I was forced to abandon my first ride. When I heard the water truck’s autonomous system announce an upcoming highway change to I-15 South, I slipped off during a slow left turn. I waited outside another charging station for two hours before this farm truck pulled in.
The company logo across the back windshield told me the truck belongs to a local family farm. The bumper sticker shouting “Proud Father of a Wilson Bulldog” told me the truck belongs to a man from Wilson, Montana. After consulting my trusted map, I saw the route will likely head through land that used to be known as the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Just east of Glacier County.
And right where I need to be.
“I’m sorry, please repeat,” the machine recites once more.
I silently scream with impatience. I can’t keep my legs still; my feet keep kicking up the dark soil, and I’m anxious for the truck to keep moving forward. The sun will rise in two hours, exposing me in dangerous light for the last twenty-five miles to the coordinates.
I peep my head farther out from the tarp and glare at the machine. My weary feet halt their simulated march when my eyes catch sight of Halton Roth’s face.
Wearing an elegant military uniform—a diminutive clone of his grandfather—he has Mckinley Ruiz’s arm tucked neatly into his elbow. She’s dressed in an elaborate ball gown, diamonds on her throat. Together, the couple looks absolutely regal. And powerful. With a royal wave, they greet the crowd assembled below. The advertisement excitedly invites the listener, “Join us live. A celebration seventy-five years in the making. One Child, One Nation.”
I watch Halton’s smug smile play again and again on loop. The prince of the ball and his second-place princess. White-hot anger blazes through my body. Anger that this unworthy boy brought down my family, anger at myself that I didn’t see it coming. Anger that my biggest problem used to be getting out of attending a stupid Gala with the arrogant governor’s progeny. I’d give anything to be back in that basement with Father and Mira right now.
That life doesn’t exist anymore. Focus on the task at hand.
I bring my attention back to the advertisement. “Join us live . . . One Child, One Nation.” And then it hits me.
The Anniversary Gala. The perfect opportunity for the Common to make their first strike. Everyone will be watching. We have to infiltrate the Governor’s Mansion. But how?
Together your faces can symbolize a revolution.
Another stab of anger pierces the open wound in my chest. Not anymore. My sister is gone.
A disheveled head pops out of the window, blocking the screen from my view. The agitated man presses his lips against the speaker.
“Spaghetti!” the farmer shouts, all patience ripped to shreds.
“Okay. Risotto. Please scan your wrist.”
The man lays into his horn.
“You ill-bred, sheep-biting lout of a robot scum—”
The man cuts his insult short and kills the truck’s headlights. Pulls the truck slowly away from the lights of the drive-thru machine. Safely shrouds the vehicle behind a row of bushes. From my hideout I scour the horizon. What spooked this farmer?
Through a gap in the branches, I see in the distance dust from an entire State Guard unit thundering past. Eerie and foreboding in the small hours of the night, the sight turns my blood to ice.
Stay calm, we’re hidden.
“Nuh-uh, nope. Not getting myself mixed up in any of that trouble tonight,” the man says aloud to himself. “Promised Jimmy I’d be home for breakfast.”
We wait in dark silence until the dust finally settles. The man pulls back onto the main road, headed north, abandoning his spaghetti, without any idea of the trouble he has stashed away in his truck bed.
Less than three hundred miles to go.
MIRA
Light on my feet, blending with the darkness in my full-length charcoal coat, I trudge up and down the rugged terrain anticipating the sirens. Every few hours I shed my clothes and change into a new disguise like they can help me disappear. It’s the only piece of advice I’ve taken from Rayla, but it’s a superficial fix. I know I am surrounded.
If I can just make it out of Montana, I still have a chance.
Something catches my eye, halting my thoughts, slowing my steps. Flat, orderly squares of farmland disrupt the repetitious hills and draw my attention to a short wooden building that looks scarlet in the moonlight.
But it’s what’s on this ordinary building that pulls me closer.
I yank the hood of my coat low and lean into the powerful wind that threatens to knock me flat. In minutes, I’m standing in front of a barn, arm’s length away from the three words spray-painted casually across the sliding door.
White. Reflective. Clear.
Save the twins
My brain struggles to catch up to my eyes. It’s not possible.
“A woman came by an hour ago and wrote that,” a soft voice says behind me.
My knife is out before I fully whip around. A boy in nightclothes emerges from the shadows—he must be ten or eleven, with messy hair and a chipped front tooth. He aims his pocket knife in my direction, his blade as small and thin as my pinky finger. He doesn’t look afraid.
A swift scan assures me he’s unaccompanied, and I put away my weapon. He pockets his too.
“How old was the woman you saw?”
He shakes his head. “She wore a hood.”
I quickly study the painted words. The yawning arcs of the two Ss, the slanted cross of the T. It doesn’t look like Rayla’s handwriting. But then again, it wouldn’t.
“Are you her?” the boy asks. He moves forward, peering up to get a better look inside my hood. “Are you Ava?”
“No.” I keep my face calm. Unreadable. “You better clean this off before the Guard comes. They’ll arrest your parents. And you, if you don’t hurry.” I move to take my leave. I shouldn’t be here. I’m endangering us both.
“I won’t help the government hide the truth.”
His words give me pause. His passion makes me turn.
“They’re saying Ava really does have a twin,” the boy maintains, electrified, his wide pupils fighting to see me in the dark. “They’re saying the twins are here in Montana. They’re calling on us to help.”
“Who is saying this?”
The boy shrugs his flannel shoulders. “Everyone.”
He removes his pocket knife again, mutters a command, and instantaneously the curved edge of his handle casts a light, projecting a video onto the barn door. My face. Ava’s face. Pressed together inside the open trunk of a car. The night of the checkpoint. The night we lost Rayla.
The security footage zooms in, focusing on the two “Ava Goodwin” facial recognition tags hovering above our identical features. “There are two of them!” a Guard shouts. “There are two Ava Goodwins!”
My disbelief leaves me numb. The whole country knows. I should run and hide, but my legs are powerless and unresponsive. I can’t feel my feet.
The boy swipes to a new website.
An extreme close-up of Ava’s nose and my nose. Ava’s cheekbone, my cheekbone. Ava’s chin, my chin. “Numerous analysts have authenticated the footage as the twin daughters of Darren Goodwin,” a distorted voiceover states, “inspiring thousands to rally in support of the Goodwin family . . .”
And another site.
Four people of even height stand together in prosthetic masks. Homogeneous with their average features and matching stubble beards, their brown eyes peer out eerily from their illegal disguises as they call for the people to resist. “Cut the wires on every surveillance. Distract the Guard. Save the twins!”
The boy swipes to a fourth site. Then another. And another. He swipes so quickly, all I see are a blaze of blurred lights—my face and Ava’s face, digitized, multiplied, shared across the underground webosphere for millions to bear witness to our secret.
“Every site the government shuts down, a hundred more pop up in its place,” the boy says, his gaze fixed on me.
I stagger back, intoxicated by the images, his words, and the sudden surrealness of what is happening. A wail of sirens in the distance rouses me. The hologram vanishes, and “Save the twins” glows once more on the sliding door.