Emergent (A Beta Novel) (6 page)

Finally, I give up and just let him carry me.

I’m so tired.

Into his shoulder, I murmur, “Why does she have to come back to the Rave Caves, too? She’s not even a real person. She’s a fake. She’s a—”

At last, I’ve drawn a response. Xander throws me from his shoulder to land me standing opposite him, so close I can feel the hiss of his breath on my neck. “She’s not a fake.
Elysia is very real. Be kind to her.”

Is this the biggest joke I’ve ever not laughed at? “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I’m not. Elysia will need your compassion, and your strength.”

“Excuse me, I’m the one who was left for dead, cloned against my will, and forced to escape to the Rave Caves with a posse of Defects.”

“Emergents. And she’s had it harder.”

“I don’t even believe you.”

“Believe me. Your clone is pregnant.”

I die again.

“Is it yours?” I ask him.

“No.”

Scientists say they don’t make clones from teenage Firsts. They say they only make clones that can’t replicate.

Adults lie and lie and lie.

“Why should I believe you?”

“If you know me at all,” says Xander, “you believe me.”

I do believe him. If Xander had murdered someone, he’d straight-up admit:
Yes, I did it.
He’d hold out his wrists to be cuffed and taken away, ready to accept his judgment.
Did he knock up my clone?
No.
He said it; he means it.

If he didn’t do it, who did? Is my clone not just my worst nightmare, but also a slut?

“SLUT!” MOTHER SCREAMS FROM THE
witness stand. I should be concentrating on more important matters—like my imminent
sentencing—but I can’t help let out a little laugh at how funny Mother sounds, the shrillness of her exclamation completely at odds with her breathy, childlike voice. I was supposed to
be an emotionless clone. Instead, I’m a victim of a terrible human oddity—a funny bone. Further enraged by my laughter, Mother points her bejeweled, burgundy-painted fingertip at me,
and repeats her shrill accusation. “SLUT SLUT SLUT!”

The judge raps her gavel. “Order! Order! There’s no need for such shouting here. Such ugly words. Tsk, tsk. Compose yourself, Mrs. Bratton.”

Mother wipes her brow and takes a deep breath. “Sorry, Your Honor,” Mother says quietly in her babyish voice. It’s so obvious she’s not sorry. The only thing she’s
sorry about is that rash purchase she made: me.

By Demesne standards, Mother’s family is poor. Mother’s husband, Governor Bratton, is the CEO of Demesne, the hired help to the rich property owners. Mother wanted to make a lavish,
frivolous purchase like her richer friends, who looked down on her. She wanted to impress them by being the first to own a Beta—a teen test clone. Her older daughter, Astrid, had just left
home for college, so Mother thought she could purchase a replacement companion to her other children, Ivan and Liesel.

Mother’s not sorry that she treated her Beta like dirt, or that her son violated and impregnated her Beta. I’m not even sure she’s sorry that her Beta killed her son before her
son could kill her Beta. The only thing she’s really sorry about is that all her fancy friends know what a fool she was to impulsively purchase a Beta.

The judge turns to me. “How do you plead, Beta?”

“To which charge?” I ask, my voice filled with
teenage disdain
. The crowd in the courtroom audibly gasps.

Alexander, sitting in the front row, turns around and proudly tells the crowd, “They breed these Betas to be extra insouciant nowadays.”

I datacheck the unfamiliar word.

Insouciant.
Good word. I like it. That’s what I want to be, free from concern, no worries about my judgment day coming sooner rather than later, not a care in the
world.

I look directly at Mother, pointing at her as she did me, and I insouciantly accuse her of the word that’s my hope for her future: “INDIGENT INDIGENT INDIGENT!”

Mother faints from the harsh accusation and has to be carried away by the Governor’s clone henchmen. The crowd roars its disapproval—“Silence the Beta! Death to the
Beta!”—in my direction as the judge struggles to get the room back under control.

“Order! Order!” the judge admonishes. The crowd quiets, and she turns to me again. “The murder charge! How do you plead? Don’t dare with further insouciance.”

“Guilty,” I admit. “But it was self-defense.”

“Don’t be absurd,” says the judge. “Clones have no rights to defend themselves.” She bangs down her gavel. “Guilty as charged. Next charge: inciting
insurrection. How do you plead?”

“I didn’t start it,” I say, as if I’m stating the obvious, because I am. Why do these people have to pin
everything
on me? “I just picked up where the other
Emergents left off.”

“Guilty!” says the judge. “Next charge: stealing my boyfriend. How do you plead?”

I look at Alexander, who shrugs, and then I look to the judge, who looks exactly like me, only with honey-colored human eyes, and unruly matted hair.
Seriously, get a brush already.
“I didn’t steal him,” I tell Judge Zhara. “I just borrowed him to help me get through a rough time. It’s Tahir I love. Tahir, who is a Beta clone like me; Tahir,
who—”

Judge Zhara cuts me off, sounding as shrill as Mother. “GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!” Zhara shrieks. The crowd goes wild, jumping to their feet, hooting and hollering as they clap their
hands in approval.

The Governor, standing at the door, exults with joy. “SLUT SLUT SLUT!” he yells at me.

The bailiff—a clone, aestheticized with a black rose on the side of his face—comes to the stand to handcuff me. “Her sentence?” he asks Judge Zhara.

“Kill her, already!” Judge Zhara tells the bailiff. Then she turns to face me. “Once you die, I can finally get my soul back.”

It’s so dark here in the Rave Caves. I can’t stop sleeping. Maybe when I wake up, this nightmare will be over. Maybe when I wake up, I won’t be pregnant, I
won’t be a fugitive, and I won’t be pretending to care for the Aquine who considers himself my protector.

I wanted to escape with Tahir, my true-love Beta, not with Alexander and the Emergents. That I managed to escape Demesne was itself a miracle, but Tahir faced the most formidable obstacle of
all—his parents. After Tahir’s First died in a surfing accident, his parents’ grief was so great that they used their wealth and power to have his dead body cloned. My Tahir is a
Beta like me. Unfortunately, his parents cling even harder to their First’s clone; I don’t know why. All they are doing is stalling their next wave of grief, when Beta Tahir finally
escapes from them—or dies from Awfuls—or both.

In my sweetest fantasy for the future, I spend every moment of however many months I have left with my Tahir, before the Awfuls that Dr. Lusardi programmed into us cause us to burn out and die.
I suppose if it’s my fantasy, I can be greedier. Hope for better. I wish for a future where Tahir and I don’t have to live our lives on the run, forced into being outlaws by the sins of
our humans. Tahir and I live freely, wherever we want, however long we want. We won’t live in paradise, and we won’t live in dark caves. We blend in like regular people, with no need to
hide in remote corners of the world. We roam city streets and climb cathedrals and thrash through rivers, living our lives to the fullest, appreciating those lives more than the humans because we
appreciate how precious each breath of freedom is.

When Tahir and I do finally die, we’re old, shriveled-up Betas, clasping our hands in one last clench of shared joy before we succumb to deaths earned by old age, and not violence or cruel
programming.

Zhara, my First, lives. She died and then got a do-over. May I please have one, too?

“How long have I been asleep?” I ask Alexander, who’s lying next to me on a surprisingly cozy bed made of sticks and boughs. Thousands of tiny pink crystals
glimmer from the cave walls, highlighting the sharp angle of his cheekbones. “It’s so dark in here. I feel like I could have been asleep for days and not known the
difference.”

He removes a piece of hair covering my brow and places a soft kiss on my forehead. “You’ve been asleep for maybe fourteen hours. You needed the rest after everything that happened
yesterday. It was a lot. For me too. Wish I could sleep it off as well as you do. I’ve barely slept since we got to the Rave Caves.”

“Everything is different now,” I say, acknowledging the invisible third party in the cave: Zhara.

“Everything is weird now,” says Alex. He pauses, and then adds, “Weird
er
. It was already pretty strange. But nothing is different in terms of my commitment to you and
the baby.” His hand touches my belly, and I know, even if he doesn’t, that what he really cherishes is the unborn thing inside me. I will never cherish it. For some reason only he can
understand, he’s chosen to love and protect the thing for me. That’s why I can’t return him to Zhara. Yet. The baby needs someone on its side. That someone won’t be its
birth mother. As soon as it is emerged, I plan on giving it to Alex and letting him figure out what to do with it. I can give it life, but he can give it values. Loyalty. Strength. Kindness.

For a second, I think I feel the baby’s first kick; then I realize it’s not the baby shoving me, it’s the ground below my bed. The ground shakes for a good twenty seconds as
the sound of rumbling reverberates across the cave walls. Startled, I grab on to Alex, tucking my head against his neck and hanging on to his firm chest. “What was that?” I ask.

But he laughs instead of fears. “I think that was an earthquake! Incredible!” He presses his hands together and…applauds?

“I’m terrified! Why do you clap?”

“Because if that’s what I think it was, it was the Emergents practicing to build a tsunami.”

I datacheck
tsunami
and do not like the result.

“A tsunami could wipe out this island,” I say to Alex.

“Or it could be used to take the Insurrection directly to the Demesne property owners.”

“Oh,” I say. That’s a good idea, maybe. “Nice earthquake, then.” The tremor was not so nice to my queasy stomach, which churns in anxiety or morning sickness,
I’m not sure which. I grab on to my belly, thinking I’m about to throw up, but the moment passes. “Do they know?” I ask Alex.

“Who? Know what?”

“The Emergents. About the baby.”

“They know. You’re their hero.”

“That’s absurd. I’ve done nothing to deserve their admiration.”

“You took justice on a human,” he says soothingly. “You represent their potential future.”

“Their future? I may turn Awful before they can even achieve Insurrection. How could I possibly represent their future, if I’ve been programmed to die by eighteen or nineteen?”
The Awfuls, the curse of the Beta clone. Thanks, Dr. Lusardi. May you rest in peace—
never
.

Alex reminds me, “We don’t know your expiration date for sure. If you can get pregnant against all odds, maybe there’s a cure for the Awfuls. Maybe you’re the cure to the
Emergents’ sterility.” Demesne adult clones are programmed to expire at the human equivalent of age forty, once their usefulness is complete and before their superior physical aesthetic
turns displeasing. That gives these Emergents ten to fifteen years at most to enjoy their reclaimed land and newly independent lives, should they achieve Insurrection, unless they can figure out
how to undo their genetic programming and make babies. “You’re their hope.”

I don’t want to be the Emergents’ hope. I want to be free of their struggles. I just want to be a regular girl, allowed to live in peace with the boy she loves. Tahir. Not Alexander
Blackburn. I want to have that peace not attached to a premature death sentence.

I roll over on my side, turning away from Alex. “They don’t need me. Let the Insurrection bring their souls back instead. Then the Emergents can finally be happy—and
hopeful.” And miserable, just like the humans.

Alex says, “I thought you already realized you have a soul.”

“I suspected. When I saw that Zhara was still alive, I realized why.”

“That’s not why. Soul extraction is a myth. The Demesne clones have always had souls.”

Instantly I am alert and awake. “Explain!”

“The answers are outside this room. The Emergents have their own way to explain it to you.”

I jump to my feet, more than ready to face this new day unraveling yet another ball of human lies. Excited + Angry = Awful. That’s the equation for the new Elysia—whose soul is no
lie, apparently.