Imitation Read Online Free PDF Page A

you go by Ven in
Twig City. That will not be tolerated here. Henceforth, your name
is Raven Rogen and you will answer to only that name. Am I
clear?”
    I nod a second time and manage, “Yes,
sir.”
    It’s all I can do. My mission is
clear. They want me to draw out the killers. They are unconcerned
what happens to me as a result. Only that they apprehend the guilty
parties so life can resume as it always was.
    I know as a trained Imitation, I
should show more initiative, a willingness to integrate myself as
Raven Rogen and do what I can to eliminate the danger against her.
It’s what I was made to do. But I cannot stop thinking how my own
existence matters so little to the very beings who should value
life so much.
    He sighs. “Look at me.”
    I do as he asks, raising my head and
letting my hair swing away from my face. He is surprisingly average
in stature considering the fear he evokes from the mere sound of
his voice. Slight and bald, his head shines like the granite walls
in the lobby. I think if I catch just the right angle, I will see
my own reflection in his cranium. A panicked laugh bubbles inside
me, lodging in my chest and sticking there. I cannot
laugh.
    “ Do you speak coherently
at all or do they manufacture them mute now?” He speaks with an
edge that makes me want to back away.
    “ I speak very well, sir,”
I say. My voice is small. I feel like Ida.
    “ Good damn thing. Would’ve
been ironic, me of all people getting a defective piece of
equipment.”
    I have no idea what he’s talking
about, so I remain silent and drop my attention back to the
floor.
    “ Gus!” he shouts, and I
jump.
    “ Boss?” a gruff voice says
behind me.
    “ Show Raven to her room.
She’s had a long day.”
    “ Yes, sir.”
    Titus looks at me once more and then
turns on his heel and leaves through a side door. It shuts behind
him before I can see where it leads. I turn to Gus. He is waiting
for me, an impatient expression on his already scowling face. “Come
on, then,” he says.
    I feel mildly better with him than I
did with Titus. Not much, but some.
    We take a curving hallway and I wonder
if this apartment is rounded. If there’s a room somewhere that
makes a circle instead of cornered walls. I wonder if I’ll be
allowed to see it or if this place will be just as much a prison as
the home I’ve left behind.
    Gus wears boots that clomp against the
flattened carpet of the hallway, so even with my head down, I hear
when he stops. He turns the knob on a blue door and shoves it
inward, flicking a switch before stepping aside. I stop, one foot
in the doorway, one foot on the honey-colored carpet, and stare at
my new accommodations. I was right to assume my Authentic is
accustomed to niceties.
    The room is almost as big as the
sleeping room back in Twig City—a space that holds twenty bunks,
sixty girls. There are no fluorescent lights here, no pipes humming
with power, feeding Imitations as they slumber in incubators
underneath heat lamps and microscopes. The sleeping room in Twig
City is drafty and above all, loud. Other than my own intake of
breath and Gus’s impatient huffing, there is no sound
here.
    The room has the same plush carpeting
as the one where I met Titus. Only this carpet is a rich brown,
like chocolate—a luxury item I’ve only heard of, never tasted. The
thick rug sweeps in all directions, uninterrupted until it
disappears underneath a bed with wooden columns rising from each of
its four corners.
    The furniture is similarly colored and
cut, a matching suite. Above me, illuminating the entire space is a
chandelier dripping with what looks like icicles, though I’m almost
positive they can’t be made of real ice, since the temperature in
the room is comfortably warm compared to the air
outside.
    I’ve never seen amenities so
luxurious. It takes me a full minute to realize it is meant for
only me. I will sleep in a room alone for the first time since I
awoke from the incubator. I’m awed and