Masterminds (18 page)

It's scary and infuriating—and the anger is the scariest part. Was it anger that turned my DNA twin into a criminal mastermind? Does that mean I'm already on my way? And how do I stop it?
Can
it be stopped? Everything I do—is it me deciding, or is it him?

Malik has also been thinking about where his genes came from, but he doesn't seem to be as bothered by it. He refers to his DNA donor as “my guy,” as in, “I can't wait to blow this Popsicle stand so I can go find my guy.”

“He's not your uncle, you know,” Hector reminds him. “He's more like an older evil twin.”

“I'll bet he's in NYC,” Malik daydreams. “Convenient—I was planning to head that way myself.”

“The reason they got his DNA is because he was in
jail
,” I point out. “Chances are, he's still there. Master criminals get long sentences.”

“The jail hasn't been built that can hold my guy. He must be a real player. Please don't let me get the bonehead who got arrested for jaywalking.”

Like this is a contest to see who's cloned from the coolest felon.

“I don't want to meet mine.” It's one of the rare times Hector doesn't agree with Malik.

“Aw, come on,” Malik shoots back. “Your guy is a cinch to find. Just scour the prison system for somebody four foot six doing time for felony pain-in-the-butt.”

Hector doesn't take the bait. “I don't care about that stuff,” he says seriously. “I just want to get out of here and make a fresh start.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Malik turns back to me. “When do we make our move?”

“Tori still hasn't decided if she's coming with us,” I tell him.

“Forget her, man!” Malik exclaims. “I've got nothing against Tori, but we can't just chill forever while she makes up her mind.”

I dig in my heels. “We need her. Remember the factory? We never could have pulled it off without her. We've got to get this right, Malik. If we're caught, there won't be any second chances, even if our parents have to chain us up in our rooms.”

“Well, tell her to hurry up,” Malik says irritably. “If we wait too long, she'll break down and blab everything to
Mommy and Daddy.”

To me, that's even more reason not to push her. Too much pressure might make her snap in the wrong direction and come clean to her parents.

Hey, I totally get her reluctance to turn her life upside down. It goes far beyond working up the courage to break away from her family. Escaping this place is going to be
hard
. The next town is eighty miles away, and we have no transportation other than bikes. There are four of us against close to two hundred Osiris types and Purple People Eaters, and they have cars and a helicopter. And even if we do get away, what then? We're underage, we don't know anybody outside Serenity, and we have no idea how things work in the world. Our education may or may not bear any resemblance to reality, and even the books we've read and the movies we've seen might have been edited by Osiris scientists.

One idea is to go to the Taos police and tell them who we are, and what's been done to us. Maybe they'll shut down Project Osiris and rescue the other seven who are like us. But that's if they believe us in the first place—it's a pretty crazy story coming from a bunch of kids. What evidence do we have? A few dozen pictures of the conference room? They're barely readable on my iPad—a whole lot
of “
ARTH
  
OM W G EN
,” but very little that's concrete. The real stuff on the whiteboards can easily be taken down and hidden. It'll end up our word against our parents'.

For all we can predict, we'll be in trouble for the crimes our DNA twins committed, or simply for being clones in the first place. What if that's illegal?

If we do manage to get away, we'll have to take things as they come, and make decisions on the fly. The prospect of it freaks me out—just not enough to stay here and live my life the Osiris way.

So for the moment, we're biding our time, making mental plans, and trying to act as if nothing is up. I smile through the lump in my throat, and remind myself that the guy across the breakfast table is not my father, but a scientist named Felix Hammerstrom. I am quiet and obedient, the perfect son. I slave over a Serenity Day project that with all my heart I hope not to be here to present. I write endless details of President Roosevelt's 1937 visit, an event that never happened, regardless of what it says on our fake internet. I fill Excel spreadsheets with manufacturing statistics about our fake plastics factory. I quote fake articles from the
Pax
about how our town is tops in the state, the country, the hemisphere, the world, the solar system, the Milky Way.

In school, I keep my grades up and my mouth shut. If Mrs. Laska finds out what I've been thinking about in Meditation, she'll definitely dock my Contentment score.

In gym, I'm a beast in the pool. The emotions I'm suppressing in every other part of my life are coming through in water polo. Luckily, I've got an excuse. I tell Mrs. Delaney I'm striving to make myself a counterbalance to Malik's overpowering physical play.

“It's fine to be aggressive,” she tells me. “But you're swimming like you're trying to hurt the water. You move better with the relaxed, measured stroke you always use.”

“I'll try harder next time.”

The words come out so automatically that she can tell it's lip service.

She's quiet a moment, chewing this over. Then: “Remember what I said when I came to your house that time? That if you ever need someone to talk to, you can count on me?”

I do remember, and the truth is I like talking to Mrs. Delaney. I always sensed she was different from the other adults in town, and now I have proof. She must have been just a kid in the early days of Project Osiris. Does she know the whole truth about what's going on here? It's impossible to tell, but I hope not. I want to believe she's the kind of
person who'd never go along with the Serenity scam.

I realize something unexpected: When I'm gone from this nightmare town, I might feel sad about leaving my dad, mostly out of habit and brainwashing. But she's the only one I'll actually
miss
. “You're awesome, Mrs. Delaney. I'll never forget you.”

She looks puzzled. “Forget me? I'm not going anywhere. I just got here.” Her playful grin disappears as her eyes narrow. “Are
you
—going somewhere?”

My heart leaps up into my throat and I very nearly choke on it. How could I have said something so stupid? “Of course not,” I manage to rasp. “I never go anywhere.”

She studies me for what seems like a long time. At last, she says, “Sorry, I must have misunderstood. Now go and change. Maybe try a swim at home tonight. Take it nice and easy—get your regular stroke back.”

As soon as the locker room door shuts behind me, I slide down the wall to the floor and sit there, hyperventilating. After worrying so much about Tori, I almost gave it all away in a nothing conversation about water polo.

It begins to sink in that the longer we delay, the greater the likelihood that one of us will slip up and spill the beans. And then we can kiss any chance at freedom good-bye.

Mom makes my favorite dinner tonight (mac and cheese with spicy bread crumb topping) and doesn't give me a hard time until I start my fourth helping.

It's love. It has to be. Nothing has changed. A few whiteboards and an old article on the internet can't wipe out a family.

Steve looks up from the depths of my homework. “They're simple equations, Torific. We went over this last week.
And
the week before.”

“I'm an artist, Steve,” I tell him. “I obviously don't
do
math.”

“As long as it's part of the curriculum,” Mom says, “you obviously do.”

I know they're not my biological parents, but I refuse
to believe I'm just an experiment to them. I mean every bit as much to them as a real daughter would.

How can I leave them?

On the other hand, I saw the conference room of the plastics factory, and I saw the
Pax
office where our bogus reality is crafted for our eyes only. I read the description of Project Osiris that could only be us—raised up to our ears in harmony and contentment in a hermetically sealed town. This can't be a misunderstanding; there's no way we got it wrong somehow. It's awful, but it's the (awful) truth.

Every time my parents had to work late (a vital shipment of traffic cones urgently needed somewhere!), that was a bald-faced lie. They were probably in that conference room reporting on me, making notes for my whiteboard. Worse, even before I was born, when Project Osiris was supposed to be canceled because it was immoral, my parents signed on anyway to raise the clone of some criminal mastermind (me).

Maybe they did it for the money. Serenity's a pretty rich place. They had student loans to pay off. What choice did they have?

I want to believe that
so
much! But it still doesn't explain everything.

So how can I stay?

Maybe it's this: We artists are hopeless romantics, and there's this romantic vision that I just can't shake: infant Tori placed into the arms of the two researchers; it's love at first sight!

It could have happened that way. It
probably
happened that way.

But is that enough?

I'm getting a lot of pressure from Malik and Hector to make up my mind once and for all. Eli's being a lot cooler, but deep down, he's more torn up than any of us. After all, Mr. Frieden is the head of Project Osiris.

Whoops. Not Mr. Frieden; Dr. Hammerstrom.

To make life even more difficult, Amber has gone from best friend to ex–best friend, and barely even talks to me. This is pretty awful because we're still supposed to be doing our Serenity Day project together. So there she is, in
my
studio, painting the background of
my
mural.

They say silence can be deafening. Well, this is the opposite of that. Our silence is just silent. We might as well be in deep space.

We're closer than sisters, and I know something that
explains
everything
about her life and her world. And what do I tell her? Nothing.

Some friend
I
am.

It's beyond weird—or maybe not. Maybe the criminals we're cloned from are the strong, silent type.

My climbing wild roses have stopped climbing halfway up the trellis, looking like they could make it to the top if only someone would pay attention to them. That someone being me.

Along with everything else I've been neglecting, like my Serenity Day project and my best friend, I've been neglecting my plants too.

Steve says you can't grow roses in the desert, and it's turned into one of our classic
no-you-can't, yes-I-can
things. So I'm determined to grow them, paint a picture of them, and present him with the finished product, nicely framed, on his next birthday.

I scale the trellis with a handful of twist ties so I can train the tendrils to reach for the sky. The feeling of being off the ground against the stucco is eerily familiar—I can almost see myself clinging to the wall of the Plastics Works after the rope came loose. It was very nearly a real
disaster. I'm lucky the factory had so many niches and handholds that let me scramble to the top.

Or maybe it wasn't luck. I look at our wall and see just as many spots to hang on to. If I can climb a factory in the pitch-black, a regular house should be a breeze. Intrigued, I work my way past the roses, past the trellis, and up toward the second story. I can't explain it, but it just seems
obvious
to me—like the handholds and footholds have been outlined in Magic Marker. I'm pretty high up, but I'm not afraid at all. My sneakers are established in the mortar course between adobe bricks, and my hands have a firm grip on the sill beneath my parents' bedroom window.

I hear their voices from inside, and stifle an impulse to raise myself up and knock on the sash. They'd probably have a fit. I'm about to start down when a word from my mother reaches me, and it stops me cold: “Osiris 3.”

Osiris 3—that's Malik!

I hang there, waiting for more.

“I don't like it,” I hear my father say. “The kid's not just a number. You're talking about one of Tori's best friends.”

“It's always been in the protocols.” This from Mom again. “The older ones will be fourteen soon. Any toxic
element has to be weeded out for the good of the group.”

“This isn't what I signed up for.” Steve sounds stressed. “When does he go?”

“We don't want to spoil Serenity Day,” Mom replies. “After that, he's out.”

One of my feet comes loose, and I lurch, momentarily swinging from the sill. All at once, this climb isn't so much fun, and growing roses in the desert seems like a pointless waste of time.

I ease myself down the wall, scratching my legs on the thorns. It probably stings, but I don't even notice. A few overheard words can hurt so much more.

We already know about our parents, but this is the first time one of us has heard it straight from their mouths.

Any toxic element has to be weeded out
. First Malik. Who's next?

Most important of all, what exactly does
weeded out
mean?

I suddenly realize that I'll never know, because we can't risk sticking around long enough to see it happen.

I head for the Frieden house. I feel like I'm going to throw up on the way over there, yet now that the decision is made, I won't go back on it. Funny, I never considered myself a strong-willed person, but I suddenly understand
that I must be cloned from one.

Eli opens the door. He looks nervous when he sees it's me.

I swallow hard. “I've made up my mind.”