Resistance

by Jenna Black

  “You seem to have had a lot of success with that already,” Nadia pointed out, her mind reeling at the implications of what Dorothy was saying. It didn’t sound so much like she was trying to find a way to make a human mind immortal by implanting it in a younger body; it sounded more like she was trying to create a human being from scratch. A human being whose mind would be exactly what Thea wanted it to be, who would think exactly as she wanted it to.

  Dorothy sighed, an expression of frustration crossing her face. “I am close. As you can see, I’ve created a fully functional body that is not a Replica of any living human. The brain is capable of controlling motor functions, and it should be capable of handling all the other jobs of a human brain. But I’m still missing something. There is no mind here. This body would be nothing but a worthless vegetable if I hadn’t implanted receptors in its brain that allow me to control it. It is a vessel, not a person.”

  Her expression brightened. “But it’s an achievement nonetheless. A step in the right direction. With more research, I’ll be able to figure out how to create an independent, functioning mind.”

  Nadia didn’t want to think about what Thea’s idea of research entailed. “What is it you hope to accomplish, exactly?” she asked, because keeping Dorothy talking couldn’t possibly be a bad idea. Whatever Thea was up to, it seemed that Chairman Hayes was no longer on board with it. Nadia remembered when the Chairman had first introduced Dorothy to the world and Agnes had speculated that it had been an odd time to introduce a potential heir. Perhaps that hadn’t been the Chairman’s idea at all.

  “I was created for the purpose of research,” Dorothy said. “It is the end-all, be-all of my existence. I cannot rest until I understand the workings of the human mind. I will not give up, nor will I settle for anything less than perfection.”

  Thea had made a similar claim when she’d been eagerly awaiting permission to vivisect Nadia. Nadia had taken it as nothing but the truth then, but this time, she found it harder to swallow. There were any number of ways Thea could have used her hunger for research for the good of mankind, and yet she was focusing on the mind/body connection with single-minded resolve. She wanted more than just research for the research’s sake.

  “Wants to be goddess,” Chairman Hayes choked out, then gasped when Dorothy twisted her hand in his collar and cut off his oxygen. He reached up to claw at her hand, but she poked her gun into his back.

  “Stop that,” she commanded, and though his eyes were unnaturally wide and his lips were turning blue, he let his hand drop.

  “Please let my father go,” Nate begged Dorothy. “There’s no need to torture him. We gave up our weapons like you asked. You don’t need to use him as a hostage anymore.”

  “I am rather angry with Daddy right now,” Dorothy said, but she loosened her hold slightly. “He has allowed you children to interfere with my work. He destroyed me to appease you. Yes, he made a Replica of me, but tell me, Nathaniel, do you forgive him for killing your original just because he made a Replica? Does it make the original Nathaniel any less dead?”

  Nate didn’t answer. But then, he didn’t have to.

  “I dedicated my entire life to making him immortal,” Dorothy continued. “I’ve been unfailingly loyal to him. And he was willing to destroy me rather than let the world know I existed.”

  Still using the Chairman as a shield, Dorothy moved toward the door. “Be a dear, Daddy, and unlock the dead bolts for me. Leave the electronic locks engaged.

  “In a way,” Dorothy continued as the Chairman followed her orders and opened the dead bolts, “I should be grateful to you for revealing exactly where I stand in Daddy’s heart. I might never have understood it if it weren’t for you. But I now also understand what humans mean when they say ignorance is bliss.

  “Here are some things you should know. One is that as Thea, I can undo the electronic locks anytime I feel like it. Two is that if something were to happen to this body, I can make another one, and it will still be genetically identifiable as the daughter of Chairman Hayes. And three is that there is a great deal of digital surveillance available in this room, and it’s child’s play for me to make it record my version of what has happened here.

  “In my version, there was a heated verbal altercation between the two of you and the Chairman.” Moving faster than seemed humanly possible, Dorothy tossed her little gun into the far corner of the room and drew one of the guns she’d confiscated earlier. “Miss Lake was unhappy with the Chairman, accusing him of causing her sister’s death, and she fired that little gun, hitting him in the buttocks. After which the altercation escalated. I tried my best to protect my dearest father now that we have finally been united.”

  “No!” Nadia screamed, figuring out what was coming a bit too late.

  “But Nathaniel went crazy and shot his own father in the head.”

  The sound of the gunshot was deafening.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nate couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

  Dorothy let his father’s limp body fall to the floor.

  It didn’t seem real. Couldn’t be real.

  Dorothy aimed the gun that had just killed his father at him, and Nate felt no inkling of alarm, his nervous system too tied up in knots to react. His ears were ringing from the explosive gunshot in the enclosed room, and when he managed to drag in a breath, the air stank of gunpowder and blood.

  The Chairman’s blood.

  His father’s blood.

  “I’m sorry, Nathaniel,” Dorothy said. The face of Thea’s puppet put on the requisite sad expression, but Nate could have sworn he saw through those eyes into the heart of Thea’s malice and madness. “I didn’t want to do this. I truly didn’t. But I know our father as well as you do. Probably better, actually.

  “You see, I have always monitored the net for security purposes. I found one of the copies of the video you and Miss Lake made while you were in hiding. You were going to use it to blackmail Daddy into stepping down, weren’t you?”

  Nate was too numb and too horrified to acknowledge the question, much less answer it. He’d come here thinking he’d been almost angry enough to kill his own father, but seeing his father lying on the floor in a pool of blood disabused him of the notion.

  “Daddy would have been furious, of course,” Dorothy continued without waiting for a response. “And he would have asked me to go looking for the videos to destroy them, just as he had me looking for the recordings you made when last we met. But until I found them all and destroyed them, he would have felt obligated to accede to your demands, no matter how furious it made him. And that would have been unacceptable.”

  “But you don’t care if those videos are released,” Nadia said in a small, shaking voice. “You don’t care that it could cause a war.”

  “I wouldn’t say I don’t care,” Dorothy said with a thoughtful frown. “I have dedicated my whole life to the well-being of my state and would hate to see it jeopardized. However, I believe that only the lower classes would be outraged enough by your claims to object with any great violence, and they don’t have the means to stage a long-term insurrection. There would be violence and there would be casualties, but the Executives of Paxco would quickly gain the upper hand.

  “In other words, unlike Daddy, I don’t think it would be the end of the world if the truth got out.” She glanced down at the body at her feet with a fond smile. “Of course, I also don’t think anyone will believe your claims after they learn the two of you conspired to assassinate the Chairman. You can be certain the video I release will be playing on the net all around the world and will be far more convincing than your quaint little confessional.”

  Nate shook himself from his trance and looked at the monster his father had created. The monster who thought it would be no big deal if Paxco’s lower classes were to take up arms against the government. So thousands of people would die. So what? As long as the government won in the end, she was okay with that.

&nbs
p; And she was also okay with killing the man she’d once claimed to want to make immortal.

  There were people pounding on the office door and yelling, though the soundproofing made their voices indistinct and their words indecipherable. The Chairman’s personal phone rang from inside his pocket, but no one was inclined to answer it. Nate imagined his father’s bodyguards must be frantic out there, but they would need a bomb or something to get into this well-defended room.

  Nate was shaking, and he wasn’t sure if it was from rage or grief or maybe even fear. He felt the weight of the still-hidden gun tucked into his pants at the small of his back. His odds of getting to it, flipping its safety off, aiming, and firing before Dorothy put about ten holes in him were slim at best, but he was so, so tempted to try it. Even though killing Dorothy would be a pointless gesture. Thea was the one who needed to die, and killing Dorothy wouldn’t accomplish that.

  “Don’t get any funny ideas, Nathaniel,” Dorothy warned. “I told you before that I was going to let you go, and I meant it. But not if you turn this into a gunfight.”

  “Why?” Nadia asked. “Why would you let us go?”

  “Because dead, you might take on martyr status. In prison, you might start oversharing with anyone who will listen, and there will be people who want to listen despite the evidence I present. But on the run, wanted for the assassination of the Chairman, you remain exactly what you are and what you should be: powerless children.”

  Nate shuddered. There was always a lot of political maneuvering that went on when the Chairmanship changed hands, and Dorothy, as an unknown who had only been introduced into Paxco society a few days ago, would have her hands full. Nate had no immediate family left, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have relatives who would see any political unrest as a chance to further their own interests, maybe even seize the Chairmanship for themselves. Dead or alive, Nate might be able to help their cause, or at least become a symbol they could rally around. The same could be said of Nadia, whose family was almost as powerful as his own. But if he and Nadia were missing, and wanted for murder and treason and any number of other crimes …

  Dorothy wasn’t going to let them go. Not really. She just wanted them to run so she could kill them somewhere else, where no one was looking and their bodies would never be found.

  “You know where the emergency exit is,” Dorothy said, gesturing. “I suggest you use it. The video will show that you and I wrestled for the gun, and you eventually hit me over the head with it and knocked me out. I will be ‘unconscious’ long enough to give you a nice head start.”

  Nate stared at his father’s body. He couldn’t just let Thea get away with this, could he? Couldn’t run away like a common criminal and thereby convince everyone that he was as guilty as Dorothy claimed.

  “My preference is that you be on the run,” Dorothy said when he didn’t immediately move for the exit. “My second choice is that you both be dead and silent. More inconvenient for me, and a little harder to stage convincingly for the video, but I’m sure I will manage if I have to. And I’ll start with Miss Lake.”

  The gun shifted, pointing at Nadia’s head. Nate’s body moved without conscious thought, and he found himself stepping in front of Nadia to shield her.

  “Nate, don’t…” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder as if to push him aside. But he wasn’t budging.

  “Go ahead and open the emergency exit, would you,” he said, his eyes locked with Dorothy’s. “It’s not as heavy as it looks.”

  “Are you sure?” Nadia asked.

  “I’m sure. We have to get out of this alive. We’re the only ones who know who and what she is, and that makes us the only ones who can stop her.”

  Dorothy laughed, and Nate had to admit that the idea of him and Nadia being able to stop her seemed absurd. They had no resources, no power, no money. They had a fledgling resistance movement that consisted of five teenagers on the run from the law. Not exactly a force to strike fear into Thea’s heart. But the odds had been against them from the very beginning, and they’d kept fighting. They would keep fighting until the bitter end.

  Nate straightened his shoulders and glared at Dorothy as she continued to chuckle over his threat and Nadia pushed the bookcase aside to reveal the exit. She might laugh now, but there was no doubt in Nate’s mind that the moment he and Nadia were out of sight, she’d be planning how she could track them down and kill them.

  Nadia opened the emergency door. It was time to go.

  Nate looked at his father’s crumpled body one more time. His eyes misted over, and his heart ached. Despite everything that had happened between them, Nate realized now that he’d always harbored a secret hope that, someday, they might reconcile their differences. Now, thanks to Dorothy, that hope was gone.

  “You could make a Replica.” His voice came out hoarse, and he hated that he was betraying any of his emotions.

  Dorothy shook her head. “But I won’t. Even if I started over with an earlier version of him, we would eventually reach an impasse. I loved our father, but like all human beings, he was resistant to change, and he could not share my vision of Paxco’s future.

  “Now go,” she commanded. “Your time here is up.”

  Vowing to himself that he would be back, that he would not allow Dorothy to win, Nate followed Nadia into the stairwell and shut the door behind them.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I’d like to thank my fans, especially those of you who reach out to me through e-mail, or Facebook, or Twitter. The writing business can be truly grueling and often frustrating, and some days, it is only your enthusiasm and kind words that keep me going.

  I’d also like to thank my editor, Melissa Frain, who gives me the perfect blend of constructive criticism and encouragement, and who helped make this a better book without making me any crazier than I already was. Thanks also to the Tor Teen art department, which has done such a wonderful job with the covers, and all the other great people at Tor who’ve worked on this book behind the scenes!

  And then there are the “usual suspects,” without whom writing would be a far lonelier and less enjoyable endeavor: my agent, Miriam Kriss; my husband, Dan; and the Deadline Dames, Devon, Jackie, Kaz, Keri, Lili, Rachel, Rinda, and Toni. Thanks for all your support!

  About the Author

  JENNA BLACK is your typical writer. Which means she’s an “experience junkie.” She got her B.A. in physical anthropology and French from Duke University. Once upon a time, she dreamed she would be the next Jane Goodall, camping in the bush making fabulous discoveries about primate behavior. Then, during her senior year at Duke, she did some actual research in the field and made this shocking discovery: primates spend something like 80 percent of their time doing such exciting things as sleeping and eating. Concluding that this discovery was her life’s work in the field of primatology, she then moved on to such varied pastimes as grooming dogs and writing technical documentation. She is now a full-time writer and lives in North Carolina with her husband.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  RESISTANCE

  Copyright © 2014 by Jenna Black

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Paul Youll

  A Tor Teen Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Black, Jenna.

  Resistance / Jenna Black. — First edition.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  Sequel to: Replica.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3372-8 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-0490-6 (e-book)

  1. Science fic
tion. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Conspiracies—Fiction. 4. Gays—Fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.B52894Rf 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013025954

  e-ISBN 9781466804906

  First Edition: March 2014