“Defense requires it. You can’t run an army as if it’s a factory, or a construction crew, or a garden. Our leaders can’t be managers; they have to come from within our ranks, and command positions are awarded through competition.” He takes a deep breath, then stands straighter and practically barks a motto in a practiced cadence. “It takes the best to lead the rest.”
All at once I understand. But I’m not supposed to. No one outside of the Defense Bureau is supposed to know that their rules encourage competition and allow for arrogance and—evidently—for one child locking another in a dark closet.
I want to be able to declare that I’m the best hydroponic gardener in my union, but the city neither requires nor allows arrogance from its gardeners. And now I wish I didn’t know that Trigger is allowed to feel and say what I am not.
“Okay. I promise I’ll eat the carrot. But we have to go. I can’t keep Management waiting.” And I have no idea how I’ll explain the delay.
Trigger 17 throws his head back and laughs. The sound echoes up through the stairwell above us, and I scowl at him. I’m not in on the joke. “Management isn’t expecting you, Dahlia. I just told your instructor that so he’d let you come with me.”
“You lied to Belay 35?” I can’t even process that statement. Keeping our secret has been hard enough for me, but an outright lie? Skipping class? “What if he pings Management to verify what you told him?”
“He probably won’t, because he doesn’t expect to be lied to. And even if he tries, the ping won’t go through, because Management’s communications truly are down. I hacked the system. They’re restricted to verbal communication until I repair the damage. Or until they figure out what’s happened, and even if they do they can’t trace it back to me.”
I stare at him, wide-eyed. How can a cadet—a student—have broken into the city’s security system without alerting the people who run that system? Just how special are these Special Forces? “Do you have any idea how insanely dangerous all this is?”
“Yes. This is what I’m trained for.” Trigger looks exhilarated, and with a strange sense of intuition I realize I know exactly how he feels. This same reckless thrill races through me every time I think about him. “It’s good practice for real-world application,” he adds.
“But I’m not trained for…whatever this is.” And all this adrenaline is making my heart race too fast.
“Relax. Once you’re back in class, I’ll restore Management’s communications and they’ll think it was a random glitch. If your friends ask what Management wanted, just tell them it was about the instructor’s position, but that’s all you’re at liberty to say.”
My focus narrows on him. “How do you know about the instructor’s position?”
“It’s in your file.”
“You looked at my file?” Does that mean I’ve been hacked?
“How else was I supposed to know whether Management would have a plausible reason to want to see you?” Trigger gives me a sly smile. “They’re very impressed with your efforts in the hydroponic lab. Your work with vines and climbers is especially noteworthy.”
I shake my head, setting aside the compliment clearly meant as a distraction. “Won’t they be able to see that my file was accessed?”
“Yes, if they go looking.” Trigger leans against the top half of the stair rail and crosses his arms over his chest. “But I used your academic instructor’s access code.”
“Do I even want to know how you got that?”
His grin is small but indomitable. “Probably not.”
“And you want me to lie to my friends about where I went?”
“I want you to give them the benefit of plausible deniability. Protect them from the truth, just in case. It’s in everyone’s best interest.”
I can’t argue with that.
Grasping for patience in spite of the increasingly insistent awareness that we should not be here, I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and stare up at him. “Do you have an answer for everything?”
He grins. “Cadets are trained to be prepared.”
I feel like I should yell at him, yet I find myself returning his smile. Something about his stalwart confidence is charming, even as it makes me want to pull my own hair out by the roots.
How is that possible? Is it something they breed into a soldier? “Are there thousands just like you?”
Finally he hesitates, clearly giving his response serious thought. “I’m not sure there are any like me anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“My identicals and I are genetic duplicates, of course, but that just means we’re operating with the same basic genetic tools at our disposal. And obviously we’ve had the same training. But I’m the only one who got trapped in an elevator with a beautiful girl who so clearly wanted to ask a million questions yet so clearly knew she wasn’t supposed to. My experience diverged from theirs that day. Meeting you led me and my training down a different path.” He makes a gesture that encompasses the two of us. “Down this path.”
“A path that makes you willing to break rules that Management doesn’t even know it needs yet. Like ‘Do not hack into the city’s security and communication systems.’?”
“Exactly.”
What he’s done is incredibly risky. Yet I understand the impulse. Before I met Trigger 17, I had no idea how little I actually knew about the world, outside of hydroponic gardening, and if that knowledge were available to me with a few taps on a tablet, as it is for him, wouldn’t I tap?
Trigger pushes himself away from the stairs and stands straighter. “I’m sorry for all the covert maneuvers. I just wanted to talk to you again, and this seemed simpler than rigging an elevator to break down while we’re both on it. Although I have to admit, that was my backup plan.”
“I can’t tell whether you’re joking.” Violet is like that. It drives me nuts.
“I am. Mostly. Although it is much harder to find time to talk to you than to girls from my own union.”
“Girls from…?” My chest aches in an entirely new and painful way. We’re allowed to talk to the boys in our union, so why does the thought of him talking to the girls in his union make me feel a little mad and a little sick at the same time?
“If…” I can’t figure out how to ask what I want to know. “If you weren’t supposed to talk to those girls, would you go through this much trouble? Would you break rules for them?”
Trigger is silent while he thinks, and each second that passes without an answer makes my heart beat harder. Finally, his head tilts to the side and he looks down at me with somber consideration. “It’s possible that I made hacking into Management’s communication system sound easier than it was. It actually took me a week and a half to analyze and break down the process, and another couple of days to work up the nerve to try it. I don’t think I would have done that for anyone else, Dahlia. I’m not even sure I did it for you. This was kind of selfish. I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to know if you liked the carrot, and I wanted to tell you about where I found it and how it was growing.”