Emergent (A Beta Novel) (20 page)

Tahir’s eyes darken and his body shakes in
anger
. “I
hate
them for what they allowed to happen to you!” He lifts a fist into the air. “I’ve never felt
rage this raw before. It’s almost frightening—but powerful too. Am I right?”

His arms reach over now to pull me tightly to him, and I feel his raging heart beating against my raging heart, and a potent wave of completeness comes over me. I nod against his chest.
“You’re right,” I whisper. Experiencing anger on that powerful a level is what enabled me to fight Ivan, who was trying to kill me—and win.

Tahir says, “We have to get away. Be free. Yes?”

“Yes!” I don’t exactly know what this freedom that Tahir and I seek would be like. I can’t define it because I’ve never experienced it; I just know it exists.
It’s a mythic place where we live unmonitored, unmoored, and behave like ourselves. Without fear of retribution. Without being data-mined. It’s where we live our lives however regular
people out in the world do, with whatever joys and pains come along with it. Until our Awfuls kill us. “But first we have to help finish the Insurrection. Makes sure that what happened to me
cannot happen to other clones here again.”

Tahir places his hand beneath my chin to lift my gaze to meet his. “My feelings exactly. You just make me love you more and more. We’ll finish the job, and then we’ll escape.
Who cares how little chance we have to succeed? We’ll do it anyway, because we must. We’ll burn the island down if we have to.”

I love his fire. “Are you Awful now?” I ask him.

“Pretty much,” says Tahir. “But it’s not the disease we were led to believe. You’ll find me much more fun now. Even Tariq says so.”

If Tahir is Awful, he is soon to die. I think I am slowly growing Awful too, but I don’t have the doctors that Tahir has had to confirm it.

We have to make the most of our remaining time.

That’s why his parents brought him back to Demesne and agreed to become my monitors here, I suspect. To clock out Tahir’s remaining time in a safe place, and to gift him with the
only present that’s ever mattered to him. Me.

“Elysia!” We hear my name being called from the top of the cliff, and Tahir and I look upward.

There stands Alex, waving at us.

Alex lives. I guess that’s a good thing. For him. For me, not really.

“What’s
he
doing
here
?” I ask Tahir as Alex bounds down the stairs toward the beach to reclaim me.

“Alexander Blackburn? He’s our guest too.” By the
easy
tone in his voice, I know that Tahir has no idea about my relationship with Alex. “My parents offered him
accommodation in the quarters that Farzad’s family used to occupy. He can’t leave here or he’ll be imprisoned for treason by the Uni-Mil. Bahiyya told me he comes from a powerful
Aquine family. His grandmother is negotiating his extradition back to Isidra. Until then, we’re stuck with him.”

“He thinks he’s my boyfriend,” I admit to Tahir.

“The Aquine?”

“Yes.”

Tahir laughs heartily. “We’ll just have to re-educate him about that.”

As Alex bounds toward me, I see he’s cleaned up nicely since Heathen. His face is now clean-shaven, and his blond hair has been shorn back to a military buzz cut. He wears white linen
pants with a blue shirt that fits his muscular form perfectly and highlights the intensity of his turquoise eyes; clearly, the Fortesquieus’ clone tailor has been busy to have custom-fit new
clothing ready for Alex so quickly. How efficiently Demesne prioritizes aesthetic perfection first and foremost. Alexander Blackburn looks as handsome as the night I first met him, at the
Governor’s Ball, so dashing in his fine military uniform.

He’s
too
perfect. It’s unseemly. I feel
resentful
at his approach.

“Elysia!” he calls out. “How’re you feeling? I’ve been so worried about you.”

After all I’ve been through, do I really owe the Aquine a gentle breakup? Because I just don’t feel up to the task.

The kind, docile Elysia who needed a protector no longer exists, because she doesn’t need to anymore. To make that clear, I pull Tahir to me and plant a long, deep, deliciously Awful kiss
on his lips just as Alexander reaches us. Now the Aquine knows which mate I’m loyal to: Tahir. My true partner, not my protector because of convenience.

Now Alex knows he’s free to reclaim Zhara—if she’ll have him.

I pull back from Tahir and stare dully into the Aquine’s perfect blue eyes. “I’m fine,” I tell Alex. “Thanks for your concern.” I take Tahir’s hand and
walk away.

We leave Alex standing alone on the beach—this big, beautiful, “perfect” specimen of a man who trained to be a military commando, who looks like he was engineered for climbing
the harshest mountains or fighting the deadliest fires or leading the most noble battalions.

Who looks so small in this moment.

THE FIRST AND ONLY LOVE
of my life has been returned to me, and I should be relishing every precious second of that reunion, but still, annoyingly, I
feel compelled to check on my First.

After our long walk on the beach, I take a brief leave of Tahir in order to see where Zhara is situated. The butler leads me to the quarters I’ve been designated to share with her. I enter
the bedroom and find Zhara luxuriating on a chaise situated beneath a sun-soaked glass wall overlooking violet Io, her head nestled on a magenta pillow. She sees me and announces, “I forgot
what real pillows feel like—and these pillows here feel a million times more luxurious than the ones back home. Did you
see
the bathroom? It’s entirely made of white marble. It
looks like a giant pearl, with gold—
literally, gold
—fixtures!”

“Whatever,” I say.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—human beholders. My fuchsia clone eyes register a white-walled room that’s large and immaculate, the size of a grand ballroom, bathed in
sunlight, with views of the violet sea below. The room’s opulence—the inlaid parquet floors, the desks and chairs carved from ivory, the burgundy silk pillows on the king-size beds, the
gold-spun silk chaises—don’t change the fact that I’d rather live in a dirty, miserable slum anywhere in the real world, if living in that slum meant that I was free.

“Apparently Tahir is here?” she asks me, flashing a smile my way. I don’t return the smile, even if my heart feels it. For some reason, I don’t want to share my joy with
her. Seeing my nearly identical face and body lodged so comfortably inside the Fortesquieus’ is a sudden and stark clash of my two lives—the brief but happy one I experienced here
before with Tahir, before he was sent away and before Ivan violated me, and the short and hard one on Heathen, where I discovered my First was alive and not at all happy to discover my existence,
and where I was designated as the hope and future of an Insurrection that never properly came to fruition. “Details?” Zhara asks.

I shrug. I don’t feel like sharing with her in this moment. Why’d I really come looking for her? I wonder. Maybe I’m getting to be like an animal that stalks its prey with no
intention of devouring it, just to keep tabs on it and prevent it from stealing resources.

“Whatever,” Zhara mimics back to me. She stands up and runs across the room and climbs the ladder to a bed hanging from the ceiling, where a half moon–shaped window looking
over Io serves as the bed’s headboard. She flops down onto the bed. “This bed is like lying down on a cloud. No wilderness beds of sticks and boughs for us here. Seriously, I could
almost die from this level of luxury.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I should feel so
happy
right now. I’m living in a palace instead of in a cave on Heathen. My true love has been
returned to me. But dumping the man who was so good to me has made me grumpy—too grumpy to tell Zhara the news yet. Hurting someone I cared for has cut deeply and unexpectedly into my heart.
How do humans live with causing this kind of pain to each other on a regular basis?

“What’d I ever do to you?” Zhara asks, her face expressing the same irritation that I’m feeling.

“Not die. I think that’s clear.”

“You’re getting really mean since we got to Demesne. Is there some side effect in the air here I don’t know about?” Zhara knows the answer as well as I do:
Yes. The
side effect is called Awful. It applies to Betas, not Firsts.
Zhara rolls over onto her side so her back is facing me. “I’m going to ignore you and take a nap. Hopefully by the time
I wake up, you’ll be appreciating your good fortune and not acting like a PMS bitch.” She lets out a loud yawn and snuggles tight under her blanket.

She can’t see it, but my face snarls and registers the expression
Ugh.

I walk to the floor-to-ceiling mirror near to my bed and stand sideways before it, pressing my hand against my belly. The baby is gone. I change position to face the mirror. I partially lift my
shirt. My exposed belly is flat again. I trace my pinkie finger over a tiny laser incision mark at the base of my belly, thin like a piece of thread. The doctor told me the minor mark would
disappear within days, and then there would be no physical evidence left of what my body once carried. The mark can’t disappear fast enough for me.

My bump was not that big yet, but still, I feel a million pounds lighter.

Bitchy. But much, much lighter.

A few minutes later, as I stand in a corner of the room where I’ve moved to inspect the view outside, I hear a kind, familiar female voice call to me.
“Welcome!” I turn around and see Tahir’s mother, Bahiyya, standing at the doorway to the room. She is a later-age human female who oddly prefers to look her age. She shares
Tahir’s hazel eyes and mahogany skin, but her face is wrinkled with soft lines. Her hair is long, completely gray, and falls in waves nearly to her hips. She has Tahir’s charismatic
smile, which she offers to me now along with two open arms.

She walks toward where I’ve been standing at the floor-to-ceiling window. “My darling Elysia.” She pulls me to her in a hug. “My sweet girl. I’m so sorry for all
you’ve been through. But you’re safe now, with us. We will take care of you like you’re our own.”

What a warm and comforting warden.

Zhara stirs in her bed. “Parents,” I hear her softly mutter from her bed. “I forgot about those creatures.”

Bahiyya loosens me from her embrace and turns her attention to Zhara, who has climbed down to the floor. “You must be Zhara,” Bahiyya says. “I’m Bahiyya Fortesquieu.
Welcome.” Her eyes appraise Zhara from head to toe, as if to verify that Zhara is real. “I’ve never met a First before. I never imagined it could be possible.”

I hear
sadness
in Bahiyya’s voice, and my chip reminds me why. During the Water Wars, Bahiyya’s five children from her first marriage all died, along with her first husband.
Then she reconnected with her childhood love, Tariq Fortesquieu, a climate engineer who’d become one of the primary architects of Reconstruction. They married and produced First Tahir.
Perhaps she is now wishing Tahir’s First had been so lucky. Perhaps she is wishing that, like Zhara, his heart could have simply appeared to stop beating, mimicking death, instead of his
lungs filling with water in the
gigantes
, ensuring death.

Bahiyya rubs her hand gently along Zhara’s arm, like a mom. “You’ll find a new wardrobe of clothes in your size. There’s a full complement of staff available for anything
you need. Dinner is at seven.”

Bahiyya places kisses on Zhara’s cheek and then mine, and starts to walk toward the door.

“Bahiyya?” I call to her.

She turns back around to face me. “Yes?”

I say, “I’d prefer to stay in Tahir’s quarters.”

She smiles. “As you wish, my darling. I wanted it to be your choice.”

Bahiyya leaves the room, and Zhara mock-slaps me on the shoulder.

“That’s a bold request. And I can’t believe she said yes. My dad would
never
have gone for that.”

“It’s not a big deal. I lived in Tahir’s quarters last time I stayed here.”

“Not in his bed, though. Right?”

“It’s not your business. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Spoken like a true teenager,” Zhara says in a most patronizing tone.

I get her back the best way I know how. “Alexander’s here too. Didn’t he come find you yet? He looks
gooood
. Perfect Demesne suits his perfection perfectly.”

“What?” Zhara throttles my shoulders. “You knew Xander was here—that he was okay—and you didn’t tell me as soon as you walked in here?”

“I knew,” I tell her. “And now you do too. You can have your boyfriend back and stop blaming me for something that went wrong between you two long before I ever
emerged.”

“I could never be with him after he’s slept with you.”

She doesn’t deserve this explanation, but I give it to her anyway. “Alexander
slept
with me. That’s
it
. We kissed. He held me and kept me warm at night. Nothing
more happened between us. I was pregnant.”

Zhara places her hands over her ears, revolted by what I’ve just told her. But probably relieved too. “I didn’t ask how far things went between you two! Don’t tell me!
Gross!”