uPart 53/u
Max knew that he was dying. It was interesting to discover that, when this was the case, it was true that your life did actually pass before your eyes. Because that was what was in the process of happening to him.
He felt detached now, no longer possessing the will to fight. He could hear Liz screaming, but it was far away, beyond his ability to do anything about it.
It was right before he passed out completely from lack of oxygen that he realized that it wasn't Ihis/I life he was seeing. The flashes were unfamiliar and, yet, somehow he knew them too.
It was then, and only then, that he let go completely, giving himself up to the memories that might finally explain everything.
I He awoke in a cell. He stared up at the white ceiling, trying to remember how he had gotten there. It took longer than it should have. Whatever they had done to him had affected him badly.
Eventually it all came back. He was on Valonia. Before he had been taken prisoner, he had been staying at the crown princess's summer palace. Rowena's summer palace. Officially he was there to figure out how to resolve the trade conflict between Knosis and Sardica without alienating either planet. Unofficially he was there to avoid having to make the decision he knew his father wanted him to make, the one he couldn't in good conscious make, because he knew his father was wrong.
But, finally, he knew that it wasn't just his conscious that had brought him to the summer palace. She was the real reason he had come. Rowena. He had come to see if the spark he had felt between them at the conference was simply his imagination, or whether she had felt it too.
Until the moment he first saw her, Zan had thought the garden in which she stood to be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. They did not have such places on Antar. He spent many hours there, when he wasn't in meetings, enjoying the novelty of it. But, when he first laid eyes upon her, he knew that the garden was now put to shame. She was talking to her fiancé, Khivar, the king of Sardica, at the time, but he had barely noticed this. All he saw was her.
Zan's brother-in-law, Rath, introduced them to each other later that day. Few words were exchanged, but when his eyes met hers, he felt it again. A connection. A bond. And, for one brief moment, before she was led away by Khivar, he thought she felt it too. Her large dark eyes flared in a way that had set his heart pounding in his chest.
But, then, she left. Without a word, she left the summit and retired to her summer palace, and he tried to forget her, sure he had imagined it all. Until she invited him to join her there, supposedly to deliberate his decision, but some part of him had been hoping that it was for a far different reason.
When he arrived, nothing was as he expected. While she welcomed him warmly enough, in some ways, he felt as though she was a stranger. She was, of course, but somehow he had expected her not to feel that way. He was more disappointed than he admitted even to himself. She barely spoke to him, keeping to herself. He had been even more confused, and it angered him. He was the future king of Antar, the future high king of the system. He was not used to being ignored.
Finally, the night before, he had confronted her. He had gone to find her in her lab, where he knew she spent most of her time, having been there long enough to learn the pattern of her days.
It was then that he got the shock of his life. For it was in the lab that he found two of her.
He never found out what it meant though. One moment he was staring at them both in shock, as they stared back at him in equal horror; the next he found himself waking up in the cell.
It was only now that he realized that he was not alone.
One of them was curled up beside him on the pallet, sound asleep. He propped his head up on his hand, cringing when he felt momentary dizziness. Once he could again focus, he stared down at her, a frown on his face.
She was still exquisitely beautiful, but he now knew that she was not what she seemed. He could not trust her. None of which, of course, explained why she had been thrown into this cell with him.
Well, there was only one way to find out.
"Wake up," he growled.
Her eyelashes fluttered and in the next instant she was staring up at him. She sat up abruptly, waking up more easily than he had. "You're awake."
"Clearly," he replied icily. He did not move a muscle. He continued to stare at her, still lounging almost casually on the bed. She could not be allowed to see how her simple presence was affecting him. In spite of the fact that he now knew that she could not be trusted, he still found her intoxicating.
What was this feeling? He barely knew her! It was ridiculous. He needed to get control of himself.
"Why am I here?" he demanded, pushing away the desire to pull her into his arms.
She got to her feet, looking around the cell in dismay. "I..." Her voice trembled slightly, which served to annoy him more. She trailed off, clearly upset by the expression on his face.
He grabbed her, forcing her to look at him. "I'll tell you why I think I'm here, Rowena. You and Khivar dreamed this up together, didn't you? You're going to keep me prisoner here until I decide for Sardica. Isn't that right?"
She did not flinch, but she did not deny it either. Instead, she tilted her head and asked quietly, "How are you so sure that I'm Rowena?"
He blinked. "Aren't you?" He realized she was right. She could just as easily have been her mystery twin.
"Yes," she acknowledged. "But I'm curious as to how you know that I am, considering you've been consorting with my sister for the better part of two cycles without seeming to notice any difference. Or so she tells me anyway."
He didn't quite know what to say to this. "I didn't know you had a sister," he finally said, feeling foolish.
Rowena sighed. "Well, I suppose you might not call her that at all," she conceded. "But I considered her to be mine. I suppose that my presence here would indicate that she doesn't feel the same," she finished, somewhat wryly.
Zan just stared at her. He did not like feeling this confused. He was the crown prince of Antar. His family had ruled the system for generations. They were supposed to be informed of everything that went on with the other royals across the Five Planets. Instead, he felt completely lost.
And, for that reason, he seemed unable to control his temper. "Will you please stop speaking in riddles?" he snapped. "I want to know who that other person is. What is going on here?"
"Disaster," Rowena admitted, not seeming at all off-put by his tone. It befuddled him even more. "I had no idea this was going to happen, or I never would have given her so much freedom."
"What has happened?" Zan demanded, his voice rising in frustration.
"We've been taken prisoner, obviously," Rowena replied, looking at him strangely, as though he might not be quite all there.
He closed his eyes briefly, praying for patience. "I guessed that part. What I want to know is why you are here with me."
"Because my sister is trying to take over my life," Rowena told him, abruptly serious. "Or at least, she's being made to do so. I had almost convinced her to let me go before you came stumbling upon us and ruined everything."
"Let you go? How long have you been here?"
"A long time," Rowena replied sadly. "Since I returned from the summit. They weren't expecting me back so soon, but I had to leave." She looked away briefly. "I couldn't stay there."
"Who are /ItheyI?" Zan asked. He chose not to ask about why she couldn't have stayed at the summit. Not yet anyway.
"The Wendarians," Rowena told him. "They've taken control of my sister and they've corrupted her. And now she's going to take my place."
"The shapeshifters?" Zan stared at her, dumbfounded. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, didn't you know?" Rowena asked, sounding sarcastic. "They're trying to take over the system."
"What? Why? They've never been interested in ruling!"
"Not especially," Rowena agreed. "But I think they've become intellectually stimulated by the fact that they think they can. I work closely with some of them, you know. They are attracted to a challenge."
"You're saying that they're trying to take over just to see if they can?"
"Basically," she said.
"That's ridiculous!" Zan exclaimed. "Why would they ever think we'd allow this to happen? Every planet in the system wants to maintain the status quo. That is what the summit was about in the first place!"
"Not everyone wants things to stay just the same, Zan," Rowena informed him. "But, at least, when those people try to change things, they usually have a reason," she muttered. "The Wendarians just enjoy chaos."
"This can't happen!" Zan told her. "I refuse to allow this to happen!"
"You're planning to stop them how?" Rowena asked, glancing around the cell meaningfully. "You're presently in a prison a mile below the surface of the planet. We're not getting out of here."
"Someone will notice we're missing," Zan replied. "They know where I went. They will come for me."
"Don't you understand?" Rowena asked. "No one is going to come. No one will know you're gone."
"Of course they will," Zan told her. "Rath will come for me."
"Zan, just as no one will come for me, no one is going to even look for you. Because of what I've done, no one will even know there is a need to do so."
Zan stared at her for a long moment. He could see by the expression on her face that she was deadly serious. She truly believed what she was telling him. But Rath would come. IIf he didn't, then his father would. Or his sister. Vilandra would know that he was gone.
And, yet, Rowena seemed truly convinced. She just watched him sympathetically, waiting for him to accept what she was telling him.
"I don't understand," he finally admitted.
"It's my fault," Rowena explained. "I created her, and she was able to create you. With the granolith, and under the influence of the Wendarians, she cloned you."
"Cloned?" His heart was pounding in his chest – not from the fact of her presence, which it might have very recently, but because, for the first time, he was truly terrified.
"You do know what a clone is?"
"Of course I know what a clone is!" Zan yelled.
Rowena was unafraid. She just calmly replied, "Well, then you will understand that no one will ever miss you, because there is a clone of you out there. As far as everyone is concerned, you are not gone. The shapeshifters will use your clone to take over the system."
"But someone will have to know. Someone will figure it out!" Zan said urgently. "They have to."
"No one will figure it out," Rowena told him. "No one who would intervene has any idea what I've been doing here."
"Rath. He will know the difference. Or my father."
Rowena moved towards him, taking his hand in hers. He knew he should flinch away, but he couldn't. Even now, when he was aware that she was absolutely crazy, he could not resist the fact that she was touching him.
It took him a long moment to understand what she was saying to him. But, when he finally did, he realized that none of this was shocking at all. Because when he finally learned the crux of the matter, it all made perfect sense.
"Zan, I'm sorry, but your father already knows."
He was not surprised. And, yet, he asked anyway. "What?"
"Who do you think wanted you cloned in the first place?"
And, with those gentle words, Zan knew that there was no hope at all.
They were kept in the cell for weeks. Or at least Zan thought it was weeks. He lost track of time fairly early on, the seeming hopelessness of their situation making its passing incidental.
They never saw anyone, although twice a day they were fed through a slot in the door, so Zan knew that they had not been entirely abandoned. He wasn't sure why they were bothering to keep either of them alive, but he chose not to question it. He might have lost all hope that they could somehow stop whatever it was that was taking place outside of their prison, but he was not yet ready to die.
Later, looking back on it, he knew that he wasn't willing to give up entirely because of Rowena. Not because she hadn't give up. She had, as completely as he had. In fact, /IbeforeI he had. Or at least so it seemed. Later he knew that this wasn't true, but at the time it seemed like it was.
The reason he wasn't ready to let go of all hope was that it seemed impossible that he could be allowed to feel so much for someone when they'd never again see the light of day. And, because he never could quite believe that they wouldn't escape someday, he started to enjoy himself.
He was ashamed to admit it, but there was something liberating in being completely free of responsibility. He knew she felt it too. It was why she was so prosaic about the situation in which they found themselves. She blamed herself entirely, but she also couldn't control what was happening, so she chose to let it go.
In the end, because there was nothing else they could do, they ended up doing the one thing they could. They got to know each other. It was why he had come to the summer palace in the first place, after all. And, she ended up being everything he knew she would be. Only better.
They talked to each other all the time. He told her things that he had never told anyone, including Rath and Vilandra. He found himself telling her things that he had never even admitted to himself.
One day, he told her that he was not particularly enamored of the idea of being king. He knew that it was selfish, and that it was what he had been born for, but he didn't want it.
She sat quietly for a long while after he told her this, until she finally said, "I don't think it's that you don't want to be king."
He felt a twinge of annoyance that she was treating his deepest, darkest secret so cavalierly. But all he said was, "You don't?"
"No," Rowena replied with great certainty. "I think it's that you fear you will not be a good king. You care about things, Zan. Too much. I saw it from the moment I met you, but I knew it even before that. The things Rath and Karana have told me about you...I knew how it would be." She reached out and took his hand, squeezing. "The fact that you don't really want to be king will make you a great one."
"Well, I guess it doesn't matter," Zan replied, after he could finally speak, because he realized that she was right. "It's not like we're ever getting out of here anyway."
It was in moments such as those where he became desperate to escape. Where he remembered how much he did care about his planet, and his people – how much he cared about the whole system. And he was afraid. What was going out there? What mess were the Wendarians making of the galaxy he had been meant to lead into the light? Because he knew it was a disaster.
If he cared too much, they did not care at all.
Only once did they discuss the disaster that Rowena had unleashed on their world - the clones that had made it possible for the Wendarians to proceed with their game.
Zan was not angry at Rowena for it. Not really. Because he knew there was a deeper reason for why she had done it than just to see if she could. She was not like the shapeshifters, after all. He knew it – had known it from the day they met.
Finally, one day, she told him.
"I just knew that something was missing," she said quietly. They were sitting side-by- side, cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the wall of their cell. She didn't look at him and he didn't look at her while she spoke. "My whole life, I was alone. I knew that something was wrong, and I tried to use science to change it. I thought the granolith was the key to changing it, because, once I figured it out, it was just so easy to do. I was sure that if I had a sister – someone like me, who understood me – it would all be better."
"I don't understand that," he admitted, after a long moment of silence. "You weren't alone. You had Khivar. You've known you were to marry him your whole life."
"It never felt right," Rowena told him. "It just wasn't right. He's never understood me. He's so strong and so certain. He always does the right thing. He makes me feel even more alone, because I'm not that way at all. I've always been uncertain." She laughed bitterly. "That's why I created Serena. It seemed perfectly logical. Another /ImeI. No one would be able to understand like another me. How was I to know that all I was really doing was bringing out the worst parts of me in her? She is even more uncertain, even more biddable and, yet, even more reckless."
There was another long silence. "You're not angry at her for it, are you?" Zan asked eventually. He turned his head to look at her. She was still staring straight ahead, seeing things he couldn't even begin to imagine. Maybe seeing the chaos her 'sister' was possibly helping to unleash at this exact moment.
"How can I be?" Rowena asked, sighing. "She's not to blame. I'm the one to blame. My selfishness and arrogance caused all of this."
"You're not selfish and arrogant," Zan insisted. "If you were, you wouldn't feel all this so deeply. You were trying to make things better. You couldn't have possibly known that the clones would go wrong."
"I was trying to make things better for myself," she reminded him. "And I should have known." She turned her head towards him, so that they were now looking at each other. Her dark eyes were pained. "Why could I not have been patient?" she whispered. "I should have known you'd come."
Their eyes locked for what seemed like forever. Zan felt his head moving towards her, and before he knew it, he was kissing her.
It felt like coming home. There was no other possible way to describe it. This was right, always had been, always would be, and now that they both knew what they had always been waiting for, there was no going back.
There was no going back, until the day they had no choice. Until the day that they could no longer simply be Zan and Rowena, but, rather, became again who they were born to be. Until the day when they had to emerge to fix the mess that had been wrought in their names, but in their absence.
And, in the end, it was all even worse than they had ever imagined.
It was Rath who found them, of course. Even in the darkest days of hopelessness, Zan had known somewhere deep inside that Rath would come. And, come he did, along with a full contingent of the Sky Army. It was Rath's personal army who accompanied him, Zan later learned, because Zan's own army was no longer under Rath's control.
It was now Zan's army, because he was indeed king. His father had died many weeks before, and, in the weeks since, civil war had broken out everywhere.
But that wasn't even the worst part. The reason Rath had finally come was the worst news of all.
"I knew it wasn't you," Rath said, embracing Zan. Zan knew it had to be really bad, whatever it was, if Rath was actually being demonstratively affectionate. Rath hugged Rowena, his cousin, next. Finally, he continued, "When it happened, I knew it couldn't be you, brother. It's why I finally came here myself."
"After what happened?" Rowena asked.
Rath closed his eyes for a long moment. Eventually he replied grimly, "You'll see soon enough."
And, when they emerged from deep underground, from the place of their captivity, which had since become their refuge from the real world, they did. While they had expected the worst, they had never, in a million years expected that the worst had been happening right above them.
Valonia had been completely destroyed./I