Archetype (20 page)

E
mma? How do you feel?”

I yank at my bound wrists. Struggle against the binding across my forehead and chest. “What is going on?” I ask through gritted teeth.

Dr. Travista lays a hand on my shoulder. “Just calm down. We’ll get to that in a moment. What’s the last thing you remember?”

The last thing I remember. Memories of Noah. Holding on to myself with a fierceness and desperation that surprised me.

And winning.

Declan appears on the other side of the table, a deep crease between his eyes. “Emma, answer the question.”

“What am I doing here?” I ask and twist my bound wrists. I pull hard enough to cause pain, making my eyes glass over with tears. I am too angry to fake frightened ones. “Did something happen?”

The two share a frustrating glance over me, holding some private conversation with their eyes. I wait impatiently for their response, but I wait nonetheless. They can never know this experiment failed.

Declan is the first to react. “Nothing serious happened. You fainted during your run this morning.”

The lie stings. One day the lies will not surprise me and I will be able to let them glance by, leaving me unscathed. “Then why am I strapped to a table?”

Dr. Travista takes over here. “I needed you to hold still as a precaution in case you woke up while I was checking you over.”

“Is it necessary now?”

They exchange another look, and I bite the inside of my cheek, tasting copper. Finally, Dr. Travista begins removing the straps. I sit up and a low throb of pain courses through my head. I wince and press the heels of my palms into my eyes. The pressure barely touches the ache.

Dr. Travista taps my leg. “I’ll get you something for that headache. Can you tell me what you remember first?”

I think back over the course of the last few days. Everything started going wrong the day Declan told me about the supposed rape and kidnapping. That was right after the opening. “The show at the gallery,” I say, mentally crossing my fingers.

Declan’s posture relaxes and Dr. Travista nods. Smiles. “Good. That was just last night. No harm done, then. I’ll get you something for that headache.”

He leaves me alone with Declan, who places himself right in front of me. He pushes my hair back and tucks both sides behind my ears. It takes everything I have to keep my muscles relaxed. I smile at him and he kisses my forehead. I slide my arms around his waist and lay my head against his chest. His heart beats fast and in contrast to the slow strokes of his hand on my head.

Being this close to him right now makes me sick, but I have a part to play and I plan to play it well. I will destroy him for what he has done to me. But I need help. I need Noah, but he needs to know I am okay. I hope he is watching this.

“I had the strangest dream just now,” I say.

Declan stiffens. The stroking over my head stops, then restarts a moment later. “Oh yeah?”

“I dreamed about Zeus turning into a white bull.”

Declan chuckles. “That is strange.”

“He and some goddess heroine stormed a castle together.”

“Did they win?”

I look up and smile at him. “Yeah. The bad guy went down in flames.”

 • • • 

Dr. Travista wants me to stay overnight, and like the good little wife and patient I am, I comply with a smile and a doctor-knows-best attitude. Declan sets up a cot beside the single bed in my room and stays. I hate that he will not leave me alone.

To my surprise, I sleep through the night. I am too physically and mentally exhausted to do anything else. If I dreamed, I do not remember anything, and I wake in the same position I fell asleep in.

Declan is still asleep when my eyelids slide open. He faces me, and the hard planes of his face are so soft. Seeing him like this, so innocent and young-looking, it is easy to understand why I fell in love with him.

And I hate myself for it. For betraying Noah. It is no wonder he was so angry and hurt. He had every right. It was not my fault—I get that—but even so, how did I forget about my husband so easily?

But I did not forget completely,
I remind myself. It took a while, but I finally remembered. There are still a lot of holes to fill, but at least I have filled in the important parts. Now if I could just shovel out the last few months and make them disappear. I do not want to feel this pain every time I look at Declan, because God help me, I still love him for reasons that will never make sense.

I get up, telling myself this is part of the act I must play, that I will loathe every second of what I am about to do. But the truth is, I need to do this. I need to allow myself one last moment before I say good-bye to Declan for good. Because when we leave this room today, I will leave as his enemy and do whatever it takes to bring him down.

I slide onto the cot, facing him. He stirs and peers through slitted lids. His arm lifts automatically to let me roll into his chest. The steady rhythm of his heart beats under my cheek and the heat of his body seeps into my skin. It is as familiar as my own now. Tears sting my eyes and I hide my face in his chest, taking slow, steady breaths. Once, being here in his arms felt as natural as breathing. Now, it does nothing more than shatter my heart.

 • • • 

It is more than two days before Declan returns to work. He claims he needs the time off, but he spends a lot of that time closed off in the bedroom on the phone. Whatever is going on with the “team” has gone horribly wrong. All I get out of his conversations is that they are stuck across the border—which border, I can only guess at. The west, I assume. Contact has been lost and he fears someone found them out and is holding them. I cross my fingers that this is the case.

Declan stays long enough to have breakfast with me on the third day, seeming hesitant to leave me. I do not think I can last another day with him but continue to act the part of his adoring wife.

“I think I will go paint today,” I say, pushing my food around my plate. “Something new. I am done with beaches for a very long time,” I add and laugh. It feels unnatural.

“That’s a great idea. What will you paint?”

I shrug noncommittally. “I do not know. I am hoping the holograms will inspire me.”

He stands and kisses my temple. “Well, whatever you decide, I’m sure it will be brilliant.” He takes his plate into the kitchen and there is a clatter when he sets it in the sink. “Call if you need anything.”

I nod, staring intently at the remains of eggs and toast on my plate. My stomach flips nervously. If I am right, Noah will come. Hopefully, he will have a plan to get me out of here. I cannot take much more of these lies.

“Emma?” I turn to find Declan watching me. “You okay?”

“Yes, why?”

“You seem distant.”

I smile and shrug. “Just thinking about the spring. I hope it comes early.”

His lips thin slightly and he nods. “It’ll be beautiful. You’ll love it.”

I realize what he must have heard in my lie: the very words he used to try to coax me into submission at the lab. His talk of spring.

“I will love anything that is not covered in snow,” I tell him with a roll of my eyes and a grin.

I stand with my plate and meet him in the kitchen. When my dishes clatter home with his in the sink, I take him by the waist and twist him to face me. The hard lines of his face disappear and he smiles crookedly down at me.

“I will miss the fireside nights, though,” I whisper.

He leans to kiss me and I push up on my toes to meet him. He tastes of coffee and toast, smells of heavy musk. My heart wrenches painfully at the fond familiarity of this. No matter how much I have tried to distance myself from him these past days, it is still too hard to let go completely.

But I will.

He has left me no other choice.

I wave good-bye to him and clean up the kitchen with shaking hands. My nerves are tripping with the release of anxiety. I want to run out of here to see if Noah is in the studio, but I have to act as if everything is normal. Just another day.

The hum of the teleporter sounds. It must be Declan, and I am glad I did not go running off.

I shut off the faucet and fling off the excess water on my hands. “Forget something?” I ask and grab a hand towel.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

I whirl at the sound of Noah’s voice. My heart thumps as if it will break through my rib cage. He wears a day’s worth of beard growth and his cropped waves are a crazy mess on his head. Dark shadows live under his eyes. He looks like hell and bliss all rolled into one.

I try to walk around the island and end up running to him. He catches me and buries his face in my neck. I clutch a handful of his hair in my fist and choke out a strangled laugh.

“I knew you would come,” I whisper.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said. “If I’d had any other choice—”

“No. I know. I am the one who is sorry. I did not know before, but now I remember. I remember how we met and how you proposed and . . .” I pull away and clasp his face, lightly scraping my nails over his sideburns, holding us nose to nose. “Noah, I am so sorry. You must hate—”

“Emma, stop.” His hands circle my wrists, but he does not pull them away.

“Why did you not tell me the truth before? Why all the secrets?”

He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “You still don’t understand.”

I grip his face and shake his eyes back open. “All I need to understand,” I say earnestly, “is that you still love me.”

His lips part to say something, but I cannot wait any longer. I kiss him. He does not stop it, but his hands hover over my cheeks as if debating it. Finally—
finally—
his hands tighten on either side of my head and his return kiss is desperate. This kiss feels as if it is my first breath after a lifetime of being forced to hold it. I want to cry and laugh and scream and claw and crawl inside him. I do not care that I do not understand what has happened, because nothing matters more than being with him in this moment. Holding him. Feeling him. Tasting him.

It is the most natural thing in the world to force my hands up his T-shirt and stroke his hot skin, the trail of hair over his stomach. His breath stills, as do his lips, and he jerks away as if my touch burns him.

The glow of tears in his amber eyes startles me. I reach for him and he snaps his hands up between us.

“Don’t,” he says with a pained, deep sound.

“What? Why? I am your wife, Noah.”

“But that’s just it,” he says, his voice choked. “You aren’t. God knows I feel as if I’m looking at a miracle, that I’ve dreamed these past horrifying months, but I see the truth every damn day. I
see her
every day.
You
aren’t my wife.”

I
will not let him hurt me again. I will not let him lie to me anymore. “The hell I am not. I remembered things when Travista tried to erase my memories. I remembered enough to know the truth.”

I cup my hands around the sides of his neck and force him to look me in the eyes. “Remember what we said about the hearts?
You
first painted them for me. Now I paint them for you. I did that without even remembering why, but that is how strong—”

“Stop,” he says, pulling my hands away. He pushes by me, running his hands through his hair.

I spin with him, gaping. “Are you that upset about Declan? That was not my fault.”

His breath hisses through gritted teeth. “Oh, trust me, I’m insanely pissed about Declan, but no, I don’t blame you. This situation is way more fucked up than that.” He stands at the island now and slams a fist down on the top, rattling a bowl nearby. “I can’t fucking believe this is happening.”

“You cannot believe
what
is happening? Noah, you have to talk to me. You have to make me understand, because the more you push me away—” I stop, unable to let the thought fully form, let alone tell him. My heart is shattering right now.

He shakes his head and moves swiftly toward me. His fingers bite into my upper arm as he spins me toward the teleporter. “Let’s go. You just have to see.”

“See what? Jesus, you are hurting me. Let me go.” I twist out of his hand.

Stepping back, he raises a hand for me to step into the teleporter, and I go after only a moment’s hesitation. I am almost afraid to see what has him on edge, but I am anxious to finally learn the truth.

The floor gives under our weight and the sensors read our information. The difference between Declan’s and Noah’s is not much, even though Declan has a couple more inches on Noah in height.

Noah taps a port number into the keypad and my living room melts into stone walls and floors and a flurry of people. When we appear, several people do double takes and stop, and this reaction ripples throughout the room until they are all staring at us. It is a command center almost exactly like the one I saw in the memory when he proposed to me.

Stations of tables and computers form semicircles over wide, gray stone steps for several rows. The back wall is one gigantic computer screen, but not just that wall . . .
all of them.
It is like Declan’s computer, only these walls are comprised of multiple images. It is hundreds of cameras watching hundreds of different places all at once.

“Burke isn’t the only business we’ve sold Tucker Securities to,” Noah tells me. “We’re everywhere.”

“You are a genius,” I whisper.

“No, my wife is. Was,” he adds more to himself, then says, “I know computers; that’s all. She knew we could turn high-tech security against them and find their weak spots.”

I clear my throat, unsuccessfully ignoring the pang of hurt. I do not understand why he says these things when I am standing right here. Did he marry someone else and I just have not remembered?

“You were going to show me something?” I ask, needing the answers before I go crazy speculating.

He takes me by the elbow. “Yeah, let’s go.”

He leads me out of the room and down a dark stone hallway. Our soft-soled shoes shuffle over concrete. Everyone we pass looks at me with surprise, gasping or cursing or making the sign of the cross over their chest. It does not give me a good feeling. I already wish I had stayed home.

We turn a corner and I shoulder into a tall man who surprises me by taking me roughly by the upper arms and forcing me to look into his familiar eyes. There is no sign I ever broke his nose. I am glad of this.

“Foster,” I say and smile. “Hey.”

Foster returns my smile. “Hey yourself, Emma Wade.”

Noah pulls me away from Foster. “Birmingham, look, we both know—”

Foster holds a hand up. “No, man, you look. She isn’t like the rest. We’re missing something—”

“We aren’t getting into this again. She isn’t Emma.”

I turn a glare on him because he is going too far. First he tells me I am not his wife; now he is saying I am not
Emma
? Where does he get off? “You are really starting to piss me off.”

Foster folds his arms and nods toward me, though he never takes his eyes off Noah. “Sounds like Emma to me.”

Noah glares between the two of us and I feel something deep set in my bones, like this is not the first time he has looked at Foster and me the same way. Finally, he tugs on me. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Foster walks on my other side, forgoing his previous engagement. My stomach twists in nervous knots the longer we wind through hallways. I cannot believe I am about to get some real answers.

We finally reach the end of a hallway, and Noah enters first, his gaze directed to the back left corner of the room.

I follow him in, though every bone in my body now vibrates with shock. Every muscle feels weak and my equilibrium is dangerously off-kilter. I recognize the medical vid screens inside to my left, though I cannot believe my eyes. The only reason I continue forward is to read what my mind denies to be true, and even then, it is through tear-blurred vision.

PATIENT 1: EMMA WADE.
The entire left side of the screen is a slowly spinning body that is no more than an outline with streaming medical data. No different from what I recall seeing before.

It is the right side I have never seen before.

PATIENT 2: ADRIENNE TUCKER.

My knees give out and I slump to the floor, barely cognizant of the hands stopping me from landing too hard. Patient 2, Adrienne, is an enlarged visual of a fetus. The black-and-white ultrasound image flashes with color with the baby’s movements and a tiny heartbeat.

I cannot tear my focus from this image and am only distantly aware of the cold chill of tile seeping through my pants to my knees and shins.

Noah kneels beside me and follows my gaze. Then he points into the corner. “Over there. Proof that you aren’t Emma Wade. Meet my wife and our daughter.”

I reluctantly shift my gaze from the screen and follow his finger. I stifle a cry behind the back of my hand. Breathing becomes difficult and I desperately want to rip my gaze away from Her, but I cannot. Her hazel eyes bore into mine, and I can almost see Her in the white room again. Long, dark hair, tilted grin . . .

Only She is not smiling. There is no light of amusement in Her eyes.

She floats.

She stares unblinking in a full bodysuit of solid white. She is also very pregnant. Probably nearing the end of Her third trimester.

“I found her like this,” Noah says. “Brain-dead but alive. Barely. Another half hour and she might have been. She sent Foster through the teleporter, and by the time I got to the compound with a backup team, she was lying in a pile of dead bodies.”

A hoarse sob breaks free of my chest and I realize a thin film of tears coats my cheeks. I cannot hear anything he tells me. The body floating in a tank screams at me in a pitch only I can hear. The screams echo in my ears, bouncing off every available surface, looking for a way to escape.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. My throat and chest are tight, trying to reject the needed oxygen. Already, the edges of the room grow hazy and gray. “No.”

Noah nods. “Yes. I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but I didn’t think you’d believe me otherwise.”

I push my hands through my hair, pulling the strands taut. “I thought—I thought this place was a memory.”

Foster kneels on my other side. “What do you mean? We haven’t even been in this place a year. Emma’s never been here.”

Noah sighs beside me. “Is this what you were talking about in the studio? You said you remembered floating in water. You mentioned Adrienne.”

Foster’s attention snaps to Noah. “What are you talking about?”

Noah shakes his head. “I wish I knew.” He touches my back so lightly, it is almost as if his hand is merely a brush of wind. “You have to tell me what you know.”

I close my eyes. “Behind us is a row of hospital beds with curtains separating them. Cabinets of medical supplies on the wall. Sonya. Is she here? She is almost always here. Almost always with one of Dr. Travista’s books. She sleeps on the bed to the far right.”

“That’s right,” Sonya says from behind me. “I do. How did you know?”

I open my eyes and twist around. Sonya watches me with dark, narrowed eyes. Seeing her and the beds and the cabinets and the same light blue walls I have been staring at for months . . .

“No,” I moan, and my chest shudders with another sob. “This is not happening.”

Foster glances between the other two. “What’s going on?”

I shake my head sharply from side to side, trying to stabilize my thoughts. “You tried to kill me here,” I whisper hoarsely to Noah. I point straight ahead. “The tank used to be there. You turned off the life support and Sonya stopped you.”

Foster glares at Noah. “Is that true?” He jerks his head up to Sonya for confirmation. “Is it?”

“Yes,” Sonya says.

Noah lets me go and drops hard to the floor. He stares at me with wide eyes.

“They were only nightmares at first,” I say to no one in particular. “Not once did I think they were real. Over time I believed them to be a bad memory.” Another sob breaks through. “I still have these dreams. Almost every night.”

I stand and turn to face Her. I came here for answers, only to come away with more questions. I have been seeing this place through Her eyes.

I draw close and search for something to explain everything. We are identical down to the dark freckle on the left side of our necks. But there are differences, too. One being the luckenbooth on Her left hand. She also has a long scar down the side of Her right cheek. If there are other scars, I cannot see them through the suit covering nearly Her entire body.

I lay my hands on the tank. The glass is room temperature and vibrates against my palms. “Who am I?” I ask.

“Not who,” Sonya says. “What.”

I spin around, heat surging like a deadly tidal wave inside me. “Do
not
give me vague answers. Tell me what you know.”

Sonya does not flinch and delivers the message without hesitation. “You’re a clone. The first successful
intelligent
human clone in history, from what we can tell.”

I look to Noah for verification, but he remains on the floor, his face buried in his hands.

Foster, on the other hand, glances between me and the tank behind me with a slack jaw. “Someone want to explain how Emma’s clone has been seeing through Emma’s body?”

They all look to me for the answer, but my body is weightless and the edges of my vision grow dark. The darkness closes in and soon the room will disappear. Maybe it will dissolve this strange new world with it, because nothing makes sense.

I am a clone?

Not real.

Not Noah’s wife.

Not Emma Wade.

Her memories.

Her family.

Her friends.

Her life.

Not mine.

Never mine.