The Body Electric - Special Edition (42 page)

seventy-three

“Now, Ella, here’s what’s going to happen,” Ms. White says. “You give me your father’s secrets. And we’ll make sure that the formula works. Representative Belles still has a son—let’s try it on him. And when the formula works and you’ve given me what I need, I will let you go. And your little boyfriend. And I’ll even give you enough money to leave this godforsaken island and do whatever it is you want with your life.”

Before I can say anything, she adds, “
Or
, I can kill your little boyfriend in front of you, and you can do all this for me anyway.”

No, I won’t tell you anything, I won’t, and you can’t make me.

But, of course, she can.

“Remember, dear,” Ms. White says. “I control you.”

Something clicks in my mind. If she can control me, she wouldn’t have needed all the subterfuge and lies. She wouldn’t have already tried to trick this information out of me. She wouldn’t be afraid right now.

All Ms. White is, is lies and manipulation.

She is trying to control me with fear, because she cannot control me any other way.

My eyes open wide. They
burn
as if they are on fire—no, as if they are made of fire.
Eyes are the window to the soul.
Something of the flames inside me must show, because Ms. White scrambles up and takes several steps away from me.

I turn my head to face her.

Ms. White’s fingers tap frantically on her cuffLINK, but to no avail.

She no longer has
control
.

“I know they’re going to try to use you,” Dad whispers. “I’ve done what I can to make sure that I can save you. All the technology they forced me to make… I gave it a fail-safe.” He looks into my eyes. “You.”

I blink at him. I’m so confused. There’s me, dead, and there’s me here, and there’s him telling me things I don’t understand.

“Computers are faster than humans,” Dad continues. “Steel is stronger than bone. And I made sure your brain cannot be controlled. You bypass their tech. They don’t know it, but you do.” He laughs softly. “There’s so much they don’t know. They didn’t know I knew they were making a cloned version of you, that they wanted to use you as leverage to get my formula. Well, so they have it now. But I have something better.”

He leans down, his mouth inches from my ear. I feel warmth encircle me—he’s hugging me.

“I have you. For this moment, at least, I have you.”

When he pulls away, there are tears his eyes. “You’re the key to it all. You are stronger than them. You cannot be used by them. You can break the system. If they ever try to make you do something, I’ll make sure you find a way to access your advanced tech, so you can—”

“Dr. Shepherd?” Ms. White’s voice calls from the far side of the room. Footsteps echo throughout the room as she comes closer.

“You are the queen bee,” Dad whispers just before Ms. White pushes him gently away from me, and her smiling face fills my vision.

“Oh, good, you’re awake and not dead, Ella. I suppose that means the formula and procedures Dr. Shepherd showed us were legitimate?” She glances at Dad. “I must say, I’m glad you didn’t let her die. It was such an inconvenience to make her cyborg-clone without you finding out.”

“Now you know how I did it,” Dad says, straightening his shoulders and staring Ms. White down. “Let my daughter go. She and my wife have nothing to do with this. You have me.”

Ms. White runs her finger along the barrel of the gun. “Yes, but now I don’t need you,” she says. She glares back at her colleague. “Gather up any of his little seditious friends and bring them here. We’ll want to make this look like an accident.” She turns her attention and the gun back to Dad’s face.

“This is because you took Rose from me,” she says, no emotion in her voice.

The gun blast is too loud and too long and I’m screaming, the sound piercing through my eardrums—

The silence in the vacuum of the absent scream reverberates in my mind as I stare at Ms. White. She looks panicked and flustered, her fingers skimming across the surface of her cuff.

That was the last gift of my father. Because of him, my life was taken away. Because of him, control over myself is solely mine. Ms. White cannot control me.

I take a step forward.

“Stay back!” Ms. White shouts, her voice trembling with fear.

It’s so unusual for me to see her afraid.

And empowering to know I caused that terror.

“You killed me,” I say. “You killed my father.”

“Ella, dear…”

Dad was right. His technology is far more destructive than any bomb. Not because of who it can kill, but because of what it can destroy without killing.

“Stay back!” Ms. White screams again as I take two more steps closer. She’s still trying to use the controls on her cuff; she cannot believe the truth that I’m unaffected by them. But as I grow closer, her eyes narrow. Ms. White turns on me, her right arm raised, and she seizes my throat.

And then I remember. Ms. White isn’t a cy-clone, but she does have one cyborg part: an arm. An arm she lost in the Secessionary War, saving my mother.

My eyes bulge, and my mouth opens in a pitiful mewling sound. I gasp for breath. I don’t need breath—I proved that when I hid under the boats in the Foqra District—but it’s uncomfortable now, and it hurts, and I wonder if Ms. White’s cyborg arm is enough to crush my cy-clone throat.

I feel the light flickering in my eyes.

I cannot let her win.

I channel all my strength into my arm, all my hope, all my power. And I slam my hand against Ms. White’s arm, using all the force I have within me.

It snaps like a twig, breaking off in one swift motion.

Wires sparking electricity dangle from her elbow as bio-gel leaks from the place where her arm was. Ms. White backs away, screaming in agony. I use my hands to untangle her fingers from my throat and throw the piece of arm on the ground.

Ms. White has disengaged her cyborg arm from the shoulder, which also disengages it from her nervous system. But she is pale and shaken, still feeling the phantom pains of the severed arm. She leans against the door frame, panting, her hair sweaty against her skin, her eyes glassy.

I use her pain to my advantage, shoving past her and racing toward the steps. I have to find Jack, I have to escape—somehow.

seventy-four

“No!” Ms. White screams, as I lunge away. I have little doubt as to what she’ll do with me. Transfer me into another version of myself, wipe my memory again, so I’ll be complacent. I’ll spend the rest of my life just like I spent the last year without Jack. Blindly doing what Ms. White says while she secretly pumps me full of tracker bots and does tests on me while I’m in reveries or asleep, trying to break into my mind as if it were nothing but a locked box.

My desperation to avoid this fate makes me stronger. I rip around the steps, taking them four at a time. Ms. White grabs at me, but I leverage my body weight against my attacker, throwing her off me and down a flight of stairs.

I am deeply aware of the thuds of her footsteps on the stairs behind me, just out of reach.

I wrench open the door and race down the lobby. I can make it. I can escape.

But androids fill the lobby. Their dead and empty faces turn to me as one, and they start to march toward the stairs, toward me, their footsteps heavy, making the walls vibrate with their even rhythm. I turn on my heel, but Ms. White’s right there, so close that her fingernails leave long, jagged scratches on my arm. I lunge for the stairs again, going to the only place I have left—my home. I race up the stairs, slamming my hand against the lock—it doesn’t work; I have a different cuff now, a different ID—but I kick the door down, something I wouldn’t have been able to do with simple human strength.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I was blindly running. But as I turn and see Ms. White and an army of androids standing in the doorway, I realize: I’ve trapped myself.

Ms. White shoves the androids aside. She seems uneven without one arm, and there is rage in her face unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

And then I hear footsteps down the hall, coming from, of all places, my own bedroom.

Boots thud hollowly on the floor, and Jack emerges from the shadows.

My heart leaps into my chest—with hope, with something else, something stronger—

More than a year ago, I was killed, my memories forcibly jammed into a cloned body enhanced with cybernetics, pieces of me disappearing bit by bit. Including my memories of Jack.

So why does my whole soul react when I see him?

Because…

Because he still loves me, even after I forgot him.

I don’t have any memories of Jack. I have no reason to save him because of a shared past. Those are memories I will never, ever get back. All I have of Jack are the past few weeks. The way we slept side-by-side while on the run. The way he pressed his hand against my heart, certain that it proved my humanity despite my cy-clone body. The way his kiss seared into me, desperate and passionate, as if he were trying to put everything he ever felt into the pressure on my lips.

I don’t care about how he used to make me feel; I want to save him because of the way he makes me feel
now
.

Now. Now in this very moment, when I realize that he needs saving.

Because his eyes are glassy. His skin sallow.

And I recall the way Julie and Xavier were beat up after the fight with Akilah, but Jack and I weren’t. I recall the way Jack was in the military, the same unit as Akilah. I remember all the little things, the moments when he wasn’t tired or wasn’t hurt or wasn’t… human.

“How long?” I ask, backing away slowly.

It is Ms. White who answers. “We turned him before we turned Akilah.”

So, from the moment I met him, Jack was a cy-clone, too.

The perfect spy into the Zunzana. Into me.

Always able to stay one step ahead. Always, unknowingly, giving Ms. White our exact location, the exact information she wanted. Jack’s arrival pushed me to discover Dad’s secrets in my subconscious more than anything else. Whatever tests Ms. White did on me didn’t work—she needed me to find the information and hand it over to her. She knew I wouldn’t give it to her blindly, so she used Jack.

“Did he know?” I ask. He steps closer. Closer.

Ms. White barks in laughter. “He was as ignorant as you.” She sounds amused. This is entertainment for her.

Something cold and bitter and hard snaps in place inside my soul.

And that is the moment he attacks.

seventy-five

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, panicked.

“Get her!” Ms. White screams from the doorway, her breathing jagged.

Jack charges forward, but I dodge him, throwing the kitchen chairs at him. He smashes them aside, advancing, advancing. He moves as quick as lightning, leaping over the end of the table, using the momentum to slam his feet into my stomach. I double over, gasping for air, and he rams the flat of his palm into my chin. I reel back, the pain of the blow reverberating through my whole body.

I feint toward the hallway, then lunge out of Jack’s grip, slipping on the tiled floor. My mind spins at the possibilities before me. I can’t hurt him. Even knowing that Jack’s not really Jack, I can’t hurt him.