“Gravelle killed an innocent clone,” Levi explains. “He wanted you to think Oliver was dead. Not just you, of course. You, Jane, Booker, everyone. It was all a trick. We fell for it. Can we get up now?” Levi indicates the force field.
“Certainly.” Gravelle manifests a touch screen and presses a few buttons. I feel the force field around me dissolving. This time, when I try to stand, I can. As I stretch my legs, I notice the two guards stationed by the door tensing. I’m still trapped. There’d be no point in running; I’d never get away. Instead, I walk up to Oliver, desperate to make my brain understand what I’m seeing. It still makes no sense, none at all. Even under the influence of pharmas, the real Oliver would share more of an explanation… Wouldn’t he?
“You were gone,” I choke. “For almost a year.” The serrated knife twists in my chest.
“This isn’t a trick, Emma,” says Levi, who now stands next to me. “You know I’d be the first person to question this. All of it… Why my guardian did what he did. Why he made you all think Oliver was dead. Why he created us in the first place,” he says darkly.
“It was him all along,” I say. I turn, enraged, to Gravelle, feeling so angry I could rip off his face with my bare hands. “What did you do?”
“I simply righted some wrongs,” he says with a smile. “I enlisted my brother, Albert Seymour, to help me create the Similars so I could leave a legacy. Make those who betrayed me understand certain…things.”
I must look confused because Levi elaborates. “He wanted Jane and Booker to feel the pain of losing a son, just like he did all those years ago when he lost custody of Oliver. So he made them believe, for nearly a year, that Oliver had died. And then he sent me to rub it in their faces. I’m a pawn in this whole situation. We all are.”
I look at Oliver—is it really Oliver?—wondering if it could possibly be true. “Ollie?” I ask, afraid to say his name out loud and jinx this, whatever it is.
“Ah, young love,” Gravelle says, grinning. “So wonderful for you, Oliver, to finally have the reunion with Emma that you deserve.” He claps his hands merrily. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” Gravelle addresses Levi. “Now you understand what it was like for me, when I was so cruelly abandoned by my wife and child.”
“You can’t turn me against her,” Levi snaps, and I understand why he looked so sad before. But I can’t think about that right now. I have to deal with this. I have to be rational.
“If it’s really you,” I say forcefully, for everyone’s benefit, “prove it.”
“My mom’s cookies,” the Oliver likeness says.
“What?”
“You loved the lemon meringue the best, but you didn’t want to hurt all the other cookies’ feelings, so you always ate a chocolate chip and a sugar cookie, so they wouldn’t feel left out.”
“What else?” I whisper, hanging on to his every word.
“Fifty years, fifty years—I’ll be your best friend for fifty more years.”
“And after that?”
“You have to reapply.”
My whole body tenses. It’s really him. It has to be. No one else would—no one else could know those things… I stare at Oliver’s face, his expression dulled by months of pharmas. Oliver. Oliver! I could stare at him all day. It isn’t long before panic consumes me. What if the pharmas have altered his personality irrevocably?
“Where’s Prudence?” I demand. “We’ve been waiting long enough.”
“You certainly are an impatient one, aren’t you?” Gravelle tuts as he hobbles toward the far wall with the skinny windows. He calls up a virtual control panel and begins typing commands into it. As he types, I notice the opposite wall beginning to open. There is space behind that wall. A long, narrow compartment, or room of sorts.
There, chained to the wall in shackles, is Prudence.
Escape
“The gang’s all here,” says Gravelle, surveying Pru with satisfaction. “Together again, and all that jazz. Don’t you just love happy reunions?”
I run toward Prudence. “What have you done to her?”
“I’m okay,” Pru says bravely. But from the look of her, she’s anything but.
“You were never a good liar,” I tell Pru as I suppress a sob. Pru is much thinner than when I last saw her all those months ago, and the shackles binding her wrists to the wall are abrading her skin. I feel like I will be physically sick.
I turn to Gravelle, my body heat rising as my ire grows. “Why is she in that—that contraption?”
“Emmaline, Emmaline,” Gravelle chides. “You do tend toward the dramatic. Pru paid me a visit, and it turned out to be quite convenient timing for her to assist me in some research.” Gravelle comes over to fiddle with some wires at Pru’s feet.
“He means I’ve become a human lab rat,” Pru says.
Gravelle laughs. “Prudence has been a useful, if uncooperative, subject.”
Peeling my eyes off Pru for a moment, I take in the room. So much was hidden from our sight before the wall was opened. The space is filled with equipment, shiny and metal and foreboding. I see monitors, sharp instruments gleaming on aluminum trays, and rows of test tubes and beakers.
“You’re impressed by my laboratory,” Gravelle notes. “It’s quite extensive, as you’ll soon see. Oliver, Levi… This can, and will, all be yours one day.”
“As if we’d ever want any part of this,” Levi mutters.
“I’d advise you to speak only for yourself, son.” Gravelle moves through his lab, absentmindedly stacking some glass jars. “Oliver’s spent the last several months enjoying all this compound has to offer. Seeing just how powerful he might become by my side. You’d be surprised to hear that he disagrees with you…”
“I don’t,” Oliver snaps, and I glimpse my best friend again, deep below the surface of the pharma haze. “I want to go home to my parents.”
Gravelle’s face ripples with anger. “Too bad. You’re both staying here for the foreseeable future. Levi’s had years of training on this compound. You have a lot more to go, son. Levi, have you forgotten what awaits you back at Darkwood? You’re still a suspect in dear Prudence’s attack. Here, you’re safe—”
“Levi didn’t do it,” Pru interjects. “It wasn’t him. Emma and Levi saved my life. If it weren’t for them, my attacker might have done me in. She was scared she’d get caught and left the boathouse before Emma found me.”
“She?” My heart pounds wildly. “But it wasn’t Madison. She was meeting her tutor, if you can believe it…”
“No, not Madison. Tessa Leroy. She bludgeoned me with a rowing oar and left me for dead in that canoe.”
“Tessa?” I’m bewildered. “But why?”
Pru sighs. “I knew about the experiments Ransom and Fleischer were going to be running on the Similars. I found out over the summer, from my dad. Someone in the Quarry gave him a tip. I’m not sure how they knew. But I confronted Tessa so I could stop it all before it started. I asked her to meet me at the boathouse, warned her that they wouldn’t get away with it, that the Quarry would stop it, that she needed to get on our side. But it quickly became clear that Tessa wasn’t going to see reason. She said the Similars deserved the treatment they were getting. She said Theodora ruined her family, and it had all started with me. With my father.”
“Your dad? What did Jaeger have to do with—?” That’s when it hits me. He wrote that exposé about Damian, made his fraud national news. “The news story. About his crimes.”
“Yes,” Pru answers. “That, and the fact that my father is unabashedly pro-clone. Tessa’s on a mission to destroy each clone personally, if she can. But she started with me.”
“That’s crazy,” I sputter. “Your father’s a journalist. He was doing his job. And it isn’t your fault he wrote that exposé. Shouldn’t her dad take responsibility for what he did?”
“I ha
te to interrupt this happy reunion,” Gravelle says, “but this is quite the interesting tidbit. Damian Leroy’s daughter has a bone to pick with your father, Prudence?”
“Apparently,” she says, wrestling to get out of her shackles, but to no avail.
“Well, well. She’s in good company, then,” Gravelle muses.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“It means that Jaeger Stanwick hasn’t changed much in the two decades since we were classmates. It means that he likely isn’t sorry about how he treated me back then…”
“You’re talking about the foxes, letting those animals loose from the lab, aren’t you? Your expulsion.”
“She nails it, folks,” Gravelle says, his face deadpan.
“You’re still angry about that? It was more than twenty years ago! You were kids. You became a freaking billionaire. You married Jane Porter—”
“Don’t pretend to understand what it’s been like to be me,” Gravelle says, all humor gone from his voice. “As a child, I was denied my legacy and true parentage. It took everything I had to fit in at Darkwood. The day Jaeger Stanwick refused to come forward and acknowledge his role in that fiasco set my life on a devastating trajectory, one I could never course correct.”
“Did you know all this, Pru? That Gravelle hates your father so much?”
Pru shakes her head. “Of course not. I came here to talk with him, to try to work with him to protect the Similars from people like Ransom. The Quarry believes—”
“The Quarry, the Quarry. Such noble motives you all have. Let’s be honest, Prudence. You sought me out because you were curious about the Similars. About why they exist. About why you have a twin in Pippa.”
“Of course,” Pru says softly. “Of course I was curious…”
“It was all for revenge,” Levi says quietly. “That’s why we exist. To be pawns in Gravelle’s sick scheme…”
Gravelle guffaws at that. “You underestimate me, Levi! My plans are far more complex than simple restitution. You and your friends have only begun to help me accomplish my goals. The legacy I will leave on this planet before I die—”
“You’ve made your point,” Levi interjects. “Now let Emma and Prudence go. Oliver and I will stay. You can continue your research—or whatever it is you’re doing—on us. You’ve been studying Pru’s mental control, yes? Let me guess: you want to compare her brain to Pippa’s. Study me and Oliver, instead. We can handle it,” he says stubbornly.
“You and Oliver are too important to be prodded and poked,” Gravelle says, staring me down like prey. “You will all stay here for the foreseeable future.” Gravelle nods to the guards. “And if you’re thinking of contacting your father, Emmaline, I think you’ll find your plum doesn’t work. He may love to come rescue you, but he doesn’t know where you are or where this place is, does he?”
“The other Similars,” Levi says. “They’ll come for us.”
“They’ll do what I tell them,” Gravelle says. “In the meantime, guards? Prepare three more beds.”
Two guards grab me and Oliver.
“Sorry, old man,” says Levi under his breath. “But everything I know, I learned here. From you.”
Levi flies through the air, kicking and twisting as he knees the gun out of one guard’s holster and kicks the weapon out of the other’s. As the guards fumble, Levi flips his body in the opposite direction, taking out the third guard, knocking him unconscious. He can’t get to the fourth guard in time. That man fires a shot at Levi, narrowly missing him, hitting a table full of glass beakers that shatter into a million pieces. Levi rolls on the ground, grabbing one of the guns from the floor and shooting it at the guards. The bullet strikes one guard in the foot. He crumples in agony. Levi steps over him, dodging another bullet. Adrenaline courses through my veins. I reach for the cuffs binding Pru’s arms and pound frantically at the latch with a piece of equipment. It’s a struggle, but I finally get it bent enough for Pru to slide out. Once unbound, Pru’s arms slip to her side like noodles, and she collapses on me, in agony. Were her arms dislocated from her shoulders?
“The girls!” a guard shouts, noticing that I’ve freed Pru. I hear a shot ring out as two of the guards beeline for a glass case on a counter in the lab. I hadn’t noticed it until now. It’s full of rows of injectives.
“Inject the subject!” Gravelle shouts. “We can’t lose all that data!” he bellows.
A guard lunges toward us, injective prepped and at the ready. I push Pru to the side, thrusting my own body in the way.
I feel the familiar prick as the injective pierces the skin of my upper arm. I know I only have moments before I’ll be at the mercy of whatever memory or darkness is to come. Before the injective takes hold of me, I scan the room for help, but I’m on my own. Levi has picked up Pru and is carrying her toward the exit, while Oliver tries to run interference. At least preserving Gravelle’s precious data means not killing us. The bullets have stopped flying for the time being, though the guards are wholly focused on keeping us in this room.
No one’s concerned about me anymore. I’ll be compromised in seconds. As soon as I’m thrust into the virtual reality, I’ll be helpless. I fight the sinking feeling in my gut that tells me I’m as good as dead because I won’t be able to defend myself. That’s when I notice the case of injectives. The guards have left it open. I drag myself over to pull two of the syringes and shove them into my pocket, then muster all my energy and concentration to follow Levi toward the door.
Pru insists that she’s regained her strength, and Levi sets her down.
A guard comes from the side, blocking the door. Pru surprises him with a kick to his groin. He bends over in pain, and we push past him into the hallway. Pru takes the lead, shouting that she knows the way out. Just before the injective overtakes me, a bullet strikes Ollie in the leg. I pray that when I finally return from this memory—if I ever return from this alternate reality—we’ll both still be alive.
Injected
I don’t know what I expect when my vision returns. My childhood home? Hades Point? Instead, I’m right where I was moments ago—in the hallway of the compound.
Oliver is only a few yards away, gingerly testing his weight on his injured leg and wincing in pain. Pru is farther down the hall. Is this real or just a memory?
A bullet flies past my head.
I don’t know if it’s possible to die in a virtual reality, but I don’t want to find out. I have to move. I need to get out of here.
I reach an arm out to Oliver, urging him to lean on me. He does, and we make our way with Levi toward Pru, who holds open a door at the end of the hallway.
“Come on,” she urges. “I left a small boat anchored to the dock. We can take that back to the mainland.”
I assist Oliver through the exit and wait for Levi and Pru to pass before going through it myself. The door shuts behind me, and I exhale. Even though we’re still not in the clear, I’m relieved. My friends and I will make it out of here—out of this vision I’m experiencing, and in real life too. We will leave this island for good. We have to.
My friends. Suddenly, I’m in a dark hallway. They aren’t here.
“Pru?” I cry out. “Ollie? Levi?” I turn around, squinting in the dark, praying that they’re up ahead or around a corner. But from what I can see, the hall is empty. They’re gone, and I’m entirely alone.
Fueled by my desperate need to survive, I jog down hallway after hallway, losing myself in the heart of the compound. When I reach the end of a long corridor, I pause, wondering whether to go left or right. Two guards grab me. Before I can resist, they carry me off. I try to free myself from their grasp. It’s a futile effort. They are too strong, and their grip is as unmovable as a vise.
Within moments, we are back in the big room where Gravelle kept Pru. The room looks the same as it did when we left it, only the floor is
covered in blood. New terror grows in the pit of my stomach. They are bringing me here for a reason. That reason must be to kill me.
The guards strap me into the manacles that bound Pru to the wall. They yank my arms to the ceiling and handcuff them into the shackles. They bind my feet too, then hook me up to electrodes. I scream, and they poke needles into my veins. I imagine myself trapped here indefinitely—my friends gone and unable to save me. That’s when I realize there are worse things in life than death. Like this. Definitely this.
No! I scream in my mind, as the guards stab me with more needles, conversing in a language I can’t understand. No, I plead, tears pooling in my eyes.
Someone appears in front of me, pacing back and forth, surveying his handiwork. I blink out my tears, expecting to see Gravelle—the madman himself. But it’s not him. Instead, Headmaster Ransom is the one studying me. He watches from a comfortable distance as the guards finish their work.
“Emmaline,” Ransom booms. “It’s a pity things had to end this way. But you always were so…fascinating. My research on the Similars is plateauing. I need a new subject. Someone with potential. Someone like you.”
“Never.” I grimace, the pain of the needles and the throbbing in my shoulders beginning to make me woozy. “I’ll sabotage the data. You’ll never get anything from me.”
Ransom sighs. “I do wish duty had taught you a lesson, Emma, but I can see it had little effect on you. Guards? Can we see how her body reacts to the drowning sensation?”
“No!” I shriek. I won’t let him torture me. I wrench my hands and my body against the binds that hold me. In one excruciating motion, they pop. The handcuffs release.
Wait—how…?
And that’s when I remember: flying from Hades Point. Floating, freezing in midair, and flying upward, not falling down onto the rocky crags. Saving myself.
This isn’t real, Emma. It’s only a simulation. A fabrication. A fiction.
I’m free. I’m no longer bound by the chains, and I’ve propelled my body high in the air. I’m flying again. The view in front of me is out the long, rectangular window at the top of the wall. Outside there are trees, then water as far as the eye can see, and endless blue sky.
The Similars Page 29