Lux and Lies (Whitebird Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Hazen’s stare didn’t yield. “I must say, for such a young girl, you’re awfully calm.

  “I’m not that young.” Wren remembered the conversation she’d overheard moments ago. She straightened her tired spine and stared Hazen down. In VidaCorp’s commercials, he always looked as bright and shiny as the Hollywood sign, but in person, he was shorter than Wren had anticipated.

  “How are you so calm?”

  Wren met his gaze without blinking or flinching. “Who says I am?”

  “You keep your cards close to the vest, don’t you?”

  “I’ve found it’s best to let others talk. You learn a lot more from listening.”

  “Really? What have you learned about me?”

  Wren merely smiled in answer.

  Hazen’s silence stretched to the point that Wren’s heart dipped. She’d guessed Hazen was the type who appreciated backbone; otherwise, he wouldn’t be so lenient with Hutton. The casual disregard he showed his brother suggested he didn’t enjoy people trying to please him constantly. Had she guessed wrong?

  But then he beamed at Hutton and rubbed his hands together. “I stand corrected, Hutton dearest. You were right. Let’s get her into the Tube!”

  Wren had passed his test. One question and he thought she could be Sloane. These people saw something in her that convinced them, but doubt peppered Wren’s mind. Her entire life had felt like one long failed attempt to reach the standard set before her. She was always either too sick or too frail, too poor or too young.

  “First things first. Here’s the more advanced medicine Hazen brought over.” Bode picked up a glass of water and a silver plastic packet from the coffee table. As he walked toward her, Wren met him halfway.

  “This is the glorified pause button?” she asked, slanting a gaze at Hutton.

  The handler cocked a brow at the comment, but didn’t say anything in Hazen’s presence.

  “It’s your new medicine,” Bode said. He handed her the water, ripped open the packet, and shook out a single clear pill into her hand. In the very center of the pill the size of her thumbnail, Wren made out a faint, swooping “VC.”

  “It’ll manage your symptoms better than the inhaler by reducing the inflammation in your lungs and stopping the cancer from further metastasizing,” Hazen said. “It’s not Pacem, but it will help.”

  “You’ll receive one pill each day in return for your cooperation,” Hutton sniped.

  “I’ll cooperate.” Wren lifted the pill to her mouth. It quickly dissolved on her tongue with a blast of minty-fresh flavor. She washed away the lingering residue with a swish of water.

  Bode took the empty glass from her.

  “We know you will,” Hazen said. “Once Beau is in office, things will be much easier for everyone. Think of all the people like you who could use a pill a day to keep their diseases away!”

  Wren could think of many people like her, but they would never be able to afford VidaCorp’s miracle drug. But she pushed the thought from her mind; she could only focus on herself right now. “What happens between now and the start of the show?”

  Hutton and Hazen laughed. Only Bode stayed quiet, his gaze steady and calm. Wren caught him casting a long stare at his brother, as if he were waiting.

  “We have three weeks to prepare you.” Something unnerving glinted in Hutton’s bright, too-wide eyes.

  “And we need every day,” Hazen added. “By the time the show starts, you will be Sloane Lux. Every action, word, and thought will be exactly what Sloane would have done, said, or thought. That will also give us enough time to adjust your physical alterations.”

  “I don’t know if I can become a completely different person.” Wren directed the words at Bode, but her eyes flicked between Hutton and Hazen.

  “You just have to be convincing, Wren. That’s all,” Bode said.

  “Don’t be too worried. Just be the most superficial backstabbing whore you can be, and you’ll be the infamous Sloane Lux.”

  No one laughed at Hazen’s comment, and the silence stretched uncomfortably long.

  “Let’s get started then,” Hutton said. “The medical team is standing by.”

  8:

  While Hutton checked on the status of the medical team, Wren hugged her robe tighter around her shoulders. The penthouse felt empty without Hutton, even with the Bafford brothers stretched out on the white couch in front of her.

  Bode turned on the television, and Hazen slung his arms over the back cushions, his loafer-clad feet propped up on the glass coffee table. A heaping bouquet of fresh pink peonies had been pushed aside on the table to keep from blocking Hazen’s view of the television. Unsurprising to Wren, Beau’s latest campaign ad was the first commercial that played.

  “Poverty. Unemployment. Environmental toxins.” A sweeping landscape of barren earth accompanied Beau’s voice-over. A low, sad melody played in the background. A picture of a homeless child with a dirty smudge on his cheek followed the image of a stray puppy poking through a pile of garbage. It was all preposterous to Wren.

  Everyone in the suburbs knew all the strays were eaten long before they could scavenge garbage.

  “Gang violence,” Beau said. The images flashed to fires and riots, Links with guns, and a woman crying.

  “Illness. Disease.” Beau walked through a suburb hospital and swept his hands wide, gesturing at the packed space, the harried doctors, and the people who couldn’t find a chair to sit in so they slumped in corners, eyes dull and tired.

  “We live in a world where one in three people will be diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer. But we can stop this. Together”—the camera tightened around Beau’s handsome face—“we can overcome the illness around us. We can rise above such meaningless death. My name is Beau Montgomery, and I approve this message.”

  A VidaCorp commercial followed.

  “How are the polls looking?” Bode asked Hazen.

  “Better than last week. People like the puppy.”

  Hutton’s heels clacking across the floor drew the brothers’ attention, and Wren breathed a sigh of relief. Carrying a plastic water bottle in her hand, Hutton approached the couch and swatted at Hazen’s feet. “No feet on the table. It scuffs the glass.”

  “What do you care?” Hazen leaned around her to see the television. A commercial for Glass House played next. He had a phone in one hand, his fingers sliding across the screen.

  Hutton looked ready to snap something back at him, but instead, she picked up the silver vase of peonies and put them on another side table, arranging them so they were perfectly centered. She retrieved her water bottle from the coffee table.

  “You and Hazen shouldn’t drink from water bottles so often. They’re bad for the environment, you know.” Bode’s smile suggested he wanted to smooth over the tension with some light-hearted teasing.

  “She’s too good to drink our water,” Hazen said without looking away from the television.

  “You drink bottled water too.” Hutton clenched the bottle tight enough that the plastic crinkled.

  “I have sensitive teeth. I need medicated fluoride in my water. You’re just a snob.”

  Hutton ignored Hazen. “Come on, Wren. The med team is in the elevator.”

  “Good luck,” Bode said.

  Wren glanced over her shoulder as she followed Hutton down a hallway off the kitchen. Wrinkles creased Bode’s forehead. His nervous energy tracked Wren’s every footfall.

  Hutton led them toward the other side of the penthouse. She turned a corner into a bathroom and pulled Wren in with her. The room was similar to Wren’s bathroom, but positioned in the center of the room was a tall red leather chair bolted to the floor so it could swivel around. Surrounding it were rolling tables containing trays of makeup, brushes, tubs of moisturizer, primers, hair color, and a multitude of other supplies Wren couldn’t make out.

  “Sit there,” Hutton commanded, pointing at the red chair.

  “What changes are happening today?” Wren asked a
s she sat.

  “Don’t think about them as changes,” Hutton said. “You have to be a perfect replica of Sloane. Pictures of you on the show will be broadcast side by side with other pictures from Sloane’s career. Your face and body must stand up to scrutiny. Even the tiniest detail must be perfect. But don’t worry, the Tube won’t hurt. The doctor has drugs to manage the pain.”

  Wren winced at the thought of procedures needing drugs for the pain. “The Tube?”

  “Not very original for the century’s greatest invention, right?” Hutton pressed a slim button on the interface by the door. “We’re ready. Send in the team as soon as they arrive.”

  “Do these people know about me?” Wren asked, feeling anything but ready.

  “The doctor works for VidaCorp,” Hutton said and smoothed her pants. “He knows you’re a replacement, and he’ll be seeing to your alterations. You’re free to talk in front of him, as well as his nurses.”

  The bathroom door opened and the doctor stepped in, followed by Hazen and a couple nurses, their faces hidden behind paper masks. The doctor wore a plastic apron and latex gloves. Protective glasses were already positioned on his face, as if Wren were radioactive. The nurses rolled in a large booth, its wheels clacking over the tiles. Wren’s eyes widened; the booth looked like a narrow coffin. Its VidaCorp logo blinked beneath the bathroom lights. This was the Tube. It would be used to change her, break her, and rebuild her. But Wren could only see a coffin.

  Hutton’s eyes flicked to the doctor as he checked the interface on the coffin-like booth. “Could we maybe fill in my cheekbones some?” She pouted and pointed to the bone beneath her eye. “Right here? It’s so … flat.”

  The doctor ignored her and told a nurse, “Dose the patient.”

  Wren tried not to squirm away as the nurse approached her. With unsympathetic eyes, the nurse grabbed a syringe off the cart beside Wren and unceremoniously jammed it into the crook of her elbow, plunging the clear liquid into her vein.

  Within a few deep breaths, Wren’s heartbeat slowed and her chin dipped toward her chest. The lights dimmed, the voices quieted, and the people swam through the air.

  Wren laughed.

  “That was too much,” Hutton admonished.

  “The dosage is correct for the alterations,” Hazen said, sounding like a bee buzzing in Wren’s ear. “They’re painful.”

  “I know they’re painful,” Hutton fired back.

  “This is more than a little Botox. What would you know about how painful they are?”

  Hutton’s silence crackled with enough electricity that Wren’s laughter dried up in her throat and she sank deeper into her seat.

  “Let’s get started. I’ve got dinner reservations at six,” the doctor announced and clapped his hands like he was the ringleader of a menagerie. Hazen took his cue and slipped out of the room.

  The VidaCorp employees descended on Wren like she was a morsel of bread in Sunshine Heights and they were a flock of hungry birds. She stared back at them, unafraid as they shined lights in her eyes and tilted her chin this way and that. Bright laser lines flickered out from tiny white devices and stretched across her chin, from her nose to her eyebrows, from her ears to the corners of her mouth, and everywhere else to measure the angles of her face. With eyebrows furrowed and tongues clucking, they mapped every pore and examined every defect.

  A nurse pulled Wren out of the chair while the other tugged her robe loose. They stripped her bare and passed her back and forth like a doll. She could only watch and smile at herself in the mirror. Quiet descended on the group as her bruises were revealed. Some were yellow with age, like the ones on her arms, but the ones across her ribs shone with purple freshness. Her bones jutted into the clean, bright air. She was nothing but dirt, bones, and bruises.

  The colors were so pretty. Pretty like Sloane. Pretty like Wren would be.

  Hutton turned her head away from the sight.

  “Vests on, everyone!” the doctor called out.

  The nurses shuffled Wren toward the sleek white coffin. The lid opened with a whoosh of cool air. Inside, the box lit up like a sterile sunrise. The nurses guided her to sit on the edge and swung her legs over. It was like she was lying down in bed, which was good. She felt exhausted, and a nap sounded perfect. The lid closed.

  The coffin’s corners hissed, and soft foam poured into the spaces around her body, cradling her in warm gooeyness. It settled around her face, leaving only her eyes, mouth, and nose open to the sliver of air beneath the coffin’s lid. She couldn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t take a deep breath because her chest pressed against the sealed lid. The only thing Wren could twitch was the tip of her nose, but even that stopped when the air in the coffin compressed like liquid atop the bed of foam, trapping her.

  Something beeped, and soft lights clicked on around her like a thousand orange fireflies. Above her, the VidaCorp logo lit up on the underside of the lid. A whirring noise started somewhere at her feet.

  The coffin lights flashed in Wren’s face and blinded her with their brilliance.

  “This might sting a little.” The words came from all around her, as if the coffin were speaking to her.

  The whirring moved up her legs, and the coffin’s lights trailed after the sound. Her skin began to itch. The temperature in the coffin increased, and Wren wanted to shift away to escape the flames, but she was frozen in the hardening foam. Something in her knees popped, and her toes twitched.

  The whirring reached her thighs, and her blood began to boil inside her. Her quadriceps bubbled and convulsed. A smell, like burnt hair, reached her nose.

  “This might sting a little more,” the coffin said.

  Wren’s hips popped. She tried to pull free from the foam holding her down, but she was trapped.

  She couldn’t feel her feet. Her thighs stretched down, and her hips unfolded. The skin around her buttocks and waist caught fire. Tiny snaps sounded in her ears, but she felt it in her stomach as though her body’s cells were frying in a skillet. The snapping continued into her breasts until they felt heavy and foreign. Tears filled her eyes. Her sternum shoved her heart backward until it hit her spine and complained with a stuttering half beat. Her neck tightened and her spine tugged up her back the way she used to tug on her bed sheets in Sunshine Heights to fold the military corners before her father hit her. The bones in her jaw shivered; her teeth cried out. Her lips exploded like her breasts had. Her cheeks fluttered until the bones broke with multiple staccato snaps and reformed just as quickly.

  Wren went limp—unconscious or dead, she didn’t know. A vat of lava had been poured down her mouth. When it started burning through parts of her throat, she faded into a deep black shadow of numbness.

  The whirring stopped and the lid opened, though her body was still encased in foam. Hutton’s face, halved by light, floated above Wren. “Wren, can you hear me?”

  “Christ. Someone should take a picture,” the doctor said. “She’ll never act more like Sloane than now, drugged and out of it.”

  Through the haze of pain and drugs, Wren saw raw, unfiltered pain in Hutton’s eyes at the doctor’s comments.

  Someone laughed. Everyone except Hutton and Wren joined in until Wren was floating atop a sea of laughter. Her eyelids fluttered, eyelashes wet with tears, and she sank away again.

  : : :

  “Wren. Wake up, Wren.”

  The words floated into the deep, deep down of Wren’s subconscious. She flinched. Black muck sucked at her feet as she tried to rise toward the voice. Then, a flare of light flickered beside her. She followed it up, up, up. Her heartbeat stirred in her ears, and her pulse thrummed in her neck. Everything weighed on her heavily, so heavy she thought she might sink back down, but she forced her eyes open.

  “There you are,” Bode said, sitting on the edge of her bed.

  Wren moaned. When she tried to sit up, she felt it. Her eyes flared wide. Like a flurry of bird wings, her heart started pounding.

  Pain. Everything
hurt, but the worst was her throat. Deep in the spot where she wanted to form a scream, she felt only unrelenting fire. Wren wrapped her hands around her neck, too scared to form the words to beg for help.

  “Hey.” Bode shifted and put his hands on her arms to pull them away from her neck. She fought back. “Don’t move, okay? You’re going to be sore.”

  Even his soothing voice did nothing to calm Wren. She panicked.

  Her skin scraped against the sheets like a fresh scab ripping open and exposing the raw wound beneath. As she fought against his hold, her hands thrashing against his arms and face, she sensed the change in her body. It felt fuller and longer—and wrong. In those places, the bones screamed. Her hips and ribs were hot pokers stabbing her insides into a blazing inferno. She opened her mouth, expecting smoke to billow out, and screamed.

  She’d been right to be afraid. She imagined her throat was exploding, and she couldn’t have stopped screaming to save her life.

  Bode leaned across her, pleading with her to be still, and pinned her to the bed. His weight made everything worse, and she screamed all the more.

  “I’m sorry,” he said over and over. “I’m so sorry.” He turned his head away and shouted, “Help! Someone get in here!”

  Her bedroom door sprang open and the doctor rushed in. Wren’s eyes landed on his gloves, too-tight latex that squeezed at the fleshy bits of his wrists. He poked a syringe into her hip. Behind him, Wren spotted the place where the large mirror had been propped against the wall. It was gone. Had they messed up her face? Was she a monster? Her hand fluttered up to her face and met a thick bandage. Her entire body was covered in bandages.

  Bode took her hand. “You’re okay. Don’t talk. The voice alts will take a while to heal.”

  “That should keep her quiet for a bit more,” the doctor said, his voice deep and droning. The underside of the bandages on her face turned wet with her trapped tears.

  Bode scooped her up in his arms and sat down fully on her bed, in the warm spot she’d lain in. The doctor helped him arrange the blankets up around her chin.