I feel the muzzle of a gun press to the back of my head. In the corner of my vision I see Bree tensing as well.
My last thoughts are funny. I’ve been in this situation before and I could think only of the present, of the things I would miss, of questions left unanswered. That’s not the case this time. I know Sammy and Bree are coming with me, so I don’t linger on them. I know Clipper will be waiting wherever we go. And Blaine, too.
For a fraction of a moment I am undeniably content. If everyone I love and care about isn’t in this world, why the heck am I fighting to stay in it? But the thought brings up a memory: Emma and me at a window in September’s apartment. She sounded just as resigned, as hopeless.
So when I hear the safety flick off, I’m thinking about her. About her choices. Her still mysterious goals.
Even after everything, I hope she finds some level of happiness. I can’t imagine it will be easy to cope with the guilt once she’s facing this world friendless.
The alarm fades, then spasms back to life, looping as planned.
Behind me, the Forgery barks out a cough. I feel the muzzle drag across my skull, then break contact altogether. The coughing fit grows worse, and when I turn, the Forgery is writhing on the ground. They all are—the two that had Bree and Sammy at gunpoint, and the other two standing guard. I snatch up a dropped gun, and spin. My hands are still bound, but I can aim well enough. My finger can pull a trigger. But when the balcony comes into my sight, Frank’s eyes are rolling back in his head. He staggers a moment, hand on the doorframe, and then collapses just like his Forgeries.
Like he is a Forgery. Or was.
I can’t tear my eyes away from the place where he fell. Did I ever meet the real man? Was it a Forgery down in the square just earlier, addressing the public while the real Frank cowered in safety?
I twist, taking in the screens that surround the field. The Forgeries are dropping everywhere. In Taem’s public square, in the streets, beneath other domes. It’s like watching a tall grass blow in the breeze, a visible wave crashing.
Harvey staggers through a ground-level door and onto the field. He looks breathless. Shocked, but very much alive.
“You’re fine! It didn’t . . . Clipper’s going to be—”
I bite off my words, but Harvey looks us over—Bree’s bleeding cheek, the bracelet still clasped in my hand, Sammy slouched in the grass—and knows.
“That kid,” he says, fighting back tears. “God, I loved that kid.”
This is the second Forgery I’ve heard make a declaration of love. Something that should be impossible. How fine is the line between human and not? Have we done something both necessary and wrong with the fail-safe?
Bree offers Harvey her palm. “I’m sorry I doubted you. That probably doesn’t feel like much now that you’ve proven yourself, but I still need to say it.”
As they shake, panic flashes over his face. He doubles over, landing on his knees.
“Harvey?” I rush to his side.
He coughs, spattering the grass with blood, then rolls onto his back. It’s happening. Was the fail-safe delayed for him because he’d broken through his own programming already? Because his sacrifice made him more human than Forgery? He dissolves into a coughing fit and I realize I’ll never know the answer. The only thing I know for certain is there is no stopping this, no way to help him, and it brings me to my knees.
Harvey’s back arches. Bree and I each grab one of his hands and try to hold him still as he flails. The screams coming out of him are so much worse than anything the other Forgeries went through.
Bree glances at the gun in the grass, then at me.
“Do you want a bullet?” I ask Harvey. “It would be quick.”
He shakes his head in a spasming rock. “Just you two.”
So we hold his hands, even when he squeezes ours to the point that our skin goes white beneath his grip. He begs for it to be over, cries shamelessly, and then, as quickly as it began, he shudders and is still. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.
Bree feels for a pulse along his neck and frowns.
An Order member bursts onto the field. “Weapons down! Step away from him.”
“He’s dead,” Bree says.
“Weapons down!”
Emma follows the guard. She’s wearing a medical smock over her dress, and her right hand clenches a handgun.
“Which one first?” the Order member asks her.
She brings her gun to his temple. “Neither.”
“But you said . . . I thought . . .”
With her spare hand, Emma pulls a syringe from the pocket of her smock. The needle is buried in the soft flesh of the guard’s neck before he even registers the threat. He frowns, and then his face goes entirely slack a second before he collapses.
Emma turns to us and frees our bound hands. “Crap,” she says, her eyes falling on Sammy. “He looks even worse in person than he did on the cameras. Here.” She shoves a small piece of blood-covered metal into my palm. “His office,” she says. “Use the wrist chip to get there. Then the bookshelf. There’s a false room.”
I notice the bloody bandage on Emma’s arm. She cut her wrist implant out. She cut into her own arm to retrieve this chip.
“Whose office?” I ask, completely baffled.
“Frank’s,” she urges. “I figured it out a while ago, before they planted me in Pine Ridge to wait for you. He’d visit me in the hospitals a lot. I was gifted, he said. Had talent like Harvey. Sometimes his eyes were perfectly human. Other times they weren’t right, like the Forgeries’. I got good at spotting the difference in the glare of operating lights.”
Bree’s eyes drift back to where Frank’s crumpled form sits, and she swears.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Emma continues. “I wanted Frank to trust me, which meant making sure none of you did. I was going to do it myself, two days ago when we got back, but I was worried if I killed him first, the Gen5 would suspect everything; and if I killed the Forgery first, I knew Frank would. One of them was always watching. So I waited.”