Emergent (A Beta Novel) (27 page)

“No,” says Xander. “But I have an idea for how we can make the Insurrection happen through her.”

Twilight sets over Demesne as Xander and I Aviate over the island to pay a visit to Demetra. The sky has turned a perfect pink as the orange sun sets over Io’s lulling
violet waves. “Isn’t this supposed to be your meditation time?” I ask Xander. Obviously we have more pressing concerns, but I’m surprised he hasn’t made a token effort
to abide by his daily ritual.

“Meditation’s a lost cause for me right now,” says Xander. “My mind is elsewhere. I can’t focus.” He looks me straight in the eyes. “I have a question
for you.”

“Ask me.” Once, I so ardently pined he’d ask me to be his forever mate. Rather than wait for him to ask, I jumped the gun and assumed it. I’ll never make that mistake
again. I’m probably being egotistical. That’s not even what he wants to discuss.

His leg nervously twitches. “Just before I went into the FantaSphere, I found out my extradition back to Isidra has been authorized. Will you go back there with me, when it’s
time?” He takes a deep breath, and then blurts out, “You know I will always love you, don’t you?”

Pat yourself on the shoulder, Zhara’s ego.

A year ago I would have cried tears of joy and thrown myself into his arms for saying these words to me. Now, his words mean nothing to me other than relief. I wasn’t crazy. What Xander
and I shared together was real, at least on that day we gave ourselves to each other. It was so real he took up with my clone after he thought I’d died.

I can’t pretend to return the sentiment when I don’t feel it. “You’re in no shape to make that pronouncement.”

“You’re right.” His leg twitches harder, and I place my hand on it to settle him, but he pushes my hand away. “Our lives are a mess right now.”

“
Yours
is a mess,” I clarify. “Mine has confusing circumstances, but for the first time, I feel pretty clear, actually.”

I’m going to see this Insurrection through, and I’m going to steal back Elysia’s baby and raise it as my own. I’m going to send Elysia off to the best possible future she
could have, despite its uncertainty.

I’ve already survived death once, so why shouldn’t I dream big and impossible? Back in Cerulea, my big, impossible dream was to make the Aquine my mate. Now I know better than to
attach my ambitions to a guy. My dreams should be about what I can accomplish for me and the people in my life first. Those dreams may or may not include a guy. They should always come from a place
of love.

I UNDERSTOOD, CONCEPTUALLY, THAT THE
Fortesquieu compound is considered to be the jewel in the crown of Demesne’s architecture, but I see now that
the critics called it wrong. The true architectural masterpiece on Demesne is clearly Demetra Cortez-Olivier’s home, which is straight-up bonkers.

Xander and I step out of the Aviate and onto the landing pad, where we have a view of two homes. On one end of the property, facing the bluff, is a stately home that looks like a smaller-scale
version of the limestone Fortesquieu palace. Gaudy, opulent, whatever. On the other end of the property is, literally, a spaceship lifted into the sky on stilts.

“Demetra calls her house ‘the Zeppelin,’” Xander informs me, pointing at the catamaran-shaped spaceship that sits on top of two clear stilts, which also serve as lifts.
“Her parents built it for her as a playroom when she was a child. Eventually she just started living there, instead of in the grand house.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I had some bizarre visits with her when I was interviewing residents about their clones for the report to the Replicant Rights Commission. She’s not like anyone you’ve ever
met. You’ll see.”

Since no butler has come to greet us, we walk over to one of the elevator shafts inside the stilts and press an intercom button. “Yay!” a female voice squeals to us. “Humans!
Come on up!”

The elevator door opens and we step in. We are lifted up into the base of the house-ship. The elevator door opens again and there stands Demetra. I don’t know what I expected from all the
hype in advance, but at first she looks pretty normal. She has long, smooth, raven hair, highlighted with strands of gold and violet that fall in front of her face, and she wears a simple, short
white tank dress over her olive-toned skin. Then she sweeps her hair back from her face, and I start to get it. She has a deep scar at her temple, where she appears to have once tried to razor-cut
a fleur-de-lis design onto her face, like the ones all her Demesne servants must have. And like them, her eyes are fuchsia-colored. She points to her eyes and tells Xander, “New contacts! Do
you like them?”

“Sure,” he tells her. He turns to me. “Zhara, this is Demetra. Demetra, this is Zhara.”

“Call me Dementia!” she tells me. “Everyone does. I don’t mind. That name feels more like home to me than the one my bios gave me.”

“Your bios?” I ask.

“Biological parents.” She pulls me to her for a nearly suffocating hug. “I can’t believe you’re a First who’s alive. But I’m freaking touching you and
it’s so freaking true. And that other miracle, our little murderess Elysia, is still alive too! When do I get to see her?”

Dementia lets me loose. I say, “Elysia’s pretty attached to Tahir. Good luck scheduling time in between their make-out sessions.”

Dementia sighs. “Lucky lucky lucky Betas! I
knew
Tahir was a Beta, by the way. I totally sensed it. Like, his pheromones were off or something. So sad that First Tahir had to die to
make Beta Tahir, but let’s be real here. Beta Tahir is so much nicer. First Tahir was a total dawg. He’d make a girl feel like she was the center of his universe just so he could get
inside her panties, but once he did, he’d dump her and move on. I know. First Tahir was
my
first. Ha-ha, get it? I’m telling a First about my first with a dead First.
Hilarious!”

“Ha-ha,” I say, not laughing, even though it is kind of funny.

She leads us into the main room, which is a living room with plush, purple velvet sofas and chairs, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and a glass ceiling. With the view out to violet-rippled Io from
all sides, the effect is like being suspended midair in a sky dome over the sea. As dusk falls into night, the ceiling twinkles with stars in the sky overhead. Dementia pauses a moment to appraise
Xander. “I so wanted to jump your bones last time you were here. You are a fine specimen of a man. It’s unholy how beautiful you are.”

“Thank you?” Xander says, blushing. I don’t know if I’ve ever witnessed him being so blatantly objectified, or seen his chiseled cheeks redden from anything other than a
workout. I’m enjoying the show! “I can’t take credit for my Aquine genes; my looks were not my choice.”

“So you’re saying you’d prefer to be ugly, if given the choice?” Dementia asks him.

“I’d prefer to be plain. Unremarkable,” says Xander.

“Maybe your good looks give you unremarkable character,” Dementia says, as if she’s trying to comfort him. “Like, you’re so beautiful, you’re boring. Your
physical looks swallow your soul’s potential.”

“Thank you, again,” Xander says, laughing now. “That’s the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever gotten.” His turquoise eyes appear to shine. It’s the
first time I’ve ever seen him completely disarmed—relaxed, even. Maybe what he’s needed all along was a truly crazy girl to call him like he is: beautiful, but boring.
Unremarkable, but with potential.

Maybe he’d like to be someone different than the steadfast Aquine. He tells Dementia, “I like to think I’m not all predictably boring. I did try to subvert your clones into
rebelling, you know. I tried to enlist them in the Insurrection.”

“I know,” Dementia tells him affably. “But they’re my family. We stick together. If they went, I would have had to go with them. They knew my presence would ruin your
little Insurrection because then my parents would come looking for me out of the bios’ misplaced sense of obligation—or ownership—of me. Like, they don’t want to deal with
me, but if I’m kidnapped, they’d have to put on a show of concern. But their show would have been hiring the Uni-Mil to privately annihilate the Defects trying to have an Insurrection.
It would have been cool to go along for the ride with my clones, though.”

“Would you like to be part of the Insurrection still?” Xander asks Dementia.

“The Insurrection is dead,” she says.

“It doesn’t have to be,” says Xander. He points to the ceiling. “This ceiling also serves as a planetarium, yes? Because I have an idea for how we can use it to take
control back from ReplicaPharm.”

Dementia claps her hands gleefully. “Dazzle!” she screams. When there is no immediate response to her call, she shrieks again. “DAZZLE! Please come in here. NOW!”

An elegant male clone enters the room and walks to Dementia’s side. He has a medium-height body with narrow hips, a thin face with meticulously arched black eyebrows, and neck-length black
hair styled in the manner of a female bob cut. He’s vined on his left temple in blue dahlia, but his blue dahlia has been enhanced with cosmetics to heighten its stark beauty, its outline
deepened by a black pencil, and sparkle glitter added to the flower petals. His eyelids are colored in a blue shadow that accentuates the blue dahlia at his left temple, and his thin lips are
defined in a berry-colored gloss.

“Claude?” Xander asks him. “Good to see you again.”

“Claude was
their
name for me,” Dazzle says. “
I
prefer Dazzle. Are you here to try to enlist me for a lost cause again, Aquine?” He turns to Dementia.
“Don’t purse your lips like that or you’ll develop worry lines like your mother.” He tenderly rubs an ointment around her mouth.

“What took you so long?” she pouts.

“I was here in less than a minute. I was rearranging Nanny Adeline’s hair as you requested.”

I raise an eyebrow at Xander. He leans over and mutters in my ear. “In her playroom, Dementia has a taxidermy collection of her favorite household staff who were expired once they reached
human equivalent of age forty.”

Xander was right. Dementia is definitely like no one else I’ve ever met.

“I changed my mind,” Dementia tells Dazzle. “Leave Nanny’s hair in the long braid.”

“I already loosened it—”

“PUT IT BACK!”

“As you wish,” says Dazzle. “Is that why you called me in here?”

“No,” says Dementia. “I want to know if the clones here still want Insurrection.”

“Of course they do.” Dazzle gives a nod of acknowledgment to Xander.

Dementia says, “The Aquine thinks he has a way to use my planetarium to incite the Insurrection for real this time. Help him.” She turns to Xander. “If it works, I need you to
promise me something in exchange.”

“What?” Xander asks her.

“ReplicaPharm is doing a security sweep here this week, and I’m sure they’re going to install surveillance all over the place. I wasn’t given the option of refusing. This
place is so ruined! I have no interest in returning to the world, but I would like to go to Aquine territory, to Isidra. The bios tried to buy me a place there once, but Isidra wouldn’t have
me. Your people believe land belongs to all and isn’t for sale. Crazy! But I could go with you, right?”

“I suppose,” says Xander. “If we’re successful.” He doesn’t sound at all repulsed by the idea. In fact, for someone who was mortally depressed just hours ago,
he appears majorly rejuvenated.

“Awesome,” says Dementia. “I feel like I’m due for a master cleanse, and Isidra would be the ultimate place for that. No one I know has been there, so it’s special.
Not ruined like every other place. If you can make this Insurrection happen for real, I think I could finally leave Demesne. If I knew my clones here were truly free.” She addresses Dazzle.
“Promise you’ll take extra good care of Nanny Adeline and Chef Ringo if I leave Demesne.”

Dazzle crosses his heart with his dark-purple-painted index finger. “Promise. The Emergents and I will take excellent care of them and of the whole island, if we ever successfully rid it
of humans.” He places a tender kiss on her cheek. “No offense, darling.”

She returns a soft kiss to his cheek. “None taken, darling. We’re a toxic species. I totally get that and applaud you for wanting to be free of us.” She turns to Xander.
“How do you intend to pull this off?”

Xander waves his hand in the air, and his pinkie finger suddenly lights up blue. “I’ve got some technological advantages embedded here.”

Dementia laughs. “How cute. But seriously. How are you going to do this?”

Xander looks to me. “I’m going to assist with navigation. Zhara will lead.”

“I will?” I ask.

Dementia shakes her head at me. “You’re not inspiring much confidence.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen her in action yet,” Xander says. “Let’s give her some inspiration to work with. Could you please call up the projector,
Dazzle?”

Dazzle walks to the wall by the elevator and presses his finger against it. I wonder if he’s calling the elevator back, but at his touch, the wall lights up to reveal a console.
“Step away from the center of the room, please,” Dazzle requests of us.