Page 89 of Because I Killed Him
Everywhere we go, the campus reacts like cattle sensing an earthquake. Low-citizen students scatter, shrinking back against walls and doorframes, rerouting to avoid us. Conversations halt mid-sentence, and voices drop to whispers whenever we get too close. Even the Blues, who once stared Edmund down at eye level, now glance a little lower.
With each passing day, I breathe easier. I think less about my stolen energy shield and the looming threat of my vulnerability. I stop obsessively refreshing the Copper directory online, searching for Sergeant Croft, and I stop walking past the campus Copper Headquarters, trying new strategies to get the information the officer at the front desk has repeatedly denied me. “Privacy and security,” he always says. I don’t even bother anymore.
My mistrust of Coppers runs deeper now, but I don’t feel in danger.
For the first time since I arrived at Grandmaster University, I feel safe. It makes me realize something I thought I already knew but never truly understood. I never knew what freedom was until I joined Edmund’s entourage. His shadow stretches over all of us, yet in that shadow, I’m untouchable.
For now.
Slowly and cautiously, I edge past him. I use my free time to experience the university not as a battleground of threats and surveillance but as a place to enjoy as a normal student. Together, Charlotte and I find rhythm in the campus’s routine and secrets in its corners, exploring every hotspot like we’re on a scavenger hunt. We dance through underground clubs, speed along the coast in rented boats under violet skies, and sift through antique boutiques for treasures I usually end up mailing home to Mom and Vivian.
One afternoon, I snap a photo of the Genetic Engineering Facility—a massive brick-and-glass building glowing like a ship about to launch—and send it to Hillaire. She prints the photo and frames it on her bedroom wall, as if it were art. As the weather turns colder and the sidewalks pile with leaves, I send her virtual tours of campus, my voice floating over the crunch of my boots.
I try to keep up with Vivian, too. When I call, she mostly wants to talk about Harrison, so it’s easy to keep the spotlight off the information I want to hide. Yes, Vivian knows about Irene’s attack. With all the media coverage of the Blue arrests, everyone in the Civilized World does. But she doesn’t know a Copper tried to kill me or that another stole my energy shield. And she definitely doesn’t know I made a deal with Edmund and joined his entourage.
Maybe Vivian wouldn’t judge me. Maybe she’d even understand. But I can’t tell her or Hillaire. If I do, I’ll have to admit that, yet again, I couldn’t make it on my own.
Most days, I’m either training, in class, or studying. I enjoy some of my classes, especially Political Theory & Governance, but there’s one I can’t stand: Cloning Theory.
Three days a week, I slog through stuffy, sluggish lectures that drone on like static. Most of it is speculative nonsense delivered in a nasal monotone by Professor Hollings. I’m not the only one who thinks the class is a joke. Hollings knows exactly which students hate it, and he makes us sit in the front row so he can deduct civil credits at the slightest whiff of ridicule.
The only time my eyes stop drifting shut is when Hollings’s Pinkie assistants wheel out the containment crates filled with clone samples. They’re technically human, but they don’t speak or blink or even know they exist. The clones simply lie there, warm and twitching, like meat waiting to expire. None of them survives longer than a week.
Even Dickie agrees it’s quack science.
Cloning the body is possible. That much is clear. But the mind? Consciousness? Personality? Every attempt has failed.
Still, I don’t drop the course. If I do, I’ll be reassigned to the one class I hate even more: Introduction to Genetic Engineering.
It’s a course that explains, down to the molecule, how we’re built in labs from conception onward; how nothing is left to chance, from eye color to bone density to memory retention. It turns my DNA into a scoreboard, reminding me that some of us were sculpted for greatness, while the rest weren’t.
I won’t sit through a class like that. I won’t be in a room where aprofessor points to a gene sequence and says, “That’s why Edmund Prew can recite the law code from memory, and you have to study three weeks just to pass your Digital Rights & Cyber Law quiz.”
So I stay in Cloning Theory. I dig in and watch sacks of failed humanity twitch beneath bio-light panels, their organs shutting down one by one.
It’s still better than the alternative.
When Cloning Theory ends—always the last class of the day—I slip out fast, forgetting Professor Hollings’ nasal drone as I clock out of Edmund’s entourage and cruise across campus with Charlotte. Lately, we’ve spent every evening together, filling the long twilight hours with conversations that carefully steer clear of our secrets, like landmines. She doesn’t ask about the Blue I killed, and I don’t ask about her fallout with Edmund and Jack. It’s a silent agreement, and for now, it works.
“Things have been pretty quiet,” I say one night as we cross a parking lot toward my hovercar. We’ve just finished a climbing lesson at a popular campus gym and have already showered and dressed for a night out. The evening wind cuts through my damp hair as I slide into the driver’s seat. “Thought Rosamund would’ve paid us a visit by now.”
“No. She’ll wait till the Tangerine Tree shitstorm dies down first.” Charlotte pulls off her cloche hat and runs a hand over her head. With the regrowth cream, her hair is already thickening, faint sprouts pushing through her scalp like new grass. “Right now, while everything’s fresh, Rosamund won’t touch us. It was the same when I dated Jack. She waited till I’d settled in with Jack, Edmund, and Dickie enough to let my guard down. Then she went straight for my throat.”
I power on the hovercar and lift out of the parking lot, thinking that adds up. Edmund has been on high alert since the death duel, watching me like I’m prey limping through a herd, sometimes even texting to check in. He killed two of his own in a viral video, so everyone’s scared of him right now, but I doubt that includes Rosamund. Once things settle and Edmund decides I’m safe, he’ll stop watching.
And maybe that’s what she’s waiting for.
Charlotte tugs her cloche hat back into place with a sigh. “Enough about the spider, Lore. If you want my advice, enjoy the time you’ve got without her. Once she shows up, you’re never getting this kind of peace back.”
There’s a shadow of sadness in Charlotte’s eyes as she speaks, as if she’s mourning something stolen from her. I know it wasn’t only Jack. It was a part of her youth, taken and twisted, filled with the kind of pain that seems to have aged her soul more than her body.
“All right,” I say softly. “Do you want to go tap dancing?”
Charlotte brightens. “Sure. A girl I met on the tram yesterday mentioned a good spot.”
The tap dance club is called Jolt & Jive, a low-citizen joint near the Moonshine Mile. When we step inside, we’re swallowed by a kinetic fever dream of spirited jazz and sweating bodies, with students packed wall-to-wall on the floor. Tap heels click in staccato bursts, sparking like fire with every beat.
Within moments, three men have already offered to buy Charlotte a drink. But she dances with me instead. I’m sore from weeks of relentless training, but as soon as my body warms up, I slide back into my old rhythm. When our feet blister inside our shoes, Charlotte and I rip them off and keep going barefoot. We sip cheap wine from sticky glasses, spinning into a haze of dizzy laughter. The lights blur. The hours vanish. And for the first time in years, it feels like the old days: Charlotte and me together again, a little older and a little more bruised, but happy.
