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The first thing Luka knows is violence.
Not against him, no, because these days violence against pet-humans is frowned upon. Just the wet give of something warm to the touch, and sharp metal pressing against his palm.
Dimly he knows he should not be here, but his mind is too young to form words, so he stands and stares and thinks that he has done something horribly, terribly wrong. He does not know what. The air is acrid and cloying.
There are other Lukas here, the ones left sleeping, and they do not stir when he presses too close, nor when he attempts to reach for them, not even when the alarms start to shriek. Their bodies are growing cold. They aren't breathing. Luka begins to cry, because he is not used to feeling guilty. He's not used to feeling much of anything at all.
The lights that follow are painful, too-red and too-bright. When the staff haul him away his feet catch, sticky with blood drying black and brackish. They aren't gentle, and Luka's arms are mottled blue-and-black for a while.
His father is not angry. His father hurls papers across the room, swearing in that guttural dialect of his, but he cannot be angry. Luka is young and Luka is a fool and it is the staff's fault Luka strayed from the laboratory.
Luka doesn't say a word. He stares up at his father and tries not to look scared. Heperu does not speak to him directly for a week.
He is not allowed near that room again, even under strict supervision. His father makes more Lukas and leaves them as an example. Cuts into one, when Luka's heart starts to go a little strange, trying to see what needs fixing.
Luka grows older. He remembers blood, sometimes, that dull rusty scent, but no one ever explains it to him.
His health worsens in gradual increments until every breath catches in his chest. He is left alone in his room all day, making up melodies, playing and replaying the same little games. It's boring setting his own puzzles. There's no challenge whatsover.
Luka dislikes loneliness, but he grows used to it. He studies when his head does not ache quite so much, because if he can please his father like this, he can do absolutely anything that is asked of him.
Luka meets his saviour on a particularly miserable day. His father is meeting with an associate, and therefore Luka is stuck in bed, even though he's better than before. Still, he isn't at his best. He coughs, and the sound is wet and unpleasant. Moves too fast, and his vision swims.
He barely flinches when a monitor beeps, the sound harsh as it cuts the silence. Someone far down the corridor squeaks.
Luka listens to the buzzing chorus, unsure of whether he should panic or not. He coughs once, hard, pain settling somewhere between his ribs, and considers pulling his father from his meeting. But his bed is warm, his body leaden. He does not want to get up.
Luka feels close to drifting off when a brown-haired girl comes scampering into his room, silent as a mouse, footsteps soft and careful. She squints in the light, fluorescent and not so painful anymore. Luka feigns sleep, watching her through the opalescent oil of his lashes. When her eyes widen, he forces himself into a sitting position, eyes snagging on her features, her pristine white clothes.
He sees the tension drain from her small frame. Not dead. Only sleeping. Maybe he looks a little dead, surrounded by machines as he is. Her eyes rove over the tubes and wires snaking under his clothes, concern marring her expression.
There is a boy with her, watching him with startled blue eyes, but then he sticks his tongue out with a ridiculous little grin. His hair is dishevelled as if he has been running. They look almost exactly the same, he thinks. He's never seen that in other children before.
Luka's gaze shifts back to the girl. She looks to be thinking very hard about something he can't bring himself to care about.
"Hi," she manages, though the words come out forced, wooden, "Who're you?"
"Luka," he says simply, eyeing her and then her… brother? 'Clone' can't be the right word. He examines their clothes again - slightly foreign to him, laced with light blue. "You're Phan's."
Phan is a scientist, an associate of long standing with a perpetual air of indifference. Heperu complains of them often.
The girl's expression sours almost immediately. "I'm Hyuna. He's Hyun-woo. Are you…" She falters, glancing briefly towards her brother.
Luka watches her fumble for words. She could have been asking any number of pointless questions. Is he okay? Is he lonely? Is he going to let them stay?
In the end, he just nods, and her expression brightens for a moment. Her brother is steadily sneaking towards his bedside table, furtively glancing around and hoping he is not noticed.
There's a clatter, and Luka winces, glaring at Hyun-woo as he slowly inches away from the rubix cube he knocked off the table, expression guilty.
"Father said I might meet people soon," Luka adds, thoughtful, "You're loud. I heard you from outside."
"Sorry," Hyuna says hurriedly.
Luka shrugs. "It wasn't so bad. I've got good hearing." He glances towards the cube lying abandoned on the floor. "Do you want to play?"
Hyun-woo meets her eyes, looking baffled. Probably trying to figure out how they're meant to play in a hospital room. Hyuna grins, almost triumphant, mischief stirring in the depths of those blue eyes.
"Sure," she replies, bending to pick up the toy, "But no peeking, okay?"
Luka beams, hiding behind his hands and pretending to follow her instructions.
When Hyuna is seven and Luka closer to ten, she is entered into Anakt Garden.
She sits with him every day as the date draws closer. She works through more puzzles than normal, devises one of her own that Luka cracks in two minutes. It takes Hyun-woo twenty - five to whine about the cruelty, fourteen to try in earnest to solve it, and one to throw it at his sister and admit defeat.
Luka laughs when she does, cheek pressed against her shoulder. She's always warm. Or he runs cold. He's never quite sure. She meets his eyes, her own sparkling with mirth. "How are you so good at this?" she asks, "I can't do half the puzzles you can!"
Luka blinks, slow and confused. "Practice. It's like telling Hyun-woo about beetles. He never reads that book, so he never remembers anything I tell him."
"You've gotta be a genius," she muses, completely missing the point, "Hyun-woo! You hear what Luka said?"
Her brother turns, having been poring over the remains of the puzzle. He pulls a face. "Nope. He's being weird again, so I'm not listening."
"He is not. Be nice."
Hyun-woo ignores her. Luka takes the opportunity to pull himself closer, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face against her side. She twitches, swatting at him as his hair tickles her chin, and then she realises that he's not teasing.
"You're going to miss me," she says softly, "Right?"
He nods mutely. He can't form the words, not in the human language, and her segyeinko is worse than his. It's highly likely she won't understand what he wants to say.
Still, he wants to say it anyway. They might never see each other again, but she's everything he's ever needed and more. He squeezes her tighter, feels her laughing, feels horrible for wanting her to stay.
"Ne itakya akyo," he finally murmurs, the words newborn and tentative.
He can picture the slight confusion on her face as she says, "Huh? What was that?"
Luka doesn't have the confidence to say it again.
Luka demands to be entered into Anakt Garden the moment there is an opening. He knows he will not get a say in the matter, that he is going whether he likes it or not, but it is nice to be given the illusion of choice.
Class Fifty. The year below Hyuna, give or take.
He's the oldest of his class by three or four years. It doesn't matter very much. He scans the crowd in vain, then picks his way across the field, settling himself against a solitary tree. The shade is nice. Everything here is far too bright.
He goes through the counting game, silly and childish as it is. He's seen Hyuna practicing it, the repetitive motions coming easy, the words a simple mantra. Unme, kiyo, pliye, hako, ito, over and over until the world fades away.
Until there is a warm hand against his own, a vibrant girl with flower-pink hair finishing the sentence for him. Her cheerful expression makes him curious, though he does not recognise her.
“You don’t have to sit out here,” she admonishes, “Isn’t it boring being on your own?”
He slowly shakes his head. “I’m okay,” he mumbles, “Really.”
She takes his hand again, counting his fingers, and they sit like this for some time. She says his name is pretty. Luka has been called that before - pretty, handsome, cute - but when she says it, with that silly grin on her face, warmth blossoms in his chest.
Mizi introduces her to Sua, a thin spectre of a girl with lavender eyes and dark black hair. She's like Luka in many ways (he learns later that their guardians are in similar social circles), and she hates most people.
Luka understands. Luka, too, finds most people a bore. He's pushed from place to place as his father's pet and the majority of the other humans he knows are sad, simpering things.
Still, the three of them are fast friends. Luka cannot find Mizi a pain, when it is Mizi waiting for him after his checkups, and he cannot dislike Sua, when she wordlessly hands him her notes every time he drifts off in class.
Luka, from time to time, lets himself remember the before, when he had no one but his father, and then those rosy childhood days, making fun of Hyun-woo and clinging to Hyuna like a much younger child. Mizi is not Hyuna and Hyuna is not Mizi, but he allows himself to love her all the same.
Even so, Luka finds himself growing comfortable with the distance.
When they are all a little older, Luka becomes a star. Anakt Garden's crowning glory, he is nothing if not a masterpiece, honed to crystalline perfection.
Sua begins to visit her mother more. Mizi spends her days drifting, or sitting with Ivan, who is as strange as Luka but far more offputting.
Luka acts. Luka dances. Luka sings. Luka plays violin for a vast and adoring audience, is named prince of both stage and screen. He's a kodenka first and a human being second, but that is what he was built to be.
Sua writes a song for Mizi. It's named for her. They perform it together, day after day.
Luka does not have time to do the same, but he dedicates every show to his saviour, and prays that she will one day sing with him.
When Luka meets with his father, Heperu gives him a long list of demands. A training regimen, and new tests designed solely for him. Luka supposes it's for the greater good. They stopped the routine testing a year ago, except for those in need of supplemental image-making.
The tests hurt, and they leave him weak for several days, but he learns to compose himself, steady his heartbeat as if there is nothing wrong at all.
Mizi stays by his side after every session, concern in her green eyes. There is something bitter about her these days, and three weeks ago she and Sua had sported matching bruises, but Luka stifles his worry and lets her fuss when Sua is not there to distract her.
Soon Alien Stage Season Forty-Nine is announced. Luka watches and rewatches every season alone in his room, and thinks about dying. He used to imagine death as something peaceful, slipping into unconsciousness as his body fails. He knows now, with a bone-deep sort of certainity, that if he is to die, he will be shot through the neck.
Luka wonders, sometimes, how it feels to die before you are granted the opportunity to live. He is the product of countless failures, and surely there are many to come after him. Luka is a masterpiece only when he is alive to be one.
Luka's salvation begins when he is close to twenty years old.
They are in the star-room, and he is correcting the girls' segyeinko with an air of slight contempt.
"O ki miziki," he murmurs in that too-soft voice of his, "Ore mizike o tia… No, no, that's… It's ori. Ori mizike."
Sua pulls a face that can only be described as pained. She hates being corrected when it comes to things she has worked hard on. Ivan's tried a fair few times, to no avail.
Ivan. Who is watching the holograms on the screen flicker and pop as the music of Season Thirty-Something echoes throughout the room.
Luka does not particularly like Ivan. He spends most of his time bickering with Till, so perhaps to that end they are kindred spirits, but Luka finds him impossible to like. Tolerating him is about the best he can do, even when they have been forced together more times than he cares to count.
Ivan knows, somehow, that Luka and Mizi are not a pair. It's been a topic of much debate over the years - Mizi and Till, Mizi and Luka, Mizi and that shitty kid named Alan. He also knows that Luka's heart belongs to someone no one else has met. Mizi's joked that his saviour doesn't really exist, because she's not a household name like most of their idols.
Even now, with the next season of Alien Stage soon to air, she can't be convinced. She's absolutely messing with him.
"Sua. Play the Forty-Nine preliminaries again," Luka demands, petulant, because he has a point to make, "You look like you're going to throw up."
Sua does so, and slopes off to curl up besides Mizi. He nabs the remote, skipping three interviews to stare, enraptured, at a girl in black and green. The colours are garish against the warm brown of her skin, but he doesn't care. It's her. Ivan gives him an odd look, like he has never seen him pay this much attention to anyone.
It's rather like how Mizi looks at Sua, or how Ivan stares at Till. As if they are the only beautiful thing in the universe.
When Luka has been ogling a freeze-frame for almost a minute, Ivan prods his shoulder. All the childlike wonder falls away in an instant, and his lip curls into a sneer.
"What?" he snaps, switching off the TV, "I know her."
Ivan smiles slightly and does not give him a response. Nuisance.
Season Forty-Nine comes and goes, and Luka watches every episode again and again. He needs it, he tells himself, needs this proof that Hyuna is still alive like he needs air to breathe.
He hears from the staff during a filming session that they intend to let her compete in Season Fifty.
Luka throws himself into his work like he has nothing left to live for. He releases Adekanyo the week the season ends, stars in several movies, amasses a following like no other. His lukakiyaro are a hungry sort. He hates them.
Hyuna does not compete in his season. She escapes, and he hopes that she survives.
He steals her wanted poster when he finds one, hangs it in the only place the cameras do not reach, and, just once, when he is alone and unobserved, he dares to kiss it.
Everyone would tease him for it, so it stays a secret, kept close to his hummingbird heart.
Season Fifty draws nearer. Luka doesn't want to go. Not because he thinks he will lose, but because he does not want his friends to see him die. They interview him about a movie, the new season, a television series. He starts to let his hair grow longer than it has ever been, though he is forced to cut it eventually.
The preliminaries are a breeze. He messes around with Sua, dissects her wardrobe choices with clinical precision. She switches dresses with Mizi. The white is stark against her black hair. Mizi blushes every time she lays eyes on her.
Sua dies in silence. Mizi's grief is louder than anyone thought possible.
Acorn, that plain, dull boy from their class, dies angry and envious.
Luka's own opponent does not sing. The blood gets onto his boots and does not come off.
Mizi sings. Mizi is beautiful and hurting and they all know it. Luka dances with her - they'd practiced it endlessly, giggling and tripping over each other's feet - and he acts cold, even as her anger burns white-hot through her veins.
He mimics Sua, though everything in him rejects the idea, because it is so, so easy. Mizi hits him. He feels the bones in his nose splinter. The blood drips hot and thick from his nose, but Luka laughs, high and mad. He can't for the life of him figure out why.
He thinks he's imagining her. One of his eyes is swollen shut and his mind is hazy with pain. He has to be imagining her. He watches as Mizi is taken away and wonders if they will ever meet again.
The ring of bruises around his throat refuses to fade. They cover it up with makeup for the final round, of course. His costumes are designed in such a way that covering him in jewellery ruins the effect. And yet they can admire those ugly old scars all they want.
Luka does not watch all of Round Six. He sits outside his dressing room and counts the stars, until the music crescendoes and he sees Ivan drown in his own blood.
Till's grief is as palpable as Mizi's. He's weary and perhaps he only wishes to live because Ivan allowed him to do so. He makes mistakes, cuts in where he is not supposed to, fingers stumbling clumsily over the frets of his guitar. His eyes are foggy and unfocused, and still Luka wraps slender, corpse-blue fingers around his throat.
Mizi sneaks into the audience and Till's enthusiasm grows feverish. Luka watches him drop. He dies cradled in Mizi's arms, and Luka decides that that is the closest thing to peace any of them will find.
The world shudders to a halt when a rebel stumbles onstage. She is clutching her side, blood seeping through her fingers, but still he knows that storm-blue gaze.
Luka's mouth cannot form words. His heart beats a litany (I love you, I love you, I love you) and he reaches for her because that is all he dares to do.
He wraps his arms around her waist as he did so long ago. She's still taller. She's still lovely. He presses as close as he possibly can and she spins him around and then there is a gunshot. Just one.
Luka watches his heart shatter.
There is a lullaby that all children entering Anakt Garden learn. It is often the first song taught to these aspiring young kodenkari, generally as a measure of musical ability.
Without a word, it goes, you'll embrace the sea that sings.
It is a peaceful tune, to be accompanied by violin, and best performed as a duet.
Singing it alone in a hospital room, thinking of days long since past, Luka finds that his own voice is too small to fill the silence.