Excerpt

BEFORE

I'm seven years old the first time I see the girl who wears my face.

Princess Jo'Niss Sylvarian of the Sister Systems waves to the crowd from her father's car, propped up by her mother as they drive down Mirah Memorial boulevard. I imitate the girl who has my skin, my hair, and I wave to the toys on the couch next to me, lined up to watch the coronation like the crowd on the screen. I wave out the windows, across the empty sea of corn. I wave like it's me in that little blue car.

The princess is matching her mother, wearing a dress spun in the brightest yellow—a beautiful gold that shimmers when she moves. She looks so poised beside her parents, the newly crowned king and queen of the Systems; she is the first royal daughter since the Great Exodus that began her line. She doesn't smile at the crowd, and instead keeps her lips a straight line, tight and dignified. It looks like she's found a sweet candy and doesn't want to seem too eager.

I try to do the same, but it feels like a frown, too hard and stiff. She must have practiced that look for hours.

"Oh honey, no, no, no!" Auntie rushes in, grabs the remote from my hands, and shuts off the TV.

Jo'Niss's face snaps into blackness, replaced by my own reflection—identical in every way, as if the screen is still on—a little girl with golden skin and hair black like the void.

"You shouldn't be watching TV." Auntie busies herself, fluffing the pillows on the sofa. "It's bad for your eyes."

"It's the coronation!" I say. My eyes prickle. "Everyone is watching!"

Television is a rare treat: we are so far out on the rim of the colonized universe, so we only get major events. For a second, I think the cost of the uplink made Aunt Emery angry. Everything is always too expensive for me to enjoy. Lemonade? Expensive. Ice cream? Expensive. Everything I read about in books is too expensive, even the books themselves.

"We…" She looks up as my uncle enters the room. "Waelon," she says to him, "I think it's time she knows."

"But she's too young," he replies. "She's not old enough to understand."

I don't dare say anything. I want to know whatever they're keeping from me, their grown up secrets. Begging for it is something babies would do; I am not a baby.

"She doesn't need to understand," says Auntie. "All the other children will be watching this. They'll have seen the royal girl. Tobis will be asking questions. We won't be able to hide it forever; she needs to be ready."

I don't want to make them unhappy. Uncle is always reminding me that if I fail them, they can make me go away. "Did I do something wrong?"

They turn to look at me, and their features soften.

"Nymphodora," Auntie says with the gentlest voice as she reaches over to clutch my hand in her pale fingers. "We have something to tell you. That girl on the screen…she's your sister, in a way."

"I have a sister?" I ask with a flutter of excitement.

"Dora, when princesses are born, they're not born by chance," Auntie explains. "Princesses are born through science. They are born with star-shine and perfection. And they are born in batches."

"Like cookies?"

"Exactly like cookies. When you bake a batch, you know how some of them come out burnt? Or not perfectly round?"

"Uh-huh."

"When a princess is born, she usually has matching sisters. We call these sisters clones. They're all made with the same ingredients, like cookies, but each comes out of the oven with tiny differences. The king and queen want the most perfect cookie. The roundest cookie, the sweetest cookies, the one that's least burnt, the one that is just right. So, they only keep one. Of all sister clones, only one will ever be the princess."

"But what happens to the other sister princesses?" I ask, feeling a chill. Even the fields seem like they're getting darker, as if the giant blue planet in the sky has suddenly gone dim.

"They…" Auntie swallows, hard. "They are terminated, dear."

I only know the word from the other colonists, when we shut down equipment for the very last time. Can you shut down a person, the same way you would a terraforming droid? The thought makes my head swim.

"I thought you were just as perfect as the princess," Auntie continues, "so I took you away. And now that you know, you need to help us, too."

"The rules we put in place are for your own protection, Dora," says Uncle, his voice dry and hoarse. "We want to keep you from getting hurt, so we can't let anyone know who you really are. If they find out, they will take you away from us, and they will hurt you. Do you understand?"

I nod. I clutch my little stuffed dog against my chest. My mouth can't seem to form any words, as if the act of speaking was forgotten to make room for all the new.

"Rule number one," he says, "you must never tell anyone you are a clone. Rule number two: you must study your sister in order to look nothing like her. If she cuts her hair, you grow yours long. If she carries herself tall, you will learn to walk hunched over. You will let your skin dry and crack to stop it glowing like hers. And rule number three: You are not her. Just because you share the same DNA, it does not mean you are meant to be alike. Do not forget that she is a stranger, even though you will know her inside and out. And if they find you—run. Run to the end of the road and don't look back."

I don't know who they are, and I want to ask – but my mouth still hasn't remembered how to speak.

"And know that we love you," says Auntie, "not despite what you are, and not because of it, but because you are you. And we will always be your family."

I learn the rules like the back of my hand. Like the back of Jo'Niss's hand, all smooth and unblemished. The only rule that matters is the one that keeps me tethered to the world, that keeps me safe.

Rule three: she is not me, she is not me.



As years go by, I learn the rest, fill in the gaps. Clone batches are expensive, but it's worth it to receive the perfect child. I read about epigenetics, and how the same DNA does not always equal the same personality. How each clone needs to be carried by a different surrogate, and that this plays its own small role, too.

The books I read never specify how doctors know which child is the ideal one, but whatever magic genetic marker she has, I don't. I'm a Genetic Imperfect, a mistake who should have been terminated at birth.

I also learn that the process of clone-batching was made illegal long, long ago. So double whammy on the 'shouldn't be alive' part. If the Systems find out that the royals are still batching, it could rip society to shreds.

Which is why my face can never, ever be seen. Though my so-called aunt and uncle never mention the word in my presence, I come to understand that the Royals entrusted the ocugry—a genetically engineered race of beast-like mercenaries who are known to follow a scent halfway across the galaxy for the right price—with keeping their secrets in the dark. And an illegal clone of the princess is most definitely the right price.

So, I watch Jo'Niss—my sister, my clone—grow up on the interstellar broadcasts, basking in the love and admiration of billions. All the while I am raised on Nesworth, the barrens of the Sister Systems, the invisible farmer girl. Safe.

I despise the girl who stole my childhood and my life. Jo'Niss grew up gentle and graceful, while I grew up all rough edges, bold and brash. Maybe because of the farm work; maybe it was just encoded in my nature. That's probably why the royals wanted to terminate me in the first place—they saw that somewhere in my genes.

Until the night of Queen Maratha's funeral. The night Auntie, Uncle, and I crowd around the screen, turn on the uplink and down the volume so my sleeping cousins won't hear from way upstairs. It is the night I see the princess's face explode in a violent burst of reds halfway through the eulogy, while she's telling the Systems about feeding the ducks with her mother as a small child, and I'm too busy wondering what a duck is to process what just happened.

The night I watch her crumple by Queen Maratha's casket, dead.

The TV goes black. Uncle has ripped the uplink from the unit, shattering the image, leaving only my reflection in the black mirror. The same face as hers, only mine is intact.

"Go to your room," he says, panting.

"But what just…"

"Go, Dora!" he bellows, his voice so loud I fear he's woken up my cousins.

Hours later, I tiptoe back into the living room, muting the TV before switching on the uplink. The pictures flick up on screen, accelerated through the simulcast from Apricus, light years away, yet instantly relayed to our pixels, burning the image of my own dead face into my retinas. Over and over, they play the footage of the princess crumbling to the stage, interlaced with interviews, sobbing as they recount the news I can't even hear.

With every breath, I see her face again: the moment she goes from being a person to a page in the history books. Her skin ripping, the blood. My skin would look the same if I was shot, my face would—

No. I have to calm down. Breathe, Dora, breathe.

She is not me.

I was seven years old the first time I saw my clone, and sixteen when I watched her die on live TV.

I'm not sad. Or scared. Unlike the people on the screen, I'm relieved. The day I watch the princess take a bullet to the face on live TV, I'm free.

But I was wrong.

She died, and my life remained exactly as it was—nonexistent.