“But when I agreed to impersonate Lila, it opened up an entirely new world to me. Not just the unparalleled luxury of the Hart family’s day-to-day lives, but a real opportunity to change things through a revolutionary group called the Blackcoats. As soon as my education on becoming Lila began, Celia, Lila’s mother, and Knox, Lila’s fiancé, made sure my education on the Blackcoats did, too.
“They didn’t have to tell me about the injustices our citizens face day in and day out. How Shields often kill and arrest innocent people in order to meet their quotas, or because they’re having a bad day and have the power totake it out on us. I already knew that—I’d been dodging Shields since I was a kid. But Celia and Knox did tell me how IIs are given rotting food, houses with leaking roofs, and no respect or support from anyone above them. Howmost extra children born to IIs and IIIs are sent to Elsewhere, to be raised inside a prison, and never see the outside world. How our entire lives are dictated by a single aptitude test that only caters to one type of intelligence, and how children who are lucky enough to be born to Vs and VIs get certain advantages. Tutors, inside information—in fact, every single one of the twelve Ministers of the Union received VIs, not on their own merits, butbecause of the family they were born into. They never took the test, and neither will their heirs.
“Before I became Lila, I believed the lies the government feeds us—that we’re in charge of our own lives, that if we just do well enough on the test, they’ll take care of us. They’ll tell us where we belong, and that every single one of us has a place in society. I believed them when they told us we were all important and needed. I may have rejected the life they wanted for me, but I still believed them.
“The first lesson in my education came the day I was finally declared ready to impersonate Lila. Daxton Hart brought me to a wooded area for a hunting trip. But we weren’t hunting deer or quail,” I added. “We were in Elsewhere, and we were hunting humans.”
I let this sink in for a moment, and the crowd stared at me with slack jaws and pale faces. During my few days as a prisoner, I’d quickly discovered none of the other citizens of Elsewhere knew why so many of their ranks were plucked without warning, never to be seen again. Now they knew. Now everyone knew how VIs and VIIs had hunted humans for sport, all because there was no one to stop them.
“All of the VIs and VIIs took part in these hunting trips, and as Lila, I was expected to shut up and go along with it. And I did, because while I hated watching innocent people die, I knew that blending in and doing what was expected of me then meant a chance to help others now.
“America is supposed to be a fair meritocracy. We’re all supposed to receive what we deserve based on our skills and intelligence. But unlike the rest of us, there is a small section of the population that is born into a life of luxury that they never have to work a day in their lives to earn. The Hart family included.
“But being born into a life of privilege isn’t the only way to get a VI or a VII. I received a VII after I was Masked, for instance. And I wasn’t the only one.” I gripped the edge of the podium so tightly that I felt a splinter wedge its way into my palm. “Over a year ago, another citizen was Masked as a Hart—a man named Victor Mercer. Except he wasn’t Masked as a background figure like Lila, too many steps away from power to be anything more than a pawn. Victor Mercer was Masked as the one and only Daxton Hart—Prime Minister of the United States.”
An audible gasp rose through the crowd, and they began to push forward in their eagerness to hear more, jostling for a better position. Victor Mercer had been a high-ranking official who ran Elsewhere with his brother for years, and no doubt many of the former prisoners remembered his particular brand of sadism. Several shouted at me, demanding proof, and I shook my head, my voice rising.
“I’ve felt the V on the back of his neck myself. But he’s done a masterful job of destroying nearly all of the evidence that he was Masked. Some still exists, though. And when the time is right, the Blackcoats will release it and prove that the man who calls himself Daxton Hart—the man dictating our lives, the most powerful man in the country—is an impostor.”