Or I will get caught and die with them.
I force myself forward again, and with every step I expect to hear alarms ring out, announcing my escape. They will sound something like the weather siren, I imagine, but I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never heard any other kind. Things like this don’t go wrong in Lakeview.
Somehow I am the only thing that has ever gone wrong in Lakeview in my lifetime.
After another half a flight, metal squeals over my head as a door opens on the top floor. Panicked, I pull open the door on the sixth-floor landing. A quick glance reveals the end of another empty hallway, so I step into it and pull the door closed as softly as I can.
The soldiers who’ve come after me don’t hear the door, because they’re talking. Heart pounding, I face the open end of the sixth-floor hallway so I can see if anyone approaches, then press my ear against the door I’ve just come through. I’m not sure I’ll be able to hear anything over my rushing pulse, yet soon I hear footsteps. Then the soldiers’ voices.
I press my cheek harder against the door, the metal cold against my skin, and strain to make out what they’re saying.
“Why can’t we just raise the alarm and get the whole city looking for her?” the first voice, a woman’s, asks.
“Because a recall of five thousand identicals takes some time to set up, and we’re not prepared for the panic that would ensue in Workforce if they found out about it before Management had an opportunity to release an official statement,” a second female voice replies as their steps clomp closer to the sixth-floor landing. “That, and Ford 45 doesn’t want anyone to know he lost not one but two prisoners in a five-minute span until he can also report that they’ve been recaptured. But even that probably won’t save his job.”
I exhale slowly. There will be no alarm, and my fellow identicals aren’t yet being rounded up. Which means that the best place for me to hide, at least for the moment, is among the 4,999 other girls who look just like me. Without the name embroidered on my athletic jacket, no one will be able to tell me apart from my friends.
When the footsteps and voices have faded, I take off my jacket and stuff it into a trash can halfway down the hall. Once I am sure the soldiers have had time to reach the bottom floor, I carefully ease the door open again and listen closely. I hear only silence, so I sneak into the stairwell again and continue my quiet descent.
The soldiers’ words play over and over in my head. Recall. Panic.
How will Lakeview weather the loss of five thousand of its upcoming trade laborers? Aren’t we all needed? Who will our teachers teach? Who will our dorm supervisors supervise?
Will it hurt when we die?
My feet pause on the steps when the devastating reality finally hits me. My escape is a far-fetched dream. I still have nowhere to go. I’ve never even been beyond Lakeview’s city walls.
I can’t reasonably expect to avoid my fate. But before I die, I have to know what Wexler 42 knows.
In what way are we defective?
And if he knew about that defect from the beginning, why was my genome put into production in the first place?
I huddle in the shadow of the mirrored Management Bureau, staring out at a neatly manicured lawn divided by gently curving sidewalks. As anxious as I am to be moving, I’m terrified to take that first step. On my own I feel unsettlingly conspicuous and vulnerable.
Even without my name embroidered over my heart, I can’t simply stroll across the city, much less through the gate into the training ward. The soldiers are looking for a solitary girl who looks just like me. I need camouflage.
My thoughts racing, I glance at the clock tower in the square at the center of the administration ward. Less than an hour has passed since Trigger and I were apprehended. The gardening unions—both landscape and hydroponic—will be back in class already, but because it’s field day, several of the other unions should still be in the middle of their exercise unit. Once I make it back to the training ward, all I’ll have to do is find another class of my own identicals and blend in until they return to the dormitory to shower.
Getting out of the administration ward will be the real challenge.
I scan the square, and frustration amplifies my fear. Other than soldiers on patrol and the occasional pair of managers headed to or from their bureau, the square is deserted. Is it always like this?
The training ward is always bustling with students. Why are there so few adults out and about in the rest of the city?
Panic closes in on me as I peer out over the nearly empty lawn. Then the familiar rhythm of pounding feet catches my attention. I peek around the corner of the building to see a long cluster of Workforce students jogging along the sidewalk toward the Management Bureau. They’re boys—completely useless to me. But behind the boys’ class is a girls’ class, and behind them is an evidently endless line of jogging students.
And finally I realize what I’m seeing. These are the unions that came in last place during their field day. Rather than victory cupcakes, they get a team-building jog around the training and administrative wards, and their misfortune is my saving grace.
One of these unions is made up of my identicals. And I’m still wearing my athletic uniform.
I watch from my hiding spot as class after class pass me, huffing with exertion. Sixteen year-twelve boys with pale hair and dark eyes. Sixteen year-fourteen girls with red curls and freckles. Sixteen year-seventeen boys with light brown skin and bright greenish eyes. Sixteen year-sixteen girls with…my very own face.
My heart beats so hard it hurts.
Because the late fall day has grown warm, my identicals are not wearing their jackets, and with any luck no one will notice one extra.
I steel my nerve and run in place in the shadows until my heart races not from fear but from exertion. Until sweat forms on my forehead. Then, when they pass my hiding place, I slip into their ranks near the end.
As we round the end of the square, I scan the administration grounds and I notice that there are more soldiers out than there were even minutes ago, patrolling in pairs. They’re looking for me, yet none of them look at me. Alone, identicals stand out, but together, we are never truly seen.
I’ve never been more grateful for that fact in my life.
I hold my breath as we approach the gate into the training ward, but the guard just waves us through. There are too many of us to bother scanning.
Halfway across the common lawn, the instructor—not one of Belay 35’s identicals—calls for a rest. My heart slams against my sternum as the class around me breaks into small groups, talking and drinking from bottles of water.
I don’t have a bottle. I have no one to talk to. If I join a group, will they be able to tell I don’t belong?