Emergent (A Beta Novel) (9 page)

I feel irritation mixed with a strange sense of outrage. How could she survive out in the real world with such limited information, with such willfully preprogrammed ignorance?

Elysia asks, “Your father. He was your diving coach?”

“Who told you that?” Suddenly I feel proprietary about the basic facts of my own life. Any public records could reveal the simple details she requests, yet I feel like she is prying
into the darkest corners of my life.

“Alex told me you were a diver,” Elysia says. “I felt that. From the moment I was near the water, I knew how to dive. It was like I sensed you when I was in the water. I…” She hesitates before continuing on. “I had memories of Alex, after I emerged. They were your memories. Perhaps because you never really died.”

The thought of my clone having the instant ability to perform the same dives I spent years in training to perfect is upsetting enough. The sudden image my brain produces of her performing dives
for Xander makes me
insane
. But the thought of her having my memories of Xander is like an off-the-charts intrusion into my mind, body, and soul. I’m so livid at this moment, I want to
strangle my clone and suction every breath from her body. I struggle for speech. “You have all my memories?”

Elysia looks taken aback by my angry response, then clarifies. “The only memories I had of yours were visions of Alex. They were the only ones that broke through. It always happened when I
was in the water, swimming. In the way that I inherently understood how to swim and dive, I knew that I’d gotten it from you.” My face must still register shock. Perhaps she also
inherently understands I can’t handle this subject any longer, because she redirects the conversation. “What’s your best dive?”

Keep cool, Z. Keep cool. Safe topic.
“Reverse three-and-a-half twist,” I lie. I never successfully made it past a reverse two. But I’d much rather talk dives with her
than the memories of Xander that she stole from me. Is that why she’s with him now? Because she knows that he and I were together once? That’s not even outrageous. It’s beyond
kinky. “What’s yours?” I fire back.

“Backward two-and-a-half somersault with a half twist,” Elysia says. That’s my
real
best dive. “Alex says I shouldn’t dive anymore, in my current condition.
But perhaps we could go swimming together? I’d so much like to spend time with you in the place you love most. The water, I mean. I’d like to study your technique. You must be a great
swimmer. I’ve felt that about you when I’m in the water.”

I cannot believe her insolence. She’s just asked me to help her steal something else that’s precious to me.

“Because
you
are a great swimmer? You got that from
me
.” All the skills she was given took me years of practice to cultivate.

“Thank you,” says Elysia with
sincerity
. Why does she make it so hard to hate her? She makes me wonder if I had hidden likeability traits I never knew about in my former,
friendless life in Cerulea. “Perhaps you’d like to know something about what I experienced when I swam on Demesne?” she asks, like I could somehow validate her existence by
wanting information about it.

I don’t want to discuss stupid water sports with her. What I really need to know is so much bigger than swimming and dives.

Why did you escape Demesne? Was your life there…happy? Who got you pregnant?

How do I even begin such a conversation with someone I wish never existed?

Elysia takes a gulp from her pink drink. “What are you drinking?” I ask her. I’ve never seen this concoction in the mess hall.

“Watermelon juice,” she says. “Alex found some watermelons and pressed this juice for me. He says I need to stay hydrated.”

Bile actually regurgitates up from my stomach and shoots into my mouth. Xander never made refreshments for me back at the Cerulea Aquatics Club. The best I ever got from him was when he’d
point to the water cooler during practice and say, “Drink up, Z.” I never got delivery of personally picked fruits followed by freshly squeezed juices from him.

Elysia swallows the last sip of her drink and then delicately licks the sides of her mouth, which is exactly what I do when I take the last sip of a drink I’ve particularly enjoyed. To
savor the…“I love those last drops,” Elysia says. Exactly.

I remember after Mom left, I used to long for a sister. A best friend, a kindred spirit, someone who was my blood, who could share the pain of our abandonment, but also share a special bond of
companionship. My sister and I would always be there for each other. Through thick and thin, as the saying goes. Friends and mothers might come and go, but a sister would be forever.

Elysia will never be my forever, no matter how much she looks and acts like me. I reject her. I refuse her. I may have to live in proximity to her for the time being, but I will never, ever
accept her. She stole me.

Let’s just stop with small talk.

“Who got you pregnant?” I ask her.

Would her child be considered my child too?

Her fuchsia eyes pierce directly into mine, challenging me as an equal. I’d appreciate her spunk more if she hadn’t stolen that from me too. “I was violated by the son of the
Governor on Demesne.”

What?!

Holy crap. My blood boils into a rage so much bigger than when I discovered Elysia’s existence, worse even than knowing she carries my memories of Xander. I can’t help it. I imagine
what happened to her happening to me, and my gut reaction is: I will kill whoever did that to me. I mean, her. KILL.

For an instant, Elysia is that sister I used to long for. I want to touch her hand, hold her close to me, to comfort her, to promise her vengeance. I don’t. But I want to.

A human boy on Demesne treated my clone like she was his property. She
was
his property. Fact. Another version of my face, my body—given no rights or choice, created to serve and
have no wants or desires of her own—there for him to take, just because he wanted to.

I ask, “Is that why you escaped Demesne? To get away from him?”

“No,” says Elysia. “It was kill or be killed. So I killed him. And now I am here.”

Wow. I thought
I
was the outlaw, living as a runaway on this feral island.

Elysia is the real rebel. She is a murderer. How can a deed so awful make me want to respect her? She took no prisoners. She exacted her own vengeance.

Xander and Aidan enter the mess hall. My eyes lock with Xander’s for a moment, and my heart burns. I still can’t believe he’s
here
. His look in my direction offers me no
clues if he feels the same. His beautiful turquoise eyes are as blank as a clone’s.

Elysia looks to him, and then to me. “I’m sorry Alexander hurt you so badly.”

“How much do you know?” I ask her.

“Jingjing,” she says, shocking me. “You had already been to Demesne once before, with Alex, hadn’t you?”

IF I CAN’T HAVE HIM,
I’ll die,
I thought
.

Xander was about to leave for a whole new life in the military.

His old life was better. Swimming. Surfing. Me.

The only way to survive his new life would be to change with him. I’d go away with him and escape boring school, my tyrant father, the cheerlords who pretended they were my friends but
really weren’t. Once I started a new life with Xander, I’d reinvent myself as someone better, someone happier. Someone perfect, like him.

Today, this would happen, I told myself. Time to take the dive. If I finally accomplished the one dive that had eluded me since Xander started training me, it would be a fateful sign. Xander
and I were meant to be a team. The Uni-Mil shouldn’t be allowed to break us up.

I stood atop a ten-meter-high diving platform as Xander watched me from below. I stepped to the edge of the platform and turned around, so my back faced the pool. As I placed my feet in the
familiar formation, Xander called up to me. “The back two-and-a-half? Today’s your day to perfect it. I feel it, Z. You can do it.” His deep, gravelly voice made him sound years
older. He had left home to live on his own when he was just sixteen years old. At nineteen, he was about to the join the elite wing of the Universal Military, which his peaceful Aquine people
traditionally shun. His deep voice announced he was his own man.

I could do harder dives than this one. But this one, because it was the dive I had choked on at Olympic trials, was torturing me. I wanted to get it right again, so I could move on—in
my training, in my tortured subconscious.

“Hell yeah!” I said. Generally, backward dives were my lucky dives. When my back was to the pool, I couldn’t see the spectators in the stand before liftoff. I couldn’t
see my father’s face clenched with the stress of wondering not only if I would accomplish my dive, but would I excel at it? Or would I fail him yet again?

When my dad coached me, I disappointed. According to him, my technique was sloppy, I lacked the focus and discipline to be a world-class athlete, and I wasted my ability wanting to do other
sports, like cheerlords—which mostly I wanted to do so I’d have an excuse not to spend my weekends training with Dad.
Do you even want this, hellbeast?
Dad would say. Not as much
as you want it for me, I’d think. After I failed at Olympic trials, Dad gave up on me and turned my training over to his protégé, Xander, who managed the aquatics club facility
in exchange for modest accommodations at the back of the club’s pool house. Xander was supportive and kind, and he seemed to genuinely want me to dive for my own sense of accomplishment, not
my dad’s. Xander believed in me. The feel of Xander’s bronzed, ripped muscles holding me steady through practice dives, and his turquoise eyes and slanted cheekbones and full red lips
cheering me on, helped my technique immeasurably too. Some might have called it puppy love. Inspiration, I called it.

In anticipation of the back two-and-a-half, I stood too long at the tip of the board, causing Xander to step closer to the area beneath the board and call up to me. “What’s up
with the hesitation, hellbeast?” he asked. “Don’t overthink. Just do.”

I hated that nickname. Coach Dad used it to taunt, not tease me. “Don’t call me that,” I said, firming my legs for liftoff. Xander revered my dad. If it weren’t for
that misplaced sense of hero worship, Xander wouldn’t have been about to leave to follow in my dad’s military footsteps. Once again, Dad had chosen my fate for me.

“Whatever you say, Z-Dev.” That nickname I liked, because Xander chose it for me. Zhara-Daredevil. “Go to it. I know you can.”

“Jingjing!” I said, invoking the name of Guo Jingjing, my favorite female Olympic diver from olden times, pre–Water Wars. Jingjing, my good luck charm.

My feet sprang from the board and I flew downward, contorting into a back double somersault and half twist before my body plunged into the water.

When I came up for air, Xander stood at the ledge of the pool. He extended a hand to help lift me up and out of the water. “You did it! Nailed it!” He raised his arms exultantly.
“Beautiful dive, Z.”

Beautiful man. Instead of letting him help me up, I tugged on his arms to pull him back into the pool, back to me. Finally, I had him in the water, where I wanted him.

He swam over to me and I splashed water in his face. “Don’t start a war you can’t win,” he dared me. His long leg attempted to wrap around my calf to pin me down, but
I quickly dropped to the bottom of the pool, out of his embrace, and swam away from him, fast.

I came up for air at the other end of the pool. “Come and get me, Xander.”

Instead, he got out of the pool and walked into the club, knowing I’d follow.

My father was away for the weekend, leading boot-camp exercises at the Base, the kind of military training Xander would soon be imprisoned by. “You’re not
worried about leaving your sixteen-year-old daughter alone with Xander for the weekend?” I had challenged Dad.

But Dad, who had lived in Aquine territory when he was a young man, just laughed. “Aquines don’t mate until they’re ready to commit for life. Xander is nowhere near ready
for that sentence with you. Your virtue is safe.”

Few things gave me more satisfaction than proving my father wrong.

I followed Xander inside the empty aquatics club, where he stopped at the entrance to the FantaSphere room. “You’re sure?” I asked Xander, who never broke club rules. I
pointed to the sign next to the door, placed there after too many amorous couples had unauthorized adventures:
FANTASPHERE ACCESS DURING CLUB HOURS ONLY. POLICY STRICTLY
ENFORCED
.

Xander’s turquoise eyes, normally so serious-looking, glinted with an uncharacteristic note of naughtiness. “It’s my last weekend here. What are they going to do, fire me
from the job I’m already leaving?”

This rule-breaking, it was so unlike him, so un-Aquine. It was so…encouraging.