31 NatureNurture
Nature or Nurture
I’m lying in the desert, rivulets of water swirling around me, lightning striking nearby. I can’t move; my body is a heavy weight, tears as hot as acid tracking down my face.
Zara, Meredith, Luca.
I repeat the litany of names in my head, the reasons I have to get up. The little boy splashes in the mud puddles around me, happily gallivanting despite the fiercely raging storm.
Someone else stalks closer at the edges of my sight, wearing my mask.
I try to warn the boy, but I can’t wrench my mouth open.
The figure is right behind him now, carrying that weapon, the one I created, my biggest regret. The Gauntlet.
Reggie!
A chorus of voices yells. Zara and Meredith are with me, too, each reaching to grasp one of the boy’s hands.
I try to warn them as the masked figure in the dark raises the weapon. I’m screaming inside my head, but only the faintest unnoticed whimper leaves my mouth.
Meredith’s and Zara’s screams are the last things I hear before sinking into the mud. I’m drowning in it—but no—strong hands are pulling me to the surface.
Luca, you came back; we have to help them.
No, you were the one who hurt them.
He points, and he’s right. The figure pulling off the mask is me, was me all along.
Zara is shaking me awake, urgently calling my name.
“It’s time to go!” she says. There’s no fear in her eyes, only a fierce excitement as the thunder crashes and the lightning flickers. Meredith appears in my doorway, already dressed, carrying her bag.
I bolt upright and throw on clothes and my mask, promising myself that this will be the last time I’ll wear it. After this, I’ll be Reggie. Not Regina. Not Kingsley. Not Adele’s pawn anymore.
“Get to the outer doorway and wait there until I can open the door from the outside,” I remind my sisters.
“Meredith is your responsibility now,” I say to Zara.
“Promise you’ll hurry?” Zara asks, a waver in her voice.
“I promise. As soon as I can, I’ll come for you. I love you both.”
The boy is awake when I arrive. “It’s time to go,” I say, unlocking the cage and handing him old baby clothes of Meredith’s. I leave the key in the lock. It’s the only goodbye I intend to give Adele. He follows me, lurking in shadows as we run to the hangar where the Winnebago waits.
“This is our getaway vehicle,” I say, and he looks between me and the Winnebago in surprise as I open the door. “Climb in.” I gesture, and he doesn’t hesitate, bounding up the steps and scurrying under the table.
“Regina Kingsley.”
Surely, this is only a nightmare. My blood turns to ice, as the one voice that always ruins my plans says my name. I turn slowly, blocking with my body the boy cowering inside the Winnebago.
Adele stands there, cooly surveying me. She’s alone, no weapons in sight, but that does little to reassure me.
“I’m leaving,” I say. “I’m done, I quit. You’re not stopping me anymore.” I rip off the mask and throw it at Adele’s feet.
“And what of your poor sisters? How do you think they’ll feel, with your abandoning them?”
The mask can’t save me this time, so I concentrate with all my might to keep my face blank. So she doesn’t know. If I can just escape now, I can still get to them.
“It will be easier without them.” It’s easy to hide the truth when it doesn’t feel like I’m lying.
Adele laughs softly. “You think I don’t know that you sent them to meet you? They will never make it out that door without my genetic code to unlock it.”
I don’t let the relief show—she doesn’t know she’s made a mistake with the lock, doesn’t know that I, too, can unlock it. I just have to get to them. “Fine, keep them. But I’m leaving.”
“Not with my weapon you aren’t.”
The metal of the Gauntlet glints; the darkness of the void spaces in between eats the light that falls upon it.
My stomach drops. But I can feel it, the Gauntlet moving of its own accord, pulling me forward as it reaches out for Adele.
Then all I know is pain, ricocheting through me as I fight harder than I’ve ever fought before.
My teeth ache, my bones are on fire. Suddenly cutting off my own arm to stop this pain seems like a viable option.
An arm seems like a small thing to sacrifice.
The thought slices through the pain like a knife.
The way to destroy the Gauntlet, the way to keep it out of Adele’s clutches.
Open that door in my head, throw myself into that void, take the Gauntlet with me.
My sisters will have to fend for themselves, but I have to hope that taking myself and my weapon out of the equation will tip the scales.
Luca, I think, I’m done being her weapon.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Adele says. Abruptly the pain ceases. My arm is mine again. She’s curled forward, breathing hard and pale faced, but she’s watching me carefully.
“Do what?” I gasp.
“I know what it looks like when you’ve given up. I’ve been to the depths of that dark place myself. If you’re going to jump, you want to hear what I have to tell you first. Don’t waste a sacrifice just to destroy that.”
Without the pain, my will to live, my fear of oblivion is clawing its way back under my skin. “I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say.”
“It’s about who you are. What you are.” She stoops to pick up the mask, turning it over in her hand and inspecting it.
“I’m leaving. I’m taking my sisters and I’m leaving.”
“You’ll be back. You’re too much like me to stay away. But I’ll let you go for now if you leave the Gauntlet.” She holds out a hand expectantly.
“I’m nothing like you.”
“Of course you’re like me,” Adele scoffs impatiently. “Why else would the Gauntlet work for me?”
“No, I’ve done bad things. I don’t deny that. But I’m not a bad person. I’m trying to do the right thing despite no help from you, despite your trying to turn me into a monster. You were supposed to be my mother. You were supposed to love me.”
“You think I don’t love you?” She says it as if it were blindly obvious, as if she were offended I would even question her. “You almost just destroyed yourself to thwart me. The only reason you’re still here at all is because of my love.”
Rage, red-hot and blinding, floods my mind. “You have a hell of a way of showing your love. You never loved me; you never even liked me.”
“Don’t talk about what you don’t understand.
The only reason you have grown up is because of me.
I’ve done everything I can think of to keep you from your destiny, Regina, with no help from you, I might add.
Maybe I should have just let you jump. The only reason you’re still here is because of my sacrifices. ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! You never give me a straight answer, never tell me what you mean with this bullshit, all this nonsense about destiny and love and sacrifice! You never tell me the truth.”
“Fine, you want to know the truth?” Adele laughs coldly. “I am not your mother. You aren’t even human.”
I can’t help it; I laugh.
“There’s nothing remotely funny about what I’m trying to tell you. You are not a human being. You are not my child.”
Truth, truth.
“What are you talking about?” I say, shock reverberating around my mind, knocking everything else away.
“What is a mother anyway, but a creator? You aren’t my daughter, Regina.
I’m not your mother because I didn’t give birth to you.
I created you, though. You are nothing more than a few lines of recycled genetic code and a bit of borrowed soul.
You might wear a human skin, but you are not like the rest of the species. I cloned you.”
A ringing silence follows Adele’s words. But inside my mind, a storm of voices rages.
Same, alike, one, clone.
Clone, clone, clone. The word reverberates in my skull. I shake my head, though I feel the truth in her words sinking in.
“So no matter how much you criticize me, how much you hate me, remember this: You and I are exactly the same.”
“We are not the same,” I whimper.
“Why else would this work for me?” she says, the Gauntlet mirroring her hand gestures, my control over it having evaporated. I shake myself out of my stupor and try to fight her, but it’s no use; I can do nothing. It doesn’t even hurt.
“Meredith, Zara, the other babies—”
“I tried the cloning experiment only the once, to create a safety net. You are adequate for my purposes, but you aren’t the improved version of myself I was anticipating.
I certainly wasn’t going to bother with another cloning attempt.
I picked Meredith and Zara from a pool of magical embryos.
Unfortunately, they didn’t turn out to be the family I was searching for.
So far, my experiments in parenthood have been rather abysmal. I’d agree with you on that point.”
I’ve always clung to the idea I’m different from Adele.
It was supposed to be Zara, Meredith, and me apart from her, against her.
But I am her. We are one and the same. I am everything she is.
Every trait, every action, everything I hate about her, it’s all me too.
I lied to myself. Convinced myself that my true nature was in the part of me that lives when the mask was off.
How wrong I was. I am an abomination, unnatural, and no better than Adele.
Worse than Adele, because I saw who she was—who she wanted me to be—and instead of facing down that ugly truth and fighting to be different, I closed my eyes.
“You’re so close to figuring out the way to do it.
You’re so close to succeeding where I can’t.
When you created the Gauntlet, when you reemerged from that place unscathed .
. . there’s still hope. Stay and I will explain it all.
You can help me.” Adele holds out the mask to me.
“I’m sure your sisters will be happy to hear you’re staying here with them, because they certainly aren’t going anywhere but back to bed. ”
“They aren’t my sisters,” I say numbly, “any more than you’re my mother.” I tug on my arm that still remains outstretched toward Adele.