Delay him, I think. Just keep him talking.
“You’re not actually in charge of this place, are you?”
“Of course not. We just thought I might intimidate you most.” He writes something down in his notebook, only to glance up at me in a manner that makes his eyes look like slits beneath his brow. “It’s working, right?”
I grunt, worried that if I speak the truth will be evident in my voice.
“I’m waiting,” he says.
“Well, keep waiting! I’m not telling you crap.”
He waves a hand to whoever is behind me. “Gray’s going to need a little convincing.”
I hear footsteps, the snap of gloves being put on. The bindings on my limbs feel like they are tightening. My fight-or-flight instincts are screaming and yet I can’t even lift my wrist off the armrest.
The white lab coat appears. Sits on a stool on wheels. Slides in front of me. And time slows.
I know this man.
His glasses are different—wired rims instead of thick black frames—but his eyes are the same: dark, a bit vacant, chilling. It’s him, from his brittle-looking build to his slouched shoulders to his gaunt, hollowed cheeks.
“Harvey?” I say, and there is not an ounce of recognition on his face when he looks into my eyes.
TEN
“GO ON, MALDOON,” FORGED ME urges. “Remind him why he should cooperate.”
Harvey’s fingers trail lazily over the tools and the only thought I can form is that this man should be dead. I saw proof of it, a visual projected above Taem the evening I fled back to the Rebels with Bo, Bree, and a Forged version of Emma. Harvey had been strung up like a scarecrow in Taem’s public square, the Franconian emblem painted on his chest. His eyes had even been gouged out.
But the man before me has eyes. They are blinking, surveying his options on the medical tray. Maybe I saw it wrong. Or maybe that visual was a fake.
Has Harvey been alive all this time, stuck working for Frank—a man he hates—because we deserted him?
Harvey selects a scalpel, then switches to a pair of pliers. He pivots toward me, the tool held out.
“Last chance, Gray,” Forged Me says from his chair. “A name. Any name.”
“Harvey?” He lowers the pliers toward my left hand, my pointer finger, the nail itself. My pulse jumps frantically. I start writhing in my seat. “Harvey, you know me, dammit! It’s Gray! We worked with Ryder and the Rebels. We’re friends. I’m sorry we left you, but we’re—” The mouth of the pliers closes down on my nail. “Harvey!”
He looks directly at me, and I realize he doesn’t care. There is no compassion on his face, no sympathy, no trace of the scientist I once knew. This is a man fueled by revenge.
He adjusts his grip on the pliers, and I know what’s coming.
“Harvey, please! Don’t do it. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
He yanks his arm back and my nail goes with it. I scream, and scream, and in the flashes of red pain shooting before my eyes a memory also resurfaces: a hallway in Union Central. Harvey is ushered into a room by medical staff. His shoulder hangs limp and dislocated. His nose is bloody. They nursed him to health for his execution, just as I’d suspected that very day, but they also did more. I see it now, because the real Harvey—even one left for dead—would never go this far. Those Order members took what was necessary that day, did whatever they needed to set the wheels in motion, to create the thing in front of me now.
Why would Frank want the rebellious version of Harvey to resume work on the Forgeries when he could have a loyal one instead? Same brains, same skills, but programmed to follow any order. No chance for mishaps. No fleeing or backstabbing or abandoning his post.
This is not Harvey.
It is Harvey, Forged.
He drops my nail in the medical tray. My finger throbs, wet with blood. I can’t get my pulse to slow, can’t stop choking on my own ragged breaths.
“That was so quick,” Forged Me remarks. “And to think you were having issues with orders in December. Take your time with the next one, Maldoon, and make it a finger.”
Harvey sets the pliers aside and picks up a knife. I’m begging shamelessly now, stammering over the pain, screaming for him to reconsider. This is not the Harvey I knew—gentle, patient, good. If he remembers me at all, he’s been told what to do and how to think, which pieces of his own past to forget and who to serve. His grip tightens on the handle. My skin breaks from the pressure of the blade, and as the white-hot spark of pain jolts through me, I panic.
“There’s a safe house,” I sputter, the place appearing to me out of nowhere. Harvey pauses, my nailless finger now bleeding in two places.
“Where?” Forged Me asks.
“Near Group A, but west of the border,” I gasp. “I don’t know exact coordinates. The woman running it is named Sophia? Sally? She harbors people crossing the borders.”
I’ve been as vague as possible—even changed her name—but I feel like scum. I deserve the pain, am not worthy of being spared it. Sylvia took our team in when we fled Burg. She saw to my wounded leg, patched up Clipper’s arm. She fed us and clothed us—strangers—and I’ve handed her over like cattle for slaughter.
Forged Me makes a note in his book. “That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?”
I am going to rot for all of eternity.
I’m back in the cell.
I have nine nail-bearing fingers, and one naked one. Its bandage is stained with my blood. Light pink near my knuckle where Harvey’s blade sliced skin. Black where his pliers did worse.
I still haven’t seen Blaine or Emma. I don’t know if they’re going through similar interrogations. All I have is a less than reassuring statement from Forged Me before he locked me in: He’s going easy on me for now, but expects better results next time I’m questioned.