“Oh, my god,” Cara breathed. “It’s Rune.”
Aelyx whipped his gaze back to the woman, seeing her with new eyes. She looked nothing at all like Cara. “Your clone? But you said she’d aged to her midthirties.”
“She had.” As if entranced, Cara stepped out from their hiding place behind a cluster of trees and advanced into the clearing. “I thought she was aging a decade every two days, but she must be aging exponentially.”
A twig snapped, and Rune gasped, turning toward them with a hopeful expression lifting her brow, as if she’d been waiting for someone. But when her eyes found Cara, they widened in panic, and she scrambled backward until she met the resistance of a bramble bush.
Cara flashed both palms and spoke in L’eihr. “I won’t hurt you.”
Unconvinced, Rune tugged her tunic free from the thorny bush and pushed to her feet. She swiped at her wet eyes and then crouched with both arms outspread, prepared for battle. She reminded Aelyx of a wounded predator. Any sympathy he’d felt for her promptly died. This woman was dangerous, regardless of her age.
He glanced around the clearing in case this was a trap. When he didn’t see anyone else, he demanded, “Where’s Jaxen?”
It was obvious the clone had understood him, but instead of answering, she picked up a rotten branch and broke it in half. With her stubborn chin lifted, she waved the stick back and forth in a warning to stay back.
“He left you, didn’t he?” Cara asked the clone. “Just like he did to Aisly.”
“No,” Rune yelled in a voice raw from crying. “He’ll come back for me. I’m his perfect match—not you. Me! We were made for each other. He said so.”
The tender way Cara looked at Rune reminded Aelyx of the time she’d found a stray puppy on their walk home from school during the student exchange last fall. Even though she was allergic to dogs, she’d wrapped the animal in her sweater and carried it from door to door until she’d found it a home. Then she’d broken out in itchy, red welts that’d lasted a week.
All of a sudden Aelyx knew exactly what she was thinking. “No. Absolutely not. We can’t take her with us.”
“I didn’t say we should.”
“But you’re thinking it.” He pointed at the clone. “Elire, you can’t trust her. She’s dangerous. Jaxen trained her to fight. To kill. Even if this isn’t a trap, which it very well may be, she’ll murder us the minute we let our guard down.”
Cara bit the inside of her cheek and made that pouty face, the one that told him her heart had taken command of her brain. “Have some compassion.”
“Compassion?” He indicated the bruises on her face. “She attacked you!”
Cara folded both arms and turned to study the clone. “Try to see it from her point of view. All she knows are the lies Jaxen told her. He created her to be his partner, and to make sure she loved him, he filled every single role in her life—father, teacher, lover, friend. Jaxen is her whole world, and he abandoned her in the middle of nowhere. She probably has no idea why he left, or what’s happening to her body. All she knows is she’s alone and afraid.” Cara sighed, and her eyes misted over. “Try to imagine how she feels.”
Aelyx pinched his temples and tossed aside the thermos, because he was going to need both hands to catch the clone and relocate her to the safe house. He knew Cara wouldn’t be swayed by logic, and truth be told, her speech had stirred an inkling of sorrow within his chest.
A very small inkling.
“Fine, we’ll bring her with us. But only if you agree to keep her under watch.”
Cara smiled, eyes glittering. It was like the puppy all over again. “She’ll never leave our sight. I promise.” She kissed his cheek. “Thank you. You won’t regret this.”
Groaning inwardly, Aelyx stalked toward the feral replicate of his l’ihan and prepared to take a beating with the stick in her hand. “I already do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Be careful not to break her hip,” Cara told Aelyx as he readjusted his hold on the clone, who was slung over his shoulder, kicking and thrashing like a rabid wolverine. “She’s almost sixty, I think.”
Aelyx slid her a glare while Rune used both fists to hammer his lower back. “My bruised kidneys say she doesn’t feel a day over twenty-five.”
“I love you for this by the way.” Cara gave him an encouraging thumbs up and winced at the six-inch gash Rune had opened on his cheek. “Remind me to disinfect that. The rotten branch she stabbed you with was probably crawling with bacteria.”
“Will do,” he said tersely.
All of Rune’s grunts and swears brought the safe house security team to the backyard, where Cara had to explain to a red-faced sergeant why she’d pulled a second Houdini act in one night. She omitted the R-rated details from her story, focusing instead on the clone. “She’s been working with Jaxen,” Cara said in English, which Rune didn’t understand. “But he dumped her. If I can convince her to trust me, maybe she’ll give us some intel about him.”
The sergeant ducked down just in time to dodge a boot to the face. He pointed at the ground while retrieving a pair of cuffs from his utility belt. “Drop her there,” he told Aelyx.
“Gently,” Cara interjected.
The sergeant threw her a sharp glance. “I’ll contact Colonel Rutter and see how he wants to proceed. Until then, tell her if she makes a move against any of my men, they have orders to shoot her.”
Cara took one look at the fury in the upside-down blue eyes staring at her from over Aelyx’s shoulder and decided she’d better stay to help. “You go ahead and disinfect your cut,” she said to Aelyx after he’d set Rune on the lawn. “I’ll wait here with her.”
He charged away, mumbling something about a puppy.
Once Rune’s wrists and ankles were shackled together, Cara sat down beside her. The restraints didn’t subdue Rune’s spirit. If anything, she fought harder, tugging against the metal cuffs until she fell sideways in the grass and couldn’t right herself. Cara took her clone by the shoulders and heaved her into a sitting position, then yanked her hand back when Rune snapped at her with her teeth.
“Enough,” Cara shouted in L’eihr. “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to give you a shot of the same drug I used on Jaxen. Is that what you want?”
Panic flashed in Rune’s gaze, and she curled up against the wood siding, shaking her head. Cara realized with a tug of guilt how traumatic it must’ve been for Rune when Jaxen had awoken and reacted to the drastic changes in her face. Knowing him, he had probably run away without a word. Telling Rune the truth would’ve made it too real for him, and Jaxen always took stellar care of number one.
“I’m sorry he abandoned you,” Cara said, more gently. “He’s a terrible person.”
Rune narrowed her eyes. “He told me you’d say that.”
“Because it’s true. Have you ever seen him do anything kind?”
“He was kind to me.”
“To anyone else, though? Even Aisly?”
Rune let the silence answer for her.
“Did he say why he left?” Cara asked.
More silence.
“Because I’ll tell you if you want to know.”
That piqued Rune’s interest. She flicked her gaze down and up again, hesitating for several beats before she finally nodded.
“It has to do with how you were created,” Cara said, and she explained how the cloning process worked. She used Aelyx as an example, describing his gestation in the artificial wombs and his upbringing in the Aegis, a sort of boarding school on L’eihr. Then she defined the meaning of a year and did her best to clarify the natural progression of time. “But Jaxen didn’t want to wait eighteen years for you to grow, so he used something to make you develop faster. But it worked too well, and now the aging won’t stop.”
A look of horrified comprehension crossed Rune’s face, and she glanced at her wrinkled hands.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Cara quickly added. “Jaxen ran away because he k
nows he made a mistake and he doesn’t want to face it. Plus his thinking is impaired by—”
“He’ll come back for me,” Rune interrupted, but her gaze faltered when she spoke. She tucked her hands into her lap, out of sight. “I won’t tell you anything about him, so leave me alone.”
Cara’s first instinct was to press the argument, but then she remembered how she’d felt after her worst breakups—the embarrassment and the hurt, and, more than anything, the need to keep it private. The only friends she’d wanted around were Ben & Jerry. “All right,” she said. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”
Inside the house, news of Rune’s arrival had caused quite a stir. Aside from Mom and Dad, who were asleep upstairs, the group huddled around Aelyx and listened to him recount the same story Cara had told the soldiers.
Elle dabbed at Aelyx’s injured cheek with a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic. As Cara entered the living room, Elle noticed her and said, “You did the right thing. That poor girl.”
Troy snorted and gave Cara a look that made his feelings clear. Then Elle caught him, and he quickly transformed his sneer into a grin. “Yeah, that poor, poor girl. You’re a saint, Pepper.”
Elle wasn’t fooled by Troy’s innocent act. She chided him with a glare, but she followed it with a wink that made his whole face turn scarlet, which was so adorable Cara couldn’t bring herself to be angry with him.
“Whether you agree with me or not,” Cara told him, “Rune is here now, and we’re going to treat her with compassion.”
“While keeping her in shackles,” Aelyx said out of the corner of his mouth as his sister affixed a Band-Aid to his cheek.
“Right now she’s a hundred percent Team Jaxen, but if I can change that, maybe she’ll tell us what he was up to in all those fertilizer plants and why the Aribol want to separate us. I think that’s the key to saving ourselves.”
Larish yawned and peered into his empty coffee mug. “I’d also be interested to learn where he keeps his Nova Staff, because it’s not in the shuttle you stole from him.”
During the chaos, Cara had forgotten about the staff. “He still has his hovercraft, too.”
“But it won’t fly him off this planet,” Syrine pointed out. “If he wants to escape the Aribol fleet, he’ll have to come for one of the shuttles.”
Since Cara had taken Jaxen’s shuttle before he’d tattled on her to Zane, she doubted that was the case. “He probably arranged a pick-up point for when the Aribol arrive.” The bigger question was whether he’d done it before or after abandoning Rune. “I have to find out what the clone knows.”
“Before she ages into dust,” Aelyx added.
“Right. I should probably make another pot of coffee.”
Two lattes later, Cara sat at the kitchen table brainstorming ways to befriend her clone while Aelyx and the others snored from the living room. She’d already visited Rune twice, once to ensure she didn’t need a sedative, and again to relocate her to a cot in the basement after Colonel Rutter had given the all-clear to hold her prisoner inside the house. Both times, Rune had fixed her gaze on the floor and refused to say a word, even when Cara had offered to bring her something to eat. Rune had simply curled up on the cot and faced the wall.
She was heartbroken. Cara saw it written all over the face they shared.
And because they were identical right down to the taste buds, Cara also knew the only thing that had the power to distract Rune from her grief—the culinary wonder of pizza. Luckily, there was one in the freezer, along with a pint of cookies ’n’ cream. So she preheated the oven and prepared a dinner filled with the breakup food of champions.
She didn’t say anything when she carried the tray into the basement. She set the meal at the foot of Rune’s cot and stepped back to let the rich, spicy aroma of pepperoni do the talking.
It worked.
Rune peeked over her shoulder at the food. Her stomach growled. Though she turned away and rested her head on the pillow, her resistance only lasted another minute or two. Then she pushed into a sitting position and inspected the tray while Cara sat down on a stool and surveyed the dingy basement. Empty concrete floors stretched into the darkness, illuminated by a single hanging bulb. The only finished portion of the area was a half bathroom located within walking distance of Rune’s ankle tether.
“What’s this?” Rune poked the mozzarella with an index finger.
Cara flapped a hand. “Just pizza.” She faked a yawn, pretending she couldn’t care less whether Rune ate it or not. “It’s common dinner food. The dessert in the bowl is called ice cream, and the brown liquid is Coke.” She shrugged. “In case you’re thirsty, or whatever.”
Cara stared into the corner and used her periphery to watch Rune lift the pizza slice from the plate and hold it to her lips. She hesitated twice before nibbling the very tip, testing it, and then her eyes flew wide and she sank her teeth in for a massive bite.
Success.
It turned out that Rune’s love of pizza was rivaled only by her passion for Coke, which she slurped with a childish gusto that contrasted oddly with her motherly features. By the time she drained the glass and finished the last bite of crust, her chin was smeared with marinara sauce and soda. Then she tried the ice cream and really lost her mind.
“Ouch,” Rune said after she’d devoured the entire bowl. She gripped her forehead and sucked a breath through her teeth.
Cara grinned. She knew that pain. “Brain freeze. You ate it too fast.”
Groaning, Rune rubbed her belly and lay back against the pillow.
“I’m surprised you never tried it before. What have you been eating all this time?”
“Basic foods,” Rune told her. “Lean proteins, whole grains, vegetables. Jaxen taught me we should eat for nourishment, never for pleasure.”
“See? A terrible person.”
Rune’s lips twitched in a smile. She shut it down at once, but instead of facing the wall she shifted onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
“Can I ask you something?”
Rune answered with a grunt.
“Jaxen told me he used his mental abilities to transfer concepts to your mind, and that’s how you learned to walk and talk and fight so quickly. Does that mean you can use Silent Speech, too?”
Rune cast her a sideways glance. “What’s Silent Speech?”
“It’s a L’eihr way of communicating without talking. You lock eyes with someone and relax your mind. A connection forms, and then you can share thoughts and feelings. Some human brains are capable of it, too.”
“Like yours?”
Cara nodded. “It took a long time for me to learn.”
“No. I didn’t communicate with Jaxen that way.”
“The reason I ask,” Cara said tentatively, “is because it’s impossible to lie when you share your consciousness. You can block your thoughts, but you can’t project something that isn’t true.”
“So what?”
“So I could use Silent Speech to prove I’m telling the truth about Jaxen.”
Rune didn’t respond, but the prospect of facing the truth must’ve scared her, because she turned toward the wall. Just like that, the lighthearted banter was over.
“Jaxen was created in a lab, too,” Cara went on, “with ancient DNA that’s causing him to go mad. He’s a hybrid—part L’eihr, part Aribol. He can manipulate minds, but there’s a girl here who’s an emotional healer. She can remove his influence and allow you to think clearly.”
“He didn’t manipulate my mind. I love him.”
“I know you do, and I know how strong that feeling is. That’s why I’m asking you to be even stronger. Maybe he didn’t tell you, but the Aribol are coming. We don’t have much time.”
“I know that and I still won’t help you.”
“But billions of people will die. Your people.”
“They’re not my people, and I’ll die soon anyway.”
“That’s true,” Cara admitted, “but only becau
se Jaxen altered your development.”
Rune snatched the pillow and pulled it over her head. “Go away! My stomach hurts. He was right about your food, and he was right about you. I won’t tell you anything, so leave me alone.”
Cara slouched on the stool. She should’ve remembered who she was dealing with—a stubborn, passionate girl with the legendary temper of the Sweeneys and the loyal heart of the O’Sheas. But unlike Midtown High’s two-time state debate champion, Cara 2.0 was dying, confused, shackled to a cot, and in love with the enemy.
Cara collected the dinner tray and gave her clone some privacy. As she climbed the stairs toward the kitchen, she thought she heard the light sniffle of crying behind her. Moisture welled in her eyes, but she blinked it away and clenched her jaw.
There wasn’t time for tears.
The next thing Cara knew, it was full daylight. She gasped and sat up at the kitchen table, where she must’ve fallen asleep making a list of things to do before the power grid went out. That list was now stuck to her cheek. She ripped it free while glancing at the stove’s digital clock, and what she saw made her stomach hit the floor.
She’d slept until noon!
She stood so quickly black spots danced in her vision, and she gripped the table ledge for balance. Someone had tucked a blanket around her shoulders, which she let fall to the floor as she stumbled into the living room to find her parents tidying the scattered mugs and discarded food wrappers from the night before.
The three of them were alone, the house silent. Mom bent over the sofa to fluff the seat cushions, and in true form, Dad moved in behind her, admiring her caboose while a devious grin broke out on his face. Cara rolled her eyes. Nothing short of Armageddon could stop those two. She cleared her throat before the cleaning session turned raunchy.
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