THIRTY
MY FIRST TWO MONTHS IN Crevice Valley pass quickly.
Training takes up most of my time, and I eventually graduate from Elijah’s group into my father’s. The work is harder, but my body has strengthened. I gain weight in ways I never had in Claysoot, muscles growing strong from repetitive workouts. My shooting lessons shift to include guns. I master them eventually, but only the long, slender ones. Rifles. I need a long barrel so that I feel I am holding a bow, and then my aim rings true.
Training with Owen is enjoyable, although I still don’t feel like he’s my father. If anything, he is an aged version of myself, with similar ideals and as stubborn a personality. We grow close, over the occasional drink at the Tap Room or an extra one-on-one training session, but not in the traditional way a parent and child might. The only time he ever feels like a father is when I catch him staring at me as I train, some look of utmost confusion on his face, as if he is uncertain I am really his.
The two of us visit Blaine often. Despite the fast recovery he wished for, his progress is slow but steady.
“The steady is the important part,” our father says, “not the speed.”
Most of our trips to the hospital consist of watching Blaine walk with crutches and telling him he’s doing fantastic even when he’s not. He knows we are lying and will change the subject of the conversation, asking questions about the Laicos Project or Crevice Valley. Most of the details my father spills are ones I’ve already heard, but I learn a few new gems during these visits, including the fact that our father joined the Rebels the way I did, after being captured and dragged through the door, and that Crevice Valley is such a fabulous and well-supplied site because it was once a military facility.
“When Elijah found it, all the hallways and rooms were already in place, the Conditioning Room sat there like it was waiting to be used, and the Basin was filled with dead crops. People had been here before us. And the fact that much of this place has electricity, plus a few underground bomb shelters that would be protected during a major attack—well, that proves this is more than a nifty hideout in the woods.”
“If it’s such a great military asset, why isn’t the Order crawling all over it?” Blaine asks.
“We’ve often wondered that ourselves,” Owen says. “Ryder thinks knowledge of this place died long before Frank and the Order came into power. He wagers its location was top secret and known only by a few key officials, all of whom likely were killed during the war.”
“Lucky break,” I say.
“Extremely. If Frank is so hungry to breach Mount Martyr for Harvey, imagine how rabid he’d be if he knew Crevice Valley was actually a functional military facility.”
“Well, what does he think?” Blaine asks, wobbling on his crutches. “That you guys are sleeping out under the stars with nothing more than tents and campfires for company?”
“Who knows? He has a lot on his hands,” our father says. “And we are a small threat in comparison to AmWest. The poor man is extremely overextended. If he doesn’t watch it, everything is going to go crashing out of control on him.”
I laugh. “Wouldn’t that be tragic.”
It is sometimes hard to believe that Crevice Valley flourished into its current state so quickly, but then I remember how Claysoot sprung from those dirt streets in under twelve months. When there was a need, the Rebels found a way, and the military officials that had previously engineered Crevice Valley had provided extremely sturdy building blocks.
Since replanting the crop fields, the land thrives. Sunlight and rain make their way into the Basin, giving way to corn and grain and endless rows of fruits and vegetables. The livestock fields are busy and dairy products always available. The hospital is all too often filled with injured or disabled soldiers, but a sizable field beside it houses much play, people joining together to kick a ball or host friendly archery matches. The laughter of their games drowns out cries of the injured.
There’s also a school system for the youngest ones. I see one girl often, with curls so vibrant she reminds me of Kale. I imagine at some point later in their lives, this girl and all the children of Crevice Valley will look back and understand what took place here. They will come to see they were not just living, they were resisting. They burrowed into the earth by way of their parents and grew up amid a revolution. People here chose this life. Kale, however, will never have that luxury. Her life will always be a part of someone else’s plan.
My absolute favorite place in Crevice Valley is the Technology Center. It is a mess of buildings, testing grounds, and storage facilities that begin in the Basin and roll their way into a set of tunnels piercing the mountain’s depths. There is a weapons unit—where workers clean, repair, and improve upon any firearm, bow, arrow, spear, or ax that walks its way through the Crevice—and a monitoring room, where Harvey can not only survey the areas surrounding Mount Martyr but also keep tabs on all the motion sensors.
I like to walk through the center on my more quiet evenings and admire the various screens, the glowing dials. Sometimes I watch from afar, noting Harvey’s patience as he works on the intricate equipment. He sits with poor posture, his shoulders arched awkwardly and his glasses resting on the tip of his crooked nose. When he catches me looking, he always smiles and gives me a feeble wave.
On one of those calm nights, I approach Harvey and ask him a question that has been swimming in my head since he first told me about Frank’s labs.
“If a Forgery is just a copy—a physical and mental duplicate of a Heisted boy—why is it so loyal to Frank?”
Harvey pulls his glasses off and lays them on the table. “That, Gray, is a fantastic question, and not one that many people think to ask. It is, after all, the reason that none of Frank’s lab workers could create a stable Forgery before me. If they managed to create one at all, its mind was too free. It would question Frank, and he disposed of those replicas swiftly. But I, on the other hand, had a passion for technology—a love for code, a way with software—and that is what made the difference.”
“I’m missing something.”
“A Forgery is similar to you and me,” he continues. “It contains all the same organs, pumps the same type of blood, is built of the same bones. But you and I have free thought, Gray. A Forgery runs off software, data implanted in its brain that tells it how to act and who to listen to.”
Harvey’s smile, the one that exists when he talks about his passions, has faded. “This was really phenomenal when I created it. Now it mostly scares me that I was responsible for something so powerful.”
“So why’d you do it, Harvey? Why work for him?”
He thinks about that for a moment. “I was young and impressionable, I suppose. Frank plucked me from my childhood orphanage and brought me to Union Central, where there were state-of-the-art labs and technology and more water than I could ever drink. He treated me so well, and for the first time in my life I felt like I had family. Someone was caring for me. Someone was acting like my father. I wanted to please him, wanted to show him I could do anything, that I was smarter than every other grown man he had working in those labs. Guess I really did it, huh?”
I don’t say anything, but I understand. I felt that same way with Frank, if only for a few days.
“And the limitless part,” I prompt. “If you were able to make one successful Forgery, why can’t you make a second or third off that same person? I don’t get what’s stopping you.”
“It is a very complicated process,” Harvey says. “If I tried to make too many replicas off you, Gray, it would kill you. I’m not just duplicating your physical attributes, but your mind as well. Your personality, your memories. The human brain can only be stretched so far before it breaks. So I shifted efforts to creating a Forgery of a Forgery, but that is an even messier process. Each generation is less like the first. Certain portions of the software don’t mesh right, and the duplicate Forgeries end up disobedient. They malfunction. I probably could have solved it in time.” He puts his glasses back on and winks at me. “Luckily, I’ve outgrown wanting to please Frank.”
On select days, when scouting reports are positive and the Order nowhere nearby, I am allowed outside. One day a crisp gust of autumn air ruffles my hair. It has grown back, surpassing the stage of stiff stubble and reaching a point where it is soft again, falling into my eyes and curling behind my ears.
When I walk through the woods, it feels as if I am back in Claysoot. There are days that I wish I were truly there, that life was simple again. But Claysoot can never again be a comforting home to me, because even with its structure and rules and security, it is a fraud. Things in Crevice Valley are complicated; but here, what happens is by design of its people. Nothing greater has locked or imprisoned them.
Sometimes, when Bree is sent out on a scouting mission or water run, I venture to the grassy graveyard set in the hillsides beyond Mount Martyr’s rear entrance. It seems every time I am there a new mound of fresh dirt has sprung up from the grass, like a daisy searching for sunlight. My father says this is just the beginning, that the real battle has not even started. I keep company with the deceased when Bree is away, taking refuge among the nameless bodies that lie beneath the ground; but even then I feel oddly alone, like a ghost among a sea of people.
I don’t know what caused me to latch on to Bree the way I have, but whenever she leaves, I am slightly lost. I miss her fire, her scowling face and wild nature, her snide remarks. Each time she returns, I think of telling her this, but I never do. I sometimes even think of asking her if she still wants that kiss. But then Emma will creep into my mind—Emma who has been a pain in my chest for months, an ache I pray to extinguish in reunion every single day. And so I always let the feelings for Bree—the ones that creep up on me when she flashes me a smile or playfully punches my arm—fade away.
In the thick of autumn, when the days have grown much shorter and the evenings cool, I reach a point in my training where I am deemed fit for combat. My father puts me on an active list, and the excitement in me builds. Blaine frets in his big brother way, but since he is still recovering, he can’t offer to take my place. He may be walking without his crutches now, but he has a solid two months of training before him. He has to put in his time, just like everyone else.
My first mission is a basic one, a scouting operation that will be led by Raid. The Order has reattempted Operation Ferret several times over since my arrival in Crevice Valley; and our mission is to cover ground west of Mount Martyr, deem it clear or, if the Order is spotted, report back with coordinates so a counterstrike team can be sent to disband them.
I never get to go on the mission.
On its eve, a sweaty Xavier bursts into a status meeting. The meeting is about the scouting mission itself, and for this reason I am among the shocked faces. The captains are there, along with Ryder, sitting around a circular table, while Bree and I stand with our backs to the wall. Even Harvey is in the room, but only because improved night-vision goggles are to be used on the excursion and he wants to be sure we understand the upgrades.
“Not now, Xavier,” Ryder says as the doors are thrown open.
“But it’s important, sir.” Xavier gasps, nearly choking on his words. “I ran here straight from the interrogation center.”
Something in this revelation has caught Ryder’s attention and he nods at Xavier to continue.
“It’s the new prisoner, the one Fallyn’s team brought in the other day.”
“What of him?” Ryder asks.
“Luke cracked him. We know how the Order plans to infiltrate Crevice Valley. It’s a virus, sir. They’ve engineered a virus.”