“Are you okay?” he asks, just loudly enough to be heard over the music. “You seem kind of out of it tonight.”
My gaze wanders toward Trigger, and I find him watching me. His clenched jaw is the only sign that he’s not perfectly happy playing his role while this strange new boy holds my arm and whispers in my ear.
Trigger is clearly as ready to leave this dangerous charade behind as I am now that the novelty has worn off. But I don’t know where to go. This private party in the Administrator’s mansion seems to be the only place in Lakeview that the soldiers won’t search for us.
Hennessy is still watching me in concern. “Is this about your parents?”
“Parents?” I want to laugh at the first joke I’ve been able to clearly recognize all evening, but he beats me to it.
“You know, the tight-fisted bastard and stone-cold bitch who birthed and raised you but forced you to sneak out to attend the party of the year? Or are they dead to you as a result of such brutal social injustice?”
Parents. It’s an archaic general descriptor for a set of caregivers, typically a father who physically sired children and a mother who physically incubated and gave birth to them in a messy, bloody, dangerous procedure.
Centuries ago.
When the world was different.
Yet Hennessy isn’t laughing anymore. He’s using the term as if it has current relevance. As if I came not from an incubator in a lab but from inside a woman. As if I belong not to a bureau, or a division, or even a city, but to a pair of individuals who conceived me with bodily fluids. But that’s not possible. That kind of messy genetic transfer isn’t done anymore.
Is it?
My head spins as I stare around the room.
Is that how they get so many individuals? Are people in Waverly’s city not designed by geneticists and grown in incubators? Are they not cared for by nannies, then dormitory floor conservators? Is Waverly’s city populated entirely by individuals?
How can they have such advanced food preparation techniques and clothing design and face-enhancing paint yet have mastered so little of the basic technology that keeps a city functioning at maximum capacity and efficiency?
How can they populate their academies, if every citizen requires different considerations and accommodations? If they aren’t all designed to specifically fulfill the needs of the city they serve?
Do they serve their city at all?
From our basic geography unit, I know approximately where all the neighboring cities are. Mountainside, Riverbend, Oceanbay, Valleybrook. But I don’t know which of them is the anomalous metropolis where people are conceived rather than designed and born rather than removed from incubation. Nor do I understand why the Administrator would host a party for the children of such a city.
“Waverly?”
“I’m fine,” I assure Hennessy, hoping to rid him of the concern lining his features, which is sure to evolve into suspicion if I keep saying and doing the wrong things.
Something beeps from my left, and I drag my gaze away from Trigger to see that Hennessy has pulled a small tablet from his pocket. A very small tablet, no longer than his hand. He taps on an icon, then reads a couple of sentences of a ping someone has sent him.
“My driver says our car is lined up out front with all the others and Margo’s trunk is being loaded. We’ll be leaving in about ten minutes.”
Panic burns like fire surging through my veins. When the guests have all gone, there will be no reason for Waverly to remain. My disguise will expire with this party.
He misinterprets my fear. “You can’t send for your car, can you? Because you snuck in. Let me take you and your guard home.”
Home. A brand-new fear fires through me. I can’t go to Waverly’s home, where it will become immediately obvious that there are two of us.
Yet I can’t stay here either. But if Hennessy’s car gets me out of Lakeview…
“Yes! Thank you.”
He stands and offers me his hand. “Dance with me once, before we go? We can’t take pictures, since you’re not supposed to be here, but…”
I’ve seen thousands of photographs of plants in every possible stage of growth in class, but I’m not sure how one would “take” a picture, or what that has to do with dancing.
What I am sure of is that I don’t know how to dance. I can hardly even walk in these shoes. But I take his hand and stand, because I can’t imagine he would ask Waverly in the first place if he didn’t think she would accept.
If I weren’t afraid it would draw even more attention my way, I would just trip and fake a twisted ankle. Or actually twist my ankle. Though that would add an extra layer of difficulty to everything when Trigger and I flee into the wild after the party.
I glance back at him as Hennessy leads me toward the center of the room, and my “private security” is still watching me with his jaw clenched. He doesn’t want me to dance with Hennessy. I don’t want to dance with Hennessy. I take a deep breath, ready to let my insanely high left heel slip out from under me, when suddenly the heavy double doors at the end of the room fly open.
At least two dozen identical soldiers pour inside from the hallway and the music screeches to a halt. Couples go still and groups rise, startled, from clusters of furniture. Shocked silence stretches across the huge room. Everyone stares at the soldiers, waiting for an explanation for the interruption.
The soldiers stare back without breaking their formation or even turning their heads. Their eyes are as wide as their posture is stiff. They look as astonished as I’ve been since the moment I entered the room.
A man pushes his way between the soldiers, and I suck in a startled breath when I recognize both his face and the name tag pinned to his black suit. Ford 45 scans the sea of faces without settling on any of them. He does not seem surprised that the partygoers are not identicals.
“Please remain calm!” he orders. But every muscle in my body demands that I flee. “These soldiers only need a minute of your time. Then you’ll be free to carry on with your”—his disgusted expression roams the room again—“party.”
Panic tightens my grip on Hennessy’s hand. Trigger steps away from the wall, his hands open at his sides, ready for action, but I subtly wave him back. Ford 45 hasn’t noticed us. The last thing we want to do is draw his attention.
The soldiers spread out into a loose formation, and their commander marches through the ranks to stand next to Ford. “I apologize for the interruption,” he begins, addressing the crowd. “But—”
“You better have a hell of a lot more than an apology to offer!” Seren strides through the room as if he owns it, Sofia on his heels, and stops just feet from Ford and the commander. “This is my birthday party. You have no business here. Our mother is the Administrator, and she will—”
“Your mother is the one who sent us, sir,” the commander replies, and for a second the room seems to spin around me. “We’re here to search for fugitives.”