The Pretenders

by Rebecca Hanover

  “What did he make you do?” Pippa finally asks, and the group quiets down as we find seats on the grass. We’re all hungry for information. We want to know what went down on Castor Island.

  “Nothing any worse than usual.” Levi shrugs. “There was training. And brainwashing. You know, normal senior year kind of stuff.” He doesn’t mention the injuries to his face. The black eye I saw in that photo. I don’t bring it up, either.

  “Why did he want to keep you there?” Jago asks. “Besides the obvious.”

  “You mean to torture him?” Maude cuts in. “And us?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Levi answers, his face a mask as he runs a hand through his brown hair, his gray eyes catching the light. “He’s lonely. He’s miserable. I think a part of him wanted me to share in that. Since he has no one else.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, because we’re beyond happy to see you,” Theodora says, still not taking her eyes off Levi. “But why are you here? And why now? Emma said—” She stops abruptly, looking over at me as if to ask permission to keep talking. I nod, not letting myself look in Ollie’s direction. “Emma said Gravelle called her. Told her that you wouldn’t be coming back this year,” Theodora continues. “That you were going to wait it out on Castor Island until after graduation.”

  Levi looks over at me. Our eyes meet for half a second, and in that moment, I feel every nerve ending in my body tingle and stand at attention. If I could make everyone around us vanish, so it could be only the two of us… It’s all I want right now, all I can think about. Then he tears his eyes away from me to stare out at Dark Lake, and I feel an instant loss, a hollowing out of my chest, when he breaks our connection. “Gravelle wouldn’t let me leave. Of course I wanted to. I’d never want to stay there with that man of my own free will. But then he changed his mind. Decided to send me back here.”

  I notice Maude shoot a look at Jago, who shrugs. Theodora squeezes Levi’s hand, and Ollie and Pru hang back to the side, observing but not wanting to interfere. I’m sure they feel like I do—bystanders who don’t really belong.

  “What do you mean?” Pippa finally speaks up. “Gravelle sent you back here, to Darkwood? Or he let you go?”

  Levi sighs. “Both, I guess. I’d been petitioning to leave the island for months. Entreating him every minute I saw him to let me go. I wanted out. Being there, in that desolate place—it didn’t feel like my home anymore. It felt like a prison, in spite of all the memories I have of us there. I guess in retrospect, it was a pretty grim childhood, wasn’t it?”

  I feel my throat catching at these words, not only because it pains me to hear Levi talk about the Similars’ upbringing this way, but also because now I know it’s a childhood I only barely dodged. You could have been there for sixteen years too. For the first time, I consider that my own formative years after age three, spent with the father I always thought of as cool and distant, were not half bad.

  “He put me through things,” Levi says. “Mind control in the portal with those damn virtual reality simulations we all hate. Daily exercises that were grueling, mentally and physically. On one particularly awful day, he tested how long I could stay underwater, to the point of me passing out.”

  “Levi,” Theodora says, looking pained, but Levi shakes his head.

  “All that stuff wasn’t as bad as the loneliness. Being there without all of you,” he adds. “That’s what made it unbearable. Because before, we had each other.”

  I wonder if, in some small way, he’s including me in that statement. Or only the Similars.

  “One day, I woke up, went to breakfast, and Gravelle told me I could leave,” Levi continues. “On one condition, of course.”

  Maude seems to know where this is going before Levi has to explain. “Why do I have a really bad feeling right now?” she asks.

  Levi sighs. “Because you know what I’m about to say. Our guardian’s nothing if not predictable, right?”

  “Sorry, but I’m not following,” says Pru.

  “Our tasks,” Ansel says, in his quiet, reserved way. “I bet we each have one.”

  “Twenty points to Ansel,” Levi jokes, but his voice sounds far off and devoid of emotion. “He’s not calling them tasks anymore. It’s our ‘Legacy Project.’ And we all have the same one. Getting close—closer—to our DNA families.”

  I notice Theodora physically cringe at the news. The others don’t look much better.

  “I knew this was coming,” Ansel says. “I tried to tell myself maybe he’d given up, but…”

  “Gravelle, give up?” Levi answers, raising his voice for the first time since he got back here. “Gravelle, let go of his plan to ruin our DNA families once and for all?”

  “So that’s what he wants?” I ask. “To ruin them.”

  “He doesn’t phrase it that way,” Levi explains. “No, he says he’s standing up for us. He claims that the Legacy Project is a way for us to demand our birthrights. Because we are the true legacies who should be walking these halls, not our originals. And we must ensure that our DNA families pay us the attention we were robbed of all those years—”

  “That he robbed you of,” Ollie interjects.

  “Yes,” Levi agrees. “He wants to make the families stand up and take notice. He says we did a decent job last year, putting Damian Leroy behind bars and transferring all that Ward, Inc. stock to me…”

  “You mean, to him,” I say.

  Levi sighs. “Right.”

  “Sending Tessa’s dad to prison was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” Theodora says, her eyes growing wet with tears. “Maybe what I did was technically the right thing, but…”

  “It was more than that, Thea,” Pippa says, walking over to sit next to her. “You had an obligation, didn’t you? Damian Leroy was committing fraud.”

  “Then why couldn’t Gravelle have exposed him? I’m a teenager. It’s not my job to turn in criminals.”

  “He couldn’t do it because he’s a coward.” Levi shrugs. “I know he’s hurt, and messed up, and a part of his soul is missing, and maybe that’s not entirely his fault. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s done unconscionable things. Or that he’s using us to do his dirty work. He spins this as us claiming what’s rightfully ours, but let’s face it. He wants us to screw over our DNA families, once and for all.”

  We sit in silence. Maude looks like she’s about to say something, then thinks better of it. She stands and kicks at a rock, letting out a guttural scream of frustration. Jago jumps up, grabbing her arm and speaking softly to her. I can’t hear what he says. All I know is that what Gravelle is asking my friends to do is despicable, and they must feel so trapped, and angry, and sickened by the idea of manipulating their DNA families once again.

  “So what is it?” Ansel finally asks. “This ‘Legacy Project’?” he asks with disdain. “What is it that our guardian wants us to do?”

  “I don’t have a lot of details,” Levi answers. “He said to continue to forge relationships with our DNA families and our originals.”

  Pippa’s brow furrows. “I’m already doing that, but not because I want to ruin your family, Pru!”

  “Of course not,” Pru answers her.

  “What if we refuse?” Theodora says. We turn to look at her. “What if we simply won’t do it?” She stares back at all of us, challenging her friends to come up with a good reason why they shouldn’t simply say no and walk away from the Legacy Project before it’s even begun. “When we first came here, and we had our tasks…we had nothing,” she reminds us. “We were alone, and scared, and Gravelle was our only parent. Our only family. We trusted him implicitly because we had to. But now… Now, everything’s changed, hasn’t it? Pippa, you have Jaeger in your life. Ansel, you have the de Leons…your dads. And Levi…” She meets his gray eyes. “I know you’d rather die than hurt Jane and Booker again. We have seven more month
s till graduation. Then we’ll all be eighteen. We don’t have to do what our guardian wants anymore.”

  I consider Theodora’s words. I watch the Similars; they, too, are letting her words marinate. Considering whether what she says makes sense. If there’s some way out of this.

  “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?” Levi asks. “Don’t you think that was the first thing I said to him, when he told me about the Legacy Project? I explained that you’d never do it. That we all played his game last year because we knew nothing else; we had nothing and no one else!”

  Levi clenches his hands into fists, and all I want to do is go to him and reach for him. The longing in my chest is so intense it’s almost unbearable.

  “I don’t understand,” says Maude. “What did Gravelle say when you told him that?”

  “He said we have no choice, naturally,” Levi answers, letting his fingers relax as he returns to his characteristically controlled demeanor. “He’s right, of course. We have to complete our tasks. Because otherwise, he’ll kill us.”

  “Hold on,” says Maude, who walks right up to Levi and forces him to look at her. “Did he threaten that? Say he’d come after us? Send someone to gun us down, right here on campus? Does he even think that would work—”

  “Have you forgotten who you’re dealing with? Gravelle would never do something as plebeian as shooting us.” Levi looks beyond emotion now. Aloof and hard as stone.

  “Then what?” Oliver asks, his voice tinged with pain.

  “He made sure he would always have a fail-safe way of killing us off,” Levi explains. “Even from afar. He programmed our genes eighteen years ago, before we were born, with Seymour’s help, of course. Added certain characteristics, took others away. Tweaked us to perfection, I suppose you could say.”

  “And?” Pippa implores him.

  “And one of those tweaks was to insert a stealth virus into our DNA. It’s been lying dormant in our genes for our entire lives. At any moment, Gravelle can choose to activate it. Which means that whenever he feels like it—if we haven’t performed to his liking—he can terminate us. Instantly.”

  Stealth Virus

  “Don’t you see?” Levi keeps talking. It’s clear that Levi’s been living with this information for a while now, and we’re all scrambling to catch up. “Gravelle wasn’t stupid enough to create us without some kind of an out. The stealth virus allows him to exert control over us, even when we’re not with him. Wherever we live, wherever we go, we can’t escape it. That’s the beauty of it, after all,” Levi quips. “All this time we thought moving to England would be some kind of escape for us. An opportunity to start over, fresh, and leave our bleak childhood behind. What idiots we were, thinking we’d outsmart Gravelle. He’s been one step ahead of us since before we were even born.”

  “Would he really do it?” Pippa asks. “He’s been reminding us for years that he’s our only family. That he’ll always love us more than our DNA families do. That he knew we’d always return to him because, eventually, we’d see how cruel the real world is.”

  “Joke’s on us, I guess.” Levi shrugs. “I think he’d do it, sure. I don’t think he wants to. He was hoping we’d come here last year and find a world so hardened and bitter toward us that we’d run straight back to Castor Island begging for our old lives back.”

  “But that’s not what happened,” I say.

  “No.” Levi finally meets my eyes again, this time lingering on them long enough for my stomach to flutter. “So now he’s falling back on plan B. The back-up plan he probably doesn’t want to have to use.”

  “So maybe he won’t,” Maude says, inserting some cool logic into the conversation. “He could be bluffing. He’s got the upper hand, of course, because we have no way of proving that this stealth virus isn’t real.”

  “But he also has no way of proving that it is, does he?” I ask. “Why should we even believe him?”

  “Because,” answers Levi. “You’ve already seen the stealth virus at work. And though I wasn’t here for it, I’m quite sure it wasn’t pretty.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jago asks.

  It hits me with the force of a truck. “Ransom,” I say softly. “It was the stealth virus that nearly killed him. Wasn’t it?”

  Levi meets my eyes again, and this time, as I notice the rush I get from his gaze, I also think I see approval written there. “Exactly.”

  Maude stops her pacing to stare at Levi. “You’re saying that when Headmaster Ransom injected our plasma into his system…”

  “Plasma containing DNA that was tweaked by Gravelle eighteen years ago,” Pru adds.

  “He was also injecting the dormant virus?” Maude pauses, looking at Levi for confirmation.

  “More or less, yes,” Levi says. “When Ransom injected our plasma, the stealth virus went into his system too. Gravelle was expecting this to happen. Obviously he knew about Ransom’s plan; after all, he signed off on the ‘research’ and signed the waiver himself. He must have had someone on the ground to confirm that Ransom had gone through with it, because then he activated the code to trigger the virus.”

  “But if the virus was built specifically to react in our bodies…” Maude says, trying to work it out.

  “How did it also take out Ransom?” Levi finishes her thought. “The quick answer is that the reaction Ransom had wouldn’t manifest itself in the same way for us, not exactly. Still, you had a front-row seat to all the evidence you need that Gravelle is not playing around. The stealth virus exists. Ransom’s collapse proved it.”

  “So this is why Gravelle didn’t interfere with Ransom’s experiments,” I conclude. It’s all making sense now.

  “I couldn’t get him to admit it outright,” Levi answers me. “But yes, I believe he wanted Ransom to exploit us for that plasma cocktail, so that eventually Ransom would inject it into himself and show us all how big a threat the virus really is. How deadly,” he adds.

  There’s silence as that sinks in. If the Similars refuse to act on their new task, they risk their own lives. But if they do what Gravelle wants, who knows what they’ll end up doing to hurt their DNA families?

  “How did you find out about this?” Pru asks Levi. “The stealth virus…and what happened to Ransom?”

  “I had a lot of time on the island to do my own research,” Levi explains. “Including convincing the guards to give me Wi-Fi access. It wasn’t easy, but little by little, I gained enough information to put the pieces together. When I saw on the Darkwood feeds that Ransom had collapsed, I began to construct my own theory as to why. Gravelle all but confirmed it, when I finally confronted him.”

  “Why’d he let you come back?” Theodora asks.

  Levi shrugs, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets. “To drop the hammer. And deliver a warning that if you try to interfere with his plan…” He pauses for a beat. “We’re all, for lack of a better word, toast.”

  “If he needs us, really truly needs us,” Pippa says, “he wouldn’t dare kill us. Maybe it’s an empty threat.”

  “I don’t know, Pip,” Levi says thoughtfully. “He might kill us out of spite. I think he’s more twisted than ever. He’s angry at us. Deeply disappointed that we’ve turned on him. He’d convinced himself that we’d come running back to Castor Island at the end of last year. He thinks we don’t appreciate all he’s done for us.”

  “You mean creating us for his own sick agenda, keeping us isolated on a remote island for sixteen years, and then sticking us in a boarding school with our originals, knowing most of them would despise us?” Maude snaps. “Yeah, he’s been stellar.”

  “I still don’t understand what he wants us to do,” Ansel pipes up. “Get even closer to our DNA families? I’m already as close to Archer as I’ll probably ever be. I interned with my DNA dads over the summer. What more does Gravelle want from us?”

  “May I m
ake a suggestion?” Levi responds.

  “Yes?” Maude answers, her voice sounding edgy, like she’s ready for a fight.

  “Can we get dinner?” Levi asks, the trace of a smile playing on his lips. “I haven’t eaten since I left that godforsaken place.”

  Maude stares at him for a moment, then lightly punches his arm. The others laugh; we’re glad Levi’s broken the tension and relieved to have some sense of normalcy injected into what is most definitely not a normal conversation.

  We stand up and brush off the grass clinging to our clothes.

  My heart’s hammering so loudly, I can barely focus on anything. All I know is that Ollie and I kissed—whether it was my idea or not—and Levi saw it, and the thought of facing either of them right now is terrifying. As long as we were all together on the grassy lawn, I was safe. Safe from having to confront the fact that Levi saw me and Ollie kissing. Safe from having to face Ollie, when I have no clue why I didn’t immediately push him away. Why it took seconds, maybe minutes, for me to realize what I was doing. In spite of all this, I’m so relieved Levi’s back safe and sound that it’s torture for me not moving right up to him and going into his arms.

  As we make our way up the hill in the fading light, Pru comes up next to me and grabs my elbow. There’s no way she knows what has just transpired. But maybe she senses how fraught with emotion I am, because she’s gripping my arm like a vise.

  “You okay?” she whispers.

  “Absolutely not,” I answer without meeting her eyes.

  “Deep, calming breaths. Imagine you are a flower, opening and closing in the sunlight.” I can’t help but crack up. Pru knows good and well the meditation exercises my father’s psychiatrist gave me two summers ago never worked for me.

  “Thanks. I’ll work on my inner daisy.” But my smile fades when I see Levi trekking up the hill with Ollie at his side. I stop walking, and Pru stops with me. She must instantly know what’s bothering me, because she urges me forward.