Emergent (A Beta Novel) (12 page)

I say, “What would qualify her to lead? How about emerging as a fully realized adult clone who worked directly in the lab of Dr. Lusardi and therefore has all kinds of insider information
that could be used against the humans on Demesne? How about that same clone, who used his role in Dr. Lusardi’s compound to subversively develop warfare technology that could directly lead to
the Insurrection’s success? How about arriving on Heathen and immediately organizing the former Defects into training exercises? Motivating and inspiring them? Looking after them? Natural
born leader. That’s
you
. Not Elysia.”

“You sound irritated with me.”

“I’m not irritated. I just want you to want more for yourself.”

“I want the Emergents to achieve Insurrection and reclaim Demesne.”

I want to strangle him! “But what do you want for
you
?”

To lead! I want Aidan to say.

Instead, abruptly, he says, “You. I want you.” His face turns to
surprised
. “I didn’t understand that until this very moment.”

“Wanting is a complicated emotion,” I say. I should know. Every time I look at Xander I experience incalculable hurt mixed with unbearable want. I’ll never get over him. The
only solution is that I must have him back. “It
should
be a surprise.” That Aidan wants me most of all is no surprise to me. My human instinct knew it all along, and leveraged it
for my own survival.

The biggest surprise: He doesn’t try to kiss me, like he should after such a pronouncement. Instead, he says, “Do I want in vain?”

“You could kiss me,” I whisper to him. “And find out.”

“I can’t kiss you so long as it’s the Aquine you’re thinking about,” Aidan says.

How could he possibly know that? “I don’t care about Xander,” I lie. “He’s with Elysia now. I would never take him back.”

“I don’t believe you,” says Aidan. He blows out the candles. Discussion over. His pinkie finger suddenly lights up in blue. The air outside the tree house is no longer warm and
balmy. Thunder cracks above us, and a soft, cold rain falls into our space.

“Are you punishing me because of Xander?”

Aidan says, “I’m just showing you what a leader does. Makes unilateral decisions, sometimes for no good reason at all other than that he can.”

“You’re jealous of Xander?”

“I suppose that’s what it would be called. Jealousy. Yes. It’s another new emotion you’ve caused me to feel. I don’t like it.”

“There’s no need to be jealous of Xander. He could never be the leader you are. The Emergents will never look up to him the way they do to you.”

“It’s not how the Emergents look at him that I don’t like. It’s how
you
look at him.”

“I’ve hardly spent any time with him since he and Elysia got here.”

“The amount of time you spend face-to-face with him is irrelevant. It’s the heaviness in your heart—a longing, I believe humans term it—that’s always visible on
your face now.”

“That heaviness is because of Elysia. Not him.”

“Really? How well do you even know yourself?”

Not as well as Aidan knows me, apparently.

He’s right. The heaviness in my heart just from Aidan’s suggestion of it feels like a cruel, open wound. The rain falling on it is like salt on the wound. “Please make the rain
stop,” I request of Aidan.

Aidan points his finger again, and the rain ceases. But the air does not return to being warm and balmy. Instead, it’s frigid, and I can’t help but move closer to Aidan, to seek his
warmth and comfort. Was that his plan all along?

I roll over and press my backside against Aidan’s front. He doesn’t know what to do next, so I do it for him. I reach around and place his hand over my stomach, letting him clasp me
close. But his breath does not quicken from desire caused by this closeness. I don’t get it.

“You could totally have me if you want me,” I murmur. My body aches to be touched, held, stroked, wanted.

“I only want you when I can have all of you.” Aidan places his hand over my heart, which is the one part of me that’s in no way ready to give itself to a clone.

THE NEWLY ARRIVED EMERGENT LOOKS
like a mermaid. She’s a voluptuous sort of skinny, with an hourglass figure and full bosom, porcelain-white skin
and perfectly pink cheeks, and wide fuchsia eyes with thick black eyelashes. She has long, white-blond hair streaked in shades of ocean blues, flowing down to the sides of her curvy hips. She was a
luxisstant on Demesne. No, really, the Demesne owners even have clones designed solely to take care of residents’ “luxury needs.”
Luxury
and
needs
—do those two
words even go together? I guess that on Demesne, yes, they do. Luxury is not just a perk for humans residing there. It’s a requirement.

It’s earthquake day on Heathen, because the Emergents are trying to produce a tsunami in the outlying ocean as tall—preferably much taller than—the
gigantes
. It’s
too shaky in my tree house to hang out up there for much longer, despite how much I seek its solitude, away from the new power couple, Xander and Elysia. Last night for the first time, Aidan held
me while I slept. In the morning when I awoke, he was already gone. He’d rather deal with causing natural disasters than deal with his disastrous roommate who will never be able to love him
the way he wants—and deserves—to be loved.

Pink-magenta storm clouds start to form over the jungle, and I can’t wait this one out in the tree house. I bolt toward the Rave Caves, making it there just as the light rain turns to hail
blades. I take shelter in the mess hall, which is largely empty besides the kitchen-duty Emergents preparing meals. One lone Emergent sits at a dining table as I enter the area. I sit down opposite
her.

“Do you know what role I am to have here?” Tawny asks me. Everyone on this island besides us is busy with training and duties. We are the symbolic distractions. Pretty faces with
little actual value to add to the Insurrection. I hate that. I want more to be asked of me. Perhaps I have to start by asking more of myself first. Trying for higher standards other than simple
survival.

“You aren’t being assigned a role here,” I tell Tawny, repeating what Aidan told me the night before, another of Elysia’s directives. I assumed Tawny knew.

Her perfect-pretty face registers
shock
and then
indignation
. A clone without an assigned mission? “But—but—what am I supposed to do here, then?”

I shrug. “Wait out the storm,” I suggest. Whatever happened between Elysia and Tawny back on Demesne clearly caused Elysia to hold a grudge; maybe it will eventually go away.

Tawny says, “The storm should pass in an hour, yes?”

I nod. “Yes.” It’s not even worth explaining to her that she misunderstood me.

“I’ve never seen rain before. I want to go outside and experience it. I hate being locked up in here.”

“The rain was coming down so hard that I could barely walk the short distance here from my tree house. You only just escaped Demesne. Do you really want to go outside now just to be killed
by murderous hail?”

Tawny inspects my face closely, completely ignoring my wise counsel. She’s already forgotten about going outside. She says, “You were supposed to be dead. I’ve never seen a
First before.” I swear I hear a tinge of
contempt
in her voice, which is confirmed when she adds, “Elysia is more refined than you. Your wild aesthetic would never have been
accepted on Demesne.”

“I never asked for it to be,” I say. I’m starting to see why my clone disliked Tawny.

Boom!
“Get under the dining table!” I order Tawny as the ground begins to shake hard and the cave sounds like it has a freight train running through the middle of it.

She’s too shocked by the sudden shaking to move, so I grab her and pull her down beneath the table with me. The boulder that serves as the dining hall’s door literally bounces up
from the ground and moves at least five feet closer inside the room. My heart pounds with the nervousness that always comes with an earthquake, but also excitement. This is the Emergents’
biggest tremor yet! Well done, soldiers!

Tawny grips my arm hard until the shaking stops, her eyes registering
abject fear.
Even after the tremor stops, she doesn’t let go of her grip. It hurts.

“The quake is over. You can let go now,” I tell her.

“How long did it last?”

“I don’t know. Maybe thirty seconds?”

“Felt like thirty minutes. You’re sure it’s over?”

“At least today’s round, yes.”

She lets go of my arm, which is ringed in red from her tight squeeze.

“That was
terrifying!
” Tawny says. “If that was a preview of Insurrection, I don’t like it. I much prefer the luxury of Demesne.”

“Freedom or luxury. I don’t think you can have both.”

I step out from under the table and stand up, extending a hand to her to help lift her up. “I heard some plates breaking in the food prep area. Let’s go sweep up the mess.”

“Sweep?” Tawny asks, her face set to
appalled
. “I’m not trained for that role. I do more important work.”

Interesting. Perhaps I can leverage her caste snobbery to get some information from her. I guide us toward the food prep area, where plates that were stolen from Demesne households are now
smashed in pieces on the ground. “I’ll sweep,” I say. “You watch.”

“A clone worker watching a human
clean
? Preposterous!”

“A social experiment,” I suggest.

“It will have to be, because I don’t clean.” She looks down at her fingers. “And there’s so much dirt under my nails now. Who is the aesthetician here?”

I grab a broom and begin to demonstrate sweeping smashed porcelain plates into a dustpan. “You’re your own aesthetician here.”

“That’s almost as shocking as that earthquake,” Tawny quips, and I laugh to make her feel at ease.

“So what happened between you and Elysia on Demesne?”

“Nothing happened like a fight, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps she distrusts me because of Xanthe.”

“Who’s Xanthe?”

“Xanthe was a clone who also worked in the Governor’s household. Xanthe and I shared living quarters. She was like an older sister to Elysia, which was highly inappropriate,
obviously. That’s how I knew Xanthe had become a Defect, when she sought unnecessary companionship.”

I hand Tawny a slim, sharp stick. “You can use that to clean the dirt from under your nails. So how come Xanthe didn’t escape to Heathen? No aestheticians here?” I tease.

“Hardly!” says Tawny. “Xanthe was devoted to the cause and didn’t place importance on matters such as grooming, which I constantly tried to aid her with, but she
didn’t care. After she turned Defect, she helped organize the Insurrection, and that’s all she cared about. When her activities were discovered, she tried to escape. The Governor and
his henchmen threw her off a cliff.”

I gulp. I didn’t expect that ending to the story. “That’s horrible!” From everything I’ve heard about them, these Demesne people make me ashamed to be human.

“Right in front of Elysia,” Tawny adds.

By my calculations, Elysia’s short life so far has been one unrelenting horror after another. Was she ever allowed any moments of casual fun, or joy, on Demesne? It seems like my clone has
suffered more in the few months she lived on Demesne than I have in my entire seventeen years. I grieve for her as much as I resent her. She makes me want to rethink every supposed
“injustice” I perceived happened to me in my former, relatively privileged life in Cerulea. “What does that have to do with Elysia disliking you?”

“Before I awoke, I was the Governor’s consort. She may think I relayed information to the Governor about Xanthe going Defect.”

“Did you?”

Tawny’s face turns solemn. “I did. I was so ignorant then. I didn’t understand what was at stake. I thought only of how to serve the Governor.”

“Did you really want a baby with him?” I ask, repeating what Aidan told me she’d revealed at the Emergent meeting.

“I wanted to experience being alive. Truly alive. What better way to be alive than to create life?”

“Even if that life was created with someone who owned you?” I can’t imagine how anyone would want to build a life, much less create a baby, with a partner who literally owned
him or her.

“What other option does a clone have?” says Tawny matter-of-factly. “I wanted a baby, and the Governor was the only male specimen I consorted with. I knew it wasn’t
possible for a clone to become pregnant. But hoping for it was what caused me to try ’raxia. I knew there was something missing, something waiting to be unlocked inside me. It was Elysia
murdering Ivan and then escaping that inspired me to finally try the ’raxia. Once I took it, I understood. I felt my soul for the first time—really felt it, rather than just suspected
it being inside me, some Defect trait that had to be hidden or risk death.”

“Elysia’s barely had a chance to live her own life. She shouldn’t have to be responsible for carrying a new one.” My own words surprise me. I don’t understand what
I feel for my clone. But I can’t not see me in her and project what she might be feeling.