Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) by Caitlin Falls Read Free Book Online Page A

understand: this is not a game. If you screw up, you can get us all killed.”
    “So that is a good enough reason to just let her die down there?”
    “No, it isn’t, but that is the only reason we need to leave her there.”
    “Wow, thanks for being a friend.”
    “Like I said, you don’t understand.”
    “You’re right, I don’t. Did they breed asshole into you in that lab? Are you all sociopaths or something? Did being born in a test tube make you so selfish that you don’t care about anything or anyone else?”
    Venting her anger did nothing to help cool it. Tawny just tucked her slim fingers into her jeans pockets and kicked a booted foot into the dry dirt, sending puffs of it up toward her face.
    “Did you know that when you grow up in a test tube, as you put it, you can see and hear everything going on around you?”
    “No.”
    “It’s true. We floated in that solution day after day, watching them cut up others, and kill them with their experiments, always knowing one day it would be our turn. I used to watch the others watching it happen, and I used to wonder why I could not cry like some of them did.
    “Later I found out I did not have any tear ducts. They did not think they were important anymore, or maybe they were planning a different set of tests for my series, or whatever. I could not cry, but I wanted to, and you know who did cry?”
    “Who?”
    “I did. Or at least Tawny 1 did.”
    “Tawny 1?”
    “You didn’t think it was just you, did you? They made clones of all of us. I don’t know when I was made the first time, I just know that somewhere, at some time, there was a little girl who got stolen from her family, split apart, and turned into raw material for the scientists. Call her Tawny 1.”
    Krista closed her eyes, squeezing them so tightly it hurt. What had that been like, watching others being medically tortured, knowing you would be next? What had it been like to know that one day there would be a better model, one that would make sure you no longer even had that small existence? No matter how awful and terrifying it was—it was still existence.
    Would she have fought back or given up? Her heart ached for Tawny, but she knew that Tawny did not need or want her pity. “I thought you said Primes were created, not born.”
    “We are. But when they open you, you share—for a moment—a Connection, with your Giver, even if they are dead, and most Givers are long dead and have been for years.”
    “Giver?”
    “The one whose life becomes the blueprint for your own. I saw that girl; she did not really look like me, but she could cry, and she did. It did not do her any good. It never did any of them any good.”
    “Why would they steal children to build clones?”
    “They had to have a tree to graft onto. They had not learned how to grow from utero back then.”
    “Back then?”
    Tawny shrugged. “This has been going on for a very long time. When it started, they thought that the new millennium would bring spaceships taking people back and forth to work, and domes covering the cities. I know that sounds absurd now, all things considered, but when it started it was the Ice Age people were afraid of, not global warming.”
    A thought occurred to Krista. If she were a Natural, why had they opened her? To harvest her DNA, maybe? There something more sinister there, something more than what she could see. She kept silent, some inner voice warning her not to ask that question—because to do so would be dangerous in the extreme.
    The wind stopped. The clouds dispersed. Everything took on a heavy, pregnant pause. Neither of them spoke. Blake swooped over them, his strong winds flapping in the dead air. “Take us back!” He called down to Krista. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
    “Is there such a thing?”
    His grin made butterflies fill her stomach. Noite’s words came back to her... Just a warning, don’t fall in love with either of them. Don’t fall in love with anyone; all