As much as it pained me that Levi was trapped right by my side, he quickly became my oxygen, my air. It had only been a few weeks since that night we spent together in Bar Harbor, and every cell in my body longed to be with him. Not only because we were all we had, but also because he understood me in a way that no one else had, or ever would. He was the one who talked me off the ledge when I learned I was a Similar. He had known, he told me. I was angry at first—outraged—but that knee-jerk anger eventually morphed into understanding, and I knew why he’d kept it from me. Everything about his life had been so twisted, so cruel. He was sparing me from that. He had tried to, anyway. After that, every chance we got, we found a way to see each other. Some days it was only for minutes. Some days longer. Kissing each other, our bodies pressed together like magnets, it all felt so crazy when we thought of our lives, of what we were losing, of the enormity of it all. And yet, it felt so necessary and right. When I wasn’t studying, I spent my waking hours engineering ways to end up in his path, and he in mine. I spent most of my sleeping hours dreaming that one day we’d be able to be together, and not as prisoners. This was a coping mechanism. One I used, at least in part, to numb the pain I felt over being separated from Ollie, and my father, and Pru. The idea that I might never see them again was too much to bear.

Eventually, Gravelle moved us to Pollux. I don’t know his reasons, I only know it’s where he was training the Duplicates. I never saw them once while I was there. They were hidden from us, kept in the lower part of the compound, which we didn’t have access to. I certainly never saw my father or the other DNA parents and originals once they arrived on the island. I had no idea they’d all been replaced, just like me and Levi, not until the guards grew lax one day—the day the islands exploded—and Levi and I escaped our restricted area, only to discover the entire compound was in tatters, and my friends were fighting the guards and Duplicates and Gravelle and Seymour.

Our Duplicates—mine and Levi’s—died saving all of us. Resetting all the clones back here at home and “releasing” them from their duty to follow Gravelle and Seymour’s orders. Duplicate Levi and Emma had to reset themselves to do it—and I can imagine that they were terrified. But they did it anyway. They destroyed the islands, and all that research, ensuring no more Duplicates could ever be created again.