Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(34)

“No,” Raphael says softly. “No, he wouldn’t.”

Marie looks at me, and I know that was a stupid thing to say. She’s seventeen. Two years older than me, her baby sister. And though she loves me, she never fails to let me know when I’m being childish.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Raph.” I take his hand and press it to my cheek, and his skin feels as warm and real as mine. “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, beautiful girl.” He smiles. “You didn’t make us as we are. You simply see the truth of things. That’s a rare gift in this place.”

I lick my lips, uncertain. “Faith says you’re sad, Raph.”

“… I was.”

“What about?” Marie asks.

He drums his fingertips on Pinocchio and says nothing.

“But you’re not sad anymore?” my sister presses.

“No. I see the truth. Like my lovely Ana here. And that truth has set me free.”

“What truth, Raph?” I ask.

“That everyone has a choice.” He looks at me, and his eyes burn with an intensity that makes me frightened. “Even in our darkest moments, we have a choice, sweet Ana.”

… But my name …

My name is …



I’m walking in the garden when it happens.

Enclosed in a glass dome on the highest level of Babel, it crawls with creepers and vines, bright blossoms and fragrant blooms. The garden is a beautiful place. Some of the plants exist nowhere else on the planet anymore, so the garden is also a special place. But Mother insisted there be no cameras here. You come to the garden to be alone with your thoughts. So, best of all, the garden is a hiding place.

It’s past midnight. I woke from dreams of Ezekiel and found myself alone in my bed, and the smell of the roses between the pages of my books only made the ache worse. And so I stole out from my room and came here to be alone. No cameras or Myriad computer. Nobody to ask if I’m well. I know I’m selfish to think it. I know life outside these walls is worse than I could ever dream. But sometimes I feel like this tower isn’t my home, but my prison. Sometimes I wonder what home is supposed to feel like at all.

I slip out into the garden, walk amid the soft perfume. I bruise the grass beneath my feet and look at my footsteps behind me and know that I’m alive. Pressing against the glass walls, I see tiny lights on the horizon, others scattered in the city at our feet. I wonder what it would be like to live down there. To be an ordinary girl, lost in the flotsam and jetsam of a dying world. I wonder if I could run away. I wonder what I’d do if I did.

I wonder if he’d come with me.

I press my forehead against the glass and close my eyes.

Stupid girl.

Stupid, silly little girl.

I hear something. Soft. Whispers. Sighs. I creep forward in the gloom, grass between my toes, blossoms brushing my skin. And then I see them, standing in a shadowed corner. Lips and bodies pressed together. Her arms around his waist and his hands in her hair. Like angels fallen onto this imperfect earth.

Gabriel and Grace.

I watch the two lifelikes kiss, feel my pulse run faster. They’re lost in one another. Eyes closed. Seeing with their hands and lips and skin. I watch them be so perfectly together and I feel so alone that I can’t help but sigh. I’ve never kissed a boy before.

I want what they have.

Grace tenses at the sound of my breath, and Gabriel drags his lips away from hers. They both turn toward me, eyes piercing the gloom. Her lips are red and his cheeks are flushed and for the briefest moment, I understand what my mother feels.

For just a heartbeat, I’m afraid of them.

“Ana,” Gabriel says, a frown creasing his perfect brow.

I back away, and Grace moves like her name, slipping free of Gabriel’s arms and crossing the space between us in a blinking. She has hold of my hands and her hair is a river of molten gold and her eyes are wide and bright.

“Ana, please,” she begs. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

They were hiding here, I realize. Away from Myriad’s eyes. Away from Doctor Silas and my father. Somehow that makes it sweeter. Sweeter and so much sadder.

“If you tell, we’ll be in trouble,” Grace says. “We’re not supposed to.”

“But why not?” I ask, bewildered. “What’s wrong with it?”

“They say we’re too young,” Gabriel replies. “That we don’t understand.”

“But you love each other,” I say.

“Yes,” they reply simultaneously, as if they have the same mind. The same heart.

Everyone has a choice, isn’t that what Raphael told me? And if Gabriel and Grace have chosen each other, does anyone really have the right to stand in their way? We made them to be just like us. All our knowledge, all of ourselves, we’ve poured into them.

And if they’re supposed to be people, isn’t this what people do?

Love?

“I’ll never tell them,” I declare. “Never.”

Grace sighs and kisses my hands. Gabriel squeezes me tight and whispers thanks. I can smell her on him, and him on her. And again I think how cruel this is, to give them bodies and desires, and rules that deny them both. They might look a little older than me, eighteen or nineteen, all. But in truth, they’re only a few months old.