Though the sun has been down for hours, the area of Mountainside laid out immediately past the front gate is lit up like broad daylight by pole-mounted light fixtures lining the streets. Tall buildings are crammed close together just feet from the sidewalk, and the grounds seem to be entirely paved. I can’t see so much as a blade of grass from my vantage point in the center of the backseat.
Just as I become convinced that Mountainside doesn’t have a thing in common with Lakeview, movement catches my eye through Margo’s window. I lean around her, and as the car rolls down the street I am surprised to see laborers in familiar brown uniforms sweeping trash down the sidewalks while most residents of Mountainside sleep. The longer I stare out the windows, the more laborers I notice. Six women with identical faces, wearing identical green landscape gardening uniforms, kneel in a flower bed between the street and the sidewalk, planting greenery. Another half-dozen men pull garbage cans to the side of the street from the fronts of various buildings.
But the few citizens I see walking down the sidewalk and frequenting businesses this late at night—those who are out enjoying the late hour rather than working—are individuals. No two of them look alike. No two wear the same clothing.
Our car rolls to a stop, and I glance through the windshield to see that we’re sitting in front of a pole suspended vertically over the middle of the street. Hanging from the pole is a single red light. I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking why we’re stopped in front of a red light, because I’m sure that’s something Waverly would already know.
While the car idles, I look out Hennessy’s window and see another group of six landscape gardeners working in the middle of the night, but the timing isn’t what makes my eyes widen until they feel as if they will pop out of my skull.
I know those faces.
The gardeners are all girls, and they all have pale curls, narrow-set dark eyes, and long, straight noses. If I were any closer, I know I’d see a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of their noses.
When the car begins to roll forward again—the red light is now green—we pass closely enough for me to see the name embroidered across the front of one uniform.
AZALEA 19.
I gasp. I know those girls. I know their faces, anyway, because I saw them in the Workforce Academy’s cafeteria every day for years. They are from the landscape gardening class that graduated almost two years ago.
How on earth did six landscape gardeners from Lakeview wind up hours away, working on the streets of Mountainside in the middle of the night?
“You like them?” Hennessy asks, following my gaze.
I have no idea how to answer.
“What about those?” He points through the window and I follow his finger to where another group of six identical brown-clad women are washing the windows of a shop that clearly closed for the day hours earlier. “My father bought a batch just like that to replace his household staff, which is scheduled to expire next week. They should be here in a couple of days.”
The lump in my throat threatens to choke me. He’s talking about the windows. Please let him be talking about the windows.
But he isn’t. Windows won’t replace a household staff. Yet a crew of identical girls from Lakeview’s year-eighteen manual labor division will do that nicely.
I can’t answer. I am horrified beyond words.
I understand now why Lakeview has no residential or industrial ward.
Classes that graduate from my native city don’t go to work for the glory of Lakeview after all.
My father bought a batch….
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I look at Trigger and find his jaw clenched. His hands grip the edges of his seat. He is fighting to control his tongue, or his fists, or whatever part of him most wants to express the rage we’re both feeling as this new reality crashes over us.
It’s time to go. It’s time for us to leave the car and run off into the city to take what we need to survive in the wild.
It’s time to leave both Lakeview and Mountainside in the dust.
I lay one hand on his shoulder. He turns to look at me. My mouth is open, ready to put our plan in motion.
Then the driver slows the car in front of a tall, ornate gate set just back from the road. “Welcome home, Ms. Whitmore.”
What? No.
I can only stare in terrified silence as he presses a button at the gate and tells the face that appears on the screen that he has brought Waverly Whitmore home.
“Excuse me?” the black-clad soldier on-screen says. “Ms. Whitmore went to bed hours ago.”
The driver chuckles. “You’re mistaken.” He angles the screen until the soldier on it is looking right at me. The soldier scowls, then presses a button offscreen. The gate rolls open.
Hennessy’s car pulls forward on its own, driving us past a manicured tiered lawn climbing the side of the mountain until we roll to a stop in front of a huge house eerily reminiscent of the Administrator’s mansion, but built into the earth itself at the back.
My heart thumps in my ears. I can’t get out. I don’t belong here.
The tall, narrow front door flies open and a woman steps barefoot onto the broad front porch, wrapping a long pink robe tight around her slim hips. “Waverly Whitmore!” she snaps, bending to frown at me through the window. “Get out of the car!”
Trigger gets out and opens Margo’s door. He gives me a reassuring look as I climb over her, and as he helps me out he whispers, “Get ready to run.”
I’m more than ready. But when I stand at the edge of the driveway and look up at the woman in the pink robe, every thought in my head deserts me. I am looking at an older version of myself.
Waverly’s mother has my brown eyes, fair skin, and pointed chin. But her nose is different.
“Who the hell is that?” she demands, frowning at Trigger.
Before I can figure out how to answer, the front door opens again. A girl with my face and Poppy’s smile comes jogging down the steps. “Hennessy!” she cries, without even a glance at me, and I realize he’s gotten out of the car at my back. “Look! They’ve got it loaded already! Have you seen it yet? It’ll be on every billboard in the city by tomorrow night.”
She holds up a tablet, but before I can see what’s on it, her gaze finds me.
Her jaw drops and her arm falls slack. “Mom…” Her voice is hoarse with shock. “What the hell is going on?”
Waverly’s mother stares back and forth between us, both hands clasped over her mouth.
And before I can decide what to do, my focus is drawn down to the tablet hanging by Waverly’s right knee. On its screen, I am shocked to see my own face, made up with the paint and glitter Margo and her friends wore at Seren’s party. Standing just behind me in the image is Hennessy, whose arms are wrapped around my waist.
The caption beneath our smiling faces reads, “Don’t miss the wedding of the century—a Network Four exclusive! Lady Waverly Whitmore + Sir Hennessy Chapman Forever!”