Nara Read online

  “Smart lass.”

  No thanks. No sorry for interrupting. No qualms about barging into her office, one of the only two personal spaces she’d been driven back to in this imperial dungeon.

  Poor Brycie looked so lost, large hands dangling at his sides. She wanted to go hug him but her father was looming too close for comfort. It was terrible having him here in her space. The walls covered with Brycie’s grade-school art shifted from charming to tacky beneath his withering gaze. Even his one sculpture of a bird on the verge of flying free from the mud turned into what her son insisted it was, a bird trapped forever in a tar pit no matter how it struggled.

  How did he do it? How did her father turn a room of light walls, fluffy pillows, fresh flowers, and with a sweeping view of the ocean, into a small, damp, cloister of washed-out hopes?

  “I need to talk with the boy.” Bryce, Sr. waved a large hand at her like he was shooing a housefly, or a dust mote.

  Suzie hated herself for shuffling backwards until she bumped against her bedroom door. Brycie sent her a pleading look, but what could either of them do. The smile she offered was sickly at best as she moved through the door and the panel slid to in front of her.

  Now she was trapped. No way out of her bedroom except through her office, or out the doors onto the patio that would eventually lead around to the party. How had he consumed the very air? The gentle scent of lavender that she grew beneath her windows was now sickly sweet and overwhelming in the closed space.

  Why was she so afraid of her father? Lecturing herself to: “get some spine, girl,” never helped either. He was the scariest man on the planet, and being his only daughter and the mother of his grandson, she’d met a lot of the most powerful people on the planet. Even years of counseling hadn’t helped, of course she hadn’t been able to reveal most of the problems because even she didn’t dare risk the dangers of insulting the Premier’s Right Hand.

  Poor Brycie.

  What horror was he going through tonight? Suddenly she knew. And her gut convulsed. The one secret she’d kept from the boy. The one thing she could never forgive herself or wash from her body. Bryce Randall Stevens had needed a host. He had promised Suzie a younger brother, one wrought of Mum’s genetic code so carefully stored before her suicide. To have a brother. To have a companion with Mum’s heart or even a bit of her soul was too great a bait to turn down. Even if it also included an equal part of her father.

  Suzie had agreed, for reasons that were still beyond her own understanding, her father had a way of doing that. She had carried Brycie from implanted egg to fetus to baby boy so that her mother’s genes could live on, but she’d never again been able to flush her father’s genes from her body. Her knees buckled and she fell to the carpeted floor as a pain worse than any contraction lashed about her womb. She lay with her head on the floor and gasped in and out to relieve the pain. And for some twisted, manipulative reason, their father was now telling Brycie of his horrific origin.

  As the clutching pain passed and her breathing eased, she could hear voices. From the crack beneath the door, she could hear her father’s bass rumble and Brycie’s uncertain tenor. She twisted her cheek against the cool hardwood to bring her ear closer to the proverbial keyhole. A far glint of moonlight sparkled off the floor. A small pool of light in the middle of her bedroom, revealing nothing of the room. Not even one small patch of hope.

  “You’re smart, boy, smarter than you think.”

  “It’s not that, Grandfather. I simply know the answer to the question before anyone asks it. I know things. I just don’t know how.”

  The deep laugh whipped out at her just it must be lashing her son, her brother.

  “What’s so funny?”

  No, Brycie. Don’t go there. He’s ten steps down the road ahead of you and he will manipulate and twist you in the wind until you believe his truth, his reality. Run, Brycie. Run while you still can. Suzie could feel her lips shaping the sound, but no sound issued forth, not even a whisper. Run.

  “What’s so funny, my boy, is all that you don’t understand. Are you ready?”

  No.

  “It’s a good thing that you’re sitting down.”

  Run.

  “Suzie is not your mother.”

  Don’t listen.

  “Then who is she, my daughter?”

  That’s it, Brycie. Fight back. Resist. Resist until you get your chance and run.

  “No, your half sister.”

  Half sister?

  “Half sister?” It took Brycie barely half a heartbeat to connect the pieces. “You bastard.”

  A loud scrape of chair leg on wood vibrated through the floor against her cheek. Footsteps entered along her jaw as beats on a drum.

  “What are you talking about?”

  That’s his dangerous tone, Brycie. Be careful. Please god, be careful. Didn’t I teach you what you’re dealing with.

  “You— You— You raped my mother, you bastard.”

  Close, Brycie. Closer than you know.

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Then what did you do to her?”

  There was a long silence. So long that it echoed in her head until her ears rang. Finally a heavy drumbeat through the floor and she knew Brycie had plummeted into a chair in his usual, loose-limbed fashion.

  “If you’ll shut up and listen a moment, you young pup, I’ll tell you.”

  Beat. Beat. Beat. The old man pacing?

  “The reason you know more than you’ve learned, boy, is that I gave it to you. Think about genetics. Think, boy.”

  Beat. Beat.

  “I’m engineered.”

  From my father and mother.

  “Think harder. Think about stem cells.”

  Stem cells?

  “I’m a clone.” There was no doubt in the hesitant voice.

  A clone?

  “Of you.”

  Of her father? A clone of the Right Hand?

  “Memories and all. You bet. A chip off the old block. Remember when you were sick last year. That’s when you received your latest download.”

  Brycie was a clone of her father.

  That earth-shattering laugh.

  “I told you it’s always worth it to pay for the best, even if you have to dispose of them when they’re done. Think about it, boy. You are the first carbon copy of a human, you’ll be a hundred percent before I’m done. A body clone. With downloaded memories. God damn, when I’m done,” another earth-rattling burst of his smug laughter. “You won’t be a copy of me. You’ll be a younger version of me. I’m going to live forever. You’re just the first of a long line stretching into eternity. I do love science!”

  Pounding footsteps as he moved away. “Take damn good care of that body, boy. It belongs to me. No more black eyes or any of that crap.”

  Again that laugh.

  Moving away.

  A door opening and closing. Silence.

  A shuddering gasp. Imagined or her own.

  She’d given birth to her father’s clone.

  To her father. To his future version.

  Suzie wrapped herself around her fetal pain as her tears flowed and pooled and reflected the moonlight off the hard, wood floor.

  # # #

  “Brycie?” There’d been no answer to her knock. Suzie peered into the evening shadows of his curtained bedroom.

  “Go away.”

  She nodded. It was hard to stop nodding. Any repetitive motion had turned into the bobbing motion of the wounded. Or the mad. It was difficult to decide what was normal and what was another black nightmare of the ocean that was her father overwhelming them all.

  “Please go away.”

  She slid through the gloom toward the form prone upon the pale blue covers she’d chosen for him so long ago. He hadn’t changed it even as he’d grown ol
der. That constancy had always seemed a thanks to her. A love of her. Now she looked about and noted there was no stamp anywhere of Bryce Randall Stevens, Jr. upon this room. He’d never collected anything like other boys. Never brought home schoolwork. Never hung up academic awards, debate awards, stratee-gaming prizes though her scrapbooks showed that he never lost. It was as if Brycie wasn’t a person at all. And as if he had always known it.

  Suzie reached the edge of the bed. He didn’t turn to face her, his gaze was locked upon some blank spot on the ceiling. He studied it so intently that she was drawn to look upward repeatedly to assure herself it was just a pale blue ceiling like a summer sky.

  “You knew?”

  She shook her head, but he didn’t notice.

  “No, I see you didn’t.”

  “You see?” The words croaked out of her like the last discernable marks on a burned and mildewed scroll of ancient text.

  “I’ve lain here for hours, days, I don’t know. Any memory I focus my attention on, I receive his recollection of the event. I’ve been trying to sort out what I know versus what he remembers in my head for me. It took me the longest time to decide that the ceiling really is blue and not a memory of blue.”

  He flopped his head like it had been disconnected from his body by a guillotine to look at her.

  “But he barely remembers you. Doesn’t notice. I remember you, mother. If that’s what I should call you.”

  Brycie turned his attention back to the ceiling and she wondered. Was he her father, a clone? Her brother, the same generation?

  “You are my son.” It was the first thing she was sure of after huddling in her bedroom for two days.

  “You are my son.” The words sounded better. More certain. More true.

  “My son.”

  She sat on his bed and placed a hand against his fevered brow exactly as she’d done a thousand times before. Like the shooting release of an over-wound spring, he rolled his face into her belly and wrapped his long arms around her. The wracking sobs that had shook her for the last days now burst forth in renewed furor from her son.

  His head cradled in one arm, she rubbed his back and rocked. Now the mad bobbing motion had found its place. She was his mother, and it was the rhythm to comfort a baby, a child newborn to the belief about his past.

  A great cascade of tears soaked her blouse, soaked her belly, soaked right through her skin into her womb like a benediction releasing the torture of what her father had placed there. Whatever had come into her, she had birthed a son.

  She held him until the weeping subsided like the gentle waves of the sea. The movements of his chin as he gulped for air reminded her of the gentle motions he had made in this same place, but from inside of her.

  “Why?”

  Of course. The one question that nothing in his memory could answer. Because it was her memory, her choice.

  “Your grandmother—my mother, she was such a wonderful woman. She died when I was ten, but I loved her so very much. Your grandfather… your… my father offered me a child, a brother that would be half her. I thought the price would be worth it to have a brother to help me against the manipulative evil who is my father. Our parent.”

  Brycie pulled back and sat up facing her. Just far enough to break contact.

  “But the price was too high, wasn’t it?” There was no anger, no accusation, just the cold pain of a hurt child.

  Suzie reached out to touch his face and he pulled back and away. She leaned forward and cupped his cheek and turned his deep brown eyes to face her.

  “No, the reward was greater than I imagined. My son.” She said the words carefully. They were right.

  “That is a truth, Brycie. I don’t know what my father has done to your head, but you have been the greatest gift of my life. You are the great light in this prison. It almost killed me each time you were sent away to school.”

  “Why did you stay?” He narrowed his eyes until their color was nearly lost in the early evening shadows.

  “For you, Brycie. This is where I belonged, near you.”

  His eyes stayed tight and began nodding.

  “I believe you. I’ve not believed anything beyond the blueness of the ceiling and the horror of grandfather’s—” his voice was abrupt and self-accusatory, “my parent’s memories. I am trapped with them, but I’ll not be trapped by him.”

  Alive with energy, such as he hadn’t displayed since he was a small boy, he bounced off the bed and raced over to the closet. He grabbed a blue windbreaker and pulled it on. He took the only object on his desk, a slim wallet and went to ram it into a pocket.

  He hesitated, then pulled out all the cash, and tossed the wallet back onto the wooden surface. A bunched fist rammed the crumpled bills into a front pocket.

  In a blink he was back at the bed and had pulled her to her feet. Rather than resting his chin on the top of her head as he had lately done, he bent and placed his mouth near her ear.

  Bryce drew in a deep breath through his nose.

  “That is something I must always remember. The scent of lavender and honey that is my mother.”

  Another deep breath. Her shoulder-length hair rustled across his cheeks like a thousand autumn leaves brushing the air as they fluttered by. He moved his mouth against her ear and whispered so gently that she as much imagined as heard his words.

  “I set you free.”

  Chapter 4

  Bryce stood in the shadows of the main entrance and looked across at the security gate.

  Okay, nice dramatic exit, Boy. Now what the hell was he supposed to do?

  There was no reason they wouldn’t let him out of his grandfather’s, his parent’s… it was awful, but true, so he’d better face it. His parent’s compound was a place he could never survive. His mother… yes, Suzie was his mother. He had come forth from her womb even though he could remember the carnal act of his parent planting the seed to become Suzie into her mother’s womb. His wife, another woman who had left few footprints upon the shifting sands of Bryce Sr.’s memories. Bryce could remember the day of Suzie’s birth, but she was still his mother.

  He looked once again at the security gate. All that lay beyond it was the capital city. There he would be instantly recognizable. From the capital, the only escape was through layer after layer of defense, and still he would never escape Bermuda, the world’s government covered all the islands. All exits would be blocked. He might take a boat, but he had never sailed the ocean.

  He concentrated for a moment and almost puked up whatever he’d last eaten as the miasma of memory washed out of the depths and momentarily smothered him before the answer emerged. His parent had never sailed either.

  Escape.

  The word rattled around somewhere in his brain in that abrupt déjà vu of certainty that he had come to recognize over these last days as he’d studied his blue bedroom ceiling. It was a memory of the old man. He could ignore it and it might go away, or he could give it his attention and it would come into focus along with a wave of gut-churning self disgust.

  Escape.

  He thought about escape.

  This time he doubled over by the corner of the entrance and spewed forth everything he’d swallowed these last days. He threw up his parent’s disdain for a weak daughter, he threw up the old man’s plans for world rule, Bryce threw up his hatred for the things he’d done in memory, but never done in life. He heaved and heaved until his throat was seared and a noxious pile awaited the next supplicant permitted to the front door of the imperial mansion.

  When at last he could stand upright, Bryce moved around the corner behind a massive Royal Poinciana tree. The courtyard lights didn’t make his eyes tear so badly here. He spit several times trying to clear the bile from his throat. And studied his options from the shadows. From the only shadows.

  With daylight fading, everything was brightly l
it by large, sweeping lights. Everything except his refuge. There were no other trees between the entrance and the distant main gate. Flitters with official clearance could land in the forecourt, or be blasted from the sky if not welcome. A tickling sensation, like a tiny mouse running loose upon the folds of his brain, told him that another of his grandfather’s memories simply awaited the right triggering thought. He was close. Forecourt. Shadows. Escape. Safety.

  An image bloomed forth within his head. The wall of the house, where it was most shielded by the great tree and its bounty of fine, loose leaves, created a camouflage better than true dark. The dappled shading allowed movement to go undetected. The memory surged forth of the plantings that always kept a young tree wide and low and a mature one tall and arching above.

  Bryce turned to the blank wall and unerringly pressed his hand against the proper stone. The wall split and a section swung inward. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed no reaction from the distant guards as he ducked through. It closed silently behind him.

  For just a moment the complete darkness of a sealed tomb surrounded him. Dust was thick on the air, it was certain that no cleaning crews were ever allowed to know of this place. An overhead light shimmered on, and then the next and another, beckoning him forward to the brink of a great cascade of stairs descending down into darkness. For each light that lit ahead, one behind extinguished as if it had never been. He descended the rough stone steps in a bubble of light that didn’t reveal his past or his future, only his present.

  That was how to survive. His past, his parent and his mother, must no longer exist. His future, well, his future brought him stumbling to a temporary halt confusing one of the lights ahead. He was so close to its trigger point that it could only glow and flicker. His future was not what his parent wished. Whatever the old bastard wanted, he wasn’t going to get from this clone. The Old Bastard, definitely in capital letters.

  Not much of a roadmap, granted, but at least it would not be what the Old Bastard wanted. And he definitely would not want Bryce to be escaping to safety, especially not down his personal bolt-hole.