The sun was warm on my skin, trickling down through the canopy of softly swaying leaves above me. A breeze blew through, cool and refreshing, tousling my short hair. There were birds in the trees around me, singing songs I’d never heard before. Beyond them was the deep silence of nature, miles away from the nearest centre of human civilization. I felt… alive. I felt free. For the first time in my life, I knew the whole truth of my existence, and there was no one controlling me anymore.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Father- no, not Father. Andreas. He would still be looking for me, which meant I couldn’t go wherever I pleased. I still had to hide away until everything was sorted. But, in a place like this, that didn’t seem so bad. There was no mask covering my face, no helmet shielding me from other people’s sight. I could feel the sun, whenever I wanted.

  I could come out here, a short walk away from the cabin we were staying at, and sit down on this old tree stump. I could just… exist, and no one had any expectations of me. It was wonderful.

  In truth, I was still trying to wrap my head around everything. It had only been about twelve hours since it all happened. After Madeline and I had packed, Vivienne took us to the cabin, and we’d been trying to settle in ever since. Obviously, I didn’t get much sleep. The bed was comfortable, sure, but there was too much on my mind.

  It was, in a way, clarifying, realising that the true entire sum of my life stretched only as far as I could remember. There was no mysterious blank period from before I woke up in the facility, because there was no me before I woke up in the facility. I knew every minute of my life, from the second of my birth until this very moment.

  It was also uniquely horrible, knowing I only existed because a woman died and a man wanted to exploit that. I was a poor imitation of a woman who was loved and cherished both by her family and her community. She was one of those designer brands I saw in store windows, valued and cared for, and I was one of the cheap copies that people wanted because of my resemblance to the original, only to throw me away when they realised I wasn’t the same. I existed to be discarded.

  It was a truly hollowing thought, but out here, in the sun and the wind and the trees, it was a little hard to believe. I was made to be discarded – that was, perhaps, an immutable fact – but it also didn’t change the fact that I existed. I was here. Regardless of my origins, I existed in the world around me, and wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t it enough that I could sit here listening to the birds? I was alive, and I was here, and there was nothing that could ever take that away from me.

  But, well… just being here didn’t solve my issues. It was a nice thought that kept me grounded, sure, but I was still hopelessly directionless now. I had no idea what I’d do once this was all resolved. At least with Andreas, I had purpose. Yes, he barely allowed me any sort of freedom, and he’d only allow me to do what I wanted if it benefitted him in the long run, but at least I knew what I was supposed to be doing, because he was deciding all of that for me. Now, I had to come up with it all myself. It was… scary.

  Something tickled my hand. I looked down and found a little brown spider crawling over my knuckles.

  “Hey, little guy,” I said, lifting my hand to get a better look. The spider turned to me, eight sparkling eyes examining my face.

  “Must be nice,” I muttered. “I bet you probably know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. I bet you have a mom and a dad like a normal spider. No one expects anything from you. You just spin webs and catch flies. You wanna swap places for a day? I bet I could spin a pretty great web with my shadows. Maybe you could figure out my life better than me.”

  The spider didn’t respond, because it was a spider and it couldn’t speak English. I sighed, putting my hand down and letting the arachnid crawl off into the undergrowth. It was probably time to head back. Vivienne was in class today, but Madeline was still here, and I didn’t want her worrying about where I was. She had enough to deal with in regards to me already.

  I made my way back to the cabin in the midmorning sun, my stomach rumbling from a lack of breakfast. We got the fridge running and stocked it up before we went to bed, so at least I knew I’d be able to find something.

  Inside the cabin was quiet; Madeline’s bedroom door was closed. She must’ve still been asleep. I wasn’t gonna bother her.

  Quietly, I put together a bowl of cereal and took it over to the couch in what qualified for the living room. All in all, the cabin was a pretty nice place. The main space consisted of this living room and a kitchen stuffed into the corner, with a couch, some bookshelves, and a fireplace. No TV unfortunately, but Vivienne said she could download movies and we could watch them on her ‘laptop,’ whatever that was. There were enough bedrooms shooting off of the main space to accommodate all three of us, which was nice. What wasn’t nice was the fact that the toilet was in a separate building outside, and was pretty much just a glorified hole in the ground. My morning pee had never been such a harrowing experience before.

  As I ate my breakfast, my mind processed through the events of the past day. Obviously, I’d been thinking about the big things a lot, but that wasn’t all that happened. Vivienne and I kissed. She said she wanted to be with me. If it wasn’t for everything, we would be a couple, whatever that meant. The thought was still fresh and exciting, as much as it was dampened by the knowledge that I would have to wait for this all to blow over before we could pursue it any further. It was probably for the best. I didn’t know the first thing about being in a romantic relationship; would I really be able to figure it out while also trying to figure out who I was?

  Another big thing to note was the re-emergence of those elusive fire powers. Last night, when Maggie first appeared, I was so worked up and frustrated that they just erupted from my hands when she surprised me. Father- Andreas. Ugh. Andreas already tried to coax them from me, but his… method didn’t really work. Maybe I’d be able to figure it out myself though, now that I had a better understanding of how the power felt to use. It wasn’t a natural instinct like my shadows, responding to my subconscious will. So far, it had only come out when I was really on edge, but maybe with some experimentation I could find another way to spark the flame, so to speak. It would be nice if I could practice them without being on the verge of losing it.

  To that end, once I finished my breakfast I left the cabin once more, finding a nice little clearing not too far away.

  Now, time to figure this out. The key was getting angry, right? Well, I’d start there, and see what happened

  It shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I had a lot to be angry about.

  —

  Madeline sipped her coffee, looking out the kitchen window into the forest beyond.

  It had been a weird morning. When she first woke up, it took her a second to remember exactly where she was. Once she recalled that she was at Vivienne’s grandparents’ cabin, it took her a second to remember why she was here. Once she recalled that… all she wanted to do was go back to sleep forever.

  Jordyn was a fucking clone. Of ROSIE. It was all so fucked Maddie could still barely wrap her head around it. Just thinking about it filled her with so much rage. If she ever ran into de Vygon, he was going to suffer.

  At least Jordyn knew her true identity now. That was… good. For her. It was a little hard to sum up enthusiasm in the face of what Madeline would now have to deal with any time she was near Jordyn; having a living, breathing version of Rosie still walking around, yet burdened with the knowledge that it wasn’t truly her. It was such a cruel slap in the face that it almost felt like an intentional joke by the universe.

  But Madeline would press on regardless, just like always. She might start drinking more again, though, knowing herself. How else was she supposed to numb the pain from this freshly re-opened wound?

  No. She needed to keep a level head right now. What if de Vygon found them and sent an attack team? Madeline needed to be ready to fight at all times.

  …Okay, maybe she could be a little high. She’d proven time and again that she could fight competently after a little green. Really, it just wouldn’t have been fair if she had to be totally sober the whole time. Jordyn and Vivienne didn’t need the chemical help like she did. Their brains worked.

  …Actually, given Jordyn’s whole deal, maybe she could do with a little chemical help. Eh, that was only for late night boredom; Madeline wasn’t gonna waste her limited supply when she practically needed it to function.

  Fuck, she was such a fuck up. If Rosie could see her now, she’d be so ashamed.

  Madeline put her coffee down, rubbing her eyes. She needed to get out of her own head. What would her therapist say?

  …She had no idea. It occurred to Madeline that she was quite possibly the only person in the entirety of human history to have gone through this situation.

  Fuck.

  “Madeline! Help!”

  Her heart jumped into her throat at the sound of Jordyn’s call. As far as Maddie knew, she’d been exploring around outside for most of the morning. Had de Vygon found them already?

  She quickly downed her coffee and ran outside, fists already radiating cold air, ready for a fight. Jordyn ran up to her out of the woods, looking frantic.

  Even now, after having all morning to think about it, seeing her face still lit up a tiny glimmer of elation in Madeline’s gut, just for a split second. She was so screwed.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “What’s wrong? Is it de Vygon?” Maddie asked.

  Jordyn shook her head. “No, I accidentally set a tree on fire and I can’t put it out!”

  Madeline blinked. “What? How?!”

  Jordyn frantically jogged on the spot. “I’ll explain later, just come on!”

  She turned and ran back off into the forest. Madeline sighed and followed her.

  Sure enough, when they came into a clearing, one of the trees near the edge was burning. A bunch of grass on the ground was singed black as well. What the hell was she doing out here?

  Madeline waved a hand and ice crept up the tree, smothering the fire and putting it out. The cold was probably equally as unhealthy for the tree itself, but at least ice wouldn’t spread and burn down the forest.

  “So,” Maddie said, turning to Jordyn with her hands on her hips. “You wanna tell me how that happened?”

  Jordyn blinked, seemingly coming down from the adrenaline of the small panic. “Uhh, right. Um… Give me a second.”

  She lifted her hand, palm facing upwards towards the sky, furrowing her brows in intense focus. The sleeves of her pyjama shirt (definitely borrowed from Viv, along with all of her clothes it seemed) were rolled up to her elbows, revealing muscled forearms. Jordyn’s shoulders began rising and falling as her breaths grew deeper and heavier. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  All of a sudden, fire exploded from Jordyn’s skin, sparking up almost uncontrollably for a second before Jordyn exhaled and the output de-intensified. It flickered in her dark eyes. It was probably the only difference between her and Rosie, aside from Jordyn’s numerous scars; her eyes were so dark that they were pretty much entirely black, but Rosie’s always had a hint of orange to their brown depths. It was said that certain powers could influence eye colour in development – something about them being the windows to the soul, and the soul being where powers resided – so that was probably it. Maddie’s own eyes were a fittingly icy blue.

  It wasn’t a fluke, then, back during the monster attack. Jordyn really did have Rosie’s fire power. Somehow.

  And Maddie could see Jordyn’s problem immediately.

  “You’re making yourself angry to summon it, aren’t you?”

  The fire went out and Jordyn dropped her hand, gingerly rubbing it. “Still haven’t gotten used to that… Um, yeah. I am. That’s what’s worked so far, so…”

  Madeline nodded. “All you’ll ever manage doing that is blowing stuff up. If that is Rosie’s power that you have, your main focus needs to be control. Rosie’s only power was raising the temperature and creating fire, not controlling it. Once it caught on something, it was totally out of her hands. It’s the same with my ice powers. It was why we worked so well together as a superhero team. I could put out her fires, and she could melt my ice. We balanced out each others’ faults.”

  “But, the only way I know how to summon it is if I get angry, and it’s hard to control myself like that.”

  Maddie smiled. “There are other ways to get a feel for it. You didn’t have control over your shadows at first either, did you?”

  Jordyn shook her head. “No, they just reacted to my emotions.”

  “It was the same for me. I learned how to control it by taking cold baths to give myself an easy starting point, and practicing freezing the water without using my emotions to force it. Rosie used to use a fuel source, like a twig or a leaf, so that she could see the temperature increase a lot sooner than pushing herself until the air around her hands ignited. It took a lot of practice to get to the point she was at when she…um, when she died.” Generally, she’d gotten a lot less squeamish about mentioning Rosie’s death over the years since it happened, but it was weird talking about it to someone who looked exactly like her. “So, give that a try sometime, if you’re serious about mastering it.”

  Jordyn smiled, and Madeline’s heart ached at the sight. She was honestly a little grateful for the scar stretching across her face. If not for that obvious and glaring difference – always reminding her that Jordyn and Rosie weren’t one and the same – this mission she’d undertaken might’ve proven too much for her.

  “Thanks, Madeline!”

  Despite it all, Jordyn’s cheeriness was infectious, and Madeline couldn’t help but smile back. “No problem. And, uh… you can call me Maddie, if you want. Everyone else does.”

  “Maddie,” Jordyn repeated, as if trying it out. She nodded. “Okay!”

  Madeline turned, waving. “See you back at the house. Don’t stay out too long.”

  “Sure!”

  It was going to be hard, there was no doubt about that. But, Madeline could see herself getting used to it. Jordyn really wasn’t that bad to be around, in spite of everything, and Maddie was nothing if not adaptable. After all, how many times had her life turned upside down at this point? She was beginning to lose count.

  —

  Madeline strummed at her acoustic, sitting on the porch and looking out over the dirt road leading away from the property into the woods. It was late afternoon and Jordyn was currently running laps around the cabin, despite the fact that it was no longer required of her. Maddie couldn’t fault her for wanting to keep up an exercise schedule, but with everything going on, she would’ve expected her to take a break, at least for a day. Maybe it helped keep her mind off of things.

  She played through a few of the songs she had memorized, trying to avoid anything that was too emotionally charged or held too many memories. Some Beatles here, some Green Day there, and time was passing along sure enough. Viv would be back soon with pizza, or so she claimed to Jordyn before she left in the morning. She was apparently also picking up some burner phones so they could communicate with Ashley should they need to, or each other in the event one of them was back in the city. The service was spotty out here, but they weren’t completely cut off.

  “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  Maddie looked up to see Jordyn coming up the steps of the porch. She put her hand over the strings, cutting off the leftover reverberation from what she just finished playing.

  “Uh, Rosie’s dad taught me the basics. I learned the rest myself.”

  “Huh,” Jordyn replied, leaning on one of the wooden posts holding up the veranda. “Did… Rosalyn know as well?”

  Madeline shook her head. “Nah, she was more of a singer. I would play the songs, and she would sing along to them. We’d do harmonies and stuff, though I was never as good as her. It was fun.”

  It was back when they were fifteen, a few months after Rosie’s family had taken Madeline in, when they were still in that uncertain phase between friendship and romance where neither of them knew how to define their relationship. She was hanging out in Rosie’s room, trying to get her hands around a song she’d been practising. She started up a new run-through, and this time, despite the fact that she ostensibly wasn’t paying attention, Rosie started singing the words. Her voice was so beautiful, it took Madeline’s breath away. She still remembered the feeling of the music just clicking between them. Madeline finally played through the song without making a single mistake, and by the time it was over, she knew for certain that she was in love.

  They’d known each other since they were kids, meeting in their first year of primary school. In total, it was fifteen years of friendship before the end. Six years of love. Three years of marriage. On the ground, living through it, it felt like a lifetime. Looking back, it felt like no time at all. In ten years, Maddie will have spent more time without her than she got with her.

  She wasn’t sure if she wanted to live that long.

  No. She forcefully took hold of her thoughts, stopping the oncoming suicidal spiral in its tracks. It would get better. It would get easier. This little backslide wasn’t the end. Healing wasn’t linear. Life was still worth living even without Rosie in it.

  The longer she lived, the more stories she’d have to tell Rosie once they finally reunited. And they would reunite. Maddie had to believe that. Maybe she wasn’t ever meant to love again, but that was okay. There was more to life than just romance. Rosie wasn’t the only person she cared about, and Rosie wasn’t the only person who cared about her.

  “Are you alright?” Jordyn asked, now sitting next to Madeline on the cushioned seat. Right there was a piece of Rosie that was still alive. A piece that needed to be nurtured and protected. It didn’t matter that Jordyn wasn’t really Rosie, because she was a friend that cared. And… Madeline found herself caring right back.

  Madeline sniffed, wiping away the tears that had fallen while she was lost in her own head. “I’m sorry.”

  Jordyn cocked her head like a confused puppy. “What for?”

  Maddie sighed. “I was… such a dick to you before. Back when you joined the Union. And even before that. You didn’t deserve any of it. I think it was just… you reminding me of Rosie too much. It hurt, so I… lashed out.”

  “I don’t know if I would call it being a dick,” Jordyn said. “I could tell that you didn’t like me much, but you were never mean to me about it. You just avoided me.”

  Maddie shrugged. “Yeah well, either way, I’m sorry.”

  Jordyn smiled. “I forgive you.”

  Madeline smiled back. “Thanks.”

  A small period of silence passed between them, broken only by the rustling of leaves in the trees and the chirping of birds.

  “How are you… doing, with it all?” Madeline asked.

  Jordyn let out a deep sigh. “I don’t know. It’s like… ever since I woke up in the facility… for my whole life, I guess, I’d been wondering what I was like in the past. Learning that there never was any past before I woke up is… weird. Knowing that I’m just a… copy of someone else, created just because Andreas… I don’t even know. I don’t know why he created me or Maggie or the other five that came before me. He told me he was my dad. I believed him. I guess, in a way, he is, but… I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve just been mostly trying not to think about it.”

  Madeline nodded. “That’s fair. It must be a lot.”

  “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. Before, I was just following Andreas’ commands because that was who I was supposed to be. Jordyn de Vygon was a superhero who was infiltrating the Union for some reason that Father never really told me. Now, I’m just… Jordyn. The clone. I don’t even know if I want to be a hero anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.”

  Maddie reached over, putting a hand on Jordyn’s shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with not knowing your path. I’ve had twenty six, almost twenty seven years to figure out what the hell I’m meant to be doing, and I still don’t know. You’ve barely had a day. Just give it time and stay open-minded.”

  She smiled softly. “Thanks, Maddie.”

  The door of the cabin opened, and Vivienne popped her head out. “Oh, there you guys are. I got pizza!”

  Jordyn immediately hopped up and jogged inside, always eager for food. Madeline watched her go. She reckoned she would stay outside for a little longer.

  Her guitar needed tuning, anyway.

  —

  The rest of the night passed peacefully. The three of us all enjoyed some pizza and I even helped set up the fireplace with my newfound powers. It was nice, just sitting around and chatting with no expectations hovering over any of us. There was still… tension between Vivienne and I, but hopefully it would pass in time. It was mostly just those little side-eye glances where our gazes kept meeting, and remembering the taste of her lips every time she smiled. Manageable, but still an ever-present reminder of the tiny thing that happened between us.

  It reminded me of the early days after I first slept with Brianna; those tingly feelings every time I thought about it. I hoped she would get to come and spend time with us soon. After spending so long pretty much living with her, it felt odd to go a day without seeing her.

  Eventually, the night wound down, and we all retreated off to our separate bedrooms. As I laid there, listening to the deep silence of the forest, I reflected on the first day of my new life as a free woman.

  Things were still fresh and raw, and it would take time for all of us to process these new revelations properly, but I got the feeling that things were gonna turn out alright. Maybe it was just the excitement of freedom overtaking the daunting reality of the situation, but it was what I believed. If Madeline of all people could treat me with such kindness after I basically stole her wife’s body, maybe I really would be able to find my place in this world, despite Andreas’ best efforts.

  In a way, it was a blessing to realise I was a clone. Now that I was free of Andreas’ control, I had no ties to anything. No family, no true identity.

  I could be whoever I wanted to be, and I had all the time in the world to figure it out.