“You’ve perfected the flame funnel,” I praise Aidan. “It’ll just be a short matter of time until you use it to bring the Insurrection back to Demesne, right?”
“Ideally,” says Aidan. “We can’t hide out here too much longer, playing such visible war games.”
“Don’t destroy all of Demesne,” I request. “Leave the good parts. So we can have fun playing there.”
Aidan is a clone with no understanding of the concept called “fun.” He says, “Destruction is a certainty. Unless the humans surrender quickly.”
I’ll teach him about fun. I’ll just miss our feral homestead a little bit once we abandon it to return to Demesne.
I’ve lost track of time since I’ve been camped out in the middle of nowhere with these escaped clones. On Demesne, their human owners called these clones Defects, because they dared to feel. They call themselves Emergents. It’s been several months since I woke up on Demesne and was promptly escorted away to live with the Emergents. The only real clue to the length of my stay here is the length of my hair, now almost white-blond from the sun, the black and blue tips growing longer and more brittle with each passing day. Some of the Emergents were trained as expert beauty stylists back on Demesne, but I don’t dare ask them to interrupt their warfare training on Heathen to give me a haircut or pluck my eyebrows. There will be plenty of time for beautifying after Insurrection comes. Then, luxury skills will be utilized for their own purposes, if the clones choose—and not for servitude, which they didn’t choose.
My stomach grumbles and I wish one of the Emergents would bring lunch up to the unofficial office I share with Aidan. The weather fluctuates too wildly to live and sleep in this tree house, so Aidan and I use it as the ideal lookout and planning point for various training exercises across the island. I like the tree house because it allows some privacy away from the constant stream of activity in the Rave Caves, where the Emergents keep their quarters and I share a cave habitat with Aidan.
Typically for a clone, Aidan doesn’t care much one way or the other about privacy; that’s my human desire. Our tree house “office” hang-floats from a branch rising at least twice the height of a ten-meter Olympic diving platform. It’s built to resemble birds’ nests, with a pyramid roof woven with thorns and bamboo, over a base made of plumed reeds, moss, and twigs. Ten years of free-falling from platforms the height of a three-story building for sport more than prepared me for this altitude. I guess the draw of extreme heights is in my blood; I can’t escape it. My bed back in Cerulea was a hammock attached to my bedroom ceiling. Dad thought the added height would prepare me better for high-diving. People pay millions of Uni-dollars for views like mine—green trees! blue ocean! endless sky!—but those people usually require indoor plumbing and entry via elevator or stairs instead of climbing a webbed rope, and more interior space. Who needs more space? I don’t own anything, except myself. Belongings don’t belong here.
A tree house has been a great place for a lost girl outlaw. I am a natural fit here, on this land born of disaster. I court disaster.
A few generations ago, an enormous volcano erupted beneath the ocean. After the chaos of that eruption, after the tsunamis and land quakes that devastated continents in its wake, only one in the archipelago of tropical islands in the volcano’s perimeter was considered habitable by humans. That island became Demesne, and within a decade it was the world’s most exclusive real estate. The other islands in the archipelago, teeming with wild jungle and dangerous caves, were considered useless. Only the savage could survive on those other islands.
We are those savages: me, plus the small militia of Emergents. Here, time and space are meaningless. Only survival matters. And the war to come. Insurrection, the Emergents call it.
I tease Aidan. “Will you keep me as a trophy when Insurrection happens?”
“Yes,” says Aidan, straight-faced. Clones have learned how to survive on this savage island, how to manipulate weather, how to think and even start to feel like humans. But they totally don’t get sarcasm. The bottom of Aidan’s mouth loops up into a half smile, but I know the sexy look is a mimicked flirtation. I’m essentially his consort here, but that means his companion and his assistant—nothing more. Luckily, it also means I’ll be the one human he allows to survive and thrive on Demesne, once Insurrection happens.
The Emergents plan to eliminate the human population on Demesne—the beautiful paradise created with the clones’ hard labor. They consider Demesne their native land, and they want it back. It’s not even revenge they seek. Revenge will just be a bonus.
The Emergents on Heathen number about fifty. They’ve utilized the skills the humans gave them—engineering, architecture, cooking, construction, etc.—for themselves. They’ve built tree houses and labyrinth underground dwellings. They’ve created irrigation tunnels in the subterranean caves to supply drinking water and to fertilize their crops. The clones who formerly engineered the sublime atmosphere on Demesne now use their skills to control the environment around Heathen. They’ve created a weather force field, so that any unwanted planes or boats that try to reach Heathen quickly become enshrouded in sudden storms that cause them to crash and sink. Eventually, the Emergents’ weather-force-field experiments will be used to take back Demesne—and to shut it off from the rest of the world, so it can be theirs and theirs alone.
Aidan turns around to look out over the treetops toward the middle of the island, where Emergent workers are cultivating the fields of produce and plants that support the island. “The field laborers are wrapping up the morning’s chores,” says Aidan. “Must be lunchtime. Your stomach is like a clock. Shall we go?”
I turn around, too, see the rows of bright red torchflowers, and remind myself that I am hungry for food, and not the empty kind of nourishing those flowers could potentially offer me. The cuvée seeds that ’raxia is made from come from those plants. I could have as much ’raxia as I want on Heathen. The bright red cuvée torchflowers are a constant reminder of my failures, but also of my willpower. If I were strung out on ’raxia, I would never survive here. One must be constantly alert and able to adapt on Heathen. Sheer willpower—the same willpower I could never conjure to reach the Olympic diving team—keeps me from indulging. I need to rebuild that willpower reserve. Heathen is my test.
It’s not such a bad life, actually. I have a life. I try to remember that and appreciate it, always. Every breath is precious after you’ve died and not gone to heaven.
Reggie and Holly weren’t so lucky. I try to remember that also. I might be stranded in the middle of nowhere, but at least I got a second chance. Will the guilt and grief of their loss ever go away?
“Let’s go eat. Unless you want to do some ’raxia first,” I jokingly say to Aidan.
“I don’t,” he says, taking my comment literally, as he always does. “Once was enough.”
Like me, the Emergents experimented with ’raxia pills when they were clone workers on Demesne. In Cerulea, I used ’raxia to numb the pain of the guy who broke my heart. ’Raxia was my way to give up on living. For the Emergents, ’raxia was their way to come alive. For humans, ’raxia induces a sweet elation followed by a beautiful calm. (I try not to think of that beautiful calm so I don’t miss it.) For clones, ’raxia unblocks the brain inhibitors that were supposed to make them emotionless worker bees. One hit of ’raxia was all it took, and the Demesne clones were instantly changed. Those who took it then dared to question their involuntary servitude. They discovered they were clever—by choice, not by design. Once these clones were labeled Defects on Demesne, they were returned to the laboratory to be expired. No refunds or exchanges on these purchases were given, but no worries, the Defects would be put out of commission—permanently. Or so the humans thought. The Mortician back in the lab was marking the Defects’ cases as expired, but he was actually sending the very much alive Defects to Heathen, to start new lives as Emergents and to prepare for Insurrection.
“Let’s eat,” I tell Aidan. I wa
lk over to the rope ladder that leads down to the ground, and Aidan extends his hand to help me hold steady as I step onto it for the climb down. His pinkie finger, flesh-colored once again, is still warm from the surge of electricity he sent to the flame cloud, sending my body a pleasant jolt, the kind I used to feel only when Xander was near me.
The same finger touch that Aidan, who was known as the Mortician on Demesne, once used to bring me back to life sometimes has the added effect of making me feel weak in the knees now.
“What happened?” I asked the clone called the Mortician.
His pinkie finger was blue, as if there was a light beneath the skin, but within seconds, his finger returned to flesh color.
The Mortician regarded his finger with surprise. “It was just an experiment. I didn’t think it would actually work.”
“I wasn’t all the way dead,” I whispered. “I did too much ’raxia. I think that’s what made it seem like my heart stopped beating.”
“Maybe that’s why it worked.”
“What worked?”
His face turned to concerned. “The electric current in my finger. There’s no time to explain. If the chip beneath my finger works, I won’t be able to conceal the blue light from the humans. I’ll have to join the others ahead of schedule. Like, now.”
I had no idea what he was talking about and didn’t care. There was only one important question I wanted answered. “Was I cloned?”
It wasn’t the time to be boastful, but I knew I had the right aesthetic for Demesne’s couture clone class. As an athlete, I had narrow hips rounding out a tiny waist, with long, muscled legs, and perfect breasts. My sunflower-blond hair, tipped in blue and black at the ends, fell in waves past my shoulders and had been the envy of the other girls at school, along with my peach-toned skin and smooth, acne-free face. I knew I had the desirable aesthetic, because I could see the Mortician blatantly admiring it as I lay naked beneath a white sheet on the metal slab table.
He said, “Dr. Lusardi tried to clone you. It didn’t work. You must be a teenager.”
Usually, adults say the word teenager likes it’s an accusation, but the Mortician said it as an observation, perhaps because his human age didn’t appear to be that much past teenage years himself.
“I’m almost seventeen,” I said, realizing the gift the Mortician had just given me: I’d reach my next birthday, probably.
“Dr. Lusardi hasn’t mastered replicating teenagers yet,” he said. “Your clone was a Fail.”
“Good,” I said, almost as relieved by that as I was just to be alive again.
Before I could ask him What next? the Mortician lifted me from the table and into his strong arms, making sure to wrap the sheet tightly to cover my body. I felt protected. I breathed in the succulent air again. I wanted more of it. “Where will you take me?” I asked him. I didn’t want to leave Demesne—I’d only just gotten there. But I knew the only way I could stay was if I voluntarily decided to die for real.
The Mortician said, “There’s a hidden beach in the coves nearby. Pirates who deliver bodies take shelter from outer ring storms there, and sometimes help those of us seeking Insurrection to escape.”
Insurr-WHAT? Was he programmed to speak Nonsense? I had no idea what he was talking about besides the word “pirates.”
I said, “Pirates sold our bodies here. They won’t help us escape!”
“They will in exchange for the cuvée torchflower seeds that the escaped clones give them to sell on the open market back on the Mainland.”
“So, the pirates make money delivering First bodies, then again by helping the cloned bodies escape? That’s crazy. I refuse to go. I won’t—”
The Mortician cut me off. “You have no choice.” He walked toward a window that looked out to a mass of jungle. I peeked at the ground beneath the tangle of trees and saw that wherever we were, we were several stories in the air.
The Mortician looked like he was about to jump out of the window while holding me. So I was going to wake up from death just to commit double suicide with this cloned muscle man? Not so fast, pal. I started to kick free, but the Mortician was quicker than me, and in a flash, he grabbed a syringe from an exam table next to the window. He plunged it into my arm.
When I woke up, I was on Heathen.
I WAS NEVER VERY GOOD AT SCHOOL, except in history, which Dad relentlessly drilled me in, but in human behavior class I learned about the syndrome I probably have now, when prisoners or hostages start to sympathize with their captors. I’m not exactly a prisoner or hostage here, but I was brought here when a syringe into my arm knocked me out and eliminated my ability to make the choice to come to Heathen. Law enforcement officials would term that kidnapping.
Still, I stay. I’ve gotten used to it here. Plus, I have nowhere else to go—at least, nowhere better, besides Demesne, which is the ultimate better. I ache to go back to Demesne, but next time as a winner, with the Emergents. The rich people on Demesne claim their couture clones were created to be servants, but that’s just a polite word for “slaves.” I never cared much about clones’ rights before—the clones I saw back on the Mainland were manufactured in labs and seemed like generic drones—but these Emergent clones were copied from actual people who lost their lives way too young. They look like people I knew. They look like me: real. It’s hard not to feel like these duplicates deserve a better second chance than their Firsts’ premature fates.
On a weirder level, I might also stay on Heathen because my personal captor is not at all hard to look at. At first glance, he appears threatening, but Aidan’s stern jaw-line and buff muscles are softened by the black rose branded into his temple and the sweetness of his fuchsia eyes rising above his full, ruby-colored lips.
The Mortician on Demesne evolved instantly into a natural leader on Heathen. And I like power.
I follow Aidan back to the Rave Caves for lunch, feeling content to serve in his small militia. I also can’t stop admiring the movement of his tight glutes, or imagine what it would feel like to trace my hand up the line of his olive-skinned spine, stopping to pull down at the black hair at the nape of his neck so I could kiss it like I’m a vampire. I almost let out a laugh, thinking how lucky it is that clones aren’t able to procreate, because I’m trying to imagine explaining to our kids how Mommy met Daddy.
Aidan and I reach the mess hall inside the Rave Caves, where the kitchen team has laid out today’s lunch: wild turkey gizzards cooked in mango juice, with chard greens stir-fried in garlic. I want to complain—Gizzards, again? Healthy green vegetables, do we have to? But any lunch here is still better than the meals served at my school in Cerulea—that is, no meals at all. School lunch in Cerulea was strictly BYO, which meant students ate whatever leftover scraps the Base donated to Uni-Mil members from its own cafeterias, or whatever brittle fruits the parched trees in our family gardens cared to let loose. Any meal on Heathen is an improvement. The fact that there’s even juice to sauce the meat, or chopped garlic in the greens, is a hopeful sign for the Emergents, who emerged without taste buds—or so they were told. Their sense of taste is still new to them, unlocked by the ’raxia that once turned them into Defects.
It’s like the sea parts as Aidan and I walk through the dining area, bringing our lunch to the communal table. Two Emergents immediately vacate their seats at the head of the table in deference to the island’s unofficial king and queen. I like this deference. I like these Emergents. They’re way cooler than the cheerlords at school I associated with back in Cerulea—“friends” who didn’t like each other, and especially didn’t like me because I was “too pretty” and therefore “distracting.” I didn’t care much about having friends then—I was so fixated on Xander that I didn’t bother much with social politics. Maybe that’s what death cured me of—being disaffected. I care now that these Emergents, while not necessarily being my friends, at least appreciate my company.
Generally, the Emergents don’t like humans—but they don’t consider me human in the s
ame threatening way as their former owners on Demesne. I’m a teenager, powerless—and allied with the most powerful Emergent on Heathen. His consort—but the celibate kind. So far.
Aidan and I take our seats at the head of the table, and as always, the Emergents begin peppering me with questions about the outside world. They never bother with small talk, and I for one am glad that was never part of their programming. I like people who get directly to a point. I’m the only source of education about the outside world that the Emergents have. They were born, or “emerged” as the clones say, as fully grown adult clones in a laboratory on Demesne. Their primary sources of information are data chips implanted in their heads, which contain only the data the humans thought the clones needed to know—the data useful only to the clones’ service to humans.
Next to us sits Catra, an Emergent who was a chef back on Demesne but now has discovered her real niche: storyteller. She seeks to document the Emergents and their struggle. To that end, she constantly pumps me for information not contained on her knowledge chip. As usual, she dives right in. “If there were so many lab-grown clones already available in the world, why did the property owners on Demesne have their own line of clones, made from Firsts?”
I answer, “My dad always said Demesne clones were different because rich people are so vain. They always want something new, different, so they can always feel superior. Regular clones all look the same, genderless—like an average twenty-five-year-old she-male. The rich people wanted a superior aesthetic to accentuate their little paradise. And also they thought they were being eco, recycling dead people.”
Until they met me, the Emergents didn’t even know they were a rare strain of clones. Regular clones back in the world are grown in labs from cryogenic embryos. They’re not replicated from Firsts, who each have distinctive appearances. Regular clones were designed to be functional but aesthetically boring, except for the blue-green mosaic skin patterns that distinguish them from humans. They were created to help end the war. I never paid attention to clone history at school, but at home, Dad drilled me on the subject any chance he got. He said I could never have a future until I understood the past. As if my long, exhausting days that started with early mornings of swimming followed by boring school and then hours of diving training weren’t enough, Dad capped off my nights by quizzing me on history. Funnily enough, History was the only class I ever aced in school. At least there was one payoff to my nightly dinnertime torture ritual, courtesy of Dad.