Forged (8 page)

“GO ON, MALDOON,” FORGED ME
urges. “Remind him why he should cooperate.”

Harvey's fingers trail lazily over the tools and the only thought I can form is that this man should be dead. I saw proof of it, a visual projected above Taem the evening I fled back to the Rebels with Bo, Bree, and a Forged version of Emma. Harvey had been strung up like a scarecrow in Taem's public square, the Franconian emblem painted on his chest. His eyes had even been gouged out.

But the man before me has eyes. They are blinking, surveying his options on the medical tray. Maybe I saw it wrong. Or maybe that visual was a fake.

Has Harvey been alive all this time, stuck working for
Frank—a man he hates—because we deserted him?

Harvey selects a scalpel, then switches to a pair of pliers. He pivots toward me, the tool held out.

“Last chance, Gray,” Forged Me says from his chair. “A name. Any name.”

“Harvey?” He lowers the pliers toward my left hand, my pointer finger, the nail itself. My pulse jumps frantically. I start writhing in my seat. “Harvey, you know me, dammit! It's Gray! We worked with Ryder and the Rebels. We're friends. I'm sorry we left you, but we're—” The mouth of the pliers closes down on my nail. “Harvey!”

He looks directly at me, and I realize he doesn't care. There is no compassion on his face, no sympathy, no trace of the scientist I once knew. This is a man fueled by revenge.

He adjusts his grip on the pliers, and I know what's coming.

“Harvey, please! Don't do it. I'm so sorry. I'm so—”

He yanks his arm back and my nail goes with it. I scream, and scream, and in the flashes of red pain shooting before my eyes a memory also resurfaces: a hallway in Union Central. Harvey is ushered into a room by medical staff. His shoulder hangs limp and dislocated. His nose is bloody. They nursed him to health for his execution, just as I'd suspected that very day, but they also did more. I see it now, because the real Harvey—even one left for dead—would never go this
far. Those Order members took what was necessary that day, did whatever they needed to set the wheels in motion, to create the thing in front of me now.

Why would Frank want the rebellious version of Harvey to resume work on the Forgeries when he could have a loyal one instead? Same brains, same skills, but programmed to follow any order. No chance for mishaps. No fleeing or backstabbing or abandoning his post.

This is not Harvey.

It is Harvey, Forged.

He drops my nail in the medical tray. My finger throbs, wet with blood. I can't get my pulse to slow, can't stop choking on my own ragged breaths.

“That was so quick,” Forged Me remarks. “And to think you were having issues with orders in December. Take your time with the next one, Maldoon, and make it a finger.”

Harvey sets the pliers aside and picks up a knife. I'm begging shamelessly now, stammering over the pain, screaming for him to reconsider. This is not the Harvey I knew—gentle, patient,
good
. If he remembers me at all, he's been told what to do and how to think, which pieces of his own past to forget and who to serve. His grip tightens on the handle. My skin breaks from the pressure of the blade, and as the white-hot spark of pain jolts through me, I panic.

“There's a safe house,” I sputter, the place appearing to
me out of nowhere. Harvey pauses, my nailless finger now bleeding in two places.

“Where?” Forged Me asks.

“Near Group A, but west of the border,” I gasp. “I don't know exact coordinates. The woman running it is named Sophia? Sally? She harbors people crossing the borders.”

I've been as vague as possible—even changed her name—but I feel like scum. I deserve the pain, am not worthy of being spared it. Sylvia took our team in when we fled Burg. She saw to my wounded leg, patched up Clipper's arm. She fed us and clothed us—strangers—and I've handed her over like cattle for slaughter.

Forged Me makes a note in his book. “That wasn't so difficult, now was it?”

I am going to rot for all of eternity.

I'm back in the cell.

I have nine nail-bearing fingers, and one naked one. Its bandage is stained with my blood. Light pink near my knuckle where Harvey's blade sliced skin. Black where his pliers did worse.

I still haven't seen Blaine or Emma. I don't know if they're going through similar interrogations. All I have is a less than reassuring statement from Forged Me before he locked me in: He's going easy on me for now, but expects better
results next time I'm questioned.

Nerves threaten to overwhelm me. The little food I'm given tastes like ash because my mouth is so dry. Any water I drink rolls in my stomach, waves on a stormy ocean.

There was a time when I thought I hated the sea. It made me feel trapped. But now I am trapped on an island in the middle of the sea, truly without hope. At least on the
Catherine
there was the illusion of escape, a possibility to flee and reset our course.

I trace the burn scars on my left forearm, thinking of Bree, who traced them first. I hope she's okay. That they're all okay.

The room is completely silent, and it's deafening.

A few hours later, I'm brought back to the interrogation room, only this time for an examination. I'm strapped down to a table, and Harvey inspects me from head to toe, the butt of a pencil tracing the scars on my body before he flips it nimbly in his fingers to record his findings.

As he moves to a puckered scar on my chest that I've had since I was a kid, I'm hit with a crushing realization. Harvey—not Emma—is probably the reason Crevice Valley was compromised. A Forgery retains all memories of their source; it's the programming that forces them to ignore certain details. Frank would want Harvey to forget
why
he
helped the Rebels, but not
where
he helped us from. But then why did it take so long for the bombs to drop?

My Forgery's earlier comment echoes in my mind:
And to think you were having issues with orders in December
.

Frank didn't pluck Harvey from one world and insert his Forgery into another. He re-created Harvey, put him back to work doing the same tasks, and hoped the programming was strong enough to sort out the rest. Maybe Harvey's life now is so similar—the labs, the code, the research—that it took him weeks to settle into his Forged skin. He might have even fought giving up Headquarters, or at the very least, his memories could have been so rattled that the location was temporarily clouded. It would explain why the Forged spies sent after our team in December were still trying to get Headquarters' location.

If Harvey had trouble adjusting to his Forged state, maybe his mind-set can be shifted again. Jackson helped us, after all. Climbing the Wall into Burg had been too personal, too closely tied to his childhood in Dextern, and it caused something in his programming to flicker. But Emma's Forgery was a Gen5, and she joined our group the same night Harvey left it. If he was created in the following days, it's likely he's a five as well.

Any hope I was clinging to disintegrates.

Harvey makes a note of my chest scar, then moves to inspect the burn scars on my left forearm.

“What's this for?” I ask.

“A security measure. So that when we're done with you, ours will match.”

“You'll mark the Forgery? Reproduce every scar?”

Harvey's pencil scratches over paper.

“And then what? Send him back in my place? Why would I give you
any
information now that I know this?”

“You gave me a name to save a finger,” he says quietly. “Imagine what I'll get in exchange for your brother's life.”

I pull at the restraints over my wrists, my ankles. I could claw his eyes out for that threat.

“This will be easier if you don't struggle,” he says, but I go right on thrashing, creating as much of a disturbance as possible.

Harvey sighs and moves away from the table. A moment later music engulfs the room—sweeping chords and crying strings. The melody is layered and complex, so rich I feel it in my bones. I've heard music like this before, when Harvey was still Harvey.
Mozart
, he called it. A composer he'd always been fond of. Frank had outlawed such art in AmEast, but Harvey was granted the privilege of listening because it helped him focus while working on the Forgeries.
Old habits, old ways, now both alive in his Forgery.

When he reenters my vision, his arms are extended, swaying like tree limbs in a breeze. The butt of the pencil arches as the music swells and lulls. His wrists elegantly mirror each motion. If it were the real Harvey, this dance would be something beautiful, but knowing those hands put a blade to my finger changes everything. You can't unsee a truth. Not even if you want to.

The song ends and a new one surges to life. Not just any piece, but the same music we used to stage a diversion in Union Central. Clipper helped Harvey select it.

“Do you remember what you said when we met?”

Harvey raises an eyebrow, bored.

“You told me you hoped joining the Rebels was a step in the right direction. You said you hoped that someone like
me
, a victim of the Laicos Project, might be thankful for at least some of your work.

“Well, I'm not thankful for this. This is so opposite what the real you would want. The real you was willing to die so that I could live. The real you
hated
the work he did for Frank and he spent the last days of his life trying to undo the damage.”

“The Harvey you remember was a criminal and a traitor.” He says this like he's reciting it from a book. “And it doesn't
matter what I wanted in the past. I know what I want now.”

He's still conducting the music, an eerie smile on his lips as the notes build to the finale.

“I hope Clipper never sees you like this,” I say. “That kid loved you, and this would kill him.”

“Clipper?” He drops his arms to his sides and backs away from me, head shaking. He trips over a chair and ends up on the floor. The music continues to swell around us, and now Harvey's cringing at the staccato beats, flinching as though the horns and strings are causing him physical pain. He scrambles to his feet, rushes to turn off the music. As the room is thrown into silence he gasps like it's his first breath of air in ages.

His gaze drifts back to me, wide and fearful. For the briefest moment I think he heard me, that something about the music or my mention of Clipper resonated. But then his eyes narrow.

“You,” he says, looking like he wants to slit my throat. “We'll finish this later.”

I'm brought back to my cell because Harvey has other work to do, or so the guard says. Tomorrow I'll be questioned again.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
.

I'm only focused on today, the first Wednesday of March,
and how it's nearly over. Today shouldn't end without them arriving, because that was the plan: two days early, disguised as the Order inspection team, with key cards from September and uniforms made by Mercy.

But the hours pass.

The day ends.

And they don't come.

MY BREAKFAST ARRIVES BEARING A
gift. It is unintentional, I'm sure. Someone very foolish didn't think of the sort of damage that can be done with something so small.

I pull the toothpick out of the fruit and hide it in the palm of my hand. I need the wood dry, sharp. I eat my breakfast with my fingers.

When a guard finally comes for me, I have to fight the urge to spring into action. Unless I somehow manage to get my hands on his gun, I'm doomed, and my arms are still bound. The odds wouldn't be good. I've never been a patient person, but I force myself to cooperate, letting the guard blindfold me and drag me into the hall.

Once again, I lose myself in the turns. We go up two flights
of stairs. More dizzying direction changes. I'm handed off to my Forged counterpart. I know it's him because our gaits match perfectly.

When the blindfold is ripped off, I find myself back in Harvey's interrogation room. The tools are laid out, waiting beside my chair, but no one else is present.

“Are you doing the honors today?”

“Harvey is preoccupied.”

The toothpick feels like even more of a blessing now. I'm not sure what it says about me when I know my own Forgery will be more ruthless than any other interrogator.

He moves me toward the seat, and as he reaches to adjust one of the straps that will soon tether me in place, I twist. Thrusting with both hands, I aim for his throat. He barely gets a hand up in time, and the toothpick lodges in the web between his thumb and forefinger. He yells with surprise, staggers. In that flash of his panic, I grab the nearest tool from the tray—a wooden mallet—and swing. He tries to dodge the blow but isn't quick enough. The wood connects with the side of his head, and the light winks out of his eyes.

My chest is pounding, but my hands are steady as they work. I grab a knife from the tray, and with the blade pointing toward my stomach, saw through my bindings. Then, when my hands are free, I strip the Forgery of his uniform.
It fits perfectly, and soon I look like an Order member, and him, like me.

I struggle with his limp body but manage to strap him into the chair. I doubt this room is free of cameras, which means someone, somewhere, is probably watching. I can only hope they missed our fight, that when they next look at the feeds, they assume my Forgery stepped out and left me in the chair.

I momentarily consider killing him but know a dead body will look too suspicious. The Forgery was trying to get answers from me, not kill me, and I need to buy myself as much time as possible.

I toss the mallet on the tray and wrap the blindfold around the blade of the knife before tucking it into my waistband. Then I dart into the hall.

Two Order guards stand a little ways ahead, one of whom may have even been my escort earlier. They each have a handgun at the hip and an Order-issued rifle in arm, the barrels resting against their shoulders. I walk confidently. They nod as I pass by, assuming I'm my Forgery.

I pick up my pace after rounding a corner. The window for escape is shrinking even as I walk down this hallway, and I need to find stairs. The shipment center—the docks—was below the Compound itself. If I locate it, I might be able to hop a boat, flee back onto the Gulf, but only after finding
Blaine and Emma. If they're being held anywhere near my cell . . .

Two flights down.

With luck, I find a stairwell. There's another armed guard stationed here, and I slow my gait, try to appear as calm as possible as I pass by. I descend two levels. The door on the landing won't open until I fish a card from the pocket of the Order uniform and swipe it for entry.

The room I step into is massive. Pillars support the ceiling at various intervals and the only light source comes from row upon row of what look like glass coffins. They sit on waist-high tables that extend as far as I can see, their contents filled with teal liquid, murky like pond water. It's the liquid, I realize, that's glowing just slightly, casting a halo of green-blue light around each unit.

Two flights. This should be the holding cells. Or at least a hallway leading to them. The levels between my cell and the interrogation room are the only detail I'm sure about.

A wave of panic hits me. The Compound is large and probably has multiple stairwells. Just because I counted two flights between my cell and the interrogation room does not mean that all stairwells will bring me between the two.

I consider backtracking, but worry the stairwell guard might be suspicious. Maybe I can go through this room, find
another set of stairs. Maybe the cells are even waiting just beyond this room.

Too many maybes. I'm going to get caught.

I push the thoughts aside and move forward just as lights along the lab's ceiling begin pulsing. A silent alarm. Someone found Forged Me or I was seen fleeing. Regardless, it isn't good.

I spot a glass box mounted on the wall, holding an Order rifle. I throw my elbow into the case and the pane shatters. I've held this model only once before, when I was tasked with executing Harvey in Taem. In the end, I didn't pull the trigger—Bree made sure of that—but the shape of the weapon feels startlingly familiar in my hands now.

Clutching it, I skirt up the nearest row of glass coffins. Tubes run in and out of each, connecting to equipment below the table. I catch a shadow of something in the murky liquid to my right and can't help but pause. I bend at the waist, peer closer. There's something behind the glass, small and pale. It vaguely reminds me of a stillborn calf I once saw birthed in Claysoot.

I twist and examine the coffin behind me. The shape in this one is much larger. I lean until my nose is against the glass and almost cry out in shock. There is a body suspended in the murky liquid, the nub of his nose pointing toward the
surface. He looks dead. Sallow skin is pulled tight over his frame. Fingers are no more than bones. I can see every last one of his ribs. It's like he's decaying, but somehow I know it's the opposite. He's growing. He's being born.

They all are.

I'm in a lab. I'm in a lab in a production facility.

I thought the Forgeries came from Taem, and at one point, they must have. Maybe some of them still do. But the Compound is producing them in far larger numbers, shipping them out from the docks somewhere beneath my feet.

In the bottom right corner of the tank, a display reads
Subject #C317, 21 days
. I twist and check the first tank I peered into.
Subject #C317, 5 days
. I tear up the aisle.
C317
,
C317
. Over and over. Every single Forgery in this row has the same origin.

And right then I know that Harvey has accomplished what Frank always wanted: a Forgery that can be created again and again, off any previous version of itself. The original subject no longer matters. Frank is no longer limited to one Forgery from every human. He has his limitless model now, and he's growing his army. An army that can have a new soldier in roughly one month's time, given the tank I've paused next to. Inside is a boy with my build, his skin smooth and youthful, his muscles clenched even in sleep. His display reads twenty-nine days.

Snippets of the conversations I overheard when first stepping off the boat flash through my mind. Shipments to Radix and Haven and Taem. Others still heading to Lode. Domed cities. Frank is manning them with Forgeries.

But for what? What is he planning?

I hear footsteps at the far end of the lab. I'm about halfway up the aisle with nowhere to run. Stupid curiosity. I shouldn't have stopped to examine the tanks. Shouldn't have stopped for anything but Blaine and Emma.

The footsteps grow louder. Harvey steps into view at the end of the aisle. He sees me and his face goes blank.

I pull the rifle up, the butt against my shoulder, the sight trained. “Freeze right there!” I say. “Point out the way to the holding cells. Then get down on your stomach and let me pass!”

The silent alarm cuts out without warning, throwing the room back into an odd state of glowing, iridescent blue. It's harder to see now. It feels vaguely like twilight—depth is difficult to discern—and everything seems suddenly familiar. Harvey at the end of my narrowed line of vision. My finger on the trigger. A palpable tension in the air.

I'm going to have to shoot him.

I need to do what Bree prevented that day in Taem.

“You couldn't just wait,” he says, glaring.

Wait for what? To be tortured, inspected for scars?

“I had a plan,” he says, “and you're ruining everything. I could have—” Harvey flinches, bringing the heel of his palm to his temple. A half dozen armed Order members spill into the aisle behind him. I turn to flee, but my Forgery is already there, thrusting an arm out. He's holding something small and compact. My body seizes up. There's a burning sting—everywhere and relentless—and then the sensation of falling.