Archetype (24 page)

I
dash over the needle-strewn forest floor, tree limbs breaking under my feet and slapping up against my shins. Each brush against a juniper tree sends a cold shower of snow misting over me. I ignore it all, heading straight for the ledge that I pray will end this once and for all. It is going to be the most dangerous game of chicken I have ever played. With any luck, I will win, because I do not hold out any hope my body will survive the C-section.

“Emma, stop!” Declan calls.

The world opens abruptly to a low-hanging sun, nearly identical to what I saw the night I first came here. I skid to a stop where the rocks jut out from the snow and I whirl around. Declan stops no less than four steps away, arms spread. Between us, two white clouds of breath billow and dissipate before colliding.

“What are you doing?” he asks through heaving breaths. Dark hair lies over his forehead, brushing his cheeks. His eyes have only narrow spaces to peek through.

“Ending this.” I take a step back, carefully placing my weight on the outcropping of rock.

Declan follows me, eyes wide. “Don’t do this. Please.”

“The fall will kill me,” I say and take another cautious step back. “You will have nothing to bring back. That is all that matters.”

“I can’t let you do this.”

“Try and stop me.”

I glance behind me, bending my knees, preparing to jump. The frozen lake gapes up at me, perfect and untouched, with a layer of snow gathered around its edges.

Declan reacts as I suspected he would. He leaps out to stop me from jumping, only he is faster than I expected. He collides with me just as I prepare to jump
away
from the cliff. I had been hoping he would become unbalanced and go over with me out of the way—it looked great in my head—but now we are both unbalanced.

We pitch dangerously, both fighting gravity to stay upright. Declan actually begins to win the battle and we tilt in the opposite, safer, direction, but I cannot let that happen. I have to make a choice here, and though I do not like it, it is what is best for all of us.

I fist his shirt and push toward the edge. His fingers tighten on my arms and my broken knuckle is aflame in my clenched hand, but I center all my weight and focus on the lake. I focus on keeping my daughter safe from men like Declan Burke—maybe from Declan himself.

Declan’s eyes widen and his gaze darts between our death and me. “Emma, n—”

His last words are cut off in the fall. I cling to him all the way down, watching the ice race to meet us, feeling the sharp cut of wind wrap around us. I barely hear the
crunch
before the freezing lake water billows over us and swallows us whole.

We sink into the dark depths, which are so cold, all of my muscles turn to stone. But I am elated because I survived the fall.

Then I see Declan floating with his eyes open and staring at absolutely nothing and know he is dead. I see the man I loved, kind and gentle and patient, and my heart pinches in pain. I reach for him as everything goes dark.

 • • • 

“No.” The word is only a slight movement on my lips, with no sound. I want to scream it but can barely find the strength to keep my eyes open, let alone talk.

Noah is doing chest compressions over me, air escaping in hisses through his clenched teeth. “Come back, Emma. Come on!”

My eyelids close, but I am still aware of the flurry of people working to keep me alive. The odd sensation of tugging still goes on over my midsection. Over it all, a baby cries.

Adrienne.

 • • • 

I cannot breathe. In the mere seconds I had left this body, I have begun the painful process of drowning. My limbs are frozen, and swimming is impossible. My lungs burn and I do not know which way is up. Declan is gone, having disappeared in the darkness of the lake, and one last spasm of grief pulses through my heart.

 • • • 

My following moments blur. A constant battle for life between two bodies, neither seeming to be better off than the other. I am dying either way. I float in darkness, unblinking.

Noah begs me to hang on.

Ice-cold wind brushes my face.

I wake to air forced into my lungs and hands pressing into my sternum. A baby’s cry. A whipping wind.

“Come on, Emma,” a voice says.

“Come on, Emma,” another echoes.

I want to comply, but I have no control. Darkness clings to me and I wonder if it is Mother Nature trying to make things right. I never should have been. I should have died eight months ago.

But I am here and so is Adrienne. Her lonely cry is proof of that. It calls to me, begs me to stay, and it is stronger than any remaining bond I have to this earth. And it does not matter what was meant to be. Only that I was meant to be her mother.

“It’s too late,” Sonya says in a tight voice.

Hands cling to my face, and Noah’s voice grows as distant as Adrienne’s cries. “Emma, no. Stay, Emma. Plea—”

 • • • 

For the second time today, I wake up coughing water from my lungs, only this time my body shakes violently from the cold. My lungs burn and feel scraped raw, and my skin is stiff and tingly. And instead of Declan, I find Foster, dripping water over me and laughing.

“Oh my God, Emma, you fucking scared me,” he says. “I thought I’d lost you.”

My teeth clatter together. “What happened?”

I look him over and find his shirt stained with blood. His jeans, too. A cut high on his forehead seeps with fresh blood. Despite that, he is a welcome sight.

“I finally got out of that lab with the help of some of our guys, only to find Declan chasing you out of a broken window and out here. What the hell were you thinking?”

I recall the standoff on the cliff. “Did you see him?” I nod at the lake. “Declan?”

“No. I barely found you. It was too dark.” He stands and pulls me up. “Come on. After all that, if I die of hypothermia, I’m going to be pissed.”

The word “die” brings me up short. “Foster, I think Emma is dead.” Despite what Dr. Travista said, I still cannot think of that other body as anything but someone else’s. Even though I just experienced the death firsthand.

He flinches and blinks several times before responding with his blue-tinged lips. “What?” His voice is choked and a glaze films his eyes.

“The baby came early and they had to do a C-section. I think She is dead.”

His jaw clenches shut and he nods once. Finally, he takes my hand. “Let’s go home.”

A
pained quiet lies over the command center when we arrive, the people chattering softly and clinging to one another. My skin tingles painfully, gathering every last drop of heat it can soak up. A few somber faces turn in our direction. Several others look on me as if I am a freak and do not deserve to live when Emma Wade just lost her life.

Foster leads me past them and toward the hospital ward. When we are near, the trepidation of seeing what I think I will see is too much. Blood. There will be blood.

“No,” I say and stop. “I cannot go in there.”

Not even the cry of Adrienne—if she cried right now at all—could bring me to go in.

“Wait here,” he says and marches into the room.

It is only a few seconds later when Sonya comes striding out with Foster. “Come with me.”

She takes Foster and me into what looks like a small exam room and gives us dry scrubs—black, not white, I am happy to see—and heated blankets. A couple of nurses arrive, take our vitals, and clean up our scrapes and cuts. One uses some kind of laser to heal my knuckle.

By the time they are finished, I am exhausted and just want to sleep. But more than that, I want to see Adrienne and Noah.

When I ask, anger flashes across Sonya’s face. “Maybe in the morning,” she says.

Foster jumps off the examination table. “You don’t understand—”

“In the morning,” she repeats sternly, her gaze hard on Foster. She then glances between us. “He lost his wife tonight. He needs some time to grieve, and I won’t have you”—her attention lands heavily on me—“confusing him. It’ll only make the process harder.”

Foster’s eyebrows pinch together and he folds his arms. “Who the fuck are you? His mother? You have no idea what you’re talking about. Travista said—”

“The best thing for both of you,” she says to me, a hand up to stop Foster from continuing, “is to move on. You aren’t his wife.”

I flinch back as if she has slapped me.

Not an ounce of regret passes over her expression. She merely picks up her belongings and strolls out of the room, leaving Foster and me gaping after her. Being around her is a tough transition for me; she does not sugarcoat anything.

She is right about one thing: This situation is nothing if not confusing. A week ago, I loved another man. Still do, if I am honest with myself. Noah watched his wife die. I just killed the man who I believed was my husband for the last eight months. How are we supposed to compartmentalize these situations and go on as if nothing happened?

“It is fine,” I say to Foster when he looks ready to tear after Sonya. “I am tired anyway.”

Foster takes me to a room with a bed and private bathroom. It is nothing more than stone walls and a twin-size bed. All the money in this operation clearly went into the computers and staffing rather than creature comforts.

Tired as I am, I still take a long, hot shower, hoping the imprint of a bloody C-section will wash off my mind. Hoping I can scour off the feel of Declan’s hands on me. I need to wash off the lake water and stink of death.

Unfortunately, it will take more than hot water to turn back the clock and erase this day.

I wake in the middle of the night, a cold sweat coating my skin. In my dream, I did not float in a tank but rather in absolutely nothing. Space. Death. Is this how it will be from now on? My soul searching for a body that now lies dead somewhere in this building?

I stumble into the dark bathroom and splash cold water on my face, swallowing the rising bile in my throat. I grip the sides of the cold porcelain sink while my body trembles. Everything that happened is catching up to me, and it is too much of a shock to my system.

I am a clone.

My body is dead.

Declan is dead.

Noah. Noah, who is still a mystery because he never cared to come see me when I returned. Instead, he mourned for his dead wife.

This thought smacks of reality. No matter what Travista said, no matter how much hope I had that I could take my life back, I will never fit in it again. My life changed the second I opened my new eyes. I fell in love with another man. I became someone else, someone soft and trusting and naïve, but still someone else. I cannot take back a life that does not make sense to me.

I am not sure I even want that life. Noah? Yes. I love him. God knows I do.

Adrienne? I did not carry her. I did not
die
for her. Not really. Emma Wade did.

As for the life of Emma Burke, well, that is not even a possibility anymore. Declan is gone. I will never forget his unseeing eyes staring at me from the dark depths of the lake. Those eyes that I used to swim in. I wish I could have forgotten the man he was in the real world. I would have been happy had I remained ignorant. What makes this harder to deal with is that I know now just how honest he was. My ignorance hid the truth.

I chose you and created a life for us that I swear will never reflect the outside world,
he’d once said.
I don’t want that life for you or for us. I will not mark your skin because that means I am giving in to that world, which already rules my every waking decision as it is. You are my peace from that.

He loved me. It may not have started out that way, but that is how it ended. To our detriment, it seems. He is dead and I am heartbroken despite my best efforts not to be.

I blink at the dark reflection staring at me. I do not see Her. I do not have Her long hair, Her perpetual smirk. Her scars. Where Her eyes were wide and had seen an entire lifetime of honesty—honesty She grew better from—mine are innocent and have seen only a few months of lies—lies that are shattering me from the inside out.

What I do have are choices. Stay and try to fit in a square hole when I am a circle, or go and figure out who I am after all this. I cannot figure that out here in Her shadow. Under Noah’s watchful gaze, trying to decipher me out—am I still his Emma or just a really good copy?

As much as it hurts to even consider it, I have a chance to start over. Fall in love again. Have children of my own that I can actually carry and give birth to. If nothing else, this body should not fail me in that department.

My chest tightens at the idea of giving up on Noah and Adrienne. But things are too far gone now to turn back the clock.

It takes me no time at all to get help from one of the men in the command center. While he promises to get my new identification started, I return to Declan’s house for some clothes and whatever valuables I can easily pack away. The jewelry he gave me will get me far, I hope. It will have to. I have recently gone from the richest wife in America to the poorest.

When I return for my new identification, I find my biggest fear and greatest hope realized all in one package, leaning against a desk, tapping a small envelope in his hands.

Noah.

He has showered and trimmed the beard on his face to a tight cut. Though cleaned up, he looks like hell. The skin under his bloodshot eyes is still dark. I wonder if I will ever see him smile again.

He stands upright and nods at me.

I ignore the swell of my heart and drop my bags, nodding at the envelope. “Is that mine?”

He tucks it into his back pocket and tilts his head toward the exit. “Let’s go talk.”

“Noah—”

“It wasn’t a request,” he says, his back already to me.

He leads me to the same office we spoke in the day before, only this time the emotional charge in the air is of a different sort. I have made my peace, though looking at him now, I wonder what I am doing. Is my decision too rash?

“How is Adrienne?” I ask when the door slides shut.

A small, distant smile lifts the edges of his lips. “Perfect. Sonya is keeping her in the hospital ward for observation but says she’s perfectly healthy.”

I can only nod because my throat has constricted. If I speak, I will beg him to let me see her and I will cry if I do. I refuse to cry.

Noah rounds the desk and sits behind it. “I thought you’d want to know that all the information we collected yesterday is on its way to the authorities. The cloning will end, and if they ever find Arthur Travista, he’ll be charged with murder.”

I drop into a metal chair. “That is great.” Then, “He is gone?” I missed so much when I passed out in the labs yesterday.

Noah wipes his face and sighs. “Him and Burke, both. Foster told me what happened, and my guys have been watching the feeds all night. No one ever found Burke’s body. Who knows, maybe he’ll turn up in the spring when the ice melts.”

A shiver races over my skin and my stomach turns at the mental image of Declan floating up, dead and bloated. What was once handsome, a sickly blue and gray.

Noah continues unfazed. “Burke Enterprises is still up and running, and it doesn’t look like the board of directors is going to give it up anytime soon. A new CEO will be chosen to take over the business as soon as they declare Burke officially dead.”

“But you are still in there, right? You can work on taking them down?”

“Brick by little brick,” he says and blinks slowly at me. Smiles gently. “One brick down, thanks to you.”

I watch him for a long moment, then say, “Did you sleep at all?”

He leans back in his chair and runs his hands over the top of his head. “Very little. You?”

“Same.”

He nods. “Emma,” he starts, then leans forward and scrubs his face again. When his hands come away, his expression is tight. “Where are you going?”

I avert my eyes and bite my lip. How can I put into words something that took me half the night to make sense of?

“Was it really you? In my Emma?”

I know he did not mean to, but these words hurt. It is salt in the wound that reminds me how I am not Her anymore. “It does not matter. It will not change anything.”

He nods and looks away. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

And the slaps keep coming. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

I stand and hold out my hand. “You have something of mine?” Tears burn my eyes, and I blink them away before he looks up.

He stands and rounds the desk, pulling the envelope out of his pocket. He lays it in my hand but does not let go right away. “You sure you want to do this?” he whispers.

I look into his eyes and find them searing right into my soul as if looking for a desperately needed sign. “No,” I say truthfully. “But things are different now.” Declan’s words to me at the house play in my mind. More truths I have to face. “You will never see me as anything but a copy of your wife, and I will—”

“What?” he asks when I do not go on. “You will what?”

“I will always long for the man I loved on a beach in Mexico. I lost him with Her last night.”

“You can’t know that.”

I close my eyes and a tear slips free. I did know this because I saw the way he looked at Emma when She came back to him on that table, and I see the way he looks at me now, with a wariness that can only mean he does not trust his own heart.

“I am not your wife,” I say and turn away from him.

Noah is between me and the exit before I can blink. He holds a hand up to stop me. “No, Emma, wait. You’re not being fair. We need time to figure this out. To adjust. Emma just died—”

“You see? Neither of us can stop referring to me as being two separate individuals, but if Travista is to be believed, I am still only one. Two bodies. One soul.
One. Emma.
”

His eyebrows raise and he nods. “This is exactly why we need time. It’s hard now, but maybe in a few months—”

“No. I will not sit around and watch you mourn . . .
me.
I cannot. I am not even sure how to do that myself. How do I mourn the loss of a body? How do I adjust to being a perfect copy? Noah, tell the truth: Am I even remotely like her?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “That’s why this is so hard. I see her in you.”

“Well, I do not. I still feel like Emma Burke.”

Noah flinches back and takes a good, hard look at me.

“And you seeing me,” I add, “is not good enough. We have to face it. We are over.”

Noah reaches out and cups my face. He leans in until our foreheads are touching and the faint scent of his musk surrounds both of us. “Don’t say that,” he says, his voice catching.

I take his face between my hands and close my eyes. “One of us has to.”

His lips brush my cheek and warm air caresses my skin. Shivers race down my spine and branch out into my nerves like a spark that sets my body alight. That light touch of his mouth moves up to the hollow of my temple.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

I slide my hands down to his neck and feel the quickened throb of his pulse under my palm. It moves in time with the beat of my heart drumming in my ears. Just like that, we are in sync.

Forehead still pressed to mine, he swivels his face back down, letting our cheeks slide together, until his nose touches mine. Circles it. He runs his thumbs along my cheekbones.

I open my eyes and find him looking into mine. Unwavering. Any strength I had before melts into a pool of indecision at my feet. How can I walk away from those eyes? How can I consider leaving him?

The unfairness of what he asks of me threatens to take me under, but at the last moment, I manage to find some semblance of Emma’s strength. “I am sorry,” I tell him and step back.

His grip is too firm. He holds on to me, but I am merely water sliding over stone and no matter how hard he tries to keep me, I will soon be gone. At least I feel this fleeting. Like glass blown to its thinnest point. Beautiful and shining and solid. Delicate.

Shatterable.

“You have to let me go,” I whisper, shifting out of his hands.

His eyes pinch shut and his chin quivers, but he wordlessly does as I ask.

He does not follow me out of the room. It is both a relief and a painful truth. He knows I am right to do this. He knows it will be for the best. One day it will not hurt either of us anymore.

In the command center, I find an empty terminal and sift through port numbers. A port to anywhere in the west. Once I choose a remote location, I key in the instructions to hide my trail. Thankfully, the keystrokes come to me as if I have done this a million times. I cannot have anyone coming after me.