by Alice Reeds
Awful to none.
Each of us taking one side, we pulled the doors open with a much too loud whine to reveal the inside of the container.
Empty.
“Now that’s anticlimactic,” Fiona said, disappointed.
None of what I’d imagined, no rotten fruits or the crates in which they might’ve been shipped, no car or art or electronics. While I was relieved, part of me was a little disappointed as well. Not that we’d have any use for a 4K flat-screen TV or million-dollar painting. Though both had been on the list I’d read on the bridge.
“Whoever scared off the crew must’ve taken whatever was inside,” I said.
“Could’ve left at least something behind for us.”
“I know, right? How inconsiderate—”
A loud metallic bang cut me off, as though someone was hitting a nearby container with a hammer, again and again, the sound thrumming through my body all the way down to my bones. Instinctively I took a step back, my heart sinking, my mind going blank. The sound continued steadily, the intervals too perfectly timed to be just an accidental whine of the ship or something caused by wind or waves.
“We should go,” I said just as Fiona said, “Let’s check out what that is.”
We exchanged a look, our plans of action in opposition.
“Bad idea,” I tried again. “Whatever that is, I’m fairly certain it isn’t good. We wouldn’t be that lucky for it to be something helpful. Let’s just leave it.”
“Coward.”
She didn’t say it in a mean way, her tone teasing and not spiteful, but it still felt like a slap. The word echoed through my head in perfect sync with the steady metal banging. While I knew that that was exactly what I was, a coward, hearing her say it was an entirely different story, one that I should probably just push aside. It really wasn’t a priority right now when everything else was much more urgent.
Weirdly enough, pushing it aside was harder than I anticipated. It got to me.
“Fine,” I finally said, the word coming out flatter than I intended.
A moment later, the sound stopped as though it’d waited only for me to give in, the timing an obnoxious coincidence. It had to be. Right?
“I think it was this one.” Fiona walked to a container a little farther down the line.
“No dents or anything,” I observed, though it seemed contradictory. Judging by how loud the noise had been, whatever was causing it must’ve hit the container with a lot of force, and yet, nothing. “That…doesn’t make any sense.”
We opened it, but, despite my fear of various horrific things we might find inside, including but not limited to a human or animal very much ready to kill us, there was nothing. How could there be nothing? Again?
“What is going on, like, really, I mean, air can’t cause that sound. Are you sure it was this one?”
Fiona hesitated, her face twisted in a confused and annoyed grimace. “I…yeah.”
There was nowhere anyone could be hiding, no crates or boxes, just air. Slowly I went inside the container, the air oddly cooler than outside, which didn’t make much sense, and looked around. The walls didn’t show any signs of impact, either, no scratches or dents or markings of any kind. Just as I was about to turn around, something white sticking up off the floor a little farther inside caught my eye. Doubting it was anything useful, I still walked over to pick it up. Just a piece of paper that looked like it had been torn from a page. But the writing on it…
“What’s that?” Fiona asked once I emerged from the container.
“Would you believe me if I tell you that I am certain, cross my heart and hope to die, that this is my brother’s handwriting?”
Neat letters stood out against the white paper, the blue ink almost out of place, but it was definitely his handwriting, the way the letters swooped and dipped, how the end of a line was just a bit higher than the beginning. He’d always complained how he couldn’t write in a straight line on blank paper to save his life. I’d recognize it anywhere the same I would my own. But this wasn’t possible. Had Leon been on this ship? Or just a paper from him? And in either case…why?
“Papillon,” Fiona read aloud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Butterfly, in French, but I have no idea what that has to do with anything.”
“At this point I’m afraid to say this situation can’t get any more bizarre, because it just might.” She took the piece of paper from me and turned it around, found the back empty, and then held it against the sunlight. There was nothing else on it. “What is a piece of paper with Leon’s handwriting on it doing in an old container, that less than five minutes ago made some kind of noise it couldn’t have possibly made on its own, on an abandoned freighter in the middle of nowhere?”
If Fiona hadn’t been with me, seeing and hearing all of this as well, this was the point I would’ve seriously thought I’d lost my mind. Silence wrapped itself around us like a thick blanket, neither of us sure what to say. I took the paper from her and put it into my pocket. Maybe, somehow, eventually we’d figure out what it meant.
Chapter Eleven
The Villa
Coming out of the bathroom the next morning, I found Fiona standing in front of our open closet. She wore light-blue washed-out jeans and a black shirt, her hair up in a bun with a few strands hanging out of it.
“Kellie sounds and seems like someone who might’ve liked a lighter selection of clothes than me,” she explained without turning around, “since I found two pairs of light blue jeans and only one pair of black ones. Maybe the black shirt isn’t it, after all. Also, why did you get to keep your expensive shit, yet I have a whole new wardrobe? Blatant favoritism.”
Seizing the moment, I stepped closer to her and placed a kiss on the spot where her shoulder met her neck. “You might be overthinking all of this,” I said with a smile as she leaned back against my chest. “I doubt anyone will really care about what clothes we wear, but I’m glad to see that you’re in a better mood than last night. I was worried,” I admitted.
“Back on the island you were the one who suggested we play some kind of game so we wouldn’t think about how dire our situation was.” She turned her head and looked up at me from the corner of her eye. “So I thought I’d follow your lead at the Villa as well, occupy myself with something trivial so I won’t think about just how screwed we really might be for real this time.”
I took a step back so she could change her shirt, since she’d pulled a different one off her stack. As much as her mostly bare back, covered only by the horizontal bra strap, was a distraction in itself, a gorgeous expanse of her skin, my admiration for her endless, and just how comfortable she was in her own body—one detail caught my attention and sent all my thoughts flying.
Fiona turned around a moment later with her shirt still in hand, a smug expression on her face, amusement in her eyes, as she asked, “Cat got your tongue?”
“Could you turn around again for a second?” It couldn’t be, could it? I must’ve seen it wrong. Surely. I’d just been too distracted and hadn’t paid attention.
“Okay…” More question than answer, a raised brow and confusion painted across her face, she followed my request.
Slowly I raised my hand, my fingertips lightly touching her skin, and ran down her spine ever so softly, carefully. As much as I wanted to feel smug about how she reacted to it, goose bumps spreading across her skin, I couldn’t. Not this time.
“You have a tattoo, right?”
“You’re literally looking at and touching it,” she pointed out, “so why the weird question?”
I hesitated, unsure how to answer.
“Miles?”
“It’s gone. Your tattoo, it’s—”
In an instant she turned around, her eyes meeting mine, her mouth a straight pressed line, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “That’s not
funny.” But the longer she looked at me and I stayed silent, my face void of any smile or smirk, her demeanor faltered. “It is a joke, right?”
How I wished I could’ve laughed and said that I was only pranking her. But our reality wasn’t that simple, and this moment was certainly not something I’d call funny. Names could change, videos and audio manipulated, hair dyed or cut, but a tattoo was part of your skin, something that lasted a lifetime unless you got it lasered off—which Fiona hadn’t, and yet somehow it had disappeared.
“This place is a nightmare.” Fiona pulled me into our bathroom, the light suddenly far too bright, our reflections in the mirror all wrong, like I was staring at a stranger even though he was me.
Fiona turned around as much as she could and looked over her shoulder, her eyes staring back at herself, the terror in them only growing. Where once there was a tattoo, three swirling lines meeting in the middle, now there was nothing at all.
“I have no idea how this is possible,” I admitted, reluctantly. “Why is only the tattoo gone when all your scars are still there?” Ever so softly I traced the five scarred lines on her stomach, the skin raised just like it was on the island. Everything else was still there as well. What made the tattoo different—why would that be gone but not the rest?
“What does this even mean? Is Fiona fake after all? Is Kellie the real one even though I don’t remember her—me—whatever?”
“It could go either way, I think, Kellie or Fiona being the real one. The tattoo doesn’t necessarily have to prove anything, especially since the scars were also distinctively something that belonged to Fiona, right?”
Even as I spoke I doubted every word, every option as impossible as the next, reality and fiction blending, truths and lies two pieces of a puzzle made of the same shade of gray. What if Kellie and Fiona were the same? What if Kellie was made for Oscar and vice versa?
No, that was absurd, even if the fact that we were sharing a room still didn’t quite sit right with me. How did any of this fit into Briola’s scheme, and what if it wasn’t a scheme at all but the truth, our minds just unwilling to accept it?
No. Stop.
“Let me try something,” I offered, grabbing one of our towels. Fiona just stood there and watched me wet one of the corners along with some soap. I was probably reaching with this idea. If anything were covering her tattoo it would’ve long ago come off as she showered, moved around, and slept, but it was still worth a try.
Gently I turned her around, then rubbed her skin with the wet part of the towel, careful not to let any of the water run down her back and wet her clothes. But her back remained bare. The tattoo meant a lot to her; it was a piece of her and represented the philosophy she lived by. What would happen now that it was gone?
That was part of her identity. Fiona’s identity…not Kellie’s.
Hadn’t Briola taken enough from us already? Our parents, friends, pasts, future, identities, and any feeling of safety we might’ve had?
My eyes met hers in the mirror, and I didn’t need to say anything for her to know. The expression in her eyes changed, the color almost turning that little bit darker blue, a sense of disappointment and unsettling taking hold of her demeanor.
“What if Kellie and Oscar are the real ones, and not Miles and Fiona?” she asked quietly, “and what if this means that they were just some trial that went bad, a glitch making us forget who we really are?”
“Stop,” I said. To my surprise, she did. “Chances are just as well that this right here is part of their grand plan to make us doubt and eventually break us. They knew that your tattoo disappearing would be a good way to throw you off.”
My hands trembled no matter how much I tried to force them to be still. If only my mind could be as calm and rational as my words.
“What should we do now?”
“Exactly what we would’ve done if this hadn’t happened. Go out there, keep up the facade, eat breakfast, stay out of everything, watch, see what happens, and, above all else, don’t let them see that we know. Or how much this affected us.”
“But what if I’m already so tired of it?”
“Look at me.” I nudged her chin up gently with the crook of my finger, her eyes meeting mine. “I know this is hard and it sucks, but I have complete faith in your ability to make it through this and come out even stronger on the other side. If anyone can handle this, it’s you. Besides, I’ll be by your side the entire time. It’ll just be a single meal and then we can come back here and pretend everyone else doesn’t exist.”
“How are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“How are you so calm right now, so, like…unbothered?”
I wasn’t, but I couldn’t tell her that. Instead I just shrugged. That’s not the answer she deserved, but it was better than lying.
…
This was the first time I heard voices here. Actual voices, not just muffled sounds of someone speaking from far away when we arrived three days ago. There were people out in the hallways, others walking up or down the main staircase. Some of them were our age, some a little older and a few younger even, nothing obvious connecting them, their hair colors and ethnicities different, some tall and others short, skinny and chubby, loud and quiet, words spoken with accents and some without.
Quickly, eyes began to track us, conversations coming to abrupt ends as we walked past. It was as though we were two aliens wandering through the halls of someone else’s house, or like we were freaks gawked for their third ear or something, making my skin crawl like a million confused ants rushing across every inch of it.
Perhaps my clothes were at fault, at least to a degree, but I refused to wear something else. Not because I was above it but simply because I didn’t want to let Miles go. They could strip me of everything I had, but this one thing I could allow myself to keep. Even if they were just clothes, they were mine, made me feel like me, reminded me of who I was regardless of what they claimed. Besides, if they didn’t want me to wear them, why give them to me in the first place?
All my life I’d been watched, observed like a caged animal, everyone just waiting for me to mess up and give them something they could gossip about. It came with being a rich man’s son, hailed the king among the rich at our school, our house the biggest and my father’s accounts the largest, reasons enough to keep an eye on me.
And yet, despite their initial curiosity in us, their judgmental looks, it passed as quickly as it started. Like everyone simply lost interest after a few seconds, our shiny newcomer factor disappearing, though perhaps that hadn’t been a thing at all. Perhaps they were just taken aback by our supposed reappearance instead? Or perhaps they simply didn’t care about us the way I feared they would?
They picked up their conversations quickly, as though they’d never stopped. It was bizarre and I couldn’t understand it, though I was grateful for it. The less they paid attention to us, the better.
Slowly we made our way down to the ground floor, then along one hallway and then another, consciously going the wrong way. If we wanted to get to know this place, map it out, we needed to see it all, and what better time for it than now when everyone was moving about and minding their own business.
Farther down the hallway, the wall opened up, or at least so I thought, quickly realizing that it wasn’t literally the wall but instead a door painted in a way that it blended in with its surroundings. Some guy dressed like many other of the staff members—gray slacks and a white button-down in his case—walked out and quickly closed the door behind him before hurrying along to wherever he had to be.
“Did you see that?” I asked Fiona quietly. She nodded, her head cocked as if she were thinking. “We should check that out sometime.”
Part of me wanted to do it right now, but I had a feeling that at least the staff would watch us a little closer today, since it was our fir
st day out and all. It had to wait, a day or two perhaps. What could be hidden behind it, though? Was it just another entrance to the medical bunker, possibly one without CCTV that would allow us to slip in unnoticed and have a look at our files, or perhaps something completely different?
A little while later we finally arrived at the entrance to the dining hall. Just like Pamela said, it had a carved doorframe, vines and flowers climbing up the light-toned wood walls, and beyond it a room so opulent it barely seemed real.
Decorative stucco ran along the ceiling, the wallpaper in shades of white and gray with swirls and royal-looking motifs I’d sooner expect to find in a castle or palace. The flooring was polished stone—marble, most likely—with decorative cracks of rose gold. The sea of tables occupying the better part of the room was of some dark polished wood, the chairs in a complementary shade of silver, yet made of metal instead. Even the lamps looked expensive, shiny silver designs with bright bulbs shining in an inviting shade of yellow.
Moving through the room, though keeping to the sides to pull the least amount of attention onto us, we quickly figured out where the line for the food was and then waited for our turn. Everyone in front of us was quiet, not a single word being exchanged, not even a glance. The two guys handing out the food—some salad, a small bowl of soup, and something that could be meat, but might as well have been tofu, covered in sauce—looked about as nondescript as our nurses, though they occasionally exchanged words in that same foreign tongue I’d heard before.
“It really is like the first day of being at our school all over again,” Fiona said quietly, scanning the area before us. “The same feeling of having no idea who anyone is or where to sit. Thanks, I hate it.”
Me too. “Well, at least this time you have someone with you, so it can’t be so bad, no? Especially since that someone is me.”
Fiona pretended to cough before saying, “Not the best-looking someone, but I take what I can get, I guess.”