The Pretenders

by Rebecca Hanover

  “What if…” Maude wonders out loud. “What if we could somehow reprogram them? The Duplicates, I mean.”

  “They aren’t robots.” I know I sound defensive, but I’m one of them. Of course, Maude and Levi don’t know that. They’ve been so caught up in the fighting, they must not have noticed the other Emma near my father’s body. Or if they did, they assumed she’s another Duplicate, since this place is teeming with clones. They wouldn’t have assumed that I’m the copy. And they didn’t hear Gravelle reveal my true identity, I’m sure of it.

  “Of course they aren’t robots, but they’ve been brainwashed, haven’t they?” Maude goes on. “A reset,” she says, her wheels turning. “We have to get to the server room. Follow me.” Maude leads me and Levi away from the ongoing fighting, up a back stairwell and down a set of corridors to another sterile white room, this one with a bay of windows overlooking the beach. The sight of the opaque blue water nearly brings me to my knees because of what it represents—our freedom. If we can get there—out of this building, to safety—and find a way off this island… I see some of my friends loading the weak DNA parents onto boats, far in the distance, and I’m thankful. I hope we all make it out alive.

  But first, we have to try to reverse all the damage Gravelle and Seymour have done.

  I survey the server room, which is filled with the most high-tech computers, at least fifteen monitors, and other hardware I don’t recognize.

  Maude starts typing furiously on an elaborate keyboard. “If we can find a way to reset the Duplicates, back to their original state, the ones at home will abandon their roles.”

  Reset the Duplicates? Reset them so that they don’t remember anything about their lives? So I don’t remember anything about my life? The thought is so terrifying I feel the ground begin to spin beneath me.

  Maude, oblivious to how this would affect me, goes on. “Gravelle’s brain implants—we’ll have to shut those down, make sure they stop transmitting…from fighting us.”

  “Can you really do all that?” I ask weakly. If I felt thrown off course by the idea of being a Duplicate, I now feel shaken to my very core. Dizzy, like if I don’t grab hold of something solid, I might evaporate.

  And yet, I understand why Maude is suggesting this, why it needs to happen.

  Maude moves through a series of windows on the screen. I try to banish the pounding in my heart, focusing on the monitor. I can’t make sense of what she’s doing, but I understand the gist—she’s hacking the system. “I’ve already gotten into the server that controls all thought management. I’m two steps away from hitting a central reboot. Holy cow!” she says suddenly, sitting up in her chair like she’s being branded with a hot poker.

  “What?” Levi asks. “What’s wrong?”

  Maude’s shaking her head like she doesn’t believe what she’s seeing in the programming. “It’s a fail-safe,” she whispers. “Built into the code. If we reset the Duplicates, wiping their minds clean—”

  “Which we have to do if we want to guarantee that the originals get their lives back,” I remind her, my voice not revealing how utterly bereft I feel inside. I know it’s what we have to do. But I’m going to lose my entire identity. My past, my present, and my future. I’ll have nothing—no memories, no life. It’s the most horrifying thing I can imagine, and I try to hide the tears that well in my eyes.

  “If we go ahead with the reset,” Maude keeps talking, completely unaware that I’m breaking inside, “this entire island explodes. Castor too.”

  I tear my mind away from my own fears long enough to process what Maude’s just told us. “Wait. What are you saying? A bomb will detonate? More than one bomb?”

  “Gravelle and Seymour must have set it up that way,” she says, her face a mask as she tries to work through this. “If the authorities ever came to investigate, and they needed to erase all the evidence of what they’d done, they must have assumed this was the only way. To reset all the minds, destroy the islands—and all their research.”

  “It also means they anticipated this. What we’re about to do right now,” Levi adds.

  “A fail-safe, like Maude said,” I whisper. I’m only now processing the full repercussions of what that means. My eyes linger on the boats outside the window in the distance. The terror I feel at being reset begins to morph into dread, and, quickly, resignation. I know what I need to do. It’s going to be painful, in more ways than one. But it’s the only way. “Show me how to do it,” I tell Maude, accepting that this has to happen this way. This is what I must do. It has to be me. I’m going to lose my mind anyway, aren’t I? All of my memories, the thoughts that make me me—whoever that even is? Once the reset happens, I’ll be an empty shell of a person. It’s an incredibly scary thought—so overwhelmingly sad, really, that I try not to let myself go there. “I’ll stay here and do the reset. You two need to leave before this bomb goes off. I want you far out in the water before I do it.”

  Maude looks stricken. “But why would we let you sacrifice yourself?”

  “Because,” I answer her. I choke back tears. “I’m a Duplicate. 002.34.”

  “You?” She looks lost, like a little girl. So uncharacteristically out of control. The bewildered expression on her face almost brings me to my knees.

  And Levi—I’ve never seen such confusion and hurt on his face. I’ve never seen him entirely speechless.

  “Yes,” I answer, forcing my voice not to tremble. “That’s what Gravelle was telling me just now, before I attacked him. Last year, on Castor Island, he switched us. I’ve been with you, and the real Emma, the Similar Emma, has been here. All year. She’s downstairs right now, in the library, by my father’s body. I swear I didn’t know any of this until half an hour ago. I’m as shocked as you are.”

  I remember that I still have the infrared light, and I slip it out of my pocket, shining it directly on my wrist, illuminating my time stamp. I know Maude will want to see proof. She’s too logical. Too skeptical. There’s no way she’d believe me otherwise.

  “I wish it weren’t true. Believe me, I…” I steel myself. There’s no time to waste. “Please, Maude. Show me what I need to do.”

  “But,” Maude protests. As strong as she is, this is more than she bargained for. “But if you go through with the reset, we’ll be erasing you. All of your unique thoughts and memories from senior year. They’ll be gone…”

  Like the night I spent with Levi. I meet his eyes, and we don’t say it out loud, but we both feel it. We don’t want those memories to die along with me. At least, I know I don’t. But what choice do we have? He’ll have to remember for the both of us. I’ll live on in his mind.

  “It won’t matter, because I’ll be dead,” I answer her.

  “No,” she protests again. “I won’t let you do it.”

  “It’s the only way!” I have to make her see. I don’t want this; of course I don’t. I don’t want to be reset. I don’t want to die. “I could never live with myself if I let Ollie and Jane and all the others suffer like that, shut out of their own lives because no one believes they’re who they say they are. We can’t let Gravelle and Seymour win. We can’t. If we do, this will all have been for nothing. My dad’s death. Theodora’s…” I don’t say what’s in the back of my mind: that I have no life to go back to, anyway.

  “I’m with Emma,” Levi declares softly. His use of my name guts me. He hasn’t said 002.34.

  I watch Maude as she takes it all in. She presses her hands to her temples, thinking, hard. Finally, she looks up at me, spent.

  “You’ll move through this series of screens,” she says quietly. “Follow the prompts to the three red buttons. Then the F7 command will appear. Press that, and the orange reboot button will pop up at the end of the sequence. Pressing it will reset every Duplicate, deactivate the implants in the originals and DNA parents, and signal the bombs to detonate.” I commit everything she
said to memory. I can’t mess this up.

  “Thank you.” I breathe out. “Now, please. Both of you. Go. I won’t do it until I know you’re safely on the boats.”

  It’s too painful to look at them. To think of the lives back home that they’ll inhabit, while I stay here to die, alone. If I let myself go there, I’ll never go through with this. So I don’t. I keep my eyes on the beach outside the window. With relief, I see that even as the Similars keep fighting Duplicates and guards on the shore, many of them are escaping. Ollie is climbing into a boat with Pru and Jaeger. Thank God. Ollie’s going to live. He’s going to be okay. Ansel is helping Tessa and Madison into another one.

  I position myself in front of the keyboard, ready to press the three red buttons like Maude instructed me, but waiting until I’ve seen all the boats take off into the water.

  Then I hear the door slam behind me. Good. They’ve gone.

  But someone’s still here. I can feel it, the presence of someone else behind me.

  I turn quickly in my chair. My heart swells in my rib cage when I see that it’s Levi.

  “She’s gone,” he says to me, his voice reassuring. “It’s just us now. We’ll wait until we’re sure they’re all safe, and then we’ll do it—”

  “Are you insane?” I say to him, my pulse threatening to bust through my veins. “You can’t be here. You have to go. You can’t die for me! I’m not even Emma. Not really. I’m a Duplicate—”

  “So am I,” he interrupts, his eyes pleading with me. Suddenly, they look so sad and vacant. “So am I.”

  I stare at him like I’m seeing a ghost. What is he saying? Is this a trick?

  “I had no idea, either, until we got here, to Pollux, and I saw the evidence. My time stamp,” Levi explains bitterly. “Just like yours. We were played, Emma, don’t you see? Levi the Similar was on Castor this whole time, this whole year, with the Emma Similar. I was sent to Darkwood instead, and you and I…”

  We were never who we thought we were.

  The enormity of what Gravelle has done to us hits me like a blow to the chest. It’s unthinkable. Levi was a Duplicate, this whole time? We both were?

  I’m deep in my thoughts when I hear a gunshot.

  Then the door crashes down.

  Someone’s kicked it in.

  It’s Seymour. Standing there, wielding a gun, and pointing it straight at me.

  Control

  “Hands off the keys. Now,” Seymour commands, pointing the gun directly at my head.

  I don’t lift my fingers from the keyboard. He has more to lose than I do. Which means I have to play this just right. “I know about the fail-safe,” I tell him. “I know that all I have to do is hit the reboot button, and everything you’ve worked for—all your research, all your years of scheming—will be instantly destroyed.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Seymour says, his fingers still curled around the gun. “Kill yourself, to save a bunch of people who care nothing for you? Or you?” He swings the gun to point it at Levi. “I made you. I made you both. You are nothing but my creations, born less than two years ago in my lab and rapidly reared and trained. You are specimens. You are nobodies. Don’t kid yourself that any of them care about you, because they don’t.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see more chaos on the shore. My friends fighting with guards—ripping, clawing—and, in most cases, gaining the upper hand. One boat has taken off already into the water, with Ollie, Pru, and Jaeger on board, and I am grateful. I take stock of everyone I love—the Similars, the DNA parents, and the originals—and count them boarding the remaining boats. My friends are prevailing, downing guards right and left. They’re jumping into the boats and escaping the island, which is what I need to see happen before I can go through with the reboot. But I scan the shore for Levi—Similar Levi—and don’t see him. I can’t move forward unless I know he’s safe. I’ll have to stay alive long enough, and stall Seymour long enough, to know for sure.

  “Emma,” the Levi next to me breathes, but I don’t answer him. I close my eyes, focusing hard on Seymour, the Seymour I can see in my mind’s eye, as hard as I’ve ever focused on anything. I picture his smug face. I remember him lying to us back at school. I think of all the pain and suffering he’s caused these families, all for his own selfish gain, his misguided ideas of what “scientific advancement” really is.

  And I hear his thoughts.

  What’s she doing? Why is she closing her eyes like that? Little brat, just like Eden, never happy with any of what we’ve given her—

  I can control you, I think to myself. I can stop you from pulling that trigger.

  Stupid, meddling mind-reading clone. I’ll have no choice but to shoot her to bits. Shame, all that work destroyed for nothing—

  You won’t do anything to me. You won’t shoot me. You won’t stop me. Your brain controls not only your thoughts, but everything you do. I’m controlling you now, Seymour. Set the gun down.

  I open my eyes to face him. I’ve never felt more powerful in my life. I’m not just reading Seymour’s mind. I’m in charge. I’m deciding what he thinks and says and does. Seymour’s still holding the gun, but he’s not pulling the trigger. He sets it down. Levi gingerly picks it up.

  You will walk to the computer, I think.

  Seymour begins to shuffle his feet. He looks down at them, confused.

  You will hit the three red buttons, I tell him.

  He approaches the keyboard. I don’t hear a single thought in his head, because he can’t think independently. Not with me controlling him like this.

  Doesn’t feel good not being in charge of your own free will, does it? Doesn’t feel good when your “creation” becomes your master.

  Seymour presses the three red buttons. The F7 command appears.

  On the shore, it’s a frenetic, desperate scene as my friends nab the last boats and help the remaining DNA parents board them. I finally see Levi, stumbling out of the building holding a figure in his arms. It’s Theodora. Her body is limp and unmoving. But he has her, and he’s not leaving her here. Even if she is beyond reviving. I feel tears in my eyes for her. For Theodora. I wish I’d been able to tell her how much she meant to me. I also feel a deep kind of longing for Levi—the Levi I fell in love with last year, that Emma first fell in love with. I’ll never see him again. And he’ll never know how I really felt. I watch as he approaches a boat, resting Theodora inside it.

  I turn back to Seymour. Levi’s safe, and so are my friends, and it’s time.

  Now. Press the orange reboot button, I instruct him. Do it.

  He doesn’t hesitate, because he can’t; I won’t let him. He presses it.

  I brace myself for the loss of everything I’ve ever known. My memories of Ollie. Of being his best friend and loving him all these years, of splitting sandwiches and watching films and staying up way too late scarfing down junk food and sharing our lives. My memories of the Similars, of my dad, lying lifeless on that cold, hard floor. And, of course, my memories of being with Levi. Of how he rocked my entire world and found a way to heal my scarred heart. I don’t know how quick the process will be—the process of losing myself and my identity and every thought I’ve ever known. I hope it’s not long and drawn out. I hope it isn’t painful.

  In moments, it all happens. An explosion erupts somewhere within the compound, and I’m knocked out of my seat. The room is buckling and trembling so violently, the floor literally rolling beneath me, that I can’t stabilize myself. The chair is out of my reach, even as I try crawling over to it, thrusting my body forward to reach it. Seymour is on the floor, unable to grasp on to anything, since I’m still controlling his mind. He’s rocked by the waves, powerless to steady himself.

  The bombs have gone off. The entire room rattles as a string of mini-explosions hits, as labs and furnaces and everything else on this compound gets triggered by the initial blast.
I climb back gingerly into my seat, finally able to grasp it, and glance hungrily out the window, expecting to see all the boats gone, the shore empty except for fallen guards.

  I nearly keel over when I spot him. Levi’s on the shore, crumpled in a heap. He’s been hit. Debris is everywhere. This entire island is a powder keg, with destruction rippling across it in waves.

  And I’m the one who triggered it.

  “No,” I cry out. “Levi, no!” This can’t be happening. I checked before I ordered Seymour to hit that command. I checked on everyone! But especially Levi! I saw him leave the building and carry Theodora’s body to that boat. I thought he was safe.

  But you didn’t see him climb into the boat himself, did you?

  The Levi who is still here with me, Duplicate Levi, rushes to my side. We race to the window and watch, transfixed in our fear, as the other Emma huddles over the other Levi. Panic grabs hold of me with its unforgiving claws, and my eyes are glued to his prone form. Please let him be okay. Please let him and Emma get off this island. I let out a choke of relief when he starts to move his arms and legs, and eventually stands up, seemingly unharmed. Levi and Emma scramble for the last boat, and Emma’s already pulling the cord to start the engine, as smoke begins to billow out from the front doors of the compound and flames overtake the library. The thick black smoke makes its way into that beautiful building, the one filled with scores of irreplaceable books. In minutes, they will burn to ash.

  I let out a sob. Levi’s okay. So is Emma.

  Duplicate Levi grabs my hand and squeezes it so hard it hurts, and we hold on to each other for dear life as one last explosion rocks us, toppling us to the floor.