“Like hell you can,” Xavier snaps from the other side of camp.
Jackson laughs. “Why not? I’ve already uncovered your mission details by simply listening. The whole thing’s ridiculous! Group A? Frank gave you too much credit—the way he assumed you’d try to extend your reach into the west, strike up allegiances. But fine, I’ll keep tagging along on your pointless crusade. And when the time presents itself, I’ll slay you. One at a time. Slowly. Until someone divulges headquarters’ location.”
“You realize you were one of us once, right?” I say through clenched teeth. “The real Jackson spent his childhood behind a Wall. He was Heisted to make you. You’re Frank’s puppet, and you’re doing everything the real Jackson wouldn’t want.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” he says quietly. “My mind can’t be changed. I know what I have to do.”
I believe him even though I don’t want to. Harvey told me as much. The difference between a Forgery that can think for itself and a Forgery that blindly does Frank’s bidding is a piece of code—software as smoothly integrated with the replica’s brain as the blood that runs through its veins.
“I can change your mind,” I say.
“I’d like to see you try.”
I have an arrow nocked before Jackson even finishes speaking.
“You won’t fire that. Not with what I know.”
“What you know?” my father echoes.
“I’m a soldier. A technologically enhanced soldier overloaded with secrets. Do you have any idea how much confidential information is swimming around in my head? City maps. Computer passwords. Access codes to safes and storage units and maybe even Outer Rings.”
No one says anything. Jackson’s grin grows wider.
“What were you planning to do when you reached Group A? Push the Outer Ring’s wall over?” he says. “It’s taller than the interior Wall—surrounds the whole place. You need me or you’ll just stand there, staring at a dead end.”
Bo steps between Sammy and Emma on the opposite side of the fire. “You said maybe,” he calls out. “Access codes to storage units and maybe Outer Rings.”
Jackson grunts. “I can’t very well tell you how to open the door now. It’s my only leverage.”
“Then maybe you’re lying and we should just get this over with,” I say, raising my bow.
“Shoot me now and you’re already doomed to reach a dead end. But if you keep me alive, things can go one of two ways: I open the Outer Ring for you and you actually have a chance to complete your stupid mission. Or, I was lying all along, you hit a dead end later rather than sooner, and shoot me then instead of now. Your pick.”
Bo shifts uncomfortably. Emma is shivering behind him—still in shock or maybe just cold. Sammy puts his coat on her shoulders. And Jackson keeps smiling. That arrogant, cocky smile that I want to wipe right off his face.
“The Forgery lives,” my father announces. “We believe Clipper can get us into the Outer Ring, but on the rare chance he can’t, this is a solid backup plan and we’d be foolish to waste it. If the Forgery is lying about what he knows, it’s just like he said: He’ll die then instead of now.”
Owen turns and asks Emma to show the team what she recognized in Jackson’s and Blaine’s eyes. Sammy is in the process of bandaging her neck, but she agrees to explain everything when he’s finished.
“I still can’t believe it,” Bree says next to me. “Blaine. Even after we interrogated him. It’s—” She stops, touches my arm. “Hey, are you okay?”
Sammy’s brushing Emma’s hair to the side so he can better see the cut on her neck. He must say something funny because she lets out a small laugh. Bree follows my gaze and frowns.
“Gray?”
Xavier shouts for Sammy to help him move Blaine’s body away from camp, and I feel nauseous all over again.
“I just need a minute,” I say to Bree.
I want to be alone right now. Need to be alone. She has the decency to not give me a hard time about it.
I wander away from the tents, slip between the trees. When I find a fallen pine, I sit on the trunk, cringe at the sting of an oncoming headache. The moment I close my eyes, I see it all over again: Blaine’s head whipping back from the force of my arrow, his body in the snow; the way he lay, broken, with one arm crushed beneath his weight.
A little while later, my father finds me. “How are you holding up?”
I want to tell him how sick I feel, but he seems so formal in the moment. More captain than father.
He sits beside me. “It wasn’t him, Gray. That wasn’t your brother.”
“I know. But I still . . . I feel like . . .”
I don’t know how to put it into words. Like I ate spoiled meat and my stomach is writhing? Like I have a headache that pounds at the slightest movement? Like the wind’s been knocked out of me and I can’t get an ounce of air into my lungs no matter how deeply I breathe?
“You did the right thing,” Owen says. “Emma would be dead right now if you hadn’t acted so quickly.”
“How is she?”
“Fine. Nothing but a nick on her neck. She’s showing the others how to identify a Forgery, although the sign is so subtle. Clipper’s the only one having any success.” A quick pause. “I don’t know what it means. Not even Harvey seemed to know about this giveaway, and he made the damn things.”
Owen leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. I run a hand over my bloody knuckles.
“I don’t get it,” I say finally. “What the Forgery said—Frank giving us too much credit for heading west. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“I think our final destination surprised him, that’s all. I’m sure when Frank heard we were traveling west he expected us to be gathering more supporters, and of course he has a reason to fear that. With more numbers we have more power, and with those numbers spread out, more people doubting him in more locations. He could have an uprising on his hands, one that would be difficult to fight if it broke out in and around all his cities at the same time. It’s his biggest fear: losing control over his people.” Owen pauses for a second. “Frank probably never mentioned Group A to the Forgeries when he briefed them, and why would he? The place is a wreck and there are no numbers there to help our cause as far as he’s concerned. Of course, that’s exactly why it’s so alluring to us. It’s under the radar. Never thought of or looked at twice.”
“There are still cameras watching it.”
“Once we get the survivors on our side, Clipper will see to them. Remember his discussions with Ryder before we left—that idea to take several hours of video footage and loop it indefinitely? To anyone watching from Taem’s control room it will look like Group A is as deserted and dead as always, only we’ll be able to start recruiting beyond the survivors still there.”
“And the Forgery?” I ask.
“We’ll get rid of him as soon as we’re through the Outer Ring. The Order will think we’re anywhere but Group A ‘extending our reach,’ and he’ll be dead before he’s able to discover and give them headquarters’ location.”
I nod silently. I heard these plans, all this logic, a dozen times over—mostly in meetings before we left Crevice Valley. I’ve even repeated some of them to Bree when her reservations about the mission get the best of her. But now, as I sit here listening to my father, thinking about Blaine’s body back in the snow and how quickly life can get thrown off course, I catch myself feeling doubtful. There are so many details in our plan that could go wrong as easily as they could go right.