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Jane looked over with a slight smile. “Well, it’s not exactly like that. But it sucks.”

Lily put her foot up on the bench in front of us. “You have to understand—you feel everything they feel. When your dupe is afraid, you’re afraid. When it’s sad, you’re sad. And you can’t do anything about it.”

“That sounds awful.” I rubbed my hands over my tired face as Jane came over and sat in front of me.

“It’s not always bad,” she said quietly.

There was a pause. She wanted to say more, and I could guess what it was.

Lily jumped in. “Someone told me it’s like a drug.”

Jane laughed—finally, a real laugh. “It’s not like a drug. But it’s like … I don’t know. You have this other life, where you have other friends, and whenever you’re with them things are really intense. And then, suddenly, it’s all gone. It’s over. You’ll never see—” She looked at me and stopped.

“I’ve only seen dreams so far,” Lily said.

I looked over at her, and I was surprised to see a tear in her eye. She rubbed it away and made a face.

“There’s a dupe of you?”

She nodded. “Yep. I told you, they don’t keep you here unless they’ve made a dupe of you.”

“So where is it? What’s it doing?”

Before she could answer, the door opened. Cold air blew into the room and people began to walk in.

I recognized a lot of them. Mason looked at me long enough to open his mouth like he was going to say something, but then passed my bench and moved up to the front. Joel actually waved before moving on, and I wondered whether he knew that I’d been the one who’d killed him—well, killed his dupe after he’d turned on us. I’d stabbed him with a pair of garden shears.

I noticed that several who were coming in were holding gauze on their arms. Someone must have been at the door, checking everyone with a box cutter.

Laura entered the room, and I turned to Lily. “Is that the real Laura? The one who went to detention?”

“She’s true blue, the same one you knew,” Lily said. She lowered her voice even more. “We were in detention together—she showed up the day after I did. The little princess thought she’d get rewarded for what she did to … well, for what she did.”

Laura wasn’t like Dylan. She didn’t look depressed or guilty. Instead, she held her head high as she made her way to the front of the room.

I knew she was goading me, but it was working. Dylan thought he was guilty because his dupe had done something, but Laura actually had—she’d been there. She’d tried to kill me.

Jane put her hand on mine, and I realized it had been clenched in a fist.

“It’s okay,” she said softly.

“I was there,” I whispered, my chest tight.

“So was I.” There was bitterness in Jane’s words, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because of me or Laura.

Lily leaned over. “Don’t worry about Laura,” she said. “Look.”

I hadn’t noticed while she’d walked, but as Laura turned to sit, I saw her wrists were wrapped tightly in chains. Mouse strung another chain from Laura’s shackles to a round metal loop in the wall.

I didn’t have time to ask who had punished her—Maxfield or this town—because Birdman was standing up now, glaring for the room to quiet down.

I glanced around, getting a full look at the crowd. I counted about forty, and I recognized maybe half from the school. I noticed Jelly and Walnut sitting together in the back, which now made, at most, four people who I actually knew from the school—four people who were humans there, not dupes.

“Pipe down,” Birdman shouted, and the room quieted almost instantly. He looked at Harvard, who was standing by the door. “Who’s missing?”

“Carrie. And we’ve got Lance, Chris, Kaitlyn, and Trena out on watch.”

Birdman nodded and scanned the crowd. He laid a large piece of cloth over the podium and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket.

“You all know Benson Fisher and Becky Allred are here. Let’s get one thing clear: no one is going to say a word about them outside this room. They’re valuable, and anyone who screws that up will regret it. Got that?”

No one said anything, though I saw a few heads nodding.

“Okay,” he continued. “Let’s hear today’s reports, and we’ll see if he can fill in a few gaps. Anyone pop since last night?”

One girl, sitting near the front, timidly raised her hand. I recognized her from the Society—Taylor. She was one of the younger ones. The only thing I remembered about her was that she was always smiling. That was how the Society was—they were either smiling and carefree or scowling with disapproval.

Birdman pointed to her, and wrote on his cloth. “What happened?”

Her voice was small. “It was late last night,” Taylor started. “I saw it all—I was scared. Everyone was getting herded into the detention room.”

Lily whispered, “After the fence last night, they rounded up the survivors and sent them back to school. We figured they were going down to detention.”

“What’s down there?”

Lily smirked. “It’s where the magic happens. You go there and they stick an implant in your head and make your dupe.”

Taylor spoke again, her voice quavering. “Not everyone could fit in the room at once, so they were taking them down in shifts.”

“Who was?” Birdman asked.

“Ms. Vaughn was there,” Taylor said. “And the other dupes who had popped. Tapti, Hog, Mash … and I think Grace? Anyway, everyone had gone to detention and I was in the final group. There were about ten of us. It was … It was scary.”

Birdman was taking notes on all this, and there was no emotion in his voice when he talked. “Then what?”

“One of the dupes went down to detention with each group, so only Mash and Ms. Vaughn were left with us. Four of us—of them—tried to jump the dupes.”

“Who?”

“Me and three V’s,” she said.

It felt like the air got sucked out of my lungs. Jane’s grip on my hand tightened.

“Hector, Anna, and Catherine,” Taylor said.

Birdman wrote the names on the cloth, and then looked up. “And?”

“Anna had a knife. I don’t know where she got it. She stabbed Ms. Vaughn.” Taylor paused. The room was completely silent. “That’s all I remember. That’s when I popped.”

He nodded, jotting down more notes while the room waited. Shelly raised her hand, and when Birdman finally looked up he called on her.

“Hector is dead,” she said.

Lily swore. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. As far as I could tell, Hector—the Hector who I’d known—had been human. He died for real.

Even Birdman looked shocked. “You’re sure?”

Shelly nodded. Taylor turned, the horrified look on her face obvious. She was wondering whether she’d done it. Birdman spoke before she could.

“You haven’t popped?”

Shelly shook her head. “Not yet. My dupe is still down there.”

“How’d Hector die?”

It took her a long time to answer, and after several seconds Taylor stood and left the meeting.

“It wasn’t really Taylor, though,” I said, whispering to Jane. “It wasn’t even her emotions making the dupe do it, right? She’d popped, so it was just the artificial intelligence.”

Jane nodded. “That doesn’t help much, though.”

“It should.” I could feel the rage building inside me. The school wasn’t just imprisoning people anymore, wasn’t just killing them. It was tearing apart their minds.

Lily responded instead of Jane. “It’s like what we said about losing your dupe. It sucks. Taylor just lost hers last night, and now she knows it killed her friend.”

“Hector wasn’t her friend,” I said angrily. “She was Society.”

Jane’s look was dark and cold. “You can drop that crap right now,” she hissed. “The gangs don’t mean a thing here.”

She was wrong. No matter what Jane said, this town was divided. Birdman kept the people he could trust in the fort with him, and didn’t believe anyone was human unless they proved it with a blade. Maybe there weren’t gangs, but this wasn’t a utopia.

Birdman tapped his pencil on the cloth again. “Who else is still active?”

Seven people, including Shelly, raised their hands. I knew who they all were, though none of them well. Only one was a V. Most were Havoc kids.

“Anyone want to report?”

Mucus, a fat Havoc kid, raised his hand. “We’re all underground now. I was in the second group sent down to detention, and they took us to the cells.”

“Individual or group?” Birdman asked without looking up.

“Group.”

Harvard spoke from the back of the room. “I don’t think there’re enough individual cells to handle that many people.”

I turned to Lily. “How do they know that?”

She smiled. “That’s the whole point of these meetings. Everyone who’s in this town has gone down the detention elevator and into the big underground complex beneath the school. When I got here they grilled me about it. They’ve made a whole map.”

“What’s the point?”

Lily shrugged. “Knowledge is power, I guess. Gather as much as you can. In case we ever get taken back there.”

Birdman was still interrogating Mucus. “What’s happening there now?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know. My dupe is sleeping, I think.”

“Anyone gone to surgery yet?”

“Not that I know of.”

Birdman looked around the room. “Anyone else seen something different?”

Stephanie, the final active V, spoke. “They treated the wounded, but it was there in the cell block.”

This was what I wanted to know—what I needed to know. “Who died last night—the humans, I mean?”

All eyes in the room turned on me. Birdman looked down at his cloth.

“What about Curtis?” I continued. “And Gabby?”

“Curtis is alive,” someone said. “He’s bad, though.”

Birdman spoke loudly, quieting the room. “Sixteen died.”

No, that couldn’t be right. I stood up, but my legs were shaking. “Not dupes,” I said. “Not people who popped.”

“I know,” Birdman answered. “Sixteen humans died at the fence.”

He read the names. Seven from the Society. Six from Havoc. Three V’s. I knew those people. They’d listened to me. They’d all been there in the foyer when we decided to take a stand.

“They’re thinking Curtis might lose his leg,” Shelly said quietly. “No one’s expecting Gabby to make it.”

“No,” I said.

Jane stood and tried to take my hand, but I shook her away.

“You’re wrong.” I pushed my way down the row.

“Benson.” It was Birdman calling me, but I didn’t care. Harvard put up his hands to stop me, but I shoved him into the wall and threw the door open.

Sixteen dead. Soon Gabby, too, and who knew how many others.

I ran across the snowy courtyard to the other side of the fort and threw open Carrie’s door. She jumped up from the bed.

“She’s sleeping,” Carrie warned, but I ignored her. Curtis’s face stared down at me from half the drawings in the room. Carrie’s dupe had been with Curtis for how long? Years? And Carrie felt every emotion twice as strongly as the dupe?

Did Carrie know what her dupe had done after it popped?

I climbed on the bed, pulled the panel out of the wall, and scrambled inside, my exhausted muscles pumping with adrenaline and guilt.

I let the cloth picture fall into place behind me, blocking Carrie out.

Becky was quiet, eyes closed tightly in a painful sleep.

I took her hand, kissed her damp forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I cried, hiding my face in my hands. “I’m so sorry.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
t had been dark for hours when I heard Harvard enter Carrie’s room.

He pulled out the panel and peeked in. “Ready?”

I’d been lying beside Becky, watching her breathe. I’d forgotten I had somewhere to go.

“I guess.” My muscles screamed as I sat up. I had no idea how Becky could sleep on these boards, loss of blood or not.

I pulled my Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt back on, and retied my shoes. At some point I was going to need a change of clothes and a shower.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Just after midnight,” Harvard said.

He moved away from the opening and I crawled out. A very groggy Carrie stood in the corner in a worn pair of blue pajamas.

“You have a coat?” Harvard asked. He was bundled up in a thick, well-worn parka and wool hat, and he had on leather work gloves with the fingers cut out.

“Just this,” I said, pulling the hood of my sweatshirt up.

“We’re gonna be out there for a while. Let’s go check Dylan’s room. No one’s cleaned it yet.” The idea of wearing Dylan’s clothes didn’t appeal to me at all, but as I stepped into the cold night air I realized it was probably smart.

Lily was waiting for us.

“Ready to stick it to the man?” she asked. Her breath came out in white puffs.

“Sure,” I said, and followed Harvard.

“A couple things on the schedule for tonight,” Harvard said, seeming remarkably cheerful. “First a coat. Then we’re going to the Greens to talk to Shelly; then we’re going out to the perimeter.”

“Glad I can help,” I grumbled.

“Man, I’ve been waiting for you for years.”

“Why?”

Harvard stopped at a door. It hung open a few inches.

“Kid, you don’t have one of these things in your head.” He struck a match and lit Dylan’s lantern. “You’re gold.”

“I thought Dylan moved out of the fort.”

“He wandered,” Lily said. “We always hoped he’d come back.” Dylan’s room was blank and empty. The bed was made, but rumpled, and Dylan’s few belongings were in a cardboard box by the window. Unlike every other room I’d seen, there was nothing painted on the walls. In fact, they looked recently whitewashed.

“They always said detention meant death back at the school.”

Harvard smiled. “It can mean death if you’re stubborn and fight them. It probably would have meant death for you. But nope, they just take you down the elevator, give you an implant, and ship you here.”

“We’re a freak farm,” Lily said.

I found a windbreaker. It was thin, but new and sturdy, and it was big enough to pull over my sweatshirt.

“I didn’t recognize half the people at the meeting today,” I said. “Why aren’t all their dupes active?”