Strange New World Read online

  But then there it is again. Another mention of me being at the party.

  It’s a joke. It has to be. My friends are pranking me because I missed the best party of the year. But it’s not funny.

  Irritated, I close the public stream and check my private messages. While I’m reading, a clone comes into my room and removes the tray and used dishes so quietly I hardly even realize she’s there. I glance at the name embroidered on her uniform, but the only part that registers is the number twenty at the end. The names don’t matter and the faces are interchangeable, because all our servants are from the same batch, which matured two years ago.

  Clones don’t make eye contact, and they rarely speak. Hennessy thinks it’s something to do with the cloning process. That replicating a genome somehow damages it, creating servants who are people, obviously, yet lesser, mentally and physically, than the rest of us. They’re incapable of complex thought or activities, other than the tasks they’ve been trained to do through years and years of repetition on the Lakeview compound.

  As the servant leaves with the tray, a message appears on the screen from the network that airs my show. I open it, and an image takes over half of the glass. It’s the new ad for the season finale—the wedding episode. Hennessy and me, looking hot as hell, his arms wrapped around me, this smoldering look in his eyes that millions of girls wish he would turn on them.

  But he’s all mine.

  The ad flashes, “Don’t miss the wedding of the century—a Network 4 exclusive! Lady Waverly Whitmore + Sir Hennessy Chapman Forever!”

  I squeal with delight and swipe the screen off. Then I change into my new pajamas and grab my tablet on the way out of my room, tapping through the menu as I head down the hall to show my mother the ad.

  She’s not in her room. She’s not in her office. But then I hear her voice and feel a draft from downstairs. The front door is wide open.

  “Waverly Whitmore!” my mother snaps. “Get out of the car!”

  Huh?

  I jog down the stairs, clutching the glass tablet, but I forget all about my mother when I look past her to see Hennessy getting out of a long black car. “Look! They’ve got it loaded already!” I hold up the tablet to show him the image. “Have you seen it yet? It’ll be on every billboard in the city by tomorrow night.”

  But then my focus settles on the girl standing next to him, and my arm falls limp at my side. My jaw drops. “What the hell is going on?”

  The girl standing next to my fiancé? She’s wearing my face.

  Seeing Waverly shouldn’t shock me. I grew up surrounded by girls who look exactly like me, and she’s just another identical. Except that everyone here believes Waverly is an individual, and if she’s Waverly Whitmore, I can’t possibly be.

  I was only able to escape Lakeview by pretending to be Waverly. But being seen with her has blown my cover.

  Run.

  Every muscle in my body demands that I flee, even though I’m still wearing Margo’s flouncy dress and stiltlike heels.

  I glance at Trigger 17 and the tension in his frame tells me he’s thinking the same thing. But then he gives a small shake of his head, and I follow his gaze to the edge of the broad, tiered lawn sloping up like the mountain this town is built on. The yard is completely enclosed by a ten-foot brick wall. The gate has closed behind us.

  Even if none of that were true…we’ve already been seen.

  “Mom?” Waverly says, and my focus is drawn to my clone again. I can’t look away. She had Poppy’s smile, but now she’s wearing Iris’s scowl, her eyes wide with confusion, like Violet’s used to get when she didn’t understand something.

  Somehow, she looks like most of my friends, yet like none of them.

  Waverly is all that remains of five thousand girls cloned from the same genome. My genome. And until seconds ago, she had no idea any of the rest of us existed.

  Based on her stunned expression, I suspect she still hasn’t fully grasped the truth.

  “I…I…,” Hennessy stammers, glancing from Waverly to me, then back.

  “Mom!” my clone shouts at the tall, elegant woman still staring at me with shock shining in an oddly familiar set of brown eyes. This is Waverly’s mother. Or rather, my mother. Though the concept of a genetic ancestor still feels so absurd that I can hardly believe she exists. That she developed Waverly inside her body rather than plucking her from an incubator like a normal nanny does.

  But the mother of an individual isn’t the same thing as a nanny. Right? I’m not sure what a mother does when she’s done being a human incubator.

  This mother looks like Waverly. Like me. Yet not just like us.

  Finally, the mother blinks. Her eyes gain a hard focus. Then she marches past me, the ends of her silky pink robe fluttering, and peers into the car we’ve just gotten out of.

  Hennessy’s sister is still asleep in the backseat. Waverly’s mother closes the door softly, then leans down and speaks to the driver through the front window. “Take Margo home. Make no stops. Then come straight back here. Do you understand?”

  The driver nods. The car rolls around the circular drive, following the metallic cruise strip built into the pavement. The gate opens and the car pulls onto the street, and for just a second, I consider grabbing Trigger’s hand and running after it. But the gate is already closing. We won’t make it.

  Even if we could, where would we go?

  I do not understand this city, where some people are individuals born from other humans and some are clones with faces familiar to me from Lakeview—the city Trigger and I have just fled for our lives.

  “Inside. All of you.” Waverly’s mother waves an arm at the open front door of her house. “Let’s get this sorted out in private.”

  Waverly’s frown deepens. “What…? Who…?”

  “Now!”

  My clone and Hennessy head inside, confusion written all over their faces. I glance at Trigger 17. I have no idea what to do, and for the first time since I met him, he doesn’t seem to either.

  “Let’s go.” Waverly’s mother looks like she wants to push us inside, but she hovers several feet away, as if she’s afraid to get too close. “I can’t have you standing out here where anyone could see you.”

  I don’t know who could possibly see us behind a ten-foot brick wall. But Trigger and I are wanted by the Administrator and the city of Lakeview, and there’s nowhere to run. And now that the initial shock of seeing Waverly has worn off, I realize I’m covered in goose bumps beneath Margo’s dress. And my teeth are chattering. It’s cold in Mountainside.

  Trigger shrugs. He’s willing to follow my lead, but I can tell from the way his right hand hovers near the pocket of his uniform that he’s armed and he won’t hesitate to defend us if we’re threatened.

  He follows me up the curving steps through a tall, arched set of double doors into a two-story, marble-floored foyer, where Hennessy and Waverly are waiting. Waverly’s gaze is glued to my face, shock and anger warring for control of her features.

  A shiver travels down my spine. If I were a seedling in her garden, I think she would rip me out by my roots.

  A loud beeping skewers my brain as we step over the threshold. A red light flashes around the perimeter of the foyer, but before I can process the oddly ornate decor, the beeping fades and a disembodied voice announces, “Weapon detected. Please disarm and place your weapon on the floor. Weapon detected. Please—”

  “Disregard,” the mother says. The red light fades and the voice goes silent. The mother turns to Trigger. “You’re armed?”

  “At all times,” he tells her.

  “Remove your weapon and set it on the floor or I’ll lock down the house, call in security, and have you arrested.”

  I can’t resist a small, proud smile. She clearly has no idea that Trigger has taken down at least a dozen of the A
dministrator’s guards tonight, all fully grown, highly trained soldiers. “He’s Special—”

  “It’s just a blade.” Trigger removes a small folding knife from his pocket and makes a show of dropping it on the floor.

  “Weapons scan, reassess,” the mother says, evidently to the room in general. Or to the house. Her focus rises toward the ceiling as she waits for a response, and I follow her gaze, taking in the large oval foyer.

  Overhead hangs a huge chandelier with dozens of bulbs shaped like candles. My borrowed shoes feel slick against a floor so highly polished that I can see my reflection in it.

  “No further weapons detected,” the voice announces. “Shall I send security to collect the knife?”

  “No need,” Waverly’s mother says. “Disregard.”

  The voice goes silent again, and the mother bends to pick up the folded knife. She examines it for a moment, then slides it into the pocket of her silky robe.

  Trigger’s expression is inscrutable.

  “Who are you?” Waverly demands. Her gaze slides to Trigger. “Who is he?”

  “He showed up at the party with her. I thought he was your new security,” Hennessy whispers to her. “And I thought she was you.”

  “Wait for me in the study,” the mother orders in a tone that would make the Administrator proud.

  Opposite the front door, a mirror-image set of staircases curves toward the second floor from opposite sides of the foyer. Beneath the second-floor balcony and between the sets of stairs, a broad hallway leads to the rest of the first floor. Waverly and Hennessy head down that hallway, glancing back several times as if they’re reluctant to let us out of their sight.

  As they turn left through the first doorway, Waverly’s voice echoes toward us. She’s questioning Hennessy about me. But if he has any answers, he’s not giving them.

  Hennessy has been stunned silent.

  “Down the hall, first door on the right,” Waverly’s mother orders us, but I wait for her to take the lead, because the hallway beneath the dual staircases looks like the throat of a great beast, and I already feel like I’m being swallowed alive by this house, and this family, and this whole strange city.

  Trigger and I follow her through the arched doorway, an architectural echo of the front door, then to the right into a room dominated by a cluster of couches arranged to face a single empty wall.

  Across the hall, in a room lined with shelves, Waverly stops interrogating Hennessy as her gaze finds mine, and for a moment we stare at each other from ten feet—and a lifetime—apart.

  “I’ll be with you in just a moment,” her mother tells me from the hallway. Then she swipes one hand at the door and it closes between us, cutting Trigger and me off from the rest of the house and its occupants.

  “That’s your long-lost clone?” Trigger says, and I realize I haven’t had a chance to explain to him about Waverly and Hennessy.

  “Yes.” I step up to the closed door, but it doesn’t open. “And that’s her mother. There’s also a father, according to Hennessy. He and Margo have parents too—the same parents. They, and everyone else at Seren’s party, were conceived and birthed the archaic way.” A messy and inefficient process that hasn’t been used in centuries. At least in Lakeview.

  I press both palms against the door, but it doesn’t move. There’s no knob. No handle. Has the mother locked us in, or am I simply absurdly inept with this technology?

  “How is this possible?” Trigger runs one hand through his dark hair. “There are no more individuals. There haven’t been in centuries. Except the Administrator.” Whose genome was retired when she ascended to the highest position in Lakeview.

  “She lied to us.” I turn away from the inoperable door, my thoughts swimming in and out of focus.

  None of this makes sense. Individuals with parents. Family units living in houses instead of dormitories. Clones cleaning the streets of Mountainside in the middle of the night while families sleep peacefully in their homes.

  “Trigger, this is…huge.” I can’t come up with anything better to express the scale of our ignorance. “Waverly and her friends are allowed to travel to other cities. To talk to anyone they want. To wear clothes as unique as they are. If Mountainside is like this, other cities could be.” My head is spinning. “I think the Administrator lied about everything.”

  Trigger nods slowly. He’s looking at the floor, but his eyes are unfocused, as if he’s seeing something else entirely. Something much bigger than this room. “Dahlia, did you notice the clones are all from Lakeview?”

  “Yes.” I think back to the clones we saw cleaning the streets of Mountainside on our way to Waverly’s house. Most of them looked at least vaguely familiar. “They’re from previous classes.” Identicals who graduated years ago and should be working for the glory of Lakeview.

  Except that there is no Lakeview, beyond the training grounds. When we fled the city, we saw field after empty field. Not the adult identicals I’d expected, living the lives we’ve been imagining.

  “It was all a lie.” Stunned, I sink onto the nearest couch. “Lakeview is an anomaly. Everywhere else, I think…” I spread my arms to take in the room around us. The house. All of Mountainside. “I think everywhere else, it’s like this.”

  “Why?” Trigger asks. “Why would they design and clone us and tell us that’s the way the whole world works if that’s not true?”

  “Because they don’t want to clean their own streets?” I guess.

  “What?” But he no longer seems interested in the answer to his question. He’s frowning at the far wall now, as if it puzzles him. And it does look a little odd. It’s the only one with nothing hanging on it. And it’s kind of…shiny.

  “They don’t work for the glory of Mountainside here,” I say, thinking aloud as I join him in front of the wall. “They want us to clean their streets and wash their windows. I think that’s why the Administrator—”

  Trigger waves his arm in a broad motion, and the entire undecorated wall fogs over like a bathroom mirror during a shower. Then it becomes a giant tablet.

  I stare in astonishment as a series of icons appears on the wall, each as big as my head.

  “It’s e-glass,” Trigger says. “Special Forces was taught infiltration techniques on something similar a few months ago.” His frown deepens. “It’s a much more advanced system than Lakeview uses, and at the time, I wondered why we weren’t using it.”

  “Lakeview doesn’t need that much security,” I whisper as the truth becomes clear. “The Administrator wasn’t trying to keep anyone out. She was only trying to keep us in.” Which must have been pretty easy, considering we didn’t even know the rest of the world existed.

  I sink onto the couch again. This new understanding is like a weight on my chest, threatening to crush me. “We have to tell them.” I look up at him as he turns to meet my gaze. “We can’t just run off into the wild, Trigger. We have to go back and tell everyone what the Administrator is doing. About the lies she’s telling. The lies they’re living.”

  For a second, he looks like he’ll argue. Fear flickers behind his dark eyes, and the emotion looks strange there. I’ve never seen him scared. Not when we were arrested. Not when we were being hunted. Not even when we fled Lakeview, chased by soldiers with their lights flashing and sirens wailing.

  “Dahlia, if we get caught, they’ll kill you.”

  The same is true for him, but a soldier expects to die in battle. He’s afraid for me.

  I’m afraid for me too. But I’m also afraid for everyone still living in Lakeview, in ignorance of their true fate. Their true purpose.

  “I’m going back,” I tell him. “I’m going to find a way to show them what’s really happening. That’ll be easier with your help, but I understand if you don’t want to come.”

  “Of course I’ll come.” Trigger steps clos
er with a smile that makes me feel warm and a bit unsteady on the inside. “They put your genome into production for the wrong bureau, Dahlia. You were never meant to be a gardener.” He kisses me, and that warmth explodes inside me, awakening a now-familiar ache to touch him. “You were always a fighter.”

  “Well, I’m an inexperienced one,” I say, indulging in one more second of this contact. “So how do we start? We need to get out of this room, I assume….”

  “Yes. But not until we know a little more about the city we’re escaping.” He turns back to the e-glass. “This system uses voice control and facial recognition, as well as a series of gesture-based commands. And it’s connected to everything in this house. Cameras, including infrared. Audio feeds. Security systems.” He pokes a finger in the air, in the direction of one of the icons, and it swells to take up the center of the screen.

  We both grew up reading academic texts and doing assignments on tablets in class, but this e-glass looks way too big for that. “What is it for?”

  “It’s for everything.” Trigger sounds impressed as he pokes and scrolls his way through menus and options I don’t recognize. “This thing controls lights, thermostats, door locks, window tinting, refrigerator and pantry inventory, cameras, alarms, weapons detection, motion detectors. But there are apps here I’ve never seen before. And look at this.” He points at a graph I can’t make heads or tails of. “The signal strength coming from this system is immense. I bet it can reach well past the Mountainside city limits.”

  “And you said it controls the doors? Because there’s no handle on this thing.”

  “Yes, but it looks like we’ve been specifically denied access to the doors. They’re probably the only thing Waverly’s mother thought we’d know how to work.” Trigger turns to me, his hand still raised to control the screen. “Dahlia, this might take a while. If we don’t get out of here before she comes back, they don’t need to know I’m Special Forces. Or that I know how to work their system. The less they know about our capabilities, the better.”