Prototype

by M. D. Waters

  I cannot hear anything anyone says, though the floodgates are open. Questions and accusations are being flung like plasma fire between Daxton—my brother—and Evan—my father. Declan stands looking as numb as I feel. Charissa sobs into her hands, a heavy weight in Evan’s arms.

  “Noah,” I whisper, though I barely hear the word myself.

  His arms tighten around my waist and I realize my knees have given out. “Hold on,” he says. “We’re leaving.”

  But going where? There is no distance too great from this.

  He weaves us through the crowd, down the stairs, and into the teleporter bay. “Give me your com,” he tells me, his expression calm. I wish his tranquility would leak into me, because I am a gale-force storm about to strike land.

  I remove it with shaking fingers, staring into his eyes. Needing them to hold me together. “Did you hear that?” I ask, but it is a ridiculous question, because of course he did. What I really want to ask is if what I heard was real. It does not feel real.

  “Get inside,” he whispers, and helps me into the teleporter. “Base camp, we’re going radio silent.”

  He pockets our coms and types an untraceable code on the illuminated keyboard, then a port number. We appear in the park he took me to on my first night, and it is just as empty now as it was then.

  I strip off the mask and savor the warm night air on my wet face. The breeze is a tangible thing I can ground myself to. So is the tickle of grass against my exposed toes. And Noah’s scent.

  A sob shakes loose in my chest. “It is not real. What they said. It cannot be real.”

  Noah takes the mask from my fingers and hurls it into a copse of trees. “Come here,” he says, and his arms surround me as I fall into them.

  I stain his shirt with tears, clinging to the fabric, holding on to what is tangible. Trying to focus on what I know. I know I have Noah and Adrienne, and that I have finally found my home, though it is not where I expected it would be.

  If I’d been asked just over a month ago, home was with my parents, Stephen and Lily. Until now, they were faceless names typed in a WTC record. The family I have been desperate to reunite with. But they do not exist. That is why I have been unable to find them. I lost so much time on this. Too much time. Wasted time. I am always wasting time.

  Heat ignites and soars through my bloodstream. I push away from Noah and scream behind clenched teeth. I rip the wig from my head and throw it. Turn my back on Noah and clutch the hair at my temples.

  Hands wrap over my shoulders. “Say something, Emma. Talk to me.”

  I laugh hard from deep in my chest. What a joke. “Emma. Emma?” I spin around. “That isn’t even my name.”

  Noah stands coolly in front of me, supporting me with only a look. Ready for the barrage of anger he must guess is coming. But I am unsure if he can withstand it.

  “I risked everything,” I say. “I walked away from you and Adrienne and stayed away all those months because I was scared to return. Scared you would reject me. So I focused on finding them, because they would never reject their own daughter, right? Why would they? I gave you up for them.” A barely restrained sob restricts my throat. My temples throb. “I lost you for them. And they did not even want me. They never did.”

  He takes me by the upper arms. “You can’t believe that.”

  “Everyone wants to design my future for me. From the very beginning. My parents changed my name and sold me into marriage. Declan wants me to be his obedient wife and give him an heir to his madness. Doctors—even yours—want me to be a good test subject. You want me to be that girl you fell in love with who would collapse entire nations if it meant saving just one woman from slavery.”

  Noah flinches and drops his hands. I have hurt him but cannot stop the flow of emotion ravaging the air in the form of words containing only a fraction of the venom absorbing my heart.

  “What about what I want?” My voice carries on the warm breeze, and luckily, we are very much alone. “I do not want to be Olivia Thomas, and I do not want to be Emma Burke, and I do not want to be calm and willing for the doctors, and I do not want to be Emma Wade, destroyer of evil men.”

  He takes my arms again so fast and so hard, I am jolted back into reality. Amber burns in his eyes. “You are none of those things.”

  “You are more right about that than you realize. If you are expecting me to be anything like the woman you married—”

  “I knew who you were the moment we talked in the gallery last year. No matter how hard I tried denying it, no matter how hard I forced old images on you, you radiated with a strength I didn’t recognize, and that scared the hell out of me.”

  “No. That is not true. You said I reminded you of Her.”

  “You want to know who I saw when I looked at you? The woman I knew She could be, but Her past wouldn’t allow it. That’s why I’ve been looking for you from the moment you walked away. You, Emma. I love you. Not Her. I love you because you are none of those things you think I want, and more.”

  He cups my face and presses his forehead against mine. “God . . . Emma. Be whoever you want, and believe me, I will love you anyway.”

  Tears stream at a steady pace over my cheeks. He knows exactly what I need to hear, but . . . “What if I do not know who I want to be?”

  He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes. “But you do know.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He tucks my hair behind my ears. “You told me in San Francisco, remember? You want to be a mother to Adrienne. So even if everything else is up in the air, at least you know you want that.”

  Adrienne. Of course. With everything twisted around my mind, I had forgotten the one positive thing that has driven my decisions these past weeks. My daughter. Noah is right. I do know who I am.

  Adrienne’s mother.

  I nod because I do not trust my voice to work. Neither of us speaks again after that. I already feel better having vented my frustration, and what has not healed is supported by his arms around me. By the time we prepare to return to the hub, I know one other undeniable thing about myself: I am the woman Noah loves.

  • • •

  Noah ports us into his office. I am grateful for the privacy of our arrival because my face feels hot and swollen from crying. That and I am not ready to face those who witnessed our indiscretion at the ball. All I want is to splash cold water on my face and curl up in bed. Not to sleep, necessarily, but to be alone with my thoughts.

  We cross his dark office in silence, the room lit only by the glow of his computer’s screen saver—a mosaic of pictures of Adrienne. Noah pauses with a hand over the door’s activation switch, then lets out a long breath. His next intake halts as if he wants to say something, but he does not.

  “What?” I press.

  “I have to go see Sonya. Now. It shouldn’t wait.” He says this softly, as if he can lessen the impact.

  I had already assumed this and thought I was prepared, but I am nervous for him. I am also worried she will make things too hard. Can she talk him into staying with her somehow? Turn him against me by reminding him of how I deserted my family? Play on his guilt? Guilt is funny like that sometimes. It can make us do things we do not want to do.

  Noah faces me and gives me a lingering, soft kiss. When he comes away, his nose circles mine. “Should I come by after?”

  The idea both thrills and terrifies me. “I would not turn you away.”

  He smiles. “Good to know.” He stands back with a heavy sigh. “Time to face the music.”

  We are not two steps outside his office before confronting what we dreaded most. Sonya. She lays a stinging slap across my face, then his. Her bloodshot eyes are wide with fury, her hair a mess. She still wears her day clothes despite the late hour, and they are untucked and rumpled.

  Sonya raises her hand to slap me again, but this time Noah snatch
es her by the wrist and twists her arm away. “That’s enough.” His tone holds no room for argument. “If you need to blame someone, blame me.”

  But she ignores him. It is as if she and I are the only two who exist. “I asked you for the truth,” she says.

  “I never lied to you.”

  She laughs with no humor. “No. You just skirted around the question. You’re good at that.” She yanks her hand free of Noah’s hold and glares at him. “You should have ended this weeks ago. Saved me the humiliation. I’ve been walking around with people looking sorry for me. The poor idiot who can’t hold on to the man she loves.”

  Noah glances furtively at me. “Let’s not do this here.”

  She throws her arms up to encompass the dimly lit and empty hallway. “Why not? We’re alone, which is a step up from how the two of you have been carrying on.” Angry tears roll down her cheeks and she swipes them away. “You couldn’t even have the decency to let me go before you started screwing on camera.”

  I gape at her. “We are not sleeping together.”

  “Who told you that?” Noah asks, hands hooked to his hips.

  She wipes at her nose with the back of her hand, then sniffs. “It doesn’t matter. I know it’s true.”

  Noah throws his hands up in defeat. “Fine. Whatever. Where’s Adrienne?”

  “With the only person in this godforsaken place who saw fit to look out for me.”

  His eyebrows shoot upward, waiting for a better answer. I would like to know who has my daughter as well.

  “Farrah,” she says, and folds her arms, almost daring him to do something about it.

  Pieces click together. I thought maybe Sonya saw everything for herself, but she would never leave Adrienne alone in her room just to go watch a mission unfold. That leaves one other option: Farrah told Sonya. She did it to hurt either Noah, whom I firmly believe she has feelings for, or me, the woman she cannot stand.

  “You left my daughter with Farrah?” Noah says in disbelief, then heads off in the direction of the living quarters, leaving me alone with Sonya.

  “For what it is worth,” I start, gaze cast down the hall after him, “this is not how I wanted things to turn out. It was never my intention to—”

  “Don’t you dare. If you didn’t intend for this to happen, you should have left. You told me you were leaving, so why the hell didn’t you?”

  “I could not leave my daughter again.”

  She throws her hands up over her ears and pinches her eyes shut. A low, gravelly moan sounds through her clenched teeth. Then she tosses her arms out to her sides. “You’re so selfish, Emma. Everything is about you. The second you came back you made sure everyone saw how fragile you are, how needy. All anyone wants to do is shelter you from the things you perceive as danger. You wreck everything you touch. You left him a ruined man last year, and you’ll do it again. You’ll leave because that’s what you do. Only this time Adrienne will be hurt too.”

  “No.” I can scarcely get this one word through the tightness in my throat.

  “Yes. I’m right, and I’ll be here to pick up after you again. And again.”

  Does she have so little self-respect? Even if she were right, why would she do that to herself? But it does not matter. There will be no pieces to pick up, because I am not going anywhere.

  I open my mouth to respond when my vision goes completely black. Frigid air winds around me and tugs downward. I tunnel into the nothing of my abyss as easily as I would slip into a tub full of ice-cold water. But this is not happening. I am awake.

  Right?

  In the span of an eyeblink, I find myself back in the corridor, shivering, knees weakened to the point that I am beginning to collapse. Shooting a hand out to the wall, I steady myself and draw in a deep breath.

  “A fainting spell? Really, Emma? That’s the response you want to go with?” Sonya shakes her head and starts to leave, then thinks better of it. She puts a finger in my face. “This isn’t over.”

  I watch her follow after Noah, my heart pounding in my ears. A fainting spell? No. That was my nightmare seeping into my waking hours. That was my abyss showing signs of impatience. Something hungry and dark comes for me and shows no sign of stopping until it has me.

  CHAPTER 34

  I startle awake the second I realize I am beginning to drift off. The bathroom light spills through the cracked doorway. The glow from my tablet leaks from around the edges where I have it pressed against my chest.

  I need to get up. Move around. Sleep is the last thing I want right now. Especially after what happened earlier.

  Rolling from the bed, I make my way out to the hallway, where I am greeted by cool air. I glance toward Noah’s room. If he is there, I have no way of knowing. He said he might stop by after, but there is a good chance he will need to be alone after the conversation with Sonya.

  I slide to the ground, my back flush against the coarse wall, and look down at the tablet screen. Declan finally made it home around two and has not left his living room since. It is nearing three in the morning now, and from the looks of it, he is nowhere near ready to go to sleep. He sits in the corner of his couch, tuxedo shirt open to a white undershirt, staring into a cold fireplace. He has one arm draped over the back of the couch and the other over the side, fingers clutching a glass of bourbon off the end. Dark skin rings the underside of his eyes.

  What does he think about the bomb dropped tonight? Does he feel as betrayed by his father as I do by mine? All those years ago, Declan agreed to marry me under the assumption he had a choice in the matter. In truth, his options were as nil as mine. Our lives were never fated.

  Welcome to my world, Declan Burke. How does it feel to have your life plotted as if it is a piece on a bigger chessboard?

  Declan’s cell vibrates from the cushion beside him. He answers by saying, “Did you find anything?” Sitting forward, he rests his elbows on his knees and listens to the caller’s response. “You expect me to believe she just strolled into my office for no reason?”

  “What are you doing up?”

  I startle and peer down the dark hall where Noah approaches. His tux jacket hangs from a hooked finger over one shoulder. His shirt has been unbuttoned and pulled free of his pants. He looks tired, and maybe a little stressed, but also happy to see me. He lowers to the empty spot beside me with a tired sigh and takes my tablet to see what I am watching.

  “Well, that’s basically what you’re telling me,” Declan says. “She was there for a reason and I want to know what it was. I want every last detail from every video of every floor scoured for anything out of the ordinary. Nobody sleeps until I have answers; do you understand?”

  After cutting off the call, Declan swings his arm and hurls his glass at the fireplace. The glass shatters against the gray brick. Bourbon soaks blackened logs.

  Noah’s eyebrows pinch together. “Why are you watching this? If you’re worried he’ll find something, don’t. I have guys making sure all our tracks are covered.”

  “I am not worried about that.”

  What I am worried about seems ridiculous now. I had the idea that if I watched Declan have a nightmare, I would find the proof I need to show the clones are connected somehow in my abyss.

  “It is nothing.”

  Noah hands the screen back. Declan has started dialing the phone and paces the sunken living room, his face red. He starts yelling at someone a moment later, and I mute the sound.

  Noah nods pointedly at the screen. “Nothing must have been something at some point if you’re watching this.”

  I do not want to burden him with this, especially when I have no idea what is going on yet. But I do not want to keep him in the dark either. “Lydia Farris said something earlier that I cannot stop thinking about.”

  He takes my hand and skims his thumb across my knuckles. “What did she say?”

 
“She . . .” I pause, steeling myself for how absurd this will sound once voiced aloud. “She vowed to let the void take her soul if she were to give me away to Declan.”

  I expect him to laugh, or at least smile, but he looks completely serious. “What does that mean to you?”

  I drop my head back, and my skull thunks against the wall. “The phrase reminded me of my own nightmares. Of the abyss I feel tugging at me. I saw this connection that cannot possibly be there.”

  “What does this have to do with Burke?”

  I take a second to put the screen to sleep and set it beside me. “I thought I could catch Declan having a nightmare.” I smile at Noah, though the action is forced. “I think I am just desperate for a distraction and will create something out of nothing at this point.” Except it was something to me the moment Lydia made her promise.

  Noah does not return my smile and seems to study me with his intense gaze. “You sure that’s all?”

  I shrug. “How can we share dreams?”

  For that matter, how can dreams threaten your waking mind? This has gone far beyond a simple dream. I just wish I knew how and why. How do I even begin to understand?

  His hand tightens around mine and he looks straight ahead. “I don’t know.”

  I need to change the subject. Speaking of the abyss has made me cold. I bump his shoulder with mine, trying to air lightheartedness, but my heart stampedes in my chest. “How did it go with Sonya?”

  He frowns and several heartbeats pass in silence. “It wasn’t pleasant, but it’s over.”

  “I am sorry. I know that was not an easy decision to make.”

  “Easy, no. Obvious, yes.”

  “Is Adrienne still with her?”

  He nods. “No sense in waking her. I’ll pick her up in, oh . . .” He glances at his watch. “Three hours.”

  His hand drops heavy to his lap.

  “I could get her,” I offer, though in all honesty, I cannot imagine that going over well.