“I’m going to assume your head is still full of morphine, Paris, which is the only reason I’m going to overlook that statement.”
Anderson sighs. Stiffly, he says: “I’m sure she’ll be awake any minute now.”
Fear trips the alarms in my head.
What’s happening?I ask Emmaline.Where are we?
The dregs of a gentle warmth become a searing heat that blazes up my arms. Goose bumps rise along my skin.
Emmaline is afraid.
Show me where we are, I say.
It takes longer than I’m used to, but very slowly Emmaline fills my head with images of my room, of steel walls and glittering glass, long tables laid out with all manner of tools and blades, surgical equipment. Microscopes as tall as the wall. Geometric patterns in the ceiling glow with warm, bright light. And then there’s me.
I am mummified in metal.
I’m lying supine on a gleaming table, thick horizontal stripes holding me in place. I am naked but for the carefully placed restraints keeping me from full exposure.
Realization dawns with painful speed.
I recognize these rooms, these tools, these walls. Even the smell—stale air, synthetic lemon, bleach and rust. Dread creeps through me slowly at first, and then all at once.
I am back on base in Oceania.
I feel suddenly ill.
I am a world away. An international flight away from my chosen family, back again in the house of horrors I grew up in. I have no recollection of how I got here, and I don’t know what devastation Anderson left in my wake. I don’t know where my friends are. I don’t know what’s become of Warner. I can’t remember anything useful. I only know that something must be terribly, terribly wrong.
Even so, my fear feels different.
My captors—Anderson? This woman?—have obviously done something to me, because I can’t feel my powers the way I normally do, but there’s something about this horrible, familiar pattern that’s almost comforting. I’ve woken up in chains more times than I can remember, and every time, I’ve found my way out. I’ll find my way out of this, too.
And at least this time, I’m not alone.
Emmaline is here. As far as I’m aware, Anderson has no idea she’s with me, and it gives me hope.
The silence is broken by a long-suffering sigh.
“Why do we need her to be awake, anyway?” the woman says. “Why can’t we perform the procedure while she’s asleep?”
“They’re not my rules, Tatiana. You know as well as I do that Evie set this all in motion. Protocol states that the subject must be awake when the transfer is initiated.”
I take it back.
I take it back.
Pure, unadulterated terror spikes through me, dispelling my earlier confidence with a single blow. It should’ve occurred to me right away that they’d try to do to me what Evie didn’t get right the first time. Of course they would.
My sudden panic nearly gives me away.
“Two daughters with the exact same DNA fingerprint,” Tatiana says suddenly. “Anyone else would think it was a wild coincidence. But Evie was always careful about having a backup plan, wasn’t she?”
“From the very beginning,” Anderson says quietly. “She made sure there was a spare.”
The words are a blow I couldn’t have anticipated.
A spare.
