Dualed (3 page)

Luc and Chord come up behind me, and the three of us stand there for another moment, not needing to speak because we know we’re all thinking the same thing. The death of an Alt only reminds us that we’re still alive … for now. But when our turn comes—

I grab Chord’s arm. “Let’s go.”

We’re parked around the corner. It’s Aave’s beater, the one he somehow found time to work on between school, training, and helping our father fix machines out at the plants. Luc took over working on the car after Aave’s death, spurred on by a kind of mad grief to finish what his big brother couldn’t. Now that it’s up and running, he takes care of it like nothing else.

We tear our way out of the Grid and through the streets of Jethro Ward, going against our instincts as we make our way closer to the border. The top edge of the gigantic electrified iron barrier that separates Kersh from the Surround looms high in the sky, a curving ridge of teeth. Pulsing red dots light up the city’s night landscape, shrinking and blurring as they peter out into the distance. Strewn throughout the city, they mark the tops of gigantic silver pylons crisscrossed with power lines, the tips of the spinning arms of wind turbines, the edges of broadly sweeping solar panels. They’re the veins and nerves
that keep this whole place alive. Without them, all of Kersh’s four wards—Jethro, Gaslight, Calden, and Leyton—would be cold and dark.

Even without the readings from Chord’s cell’s shadowing system, we can tell we’re nearly there. Jethro is the city’s designated industrial zone. It’s filled with long, concrete factories, but out here along the eastern fringe of the ward, right where it butts up against the barrier that holds back the Surround, aging factories pump out as much exhaust as they do metal, plastic, and glass. Ugly warehouses built from rusted sheet metal fill the spaces in between, before eventually thinning out to crooked, jagged lots of run-down housing.

All around I can feel the sting of poverty, the ache of wanting more, the danger of the restlessness running throughout. The next time I get antsy in the Grid, the heart of Jethro Ward, I should come back here. The Grid’s crowds that suffocate with the constant need to keep pushing, to keep moving, are nothing compared to this kind of life.

“Talk about depressing,” Luc says from behind the wheel. He turns to Chord. “Just think—it could have been you out here.”

Chord says nothing. I’m sure the thought has already crossed his mind. It has probably crossed the minds of everyone who lives within Kersh’s borders.

When the universal cold vaccine had the nasty side effect of irreversible infertility, it was the Board who managed to keep the human race alive through a system of constant and carefully controlled biological intervention. But human nature has
a way of disintegrating no matter how many chances it’s given, and the world fell into war. An offshoot of the Board broke off, claimed the upper West Coast of North America as its own, and turned its back on everyone else. It called the massive gated city Kersh, the last war-free zone in the world.

The price of living here is high, though. In exchange for relative safety within, we have to be prepared for danger from without. The threat that the war in the Surround will break through to us is constant, always simmering just beneath the surface. So we’re bred to be soldiers. Overcoming a city of killers would not be an easy task.

Since the city is closed off to the rest of the world, limiting space and resources, only the best of us are wanted. The Board, in their genius, created Alts, manipulating genes so two identical children are born to two sets of parents. Each couple is tasked with the duty of raising the best killer, the best survivor. Because when their child’s assignment kicks in—which happens anytime between the ages of ten and twenty—both active Alts must hunt each other down until only one remains. It’s the ultimate survival-of-the-fittest test, allowing only those capable of killing to go on to become adults in Kersh.

All for peace. Fighting ourselves in here, so we don’t have to fight the world out there.

Suddenly a flame lights the night sky, turning everything bright crimson for one glorious, suspended instant, before dying away. The echo of it sizzles and hisses, lasting a heartbeat longer. Even inside the car with the windows rolled up, I swear I can taste smoke on my tongue.

“It always looks so nice, don’t you think?” I search the darkness for any last lingering light, oddly uneasy to see it go. “When the Surround sets off test flares?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Luc says. “Until you remember what they’re used for over there.”

Signals of distress.

Another flare bursts to life before burning out. The deception of its beauty is nearly cruel.

Chord’s cell dings. He glances at the screen before putting the cell in his pocket. “Right at the end of the block, Luc,” he says, sounding as tense as I feel.

“Which house?” Luc asks.

“The corner one, left.”

I sit up in my seat as Luc pulls over to the far curb and cuts the engine. After the sound of the flares, the quiet is almost too loud.

The house is no different from any of the others around it: gravel patch for a driveway, peeling roof shingles, sagging porch. Though some of the streetlamps are burnt out, I can still see the dingy stains of black factory exhaust streaking the cheap stucco walls. Grim fingerprints, a signature of the way people keep afloat out here.

The air has my nerves tingling. I don’t like it. Sometimes such hunger and desperation sparks an even stronger kind of internal drive, one that goes beyond any kind of training. Having little more than a basic ability to handle weapons isn’t going to be a problem when something deeper helps you aim your gun, swing your blade, use your fists. Completing means finally being able to grasp what the Board holds just out of reach:
higher education, better-paying jobs, permission to marry and have a family.

I’m strung so tightly I feel like I’m about to snap. Luc and Chord are the same, shoulders stiff with clenched muscle. We’re wired on a heightened mix of fear and anticipation. Is this what every assignment feels like? That last second before jumping off a ledge to somewhere unknown?

In the shadowed darkness, Chord utters a short command. “Time.” His watch beeps out the answer.

23:00
.

“Think he’s already sleeping?” he asks.

Luc is staring at the house. “There’s no lights in the windows. At least, not through the blinds.”

Chord frowns, thinking. “We don’t know who else is in there with him.”

“Nope. No idea. But he’s pretty much you, isn’t he? Seventeen, living at home with his family, a student—well, not as of today, I guess. But even if he’s decided to co-op somewhere, those jobs usually start in the morning. And chances are good he hasn’t gotten around to arranging somewhere else to crash yet.”

“If he’s not alone in there …” Chord doesn’t need to finish. He’s thinking about Taje’s friends, the ones who got caught in the crossfire.

“There’s nothing you can do about that,” Luc says. His voice reveals nothing, but the memory of our mother circles. She was a PK, too, in the wrong place at the wrong time last fall, hit by a stray bullet at the grocery store. I push the image of her body away. Her being dead can’t keep Chord from doing what he needs to do.

Clutching the back of Chord’s seat and aiming for a calm I don’t feel, I say, “If he’s not alone, then he’s not alone.”

“One-story house, three bedrooms at the most,” Luc says, running it down. “Window in the front is the living room, the smaller one next to that probably the kitchen or dining room.” He cranes his head to see. “And the one at the side is frosted.”

“The bathroom,” I say. Like all houses in Kersh, the windows are plain glass, not the bulletproof type businesses are allowed to install to prevent damage during a completion.

“We’ll go around back to where his bedroom must be,” Luc says. “We might luck out and find an open window. Otherwise, it’s the back door.” He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Like we agreed, you stay here. As soon as you see us, start the car.”

I can feel my face go stiff. “Actually, we didn’t agree. You guys decided.”

“Same thing.”

“You don’t need me to be ready to take off. It’s not like anyone’s going to chase you guys down afterward for an RK. The Board would never let that slide.”

Revenge Kills became so rampant a few decades ago that the Board had to step in. RKs undermine the reason for assignments and the filtration system as a whole, and for an Alt to win only to be mowed down later is seen as a huge waste. Alts who complete their assignments are stronger, smarter, and more skilled—they’re supposed to stay alive, just as the weaker, dumber, and less skilled are supposed to die. If someone pulls an RK today, the Board sends a harsh message by shutting all doors: no chance of job advancement, no marriage, no kids. So not much chance that Chord’s Alt’s family or friends would
seek revenge, but I will argue whatever I can to make Luc and Chord let me help.

“West, you’re not coming in, and that’s it,” Luc says, brushing me off. “Besides, I only have one gun.”

“Even one gun’s too many,” I protest. Assist Kills—accidental or not—are punished just the same as RKs. There are EKs, too, the rarest of all unnatural completions. Early Kills are when two Alts happen to meet as idles, before their assignments, and one or the other decides to go for completion. Enough of these happening at the same time and Kersh wouldn’t be much different than the Surround, so punishment for AKs, RKs, and EKs is swift.

“You know you can’t use a gun,” I say.

Luc lifts one eyebrow. “Neither can you.”

“Then give it to Chord. It’s too risky for you to have it.”

“You think I should give the gun to Chord? He’s the worst shot in Kersh.” Luc looks at Chord.

“Thanks, bud,” Chord says.

Luc shrugs, grins. “Sorry, but you know you’re way better with a blade.” He glances at me in the rearview mirror again. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. It can’t hurt to have the gun with me, even if I only end up using it to scare someone else off.”

“So I’m the getaway driver.” I hate how I sound. Sulky, childish, whining. But I don’t want to be useless. Haven’t I already been useless enough, with so many people I care about dying?

“Yeah, exactly.” Luc swings the car door open. Takes off his watch and passes it back to me. “Here. So you don’t have to keep checking your cell.”

“You don’t need a driver!” I hiss at his back, tossing the watch up onto the dash. “I’m not even supposed to be driving.”

“It’s never stopped you before, when I didn’t say anything about you sneaking out for a joyride and Mom and Dad didn’t happen to notice.”

“What if I said I’m starting to feel bad about breaking the law?”

Luc exhales, and I know he’s itching to strangle me. “West, listen. I don’t want you in there because I don’t want you getting hurt, okay? We can’t be worrying about you the whole time.”

“How very macho, Luc,” I mutter.

“Fine. Then you’ll just get in the way. How’s that for a good reason?”

“I can take care of myself.” Why can’t he see that just sitting here, waiting for him and Chord to come out alive, is going to drive me insane?

“I know you can. Stay here.” With that, Luc steps out of the car and into the night, leaving me to swear at the back of his head.

Chord turns and gives me a smile. It barely reaches his eyes, his mind already racing ahead, already inside the house.

“Don’t be so pissed off that you leave without us, okay?” he says. “It’s a long walk home from here.”

My frustration is nothing in the face of Chord’s fear, and soon enough my own dread is back, making my heart thud.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting, then,” I say evenly. It’s like holding on to a ledge and pretending my fingers aren’t in agony. “Luc wasn’t exaggerating about me sneaking out with the car, you know.”

He reaches in, about to playfully mess up my hair the way
he always does. But then at the last second, he hesitates, brushing the nearly black strands from my cheek instead. “I wish you hadn’t come, but I’m glad you did,” he finally says.

He’s gone before I can say anything.

I climb up into the front seat for a better view. I’m not the tallest girl around, so I can’t see much over the hood; Luc’s pushed the seat way back to make room for his much longer legs. Still annoyed, I yank it as far forward as it’ll go.

There. Now to wait. And not think.

Which is impossible. Like trying to quiet my thoughts when they’re already awake and shouting at me. Letting Luc and Chord walk away is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

It hasn’t always been just me and Luc. Our parents went to the Board four times. First for Aave, then Luc, then me, and finally Ehm. Not a typical size for a Kersh family—which usually has two children—but my parents never could measure us in terms of cost, only in the benefits of our being given the chance to grow up.

Aave was the first of us to go. He bled to death behind Slinger’s, a club in the Grid that had no problem serving underage actives; the alcohol in his system had dulled his exceptional blade skills and made them merely ordinary. And Ehm … I thought I could handle anything after the shock of Aave’s death, but her death brought me to my knees. Part of it was the fact that she was only eleven, just a year to really prepare herself for her assignment. But her Alt had been so quick, faster than even Luc and I had been ready for, and Ehm had had her own plans. So while we were figuring out the best way for Ehm to
safely complete, her Alt caught her sneaking out of the house to go to her best friend’s sleepover party.

She bled out in my arms, and I remember screaming so loudly that Chord came running from his house down the block. He crashed to the ground on the street next to me and grabbed me in a hug and didn’t let go. Even after Luc took Ehm from me, Chord didn’t let go—

A dog barks, shattering the silence and the drowning pull of my memories. A man yells at it to shut up.

I look around uneasily. Which house is the barking coming from? Not the Alt’s, I don’t think. If Luc and Chord have been spotted, it’s more than barking that I should be hearing.