The Similars (The Similars #1)(63)

We tell her to come with us, and she shrugs, doing exactly as we say. It’s a quiet walk to the abandoned science building. Madison’s sufficiently dazed and doesn’t question us when we ask her to flash her key in front of the door. It opens.

A few minutes later, we’re on the fourth floor, standing at the end of the long white corridor. I take in a breath as Madison holds up her key at the entrance to the hologram room. The lock clicks. We’re in.

“Keep your key in your hand,” I tell Madison. “Roll your palms over it.” Madison does as I say, and within seconds, a hologram appears—Madison’s hologram. She stares at it like it’s a daydream.

“You’ll have one too,” I tell Maude. “If you get out your own key.”

Maude’s one step ahead of me. Her hologram pops up next to Madison’s. I pull out my own key and make mine appear as well.

Maude mutters as she walks around them, surveying the three holograms. “Flicker hologram technology.”

I remember reading about that once. “The latest advancements in lasers?”

“Exactly,” says Maude.

It’s fascinating stuff, but I don’t dwell on it. Time is of the essence. If anyone finds out that we aren’t in our dorm rooms or that Madison is missing, they’ll be able to track us by our keys—and not only have we gained access to a restricted room in a closed facility, we’ve stolen injectives and kidnapped Madison. We have to hustle.

“What’s stored in these?” I ask Maude, indicating the holograms. “We know the new keys track our GPS. But is there more?”

Maude doesn’t respond, but I know she’s heard me. She’s focused, pacing the room, murmuring something I can’t hear. Before I know what’s happening, she’s pulled a virtual control panel out of thin air. I stare as she keys commands into it. I have no clue how she did that, but then again, that’s exactly why I asked her to come with me.

I circle my hologram, studying this uncanny “Emma” in front of me. I clutch my key again, squeezing it—and that’s when Emma the hologram starts to flicker and glow bright red.

“Maude,” I say quietly. “Come look at this.”

She’s instantly by my side, and we both watch as Emma the hologram rises into the air, ghostly and ethereal. With her tight-lipped smile and her half-awake, half-asleep demeanor, the hologram is a strange, unsettling sight. Hovering a few feet in the air, she morphs from red to a deep, bruiselike purple.

Next to her, words and numbers begin to flash in the air.

NAME: EMMALINE KATHARINE CHANCE

STATUS: JUNIOR

BIRTH DATE: MAY 26

On and on, statistics scroll about me. About my parents, Colin and Katharine Chance. About my record at Darkwood: my attendance, my test scores, my grades, even the results of my stratum test. They are all here, stored in my hologram. And it was my key that triggered it, unlocking this digital file. Then a map of the Darkwood campus flashes in the air, and on it, a dot. My location, labeled “Research Lab.”

Within moments, Maude is activating the data on both the Madison and Maude holograms, so that they, too, are rising in the air, flashing statistics about each girl. I read the data as it speeds past. Maude was born on Castor Island. The parent listed on her birth certificate is A. Gravelle.

“Why’s it called Castor Island, anyway?” I ask Maude.

“Our guardian named it when he first designed and built the place, some twenty years ago. Have you heard of the Gemini twins? Castor and Pollux?”

“Like the constellation,” I say.

“That’s right. Castor and Pollux were immortalized by Zeus in the stars, where they are together, for eternity.”

“Twins,” I say, thinking how strange and yet fitting it is that Gravelle raised the Similars on an island named for the world’s most famous twin brothers. I’m distracted from the thought when more of my own stats cycle past—all of my report cards, before Darkwood, and my birth certificate. It lists my parents as my parents, naturally, and is stamped by the State of California. I start to wonder if my driving record is in here too, when Maude and I are surrounded.

I gasp, startled, as the bodies of several hundred Darkwood students fill the room. They are scattered throughout the space like players on a massive chess board. These aren’t my flesh-and-blood classmates, of course. From where I stand, they look entirely real, but as soon as I move left or right, forward or back, I see that they have no substance. Like the other holograms, these figures are made of light.

“How did you do that? You called them all up without their keys!” I say, amazed.

“T2X command,” Maude answers.

I’m too awed to question this. Instead, I walk from hologram to hologram, peering at the faces of students I know, and some I don’t. It’s eerie, the way they stare at me as I walk past. Some have permanent smiles on their faces. Others frown. Still others look zoned out.

“Is there one here for every Darkwood student?” I ask.

“Yes—every current student. My hunch is that every student who’s ever had a key is logged in the system somewhere, but I haven’t figured out how to call up past students yet.”

I turn to her. “So even my dad would have a hologram? Pru’s father? Jane and Booker Ward? My father said that when he was in school, they had primitive versions of the keys we have now. They must have improved them significantly in the last two decades…” Then I ask quietly, “Can we pull up Oliver’s hologram? I think this might have been what he wanted me to see when he left me his key.”