Emergent (A Beta Novel)

by Rachel Cohn

  “Now that we’ve found each other again, I can never let you go,” Tahir says.

  “I’ll die before ever letting you go again,” I say.

  But behind Tahir stands the Aquine.

  Of course this had to be a dream. It was too good to be true.

  “I love you,” Alex says to me. He opens his arms, inviting me to choose him over Tahir.

  Alex had years of knowing and loving Zhara, but he barely knows me. How could he possibly love me? Alex imprinted his feelings for Zhara onto her Beta before he knew she was alive. His race’s design flaw, I suppose. Once they imprint, their loyalty can’t undo that feeling. Too bad for him.

  “I love you, too,” I reassure Alex.

  I am a killer, and a liar.

  When I wake, I see my face—the non-branded, human version of it. The one that had parents and a childhood and a choice about how to live her life, before she had to go and destroy it.

  “Is it gone?” I ask Zhara, who sits at my bedside.

  “The transfer was successful.” Her pale, withdrawn face reflects how I feel: like death. “I wanted to see it, but they wouldn’t let me.” I look carefully; her eyes are wet with tears.

  “Why would you want to see it?” I want nothing more to do with it. ReplicaPharm taking it out of my body is the one upside to this otherwise nightmare return to Demesne.

  Zhara says, “In a sick way, it’s part of me too. It didn’t ask to be made any more than you did. It deserves the life that you and Aidan and the other Emergents were denied. It deserves to be loved. Not abandoned.”

  “It wasn’t abandoned. ReplicaPharm will provide for it.”

  “They will mistreat it and then abandon or expire it. Just like they do with their clones. It deserves better.”

  I blink, trying to access on my chip why she could possibly care what happens to that horrible thing I so badly wanted gone from my body. My chip speculates: Zhara wants the baby to be loved and cared for as her mother didn’t do for her. She’s projecting, my chip informs me. I’m horrified by her empathy. I’m more horrified when I feel a surge in my veins, signaling sympathy, and sadness, for Zhara in return.

  “I want to get out of here,” I tell Zhara. I can taste the prime Demesne air again, and it’s not a pleasant association. Each breath I take in this toxic paradise makes me feel suffocated. The soothing air actually makes me feel hate, and crave vengeance. I want it so badly my mouth develops an Awful taste—sour, bitter—overpowering the flowery sweetness of the island’s air.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Zhara says. “This feels like a nightmare we can’t wake up from. We’re living it.”

  The sour taste in my mouth extends to the words coming from it. I say, “You don’t know anything about how I feel.” Except Zhara probably does know how I feel, because she is another version of me. I hate that. I don’t want to experience empathy or sympathy or anything else with her. I want to be free of her as much as I wanted to be free of the baby. I want to own my Awful as much as she owns hers—only in a human teenager, it’s simply called moody. What a luxury. “Why are you still here?” I snap at her. “Don’t you have some great life of freedom somewhere to return to?”

  “I have no home to return to.”

  I can’t help but remember how after I’d first met her, when I asked Zhara if her parents would be considered our parents, Zhara’s answer was that the parents belonged to her. Her grief for them should belong to her too. I can’t help that my programming automatically tells me the correct response to her grief, and I let it happen instead of resisting. She needs comfort just like I do. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, with a sincerity I don’t feel.

  I never know whether to like or trust Zhara. My instinct says, No. My heart says, Maybe. My mind says, Fool.

  “I’m sorry for yours.” Her wet eyes advance to blatant tears falling down her face. “So many Emergents lost,” she says. “Tawny. Catra.” She pauses. She can barely speak the next name. “Aidan.”

  “He’s dead?” I ask. I am genuinely sorry for that loss of Zhara’s. It’s one I understand. I lost the man I loved too. Tahir. The difference is I knew I loved him. Zhara never got the chance to figure out her feelings for Aidan, as far as I can tell. Alexander Blackburn returning to her life got in the way. Now it’s too late.

  Zhara says, “I have no idea. The not knowing is actually worse. I assume they’ve expired him, but they won’t give me any information. Either Aidan’s dead or being tortured. Demesne isn’t paradise. It’s a fresh new hell.”

  “So leave it,” I suggest.

  She wipes the wetness from her face with her hand. “I was offered the opportunity to stay here with you. I have no home left back in the world, and they’ve offered me refuge here. But that’s not the only reason I really stayed. I plan to make sure they treat you more ethically than they did the last time.”

  “I can take care of myself.” But I don’t want to take care of myself. I have nothing here besides pain, and no one to care for me. I’m silently pleased Zhara is here with me. I don’t want to suffer alone.

  “You’re their prisoner. So I’ll be their prisoner with you. Like it or not, you are me, and vice versa. They hurt you, they hurt me.”

  “Is this because of Aidan?”

  “Yes. I want you to have what he didn’t. Comfort.” A fresh tear streams down her cheek. She wipes it away and then takes a deep breath to compose herself. She informs me, “You’re to be under ‘house arrest,’ whatever that means. Most of the Emergents are dead. We’re lucky to still be alive.”

  Suddenly, I remember. I killed the Governor’s son. There must be consequences. “Will I be tried for murder?”

  “I doubt it. Demesne is owned by ReplicaPharm now. They have no interest in trying you for murder. You’re more valuable as a research subject. While you were in surgery, they placed new data-mining technology in your body. You’re a Beta who got pregnant. There’s a lot that science wants to do with the information your body will send them.” She leaves unsaid: Until you go fully Awful, and die.

  Because that’s what this is really about, I realize. For whatever reason only Zhara could understand, she wants to be with me until I die. For whatever reason I don’t understand, in return, I feel perversely protected by her, like a sister, and feel an uncomfortable sudden surge of gratitude.

  “Where’s Alex?” I ask. On the night of the ambush on Heathen, the ReplicaPharm soldiers took Alex away separately from Zhara and me. I have no idea what happened to him. I forgot to remember to care until just this moment.

  Zhara says, “I don’t know. I’ve begged everyone here—the guards, the doctors—for information, but no one will tell me anything. It’s maddening. These people are pure evil. They’re more heartless than the soulless clones they tried to create. They should have cloned themselves. Then it would have worked.”

  “Alex lived through the ambush?”

  “I think so. I feel like I would know if he was dead, like, in my heart. If Xander didn’t survive…I don’t even know how I could cope. It would just be too much loss.” Zhara’s face looks so traumatized, I decide to change the subject.

  “Will we live here?” I ask Zhara. Dr. Lusardi’s former medical laboratory was part of a huge compound. I never saw much of it the last time I was on Demesne, but there must be living quarters here where they can keep us trapped. “This place seems like it could easily hold a jail. Several of them.”

  “You wouldn’t serve science from the stress of a jail cell. I don’t know where we’re being sent. But I doubt it’s here.”

  “Wherever it is,” I say, lowering my voice, “we need to make certain one thing still happens.”

  “Insurrection?” Zhara whispers. I nod. How did she know? Is she Awful, too?

  I don’t know how we can ultimately succeed—but the war is not yet over. I’m glad Zhara agrees.

  The door to the lab room opens. The Governor walks in.

  Now I understand where my new j
ail cell will be. Back at Governor’s House.

  HE BARGES INTO MY ROOM without invitation. I’m lying on a gurney, recovering from surgery. I can’t exactly get up and bolt from the room because I don’t want to see him. I have no rights here—not even the right to refuse his visit.

  “Who are you?” Zhara asks him disdainfully. “Knock or something first.”

  “This is the Governor,” I inform Zhara.

  The Governor gazes at me, then at Zhara. He says, “A First. Alive. It’s disgusting. Against the laws of nature.” The Governor looks like he’s aged a decade in the short time since I’ve last seen him. He’s gained a substantial amount of weight, giving him a fuller, meaner face, exposed more harshly by his balding hairline, which appears to have thinned as significantly as his waistline has expanded. He approaches us and Zhara moves to stand protectively beside me, blocking him from getting too close to me.

  “Keep back from her,” Zhara commands him.

  The Governor scoffs. “You don’t give the orders here, First. I’ve been given a five-minute audience with your monster. That I should have to beg for it at all is a travesty of justice.” An audience, he said. Not a return to his home. Maybe I can survive Demesne after all. Maybe I’m not being sent back there. I can survive this meeting if that’s all it is—a confrontation and not a new beginning under his command. He directs a very hostile look at me. Bitterly, he says, “You murdered our son, and ReplicaPharm sentences you to house arrest on paradise. You should be hanged for what you did.”

  Calmly, Zhara says, “You should be ashamed for what you allowed to happen to my clone.”

  “Ashamed?” repeats the Governor. “She was our property. She’s not a real person. We could do anything we wanted to her. And she repaid our kindness in giving her a home by killing our son.”

  Zhara exclaims, “It was self-defense!”

  “Which she had no right to!” the Governor bellows.

  I’m still groggy from anesthesia and have no physical energy to stand up and run, which is what I want to do. I don’t want to confront the Governor. I wanted to never, ever see his sniveling face again. My heart pounds hard in fear, and I will Zhara to stop talking about Ivan. The topic is only going to inflame the Governor more.

  The Governor sidesteps Zhara and hovers at the foot of my bed. “I’ve been demoted to acting administrator for the island during the ReplicaPharm transition. You ruined my career. I agreed to the demotion with the new Demesne owners just so I could stay here long enough to make sure you don’t leave alive.”

  I’m scared, but he doesn’t need to know that. My chip lets me know the reaction that will most unsettle him. Indifference. “Where are Mother and Liesel?” I ask him, my voice set to nonchalant.

  His face reddens in anger. “This meeting is not high tea where we catch up with old friends. But I’ll tell you where they are so that when our family is finally accorded the justice we deserve and you’re held accountable for your crime, you’ll know where my family is, celebrating. Mother and Liesel returned to the Mainland to live with Mother’s sister. Liesel’s anxiety issues became unmanageable after seeing Ivan murdered, and she could no longer live on Demesne. So now, because of you, I’ve lost another child.”

  Now is the real time for insolence. “There’s another child coming for your family,” I tell the Governor. “It was just removed from me and placed in an artificial womb. Take that one instead.”

  Got him.

  Enraged, the Governor steps over to the other side of the bed, opposite where Zhara had been trying to shield me, and lunges directly for my throat, wrapping his hands around my neck, the exact move Ivan once used to try to kill me, only then I had a knife hidden under my pillow. “I’ll kill you now, Beta!” the Governor cries out.

  His action is so swift and sudden I almost expect to die immediately. But Zhara lets out the bloodcurdling scream my strangled, defenseless voice cannot. Unable to stop him from the other side of the bed, she instead leans down and sinks her teeth into the Governor’s wrist. She bites with all her might, and his hands spring away from my neck, and there is blood on his arm. I gasp, trying to regain my breath, indignant that my numbed body is so powerless to help me at this moment, but grateful that Zhara’s was.

  Two ReplicaPharm android soldiers immediately enter the room, aiming rifles at the Governor.

  He holds up his hands, backing away from me, moving toward the door. “Stand down, soldiers. I had my audience. We’re done here.” He casually walks directly in between the two soldiers and looks at me, pointing his index finger in my direction. “The former property owners would’ve had no problem letting me just strangle you to death. They’d have demanded it! I may have been denied legal recourse against you by ReplicaPharm, but if it’s the last thing I manage to accomplish on this island, I’m going to kill you, whore.”

  Zhara steps over to the door and opens it more widely for the soldiers and the Governor to pass through. “Not if I kill you first,” she tells him. “Now get out.”

  They leave. By the androids’ disregard of the Governor’s verbal threat, I understand the power shift. That I live and the Governor has been demoted is proof: I’m more valuable to science than his service—or rage—is to Demesne.

  How encouraging for Insurrection.

  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.”