by Patti Larsen
It's not until we reach the corner, turning it, Ande panting next to me with the two puppies clutched to his chest, Duet moaning but able to run at least clutched to my side, that I hear the pounding of feet approach, the snap of the taser and know my chance at Cade has come sooner rather than later.
Excellent.
I spin easily, sliding Duet away from me, propped against the side of the building, Ande hustling past with his huge eyes staring at me on the way by. The dog barks behind me, but I ignore him, all my attention focused on the handsome, insane young man running toward me.
He doesn't speak, nor do I. There's nothing to say. His madness rules him, white froth oozing from the corner of his perfect mouth, taser up and ready as he runs full-out, only the sound of his feet and the huff of his breathing breaking the silence.
I wait for him, feel the familiar slowing of time, see he's fast, faster than he was before. Almost as fast as me.
Almost.
Were I not inside the calm, he would have me, I'm certain. If I did not give myself so completely to it, I would be dead in that moment. But I have been created for this, I have a purpose and he is simply an afterthought.
The taser skims the edge of my jacket collar as I flex to the right, Cade's arm traveling past my face, his body impacting mine with his full weight and the force of his leap. It's all right. I don't mind how he carries me to the ground, pressing himself into me, compressing my lungs until I can't breathe, his forehead connecting with mine hard enough I see stars.
It's all right. Because this close contact is all I need.
All I need.
Cade's body convulses as I embrace him, the tingle surging into him. Not the Sick, not this time. Solo gave him what he wanted, but I give him more, filling him up, flooding every cell in his body with the power inside me.
His mind expands even as his eyes widen, face pulling back from mine just enough I see his pupils dilate, his skin flush, every vein in his body swelling until his skin is almost purple with fine lines and pulsing ropes.
Yes. His mental voice reaches me, touches my mind, grasps onto me just as the power peaks.
Cade explodes above me, body stretching outward into a million shards of bright light, his dying cry an echo of lost power. Each shining star falls, touching me, filling me up again, returning what I've given him, bringing with it the gifts Solo gave him.
And more.
Ande is tugging on me, Duet too. She's recovered. I should be glad, should hug her and run, but I stumble and stagger, letting them pull me on, toward the dog and his wagging tail.
I can't focus, can't think. Not while Solo's power is driving me insane.
***
Chapter Twenty Seven
I'm dragged into darkness, both physically and mentally, but I have no concern for the physical.
I'm lost in a spiraling hole so deep and black it devours the calm, my heart, my will to live.
Light flickers, images, pieces of my past, a vortex of memory rewinding slowly at first and then faster and faster until I'm sucked through my life as though I'm a toy bobbing in the center of a tornado that will tear me into tiny slivers as it did Cade.
Rewinding. Rewinding. Rewinding.
All the way to the end.
To the beginning.
***
Birth. Cold wetness and loud sounds, warmth at last, hands lift me, a sweet voice whispers her love in my ear, the scent of her made precious because of our contact.
Growing. Two others, like me, the woman hovering over us, her love as strong as though we'd been born of her body instead of the hard glass tubes of our shelter. And a man, I know him, know him very well, hovering over me too, his smile as kind and gentle and loving as hers. He has a name.
She has a name.
Poppy. My mother's name is Poppy.
And her husband. Her husband is Beckett.
My heart swells inside me, so big I know I won't survive if it grows much larger, but I do, and my sisters do. Two and One and I am Three. The old scientist, Beckett's father, Dr. Gorman. He tries to keep us from being human but I know, I know I'm more human than he is.
But we're special. Doesn't Mother tell us we're special when Dr. Gorman can't hear? Whisper she loves us, call us her little kittens as she strokes our faces one after the other, never favoring one over two over three.
I learn everything so easily, I hunger for more. Fighting, weapons, battle strategy. Ballet, music, painting, sculpture. Math, science, physics, astronomy. Languages old and new, dead and as fresh as a new day. All of it.
My sisters grow as I grow, learn as I learn, develop. But I know Dr. Gorman is upset. We're the same, are we not? Identical in every way. Taken from the same gene splice, the same stem cells. Identical. So why is it we are different? Why do our personalities alter, our own individual uniqueness develop?
He threatens to shut down our program while Mother begs him not to. Two is upset, crying, but One just smiles at me like she knows things I don't and I have no doubt that's true. She is our leader, the strongest of the three of us. She likes being seen, doing things risking our exposure. Being a star. Two follows her blindly, happy to do so. But I, I know the limits One pushes, the possibility of our termination.
Be a good girl. A good clone.
Flashing through memory as we grow, older, taller, more perfect, more complete.
Our pure DNA, as pure as our mother's, has been augmented. Strengthened. A gift placed inside each of us—the ability to heal, to create life through our touch. But more importantly, to improve the DNA of those around us.
To make others as perfect as we are.
One is the first to figure out hers, but the rat she experiments on dies a horrible death, ends in a puddle of horror. She shows me, shows Two. I want to tell the doctor or Mother, but One won't let me. And I listen to her.
I listen.
Until the day she comes to me, breathless. Dr. Gorman has convinced Mother and Beckett. We aren't working out the way he wanted. We're to be terminated. Two is horrified, heartbroken, but I have doubts. One leads us to the Time Chamber, where the scientists working on the bubble hover around their consoles. One kills them all while I watch, an "o" of horror shaping my mouth. I'm unable to move, to breathe as she activates the bubble and stands in its light, beckoning to me, to Two.
Neither of us moves as she vanishes in it.
More flashes of memory. I'm standing before the bubble myself, dressed as I remember being dressed when I woke in the school bathroom in Los Angeles. Two stands beside me, dressed the same. The whole world wavers outside the windows, shimmering. A flying bird is trapped just outside the bubble, motionless. Mother takes Two's hands and leads her forward, crying. Kisses her cheek. Sends her through the bubble before I'm led toward it the same way, my mother's hands clasping mine.
“Three,” she whispers. “I love you. You must save us. Find your sister and kill her.”
“And when you're done,” Dr. Gorman says, “go back through the bubble, to before we begin this horrible project, and tell us to stop.”
I'm horrible to him. Yes, of course. I'll obey.
Good girl. Good clone.
I enter the bubble and everything
Stops.
***
I open my eyes, drawing a deep, cleansing breath, filling my lungs until I feel my chest might split from the pressure before letting it all out again. My body responds when I ask it to sit up, to look around. The calm is gone, but I don't need it anymore. I am it, though somehow more. I can feel, but I am me again.
Beckett sits beside me. But not my mother's Beckett. This is him, young. My Beckett, but not mine. In a world gone very wrong. I take his hand, feel the familiar warmth. Find myself smiling. “I know you now,” I whisper.
He seems troubled. “We thought we lost you.”
I meet eyes surrounding me—Vander, glowing softly. Socrates, his dark brow furrowed. Ande.
The dog. The puppies lie at his feet, watching me. But wh
en the dog nods slowly I understand him better than I ever had.
“It worked for some,” I say to him as if he can answer me. “Just like humans. Didn't it?”
Again that nod. Can he read my mind? We have skills beyond the normal. I have no doubt that's true of the dog as well.
“Trio.” Socrates leans close. “What happened? What did you do to Cade?”
I shake my head. “That doesn't matter now,” I say. Look up. Meet Beckett's eyes. “Poppy.”
Mother.
I might as well have asked him to take his own life. His face crumples, shoulders sagging. I've never seen him so lost, so broken.
“Gone,” he whispers.
Duet grunts next to me and I turn, noticing her for the first time. I see the girl I knew superimposed over the cyborg she is now and lean in to hug her.
“Poppy,” Duet says.
“Yes.” I lean back. “Solo has to know who she is by now. That's why she wants her.”
My friends look confused.
Time to tell them everything.
***
Chapter Twenty Eight
They listen with more patience than I would have, there in that underground garage surrounded by the ghosts of privilege. Beckett seems upset his fears are founded, that his father was the creator of the Sick.
“But not in the way you think.” I squeeze his hand, still in mine. “This is a gift, or meant to be. Solo turned it into the means to make the world into what she wanted.”
I let him brood, turning to Socrates. “The disk.”
He nods. “You mentioned that. Just so happens, we might be able to figure it out after all.”
When he gestures, I find a huge smile on my face, an odd joy giving me goosebumps. Just behind him, hidden in the shadows of the abandoned cars, is the SUV. Our SUV. Duet's creation.
“How?” I stand, go to it, run my hands over the plated metal, some black with electric charge.
“They couldn't make it run.” Beckett stands beside me, hands in his back pockets. “So they left it there. We went back for it.”
Socrates opens the passenger's door, pulls out the laptop. “Duet charged it while you were out,” he says. “Let's see what we can find.”
I bend and scratch the dog's ears while Socrates boots up the old computer, crouching to accept licks and nips from the puppies before the opening chime sounds and I'm up to look at what Socrates is doing.
Socrates scowls over the encrypted files, but my former confusion is gone. “Let me,” I say. Three taps of the keys and the garbled contents are in English. I helped encrypt it, after all.
Schematics and instructions. I already know what for. I jab one finger at the screen while Duet hums beside me, chin over my shoulder as Socrates gapes.
“Time portal,” I say. “Everything we need to build one is right here.”
Socrates turns to me, eyes huge, mouth gaping. “We can build one?”
But Duet is shaking her head, poking me and I know her distress is as powerful as mine. I'm looking over the components, memories flying even as my knowledge increases by the second.
“No,” I say at last, a soft grief pulling at my confidence. “Not in time.”
Vander cocks his head to the side. “Time,” he says. “Rather ironic, isn't it?”
“It is.” I flash him a little smile. “But it's likely we're too far behind Solo to build our own before she perfects hers.”
“You think she's building one?” Socrates can't seem to take his eyes off the screen now.
“She already has.” Of course she has. This can't be all she's after.
“But she doesn't have this.” Beckett looks confused, but he's right there with me and ultimately that's all that matters.
“As far as I know, she doesn't.” If she did, she'd have figured out how to make the thing work already. She must be creating on memories. I know she spent a lot of time in the Time lab with the scientists. I shake my head. How could Dr. Gorman have been so foolish to allow her access? But we were girls then, children. Brilliant. But harmless.
At least, I used to think so. I know differently now.
“She has to have a machine,” I say as the truth clicks through in my head. “It's how she deflected Duet from her path. And how she sent me to Los Angeles. I was supposed to arrive the moment Solo did. So was Duet.” My sister nods her agreement, hum louder as I go on. “Not seven years early.” That instant between Duet's departure and mine, how did it stretch into years? “She's found a way to build one, but it's not perfect. It's not working the way she wanted.”
“Why Poppy?” Beckett's voice is soft, hurt, but his face is a mask of stone when I meet his eyes. “She can't help with the machine.”
“No,” I say. “No she can't.” I sigh, feeling my energy drain for a moment as I sag a little. So much to do. I must save them, have no choice. This is why I'm here. “Either Solo has figured out Poppy is the girl who will become our mother, or she simply wants her because of us.”
Socrates's eyebrows arch as he turns to me. “Not likely.”
I feel foolish. She must know. Now that I have my memories, I know. I see Poppy's face in my mind and it's my face, when I was young. But what benefit will Solo get from holding the girl who is our mother?
I don't know, but it can't be good.
“More clones, maybe?” Socrates chews his lower lip. I find my gaze falling to Ande who sits at my feet next to the dog, lap full of puppies. I'm looking at them all differently now.
Do I know him, too?
Do I know them all?
I jerk my attention back to Socrates. “I doubt it,” I say. “Though who knows what she's thinking.”
Duet's hum ends abruptly. “Poppy,” she says. “Let's get Poppy.”
Beckett's blue eyes tell me he agrees.
And frankly, so do I.
“We have to find Solo and her machine,” I say. “And fix it ourselves.”
“We'll have to kill her, you know.” Beckett's voice is still soft. “Are you okay with that?”
Duet growls, her voice matched by the dog.
“Of course,” I say, happy not to feel a trace of empathy for my sister. “It's why we're here.”
Beckett almost takes a step back. His body wavers, shifts from me, though after a second he strengthens as if understanding at last I'm not anyone he really should be attached to.
Not anymore.
“A boat.” Vander leans in, looking at the computer as Socrates taps at keys. “We have to find one if we're going to Liberty Island.”
“No,” I say, the towering structure of the building we were born in coming easily to my mind. “Not the statue. They used that for a reference point. Easily recognizable. But we're not going there.”
“Solo knew you were coming here.” Vander's glow increases slightly as he shifts his weight as the motion pulses his blood.
“She did. But she had no idea Dr. Gorman chose the liberty statue as my beacon.” She had Brick for that.
Socrates is distracted enough to look up again. “Then where?”
I point at the schematic, at the building blueprint beneath the machine. “It was built specifically for the size and materials that went into this structure,” I say. “The Empire State Building.”
***
Chapter Twenty Nine
I leave the others behind, though the dog refuses to let me go alone. And so does Beckett.
“She's my responsibility,” he says, though I know his need to find her is much more than that.
Oddly, Duet doesn't argue when I tell her I'm going without her. She just meets my eyes for a moment before hugging me. “Three,” she says. “Love you.”
My heart clenches as I embrace her. “Love you, Two.”
She giggles softly, a little girl's sound, reminding me of who she used to be. I release her, walk away, the dog on one side and Beckett on the other.
It's not far. We've returned the whole way, it seems, much farther than I expected. Beckett, the
dog and I emerge from the parking garage at Macy's department store and head down West 43rd to 5th Avenue. From there, it's a straight shot all the way to 34th and the building in question, though I know our journey there, a mere nine city blocks, will be far more complicated than my memory tells me.
And still, I can't help but enjoy the beautiful day, so strange how the past tries to dominate this present. Though, in truth, it's the future wanting to win over the past. I know I'll go slowly insane if I try to work out the difference and instead shrug it off.
It's not like what I'm thinking about will make one bit of difference in the end.
These streets are clean, hard to hide, but they are echoingly empty too. I know Solo must be watching, but we have no choice. I have to go.
We pass the library on our right and my thoughts go to Socrates. It's a wonder they were able to convince the young genius to hide in a department store when he had a library to peruse, but I suppose none of us are as innocent as we used to be and perhaps his priorities have changed. The idea of it makes me infinitely sad. As sad as the sight of Bryant Park, empty of happy children and their watching mothers, joggers and bicyclists. Now it stands empty, trees and grasses grown wild. Mother Nature has reclaimed parts of the city, and though I'm pleased to see the green, I still miss the happy bustle that used to be—or will be—or is—Manhattan.
The Empire State Building looms on the right, towering over the skyline. I used to love—will love?—to go up to the observation deck and look out over what felt like the center of the world, wave to Lady Liberty on her little island and dream of a life more ordinary, a life where I could live in a little house in the countryside and have a dog and maybe own my own car.
The dog part has come true. Though I don't exactly have him as much as he owns me.
We turn the corner onto 34th and I see her as we approach, my sister standing on the street outside what will be our home. She waves even, smiling still, a perfect, shining girl in the middle of a dead city.
