Emergent (A Beta Novel) (26 page)

ONCE AGAIN, I HAVE DAD’S
mantra in my ear:
Hold your friends close and your enemies closer.
Bahiyya Fortesquieu is a strange combination of
both. She’s gracious and generous. But she clearly wants to either control our every move, or give us genuine privacy. I learned that while I hid in the wardrobe while she was having the maid
look under my bed for a ring she said she’d lost that she wanted to give to Elysia. She’s just like any typical intrusive parent, I guess—but the stakes feel so much higher, with
an Insurrection to pull off. She could be our unlikely ally (because ultimately she wants what’s best for Tahir—whatever makes him happiest), or our worst foe (because ultimately she
thinks only she can determine what’s best for Tahir). The only way to gauge is to get to know her better.

I go looking for her in the garden, which Elysia has told me is Bahiyya’s sacred spot. I’ve gotten so used to being surrounded by hard-bodied, hardworking, too-attractive clones with
vined faces and fuchsia eyes that it’s surprising to see a gardener in these parts who has long gray hair, a slight pudge around her hips, and human brown eyes over a gently wrinkled face.
“You do your own gardening?” I ask Bahiyya. At the periphery of the rows of coral-red torchflowers that surround the Aviate landing pad at her family’s home, she’s on her
knees, wearing gardening gloves, and holding weed scissors.

She smiles at me. She gives a great mom smile—warm and welcoming. “Indeed,” Bahiyya says. “I enjoy gardening. I find it very peaceful and contemplative.”

“Be careful those torchflowers don’t make you
too
peaceful,” I say, instantly regretting my comment. Is it okay to joke with such a fancy and important lady?

Luckily, she laughs. “Don’t worry. I won’t be making any ’raxia from these seeds. But if I did, you can be assured these flowers would only produce premium-quality
opiate. Not like the inferior grade that boy Ivan made, which made him so crazy. These torchflowers are grown with more care than the ones at Governor’s House.”

“Ivan, the boy who hurt Elysia? He made his own ’raxia?”

“His parents didn’t discover it until after his death, but yes. Everyone knew he was mentally disturbed; certainly, his experiments with different grades of homegrown ’raxia
didn’t help. He was an addict, I believe. Once you become an addict, you lose the peacefulness that ’raxia is supposed to elicit. Instead, you become violent and crazy.”

“I know. That’s how I died—but didn’t. Too much ’raxia and I went crazy. Totally lost any semblance of good judgment.”

I want her to feel as comfortable with me as she seems to want me to feel with her. Are we both just being honest, or walking a tightrope?

“You won’t make that mistake again, I assume?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No way.” I believe it when I say it. But I know: The best I can do is try. Every day. My heart clenches, remembering Aidan, who cared about me so much he tried to
ensure that all temptation for me to fall back into addiction was removed from me. Aidan. He deserved so much better than losing his life to a failed Insurrection. He deserved a real mate. I should
have been that to him. His lover, and his fighter. His true companion, and not just a bunk mate using him for survival. I don’t dare to hope he still lives. Do I?

“Would you be willing to do me a favor?” Bahiyya asks.

“Of course,” I say, wanting to appear cooperative and helpful. When my dad used to ask me to do anything for him, the best response from me was a roll of my eyes, a resigned shrug,
some choice curse words muttered on the down-low. Now my dad suffers in a Uni-Mil prison—if he’s even still alive—while I’m stranded in paradise. I’d give up every
breath of this heavenly air if I could just go back to miserable, rotting Cerulea so I could tell my dad:
I know it seemed like I didn’t like you, but I appreciated you. And I know that in
your overbearing, controlling way, you felt the same for me. Thanks, Dad.

Bahiyya says, “There’s a holdout from one of the original Demesne families still living here. Her name is Demetra Cortez-Olivier. She was always a troublemaker. A delightful one, to
be sure, but a wild child.”

“I didn’t realize there were still families living here.”

“Demetra’s the only one, and it’s just her, not her family. She’s bizarrely obsessed with clones and with Demesne. But what can you expect when you abandon your child
here to be raised by clones? She refused to leave when the other families sold their stakes on the island to ReplicaPharm.”

“So she lives on Demesne alone?”

“She lives with her clones in her family’s home. Cut off from the world, by choice. Or so her parents claim. The truth, I’m sorry to say, is that they don’t know how to
handle her. They’d prefer their own child to be hidden away here so they don’t have to deal with her. It’s unconscionable parenting, in my opinion. But they were never interested
in parenting. They wanted a doll, not a person.”

“They wanted an Elysia,” I surmise. “Or, at least what Elysia was originally programmed to be.”

“I never thought about it that way, but yes, you’re right, like that.” Proudly, she adds, “Soon, because of Tariq’s work with ReplicaPharm, parents will finally
have the comfort of having that kind of teenager. They won’t have to program a clone anymore.”

“How?” I ask.

“Pharmaceutical innovation” is her only explanation. “Tariq will be a hero to the world a second time. Until then…the Cortez-Oliviers are stuck with Demetra. Or, I should
say, their clones are stuck with her.”

“Demetra sounds fun, actually.” She sounds different. On this island where the clones were all crafted to look great but essentially be the same, and where the humans now lording
over the place are essentially corporate drones, Demetra sounds like a refreshingly toxic whiff amid this place’s purified air.

“Fun? Yes, I guess that’s one word for her. First Tahir and his friends nicknamed her Dementia. It’s a horrible nickname, but I think they meant it lovingly. They were all very
fond of her: First Tahir, Farzad, Greer, Ivan, Astrid. I promised Demetra’s parents that we would check on her occasionally. But she makes me uncomfortable, to be honest. After the security
sweep is finalized, I’m guessing she will choose to leave the island rather than be subjected to surveillance, so I’ll be relieved of this obligation to her parents. I thought you and
Alexander might visit her for me. Perhaps you’re eager to see more of the island. If you’d do me this favor, I could authorize the Aviate for you.”

“Sure,” I say, reminded that Xander and I are unacknowledged prisoners here, and can travel off the Fortesquieu compound only by the good graces of our “hosts.” And our
window of opportunity to act is rapidly closing.

I’M EAGER TO MEET THIS DEMENTIA,
and set off to retrieve Xander so we can go. The locator screen outside his quarters tells me he’s in the
FantaSphere. I walk to the FantaSphere corridor of the compound, but the door is closed and the red illuminated sign says in use. I request entry to the room. Xander’s voice answers from the
other side. “Go away, Zhara. I want to be alone.”

What happens in the FantaSphere should stay in the FantaSphere, I know. But I don’t feel like respecting Xander’s privacy. He’s been in there for hours, according to the time
display on the console, which is very unlike him. FantaSpheres are indulgences, not habitats. An Aquine might have occasional use for one but would never linger there for so long. Something is
wrong with Xander in there.

“Enter FantaSphere,” I tell the command console again.

No answer this time from Xander. “Pass code,” says the console.

“August twenty-sixth,” I say. Xander’s birthday.

“Denied,” says the console.

“Isidra,” I guess. His home place.

“Denied,” says the console.

I only have one try left, or the system will lock me out and deny me trying again for another hour, unless I break the security perimeter, which I shouldn’t do because I don’t want
Bahiyya alerted to any security infraction, and because this isn’t an actual emergency. It just feels like one: my sudden need to find out why Xander is hanging out there for so long, and to
get him out of there so we can escape this compound and Aviate toward somewhere else, already, while we still have the permission from Bahiyya.

Impulsively, I blurt out, “Jingjing?” The FantaSphere door opens. I’m stunned. Not by the entry, but that the sentimental pass code causes my heart to ache and not swell. It
just makes me miss Aidan more. It’s like, when I see Xander in all his beautiful glory, my knees still buckle, but that’s muscle memory, a habit. A true romantic gesture without the
vision of Xander to blindside me? I think of Aidan.

I step inside the FantaSphere, and immediately I’m standing on a beach. I see Xander in the distance, surfing, although not his preferred big-wave surfing. Instead, he’s lying on his
stomach on a surfboard, paddle boarding over dark waves—the rough kind like off the coast of Isidra. The sky is overcast and the air chilly. There are empty beer bottles nestled in the sand.
That’s weird. Aquines don’t consume alcohol. Then I hear a loud, uncharacteristic belch coming from the man in the water.

No way! “Are you drunk?” I call to Xander.

“Mildly tipsy. Enjoying my alone time, if you don’t mind.”

“I mind,” I say. “I’m coming in.” Immediately, I am wearing a wet suit and have a longboard set down for me on the suddenly cold, damp sand my feet are sinking
into.

I pick up the surfboard and step into the rough and tumble water that’s the opposite of Demesne’s tranquil sea. I paddle out to a spot near Xander’s. The water is heavy and
thick, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to surf here, until it occurs to me that maybe this homing beacon of sorts is to Xander what gardening is to Bahiyya. Peaceful. Contemplative.
He’s not even really trying to surf. He’s just bobbing up and down, coasting over waves.

“What’s going on?” I ask him. “You drink beer now?”

“Apparently.”

“Pretty unlike you to do something like that.”

“Exactly. That’s what I want. To be everything unlike me.”

“Why? You’re engineered for perfection.”

“But I’m a failure. I hurt you, the person I care about the most. Twice. Elysia doesn’t want or need me anymore. I’m a lousy commando. My first mission was a covert
Uni-Mil op organized by clone rights’ supporters. I went AWOL to look for Elysia, and probably exposed the whole team in doing so. Your dad’s in a military prison right now, probably
because of me.”

I search for the right words. I’ve never seen Xander in this state before. He’s supposed to be rallying the cause, not accepting defeat of it. I say, “First of all, you
don’t know that. Second, you probably saved Elysia’s life. That’s meeting the mission, isn’t it? And you know that Dad never takes on a mission he’s not prepared to
face the consequences of. If he recruited you into it, he understood the risk—for you, and for himself. He would never blame you.” This may be the first time in my life I have defended
my father. For all his harsh ways, my dad was always there for me, for my mom, for Xander, for anyone he considered family. He’s flawed like all of us. That didn’t mean he loved us
less. That didn’t mean I didn’t love him.

Xander reaches his arms toward me, like he wants to touch me. “We need to figure out a way out of here. To find your dad and help him.”

“I agree, but I don’t see how right now. We have more immediate issues here to sort out, if you remember?”

“It’s hopeless,” says Xander.

“You’re sure that’s not the beer talking? Just yesterday you were all fired up and ready to act. What happened?”

“I had a sleepless night, thinking too hard on all the messes I’ve made. I’m not up to the task of leading. Want to know the dirty truth about me? I trained to be a commando,
but I was always better with technology than action. Programming a battle rather than fighting it.”

I look at his hulking biceps and laugh. Out of nowhere, I lean over and place an affectionate kiss on his arm. “So, you’re a closet nerd. That’s kind of beautiful.”

He takes the opportunity to pull my surfboard closer to his so that our faces are almost touching. He closes his eyes and turns his neck just so, expecting a kiss on the lips. I give him
one—just a peck, for encouragement. I’m amazed by the relief I feel. My lips don’t want or need more in return.

I command the FantaSphere to summon the reaction Xander was hoping to receive from me. “Lightning strikes!”

Bolts of lightning light up the sky in the distance.

“What’s that for?” Xander asks.

“A wake-up call. Time to sober up and get out of here, buddy. We’ve got a Dementia to call on.”

Xander’s turquoise eyes brighten in recognition. “Demetra Cortez-Olivier?” I nod, startled by his positive reaction to the name of the girl that Bahiyya told me was basically a
lunatic. “I met with her when I was stationed in Demesne for the Replicant Rights Commission. She’s still here?”

“Yes,” I say. “Why, are you already looking for a new girlfriend?” One step forward, two steps back, I guess. For every mature moment of self-actualization I experience,
I can devolve just as easily back into jealousy and bitchiness. I don’t know whether to be disappointed in myself or applaud the acknowledgement of these instincts, and try to do better.