Fractures (Echoes)

by Alice Reeds

  “Thank you for showing them the way,” Leon said, looking back at Dawid, a faint smile on his face. Blatantly fake. “I’ll make sure they return to their room in a timely fashion.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dawid said and then left, though not without subtly winking at me, the fleeting moment making me wildly uncomfortable. I dearly hoped he didn’t think we were buddies now, because I very much wasn’t interested. He’d fulfilled his purpose, and that was it.

  “Come in,” Leon said and stepped aside.

  His room didn’t look much different from ours, plain and simple, a bed, desk, bookshelf full of different-sized books in several languages, a computer, and a door I guessed led to the bathroom. There were no pictures on the wall, no memorabilia, nothing that made the room Leon’s. Any stranger could live in it. Then again, at this point, he was just that to me.

  “Papillon,” I said, immediately cutting to the chase, not interested in small talk or some kind of speech from him, or more needless brotherly advice, or even worse, him revealing the fact that I’d lied to Fiona, twice.

  Leon walked over to his desk and leaned against it, ran his hand through his hair, and then looked up at the ceiling. “Finally.”

  “Finally?” Fiona echoed.

  He ignored her and instead looked straight at me. “You talked to Mom.”

  “Or someone pretending to be her.” I crossed my arms and stared back at him while trying to keep my face as unreadable as possible.

  “It’s her, Miles.” Hearing him say my name—my real name—made my heart jump. “She’s alive, and you finally found the email. I knew you’d be able to crack it.”

  I took a step toward him. “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?” It was a stupid thing to ask, especially since I’d rejected both times he tried to tell me he was on our side. “Also, why use that name now when you were so dead set on pretending we were different people, including yourself?”

  “I could hardly break character and ruin the entire plan, blow my own cover and get myself, as well as the two of you, killed, could I?”

  “Guys, this really isn’t the time for a fight,” Fiona said and raised her hands, one palm facing Leon and one me. “Victoire said you’d explain everything, Leon. How about we talk about that instead?”

  As much as I wanted to believe that this was all real, true, that he was a friend and not our enemy, part of me refused to. This switching of personas, it was too much, too drastic. But perhaps he had no other choice, like us, like Joe.

  “Of course, I’m sorry,” Leon said and then sighed heavily. “Mom was alive the entire time. The accident, although it happened, didn’t kill her, but she couldn’t return anyway. The important part right now is that it was a test, a way to make sure you’d be the one to find the coding, crack it, and get to the site on the dark web.”

  “Then why send the message to Fiona, again and again, and not to me?”

  “Too obvious. We were sure Briola would monitor your correspondences for suspicious things like this, and if they’d be the ones to crack the coding, who knew what would happen. We couldn’t risk it.”

  “But I’ve been getting these messages for months, even before we left for Berlin,” Fiona said.

  “I know,” Leon said, “I was the one who made the code, gave it to Victoire and Alessia so they’d send it to you. We thought that maybe, just maybe, you two wouldn’t hate each other and maybe you, Fiona, would show the email to Miles. But that plan obviously didn’t work out.”

  To think there was a chance I could’ve known this so much sooner, given us a chance to never end up with Briola in the first place, if only I hadn’t immediately turned Fiona against me. I’d ruined things even before I truly knew what I was doing. Great going, genius.

  “Victoire and Alessia?” I asked, ignoring all other questions and thoughts. The name was familiar, but what were the chances of it actually being the same person?

  “Alessia Mayson,” Leon said, his eyes wandering from me to Fiona. “Your mother.”

  Silence.

  “Thanks to her, Mom found a way to reach out to me, convince me she’s alive, and then get me to agree to their crazy plan after they told me about the awful fate Dad signed you up for.”

  “Because he didn’t want it to happen to you.” Maybe it was unfair for me to bring it up, push this guilt into the open, but I was sure Leon had seen the interview himself.

  He looked away as though in shame, even if we both knew it was neither of our faults.

  “They turned you into some kind of secret-double-agent spy shit or whatever, are you trying to say that?” Fiona asked, her voice slicing through the thickness in the air.

  “You could put it like that, yes,” Leon said, his eyes still cast toward the floor. “When they reached out to me with an offer, I had to accept. I was to follow their orders, observe, and then report everything of value back to our mothers.”

  I couldn’t keep my anger in check, the words falling from my mouth before I could think about them. “Was the guy on the island sent to kill us part of your plan? Or you trying to fucking kill me on the yacht? What would Mom say if she knew you’d done that?”

  Leon dared to chuckle, my anger turning into a raging fire, blazing hot and unforgiving.

  “What’s so damn funny about that?”

  “None of it was real. All just show,” he said and finally met my eyes, his expression open, honest, his words genuine.

  “What?” Fiona asked, shocked.

  “Fake blood, mediocre-at-best acting, bulletproof vests, and a knife that retreated on impact, nothing more than a stage prop, really. They wanted to mess with you, needed you to believe Ms. McCarty, and it seems like they succeeded.”

  He couldn’t be serious, could he? And yet, we’d suspected as much, my theory about Joe not actually dying confirmed after all, the possibility of us having seen Gail at the Villa that much more plausible. My head spun, my stomach queasy, my body turning to ice.

  “Joe is alive?” Fiona asked.

  “I don’t know what they did with him or where he is now, but last I heard he was just as alive as Gail,” Leon explained. “The gun the two of you had wasn’t real, either. Or rather it was real, but the bullets weren’t.”

  “What’s the point of your deceitful role in all of this?” I snapped.

  “My job was keeping the two of you alive, help you somehow make it through this, until we’d figure out a way to crash the system.”

  “And how’s that coming along?”

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Leon said and raised his hands toward us. “Also, I fiddled with the coding of your simulation, added small details they wouldn’t pick up on no matter how closely they might now be looking at it, to help you break it one way or another.”

  “As it stands now, if this one breaks, too, we’re over with,” I pointed out. The web he was weaving, as well as Briola’s, turned even more complex.

  “Have you found a way to end this?” Fiona asked.

  “I’m afraid not quite yet,” Leon said, “but our mothers are working on it, day and night, and I’m here to keep watch as best as I can. You’re safe for now, so there’s no need to worry.”

  “You say that as though it’s easy,” I muttered.

  “Nothing is ever easy. The two of you should know that very well by now.” Leon sighed again and then pushed himself away from his desk and walked to his closet. Fiona and I stepped aside as he opened the door and crouched down, fiddled with the bottom of the closet, and opened some kind of hidden compartment. “Here.” He held an old tablet toward us. “Briola wanted to get rid of it, since it was broken, so I took it and repaired it. Now it’s a way for you to talk to our mothers. They’ll explain everything else to you. Don’t let Dawid or any of the other staff see you with it.”

  Reluctantly I took the tablet from him, n
ot quite sure how we’d sneak it upstairs. It was all just so bizarre.

  “You’re on our side?” Fiona asked. “And this time we can actually trust you, or is this just another layer of deception like on the yacht?”

  “That put me in as much danger as it did the two of you, because that wasn’t all part of the plan. I needed a way to let you know that I was on your side, but judging by your lack of hair, I’ve clearly done an awful job. I meant my warning genuinely, Miles, the two of you sneaking around with Ivy and Wakaba is a dangerous game, as well as sneaking around Doc Bowie’s office and the med bunker. Luckily, I think I’m the only one who saw you on CCTV, and no one noticed that I deleted it. I told you that you could trust me, twice, so maybe now you believe me?”

  Oh no. No. No. No. There was no way Fiona wouldn’t put two and two together, realize that I’d blatantly lied to her, kept the content of my conversations with Leon from her, and the fact that I’d talked to him at all at the med bunker. Things were already shaky between us because of those stupid files, and this seriously wasn’t helping.

  “But I’m sure you have a reason, like you’re working on a plan or something, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Fiona’s face hadn’t moved, showed no signs of her having picked up on what Leon truly meant. I was disgusted with myself over how relieved that made me feel.

  “Good, they’re a smart choice of allies,” Leon said with a nod just as the night bell blared in the distance. We all looked toward the door then, like we expected Dawid to come marching in to demand we go back to our room, or someone having listened in. But nothing happened.

  “You should go,” Leon said. “If you can, act like I’m still the bad guy around the others, ignore me like you would’ve before tonight. And wait to use the tablet until tomorrow. Whatever you did to get to the email, it probably raised a warning flag somewhere in the system.”

  “I’m good at hiding what I do,” I said defensively.

  “Believe me, I know. I tried, but you’ve really done an exceptional job.” He smiled as he said it, and I should’ve felt proud, but I couldn’t. It was like I couldn’t feel anything anymore. My mind and body were maxed out on everything and switched into some kind of safety mode, in a last-ditch effort to keep me from completely losing myself.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Villa

  I’d been convinced that Leon was a traitor, that he’d stabbed me in the back a million times over, one of them a literal, physical attempt, and yet somehow, in all of this, he’d been looking out for me the entire time. And our mother was alive as well. Too many good things were happening. My wishes were coming true, the people I loved turning up alive and on my side after all—but what if it wasn’t true and just more lies?

  I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  Dazed, I walked alongside Fiona back to our room, my mind too busy to pay attention to the fact that we were late or react to Dawid’s scowl as we passed him. I was caught in this ever-changing cycle of wanting to scream, cry, stare at a wall, run, hide, happiness, shock, and a big dose of disbelief. At the same time, I fought against my own body to keep my face neutral, my hands steady, and my heart beating normally, even though it tried its best to run away from me.

  The safety of our room was comforting, away from everyone else and their prying eyes and ears, my shoulders relaxing and at least a bit of tension easing from my muscles. I didn’t even know where to begin with analyzing everything Leon told us or how to process any of it. It seemed like a mountain too steep and high to climb no matter how I’d approach it, how hard I’d try.

  “Hey,” Fiona said, pulling me out of my thoughts. Raising my eyes from the floor, I found her standing a few feet away from me with her arms crossed and looking off somehow, her mouth a pressed straight line, tension between her brows. “You okay, after all that? Leon and your mom?”

  I smiled a little, appreciating the fact that she asked that. But how could I even put any of it into words? “I don’t know. It’s a lot, I guess. What about you? Are you okay?”

  “No,” she said, her voice serious.

  “What’s wrong?”

  So much was wrong and right at the same time, the revelations Leon just handed us a lot to take in. Besides, really, neither of us would be okay until we were out of here.

  “You,” she said, her eyes finally meeting mine. “You are wrong.”

  I couldn’t argue against that. I was wrong more often than not about a lot of things, a fact my father would’ve been most eager to confirm. But, in this context, her words were too vague, confusing.

  “What do you mean?”

  Fiona closed her eyes and shook her head, sighed as though she was disappointed. What was happening? Once she opened her eyes again, annoyance was written clearly across them, as well as her face, her mouth back in that pressed line, her knuckles turning white as she dug her fingers into her upper arms like she was trying not to lose her temper or control of her emotions in general.

  “I told you everything, practically laid the story of my life out in front of you, including things I never told anyone ever,” she began, her words firm, her eyes staring me down. “I showed you all of me, metaphorically and fucking literally, because I actually thought you cared about me.” She laughed without humor. “Maybe Briola’s little EROS project didn’t work out as nicely as they thought it did.”

  “What’s that have to do with anything? Who knows if any of that was even true, if they really did anything to manipulate our feelings, like that’s something they could actually do.” Even as I said it, part of me knew she wasn’t the only one who’d been stuck on what we’d seen in our files, who’d wondered if all of it was fake to a certain degree, the changes within us relating to each other so big, yet they felt real and natural. “I care about you, more than anyone, and I don’t need a stupid project to make me feel that way. Is that really what brought this on? I don’t understand.”

  “You’re doing it again, you know.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Deflecting. Instead of trusting me, you deflect and keep things from me like I’m not trustworthy enough to know.” I blinked, her words like little needles on my skin, their meaning making my heart sink violently. “Ever since they showed us those videos of our parents, and even more so after we read our files, something about you shifted, like your trust shifted away from me and back into your own head. And in a way, I get it, but what I don’t get is why you didn’t talk to me.”

  Had I really done that? Maybe. I wanted to help her, keep her from seeing the truth, but now as she spoke, my head spun only more, my heart racing.

  “I could’ve dealt with you keeping things from me,” she went on, “but then you went and lied straight to my face—twice. Don’t think I didn’t realize what Leon said and what it meant. Why didn’t you tell me he saw us in the bunker or that he talked to you? I just don’t get it.”

  As much as I hoped she hadn’t figured it out, of course she did. My lies were now out in the open, and any explanation I could offer would just sound like more lies.

  “Miles, I thought that if I gave you enough space, show you that I won’t push or pry, and that you could trust me as much as I trust you, that you’d come to me on your own, but it seems like I should’ve known fucking better. Briola should’ve known better, but I guess we were all wrong.”

  “I’m not like you,” I said, my voice too weak for my own liking, shame rising within me like a flood threatening to envelop and suffocate me. “I’m not strong or brave—”

  “Neither am I, fuck,” she interjected. “But I allowed myself to be vulnerable, let my guard down around you, something I’ve never done with anyone like this before. Do you even know how hard that was? I thought all of this meant as much to you as it did to me, that this was more than just some whatever bullshit, but here we are now. Maybe whatever they did simply worked better o
n me than it did on you, and now it’s all falling apart.”

  I was like a fish someone pulled out of the ocean and left behind on dry land, gasping for air and grappling for purchase, some way to return to the water. The room tilted, the disappointment and hurt on Fiona’s face like a million sharp knives slicing me into ribbons. I never meant for this to happen, any of it. And yet.

  Fuck.

  “See, you’re doing it again,” Fiona said, her voice so cold.

  “Doing what?”

  It was the wrong thing to ask, I knew it the second the words passed my lips and Fiona threw her hands up in the air, eyes cast toward the ceiling. I didn’t know how to fix any of it, what I could say, do, and if there even was a way to do it. Had I messed up the one good thing I had, turned the one person against me I never wanted to lose? Was she right, that the EROS project failing—just like our simulations had—meant this moment was something inevitable?

  “How could I ever think you were different and that you actually trust me,” she said, and ran her hands over her face. “When they showed us those videos, you cried just as much as I did, let your guard down, and I thought that meant something. But that had nothing to do with me, did it? You would’ve cried either way. And after everything we went through, I felt like I didn’t have to be some kind of warped version of myself around you, didn’t have to be some stronger, fiercer, better version of myself when I’m with you.”

  “It’s all true.”

  She ignored my words and pushed on. “But now, instead of letting me in, you’re shutting me out, over and over again. Do I not deserve to know your thoughts and feelings? I don’t get it.”

  Fiona’s words turned unsteady the more she spoke, and I swore if she would cry, I would completely lose it. I could understand it. This was more than justified considering everything she said, all these feelings I didn’t know she had, the hurt I unknowingly caused her. But I didn’t know how to live with myself knowing I’d made her cry, that in the end I wasn’t any better than her father or Carla.