Emergent (A Beta Novel) (19 page)

LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO
, the Governor was trying to strangle me to death, to seek his justice so that I would never be able to experience
freedom.

The joke’s on him. I don’t know where I’m going today, but there are no shackles on my wrists, and the view before me is wide and open, inviting. “What do you
think?” I ask Zhara as she stares out the window of the Aviate, which is gliding us over the island to our next destination, still unknown to us.

“Stunning and gross at the same time,” Zhara observes. “All of it manufactured through suffering.” The windows offer views of mountains with lush, emerald trees, and
landscapes of blue dahlias, white magnolias, pink lilies, purple jacaranda, and cactus-green succulents. Further out, we can see Io, the violet sea bioengineered specifically for Demesne, lapping
docile waves over pink sand. Zhara says, “That sand! The beach looks like it actually shimmers. My whole life I’ve wanted to experience this place, and now that I see it like this, I
feel sick. The price for all this decadence—it’s just too high.” She doesn’t have to say the name for me to know the price she’s referring to, which has nothing to do
with money. I see the pain and longing on her face. Aidan.

I’m not enjoying the scenery, either. I’m remembering the last time I had an Aviate journey with this particular view. I had just been bought by Mother, to become the new companion
to her children, and the luxury utility vehicle was gliding us back to Governor’s House. Then, I was filled with the wonder of my new life, excited for the possibilities.

Now, I know better. Now, as a bonus of the surgery that removed the fetus from my womb, I have new motion-capture sensors located throughout my body, so I can be remotely data-mined at all
times. My thoughts will still be private—but my body’s every reaction to every single thing that happens to me will be quantified and evaluated. For science.

“Aren’t you curious to know where we’re being taken?” Zhara asks me. I don’t think she realizes she’s picking at the seat fabric. I wonder why, and my chip
speculates: nerves.

I shrug. “It’s all the same here,” I say, looking down at the landscape dotted with magnificent houses. “Jail after jail after jail.”

“All the founding families here are gone, so I guess we’ll be living with a ReplicaPharm monitor at one of their houses.”

“Anywhere here will suck.”

My heart sinks as I turn my head to look out the window and notice the Fortesquieu compound coming into view. Carved out of a limestone cliff at the edge of the sea, it’s built in a pueblo
style, layered with different levels for different purposes—entertaining, living, gaming, dining—all with premium glass wall views overlooking Io. It would have taken human laborers
years to build, but my chip tells me the masterpiece house was carved out by clones in a record six months.

For a second, I feel
hope
. The Fortesquieu compound was the only home where I ever felt happy and welcomed and cherished. But I’m sure that flying me over this place now is all part
of ReplicaPharm’s master plan to make me as miserable as possible. If this is where Zhara and I are to live, it would actually hurt more than staying at the Governor’s House. Being
reminded of a happiness I once experienced would be so much worse than the reminder of past misery. Living there would be a tease, a promise of potential happiness that I can never actually
achieve, endlessly dangled before me, without relief. Everywhere I go, everything I see, would remind me of Tahir.

Torture.

Zhara’s eyes widen in wonder as the view of the limestone palace gets closer. “Holy crap!” Zhara gasps. “I never thought I’d see this place with my own
eyes.”

The Aviate begins to descend toward a landing pad marked by two parallel rows of cuvées. The towers of flowers are in full bloom and look like rows of coral-red fireworks.
Maybe this
will just be a temporary stop
, I tell myself as we land at the jewel in the crown of Demesne. How I’d like to spit it out, stomp all over it, obliterate it.

Small tears form in Zhara’s eyes. “The view’s not worth crying over,” I say to Zhara, my voice set to
teenage


disgust
.

“I don’t want to cry because it’s so beautiful, even though it is. I want to cry thinking how this island was once just like Heathen. Seeing it like this makes me realize how
much forced clone labor went toward transforming Demesne into”—she gestures with her hand to the view out the window—“this private paradise.”

Zhara taps the clear barrier separating the passengers from the RP employee navigating in the front of the Aviate. “Is this where we’re going?” she asks him.

The driver says, “Yes. You’ve been assigned to this house.”

My fate feels crueler by the second. If the Fortesquieus still own the property, there must be the possibility they could come back at some point. But they won’t, because Tahir’s
parents want to keep him locked up in Biome City, and because my life couldn’t possibly be that good. ReplicaPharm wants to shove me into an environment where I will always long, but never
have. My new monitors—whoever they are—will want their scientific specimen to behave in ways that will be interesting for them to observe, but not pleasing for me to experience.

The Aviate glides onto the Fortesquieu landing pad. Zhara’s hand resumes burrowing into the seat fabric at her side, chafing it so hard that it rips. She grimaces and then places both her
hands in her lap. “Sorry. Nervous habit.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “Rip away.”

The Aviate comes to a full stop as a clone butler on the landing pad walks over to it, places a step pad at the door, and then opens the hatch. Zhara and I both stand, and the butler takes our
hands to help us step out. It’s the same clone butler that once greeted me when I was loaned to the Fortesquieus in my former life here. “Who’s in charge here?” I ask him,
meaning,
Who will lord over me here?

To Zhara, he says, “I’ve been instructed to guide you to your quarters inside, Miss Zhara.” To me, the butler says, “Miss Elysia, I’ve been instructed to point you
in that direction.” He points toward the sea.

What? Has this clone just invited me to take another leap off a cliff, to spare me the misery of living in this palace that will constantly remind me of what was taken away from me? Challenge
accepted. I have no problem immediately ditching Zhara at this point. “Later,” I say to her.

I run to the precipice of the cliff and look down to the violet sea. Desert flowers are scattered across the pink sand, encircling an area where the word
ELYSIA
is
spelled out in red rose petals. For a second, my heart drops because I think,
Oh no—Alex! He’s here, along with his misguided romantic gestures. I so don’t care.

But I do care. Because standing in front of the rose petals, his arms outstretched to beckon me down from the cliff, is my Tahir.

I bite down hard on tongue, so hard that I can taste blood in my mouth.

The blood tastes real. I’m not dreaming. Tahir must be real! He’s right there!

EVER SINCE WHAT HAPPENED WITH IVAN,
my heart has felt only doom and dread.

Now, I understand—truly understand—what it means to have a soul, because in this moment, mine feels like it literally just exploded with exhilaration. The feeling spreads to each and
every cell in my body, fireworks of joy.

I bolt down the cliff stairs to the beach. I can’t get to Tahir fast enough. I’m so scared he will disappear before I can touch him again.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he says as I run to him, smiling that smile that makes my knees buckle and my heart sing.

I stop for a brief moment to soak him in. Tahir looks the same, but different. It’s like there’s a twinkle in his hazel eyes, the only nonphysical feature transplanted directly from
his First. Before, his facial expressions looked like controlled reactions to what his chip processed that his First would feel in any particular situation. The result was a guy programmed to be
charismatic, like his First, but who more often looked and sounded stiff. He looks freer now. What changed?

I spring into his open arms. There are no words yet, just kisses. His hands touch the sides of my face, and I press my lips against his cheeks, then his eyelids, then his nose, winding back to
his mouth. I didn’t realize how dead I’ve felt until this very moment, when I suddenly feel so alive. I jump to straddle my legs around his waist as Tahir holds me up from behind.
“You’re real,” I whisper into his ear. “I can’t believe you’re real.” I can’t stop kissing. I can’t get enough of him. It’s not just
happiness
I feel right now. It’s
delirious happiness.

“Elysia, Elysia, Elysia,” Tahir murmurs. “I’ve dreamt about this moment for so long. I can’t believe it’s finally here.”

I have so many questions. When did he get here? Why is he here? What does this all mean? But those questions can wait. For now, all I want to experience is his full cherry lips touching
mine—slowly, sweetly. I forgot it was possible to feel so
cherished
.

Eventually we both must get some air. My feet fall back into the sand, but I’m not ready to let go. “Let’s walk,” Tahir says. Side by side, he wraps his arm around my
waist, and I wrap mine around his, but it’s not enough, and my other arm goes around him too, so they lock around his waist, and I press my face against his chest as he places kiss after kiss
on my head. I want to never let go of him.

“How is this even possible?” I ask Tahir. “It feels like a miracle, your being here.”

“I told my parents I wanted to return to Demesne, to be with you. They said yes.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Yes.” I give him a look like,
Really?
Tahir pauses and then adds, “Tariq is the new chairman of ReplicaPharm. He masterminded the company’s bailout for the
island’s property owners. They wanted to unload their homes here but couldn’t find buyers with that kind of money. Now there’s no society people here anymore who would care that
I’m a clone—or that I’m in love with one.”

I know it’s not that simple. Surely Tahir’s father had bigger reasons for becoming the head of ReplicaPharm other than wanting to bring his cloned son to an island where Tahir could
be accepted for who he really is, and where the island’s whole new corporate mission would be to safeguard his son’s well-being. I know it’s ugly politics that are making us a
pawn in some stupid adult game, but I don’t care. If the result is my reunion with Tahir, that’s good enough for me. Nothing else matters.

“You look different. You
feel
different,” I say. “I see it in your eyes, feel it in your kiss, hold it in your body. You’re so much more relaxed.”

“I
am
more relaxed. His parents,” Tahir says, meaning First Tahir’s parents, Tariq and Bahiyya, who love their cloned Tahir just as much their original son, even if
clone Tahir is still learning how—or if—he can reciprocate that feeling, “are no longer trying to make me be like First Tahir. They’ve finally accepted that I’m a
clone. They recognize that I have a soul, even if it doesn’t conform to their hopes as quickly as they’d like. But they’re pleased with my progress. Even if my soul is a very new
and raw one, it’s mine just the same. I didn’t like having to pretend I was someone I’m not.”

“But your family loves you so much. It’s wrong that you had to act like someone you weren’t, but I can understand how they’d rather have you pretending to be First Tahir
than simply not existing.” I squeeze his hand again to remind myself. Tahir exists! He’s mine!

“Ha, not exactly all my family love me that much,” Tahir says. “Remember my cousin Farzad? Supposedly First Tahir’s best friend? He wanted nothing to do with me after he
found out. He and his family returned to Biome City when ReplicaPharm bought Demesne. They didn’t want to live on an island with clones who are acknowledged to have souls.”

“They were afraid their clones might turn murderous? Like me?”

“That’s exactly what they’re afraid of.”

He stops our walk, and we drop down to the sand—that silky-smooth Demesne sand, I forgot how lush and sweet and perfect it is—to sit down. I rest my head on his shoulder as we look
out over Io, its violet water lapping over pink crystalline sand. The premium air I breathe in no longer tastes so toxic to my mouth. Now it tastes extra sweet, like honeysuckle and lavender
sprinkled with magic, because I’m sharing it with Tahir. He is everything—the only thing—precious to me.

Tahir reaches over and traces his index fingers across the knuckles of my hands. “What happened?” he asks me. “With Ivan. I want to hear it from you.”

Quietly, I say, “Ivan violated me. And then tried to kill me. I fought back.” I recognize that I sound emotionless and too concise in recounting this complex situation, but I
don’t know how to express it otherwise. It’s like the rage and horror of what happened are compartmentalized in a part of my brain that’s locked away. Not dwelling inside that
memory compartment is what’s allowed me to survive everything that’s happened since. Even with Tahir, whom I trust more than anybody, I can’t go deeper. Not yet. We are only just
reunited. I want to dwell in the joy of this moment, and not relive the hateful situation that led me here.