Dualed Read Online Free

high, though. In exchange for relative safety within, we have to be prepared for danger from without. The threat that the war in the Surround will break through to us is constant, always simmering just beneath the surface. So we’re bred to be soldiers. Overcoming a city of killers would not be an easy task.
    Since the city is closed off to the rest of the world, limiting space and resources, only the best of us are wanted. The Board, in their genius, created Alts, manipulating genes so two identical children are born to two sets of parents. Each couple is tasked with the duty of raising the best killer, the best survivor. Because when their child’s assignment kicks in—which happens anytime between the ages of ten and twenty—both active Alts must hunt each other down until only one remains. It’s the ultimate survival-of-the-fittest test, allowing only those capable of killing to go on to become adults in Kersh.
    All for peace. Fighting ourselves in here, so we don’t have to fight the world out there.
    Suddenly a flame lights the night sky, turning everything bright crimson for one glorious, suspended instant, before dying away. The echo of it sizzles and hisses, lasting a heartbeat longer. Even inside the car with the windows rolled up, I swear I can taste smoke on my tongue.
    “It always looks so nice, don’t you think?” I search the darkness for any last lingering light, oddly uneasy to see it go. “When the Surround sets off test flares?”
    “Yeah, I guess,” Luc says. “Until you remember what they’re used for over there.”
    Signals of distress.
    Another flare bursts to life before burning out. The deception of its beauty is nearly cruel.
    Chord’s cell dings. He glances at the screen before putting the cell in his pocket. “Right at the end of the block, Luc,” he says, sounding as tense as I feel.
    “Which house?” Luc asks.
    “The corner one, left.”
    I sit up in my seat as Luc pulls over to the far curb and cuts the engine. After the sound of the flares, the quiet is almost too loud.
    The house is no different from any of the others around it: gravel patch for a driveway, peeling roof shingles, sagging porch. Though some of the streetlamps are burnt out, I can still see the dingy stains of black factory exhaust streaking the cheap stucco walls. Grim fingerprints, a signature of the way people keep afloat out here.
    The air has my nerves tingling. I don’t like it. Sometimes such hunger and desperation sparks an even stronger kind of internal drive, one that goes beyond any kind of training. Having little more than a basic ability to handle weapons isn’t going to be a problem when something deeper helps you aim your gun, swing your blade, use your fists. Completing means finally being able to grasp what the Board holds just out of reach:higher education, better-paying jobs, permission to marry and have a family.
    I’m strung so tightly I feel like I’m about to snap. Luc and Chord are the same, shoulders stiff with clenched muscle. We’re wired on a heightened mix of fear and anticipation. Is this what every assignment feels like? That last second before jumping off a ledge to somewhere unknown?
    In the shadowed darkness, Chord utters a short command. “Time.” His watch beeps out the answer.
    23:00
.
    “Think he’s already sleeping?” he asks.
    Luc is staring at the house. “There’s no lights in the windows. At least, not through the blinds.”
    Chord frowns, thinking. “We don’t know who else is in there with him.”
    “Nope. No idea. But he’s pretty much you, isn’t he? Seventeen, living at home with his family, a student—well, not as of today, I guess. But even if he’s decided to co-op somewhere, those jobs usually start in the morning. And chances are good he hasn’t gotten around to arranging somewhere else to crash yet.”
    “If he’s not alone in there …” Chord doesn’t need to finish. He’s thinking about Taje’s friends, the ones who got caught