But I’m going to die if Management catches me, and if I escape the city I’ll never see Trigger again. These are the last moments we’ll ever spend together.
So I pull him closer and step up on my toes. His hands find my waist, and my arms wrap around his neck. I kiss him, and this kiss is deeper and wilder. Desperate and scared. I can feel time slipping away from us, and no matter how tightly I hold him, soon I’ll have to let go.
When I finally pull away, my pulse racing, I’m hyperaware of how long I’ve spent in Trigger’s room. Yet I don’t regret a single second of that kiss.
“I have to go.” Reluctantly I let my arms slide free of his neck. “Can you tell me how to get out of the city? I…” My ignorance is humiliating. “I don’t even know where the gate is.”
Trigger’s grip on me tightens. “There are several gates, Dahlia, but you can’t go through any of them. Your bar code won’t open them, and most of them are guarded. You’ll be arrested the moment they see you.”
“Only most of them are guarded? What about the unguarded gates?”
He lets me go. “Neither of us has the security clearance to unlock them, and if we try we’ll be raising an alarm.” He holds his arm up, showing me the bar code on his wrist for emphasis.
“Trigger, there has to be a way out.”
“Not on your own. But I can help.” He squats in front of the cabinet below his sink and pulls out a small zippered bag.
“No.” I shake my head firmly. “I’m not going to drag you—” I frown as he opens the medicine cabinet and pulls out a half-empty tube of toothpaste. “What are you doing?”
“Packing. I’m in trouble whether I go with you or not, but you won’t make it out of the city without my help. So I’m coming with you.”
I should tell him no again, but I’m not ready to say goodbye. I want to know what life is like as a cadet. I want to know what he thinks about at night before he falls asleep. I want to know what he likes to eat and how he got the tiny scar on his thumb.
I want to know what these feelings mean.
Would I have this same attraction for any boy I got stuck in an elevator with, or is this attraction specific to Trigger 17? He must have felt this before. How else would he have known about kissing? How does his attraction to me compare to what he’s felt for girls in the past? Am I the only girl outside of his union he’s had a conversation with?
I will never have those answers if he doesn’t come with me.
I will never get to kiss him again if he stays behind.
“Okay. Come with me.”
He smiles, but I know I’ve made the wrong decision as soon as the words fall from my lips. I am damning him to my fate. I might also be damning his entire genome. “Wait. Will your identicals suffer for this?”
“No,” he insists as he drops a toothbrush into the bag. “I was trained to follow orders, but I was designed to think for myself.”
“Those seem like two conflicting concepts.”
“Sometimes it feels that way.” Trigger takes the third of four razors lined up on the counter and drops it into the bag. “Following orders is always our primary objective, but out in the field the method isn’t as important as the result. My genome is intentionally inventive and bold to help us survive on missions and in the wild. And those who think as individuals are treated as individuals.”
“So what will they think when you’re just…gone?”
“Management will tell the cadets I died in the wild on some kind of test or mission.”
“But that’s a lie!”
“Management doesn’t lie.” Trigger stands up straight and gives me a look that makes me feel very young. Very inexperienced. “Neither does Defense. They simply make strategic omissions, as authorized by the city’s official security bylaws. Anything necessary to protect the city is permissible. To keep everyone safe and productive.”
Safe and productive. Those words are printed on Lakeview’s official seal, displayed on the side of every CitiCar and on the floor of the Management Bureau’s lobby. Everything Management does is to keep the city safe and productive—including the rare recall of flawed genomes.
The recall is a normal, necessary process. Even in the wild, flawed plants and animals die. Right?
Yet again, I find myself inexplicably unwilling to die, despite the selfishness inherent in that thought. I’m not done living. I’m not done knowing, finding, feeling, seeing, and touching. I’m not done being.
I wish my identicals weren’t done either. I wish I knew how to help them.
Trigger zips up his toiletry bag. “We should go.” He opens the bathroom door to another very specific angle, then motions for me to make my way along the wall again. While I sneak toward the door, he glances around his dorm room from the middle of the floor, his brows drawn into a straight, determined line. “We’ll need more supplies.” He opens a closet door and lifts a worn olive-green backpack from the floor.
“Won’t we stand out if we carry a bag?”
Trigger shrugs as he shoves things into the pack from his bureau drawer. “If we’re seen together, we’ll stand out. I don’t think a backpack could make that much worse.”
I’m fascinated to realize that his entire life will fit into that one bag.
Mine would probably take up even less space.
“What are those?” I ask from my position beneath the camera as he tosses in a small cardboard box.
“Matches. It’ll get cold at night, and we’ll need fire to cook meat.”
I was taught the theoretical basics of cooking as it applies to my job, but I’ve never seen a match. I’ve never felt the warmth of an open flame. Those things have no relevance to the life of a hydroponic gardener.
With a disquieting bolt of surprise, I realize I am no longer a gardener. I will probably never pick up another pH tester or fill another water pan.
If I was designed for trade labor and trained as a hydroponic gardener yet can never be either of those again, what am I now?
Who am I?
Trigger shows me the pattern of steps and pauses needed to sneak past the cameras on his floor. I’m sure at least three of them caught glimpses of me—and probably of him—but if no one is watching the feeds live, our escape from the dormitory won’t be discovered until someone realizes he’s missing and examines the footage.
We hope to be long gone by then.
We are twenty feet from the stairwell when a familiar voice freezes me in place, my left shoulder inches from a glass window set into the stark white wall where the conservator’s office is on my floor.
“…wanted to personally thank you, Commander Armstrong, for volunteering two of your field medic classes to oversee the blood tests.”
It’s Ford 45. I’m certain it’s him. If I got any closer to the window, I could peek in and tell for sure. But that would be too much of a risk.
“The assistance has truly helped us speed the process along,” Ford continues. “Five thousand tests in two hours is quite a challenge.”