Falls the Shadow (19 page)

Free access to your thoughts.

I let out a curse.

“What?”

“Huxley knows where we are.” I reach up and dig my fingertips into the scar on my neck. A crawling spreads from underneath my touch, all the way up over my scalp. It takes Jaxon a few seconds, but then his face lights with the same understanding.

“They're using your memory transfers to follow you?”

“And they're going to realize I'm with you, and then . . .” I trail off, thinking of what Violet said earlier. How long
will
it be before they come for me, once they realize I'm out here road-tripping with their enemy? I know they can see the things I'm seeing, that they can use them to track me down—because they've done it before. A few years ago, a young origin boy went missing from the ETS station in Westside, and his parents went to Huxley for help. It was all over the news, the way they downloaded his most recent memory transfers to help find him, and pro-cloning advocates had a field day celebrating what they saw as an obvious benefit of Huxley's work. But the skeptics all wondered the same thing that I'm wondering now: How easy was it to access such transfers? And just how much detail could they see from them? Just the simple visual things—or all the thoughts that went with them? Does Huxley see my doubts about them now? Is
someone sitting at the lab right this moment and taking every single feeling I've ever had about Jaxon apart, picking through it like lines of code and searching for errors?

Suddenly, I want to rake my nails across the scar, to open it up and rip out that stupid chip so I can crush it in my hand. I don't want to give anything to Huxley right now. Or maybe ever again. Because even after everything Violet gave her clone, she's still turned all wrong, and
this
is all wrong, and all I want to do is just end the cycle somehow—I don't care if it means I'll only have one life to live. Maybe that's how it should be anyway.

I think about the knife Seth had earlier, and I wonder if I'd have the stomach to cut out Huxley's access to my mind. Probably not. I dart around the room all the same, searching through all of the bags and in the pockets of the jacket Seth was wearing, trying to find it.

“What are you looking for?” Jaxon asks.

“Nothing,” I lie. But only because I realize that it probably wouldn't work; I've seen the diagrams on their stupid videos. The chip is so deeply embedded that I'd probably cause irreversible brain damage before I even managed to cut my way anywhere close to it.

I fling the jacket onto the bed with a frustrated sigh and watch as Jaxon walks over and picks it up, then folds it and lays it back by the nightstand. He seems entirely too calm about everything. “What exactly are we going to do about this?” I ask.

He's thoughtful for a moment, and then he says, “Given Seth's affinity for illegal things, I have a feeling there might
be something we can use in the stuff he brought.” He goes to the bags I've already made a mess of and starts rifling further through them, using his phone as a flashlight to check all of the zippered pouches.

“Aha,” he says after a bit of searching, drawing out a small black object with two pronglike antennae. He holds it up to me.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“It's exactly what you think it is.”

A signal jammer. The fine for getting caught with one of these kinds of devices is more than even my father makes in a year.

“I have no idea how it works,” he says, “but you're good with this sort of thing, right?”

I frown. “Not with doing illegal things, no.”

“You hacked the CCA's computer system, didn't you?”

“That was different. And they started it, anyway.”

He gives me an incredulous look. “And Huxley
didn't
start something, using your mind uploads without permission like this?”

“Assuming they are—we don't really have any proof of that.” He doesn't argue back, but I can tell he wants to. Not that I really blame him. I know I'm only making excuses now. Because that desire to disconnect from my clone is new, and it's strange, and in a way it's like admitting that I didn't know the truth about even one of the most routine and basic parts of my life. This chip in the back of my head was always a bit unsettling, but it was ultimately supposed to be a
good
thing. It was supposed to
make it all worth it—all of those judgmental stares, all of that hate mail my father got; none of that mattered when I thought about what had happened to Violet. About how it could happen to me, too, and how that chip was the only thing that could undo it.

But now, even though I'm scared to think about it, I can't stop wondering what the
actual
cost of cloning is.

And more importantly, how is Huxley planning to collect their dues?

“Give it here,” I say, crossing to Jaxon and holding out my hand. I don't want to admit it to myself, but I know he's right: We need to block any information the chip is transmitting, and then hurry up and get away from here. The brain uploads aren't continuous; they're scheduled and usually only occur once a day. So with any luck, Huxley won't learn—at least not from me—exactly what's happened, or where we're going from here. They'll realize something is up when my clone's memories for the past hours turn up as nothing except static, of course, but this might buy us some time at least.

While I work on trying to figure out how the tiny jamming device works, Jaxon finds Seth's knife. He cuts strips from one of the ragged pillowcases and twists them together into a sort of bracelet, fitting it around my wrist and leaving enough length to tie around the jammer's prongs.

“So,” he says as he works, “you have that chip, and Violet has something like that too, right?”

“Hers is a lot more complex,” I say offhandedly. “Her entire brain is a supercomputer, basically.”

The rest of a clone's body grows completely from cells taken from their origins. However those cells are manipulated and redesigned, they're still essentially human—superpowered or not. But the brain proved too complex an organ for Huxley to grow properly, especially given the advanced-human-clone body that it needed to exert control over. Building a computer with the necessary functionality had simply been easier.

And Huxley freely explains this in all of those videos and brochures and information files that they give prospective origin families, all of which my father keeps in a messy folder on his personal computer.
Transparency and trust
, that's what the scientist in Mother's favorite video insists they are all about.
Because nothing about this science—these advancements with such possibility to change the world—should remain a secret.

“A computer that Huxley has access to?” Jaxon presses. “That they could control remotely, even?”

I don't know the answer to that, and even if I did, I'm not sure I would tell him. Because I remember what Violet said. And it's crazy, maybe, but when he mentions
control
, the first thing I wonder is if what she said was true—am I the one being brainwashed? Is it really safe to be talking with him about all of this? I've been telling myself that I'm the one using him, but is it really the other way around? Maybe my sister was right to be angry with me for taking his side.

I turn the jammer over and over in my hands and pretend to study it. “I have no idea about any of that,” I say. “But can I ask you something?”

“Can I really stop you?”

“No.”

“Then go for it, I guess.”

“Why are you still here?”

He sighs. “I already told you—I want to know what really happened that night Samantha died.”

It sounds just as convincing as it did the first time he said it. Violet was wrong. She has to be wrong. He doesn't know anything about Samantha's death. He would have told me if he did.

You trust him so much, so why don't you ask him?

The memory of her voice makes my head spin. I stop messing with the jammer and close my eyes, trying to make it stop. “Where were you the night she died?” I ask quietly.

“Why does this suddenly sound like an interrogation?”

“It's just a question. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to.”

A tense, hesitant silence stretches between us. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. And then of all the things he could do to break it, he laughs. “What did that clone say to you earlier? What did she tell you about me?”

“She doesn't matter right now,” I say, my eyes flashing open again. “I'm the one who's asking the question—I can think for myself, you know.”

“I
do
know that. Which is why I'm wondering what I have to do to make you stop thinking I'm the worst person you've ever met.”

“Just tell me the truth. That's all I need.”

His sigh is softer this time. “Look, I didn't even see Samantha the night she died. We were supposed to get together, to grab coffee before we went to this CCA meeting thing, but she never showed up. I didn't think anything of it, because it wasn't the first time it had happened. Her father doesn't particularly care for me, as you might have noticed the other day, so she's had to bail on me a few times in the past, whenever he managed to find out the two of us had plans. Then later, at the meeting, someone said she was sick and had stayed home. No big deal.”

“You didn't think it was weird that she didn't call or text you or anything?”

He raises an eyebrow. “How well did you actually know Samantha?” he asks. “She wasn't exactly the dependable type.”

Unpredictable
. I think that was the word Violet used to describe her—it was what my sister had liked best about her only friend. I guess the two of them were a lot alike that way.

“I never held it against her, though,” Jaxon says. “She could have turned out a lot worse, with parents like hers. And for all the crap people gave her about being rich and stuck-up, she wasn't really that bad.” He shrugs. “At least not to me. And she definitely didn't deserve . . . you know, what happened to her.”

There's another long, awkward pause, and again he's the one who breaks it. “I messed up, not telling you the truth about me from the beginning,” he says. “I know I did. And I'm sorry. But I'm not lying now—I wouldn't
keep something like this from you. I never wanted to keep
anything
from you.”

His voice has changed. There's something vulnerable in it now, and that scares me more than the possibility of any of Violet's warnings about him being true. I absently untuck my hair from behind my ears and let it fall into my face, like that could hide me. He's not looking at me anymore, though. Instead, he takes the jammer from my hands and ties it into the makeshift bracelet, and then he fastens the whole thing around my wrist, somehow managing to barely touch me and avoid my gaze all at the same time.

“Probably not the best fashion statement you've ever made.” It's a blatant change of subject, I know. But his tone still has that soft vulnerability to it, and it makes it difficult to keep fighting or to honestly doubt anything he's just said. “Hopefully it'll work, though,” he adds. “Now we just need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

The main problem, we agree, is Seth; until he comes around and we can tell exactly how hurt he is, we're afraid to move him any more than we have to. Not to mention we're both exhausted, and the thought of hauling all of our stuff to the car in the near pitch-black darkness isn't exactly appealing.

“Less than three hours until morning,” Jaxon says, glancing at his phone.

“Might be enough time for Seth to start waking up,” I think aloud.

“And for you to get some more rest.”

I go and sit down on the bed, not because I'm planning
on actually going to sleep, but because all of the thoughts whirling around in my head are starting to make me feel dizzy again. “What about you?” I ask.

“It'll probably be a while before Huxley figures anything out, but we still don't know where your sister's run off to. One of us needs to stay up and keep an eye out for her.” He grabs a spare pillow, props it in the corner between my bed and the nightstand, and then leans back and tilts his head against the mattress. “I think I'm past the point of sleep anyway.”

I try arguing that it should be me who stays up—since I already had a few hours of sleep earlier—but he doesn't budge from his spot on the floor.

“You could at least sit on the bed,” I say. “It would be more comfortable.”

“Not a good idea,” he says. “Something tells me I would get distracted from keeping watch.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see the wry smile spreading across his face. I force myself to stare only at the wad of covers balled up in my fist.

But warmth is already rushing into my cheeks. Even now, with everything else I could be focusing on, and with all the doubt these past few days have left between us . . . why do I still not have any control over the butterflies he sets free in my stomach when he smiles like that?

What is wrong with me?

I draw my knees up to my chest and rest my chin on them, take a deep breath, and try to force my thoughts away from Jaxon. Away from all the possible ways I could distract him.

I shouldn't be thinking about things like that.

I can't stop thinking about him completely, though. Not when he's this close. Not when I'm having to make a conscious effort to keep from reaching a hand out and running my fingers through his messy hair. I should say something. Anything to divert my thoughts away from the roads they're trying to go down.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” I ask quietly. Not the best diversion, maybe, but it was the first question that came to mind.