“Respectfully, sir, if I hadn’t gotten caught, my actions would have gone unnoticed. And unrewarded,” Trigger adds as I creep softly toward the closet.
“Are you saying you got caught on purpose? Cadet, did it ever occur to you to simply make a report?” Armstrong 38 demands. “You would have gotten credit for what you uncovered, but you would not have been caught.”
Surprise washes over Trigger’s strong features as I ease open the closet door, crossing my fingers that the hinges don’t squeak. “In retrospect, that does seem to be the wisest course of action,” he admits.
“Indeed,” Armstrong 38 grunts. “This is your last warning. If I hear your name again before graduation, I’ll have you bumped down to infantry.”
“Sir, you can’t—!”
“You are out of line!” Commander Armstrong shouts as I close the closet door.
“Yes, sir.” Trigger’s voice is softer, heard through the door, but he sounds relieved. I am hidden. He can stop arguing with his commander. “I apologize, sir.”
The only reply is Armstrong’s swift, heavy footsteps marching past my hiding place, headed toward the bank of elevators.
When I hear the doors slide closed, I exhale. A second later, the storage closet door flies open, and before I can gasp Trigger tugs me into the hall by one hand.
“Slide along the wall, beneath the camera,” he whispers, obviously unaware that I’ve already figured that out.
We make our way quickly down the hall, my hand still clasped in his, and even though my need to flee the city grows more urgent with every passing second, the feeling of his palm pressed against mine is strangely reassuring. And exhilarating.
Trigger sticks his wrist beneath the scanner next to a door halfway down, and a green light flashes as the bolt slides back.
“Step to the right and stay against the wall,” he whispers as he opens the door.
I follow his instructions and find a dorm room strikingly similar to mine. Two sets of neatly made bunk beds. Drawers and chutes built into the wall. But there is no rug. There are no chairs. There are no sketches of plants hung on the walls.
Nothing differentiates one bunk from the next.
Trigger leaves the door open at a precise and odd angle. Puzzled, I follow his gaze and see that at this angle, the open door blocks me and half of the room from the camera’s view.
“In there,” he whispers, and I hurry silently into the bathroom, careful to keep my back against the wall. Inside I exhale slowly. It would never have occurred to me to hide from the cameras using an open door, but Trigger 17 is obviously accustomed to evading observation.
What did he use these skills for before he met me?
He steps into the bathroom and closes the door, and his soft frown is equal parts relieved and concerned. And a little impressed. “How did you get in here? How did you get out of custody?”
“I had help with a door lock. Then I snuck out and jogged across the city with a class of cooks.”
Trigger looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time. “Are you sure you’re a gardener? Because that sounds more like something a cadet would do in training.”
“They teach you how to escape?”
He nods. “From a variety of situations. In case we’re ever captured.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
“Did you mean any of what you said to that Commander? Would you have turned me in for a greater leadership position, if you’d thought of it?”
“I did think of it. The day we got stuck in the elevator. Back before I’d committed any infraction. But I couldn’t do it.”
“What? You spoke to me first!”
“Yes, but only in an official capacity.” He smiles, and this time when my gaze catches on his mouth, all I want to do is punch it. “You were going to hyperventilate, and I’m trained to prevent that. What was I supposed to do? Let you pass out? Defense would have considered that a humanitarian effort, not a violation.”
“You mean I was the only one breaking a rule in that elevator?”
“Yes. But I’ve broken plenty since then. Dahlia, I could never have turned you in.” His smile fades as he looks into my eyes. “I was afraid they’d recall your genome.”
“They did. They are, I mean.” My throat tries to close around the words. “Evidently coordinating a recall that large takes time.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” His voice sounds strained. As if he’s in physical pain. “I followed you into the equipment shed thinking we could steal a few minutes, but Mace 17 saw. He wanted my red braid. So he turned me in.”
“He did this for a braid?” The petty nature of such an act stuns me. “He must have known what would happen to my genome. He would do that for an accessory?”
“For what the braid represents. For the respect and benefits that come with a leadership position. But they won’t give it to him. Locking your roommate in a closet when you’re a year seven is one thing. Betraying him to the enemy—to Management, in this case—when you’re months from graduating is something else entirely. At this point in our training, we’re supposed to be able to trust one another implicitly.”
“So he doomed Poppy and all the rest of my identicals for nothing?” Though it hardly seems possible, that makes me feel even worse.
“I’m so sorry.” Trigger’s gaze strays to my lips, and I feel a ghost of our kiss haunting me with its consequences. “I wanted to bring you something picked fresh from the wild. I wanted to touch you again,” he says. “I saw you and I couldn’t resist.”
I understand that feeling. That horrific, exhilarating certainty that you’re going to touch something dangerous—something that will hurt you—because you have to know what it feels like. Just this once.
He frowns. “I should have known better. I should have been more careful.”
Yes. And so should I.
Trigger reaches for my hand in spite of the conclusion we’ve both drawn, and I let him have it, because I am already in as much danger as I can possibly get into. He’s the reason my whole world is falling apart, yet somehow being near him is comforting when it should be terrifying.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him as the inevitability of my predicament settles onto my shoulders like a weight pressing me into the ground. “If Management is right, my flawed genome would have showed itself eventually.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, unless the same thing’s wrong with me.” Trigger leans down to kiss me, but I push him away, even though every flawed cell in my body aches to pull him closer. I can’t kiss him knowing that Management is planning the systematic destruction of nearly everyone I’ve ever known. Kissing Trigger got my entire genome recalled.
No, Mace 17 got my genome recalled. Genetic flaws got my genome recalled.
I got my genome recalled.