A terrible mistake? Blood drains from my face, and my cheeks feel cold. Trigger’s right. If I wasn’t a mistake, none of this would be happening. But the truth still stings.
“No. Wait.” He frowns. “That’s not what I meant. Wexler 42 made a mistake, obviously, but you’re not a mistake. In fact, you’re kind of a miracle.” His gaze intensifies, and I can almost believe him. “The girl who shouldn’t exist.” His grip tightens around my hand. “You said it yourself; you’ve always thought differently from the others. If you weren’t an anomaly, you probably wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“If I weren’t an anomaly, I wouldn’t have needed to. What if I’m sick?”
“What?” His furrowed brow tells me I’ve finally struck the right chord. “Why would you be sick?”
“Don’t they teach history in the Defense Academy? Genetic manipulation began as a way to prevent and eliminate inherited diseases and chromosomal abnormalities. What if whatever’s wrong with me is one of those? What if all the other genomes in my union got…scrubbed or cleaned or whatever, and they just missed one?”
“I don’t think that’s how it works, Dahlia. I think they’d have to put a disease into you for it to be there.” But he sounds far from sure.
“They’re not building genomes from scratch,” I explain. “They have to start with base material. There’s a vault of genes in the genetics lab. Geneticists start with a sample from the vault and alter it to make sure the people it will produce are healthy, hardy, and well suited to their place. Their union. If the starter genes have flaws, isn’t it possible that when they got to me, they just…missed something?”
“I don’t think so. Wouldn’t they scrub the sample, then clone it? So that they’re all the same? It’d be terribly inefficient to have to scrub each identical’s genes individually….”
“But Wexler 42 will know for sure,” I insist. “We have to find him. I have to talk to him before we leave.”
Trigger exhales slowly. “How long ago did he escape custody?”
There are no clocks in the stairwell, so I can only estimate. “Maybe five minutes before I did. So no more than about three hours ago. Why?”
“I think I know how he’ll try to get out of the city,” he says, staring at the exterior door as if he can see right through it. Visualizing his plan.
“How?” I wipe my face again, this time with the inside of the jacket I borrowed from Violet. For a second I feel bad about sullying it. Then I remember that she won’t need it anymore and I feel even worse. “Another small gate?”
“Not exactly. More like a special gate.”
“What makes it special?” My toe keeps tapping, and that small sound echoes up through the stairwell. Now that we’ve decided to go after Wexler, I am full of anxious energy and all out of patience.
“It’s only used by certain people, and only at certain times.”
What people? What times? How can I know so little about my own city? “How can we get to this special gate without being seen?”
“I have an idea.” He opens the exterior door again and peeks through the crack before turning back to me. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Trigger holds out his hand for me, and I take it as we slip through the doorway. Outside, the sun is finally starting to go down. Shadows are longer now, and I feel a little queasy when I notice that the shade cast by the Specialist Bureau stretches two-thirds of the way to the Defense Bureau. I know that’s where we’re headed before Trigger even turns in that direction.
I shake my head. “It’s too far,” I whisper.
“We can make it,” he insists just as softly. “Hold your hands behind your back again as if you’re still restrained. We’re going to march just like we did before, but this time we’ll be in the shadow of the building for most of the way.”
“What if we’re spotted?”
“I don’t think we will be. Look.” He points between the buildings at some distant point on the grounds, and I follow his finger to see a crowd gathered to watch the tail end of the caravan. “They’ll head back inside in a couple of minutes and we’ll have lost our shot. Come on.”
Before I can argue or even truly think about the risk, he grabs my arm and begins marching with me in tow. I can do nothing without attracting attention except reprise my role from before.
Trigger’s form was designed for speed and strength. He moves quickly and I struggle to keep up. But he’s right. The rear of the Defense Academy is deserted except for a single black car parked next to the curb on the cruise strip.
“Whose is that?” It looks just like the one that was parked behind the dormitory half an hour ago.
And suddenly I understand. “That’s Ford 45’s car.”
Trigger’s jaw is clenched with determination.
“We can’t take his car! It won’t even start for us.” And if anyone other than the owner was to hold a wrist beneath the scanner to try to start it, the car doors would lock and the vehicle would deliver the would-be thief straight to Management headquarters to be arrested.
I remember thinking when I was a child how absurd that standard safety feature was. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would try to steal a car. That kind of behavior would expose one’s genome as being defective.
But that was before I met Trigger 17.
“We’re not going to start Ford’s car. He is.” Trigger heads for the vehicle, and when I don’t follow he grabs my hand and pulls me forward again. “We’ll just be along for the ride.”
“This is…crazy,” I whisper, glancing around as I follow him, certain we’re about to be caught. “You want to hitch a ride with the man who organized the slaughter of my entire genome?”
“Yes. He’s going to help us escape. I find the irony highly satisfying.” His grin swells, and I want to return it, but logic and caution keep getting in the way.
“What if he sees us?” I ask as Trigger pulls open the rear door. Ford 45 has been issued a vehicle that has three rows of seats and will hold eight people. He must be very important indeed.
“He won’t even look into the back of the car. Men like Ford 45 rarely take precautions, because they don’t have to. Clean clothes show up in his drawer every morning, and there’s always food ready to eat at mealtimes. His showers are always hot, and his room is always clean.”
“That’s true for all of us.” Because everyone has a role to fill. We don’t see the people who wash our clothes and serve our meals, just like no one sees the hydroponic gardeners who grow our food.
“It’s not like that in the wild.” Trigger folds the middle row of seats forward and gestures for me to climb over it into the last row. “Or in battle.”
Before I can ask whether he’s actually been in battle, he climbs in after me. Suddenly we’re pressed together on the rear floorboard and all I can think about is how much of his body is touching mine. Dark windows have turned the back of the vehicle into a pool of shadows, and we are suspended in them. Alone together.
Somehow this feels even more intimate and daring than our moments in the equipment shed.