Forged(22)

He adjusts his grip on the pliers, and I know what’s coming.

“Harvey, please! Don’t do it. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

He yanks his arm back and my nail goes with it. I scream, and scream, and in the flashes of red pain shooting before my eyes a memory also resurfaces: a hallway in Union Central. Harvey is ushered into a room by medical staff. His shoulder hangs limp and dislocated. His nose is bloody. They nursed him to health for his execution, just as I’d suspected that very day, but they also did more. I see it now, because the real Harvey—even one left for dead—would never go this far. Those Order members took what was necessary that day, did whatever they needed to set the wheels in motion, to create the thing in front of me now.

Why would Frank want the rebellious version of Harvey to resume work on the Forgeries when he could have a loyal one instead? Same brains, same skills, but programmed to follow any order. No chance for mishaps. No fleeing or backstabbing or abandoning his post.

This is not Harvey.

It is Harvey, Forged.

He drops my nail in the medical tray. My finger throbs, wet with blood. I can’t get my pulse to slow, can’t stop choking on my own ragged breaths.

“That was so quick,” Forged Me remarks. “And to think you were having issues with orders in December. Take your time with the next one, Maldoon, and make it a finger.”

Harvey sets the pliers aside and picks up a knife. I’m begging shamelessly now, stammering over the pain, screaming for him to reconsider. This is not the Harvey I knew—gentle, patient, good. If he remembers me at all, he’s been told what to do and how to think, which pieces of his own past to forget and who to serve. His grip tightens on the handle. My skin breaks from the pressure of the blade, and as the white-hot spark of pain jolts through me, I panic.

“There’s a safe house,” I sputter, the place appearing to me out of nowhere. Harvey pauses, my nailless finger now bleeding in two places.

“Where?” Forged Me asks.

“Near Group A, but west of the border,” I gasp. “I don’t know exact coordinates. The woman running it is named Sophia? Sally? She harbors people crossing the borders.”

I’ve been as vague as possible—even changed her name—but I feel like scum. I deserve the pain, am not worthy of being spared it. Sylvia took our team in when we fled Burg. She saw to my wounded leg, patched up Clipper’s arm. She fed us and clothed us—strangers—and I’ve handed her over like cattle for slaughter.

Forged Me makes a note in his book. “That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?”

I am going to rot for all of eternity.


I’m back in the cell.

I have nine nail-bearing fingers, and one naked one. Its bandage is stained with my blood. Light pink near my knuckle where Harvey’s blade sliced skin. Black where his pliers did worse.

I still haven’t seen Blaine or Emma. I don’t know if they’re going through similar interrogations. All I have is a less than reassuring statement from Forged Me before he locked me in: He’s going easy on me for now, but expects better results next time I’m questioned.

Nerves threaten to overwhelm me. The little food I’m given tastes like ash because my mouth is so dry. Any water I drink rolls in my stomach, waves on a stormy ocean.

There was a time when I thought I hated the sea. It made me feel trapped. But now I am trapped on an island in the middle of the sea, truly without hope. At least on the Catherine there was the illusion of escape, a possibility to flee and reset our course.

I trace the burn scars on my left forearm, thinking of Bree, who traced them first. I hope she’s okay. That they’re all okay.

The room is completely silent, and it’s deafening.


A few hours later, I’m brought back to the interrogation room, only this time for an examination. I’m strapped down to a table, and Harvey inspects me from head to toe, the butt of a pencil tracing the scars on my body before he flips it nimbly in his fingers to record his findings.

As he moves to a puckered scar on my chest that I’ve had since I was a kid, I’m hit with a crushing realization. Harvey—not Emma—is probably the reason Crevice Valley was compromised. A Forgery retains all memories of their source; it’s the programming that forces them to ignore certain details. Frank would want Harvey to forget why he helped the Rebels, but not where he helped us from. But then why did it take so long for the bombs to drop?

My Forgery’s earlier comment echoes in my mind: And to think you were having issues with orders in December.

Frank didn’t pluck Harvey from one world and insert his Forgery into another. He re-created Harvey, put him back to work doing the same tasks, and hoped the programming was strong enough to sort out the rest. Maybe Harvey’s life now is so similar—the labs, the code, the research—that it took him weeks to settle into his Forged skin. He might have even fought giving up Headquarters, or at the very least, his memories could have been so rattled that the location was temporarily clouded. It would explain why the Forged spies sent after our team in December were still trying to get Headquarters’ location.

If Harvey had trouble adjusting to his Forged state, maybe his mind-set can be shifted again. Jackson helped us, after all. Climbing the Wall into Burg had been too personal, too closely tied to his childhood in Dextern, and it caused something in his programming to flicker. But Emma’s Forgery was a Gen5, and she joined our group the same night Harvey left it. If he was created in the following days, it’s likely he’s a five as well.