The steel shackles binding her wrists to the bed were icy cold. The back of the bed had been elevated so she could look her questioner in the eye. Ryan Murdock’s eyes were dark blue—the color of the Caribbean on a summer day.
How could she know that and not know what she was?
She closed her own eyes, deep bruises in her skull thanks to the stab of the bright fluorescent lights in the lab. “Ask what you really came to ask. Do I know where my maker is—no, I do not. Do I know why I was made? No. If I could tell you, would I?” She opened her eyes again and stared hard into Ryan’s gaze. “I don’t know.” The words fell flat from her mouth.
His jaw flexed and his eyes glowed. “At least you’re honest.”
“For a monster, you mean.” She watched his discomfort, relished it.
“You’re not a monster.” But everyone who heard knew he wasn’t entirely convinced. A nurse at her elbow flinched and Eva sipped the woman’s doubt and weakness into herself like a thirsty vampire.
“No. I’m…let’s see, how did you put it in your journals?” Eva eyed everyone in the room defiantly. “‘A perfect physical specimen. It has a working mind, independent of its creator, but with no memories of its own. Knowledge is its memory. Its brain operates like a hard drive, full of facts and data, languages and literature instantly accessible. It’s like a computer.’” Eva grinned slowly, ugly. “It.”
The shocked silence that reigned almost made her smile.
Someone came closer—a woman Eva knew was called Diane. She was an oracle…a precognitive for Sterling. “How do you know that? Do you have extrasensory perception? Can you read minds?”
Eva closed her eyes again. How to explain that she didn’t see the way Diane did, but listened instead to the scratching of pens and pencils as notes were jotted. In that scratching she could hear and track the point of the instrument, follow its path and pattern, and know what words it wrote upon the paper.
Just as she could watch a person move and know what motion they would make simply by eyeing the play of muscles beneath their clothes. Just as she could listen to the breathing of those around her and know which ones feared her and which ones dismissed her as an…it.
She wasn’t psychic like many of these people were. She was just aware. Of everything.
Eva heard Diane step back. “Dante.”
Against her will, Eva then opened her eyes.
Everyone in the room retreated, including Ryan. It was almost as if they were giving her some privacy at last…but she knew the respectful distance wasn’t meant for her.
Dante looked far different without the black grease on his face. He’d seemed so dark to her that night, like the inky depths of space between the stars. But now she could see that he was light. His hair was a shiny sea of bronze waves reaching just past his shoulders. His eyes, still gold as the sun and twice as hot, looked over her as if he hadn’t been watching her through the two-way mirror from day one. His tanned face was smooth, almost boyishly handsome, but his body was big and hard and supremely male beneath his sterile lab uniform. He had trained that body, pushed it and twisted it, shaped it into a mold that suited his use. He was a warrior. A fighter.
Eva believed that she, too, was a fighter.
The warmth of his skin emanated from him when he crouched at her side and met her gaze. “We can’t help you if you don’t let us,” he said quietly, though Eva knew everyone in the room heard the words. As did the recording devices beyond the walls of her prison.
“I can’t let you use me, if you don’t even pretend to show me some human courtesy,” she returned through gritted teeth, jangling the shackles around her wrists pointedly.
He sighed but met her gaze squarely. “You attacked one of the scientists—you broke three of his ribs. One blow and down he went. We can’t afford to trust you. We don’t know you.” The hard line of his mouth softened. “Let us know you. Let us know you’re deserving of human courtesy.”
His voice was deep and rough, full of mysterious pits and hollows, like an unpolished basalt stone. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking—by his breathing, the look in his eyes or the movement of his body—and that deeply troubled her. She felt some strange menace in him…and shivered despite herself.
“The man was rude,” she found herself explaining. “He took my blood without even asking. Stuck the needle in and dug when he lost the vein. You may not know exactly what I am—but I do have feelings. I know what pain is. I know he liked making me hurt. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me. He was afraid of me and wanted me to be afraid of him.” She smiled to herself, knowing it unsettled their audience. “Well, I, too, can be petty.”
His eyes blinked slowly—his black lashes thick and dense. She noticed a tracery of onyx around his shiny irises—it made the ocher stand out in stark contrast. He was lovely to look upon.
When he came closer he brought his delicious warmth, but watching his face she felt a chill inside. “You don’t know what you are. We don’t know what you’re for. But only you can decide what you will be.”
Against her will, her gaze shifted away first. It made her angry, her own cowardice, and her hands were free of their restraints and reaching for him before she had time to think twice about it. The clank of the broken steel hitting the tiled floor echoed in her ears and the feel of his skin was almost hot against hers—his throat in her hands.
But he didn’t fight.
Didn’t block her move, though she was almost certain he could have.
He merely looked at her. Into her. Eye to eye.
He let her demonstrate her strength. She squeezed once, then immediately released him. The room exploded with sound and movement as guards entered the room with new restraints and the doctors that abounded remarked on her effortless power in breaking her bonds.
When someone foolishly tried to grab her wrist to apply the new shackle, Dante struck them away for her, already recovered from her swift attack. “Let her alone. She won’t hurt me.” His gaze never left hers, daring her to prove him wrong. “Everyone, leave us.” There was an implosion of silence. “Go.” He barked the command and the words were like stones falling upon stone. “She and I will speak alone.”
“Dante.” Diane stepped forward to intervene, eyeing Eva warily.
Dante turned his head, keeping one eye on her still. “Ryan, turn off the recorders. All of them. No surveillance. Leave us alone. Five minutes.”
Ryan was silent a tick. “Five minutes,” he nodded. Turning, he ushered everyone out of the room. A moment later, Eva heard the various recording devices being turned off. Heard the silence in the observation room behind the two-way mirror.
“You’re not afraid of much, are you, Eva?” Dante asked softly, carefully, as if concerned his words might put her on the defensive.
No. Wait.
This was his true voice, she realized. His speaking voice. It was soft. Gentle. She liked it just as much as the commanding tone he’d used before.
“You don’t feel fear like the rest of us. Yet you’re wary of me.” He let out a short, staccato sigh. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know you,” she answered truthfully.
“Is that why you’re so wary of helping the doctors then? Because you don’t know them? You don’t know us? Is it really that simple?”
“Y-yes.” Was that a tremor in the lie? Truth was, she did all she could to help the doctors and scientists—she too wanted answers. But her caretakers were asking all the wrong questions, because they were afraid to tell her the whole truth of what they really wanted to know.
How can we use you to find our foe?
Dante shook his head. “We want to help you. We want to help all that we can. If there’s someone out there with the technology and the power to create trans-humans like you, in total secrecy and isolation, we need to know who they are and why they’ve done this. It could save many lives. It could save yours.”
Eva bowed her head, not looking at him. Looking onl
y at the painfully bright white of her thin hospital gown. “Trans-humans?”
“For lack of a better term, yes. You aren’t a clone—you’re too sophisticated. Your DNA is not only identical to your creator’s; you also look and sound exactly like her. You couldn’t have spent more than a few months in that tank, but are already fully grown. Your factual knowledge surpasses most of our staff’s. Clones are subject to birth and life like any human. They grow from infant to adolescent to adult. They become individuals through life experiences. But you’re different. You…became. In that tank, you grew fast and perfect in every way. But with no past, no personal development to create your independent sense of self. How? Better yet, why?”
But he hadn’t answered her question, not fully. He’d said trans-humans—plural. So there could be more like her…?
How much were the people of Sterling hiding from her?
“Who made me?” she asked, whisper-soft in her week-old voice. When he didn’t answer she felt the heat of anger bloom in her chest. Felt it and liked it. Her voice was louder, harder when she continued. “You say I look like her, so you must know her.”
Dante sighed as if in defeat, but when Eva glanced at him from beneath her forest of lashes he looked determined. “We know of her.”
He folded his arms across his broad chest. His fingers, she noted while watching his hands, were long and lovely. But she knew from experience their gentle beauty was deceptive. Those fingers could bruise. She’d seen their marks on her own skin after that first night.
She was stronger now. But it was more than clear that he was her match—he hadn’t even flinched when she’d broken her bonds and wrapped her fingers around his throat. This knowledge thrilled her in some elemental way she couldn’t quantify.
“She was once a biochemist. A brilliant scientist,” Dante elaborated. “Then, when the cloning phenomenon was young, she advocated experimental research. She was hard to dissuade and broke many laws. Eventually she was reprimanded. Fined. More than once. Then stripped of all credentials, all licensing. She seemed to fall off the face of the earth, disappeared completely. Now we find you. The product of her years spent in exile, you’re a Pandora’s box of unanswered questions.”
Eva let that last go. “If she was in hiding, how did you know where to find me? Me and not her?”
He didn’t meet her gaze. More secrets.
“Where did she get the money?” Eva tried not to let her frustration show. “Surely it must have been costly to make one such as me.” Or more than one…
Dante shook his head, his bronze hair picking up glittering highlights from the fluorescents. “She was immensely wealthy.”
“What’s her name?” Eva asked the question with a hoarse voice.
He eyed her then seemed to decide there was no harm in telling her. “Her name is Dr. Abigail Faria.” He moved in closer. “But what good is a name? Does it have meaning for you?”
She met his gaze and had to keep from flinching at the seeking intensity in his regard. “I’ve never heard her name, if that’s what you’re asking. Or if I have, I don’t remember it.”
He was still for a beat then nodded as if satisfied with her answer.
“Will you let us perform a few more tests? Ask a few more questions? After that, I promise, we will help you to build a life. A real life that is yours alone, no one else’s. Will you work with us?”
Eva blinked owlishly, purposefully using her black eyes to unsettle him—if such a thing were possible. “I will work with you. The others, they don’t empathize with me in any way.” She let her words sink in, waiting for some emotion to cross his face but none did. “But you do. You’re not like the others. I can tell by the tone of your voice when you address me. You don’t see me the way they do.” She pierced him with her stare, feeling almost reptilian as her blood ran cool through her veins. “And now I must ask…why is that? Why do I matter to your cause? What does the name Abigail Faria mean to you?”
He caught his breath. They both heard it in the stillness of the cold room.
She drank in this tiny slip, this small reaction from him, let it fill her up…but hated the way it made her feel. He was not like the others. He was not a toy. She wouldn’t play this game of cat and mouse with him. “Never mind.” She retreated hurriedly, lying back on the hard pallet that was her mattress. “Forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”
He turned to leave, but as his hand hovered above the doorknob he hesitated. Jaw clenched, Dante glanced at her over his shoulder, his gaze unreadable. “Her name means nothing. It’s her methods I’m concerned with.”
He was lying. Eva saw it in the line of his spine. Heard it in the resonance of his voice.
“You’re right about me, Eva. I do empathize with you. I’m not a clone and I’m not like…what you are. But I am what I am because of rogue scientists like Faria. I was once caged as you were. I was once unsure of my true nature—human or beast.”
“And now you’re not?” she asked, voice hushed, needing to hear his answer.
“Sterling helped me find out who I am. They can help you too, if you let them.”
Eva swallowed past a pain in her throat. “You freed me. Who freed you, Dante?” She said his name at last and reveled in the feel of it on her tongue.
He turned away. “We free ourselves, Eva.” The door closed softly behind him.
Chapter Three
She freed herself exactly seven days later.
With Dante always in attendance, Eva let Sterling have their way, let them run test after test, interrogation after interrogation. She endured hours of psychotherapy that went nowhere and made her head spin. Without reservation she gave of herself all that she could, but no matter how deep the doctors dug, no matter how open and honest she answered their millions of questions, Eva learned nothing useful about herself.
She found herself chafing to experience the world beyond the walls of Sterling. Every day took her further away from caring so much about where she came from as where she was going.
On the seventh day, they told Eva that the next step was to probe her mind. Many psychics would be invited to participate.
Dante would participate.
But Eva didn’t want anyone inside her mind. It was the only thing that was truly hers. From the beginning she’d hidden from their prying, safeguarding her thoughts as precious and sacred and wholly hers.
It had been easy. Eva knew it would stun Dante to know just how easy. Dante who, Eva had learned, was perhaps the most adept at delving into the minds of others no matter how great and powerful the shields against him.
But Eva had no shields.
Eva had a cave.
There was an abyss in the center of her mind. A blank space that was neither cold nor warm. It was, however, comforting in an odd way. There, Eva could hide her self. There, in the darkness, she could bury her thoughts like seeds in the fold of a womb. She wanted no one to trespass there. This was her secret place.
She didn’t know why the cave was there. The empty space seemed tailor-made for something beyond what she used it for. But it didn’t vex her enough to wonder, so long as this secret space provided her solace from the hungry world of her waking and the jackals that would feed on her thoughts like carrion.
It was so hard to see Dante as a jackal…it was painful to think he would so easily betray her and crawl into her mind without a qualm. But by his own admission he intended to do just that.
Damn him.
Eva knew she wasn’t an “it”. She was a person. And each day that passed solidified this knowledge within her. Each moment was an experience. A memory that was real, that shaped her. She was unique, just like any other human being. Her thoughts were her own—no one had any right to them save her.
No one would take away her individuality, not with their prejudice or their probes. No one, not even Dante, would ever reduce her to a science project again.
Still, there were things that troubled her. The most alarming—if
clues could be taken from the occasional slip from Dante or the others—the knowledge that she might not be alone. There might be others like her. More than one Eva.
Eva. A Hebrew form of Eve—the first woman. How droll. Dante had chosen the name on a whim—he’d told her as much. That it was he who had named her was the only reason Eva chose to keep the title. It was as good as any.
He’d chosen his name, too. Unlike her, he’d been born with his own name, but had forgotten it and chosen a new one. Eva didn’t need to be told the details to know that Dante had forgotten it under extreme duress. Or perhaps had merely wanted nothing more to do with it and had simply erased it. Either way, he’d found his own name. His own way.
Dante. He’d been to hell and back, but had he ever reached heaven? Eva wondered.
Maybe we can reach it together.
When Eva heard that thought, like a hungry creature stirring in the deepest trenches of her mind, she’d immediately decided to leave Sterling. And when she learned that Dante himself meant to invade her mind, whether she liked it or not, she knew that time was now.
Every time she saw him her heart burned. Every time his skin brushed hers she felt her loins quiver and melt, like wax before the flame. His scent intoxicated her—she imagined she could still smell him half an hour after he’d left her side. The sound of his voice soothed her rough edges, her impatience with her keepers, and Eva found herself striving to please him, by pleasing the doctors and researchers of Sterling. Soon everything she did, she did for him, in one capacity or another.
Every night she dreamed. And she dreamed always of him. Them. Together.
She was becoming attached to Dante and that would never do. It was clear by his intentions to invade her that he could never accept her as she was. He could never love her if he couldn’t even see how abhorrent it was to rape her mind.
And…what was she, after all, to be loved? No one had answered that question to Eva’s satisfaction.
Only one person could.
It was clear that, despite her desire to let her past fade, she could never move forward in this world without knowing exactly where she came from.
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