Forged(67)

I draw my gun with my right hand, keep her pinned against the wall with my left.

“Gray, it’s me, dammit! I fired the shot, and ran into an Order member on the half-block stretch back to the sewers. I swear it’s the truth. I swear!”

“You just said you crossed the kid in the square.”

“I meant the street! How can I think straight when you’ve got a gun on me?”

It sounds just like her. Feels just like her. I don’t have this in me. I can’t put a gun to her face and pull the trigger. What if I’m wrong?

I reach for her cheek, desperate to feel a bandage, to find proof that she is my Bree. Before my fingers can graze her face in the darkness, a voice freezes me solid.

“Gray?”

It’s her, but distant. Somewhere else in the sewers.

I shout her name.

“Don’t move.” Her response echoes, bouncing off the tunnel walls. “I’m coming to you.”

It’s her. The real her. Unless the girl rushing to meet me is a Forgery, and the one I’m about to shoot is Bree. Using my momentary break in concentration to her advantage, the girl in my hands knees me in the gut. My grip slips. She scrambles away on all fours.

“What’s your favorite bird?” I say, wheeling on her. “Answer immediately or you’re dead.”

She pauses, straightens. Something glints in her hand. The gun. She found it.

“She’s coming, Gray. That thing. Please, we have to—”

“Answer the question.”

“Herons,” she says.

“Herons?”

“Yes, herons. Always.”

Another blast on the streets, another flash of light. This time I see a flicker of her face—Bree. Beautiful. Scowling. And not a single flaw on her skin. She looks like the girl I met months ago in Crevice Valley.

I exhale and squeeze the trigger.

Footsteps pound up the tunnel behind me. “What the heck are you doing all the way out here? We need to grab Sammy.” She has a flashlight. The beam falls on the crumpled body. I turn away and nearly lose what little food is in my stomach.

“Shit,” Bree says, staring at the corpse. “Gray . . . ?”

She touches my shoulder, and my hands again act on their own. Her neck. Her neck in my hands. Doubles. Limitless numbers at his disposal. I can’t trust her. Can’t trust anyone.

“Loons,” she says. She doesn’t struggle in my grasp, just lets the flashlight trail up at the ceiling and answers calm as anything. It’s enough light for me to see her bandaged cheek, the scar above her eye. “Herons then. Loons now.”

I release her immediately. My hands shake.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She touches her holstered gun. “And you?”

“Saying we wouldn’t work.”

She doesn’t draw it. No need for flashlights now, for checking scars or eyes or anything else. I gather her in my arms. Pull her into my chest. Her leather jacket is cool against my skin.

“There’s no time for this,” she says, and I know she’s right.

We backtrack, and I try to ignore the visuals replaying in my mind. How it looked just like her. How I put a bullet in the mirror image of the person I love more than anything in this world. It makes my breath short. And I’d been ready to choke her—my Bree.

“You hit Harvey,” I say, to distract from the madness raging in my head.

“I thought I had a shot and I took it. I was off by a fraction of an inch. Rehashing it won’t change anything.”

We round a corner and nearly collide with Sammy.

“Where have you guys been?” he shouts. Bree shoves her forearm to his windpipe and knocks him against the wall. “Shit, Nox! What the hell?”

She checks his eyes, lets him go. “We have to keep moving.”

“What about the plan, the alarm?” he asks. “Where’s the shutdown sequence?”

Bree shakes her head. “Maybe Harvey really is working with Emma. They’re the only two we can’t account for right now.”

A clatter to our right makes us turn. A canister, lobbed into the sewers, starts leaking gas. Almost immediately my eyes are burning.

Bree yanks the collar of her leather jacket over her mouth and nose. “This way,” she says.

We flee.

Only to greet more gas.

Backtracking, we return to the junction and take the only open route left.

“They’re trying to smoke us out,” Sammy says.

“They’re leading us where they want,” I correct, which, not surprisingly, is back toward the dead Forgery. To wherever she was trying to bring me originally. My stomach coils. We pass Bree’s double, take a few more turns. Ahead, gas looms. Behind, the same. We have one remaining option: the ladder leading aboveground to our right.

“Shoot,” Bree says, skidding to a halt. “I know where this leads. We’re only blocks from Union Central.”

“How is that possibly a bad thing?” Sammy says. “Everyone’s down at the square.”

“We should be in that square,” I say, the guilt creeping over me. This was our plan, and none of it is working. People are dying because of it. We might end up dying. I can barely breathe anymore, and my eyes feel on fire.