Emergent (A Beta Novel)

by Rachel Cohn

  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 f
or 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.

  Tawny says, “She wasn’t so innocent. Your clone was a consort also, you know.”

  “There’s a big difference between being a willing consort and being raped by your owner’s son.”

  “I’m not talking about Ivan. I’m talking about the other boy.”

  “What other boy?”

  “The rumor on Demesne was that the Beta had become the consort of the most prized prince on Demesne. Ivan was the boy whose companion Elysia was bought to be. The boy they say she loved was Tahir Fortesquieu.”

  Is it possible that Elysia may have had some moments of happiness on Demesne? That she experienced love with someone other than the Aquine she stole from me? Is he the surfer Elysia mentioned that she hoped was on Heathen? “No way,” I say, connecting the guy’s first name to his last name. “Was Elysia’s Tahir related to Tariq Fortesquieu?” The Fortesquieu family is, like, one of the richest families on earth! Tariq Fortesquieu’s cloud technology was one of the main reasons the Water Wars ended. Thanks, dinnertime history with Dad.

  Back in her comfort zone, describing luxury, Tawny sounds like a brochure. “Yes, that Fortesquieu family. Every house on Demesne is a masterpiece, but their compound was the jewel in the crown, a palace beyond any others on the island. The Fortesquieus are the best and most envied family on Demesne, obviously. They ‘borrowed’ Elysia for a period so that they could try out their own Beta as a companion for their son Tahir. The Governor’s wife allowed it because she wanted to impress the Fortesquieus. Elysia did her job too well. She impressed the Fortesquieus so much—and especially Tahir—that the family offered to buy her from the Governor. He told me it would have been the highest price ever paid for a clone, which was even more shocking, since Elysia was a Beta, a totally unknown commodity. But then the Fortesquieus suddenly disappeared from the island the night after the Governor’s Ball. And Ivan’s jealousy of Tahir got the better of him.”

  I need to find out more about Elysia’s Tahir. How could she possibly have loved him and then Xander so soon afterward?

  There’s only one answer. She couldn’t. She hasn’t lived long enough to love—truly love—two guys in such quick succession. And if her heart truly belonged to this Tahir, it’s possible she doesn’t love Xander at all.

  He’s mine to take back.

  Now.

  I’m tired of being a distraction. I’m ready to take action.

  JUST DO IT, Z-DEV.

  Jump already.

  I stand at the slippery top of Heathen’s most jagged cliff on the island’s remote northern end, looking out over the ocean churning in ominous dark grays. The tremor trials have ended for the day, and the big storm has passed, but I can see smaller ones in the distance. From my high perch, I see the white crests of the gigantes, the huge waves in the distance. Surfers who’ve ridden those waves claim the gigantes sometimes go up to eighty feet tall. The waves are the result of the creation of Io, the bioengineered sea that rings Demesne, on the other side of the gigantes. Io is so tranquil because it pushes ocean turbulence away from its ring, creating huge and extremely dangerous waves farther out in the ocean. The oceanic result—the gigantes—offers rough passage for ships but awesome thrill rides for the surfers who tow out to dare the monster waves.

  The beach on the ground below me is prime, with acres of white sand and coconut palm trees swaying hard on the dunes, and stray branches and limbs strewn across the sand from the recent storm. Far out into the distance, waves spit high and white-tipped as gray clouds hover and a purple thunderstorm batters the distant water. The storm that just passed over Heathen, and the one approaching in the distance, have caused the waves below to rage onto the beach, loud and thundering. The waves rise about twenty feet high, nowhere near gigantes height but still intimidating, their velocity announced with each angry crash to the shore.

  I know these storms well by now. I have at least thirty minutes until it’s time to take shelter.

  I inch my toes slightly over the ledge, in a competitive dive stance. Down below, the man I seek bobs over the turbulent waters. The only person on this island who would seek the best spot for storm waves is Xander. I’ve been avoiding being alone with him since he and Elysia arrived on Heathen; it hurts too much to be around them. But the water is my safe haven. Here, I can gather my courage.

  “Jingjing.” I whisper my good luck charm words to myself, and then I leap down to join him, a straight vertical dive that I don’t think about or anticipate and therefore ruin. I just do it.

  The water feels like I feel today, super cold and angry, and I love it. When I come up for air, I see Xander a short distance away. The ocean is giving him a good battering, which pleases me. He sees me, and waves. I wave back. He attempts to catch an eight-footer to bring him closer to my position, but he is too late for its rise, and it gobbles him, tosses him, and sends him crashing toward the shore. I follow him to the shallow water near the beach.

  “Not so Jingjing out there today,” he says to me.

  “Good ride?” I tease.

  He looks dizzy, confused, and shakes his head. “Intense.”

  “I heard you were out here surfing today. Kind of a death wish in weather like this, you know?”

  “I know. But the Uni-Mil’s trying to take me out of here, dead. Didn’t you hear? So I might as well enjoy some rides while I still can. Come on,” he beckons me, cocking his head in the direction of the deeper sea. We’ve both acclimatized to the stormy sea now, so stepping fully out of it and into the harsh, cold air feels worse than staying in the water. “Like old times.” He dives back under the water, his beautiful body descending into a graceful vertical line.

  I follow him across the rough water, out toward the tumultuous waves. As I swim in pursuit of him, I remember how Xander preferred cold ocean water over warm, because that’s what he’d grown up surfing in. The Aquines’ territory, called Isidra, is filled with fertile mountains and valleys. Its terrain is rough, and the ocean on its western boundary even rougher. The ocean there is cold and moody, swimmable only by the strongest athletes; few of them even bother with it. Just like this spot we’ve found now.

  I try chasing Xander across it, but I can barely keep up with him in this stormy surf, and I am a strong swimmer. I struggle across the distance, eager for the game to end. Before when we performed this water dance, our lives were carefree. Our only responsibilities were to our own bodies, to training our bodies to be the best they could be. Surviving in the wild, clones’ rights, death, destruction, betrayal—these did not matter then. I never realized before how easy my life in Cerulea was. I only remember complaining about how boring it was. How much of a jerk was I?

  Xander retrieves his floating surfboard, and I reach him there about a minute behind. Breathless, we hold on to opposite ends of the board as incoming waves raise and lower our bodies through the water.

  Finally, something feels right, like we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be, stranded in this stormy sea that feels like our one common ground. Here, I’m ready to finally get some answers from him.

  I dive right in. “How did an Aquine, who shouldn’t even be in the Uni-Mil, suddenly become the defender of clones?” I say. “I thought your purified people looked down on cloning. I never knew you to care anything about clones and their rights back in Cerulea.”

  “Maybe you weren’t paying attention,” says Xander. He’s right, I realize. I was always admiring his beautiful body and obsessing about wanting to be the mate of the gorgeous Aquine, but only now do I clearly see how I never bothered to get to know him well—outside of the water, at least. “Your dad got me involved
in clones’ rights.”

  I could almost drown from disbelief. “Yeah, right. Drill master never cared about clones’ rights. Especially after the way my mom died.”

  I think of my dad showing up to all of Xander’s swim meets, and I remember him HarleyHovering Xander out to surf contests at the beach, because Xander had no family in Cerulea and no means to provide for long-distance transportation. I always thought their time together was Dad indoctrinating Xander into applying for the Uni-Mil, trying to make Xander into the son he never had, who would follow in his leather boot steps. It never occurred to me that any topic related to cloning would be part of their discussions.

  “Not true,” says Xander. “There’s a small group within the Uni-Mil who’ve been covertly supporting clones’ rights. Your dad brought me in to become part of that.”

  It feels bad enough to realize I hardly knew Xander when I thought I was in love with him. It feels worse to realize I never really knew my own father—and rarely bothered to try.

  “How do you think super-clone-supporter Dad will like his own daughter’s clone?” My voice is sarcastic, but my heart hurts contemplating Dad’s reaction. What if he likes Elysia more than me too? How will he feel when he finds out she’s going to make him a grandfather…sort of?

  “I think your dad will be so grateful you’re alive he won’t even care about Elysia.” Xander’s words comfort me, and yet absurdly offend me on Elysia’s behalf. “Tell me what happened, Z.”

  “When?”

  “When you died. I know the result—you ended up on Demesne and were cloned. I don’t know what led you there. Tell me.”

  A bolt of fire-red lightning cracks far out in the distance, a message that we should take cover before the approaching storm gets any closer. “I promised them glory,” I mutter, remembering.

  “Who?”

  “The other two kids. The ones who drowned. I encouraged them to steal a boat from the wilderness camp and sail away with me. I told them we’d get to Demesne. That was ’raxia logic dictating my game plan.”