He nodded, jotting down more notes while the room waited. Shelly raised her hand, and when Birdman finally looked up he called on her.
“Hector is dead,” she said.
Lily swore. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. As far as I could tell, Hector—the Hector who I’d known—had been human. He died for real.
Even Birdman looked shocked. “You’re sure?”
Shelly nodded. Taylor turned, the horrified look on her face obvious. She was wondering whether she’d done it. Birdman spoke before she could.
“You haven’t popped?”
Shelly shook her head. “Not yet. My dupe is still down there.”
“How’d Hector die?”
It took her a long time to answer, and after several seconds Taylor stood and left the meeting.
“It wasn’t really Taylor, though,” I said, whispering to Jane. “It wasn’t even her emotions making the dupe do it, right? She’d popped, so it was just the artificial intelligence.”
Jane nodded. “That doesn’t help much, though.”
“It should.” I could feel the rage building inside me. The school wasn’t just imprisoning people anymore, wasn’t just killing them. It was tearing apart their minds.
Lily responded instead of Jane. “It’s like what we said about losing your dupe. It sucks. Taylor just lost hers last night, and now she knows it killed her friend.”
“Hector wasn’t her friend,” I said angrily. “She was Society.”
Jane’s look was dark and cold. “You can drop that crap right now,” she hissed. “The gangs don’t mean a thing here.”
She was wrong. No matter what Jane said, this town was divided. Birdman kept the people he could trust in the fort with him, and didn’t believe anyone was human unless they proved it with a blade. Maybe there weren’t gangs, but this wasn’t a utopia.
Birdman tapped his pencil on the cloth again. “Who else is still active?”
Seven people, including Shelly, raised their hands. I knew who they all were, though none of them well. Only one was a V. Most were Havoc kids.
“Anyone want to report?”
Mucus, a fat Havoc kid, raised his hand. “We’re all underground now. I was in the second group sent down to detention, and they took us to the cells.”
“Individual or group?” Birdman asked without looking up.
“Group.”
Harvard spoke from the back of the room. “I don’t think there’re enough individual cells to handle that many people.”
I turned to Lily. “How do they know that?”
She smiled. “That’s the whole point of these meetings. Everyone who’s in this town has gone down the detention elevator and into the big underground complex beneath the school. When I got here they grilled me about it. They’ve made a whole map.”
“What’s the point?”
Lily shrugged. “Knowledge is power, I guess. Gather as much as you can. In case we ever get taken back there.”
Birdman was still interrogating Mucus. “What’s happening there now?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. My dupe is sleeping, I think.”
“Anyone gone to surgery yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
Birdman looked around the room. “Anyone else seen something different?”
Stephanie, the final active V, spoke. “They treated the wounded, but it was there in the cell block.”
This was what I wanted to know—what I needed to know. “Who died last night—the humans, I mean?”
All eyes in the room turned on me. Birdman looked down at his cloth.
“What about Curtis?” I continued. “And Gabby?”
“Curtis is alive,” someone said. “He’s bad, though.”
Birdman spoke loudly, quieting the room. “Sixteen died.”
No, that couldn’t be right. I stood up, but my legs were shaking. “Not dupes,” I said. “Not people who popped.”
“I know,” Birdman answered. “Sixteen humans died at the fence.”
He read the names. Seven from the Society. Six from Havoc. Three V’s. I knew those people. They’d listened to me. They’d all been there in the foyer when we decided to take a stand.
“They’re thinking Curtis might lose his leg,” Shelly said quietly. “No one’s expecting Gabby to make it.”
“No,” I said.
Jane stood and tried to take my hand, but I shook her away.
“You’re wrong.” I pushed my way down the row.
“Benson.” It was Birdman calling me, but I didn’t care. Harvard put up his hands to stop me, but I shoved him into the wall and threw the door open.
Sixteen dead. Soon Gabby, too, and who knew how many others.
I ran across the snowy courtyard to the other side of the fort and threw open Carrie’s door. She jumped up from the bed.
“She’s sleeping,” Carrie warned, but I ignored her. Curtis’s face stared down at me from half the drawings in the room. Carrie’s dupe had been with Curtis for how long? Years? And Carrie felt every emotion twice as strongly as the dupe?
Did Carrie know what her dupe had done after it popped?
I climbed on the bed, pulled the panel out of the wall, and scrambled inside, my exhausted muscles pumping with adrenaline and guilt.
I let the cloth picture fall into place behind me, blocking Carrie out.
Becky was quiet, eyes closed tightly in a painful sleep.
I took her hand, kissed her damp forehead.
“I’m sorry,” I cried, hiding my face in my hands. “I’m so sorry.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It had been dark for hours when I heard Harvard enter Carrie’s room.
He pulled out the panel and peeked in. “Ready?”
I’d been lying beside Becky, watching her breathe. I’d forgotten I had somewhere to go.
“I guess.” My muscles screamed as I sat up. I had no idea how Becky could sleep on these boards, loss of blood or not.
I pulled my Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt back on, and retied my shoes. At some point I was going to need a change of clothes and a shower.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Just after midnight,” Harvard said.
He moved away from the opening and I crawled out. A very groggy Carrie stood in the corner in a worn pair of blue pajamas.
“You have a coat?” Harvard asked. He was bundled up in a thick, well-worn parka and wool hat, and he had on leather work gloves with the fingers cut out.
“Just this,” I said, pulling the hood of my sweatshirt up.
“We’re gonna be out there for a while. Let’s go check Dylan’s room. No one’s cleaned it yet.” The idea of wearing Dylan’s clothes didn’t appeal to me at all, but as I stepped into the cold night air I realized it was probably smart.
Lily was waiting for us.
“Ready to stick it to the man?” she asked. Her breath came out in white puffs.
“Sure,” I said, and followed Harvard.
“A couple things on the schedule for tonight,” Harvard said, seeming remarkably cheerful. “First a coat. Then we’re going to the Greens to talk to Shelly; then we’re going out to the perimeter.”