Duplicity [p.h]

chapter eight || sounds like conjuring a demon, if you ask me

"YOU'RE TELLING ME they made a long-range one?"

"Almost," I corrected. Zeke's eyes bulged out of their sockets while Verity adopted a sheet white pallor.  Especially because her skin was already so fair, I noticed as the three of us sat on my bed that she was nearly the same shade as my bedsheets.  One glance in the mirror told me I didn't look much better, but none of us were as crazed as Tori. She was manic when we reunited for dinner and stormed to her quarters as if she was seconds away from exploding.  "It's still in development.  According to Max, human trials are starting next week."

"But who... on who?"  Verity wrung her hands. We already knew what the answer was. The woman tucked a tuft of blonde hair behind her ear.

"I don't have the names," I responded.  "Not yet. But Zeke, you need to make sure you and the defectors don't get caught. We can't afford a slip up." 

The boy nodded.  "At least it can't get much worse than that!" His beaming grin, intended to act like a contagion, only made me gulp.

"Yeah, about that..."

Zeke sprouted creases of confusion and trenches of dread in his forehead.  I had a suspicion Verity was going to be sick.

Eric had explained the process clearly, as if he himself had done all the research. The serums we used had relatively short lives; they were good for one simulation, which often barely lasted an hour, before the transmitter was dissolved and lost control over the brain.

This was all old news to me, but as I relayed it to my coconspirators I made sure to be thorough. After all, Verity's anatomical and other scientific know-how was limited to her infirmary work, and Dauntless-born Zeke expressed no shame in dozing off during science classes when he was still in school, on the occasion he didn't skive off entirely. Neither of them were as exposed to this kind of research as I had been.

The new news, however, was shocking to everyone: the same change the Erudite had made to ensure long-range functionality also led them down the trail to long-lasting functionality. It was theorized that, if the new transmitter worked, one injection could yield myriads of simulations, all of which could last for as long as the Erudite wanted to exert their control.

"Then we'd better stop it before it happens," Zeke suggested.

"No." The two of them looked me dead in the eye, bewilderment plain across their faces. "We can't. If they've already gotten this far, there's no way we can stop it now. Not unless..."

"Not unless, what?"

The sheets caught in my grip as I bunched them up in my hands. "Not unless we break into the lab and destroy all their samples."

• • •

DAUNTLESS LEADERSHIP WAS complicated, to say the least. Our meetings were chaotically organized, with screaming matches on nearly every topic that more often than not ended in all parties involved being held apart. I had always had a good control over my emotions. In Erudite, I had been taught relentlessly how to tackle arguments with logic and reasoning; nothing more, nothing less, and for the most part it worked.  It wasn't until my third day in that I found myself on the receiving end of a pierced tongue's scorn seconds away from biting back.

Max had brought to our attention a request from Erudite for two Dauntless leaders to oversee the transmitter trials.  At first, there was nothing but silence. And then, she spoke.

"Well obviously it should be me and Rudy."  Her tongue stud glinted in the artificial light, spit flying out of her mouth as she spoke.