“I heard from your dad that ’raxia had become a problem for you. Is it still?”
“No. Death seems to have cured me of that addiction.” ’Raxia could have been a problem again, after you and Elysia arrived, but Aidan wouldn’t let it. It’s Xander I’m drawn to. But Aidan who seeks to protect me. To save me from myself. Why, then, does my heart have to still yearn so badly for Xander, who betrayed me?
“What happened on the boat?”
“We fell asleep. It was just drifting, felt peaceful even. But when we awoke in the morning, it’s like we were crazed by sunstroke. It was like the ’raxia didn’t just calm our bodies, but actually burned through our brains. I literally thought the boat would sail itself to Demesne.”
“And then?” Xander asks, looking to the storm not so far in the distance now. Holding on to the board, he swims us over a wave to move our position closer to shore.
“And then the nightmare storm came in. The boat nearly capsized. The guy and the girl drowned. The ocean killed me too. For a little while, at least. Then Aidan woke my heart back up, on Demesne.”
My heart woke up. Without any help from Xander.
No longer able to avoid the storm, Xander and I swim back to land as thunder, lightning, and rain arrive on the north shore, battling our way through vicious waves that hammer us relentlessly. Finally we straggle ashore, but then the hail starts. We hide inside the hollow opening of a set of large black boulders situated just past the dunes. The cavelike opening offers just enough ground space to take cover until the storm—milder than the earlier one today—passes.
As we crouch shivering on the cold ground, Xander shouts over the sound of the thunder, “We need to get a message to your father. He was beside himself with grief after your disappearance.”
He was? All I ever thought about was my grief in losing Xander when he left for the Uni-Mil. I never considered Dad’s in losing me. “If we alert him now, it would jeopardize the Insurrection,” I say.
“Agreed. But as soon as we can, we need to let him know you’re alive.”
“Yes.”
For the first time since the death party that landed me on Demesne and then on Heathen, to this nowhere that became my everywhere, I want to go home. I just don’t know what home there is for me to go back to.
A hard, driving rain pounds our shelter, whipping wind and sand, but we have nowhere else to go. With lightning strikes all around us, it’s better to wait out the storm right where we are before returning to the Rave Caves.
Xander and I sit side by side, saying nothing for a while, until I break the silence.
“Did it mean anything to you?”
“What?” He knows what I mean, so I don’t bother to clarify. He pauses, then: “That night meant everything to me.”
“That night?” I cry out. “It happened during the day!”
He shrugs, like that huge detail is meaningless. “I guess I remembered it wrong.”
Another betrayal he’s foisted on me. How well did I really, truly know this guy? He doesn’t remember the when of the most defining moment of my life? Then, it occurs to me: Why do I still let that day (not night) when Xander loved and then rejected me even be the defining moment of my life? I survived death. How’s that for a defining experience? Why do I give him such power over me? Especially when he doesn’t want it?
“The time was wrong,” Xander says. “You knew that then. You know it now.” He’s right on both counts. “I’m not proud of how I behaved.”
I’m not appeased. If it weren’t for Elysia, perhaps I could let it go, but because of her, I can’t. “How could you love me, and then imprint on her?”
“You and she are essentially the same person. My feelings for you transferred to her.”
“But isn’t loyalty supposed to be your prime ethic? You would be shunned in your own Aquine community for how you left me.”
“I already have been shunned by them,” says Xander. He wipes away some rain that’s fallen onto his arm, causing me to notice the purple scar on his bicep.
I make the connection from the scar to what he just admitted. That scar is the reason he left home when he was just sixteen, I’m sure of it. “What happened?” I ask him, pointing to the scar. I was never brave enough to ask him before, back on Cerulea.
He speaks in a pained tone I’ve never heard in his voice before. “You’ve shared your trauma; I guess it’s only fair if I share mine. Did you know that my grandmother was Isidra Magnuson?”
“Isidra Magnuson, the founder of the Aquines?” I say, shocked. Even I, who never paid attention in school, know who Isidra Magnuson is. The Aquine territory was named after her—it’s impossible not to know her name. Actually, it’s totally possible. But my non-studious self researched everything I could about the Aquines when their gorgeous young Alexander Blackburn came to live in our extremely boring Cerulea enclave. Dinnertime with Dad was my nightly required history lesson. Fantasies of hot-bodied Xander inspired my optional study.
“Yes, that Isidra Magnuson.”
Isidra Magnuson was a botanist and activist who led the Aquine movement. It had started as a student movement during the Water Wars and snowballed around the world. Its activists protested for economic, energy, and food justice. As the world order crumbled, the Aquines grew tired waiting for change and decided to stop protesting and just create their own new order. They moved to the remote areas of the West Mainland and lived there without authority until the end of the Water Wars, when they won full rights—but no deed—to live on the land. They named their territory Isidra.
If Xander is Isidra Magnuson’s grandson, that makes him the son of Athena Magnuson-Pont, the world’s first genetically engineered Aquine. Isidra Magnuson and her wife, geneticist Francesca Pont, were Athena’s parents. Francesca Pont had been the pioneer of the Aquines’ genetic engineering. It was her brainpower that resulted in the best and brightest of the freedom fighters pooling their DNA to create a new race. The Aquines were designed to have Olympic-level physical strength that also fostered superior psychological stamina; in creating a new breed, they hoped to distance themselves from what they perceived as the mental sickness in the old societies. Francesca Pont did not live long enough to see her daughter become an adult, or to see the success of her life’s work when the Aquines were granted the Isidra territory. Before the Water Wars ended, Francesca Pont was assassinated by religious zealots who believed her genetic engineering work was against God’s will.
What a legacy Alexander Blackburn comes from! I say, “So you’re, like, an Aquine prince or something?”
“Hardly. Our people are egalitarians. We don’t believe in those labels. We were designed to reflect humanity’s best aspects. Strength, loyalty, kindness, community.”
“And you are supposed to value monogamy above all else, and mate for life,” I remind him.
“There is room for error. Clearly.”
“Is that why you were exiled? You made an error?”
“Yes. My family lived inland in the mountains, but I always sought the sea. As a teen, I would leave home to go on surfing quests in the rough ocean waters. I was so young and unformed still. Back then, Aquine values felt too rigid to me. My way to rebel was to disappear for periods of time, to surf or camp out in the wilderness. I guess you could say I caused my own death party.”
“Really?” It’s hard to think of young Xander being rebellious, much less a careless idiot who incites death parties. It’s comforting to know he’s stupid—and mortal—like me.
“I was camping at the beach. It was a wilderness beach like this, not the kind of beach where people go to relax. I met some Mainland clones who’d escaped from ReplicaPharm dormitories. They were near their expiration dates and eager to try some adventure before they turned off. So I got them to tow me out to sea, where there were wave turbine installations used to power energy in the West Mainland.”
“You and some clones surfed wave turbines?” I ask, incredulous. How’s that even poss
ible? The gigantes in comparison seem so tepid.
Xander says, “Maybe it was like your ridiculous notion of getting to Demesne. I was full of bravado back then. I had this notion to conquer wave energy by surfing it.”
“Did you?”
“Yes and no. When I tried surfing the turbines, I accidentally tripped a valve. I caused one of the wave turbines to explode.” He runs his hand over the deep purple burn scar on his arm. “I inadvertently shut down power to parts of the West Mainland for two days. It’s a miracle I survived the accident at all.”
“Whoa! You shut down power to whole territories?”
“Yes. But there was more trouble for me to deal with back home. My actions caused the Aquine authorities to have to deal with the West Mainland authorities to fix the problem. Even more than Aquines hate disloyalty, they hate having to engage humans in the outside world for any extended period of time. Plus there was the shame of recognition, that Isidra Magnuson’s grandson could be so publicly…flawed.”
“You were just dumb. Aren’t we all, sometimes?” Aren’t I? Like, a lot?
“Aquines don’t tolerate recklessness like that. After the incident, my parents decided I needed to leave Isidra. They believed I needed to be tamed, by experience, in the outside world. So they sent me to Cerulea. Your father had been a friend to my father—they had known each other from childhood swim meets in the border Aquine–West Mainland area. Your father got me the job that offered me refuge at the Cerulea Aquatics Club.”
“Unbelievable,” I say. Even more unbelievable is how much Xander is making me appreciate my own father. The Dad I remember was rigid and a taskmaster. The man that Xander knew was apparently also capable of compassion. Why did he never show me any? “But…you lived. How does your accident qualify as a death party?”
“The two clones I got to tow me out were killed in the explosion.”
“Surely their deaths didn’t matter to people who don’t even believe clones should exist.”
Xander says, “No one grieved their loss. Besides me.”
I can’t handle his pain, no matter how much pain he’s caused me. I reach over to wipe away a tear that’s sprung down his cheek. “It’s okay,” I say, desperate to comfort him.
He takes my hand from his cheek, and presses my palm to his mouth. His lips kiss my hand. He leans in, and our lips touch, lightly. The kiss starts out more tender than passionate, but as our mouths reacclimate to the taste of each other, the kissing quickly graduates to more urgent, magnetic need.
But Xander abruptly ends it, pulling away from me, actually pushing me away when I try to lean back in for more.
Déjà SUCK.
“I’m so sorry, Z. I have profound regret for how I treated you. But we can’t do this.”
“Again,” I mutter.
“Please try to understand. After I left for the military, I realized the mistake I had made. I vowed that no matter how strongly I felt for the next girl, I would not disobey my Aquine values. That next girl was Elysia. I didn’t know you were alive. I imprinted my feelings for you onto her. I can’t undo that. No matter how much I might desire you, I will always be loyal to her. I have to be. She needs me more.”
How come I can never wake up from this Elysia nightmare? Even after what Xander has just shared with me? “She doesn’t deserve you! She doesn’t have the years of knowing you, growing up with you, that I have! You can’t possibly love someone you’ve known such a short time.”
“I understand her. I, too, took a life. Caring for her child could be a chance at redemption for us both.”
I have great remorse for the two teens who lost their lives in my death party, but no way could I ever see my clone’s future child as a potential redemption for past mistakes. How can I even compete with that “logic”?
I can’t compete. There’s no winning with that irrationality.
I must redirect the game. My best shot at breaking up Xander and Elysia is Xander’s own competition: the memory of her Tahir Fortesquieu.
It’s time to bring the next swim meet directly to my clone.
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE BUT YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER.
My father used to repeat this proverb to me as part of my diving training.
“Who’s your most serious competitor, Zhara?”
“Sarah Phang.”
“Now she’s your new best friend.”
“Why, Dad?”
“The more she likes you, the less threatened she’ll be by you. The less threatened she is, the less attentive she is to her game. And the more you can be on yours.”
Elysia is my new Sarah Phang.
A few meters inland from the south shore, there’s a lagoon hidden inside one of the caves, but partially exposed by a half moon–shaped opening at the top of the cave. The lagoon can be reached by jumping from a series of ropes installed from either end of the cave at its exposed parts. It’s my favorite spot on the island, my heaven on Heathen. The lagoon’s shape is long and wide, near to the dimensions of an Olympic-size pool, with water that’s smooth and mellow, at a mild, cool temperature that’s ideal for lap swimming. Bonus: the lagoon offers an abundance of swimming companionship, harboring many varieties of fish species that glow in magnificent oranges dots, black stripes, and red swirls as they dart through the crystal clear blue water.
Today’s an ideal swim day—a necessary one. Yesterday was storms ’n’ quakes for the Emergents’ training. Today, they’re experimenting with brutal heat that sometimes causes brush fires in the jungle and always results in snakes rising from the ground to taunt and intimidate. No, thank you. I want to be more than a distraction here, but I also want to be comfortable. I’ll take a nice swim this morning instead, thank you very much. If my clone is really as much like me as she seems, I know the lagoon will be the setting to pry the most information from her.
I climb to the top of the cave and then hang from a rope attached horizontally across the half moon–shaped open-air dome over the lagoon. I inch my way across to the middle point. Rather than climb down the vertical rope knotted to the center of the horizontal rope, I cry out “Jingjing!” just for the hell of it, then let my hands loose, savoring the awesome downward drop, feet first, into the lagoon.
“Find it okay?” I ask Elysia when I come up for air after my plunge into the lagoon. I swim toward where she’s finishing a lap at the far end of the water.
“It took me a while to find this spot, and some monkeys tried to bite me on the way here, but I found it okay,” she says. “The note you left on my breakfast plate wasn’t very specific with directions.” Whatever. My clone’s got to start cultivating wilderness skills on her own, right? She adds, “I’m supposed to be doing target practice this morning. This is much more enjoyable. The heat is horrible today, so thank you for the invitation. It was a pleasant surprise.”
I begin swimming alongside her, mimicking my mimic’s breast stroke. We reach the equivalent of the swim lane’s end, turn-flip at the same time, and then resume swimming the opposite length of the lagoon.
“How did you get down here?” I ask.
“The same way you just did. I jumped from the rope.”
“You should have climbed down the rope. Is that jump even safe in your condition?”
“It will have to be.”
Everyone treats her like she’s some sacrosanct Virgin Mary—a replicant who has managed to replicate! But how does Elysia feel about her situation—trapped by the hopes and dreams of every other clone here? I stop the swim to tread water in place. “Do you even want this baby?”
She stops her swim to tread water too. “No.” She says the word without hesitation or remorse.
“Then why have it?” For some reason I feel strangely fascinated by the idea of the baby in my clone’s womb. Technically, I think it would be considered mine, too, biologically at least. Her ovaries were copied from mine.
Elysia says, “The one person I knew who could make it go away—the healer called M-X—wouldn’t do it.
She said that what was happening in my body was a miracle and that even unborn life was sacred.”
Come on. There has to be a way to get rid of it if that’s what Elysia wants. Why should she be forced to finish a pregnancy started by rape, just because her pregnancy promises—maybe, doubtfully—hope for the other Demesne clones to procreate? Why should she have to carry a baby she doesn’t want, which was conceived in violence, and carry the hopes and dreams of so many others who care more about what’s best for them rather than what’s best for her? That’s so not fair.
I might be taking the helpful angle too far, or maybe I’m projecting how I’d feel in her situation, but I say, “If you want help to get rid of it, I’m sure we could figure out a way.” I totally mean it. If she needs my help in this rotten situation, I will give it to her.
“I’m resigned to see this through.” Her tone does not mimic joy for the “miracle of life” growing inside her. Her tone, in fact, sounds more curious, along with resigned.
I know about curious. It’s what landed me on Heathen via Demesne.
Elysia resumes her swim, as do I. “But I appreciate the offer,” she says. “Race you?”
“Butterfly!” I call out.
Did Dr. Lusardi give her steroids along with my face and body?
We could never make a synchronized-swimming pair, because she’s so much faster than me. Her strokes are flawless. Even with a baby inside her, which I’d think would weigh her down and slow her speed, she easily outpaces me, stroke for stroke. I’m a good swimmer. She’s great. I’m grateful Xander advised her not to dive in her condition. I don’t think I could handle her being so much better than me at that too.
She wins the butterfly heat easily. We take a break, sitting on the shore, letting the lagoon lap sweet water over our feet. Elysia says, “You’d swim faster if you stopped watching me.”
I know that already. It’s why Dad pushed me into diving instead of race swimming. Some swimmers can look to their competitors in the nearby lanes and use them as leverage to push harder and faster to win the race. Other swimmers, like me, get slowed down from too closely watching their competitors, costing them crucial speed and distance.