivers up my legs.

Jane paused at the edge of the trees and I caught up with her. Mouse and the guy were twenty yards ahead of us, continuing up the dirt road.