Brave New Girl

  “You think Wexler 42 deleted them?” she asks at last.

  “Defense has its best digital forensics team on it, and so far they haven’t found any sign that the records were deleted.” Ford 45’s seat creaks as he shifts uncomfortably. “They can’t find any sign that the records ever existed in the first place.”

  “That’s not possible. Protocol demands a record of every gene in the sequence.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The digital team couldn’t find the city’s original commission for the year-sixteen trade labor class. I’m headed to the mansion to search for it in backup storage. Then I’ll—”

  “You better be here in five minutes. And, Ford 45?”

  “Yes, Administrator?”

  “If you don’t find both the geneticist and the anomaly today, I will promote someone else to Bureau Chief and have you recalled.” Another chime signals the end of the communication.

  Stunned, I can only stare at Trigger, trying to decide based on his equally shocked expression whether he understood more of that than I did.

  Ford groans. Then I hear a loud crack and a gasp of pain. I peek between the seats to see that the screen has been shattered and the knuckles of Ford 45’s right hand are dripping blood.

  Obviously he doesn’t want to be recalled either.

  Seconds later the car rolls to a smooth stop. I frown and twist quietly to look through the window over my head. We only left the training ward a few minutes ago. How can we already have arrived at the Administrator’s mansion? Is the city so small that I could have walked across it if I’d had permission?

  Between the seats, I see Ford slide his tablet back into his suit jacket pocket with his clean left hand. He opens the door and steps out of the car, holding his bleeding right hand close to his chest.

  Through the window over my head, I watch him walk away from the vehicle without even a glance back, but I can’t see where he’s going without revealing myself.

  Trigger is right. Ford’s carelessness comes from a kind of arrogance I’ve never even considered. He assumes that everyone else lacks the intelligence or the audacity to breach his personal space and property, because he’s in a position of authority and no longer spends his time surrounded by his few identicals. And for the most part he’s right. It would never have occurred to me to hitch a ride in the rear of his personal vehicle. To make my escape by sticking close to the very man trying to catch me.

  Trigger puts one hand on my arm and I turn to see him making a shushing gesture with one finger over his lips. I nod and he sits taller, slowly, until he can peer through the glass over my head to make sure no one’s around to see us get out of the car. He’s counting on the tinted windows—and a little bit of luck—to shield him from sight, and I’m happy to let him take that risk for both of us, even though if he’s seen, we’re both caught.

  “There are two men waiting by the door,” he whispers. “They can’t see into the car, if you want to look.”

  I don’t want to look, but if I’m going to make it out of the city—if I’m going to survive in the wild—I have to start taking more risks. So I turn in the narrow space until I can rise on my knees and look through the window.

  We’re behind a building I’ve never seen before. It isn’t a tower like the Workforce Academy or the dormitory. It isn’t a squat building like the Defense Academy or a shiny building like Management headquarters. This building is short—only three stories high—with quaint windows and great peaks of roof covered in vintage tar shingles.

  It’s the roof that clues me in. This isn’t a public building. It’s a private residence. A swollen version of the individual homes we learned about during our history unit, from back when people were born rather than grown and lived in family units consisting of genetic siblings and the parents who conceived them.

  “This is a house,” I whisper, and the words sound as confused as I feel.

  “The only one in the city,” Trigger confirms. “It’s the Administrator’s mansion.”

  “Why does the Administrator need a giant house?” I share—shared—a room and clothing with three other people. A classroom and supplies with more than a dozen. A cafeteria with hundreds. A face with thousands.

  “It’s not just a house. She works out of the mansion, running the city, meeting with the bureau chiefs and with representatives of other cities and doing whatever else an Administrator does.”

  “How many rooms does she need for that?” My gaze tracks up the rear of the mansion, over brick and stone and what appear to be painted slats of wood. There are three chimneys and one large open area where three black private vehicles are parked. “Why does one woman need three cars?”

  “I think most of that is less a need than a privilege.” But I can tell from the distracted quality of Trigger’s voice that he’s no longer interested in the Administrator’s mansion. “They’re going in.”

  I follow his gaze to see Ford 45 enter the house through a rear door. A man in black pants and a black shirt steps in after him, while another dressed just like the first holds the door open, then lets it close as he follows them inside.

  “Who are those men?” I whisper as Trigger rises onto his knees to look more boldly through all the car windows.

  “Private security. They were recruited from Special Forces to protect high-ranking officials like the bureau chiefs and the Administrator.”

  “Protect them from what?”

  Trigger blinks. His brow furrows, as if that question has never occurred to him before. “I don’t know. Threats from outside the city, I guess.”

  “What kind of threats?”

  Trigger settles into the seat and frowns down at me. “For a girl who never asked a question in her life before a couple of months ago, you sure do have a lot of them now.” He crawls between the two middle seats in front of us and reaches for the door. “We need to go while no one’s watching.”

  I crawl after him and stare at the windows sparsely distributed across the back of the Administrator’s mansion. “If anyone looks out, we’re caught.”

  “Yes. So move fast.” Trigger brushes past me and steps out of the car. I follow him out onto a slab of concrete into which intricate, whirling designs have been pressed. He closes the car door softly, then reaches for my hand again, and suddenly we are running.

  His boots make no sound on the concrete, but my athletic shoes are not as quiet, and I’m so busy trying to imitate his silence that at first I don’t realize we’re running toward the mansion rather than away from it.

  “Wait!” I pull him to a stop halfway across the Administrator’s back patio. This is incredibly dangerous. We could be seen at any second. But going into the mansion seems so crazy that for a second I wonder if his real goal is—“Trigger?” Something in my voice makes him turn, and he seems to understand my fear with one glance at my face.

  “I’m not turning you in, Dahlia. If that was what I wanted, I would have just let the Commander catch you in the dorm.”

  “Why are you helping me?” In that moment, despite the danger of being caught, I have to know.

  Trigger presses a quick kiss against my lips. “Because I like you. I don’t want to lose you.” His small smile makes my insides feel warm. “And because I want to see just how deep your wild roots will grow. So come on,” he whispers, tugging me into motion again.

  Against my better judgment, we cross the rest of the patio toward the room full of cars. Distant memory of past history lessons labels it a “garage,” but I still can’t fathom one woman’s need for so many different vehicles.

  I follow Trigger into the garage, where I see that there isn’t a speck of dust on any of the cars; then he takes a sharp left and pulls open another door. Behind it a flight of stairs leads down into the dark. He motions for me to proceed, then closes the door at his back and we are alone in the dark. Again.

  “Where are we?”

  “Shh.” He brushes past me and his touch trails down my arm until he finds my hand, which he
places firmly on the rail attached to the wall, obscured by the darkness. “We can’t risk turning on a light until we’re farther from the house. The stairs are steep. Be careful.” His footsteps echo as they descend, headed away from me.

  I feel my way slowly, and when his steps end I realize he’s stopped at the bottom of the flight to wait for me. His hand finds mine again when my shoes hit concrete.

  “There’s a light up here a few feet, if I’m remembering this correctly.” He tugs me forward, and I hear the brush of his hand against the wall to our right. Something clicks, then soft light from about twenty feet ahead illuminates the concrete tunnel around us.

  “Where are we?” I ask as I follow him through the tunnel.

  “The Administrator’s emergency exit.”

  “But we’re already out of her house.” My sneakers shuffle against the dusty concrete as I try to keep up with Trigger.

  “It’s so she can exit the city, not the house.”

  “Why does the Administrator need an emergency exit? What kind of emergency?”

  “Any kind, I guess.”

  We pass beneath the first bulb, and when Trigger flips the next switch, the bulb we’ve passed is extinguished as the one ahead lights up.

  “So this tunnel leads to the city gate?”

  “One of them.” His voice seems to bounce back at us from every surface of the narrow tunnel. “It’s the VIP gate. For very important people. There aren’t many of those, so the gate isn’t used much.”

  “And you think that’s where we’ll find Wexler?” Or is this his way of bypassing my request altogether? Oh, well, your geneticist isn’t here, but since we are, we might as well strike off into the wild….

  “That’s my best guess, if he’s still in the city.”

  “How would he even know about this gate? Are geneticists that important?” Yet I know the answer before I’ve even finished asking. Without geneticists, humanity would have to go back to the old, messy, inefficient way of producing children who might die of inherited diseases and would certainly never live up to their potential, being made of random strands of DNA rather than handpicked genes ideally suited for a specific purpose.

  The world as we know it would collapse without geneticists.

  “Yes,” Trigger says, confirming my thoughts. “Every year the Administrator sends a delegate of Management leaders and geneticists out of Lakeview to meet with representatives from several other cities. They call it a summit. At his age, Wexler 42 has probably attended several times, and he would have left the city through the gate we’re headed for, which also happens to be the Administrator’s personal emergency exit. Since it’s only occasionally used, it’s not regularly guarded, so it’s Wexler’s best chance of getting out. Not coincidentally it now represents our best chance as well.”

  “Is this the way you were going to take me before I told you about Wexler?”

  “No. I was going to introduce you to the wonderland that is the Lakeview city sewer system. But since we’re headed for the VIP gate, we’ll give that a shot first.”

  “How do you know all this, Trigger?” And how much more is there that I don’t know?

  “We don’t all spend every day in a plant lab surrounded by tubers. The last two years of a cadet’s training is fifty percent ‘in the field.’ We participate in drills aimed to prepare us for every possible kind of emergency as well as to determine what positions we’ll be most useful in after graduation.”

  “It’s much the same for gardeners,” I tell him as I flip a switch to turn on a light up ahead. “Those best at apples and pears will grow fruit trees. Those best at yams and potatoes will grow tubers. But we have to try everything to know what we’re best at.”

  “Exactly. A couple of months ago, my squad trained for VIP guard duty. If we’re permanently assigned to that field, there’ll be much more training in my future.”

  He’s speaking in the future tense, as if he’s forgotten that where we are and what we’re doing will forever alter the trajectory of our lives. Assuming we live.

  I decide not to point that out.

  “But as a year-seventeen Special Forces cadet, I’ve had a little bit of training in a lot of highly sensitive areas.”

  “This is why they don’t want commingling between different bureaus,” I whisper as we near the edge of the current circle of light.

  Trigger stops long enough to grin at me, his gaze caught on mine, and heat pools low in my stomach. “That’s only one of the reasons they don’t want girls like you mingling with guys like me.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. This feeling I have for him—this attraction—is still so new I don’t know if it can be trusted. It’s so unexpectedly physical, and somehow similar to both winning an exhilarating relay and catching a stomach bug. The way he looks at me sends pleasant chills down my spine, yet my palms are slick with sweat. I want it to stop so I can think straight, yet I never want it to end.

  Were girls in the archaic time of bodily fluids and congenital disease so mixed up and confused?

  I think about that while we walk, flipping switches as we go, so that only one portion of the concrete tunnel is lit at any given time. I have no way to judge the distance, but my best guess is that we’ve been walking for half an hour when we see another set of stairs, this one leading aboveground.

  “There shouldn’t be anyone here,” Trigger 17 says as we ascend. “But be quiet just in case.”

  I follow him out of the tunnel and into a long, tall stone passageway, which curves gradually in each direction. “Where are we?” I whisper as my gaze roams over the dusty passage, so different from the stark, polished surfaces and clean lines of my academy and dormitory.

  “Inside the city wall,” he whispers in return.

  “Why is it hollow?”

  “Because a city wall isn’t as simple as the wall of a building. It has to be thicker. Stronger. It doesn’t just define the edge of Lakeview; it defends the city from anything on the other side.”

  Yet in my lifetime, Lakeview has not been in need of defense, that I know of. Was that different in the past? Did we have enemies determined to breach such a barrier?

  “This wall is twelve feet thick and twenty feet tall, and it’s hollow on the inside to allow for the movement of troops and supplies regardless of the conditions outside. We’ve come up in the middle, so we’ve bypassed the locked gate that lets people inside the wall. But there’s another up ahead. That one actually leads out of the city.”

  “Can you open it?” I ask.

  “We’re about to find out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means that a camera feed is one thing, but I doubt my basic electronic systems unit gave me sufficient skills to hack the VIP gate. But I’m going to give it a shot.”

  Yet after several minutes and a series of dimly lit wall sconces, no gate appears. Finally Trigger stops walking.

  “What’s wrong?” I glance back the way we came. “Are we going the wrong way?”

  He shakes his head. “We can’t be.” But he turns to follow my gaze anyway. “I could have sworn the gate was to the left. We should have found it by now.”

  “Well, unless they’ve moved it, I think we went the wrong way.”

  “But we didn’t,” he insists. “I patrolled this section of the wall for an entire week. Let’s just round that curve, and if the gate isn’t there we’ll go back.”

  Yet before we even get to the curve, laughter echoes toward us from some point beyond it.

  Trigger freezes. His eyes close. “That’s the patrol break room,” he whispers. “The break room was left. The gate was right.”

  “We all make mistakes.” Evidently. I take his hand and try to pull him back the way we came, but he stands his ground, staring in the direction of the laughter.

  “I didn’t think there’d be anyone patrolling right now. We’re a month away from the summit.”

  “You can’t know everything that happens i
n Lakeview, Trigger.”

  “Yes, but I checked the security status using my instructor’s clearance and there was nothing listed. Whatever’s going on here, Defense officially knows nothing about it.”

  “Even more reason we should get moving. Come on,” I whisper fiercely, tugging on his hand now.

  He takes one step backward. Then we both go still as footsteps echo toward us from around the curve.

  “Too late,” Trigger mumbles. “Stay put.”

  “Why?” I ask as he retreats into shadow, where the light from one sconce doesn’t quite meet the light from the next. A second later a soldier rounds the curve. Only he isn’t a typical patrol soldier. He’s wearing all black—like the Administrator’s private security.

  The soldier stops when he sees me, and his hand hovers over the gun strapped to the belt at his waist. “Who are…?” He steps closer, and his gaze focuses on my face. “Oh.” His hand falls away from his gun. “What are you…?”

  Trigger appears silently in the shadows behind him, a silhouette against what little light falls on the passage inside the city’s wall. Before the soldier can turn, Trigger wraps one arm around his neck and squeezes, applying extra pressure by gripping his own wrist with his free hand.

  The soldier claws at Trigger’s arm, but within seconds his face turns an alarming shade of red. His eyes roll into his head and his arms go slack. When his legs fold beneath him, Trigger drags the poor man into the deepest shadows against the wall.

  “I don’t think he was going to shoot me,” I whisper as Trigger ushers me back the way we came.

  “Of course not.” We pass through the light from one fixture into the light of the next, our footsteps nearly silent on the stone floor. “The Administrator wants you alive.”

  “No, I mean he didn’t seem like a threat.”

  “You’re wrong about that. Only the deadliest Special Forces soldiers are recruited for private security.” His pause feels strangely heavy. “That was my ambition.”

  “I’m sorry.” I’ve pulled him from the life of honor and distinction he was supposed to have.

  “Don’t be. There’s something exciting about not knowing what’s next. Don’t you think? Something exhilarating.”