Prototype (4 page)

H
ow do you feel today, Emma?

Any nightmares?

The internal voice comes in the curious resonance that can only belong to Dr. Travista. Why, I do not know. Maybe because I am living a new nightmare, trapped underground with Noah and Sonya, forced to wear Her clothes from a cardboard box marked
EMMA’S
in bold black letters. A box I refuse to look into too deeply. My past haunts me around every turn.

I stare in the full-length mirror at a version of Emma Wade that I, along with everyone else, would love to deny exists. She wears black pants with zippered pockets everywhere. Military issue. They are fitted but loose enough to move comfortably. The basic tee is white and fitted as well. With my dark hair hanging long and loose over my shoulders, I could easily be the version of Noah’s wife who died more than a year ago. For half a second I am tempted to find scissors and cut it back to chin length.

I sigh at my reflection and run warm palms down the front of my thighs. “Pull it together.”

A knock on the door startles me and I twist to face the steel surface. “Come in.”

A whisper-soft
shiff
fills the space as the door slides into the wall. Sonya peeks her head in and gives me a belated, tight smile. “May we come in?”

“We?”

Another head, male, bald, and shiny, ducks in nearly a foot below Sonya’s. The man’s smile beams from one unusually tiny ear to the other. He must be older by twenty years, but he looks far more youthful than I feel at the moment.

“Hello, Miss Emma,” he says, and darts into the room with quick feet, stocky arm extended in greeting. He wears tan slacks and a rumpled button-down shirt striped in shades of brown. One of his shoes is untied. His palm, when I take it, is warm and moist but soft.

“Just Emma,” I say.

“Phillip Malcolm. Call me Phillip.” A nervous energy makes his hazel eyes dart, his smile twitchy. His head bobbles jerkily from side to side. “Or Phil. Or Dr. P.”

It takes everything I have not to yank my hand free. “Doctor?”

Dr. Malcolm glances between me and Sonya, who leans cross-armed in the doorway. “Geneticist, actually. Or at least that’s how I began my career. I like to dabble in all the sciences. You know, I once even tried my hand at ichthyology, which sounds boring except—”

“Phillip,” Sonya cuts in. Her weary tone suggests she has to do this often.

The man flushes, but his smile never shows any hint of disappearing. “Anyway. My specialty is in genetics.”

Sonya walks the rest of the way in, her hands sliding into the deep pockets of her white lab coat. Unlike Dr. Malcolm’s, her attire is neatly pressed. “I told Phillip I wanted to take a look at that cut on your head and he insisted on coming along to meet you.”

He raises both hands as if to stop me, though I stand perfectly still. “I am a huge fan.”

What an odd little man. “Thank you. I think.”

Sonya’s hands reappear with a set of gloves. “May I?”

I step back. “I cleaned the wound myself, and it is not deep enough to warrant an examination.”

Despite my words, she continues to snap on the latex. “Why don’t I be the judge of that?”

Hold very still, Emma,
Dr. Travista’s voice says in my head.

My heart leaps. “The cut is not even bleeding,” I tell her, retreating again, this time stepping on a wooden support leg jutting out from the standing mirror.

Dr. Malcolm tilts forward and back on the balls of his feet, waving a dismissive hand at me. “She’s right, Sonya. You can’t fix what ain’t broke.” He winks at me.

I blink.

Is this a trick? Why is he trying to help me?

I stare at the man so long I almost forget what I am doing—
escaping
—and Sonya nearly has her hands on me before I dart around her. “Okay, hold on a second. Please do not do that, Sonya. I did not ask for your help, and I do not need it.”

Her espresso eyes meet mine, unblinking. “All right. Fine. But you’ve been doing a lot of traveling,” she says, rummaging in her deep pocket. “I’m guessing you didn’t have any immunizations.”

“You want to know if I have had my shots?”

She eyes the wound on my forehead. “I wanted to look at that and then draw some blood. For the safety of the population, I need to make sure you aren’t carrying anything contagious.”

The last thing I want is to have a needle shoved through my skin. I do not believe I carry anything but would also hate to be the reason an entire underground population—

“Did you know there was once a virus,” Dr. Malcolm begins, “that killed hundreds of millions a year? Up to eighty percent of all who contracted the virus died. It was unintentionally introduced in Veracruz back in the 1500s and killed millions of the native population.” He wiggles his fingers over his forearm and squishes up his nose. “They’d get these tiny little pustules—”

“Phillip,” Sonya says with a dark eyebrow raised at him.

He mimes locking his thinned lips and winks at me again. I cannot help but smile. He has also sold me on the needle, which I hope for his sake was not his master plan. “I guess if it could mean the life of hundreds of millions, you should check my blood for this deadly virus.”

Dr. Malcolm chuckles and waves a hand in the air. “Oh, they eradicated smallpox in the 1900s. No worries.”

Sonya motions for me to sit on the bed. She pulls a chair over to sit in front of me and focuses on preparing my arm for the blood draw. She is close enough that I cannot help but inhale her sweet scent. Like raw sugar and vanilla. The smell is too sweet for my tastes and I wonder if Noah likes it.

I am suddenly filled with images of the two of them together, making love, talking about marriage, raising Adrienne together. Maybe even having more children. Are they to this point in their relationship? Does he love her?

It is as if my rib cage constricts in reaction to this thought. More than anything, I do not want him to love her. Is this how he felt last year after seeing me with Declan? He had the means to watch every detail of my time with Declan, too. I can only imagine the torture he must have experienced.

The room grows eerily silent except for two sets of uneven breaths between me and Sonya and the measured set leaning around Sonya to watch. The air grows warmer by the second.

“Little pinch,” Sonya warns, then slides the needle into a vein.

I wince and watch the vial fill with my blood.

“In the blood,” Dr. Malcolm whispers unnecessarily, “are six
billion
letters making up a gene sequence.” His gaze lifts from the vial to my eyes. “One single letter out of place in a single chromosome can lead to death.” His smile lifts the corners of his eyes, causing lines to fan away from the outside edges. “Did you know that?”

I swallow hard, my suddenly dry throat clicking. “No. I did not.”

His eyes twinkle. “But I am sure Dr. Travista has already checked you for these sorts of defects. I bet you’re perfect.”

Perfect.
Yes, Dr. Travista used that term a lot. But I am far from.

Sonya looks up at me as if we are sharing in some wordless conversation. I do not know what that could be, nor do I care. All I care about is the order of my six billion letters in the hands of these two doctors. The last thing I want is to find out something is wrong with me, which will cause a domino effect of actions that can only lead to tests. Tests lead to a loss of freedom.

“I only give you permission to test for viruses,” I tell her. “Not my gene sequence.” I look pointedly at Dr. Malcolm. “All right?”

His beaming smile falters. “Of course. But if you ever change your mind, I’d love to spend some time—”

“I will not change my mind.”

Sonya removes the needle and passes the full vials to Dr. Malcolm. While stuffing everything else back into her pockets, she squints up at my cut. “Looks superficial.”

I lean away. “I told you it was not bad.”

“Just doing my job, Emma. Keep it clean until the skin closes.” She stands and places the chair back in front of the little desk. “Let me know if you need anything. You know where to find me.”

“
Us,
” Dr. Malcolm amends. “I would love to chat with you while you’re visiting, Miss Emma.”

“Please. Just Emma.”

“Are you staying long?” Sonya asks, then activates the door switch.

Dr. Malcolm darts into the hallway, stops, then spins to face the room with interest dancing in his bright eyes.

“No,” I tell her.

“Too bad.”

This is the last thing I expect from Sonya after how we left things. I will never forget the look on her face as she said the words that ultimately led me to leave in the first place:
You aren’t his wife.

She gives me a tight smile, then disappears into the concrete, boxlike hallway. Dr. Malcolm waves enthusiastically before sprinting off after her.

Dumbfounded by what just happened, I start to close my door but stop when a very tall someone fills the space. Long, toned arms brace on either side of the steel doorframe. I beam up at the man whose skin is the color of milk chocolate and whose eyes have a grayish-blue hue.

Foster swoops in and scoops me off the ground in a swinging hug. I do not need all of my memories to feel bone deep that Foster Birmingham is my best friend in this entire world. He was the only one who accepted me without question after discovering my clone status last year.

Me.

Not Her.

He sets me down and holds me at arm’s length, giving me a cursory once-over. His eyes shine with some private amusement. “All your limbs are still there. All ten fingers and toes?”

I wiggle my fingers in his face.

He smirks. “And look at how well they work.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What am I missing?”

“Apparently nobody enough to warrant a simple phone call.”

Over this last year, I have felt guilt for leaving Noah and, most especially, Adrienne, but never Foster. Until now. “I know. I am truly sorry for disappearing the way I did. I would have called eventually.”

He straightens and folds his arms. His biceps strain against the dark-green T-shirt he wears. “I’m not a fan of eventually.”

I need to divert this conversation away from me, so I turn and sit with folded legs in the middle of the mattress and hug a pillow to my chest. “What has been going on with you?”

He sits on the edge of my bed. “I was promoted to lieutenant a few months ago, which is really cool. I also had my leg cut off, which wasn’t so cool.”

I laugh, because he clearly has both legs. “Funny.”

He does not laugh. Instead, he leans over and drags a black pant leg up. Dark-gray metal joints and curves of alloy muscle make up his left leg from the knee down. The metal ankle flexes in complete silence.

“Best cybernetic leg money could buy,” he says, knocking knuckles on the artificial knee joint. He then points to his temple. “Complete with nanorobotics that communicate directly to my leg from my brain.”

Belatedly, I realize I have not taken a breath since the reveal and fill my burning lungs. “But why?”

“Tucker was faced with discharging me from active duty because I never got full function back.”

One of my memories pre-Declan is of Foster nearly losing his lower leg in the raid where I was shot. It was the same night Dr. Travista cloned me. Last I saw Foster, he limped all the time.

Foster focuses on lowering his pant leg and says, “Speaking of Tucker. You saw him? How’d that go?”

The idea of how it went creates a desert in my mouth. I stand and pour water from a pitcher, avoiding the look on his face. I do not want to see the pity or hope or whatever else could possibly lie there.

“That good?” he says.

I swallow half the glass before saying, “It was fine. He looks well.”

“Well?”
He laughs. “There’s a time and place for political correctness, and that’s never with me. Especially when it comes to you.”

I set the glass on the table as if in slow motion, wasting time before turning to face him. I find him leaning on his knees, eyebrows raised and waiting.

“He looks happy,” I say with a hitch in my voice, “and I am unhappy with the reason why. But”—I raise a finger to stop him from speaking—“I made the choice to leave him. I cannot blame him for moving on.”

Frowning, he lowers his head, then nods. “You’re right. You couldn’t blame him.” He looks up through lowered lashes. “If it were true.”

I brace against the edge of the table. “I do not understand.”

Foster stands, and each silent step he takes toward me is agonizing. He stops in front of me and folds his arms. “Nobody knows this, and I mean
nobody—
other than me, of course—but he’s been looking for you since the day you left. You should have seen his face when you appeared in that feed from Mexico.”

But Noah is with Sonya now. And I saw the way he greeted her in the hall. There is no mistaking the bond they have formed. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Wade. Because I want to offer you incentive to stay put for once. Or because while I respect Sonya, Adrienne could use a little less I-learned-to-be-a-regimented-mother-from-a-handbook
child rearing. Or maybe it’s because I remember how happy you two were once upon a time. After all that, it’s because you have a right to know. What you decide to do with that information is up to you.”

W
hat do you have to say to those who claim you’ve managed to find a person’s soul? That you can control the one part of us we’ve been unable to prove the existence of?”

Dr. Travista removes the wire-rimmed glasses from his bulbous nose and aims a thin smile at the interviewer, who speaks offscreen.
“Now, that would make me a god, wouldn’t it? I’m merely a man of science.”

“A man of science who performs miracles.”

The doctor responds with a satisfied smile and puffs out his chest.
“At least one a day.”

 • • • 

I lie blinking at the shadowed ceiling. The interview returns me to a time when I sat facing Dr. Travista, wearing white scrubs, and always curious. Curious about what I looked like. Curious about an accident it turned out I never had. Curious about why my husband was so reluctant to touch me. Curious about the man who grieved his lost wife in my nightmares.

He refused to let me go. Does he still?

How are you today?
Dr. Travista’s voice asks.

I finger the round piping edging the mattress.
Heartbroken.
That is how I am. Ashamed. Guilty. Curious.

Talk about that, Emma. What about this situation makes you curious?

Sighing, I rub the heels of my palms in my eyes until white spots appear. This has to stop. I am
not
curious about how Noah and Sonya started dating or why. Why he would look for me if he has moved on.

I am also not curious about why the resistance has a geneticist on staff.

Put the stirrups up.
The ghost of Dr. Travista’s past order is punctuated by the snap of a rubber glove.
May as well run a few extra tests while I’m at it.

Shivering, I roll to my side and clutch the pillow under my head. This is not the same situation. I cannot let my imagination go there. Besides, I am no longer as naïve as I once was. And this place is big enough. I can avoid Dr. Malcolm, and maybe even Sonya if I have to. I definitely do not have to go near the hospital wing. And there is no one here with the means to order me to have tests run. I make my own decisions.

Exhaustion sucks me into a deep sleep. I dream of an office lit by sun reflected off snow, and walls lined with bookshelves. Furniture a deep shade of red. The quiet, watchful eyes of Dr. Travista as I trek along the path of one shelf. He motions for me to sit in my usual chair across from him. I do not want to. He will ask me how I am, and I will be forced into telling him more lies. I am tired of the lies.

I stand before my chair, and his smile is gentle, his gray eyes studying. He searches for the woman he tried to erase, but he will not find Her. I am too careful.

I sit, and—

—
I float in nothing.

 • • • 

I lurch up to a sitting position and drag in a lungful of air. My skin is slicked with sweat, but my bones have brought back with them the frigid depths of the abyss. I jerk and flinch as I try to control the shiver that has taken over my body. The air tastes strange. Thin. Wrong. And the walls feel too close in the darkness. They tilt toward me and I scramble to free my legs of the tangled sheets.

I roll from the bed and my bare skin slaps against the floor. My already bruised hip flares, but I am more aware of the pain swathing my chest and throat. The tight nature of my lungs. I cannot breathe.

Exit. Where is the exit?

The shadowed steel beckons me from across the room. I race through the door hoping to breathe fresh air, only I face the underground corridor. It may as well be another tomb for all the good it does me now. Gasping in recycled air, I claw the sweat-dampened shirt away from my skin.

The slap of bare feet on concrete moves quickly toward me. “Emma? What’s wrong?”

I face the voice and want to cry. Noah approaches in black sweatpants and a white tank top. I do not want him to see me this way. Weak. A child by comparison to the woman he remembers.

He reaches for me but I twist away, unwilling to let him touch me. His hands fist at his sides. “What is it? Talk to me.”

Let’s talk about your recent nightmare, Emma. Can you describe it for me?

I grit my teeth and rake my hands through my hair. I shake my head in an effort to rid myself of Dr. Travista’s voice. He drifts away, but I feel him there. Waiting. Studying. The way Noah does now. There is no telling what he must think as I stand there shivering in my tank top and underwear, my usual mess following a nightmare.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask. The question comes out in a half moan.

“Never mind that,” he whispers. “What’s wrong?”

I need to see the stars.
The old thought comes of its own free will for the first time since my time in the labs. “I need fresh air. That is all.”

He enters my room and returns with a blanket that he wraps around my shoulders. Standing before me, he helps gather the front for the most coverage. I cannot help but focus on his handsome face and the caring, efficient way he handles the situation. I want to lean in and feel the solidity of his arms around me. I do not need anything else as long as he is there to hold me together.

But he does not. Cannot.

“Come on,” he says, once finished.

He leads me through several corridors, and we end up in his office. He opens a door behind his desk and reveals a teleporter. “I had it put in after . . .” He pauses and seems to consider his next words carefully. “After you left.”

The public port we arrive in is moonlit and free of people. I stare out at a large park surrounded by trees and benches that line a running path. In the distance rests a shimmering pond with a wide footbridge.

I draw the cool night air into starving lungs. The action is exactly what I need to ground me. So is the tickle of grass between my toes. The wind in my face. I am nearly lost in these sensations when I feel him. Noah’s gaze touches me as if with fingers of its own. I look straight up rather than give in to the temptation of returning his attention. What I see is almost enough to distract me. The stars are incredibly clear here, except tree branches obscure a large section of the night sky.

Noah points at a grassy knoll near the bridge. “The best view is there.”

We stroll in silence, with only the whisper of our feet brushing the grass. It takes a full minute to get to the spot despite how close it looked. I sit and tug the blanket tight around me before looking up and seeing how right he was. The sky spreads out nearly uninterrupted.

Noah sits and wraps his arms around upturned knees. “Ready to tell me what happened?”

I cannot look at him, nor am I ready to talk about what happened. I am too embarrassed. “What were you doing in the hall?”

He chuckles. “I feel like I live in that hall. Adrienne sleeps in my room. If I’m in there, she won’t go down, so I wait in the hall. She woke up and caught me painting.”

I am instantly jealous he has the means to do this. I have not touched a brush to canvas in too long. “Painting? At this hour?” Not that I know the hour, but it feels like it is very early in the morning.

“Couldn’t sleep. Your turn.”

I hesitate, wondering how best to explain, then decide on, “Bad dream.”

“Now tell me something I didn’t already know.”

I look in his eyes before I realize what I have done. He looks tired behind his interest in my story. I do not want to tell him and break this content moment, but he will not give up until he hears the details. “I dream of death. I feel it pulling me, and every night, it gets closer and closer to taking me. I did not think I would wake up this time.”

We turn away from each other at the same time. When he does not respond, I say, “Anyway, I was a little disoriented when I woke up, and I panicked.”

“I’m glad I was there, then.”

“Me too.”

Silence envelopes us again. We lie back on the soft grass and stare into the sky. At the stories laid out in a series of constellations, most of which Noah knows somehow. I know only a handful of them and do not see the three he pointed out to me in one of my few memories.

“Will you tell me what you see?” I ask. “What story plays tonight?”

He is quiet for too long. I find him staring at me with unfiltered shock.

“You do not have to,” I say, and look away. “If it—”

“Centaurus,” he cuts in, then points straight up.

“I do not know which stars you are looking at.”

Noah scoots closer and takes my hand, sending tingles racing over my arm. He opens my palm without pause, as if the fire I feel is mine alone. In it, he places dots in several places and then draws invisible lines to connect them.

When he is finished, I look up and find the grouping. “What is Centaurus?”

Our hands drift apart and lie between us. I feel the heat of his skin beside mine, so close, yet very far.

“Centaurus is about a centaur named Chiron,” he says. “He was a wise half-human, half-horse who tutored Hercules and Jason. One day Hercules accidentally wounded him. Being immortal, he would live with the pain forever and begged the gods to put him out of his misery.”

Noah pauses and drops his head to face me. I wonder if he has chosen this story on purpose. Am I supposed to be Hercules? He the wounded centaur unable to escape the pain I have inflicted?

“So did they?” I ask. “Put him out of his misery?”

“Yes. And gave him a place among the stars.”

A protracted moment ends with us turning away at the same moment. The heat of his skin is suddenly too much and far too close. I sit up to end the intimacy of lying beside him.

“You always know the best stories,” I say, thinking back to the memory of us on the beach.

He sits up and wraps his arms around his knees again. “Why don’t you tell me one?”

The wind blowing through a nearby cluster of trees cloaks the release of my sigh. I am wary of where his question will lead. “What story would you like to hear?”

“The one where you tell me where you’ve been all this time.”

“Nothing to tell.”

One heartbeat.

Two.

I resist the urge to comb down his hair, which stands up in the wind.

“You never could lie to me,” he says.

These words speak of a history together. The day I left, this was what I wanted from him more than anything. He could not give it to me then, and now that it seems he can, he is too far away to reach.

I stand and tighten the blanket. “I have been searching for my parents.” I turn away once the words are out. I need to walk. Sitting with him feels dangerous.

Noah catches up to me at the end of the footbridge. “Did you find them?”

I do not answer until we reach the middle. I lean over the railing and watch the gentle ripples of water bathed in moonlight. “No.”

My wedding ring falls and swings heavy from my neck, a reminder of the man who would rearrange entire continents to find me, thus halting my search. I lift and finger the band, staring absently at the water. “I thought I was finally getting somewhere in Mexico. The man I was meeting was ex-resistance. It turns out he only knew a woman named Lily Garrett. That was all I learned before Declan’s announcement.” I point to my bruised cheek. “That is when the man gave me this and I spent the following hour or so running from an entire village in the central highlands of Mexico.”

Noah reaches out and takes the ring from where I roll the band around my fingertip. “Your wedding ring,” he says, letting it drop.

I tuck the jewelry back under my shirt, mentally flogging myself. I may as well have flaunted my marriage to Declan in his face. Careless. “I no longer have a luckenbooth to stave off any would-be husbands,” I explain.

Noah rests his forearms on the railing. We look down at the branded luckenbooth on his right hand. I do not have a memory of him doing this, but I know he did it when we married. I loved him for it because he turned something tainted and ugly into a symbol of our love.

He pushes off the railing and backs away. “What will you do now?”

I turn and rest against the barrier. “The same thing I have done for more than a year. Look for my parents.”

Noah stands with arms folded, his gaze cast far behind me. “The price Declan Burke has on you won’t make that easy.”

“All I need is shelter for a couple of days. Until I figure out a safe place to—”

“You’re safe with me,” he cuts in, his gaze fastening on me. A moment later, his arms fall, as do his eyes. His weight shifts. “Let me help you.”

My head tilts to the side, drawn down with the cinching around my heart. “I cannot ask you to do that. If Declan finds me with you, it will wreck everything you have done using Tucker Securities.”

It seems he can look at me again, and I am unable to tear my gaze away for even a moment. “He won’t find you.” He sounds so sure I almost believe him.

“Your men think I am a traitor, and if you protect me—”

“Let me worry about them.” He takes a step closer. “Tell me you’re staying, Emma.”

He will thwart any excuse I throw his way, but in truth, I do not want to leave. Despite all warnings to the contrary, I want to be near him and Adrienne, and maybe with the access to his computers, I can make headway in my search.

“Okay.”

He nods once and tries unsuccessfully to contain a smile. “Okay.”