The Book of Olivia Read online

  To add to our problems, a rumbling from the borders had begun, and we were running out of time. Soon, the United Regions would invade with an army, attack us while we warred with each other. And they would come. I’d learned much from Eva about their hunger for territory and power. If it wasn’t my husband’s men attacking and raiding, it was the small units from the U.R. testing our strengths and weaknesses, and their assaults were far uglier and more crippling.

  They, too, wanted our lands but didn’t need the crops for survival, and had proved this time and again when they didn’t hesitate to flatten an orchard, field, or vineyard, to get to us. It was Marcus’s ships driving them back to the borders, sparing us from total destruction. I often wondered if we’d survive this game of monkey in the middle. At the moment, our enemy here in Aeropia was also our closest ally.

  2

  I was so thirsty. The sink in my cell provided all the water I’d ever need, but it was not enough. There could be an ocean of it, and I’d still feel parched. My tongue was swollen, and the infection had made it impossible to open my left eye. Through a blurred eye, I watched the bugs scurry over the sweaty stone blocks on the other side of my cramped cell, wondering if Marcus would pardon me or sign off on my execution. He was certainly taking his time deciding. I had no choice but to wait.

  At this point, I really didn’t care. Hope once glowed bright, now, like a candle down to the stub end of a wick, it flickered with uncertainty. The slightest breeze would snuff it out. Before, dreams of peace and freedom for the clones provided all the drive I needed to survive what fate dished out. Now, like the endless supply of water, it wasn’t enough.

  I was certain Pilot had gone to sleep. I stopped talking over an hour ago and had not heard so much as a contentious snort, which I had come to the conclusion he’d mastered. I lay on my side and curled into a ball, pulling the thin blanket tight around my shoulders. Fever ravaged my mind, bringing with it my custom-designed torment. In immeasurable pain, I drifted off to sleep.

  The smell of burnt flesh and hair filled my nostrils. Bodies littered the street in various states, from bloody to crisp. It was horrid. And when I woke, it would still be there, even if I didn’t physically see it before me. This was now my reality.

  Things could go bad quickly, as I learned the day Eva released the clones and once again when Axel sent me into exile. One moment, you felt like you just might make it, the next, everything you lived for was gone. I loved Axel, believed he was the man for me, the only one I’d ever want, or need. Even after all we’d been through, I still felt deeply for him, but our relationship had become strained in the last few months. Perhaps the daily stresses of trying to stay alive, or maybe the uprising, changed us. The closeness we once shared had become frayed, and though I didn’t know what caused the continued decline, I certainly knew what triggered it.

  Fourteen months after the rebellion, food in our fields began to disappear at night, and a couple of old women were murdered, but not just killed. They were tortured and raped. Our scouts tracked the fiends and brought them back to our camp for justice.

  “Present those who stand accused,” Axel called out.

  Three Aeropite soldiers were dragged before where he sat on his favorite perch, a chunk of ledge jutting from the side of a cliff near the ground. He’d planted one boot on a rock, serving as a step to his perch; the other hung over the edge but did not move. His elbow rested on his knee, his chin in his palm, and his eyes were closed as though he concentrated his entire being on one thought. His other hand gripped an iron bar he carried everywhere. In his possession, it could be as dangerous as a knife or blaster.

  He’d doubled the breadth of his shoulders since the rebellion and stood at least four inches taller than when I first met him, making him tower over the crowd. Axel had become what I imagined General Axis strove to be in his youth yet never achieved.

  His hair had grown to just past his shoulders, where he kept it tied back with a strip of fabric. His blue chip still blinked from his cheek, now a symbol of survival he wore proudly. He was one of the few who retained the original implant. Pulse, pulse, pulse. It thrummed, as silent as he remained, screaming in the emptiness like a warning.

  The scouts shoved the killers to the ground in front of his stone throne. Axel’s eyes opened, and he pinned the men with a look of contempt, cold enough, if it had been directed at me, I’d have run.

  In most cases, we would offer them a choice. Join us or die. Axel remained silent. I knew then whatever he planned to say wouldn’t be good. I shivered, remembering how tenderly he’d held me in his arms hours before. Now, he shifted his manner to that of a different man, one I didn’t know. I could see it on his face, and it made me tremble.

  “Axel.” I took a step toward him. One of his soldiers hooked an arm around my body and pulled me back. I gave him a sharp elbow to the solar plexus, but he didn’t release me. “Let go.”

  “You can’t interfere.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “If you don’t remain quiet, I’ll escort you to your quarters.”

  I snapped my mouth shut and glanced from the men to Axel and back again. No, not good at all. Axel didn’t acknowledge me but continued to glare at his prisoners, the gears and wheels in his head turning. I could see it in his eyes. He weighed his options.

  He jumped off the ledge, landing on the ground before the men. “You were stealing and killed two helpless women.”

  “It can’t be stealing if the land isn’t yours. It belongs to Aeropia, and the women were old clones and a waste of food. We did them a favor and put them out of their misery.” One of the soldiers spat at Axel’s feet.

  “You tortured them. Not even rodents deserve what you gave them.” He paused and lifted his chin, looking down at the valley and the city below. “Everything beyond the walls is mine. I hold the fields, the forests, the lakes, and the ocean coastline. I protect the people out here—even the old clones you murdered. They were not soldiers but innocent women and didn’t deserve what you did to them. Nobody should have to endure that.”

  “No clone is innocent, and we won’t answer to one. As for holding the land—you won’t for much longer.” The man laughed. He had balls, but he should have kept his mouth shut.

  Axel’s posture stiffened. I could practically feel the fury shedding off him. But the chill in his eyes told me without a doubt the man’s reply had been the wrong one. Brave or not, the man was a fool.

  “Aeropia has tried to take our territory for over a year. I hardly think that will change anytime soon.” Axel nodded to his second in command, a man three years his junior but sharp and brave. “Skin the two of them alive. Then send a gift of the crops they stole back to Marcus, wrapped in their hides. Hang their bodies in the trees outside the field where they murdered the women.”

  I shuddered, wishing I’d never shared books on Viking history, remembering all too well his intense interest in the warriors who couldn’t be defeated. Brutal tales existed between those covers, stories of blood wings and torture. I had a hard time even thinking about the cruel tactics the Vikings utilized to strike fear into their enemies, let alone one that could become reality. I could only guess which scenario we read brought about this solution.

  “Axel—”

  His man slapped a hand over my mouth, gagging me. Axel couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t let him. The men in those books were brutal heathens. They were men of their time and circumstance, not ours. We could show compassion, had evolved past bloody displays of power, or at least I had to believe we had. We would lower ourselves to Marcus’s level if we behaved in this manner. I wouldn’t have it. Not in my country.

  I bit down on my captor’s palm. He yelped and pulled his hand away.

  “No! You can’t…” Like a vise the gag returned.

  “This is not a matter for women.”

  And that was where he was wrong. It was a matter for women, well, this woman. My birthright. My choice. I bit again, but the soldier
did not release me.

  Axel eyed the man who’d dared to challenge him and pointed. “Leave him alive. He can present the package, along with a message.” Axel smiled. “Tell your leader we will not bow down to his kind again. For every man, woman, and child he kills, I will send two of his own back to him as I present them to him today. As for these young men, if the families want them back, tell them to clone them. They didn’t have a problem with it in the past.”

  He paused and closed his eyes, as though the next thing he wanted to say pained him. “We will not return to our former lives, and we will not live as anything but the natural-borns’ equals. We are human and only want to live in peace.”

  “You’re crazy. Filthy animals,” the idiot said. “You call what you’re doing anything but an act of aggression? Heathen bastards—that’s what you are.”

  “Are we?” He turned back to his second in command. “Or are you the animals. Raping, using, taking whatever you want, believing there is no consequence for your actions. No, we’re not the beasts. We are only responding to an attack, defending ourselves, and we won’t lie down and be your victims again.” Axel turned to his next in command. “Before you release him, castrate him. He won’t rape again.”

  There were a few gasps, but no one spoke up. The back of my throat watered, and an ill feeling swept over me. No, no, no. Axel spun on his heel and strode toward our dwelling. The arm around me released, and the man’s hand slid away from my mouth, but I remained standing where I had been when he’d given the order. Frozen. The young men screamed and struggled as they were hauled away to their fate. I watched them for a second and then bolted after Axel. Someone needed to stop it. “Axel.”

  If he heard me, he did not slow. Reaching up, I clamped a hand on his shoulder. He spun around, his fist raised, ready to strike—until he realized who’d come up behind him.

  “Olivia?”

  “You can’t do that. It’s barbaric. Please stop it. Punish them, but not like that. You told him we weren’t animals, but then you did this. These are my people—our people. We can’t hope for peace if we do things like this.”

  “I’ve already given the order. Did you not entrust me with your armies? You must let me do the job you’ve given me. Anything other than seeing it through will make me look weak. If we are to survive, we must stand together, and the people must have a strong leader who will do what is necessary to ensure they survive and live free. They must be taught to respect us. If we do not send a message, they will continue to encroach on our lands and kill our people until we have nothing left. And then we starve.”

  He studied me for several seconds before he reached out and brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “I don’t do this to hurt you. I’d never intentionally hurt you, Olivia.”

  “Then don’t. You can’t skin them alive. Execute them, but be humane.” Reaching up with both hands, I cupped either side of his face. “This brings us down to their level. My father did stuff like this, and it only made his enemies hate him more, become more determined to take him down. You know Marcus will retaliate.”

  “Let him. If we don’t pick up our weapons and start fighting back, we will soon fade to nothing. It’s time we bring the cowards out from behind their walls, and if this is what I have to do to get his attention, I will. We need to stop dreaming of traveling across the seas to gather what we need to fight. That’s not the solution. The fight is here and now. If we abandon our ground, they will overrun it and dig in like ticks.”

  A scream sliced across the night. Axel’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t blink or look toward the area from where it had come. His face remained stoic, as though the horrid sound had not echoed across the valley—as though it wasn’t reality.

  I clamped my hands over my ears and sank into a heap at his feet. “No, no, no.”

  Axel scooped me into his arms and carried me into our home, the basement of a burned-out factory. “You will forgive me in time, when you see I am right.”

  I had yet to see he was right, but I had forgiven him as best as I could. I vomited for three days and refused to speak to him for weeks. Our relationship had never been the same. I still loved him, but I feared him. There were times when he held me and he was the man I fell in love with. Other times he was a stranger. I never knew which he would be from day to day.

  He was right about one thing. His actions got Marcus’s attention. And so the games began. They’d kill some of ours—brutally. If women, they were raped and mutilated, left staked out where we would find them, and without their skins. The men, they tortured in the nastiest possible ways, things I’d never dream a human could even think of, let alone do.

  Then Axel would retaliate as promised. I tried not to listen to the stories when the squads came back from an ambush. Both sides were behaving like the beasts we’d been accused of being. Every day, it got a little uglier.

  And then Axel had the virus engineered, inserted into nanite carriers whose sole purpose was to spread it through blood contact to any who didn’t carry the special micro-bots that collectively worked like a central processor to control the virus carrying nanites. Once inside a host, the nanites converted the plague to an airborne bug. Without the special neutralizers, the virus would run rampant, killing any infected who didn’t also carry the guardian bots.

  When he was sure his people were safe from the nanite-borne strain, he found volunteers to become carriers. At first, it took the Aeropites by surprise. Shortly after the first deaths, they ceased the rapes and bloody displays, changing the way they killed us. Now, they vaporized us on sight, terrified of the microscopic technology in our blood.

  Soldiers from the city became wily. They would dress as we did and enter our camps, slaughtering dozens in their sleep. After that, anyone without a chip took one to prevent imposters from insertion within our ranks.

  We did it out of necessity, not wanting past mistakes to come back and bite us. My father’s fall from power and eventual death came about because he could not tell friend from foe. The United Regions had swapped out clones for his personal advisors, military leaders, and my mother.

  Fool me twice—shame on me.

  * * *

  “What is this place?” Axel glanced around the empty lab we’d busted into in search of medicines, only to discover most of the facility sat underground and contained more than healing drugs. My father had never mentioned it to me, but I knew what it housed. Mostly.

  I studied the beakers and empty vials. Labels were marked Center for Disease Control. Biologicals were just one of the things dropped on us during the Great War. Both sides were guilty of the development of viruses and plagues. Not the most honorable thing in our history. “They tried to develop cures for engineered diseases here.” The nanites with special programming were one of the things the other…

  “Engineered?”

  I shut my mouth. My gut knotted. What I didn’t say still roared across the room like I’d screamed it. Among other things. I lifted a dead electronic pad and set it back down. They’d also grown clones in facilities like this one, using some of them to test the treatments they’d created. A brutal side of our society nobody wanted to admit to. But no amount of sweeping would bury our sins under the rug, and the evidence before us couldn’t be any more blatant.

  Axel brushed his fingers along the glass of a large tank, the fluid it once held had long before dried up. Minerals grew along the bottom and up the sides, a product left behind when the amniotic fluid evaporated. The crystals cloaked the contents of the cell. “This is more than a facility dedicated to treat diseases. This device is a uterus for clones.” He yanked his hand back.

  “Yes.” I frowned. “A bionic womb.” Swallowing hard, I stared at it. What must it be like to come face-to-face with the tools used to create you? In essence, the thing was like a surrogate mother to Axel, and I’d no desire to know what emotions seeing it brought to him.

  “I came from one of these things.” He drew back without warning,
striking the glass with his iron pipe. The tank shattered into a million shards. The only sound in the lab.

  Inside, a mummified fetus remained, suspended from bio cords that had taken on the appearance of rawhide. It swung back and forth, creaking as it moved on the manmade umbilical. The hollow eyes and toothless grin all but accused me of its misfortune. I shifted my gaze to the floor. Not a person in our squad, which consisted of clones and those who’d deserted Aeropia to help our cause, dared to draw a breath or comment.

  “Once we find what we came here for, I want this place burned to the ground. We’re not clones anymore.” Axel spun on his heel and strode out of the room. His anger hung in the air, even after he’d gone, dangling like the macabre corpse, shouting in its silence.

  I didn’t know how I’d feel in his place. More than likely, the same way.

  * * *

  “We are not animals! You cannot do this.” I woke with a start, sitting up, my heart thumping so hard the world began to spin and lose focus. Panting, I grabbed my stomach and rocked.

  “Ah, she wakes from her guilty dreams. Were you dreaming of him—the clone you call Axel?” As Pilot spoke from the other side of the wall, I realized I’d yelled and had caught the attention of the monster next door.

  “No.” I gritted the words out through clenched teeth. “Go away. I don’t want to talk now.”

  “I, like you, find myself trapped in a cell, and you know I can’t do that—go away as her highness has ordered.” He chuckled. “Since we have nothing better to do, I should tell you how I admire your fuck buddy’s tactics. He is a military genius, and has a serious set of balls to pull off what he’s done to date. But I have to tell you, his luck will run out. Soon.”

  “Axel’s tactics are barbaric.” I was not even going to address the comment about having a fuck buddy. Not a conversation I wanted to have with the man in the next cell over.