“I am your appropriate contact from now on,” I said. “Neither one of us is in hiding anymore.”
“Noted,” he said, his tone cool and his hands fisted.
I turned my attention back to Indy. “What else? Why did you really fly all this way? You knew we’d show up at the safe house soon enough.”
Indy held her ground, which I’ll admit I admired about her. “Well, there’s another tiny snag.”
“Tiny snag?” I asked. “Define ‘tiny snag.’ ”
“Grande is surrounded by Van Hightower’s people. Thane and I were on watch, which is why we’re not at the safe house.”
“Hightower’s people,” Vi repeated. “What kind of people?”
“Clones,” Indy said.
My blood ran cold. A high-pitched squealing started in my ears. The images of all that purple, of those fetuses, of Cash Whiting, filled my head.
They’d done it. They’d finally cloned a superhuman, even without Cash’s notes. In my stupor, I wondered if the clones could control the elements, or if they could read minds, or command people with ultrapowerful voices, or all of the above.
My Resistance cannot survive against an army of super-humans, no matter how talented we are. I thought of Starr. Her last convo with Gunn had been a few days before, and she’d been so concerned with Raine draining Thane.
Starr said she’d warn us, but maybe she didn’t know. Around me, the earth moved in slow motion.
“Jag?” Vi’s hand on mine jolted me out of my fear.
“What’s their talent?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Thane said. “Those clones were not made while I was in Freedom.”
“Three weeks is awfully fast to manufacture an entire fleet of clones,” I said, the feeling returning to my limbs. Cash had said thirty days. Starr’s destroyed microchip wasn’t even that old.
“Van’s been on the brink for a long time,” Thane said. “One of my Insiders destroyed a crop of successful embryos mid-February—and he paid for it with his life. This could have happened a month earlier.”
I knew about the sabotage. I had cracking witnessed it. I began pacing, wild and unorganized thoughts running through my head. “Why didn’t we burn that place to the ground? Destroy all their notes?”
“Things like that take time to plan,” Thane said. His calm reply boiled my anger into fury.
“And you weren’t available to plan them,” Indy added.
I shot her a death glare. She’d had access to Thane’s information. “You should’ve—”
“I was running your precious Resistance a thousand miles away. Don’t you dare—”
“Enough,” Vi said quietly, but with force. Indy and I didn’t take our eyes off one another.
“Are our people secure inside the safe house?” Vi asked.
“Yes,” Thane answered. “But Laurel won’t be able to get out her moles, and we can’t get in.”
“So we need somewhere else,” I said. “Beachfront? Who’s there now?”
“Director Palmer, and he’s friendly. But we don’t have the manpower to organize our people, unless you plan on flying to the thirty-one cities in the Union yourself.”
A sob hiked up my throat. I swallowed it down. “If I have to,” I said.
“No,” Vi said, putting her hand on my shoulder to stop my incessant pacing. “Let’s go see what the situation is in Grande before you freak out and fly off.”
“I have never freaked out and flown off.”
“Have too,” Indy and Vi said at the same time. They both smirked. A grin looked like it might break out on Thane’s face.
I turned my back on them and stared into the sun as it bathed the plains. “Fine. Let’s go see what the situation is in Grande.”
Clones stood shoulder to shoulder along the perimeter of Grande. Beyond the clone barrier, nothing moved. No workers in the streets. No movement in the common areas. The public transit didn’t stir.
After a preliminary check, I hovered with Indy, Thane, and Vi a great distance away from the city, out of sight of any enhancements a person could have, clone or not.
“Can we freak out and fly off now?” I asked.
“Quiet,” Vi said. “I need to concentrate.” She closed her eyes, reaching for me to keep her balance while she invaded the minds of the clones. Apparently their brains weren’t that complex, because only a beat passed before she said, “Use your voice. Then my—” She swallowed hard. “My mom can get the moles out. We can relocate to Beachfront or wherever.”
“There are at least five hundred of them,” I said. “I’m supposed to tell them one by one to take a nap or something?”
“You’re the one with the snappy voice,” she said. “And he can help.” She hooked her thumb toward Thane.
I looked at Thane. It was obvious that neither one of us wanted to work with the other.
I shelved my pride. “Voices?”
“Voices,” he confirmed.
Zenn
28.
When my older brother found out I was involved in the Resistance, he punched me in the face. That was the first time I broke my nose. He stalked out of the house while I bled on my mother’s pristine floor.
When he returned, my father was with him. The resulting discussion wasn’t a discussion at all. More like a shouting match between my father and my brother. My father won. He always did.
And since my father favored me, I won too.
I had no idea my brother had wanted to join the Resistance and my dad wouldn’t let him. I didn’t find that out until I’d been matched with Vi and quit. I didn’t know he’d joined until after he’d left home—and we’d never talked about the Resistance after that.
The second time, my nose broke at the mercy of Vi’s fist. We were fourteen, and she was livid I wouldn’t tell her where I went at night without her. I was protecting her then, just like I do now.
But that didn’t matter, because I quit the Resistance a few months later, and then Vi and I snuck out together at night.
I forced away the memories of my brother though I flew closer to him every second. I touched my nose, remembering the anger in his fist, the silence that had come between us ever since.
I rode a westerly until ten miles outside Arrow Falls. Then I thanked the current and asked it to go back the way it had come. I powered on my board, flying low to the ground to travel unseen.
The city of Arrow Falls was a tiny thing, with a fence surrounding the main buildings. Now, in mid-March, the radiating fields lay plowed and ready for planting. The first seeds would be sown in a month or two.
I stopped just outside the city and left a message for Saffediene, detailing everything Trek had told me. She could alert Jag about General Director Darke. After that I zipped past the city without incident. The air felt stagnant, and landlocked as Arrow Falls was, I couldn’t expect anything different. Ten miles past the city, the red light on my board flashed. I activated the solar portlet again so it would charge, and called on the wind.
I rode the breeze past Allentown, a city devoted to improving air quality. No walls, no barriers, and no Insider support. Not that Jag hadn’t tried. He’d been in every city, met with every Director. Some of his escapes required more skill than others, and it was no wonder why everyone in the Association knew him on-sight.
He’d refused to alter his appearance for meetings. He’d refused to let anyone negotiate but him. He’d refused to let anyone shoulder what he called “his burdens.” He couldn’t seem to grasp that living a brainwashed life was a burden
