Strange New World Read online

  “It has to do with one of the changes Wexler made to Dahlia’s genome—one of the ‘anomalies’—so he could clone it. This probably never occurred to her, because embryos in Lakeview are artificially incubated, but clones are genetically engineered to be infertile, so that we can’t just…let them multiply. So that we become the Administrator’s repeat customers. Since Dahlia’s not a clone, she’s fertile, though none of her identicals are. Including you.”

  Goose bumps form on my arms. “You’re saying I’ll never have children of my own? No matter what?”

  My mother takes my hand, and the unusually touchy gesture does not bode well. “Waverly, I’m saying you’re never even going to get your period. You’re not built for it.”

  This time, I can’t stop the tears. Deep down, I’ve always believed the doctors could fix me. That the hormone injections would eventually work. “How am I going to tell Hennessy?”

  My mother reaches for me, and I let her pull me into a hug. “He already knows fertility is an issue for you. If he knows that clones are infertile, then he’ll probably make the same connection I made. If he doesn’t know that, you don’t need to tell him. Just don’t lie about it, because he’ll find out when you two place an order for your own household staff.”

  “Mom!” I sit up, looking at her in fresh panic as a whole new set of horrors crashes over me. “I can’t staff my house with clones. I’m one of them.”

  “No.” Ferocity shines in her eyes. “You are not. Lakeview’s geneticists assemble genomes from a central cache of random genetic material. From samples preserved generations ago. The Administrator holds the patent on that process. She owns the genes. Her clones are her intellectual property.

  “Your genes do not come from a central cache. You are my daughter. Your father’s daughter. You are the perfect combination of his bloodline and mine, and no matter how you came to exist, I carried you. I gave birth to you. I fired every nanny my mother ever sent my way and changed your diapers myself, because I wanted you so badly that I broke laws to get you. You are the sum of every unique thought and experience you’ve ever had. Of every single time I’ve yelled at you for being careless and your father has spoiled you with some ridiculously expensive treat, to balance out my firm hand. You are a Whitmore. For better or for worse.”

  My panic begins to ebb. She’s right. No matter how my genes were assembled, they came from my parents. No matter how my mother got pregnant, I am her natural child.

  “Then so is Dahlia 16.” I glance up at the ceiling toward the north wing, as if I can see her through all the walls separating us. “She’s the one you were supposed to get.” She’s special in a way no one raised in Lakeview has ever been. In a way few people born in the real world have ever been. “Dahlia’s every bit as much a Whitmore as I am.”

  My mother frowns. “Yes, I guess she is. Technically.”

  “What are we going to do with her?” My hand begins to tremble, and I can’t make it stop. Even knowing that Dahlia has as much right as I have to everything I own and everything I am, I am terrified by the thought that the public might discover that I’m a cheap genetic copy. A designer knockoff, flaunted in ignorance by my parents for eighteen years.

  “For now?” my mother says. “We’re going to hide her. Here in the house.”

  Alarm spikes in my pulse. My gaze drops to the stylized numbers permanently inked on her forearm—the date of my parents’ wedding. “My ink ceremony is tomorrow! There will be cameras everywhere!”

  Her thumb brushes absently over the date on her skin. “No one will see Dahlia. I’ll make sure of that.” A slow smile turns up my mother’s perfect mouth, and I recognize the birth of an epiphany in the sudden shine in her eyes.

  “What?” Suspicion echoes in my voice. “What are you thinking?”

  “Dahlia has what you’re missing, Waverly. I have an idea, and if it works out, we’re going to need her. You’re going to need her.”

  “Why? What’s your idea?”

  “I’ll explain after I’ve had time to do a little research.” My mother stands and pulls me up by one hand. “Right now, I have to go fill your father in on a secret I’d hoped never to have to tell him.” Her smile falters at the thought. Then she cradles my face in her hands and wipes my tears away with her thumbs. “And you need to get some sleep. Unless you want puffy skin and dark circles for the shoot tomorrow.”

  She’s right. Tomorrow’s a very big day.

  “This is why you wouldn’t let me go to Lakeview, isn’t it?” I ask as she guides me firmly toward the door with one arm around my waist.

  “No, honey, I had no idea there were five thousand replicas of you running around the training ward. I wouldn’t let you go because I was afraid you’d somehow run into Wexler. That he would see you and recognize you.” She smiles. “In case you haven’t noticed, you and I look alike.”

  “You thought he’d see me and confess to a crime that could get him executed?”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t take the chance. And it’s a good thing I didn’t. What if you’d been at Seren’s party when Dahlia and Trigger showed up?”

  I shudder at the thought. Then another eclipses it. “What’s the other difference between me and Dahlia? The other ‘anomaly’?”

  She tugs me closer to the door and it slides open. “Let’s talk about that tomorrow.”

  “No, Mom.” I pull free of her grip and capture her gaze, terrified of the fear I see swimming in it. “Tell me. It can’t be any worse than total infertility, right?”

  My mother’s smile fades. “Waverly, things can always get worse. All you need to know right now is that I told lies and broke laws to bring you into the world, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you here.”

  The door slides open, and I stare into a bedroom unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The space is huge, yet there’s only one bed, and it’s big enough for several people to sleep in at once.

  Will Trigger 17 be sleeping here with me?

  I feel strangely nervous at the thought, yet I wonder what he wears to sleep in. Not that either of us has anything to change into.

  “There are pajamas in the dresser,” Lorna says. “Hang your gown in the closet, and I’ll send it to the laundry tomorrow.” She frowns with a glance at my dress. “Where did you get that?”

  “It’s Margo’s,” I tell her. “Hennessy lent it to me when he thought I was Waverly.”

  “Well then, I’ll have it returned.” Lorna gestures to a door on the far wall of the bedroom. “The restroom is through there. Make yourself at home. Trigger, you’ll be down the hall—”

  “He’s not staying here?”

  Lorna actually looks amused. “I can’t allow you and your boyfriend to sleep in the same room. He’ll be just a couple of doors away.”

  “But—”

  “It’s okay.” Trigger squeezes my hand, then lets it go. “Just get some sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.” But his beautiful, dark eyes seem to be telling me more than he’s actually saying out loud. He steps into the hall with Waverly’s mother, and the door closes behind them.

  I am alone. I can count the number of times I’ve been truly alone on two hands, and most of those have happened in the past couple of months. And I’ve never slept in a room by myself.

  I study my surroundings as I step out of Margo’s high-heeled shoes, and my feet sink into a plush rug with splashes of blue in every possible shade.

  This whole room is blue, from the sleek, featureless walls to the intricately patterned rug. The bed is a platform in the middle of the floor, made up with a puffy, oversized cobalt comforter and six matching pillows. I have to walk around the strange square bed to get to the dresser against the rear wall, where I find several sets of underwear cut into sparse shapes I hardly recognize, as well as a blue tank top and a matching pair of stretchy pants.

/>   It takes me a minute to work my way out of Margo’s dress—the latches in the back are difficult to reach—then I try on the soft blue pajamas. They’re a perfect fit. Which means they probably belong to Waverly.

  The bathroom door slides open when I approach; then it closes behind me and beeps. Before I can figure out what the beep means, my attention is captured by the bathroom itself.

  It’s huge.

  In the middle of the floor stands a long, asymmetrical tub made of polished black stone. The counter is shiny and black, and to my left is a large frameless glass shower stall with a black polished stone floor and a large round showerhead.

  To my right, across from the sink, an open door reveals a closet as big as the bathroom Poppy, Sorrel, Violet, and I shared. Both long clothing racks are empty, except for a row of hangers and a single fluffy blue bathrobe.

  I hang up Margo’s dress and set the jeweled cuff on the counter, then contemplate the tub. I’ve been taking showers since my class aged up into the intermediate dorm, and suddenly I want nothing more than to fill this huge tub with hot water and sink into it.

  But there are no knobs on the tub or the shower, so I wash my face at the bathroom sink—the water comes on when I hold my hands under it—then brush my teeth with the toothpaste and brand-new toothbrush laid out on the counter.

  Despite my exhaustion, I’m not actually sleepy. Still, I fold back the covers and climb into the big blue bed, and the moment my head hits the absurdly soft pillow, the lights in the room go off, except for a soft glow around the floorboards, outlining the room with dim light.

  I roll onto my side and close my eyes, but sleep does not come. This space feels too big. This bed feels too soft. This room is too quiet. There are no roommates rolling over in their bunks or getting up to use the restroom. And now that I’ve thought about them, I can’t get Poppy, Sorrel, and Violet out of my mind.

  Did they suffer when they died? Did they know the whole thing was my fault?

  I sit up, and the lights come back on. When I slide onto the floor, the comforter rustles behind me, and I turn to see the wrinkles ironing themselves out, leaving the bedclothes turned down, yet perfectly neat.

  I can’t sleep here alone.

  Determined, I head for the door, but it remains closed even when I’m inches away. “Um…open the door,” I say to the room, though I have no idea whether or not it’s voice-controlled.

  “You are not authorized to operate this door,” a voice says, and I jump back, looking for the source in the empty room.

  “Does that mean I’m locked in?”

  There’s no reply.

  “Hey!” I shout. “Open the door!” When that doesn’t work, I bang on it with both fists. “Open the door!”

  Why would Lorna lock me in? Is she turning Trigger and me over to the Administrator? Are we about to be recalled? This room is nicer than my Lakeview prison cell was, but this is still imprisonment.

  “Open the—”

  “Dahlia,” Trigger’s voice calls from behind me, and I spin around to find him watching me from an e-glass screen I hadn’t even noticed on the wall facing the bed.

  His face takes up most of the wall. When he steps back from the camera, the space that comes into focus around him is a bedroom similar to mine, only decorated in shades of gray rather than blue—another fancy prison.

  “Where are you?”

  “Across the hall and one door down.” Which means he probably heard me yelling.

  “Are you locked in too?”

  “Yes, but I’m working on that.” Trigger’s focus slides to my left, as if he’s looking at something beside me, but the intricate dance of pokes and swipes his hands are performing tells me that I’m only one of the things being displayed on the screen in his room.

  He’s actually deep inside the Whitmore security system. Again.

  “We’ve been denied access to all the doors except the closet and bathroom doors in our own suites, and I’m going to have to hack my way back into the security system to fix that. Since the mother brought us upstairs, we’ve also been locked out of communication with the outside world and any other room in the house, except each other’s. Which means we won’t be ordering late-night snacks or having secret conversations with Waverly or Hennessy.”

  “So she knows you can work the e-glass?”

  “That, or she assumes we’ll figure it out. Or she’s just being cautious.”

  “Then why would she let us communicate with each other?”

  “My guess is she knows that if we can’t, we’ll bang on the doors and wake up the whole house. This direct line of communication seems to be an attempt to pacify us, for the moment.”

  “Can you get us out of here?”

  “I’m going to try.” His gaze is focused to my right now, studying a security system I can hardly even fathom. “But it’ll take some time. You might as well get some sleep while you can.”

  Sleep hardly seems possible. But Trigger’s right, so I leave the e-glass on and curl up in the big blue bed. The lights go off again when I lie down, and I watch Trigger hack his way through the Whitmores’ security system, pretending he’s actually here in the room with me, until I can no longer hold my eyes open.

  My mother lets me into her home office at six a.m., still wearing her pink robe over a matching set of satin pajamas. But her hair is pulled back from her face in a neat bun and she looks wide awake. I’m not sure she even went to bed last night.

  “Why do we have to do this so early in the morning?” I ask, yawning.

  “Because the film crew will be here in an hour to set up. I assume you’d rather have this settled before you and Hennessy commit to your union in permanent ink, on camera.” My mother swipes one hand in the air, waking up the e-glass on the far wall. “You should really be thanking me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” The early hour isn’t really the problem. I’m actually terrified to talk to the Administrator. To hear her confirm that regardless of my elite private high school, custom wardrobe, and online following of tens of millions, I was never meant to be anything more than a common laborer.

  I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the Administrator in person. She rarely leaves the Lakeview compound, and Sofia and Seren hardly see her for nine months out of the year because they’re boarders at my school.

  I’ve heard her called Mom by her kids and Amelia by my parents, but I’ve never been able to think of her as anything other than the enigmatic, reclusive, domineering Administrator. And that’s even more true now that she holds my fate in her hands.

  “Have you spoken to her yet?” I ask as my mother clears the wall screen of the documents, charts, and applications she left running last night.

  “No. I scheduled this through her office—they were up late for the same reasons we were. But I have confirmed that Dahlia and her identicals are not in this year’s Lakeview catalog. No one outside of our house and the clone compound knows about this.”

  A soft chime echoes through the room and a large chat window appears on my mother’s e-glass, blinking with a silhouette of a generic female head. The text beneath the silhouette says that the call is coming via a secure signal from Lakeview.

  My pulse spikes. My foot begins to tap on the floor.

  My mother calmly settles onto the couch next to me, her spine straight, her ankles crossed. She lays one hand on my knee, and I make my leg stop bouncing.

  “Accept the call,” my mother says. A second later, the Administrator’s face appears in place of the silhouette. The room behind her is made of straight lines and glass surfaces, giving her office the cold, sterile feel of a laboratory, despite the fact that, according to Sofia, she doesn’t actually run any of the scientific divisions of her corporation.

  “Amelia.” My mother’s greeting is crisp but polite.
r />   The Administrator nods. “Lorna.” Her gaze narrows on me, and my skin crawls while she studies my face, as if she’s never truly seen me before. “I wasn’t aware that you knew about our little problem until you contacted my office. I assumed I’d get to break this news to you.”

  “When did you find out?” my mother asks.

  “Yesterday. I received a report when Dahlia 16 was arrested, and I recognized her the moment I saw her picture.”

  “But not before? Almost seventeen years, and you never knew you were raising five thousand copies of my daughter? Your daughter’s best friend?”

  The Administrator leans forward, pale arms crossed over the glass top of her desk. “Lorna, this facility trains hundreds of thousands of clones at a time. I personally approve every strand of DNA based upon chromosomal traits and a genotype report, but I don’t walk the training grounds, inspecting faces, for the same reason you don’t go down to your e-glass factory and watch tablets roll off the assembly line. I haven’t seen any of your daughter’s clones since I inspected them at year five. Which was before Sofia even met Waverly.”

  “Seriously?” I demand as outrage gets the better of me. “You don’t know what your own product looks like?”

  My mom shoots me a warning glance, but the Administrator’s full attention feels like an hour locked in the walk-in freezer. “My time is spent managing the compound and overseeing orders.” She turns back to my mother, and I feel limp with relief. “Once the clones are in production, I rarely see them until I start putting together the annual catalog, unless something goes wrong. Obviously, yesterday something went wrong.” Her pointed left eyebrow rises. “Though it would appear that that ‘something’ actually went wrong more than eighteen years ago. Care to tell me how you wound up raising one of my clones, Lorna?”

  I shift on the leather sofa, uncomfortable with the descriptor, but I’m not going to interrupt again. This discussion may be about me, but it doesn’t have to involve me.

  “How can you be sure she’s a clone? You haven’t analyzed Waverly’s DNA.”