Dualed (10 page)

One street blurs into another, one block into the next, until I’m no longer sure where I am. I could be anywhere, nowhere, it doesn’t matter. Bright hazel eyes and hair the color of butter are all I see, mixed up with endless pavement and houses with blank faces. Only exhaustion has me stopping, and I collapse onto a curb and just sit there, gasping. I lean over and throw up whatever’s in my stomach.

I don’t know how long I sit there. Only when the streetlamps flicker to life do I realize how late it’s getting. The sky is an ashy gray, the arched lip of the border’s iron barrier curving along its horizon. Plumes of smoke from Jethro’s factories rise in multiple columns. Below it all, houses sit quietly, falling farther into shadowed recesses. Branches sway in the wind. Driveways wait to be swept.

It’s a nondescript neighborhood, forgettable. And I can’t help but think of the first completion I ever saw. It took place in a setting just like this. Designed to fade into the background, as if to make sure the players remained vivid in my memory.

“West, wake up!” A hand shook my leg beneath my blanket, and I kicked it away. Way too early to get up.

“C’mon, we gotta go,” Luc hissed into my ear, “before Mom and Dad wake up.”

I opened my eyes, suddenly wide awake. A sick blend of anticipation and anxiety already had my stomach in knots. I’d seen portions of completions before, but never one from start to finish.

Through the pink-hued gray light of dawn, I could make out Ehm’s quiet form in the bed next to me.

I looked at Luc more closely. “Why are you dressed?” I whispered loudly. “Why are you even awake? Aave said you had to stay here.”

He shrugged. “Ehm’s still sleeping,” he pointed out. “She won’t even notice we’re gone. Besides, it’s not like I’ve never seen one before.”

True. Luc went through this at nine, two years ago, when our father took him to see his first. Now it was my turn since I was nearly old enough to qualify, and Aave had decided he was old enough to take me himself.

I swung my legs off the bed, already in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. I’d slept in my clothes, knowing we had to be as quiet as possible. My parents wouldn’t have wanted us to go on our own, and if we’d thought it through and really considered the danger of PKs, we might not have wanted to go, either. But as idles, we still had our childish sense of immortality. Nothing could hurt us except our Alts, and that wasn’t going to happen that day.

“Fine, but don’t lose it if Aave still says no,” I said to Luc as we crept down the stairs.

“He won’t,” Luc argued. “And who knows when we’ll see another one the whole way through, right? One we know about ahead of time.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun, Luc,” I muttered, shoving my feet into my sneakers.

Even in the half light, I could see him rolling his eyes at me. “You know what I mean, West. Jeez.”

I did, but I still felt bad for not being overly sad when an Alt died. It was hard to feel that way when the Alts were strangers. All of it was real without being
real
, if that makes sense. And since neither of my brothers had gotten their assignments yet, each completion they saw was only like adding on another layer of armor, another technique they could remember.

We slipped out the back door, as silent as thieves in the early-morning gloom. The way we would one day hide and move in the dark as actives with assignments.

Aave was already waiting outside. And Chord, too. Not a surprise. Chord was actually good friends with both my brothers, and tolerated me and Ehm well enough, but being the same age as Luc—and sharing the same geeky obsession for all things remotely electronic and tech related—Chord mostly hung out with Luc. The fact that he lived just down the block didn’t hurt, either.

Chord pushed the hood of my sweatshirt off my head. My uncombed hair became an even bigger nest. “Good morning, princess.” He drove a knuckle into the top of my head with a grin.
I swatted at him and made a face. Made a show of smoothing down my hair. “What are you doing here, Chord? Don’t you ever go home?”

“I did. I’m back.”

“Yay, lucky us.” But I didn’t mind too much. Chord was all right … most of the time.

Aave was frowning. At thirteen he was still a kid, but sometimes he came across as so much older. “Luc, you’re supposed to be watching Ehm.”

“C’mon, Aave, she’s sleeping,” Luc complained. “And I want to go. Besides, you’re letting Chord go.”

“
Someone’s
got to watch Ehm. And I asked Chord to come because I was worried, in case West has a meltdown or something—”

“Hey.” I elbowed Aave in the side.

“—and I’m stuck trying to get her home by myself.”

“I’m not a baby, Aave!”

“Ehm’s not going to be up for hours,” Luc said.
“C’mon …”

Aave narrowed his eyes at him, then sighed. “Fine. But I’m not taking the blame if we get caught leaving her alone, though.”

Luc snickered. “Not like you would have been able to stop me, anyway.”

Aave ignored him and turned to look at me. His dark brown eyes were very serious. “You ready, West?”

I nodded, tried to ignore the nervousness in my stomach. “I think so.”

“Let’s get moving, then.” His longer legs had him pulling slightly ahead, so I fell into step with Luc and Chord instead.

“I guess your aunt doesn’t know you’re here?” I asked Chord.

He shook his head. “No way, she’d kill me if she found out.”

“I guess Taje wasn’t ready …,” I began. Not that Taje wasn’t ready to see a completion—at eight, he would have been fine—but he might not have been ready to hang out yet. His and Chord’s parents had died just that past spring, and Taje was having a hard time of it. A part of his mind kept him trapped in that car, imagining what it must have been like to have it spin out of control, over the divider, into traffic coming the other way.

“Not yet,” Chord replied after a few seconds. We shared a look. “Soon, I think.”

Luc kicked a green bin back to the curb. The loud scrape of it made me shiver, and I glanced around furtively, feeling guilty for some reason. Whatever it was—the slow-lifting light, the chilled and damp air—it suddenly seemed like the most morbid of treasure hunts, the group of us hunting in the still mostly dreaming streets of Jethro that morning.

Luc must have seen me shiver. “Don’t tell me you’re getting scared, West,” he teased. “I’ll let you stand behind me.”

“I’m not scared,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Chord asked.

“Well, it’s just …” I stuffed my hands into my front pockets, tried to think how best to put it. “When there’s a completion, do you think of it more as an Alt having to die or an Alt getting to live?”

“I don’t get it,” Luc said, shrugging. “It’s the same thing.”

“But it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is. One makes it, one doesn’t. That’s it.”

“You mean how there’s two different ways of looking at it,” Chord said. “Glass half full, right?”

I reached up to grab a low branch from a maple tree. Shook it so dying red, orange, and yellow leaves rained down on us. “Yeah, I guess. But I can’t decide if one’s more right than the other.”

“Maybe it’s something in between,” Luc said. He yawned. “I don’t know. This is hurting my brain. It’s way too early to have to think so hard.”

Chord reached over, plucked a leaf from my hair. Crunched it up so bits of it fell back onto me. “Maybe we’re just supposed to try our best, whatever that is,” he said, “and hope whatever happens is meant to happen.”

I waved him away and pulled my hood back on. “I think Luc’s right. It’s too early.”

Luc huddled farther into his jacket. “Whatever. All I know is I’m freezing my butt off out here.”

Just then, an outer ward train blasted by us, blowing my hood right back off and stirring Luc’s and Chord’s dark hair. The sudden rush of air had me blinking rapidly and taking notice of how far we’d actually walked.

We were there.

Aave was already at the train stop. Bolted to one side of the metal frame arching over the long bench was a worn plate:
REMEMBER ALL ACTIVE ALTS ARE EXPECTED TO ENGAGE AND COMPLETE ASSIGNMENTS IN A DISCREET, RESPECTFUL, AND RESPONSIBLE MANNER THANK YOU THE BOARD
.

The three of us stepped up to stand next to Aave.

“Is Hoult sure?” Chord asked him. “About the time and everything?”

I’d heard the name before. Hoult was a classmate of Aave’s—had been, anyway, before he’d gotten his assignment a few weeks earlier.

Aave nodded. “He’s been tracking him. Says his Alt takes the outer ward train at this time each weekend, switching between Saturday and Sunday. He wasn’t here yesterday, so it’s gotta be today.”

They kept their voices low because we weren’t alone at the stop. Even on a Sunday there was a morning train rush for the early shifts.

A man in a suit with a briefcase and a cell pressed to his ear.

A woman in a server uniform.

Another woman dressed in a lab coat and carrying a duffel bag.

“Why would his Alt keep taking the same train at the same time if he has an assignment?” Luc asked Aave. “No one’s that stupid. He’s got to know Hoult’s out here somewhere, looking for him.”

“Hoult says his Alt’s got the IQ of a june bug. He’s already fallen behind two years. Him switching between Saturdays and Sundays
is
his idea of not being stupid.”

Luc shook his head. “Wow, Hoult really lucked out, didn’t he?”

“All right,” Aave said, “so it sounds like we’re good to go.” He looked over at me. “Don’t forget, West. It’s about what to do, but also what
not
to do, got it?”

“Got it.” I stood next to Luc and Chord as we all pretended
to be waiting for the train, there alongside the man and the two women.

Within minutes, Aave was saying quietly between his teeth, “Okay, there he is.”

From the far end of the street, a tall teenaged boy approached. He was thick in the waist, with light brown hair the color of milk chocolate, glasses, jeans, a gray jacket, and a book in his hands. He was actually reading it as he walked. His mouth moved along with the words.

“Whoa,” Aave said in disbelief. “What an idiot. He deserves it. This is going to be a cakewalk for Hoult.”

I looked over at Chord, who looked over at me, and we both looked over at Luc. He stared back at us, and what Aave said echoed in our heads. I knew we were all thinking the same thing. If there was only room for either him or Hoult, the weaker had to go.

The Alt kept reading as he walked, not looking up even once to see if Hoult could be nearby.

I felt sick. To know that he was about to die, that it made sense for him to die and not Hoult. Sick because he still looked very much like a little kid, too wrapped up in the world he held in his hands to remember the dangers of this one, the real one, the only one that mattered in the end.

Watch what to do, what
not
to do
.

A movement on the other side of the street, directly opposite where Hoult’s Alt stood on the sidewalk, caught my attention. A rumbling in the bushes, a shaking of evergreen leaves and spindly brown branches.

Hoult burst out, hair wild, eyes wilder. I’d never seen him before in my life, but I knew it was Hoult because his face was exactly the same as his Alt’s. He even wore glasses, though the frames were thinner. And Hoult’s thickness had a different kind of density, bulky muscle rather than lumpy fat. Proof of how environment and habits could make you veer just slightly off course from your Alt. Hoult exercised regularly; his Alt didn’t.

Hoult was holding a gun. Small and efficient, nearly swallowed up by his hand.

My breath was caught in my throat, trapped like a bug in a cupped fist, wings vibrating in dread.

One of the ladies on the bench, the server, uttered a short squawk of surprise. Immediately covering her mouth as dismay crossed her face. She dropped to a half crouch. FDFO.

That
got Hoult’s Alt’s attention. He glanced up from his book and toward the train stop, his mouth hanging open, a blank expression on his face. I watched his lips start to form a word, though I couldn’t actually hear him from where I was standing.

Wha—

Hoult fired. The sound of the gun was bright and loud. It made me think of smoke and fire.

At thirty feet, most active Alts with even the minimal amount of training probably had a good chance of at least nicking their target. Hoult had no more than twenty to cover. And he had trained.

His Alt fell, a punctured balloon. His book flew through
the air, pages fluttering in the wind. His glasses shattered into shiny shards that sprinkled on the pavement. His head cracked like a dropped pumpkin.

I watched, breath finally coming, but shallowly, making me light-headed, as Hoult crouched over his Alt’s body. Double-checked for death before leaping away, finally safe, finally a complete.

“Let’s go,” Aave said firmly. “Before clearing gets out here.”

Luc looked at him. “Don’t you want to go congratulate him or something?”

Aave shook his head. Flicked a glance in my direction. “No, not right now. I’ll see him soon enough.”