Read Online Emergent (A Beta Novel) by Rachel Cohn - Free Book Online

Let this be our little secret.”
    Tariq, normally so calm, uncharacteristically raises his voice. “You’re saying the entire workforce on Demesne could be compromised if they simply took ’raxia?”
    “Sorry,” says Dr. Lusardi, who herself is a clone. According to M-X, who’d worked in Dr. Lusardi’s laboratory, the real Dr. Larissa Lusardi was murdered. She objected to
her clones being used as slaves. ReplicaPharm, the corporation that financed her work and most served to profit from it, decided her righteous sense of ethics was all wrong. They killed her, and
then cloned her to finish her First’s work.
    So it’s no surprise that her apology sounds
insincere
. This Dr. Lusardi’s not sorry.
    I have a soul.
    It wasn’t my imagination.
    It’s my own, not borrowed from my First.
    I feel…
joyful.
    “Where’s Zhara?” I ask Aidan, realizing she’s been gone through this whole presentation.
    Aidan doesn’t answer for a moment. His face is set to
grim
. “She’s sleeping it off in the tree house.”
    “Sleeping what off?”
    “When we returned from the atoll yesterday, she bolted into the jungle and returned to her unfortunate old habit. ’Raxia.”

ONCE AGAIN, I AWAKE FROM THE DEAD, only this time, I wish I hadn’t.
    I’m still groggy from the ’raxia that catapulted me into welcome emptiness, but this time I re-emerge knowing exactly where I am, and it’s not Demesne paradise. I’m in
the tree house on Heathen. After we returned from the atoll with Xander and Elysia, Aidan took them to their quarters…and I ran away to the cuvée fields. Aidan must have found me and
brought me to the tree house after I passed out in the fields. I can see by the light outside that it’s midmorning. I must have been out for at least twelve hours. My brain is still hazy, but
my heart pounds hard, remembering. Yesterday, I was ignorant of my clone. Today, I am not.
    My whole world is different. Skewed. Wrong.
    I press my hand along the floor of the tree house, searching. I want to go back to sleep. I want more ’raxia. Where did I leave the other pills I made from the crushed cuvée seeds
last night?
    I hear a voice. “What are you looking for?” asks Aidan. I look up. He’s standing at the tree house entrance.
    I sniff, smelling a burning smell. “Are you playing fire tricks outside again?” I look, but his pinkie finger is not lit in blue.
    “I ordered the cuvée fields destroyed.”
    I cover my face with my hands. My heart pounds harder, with extra discomfort. It’s called
panic
. “Why? You don’t understand. I just need a little more to get through.
You
need the cuvée seeds to finance supplies for Insurrection.”
    “Then Insurrection will just have to come sooner rather than later. We’ll do without. As will you. The Aquine told me you were an addict in your previous life. I won’t allow
that to happen to you again here.”
    Who does this clone think he is, my sobriety sponsor? “
You
could use some ’raxia. Lighten up, already.” I hate Aidan so much right now.
    Aidan shakes his head. “’Raxia affects us differently,” he responds, taking my comment literally. “We don’t develop the instant addiction to it that humans do.
It’s nothing to us except a potential profit source.” He looks out beyond the tree house, to the smoke rising from the fields. “Rather, it
was
.”
    Aidan sits down on the ground next to me. He removes my hands from my face and stares intently at me, and I wish he would lean down and kiss me. I want to be held, comforted, stroked, loved. If
I can’t have more ’raxia, I need something—someone—to numb the pain. My desire to feel anything other than what I feel now—deep, abiding anger—temporarily
overrules my disgust with Aidan. Give me more. Please don’t make me beg!
    I sit up and move farther from him. “You knew,” I accuse him.
    “Knew what?”
    “About Elysia.”
    “Yes.”
    I wait, expecting an explanation, but he offers none.