He was going to infuriate the Light Council and give the rebels further reason to fight.
“So this mystery man, the one who looks so much like you,” Seth continued, picking up smoothly where Gina had left off. “You have more in common than your faces. You agree with the message he was spreading? You two have the same face and the same beliefs, but you claim you are not the same person?”
“I understand why people find it hard to believe,” I said. The attention of everyone was suddenly and sharply focused on me.
It was strange how difficult it was to speak while wearing a false smile. I wished I could control my body in precisely the way I wanted: what use was it if I could not use it? A puppet would obey me better than my own flesh. I wished I could be a puppet, could be some smiling, dancing thing that would make all the right moves and save him.
“Two boys that handsome in one city,” I said. “I find it hard to believe myself.”
The joke fell utterly flat. Nobody laughed except me, and my laugh shook.
Of course, the idea that there was someone who looked exactly like Ethan who was wandering Light New York committing crimes sounded like a very weak excuse indeed. To everyone else, it was a ridiculous, obvious lie that nobody would believe. Only I knew that it was the truth. Only I knew that if people found out the truth, we would all be in even worse trouble than we were now.
That afternoon, we were in Stryker Tower, escorted into one of the rooms where the council met. We sat at a long oval table watching our interview play. Even at the very beginning of the interview, before disaster struck, we were both stiff and uncomfortable. I was visibly trying hard to be charming and thus was not charming at all. Ethan turned his chair away slightly from the screen, as someone who was not used to and could not bear to see unpleasantness.
I was used to seeing people hurt. I could watch and try to measure how hurt they might be.
I had known the interview was going wrong even as it happened, but I had not dreamed it could turn out as badly as this.
It was not Ethan’s father, Charles, who had brought us here. It was Mark Stryker, and he was looking at Ethan as if Ethan was not his nephew but an unexpected liability.
“Have you two seen the papers today?” he inquired.
“I’ve seen the Times,” I said.
“So you haven’t seen a paper that counts,” said Mark.
We were sitting but he remained standing, the better to tower over us. He made a gesture at one of the men behind him, one of the usual anonymous drones always wearing gray. Even the man’s shining rings seemed like a uniform as he handed a sheaf of newspapers to Mark and Mark tossed them one by one onto the table. Their lurid colors, the twisted bright repetitions of mine and Ethan’s faces, turned the table into a nightmare carnival.
“Paper after paper discussing your obvious guilt, and what that will mean for the future of the Light Council,” Mark said. “Splendid. Just what we wanted. I thought having the girl with you might help, but I suppose it was too much to hope for. We can’t expect her to have the same popularity as she did a couple of years ago.”
“Why not?” Ethan demanded.
“Because I don’t look the same,” I said. “And because I’m with you, and the citizens of both cities either hate the Strykers and think I need to be rescued, or they support the Strykers and worry I am undermining you. No matter what they believe, I’m an easy scapegoat.”
I remembered my changed shape in the white dress. A child, a daughter, could be innocent in a way a woman—a woman with her man—could not be. Especially not a woman whose name the sans-merci were using as a rallying call, a woman who might have seduced a Stryker to the rebels’ cause or who might have been the Strykers’ victim. I could imagine a dozen dark rumors about me floating around the Light city.
I had always known that the way others saw me had nothing to do with the truth. Now new lies were being told about me, and I knew how easy it was to make people believe lies.
Ethan looked at me, his face a picture of angry confusion. I didn’t want to explain to him. I had always been innocent in his eyes, and I wanted to remain innocent.
Mark looked toward me as well. “So only one of you is a fool,” he said. “What a pity that means there is a fool in my family.”
“This whole interview fiasco was your idea,” Ethan said. “So maybe our family can boast of more than one fool.”
He always spoke to Mark like this, as if it was safe.