by Alice Reeds
“Kellie and Oscar,” I said with sudden clarity. “The personalities that the woman—”
The sound of metal meeting metal followed by a high-pitched scream had my muscles constricting, and I flinched and almost tripped over my own feet in my haste to get away from the sound. There was a ringing in my right ear, loud and searing, my brain felt as though it was being scrambled, my heart racing like it wanted to jump out of my chest and run away.
Not again.
“Are you okay?” Fiona asked, her voice bathed in that ringing, off and distant.
“Slowly this is truly getting annoying,” I said instead, freaked out and yet also somewhat angry, though I couldn’t quite grasp why. Perhaps it was the fact that I couldn’t explain it that pissed me off, but did I truly want an answer?
The sound came again, even closer this time, as though twice, the second more like a ricochet than a banging. Somehow that fact wasn’t nearly as calming or offered any sort of relief the way I thought it would. It was another thing I couldn’t explain, my heart nearly jumping into my throat. If it wasn’t the disembodied hammering, what was it then?
“Gunshots.”
Oh no.
“Run!”
Grabbing Fiona’s hand, I pulled her with me just as another shot came, the bullet hitting the metal high enough that it could’ve hit my head. How was this supposed to be a simulation when the shots were so real? I didn’t feel like finding the answer anymore, even less as two more shots followed, and the sound of an approaching ship became so clear I wanted to slap myself for not having noticed it sooner.
“Are you still sure this isn’t real?” Fiona asked, her voice panicked, her grip on my hand turning viselike. “Because this feels and sounds really fucking real!”
I wasn’t, and I wasn’t sure if it mattered, either. The only thing I knew for certain was that we needed to get out of their line of sight so they couldn’t shoot us, and maybe even lose them. But we’d wandered far along the freighter, the building now seemingly unreachable, even farther than it seemed before, my legs quickly starting to burn with exhaustion.
A woman shouted something behind us, her tone commandeering, a good indication that she was the captain, and her crew chased after us. As much as I wanted to look over my shoulder to see how close they were, or how many, I was too afraid.
The next time a passageway opened to our right, we took it, the towers of containers to either side even more threatening now. This was a mistake. There was nowhere to take cover until we came out the other side, so if they reached the opening behind us and started shooting, we’d be easy targets.
We ran and ran, yet the exit seemed just as far away, the illusion as though we were racing toward the light at the end of the tunnel and the afterlife waiting on the other side. Almost. Maybe a dozen or so more feet and we’d make it out, win more time, a measly advantage. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest as a bullet ricocheted off the container to my right.
Flinching away, I crashed my left shoulder into the container on the other side hard enough for a painful jolt to race through my body. Worst possible timing.
“Are you okay?” Fiona asked, worry splashed across her face and voice, her hand touching my arm.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, rolling my shoulder with gritted teeth, the pain oddly radiating from both my arms. We continued, all of this taking only a few seconds, but it was precious time lost. Glancing over Fiona’s head, I could see our pursuers closing in on us quickly, and while they weren’t the best at hitting their targets from afar, I wasn’t willing to test their close-range skills.
I could breathe just a little easier once we made it out on the other side, the sunlight blinding once again, but we pushed on toward the building. We didn’t know the freighter’s layout to be able to plan ahead—the bridge came to mind, but it was too easy to find and offered no cover. Our only option was improvising, which usually wasn’t so bad, but we were on foreign territory, one that seemed to want us dead even more than the island had.
“You can’t run forever,” someone yelled behind us in accented English, another female voice, a laugh following a second later, amused and booming. Vile. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up.
My weary legs had turned to jelly, but my fear was stronger than my lack of stamina. I should’ve joined our school soccer team years ago, but how was I supposed to know I’d need that kind of athleticism further down the line? Even Fiona was breathing heavier by now, and she was in shape. Our time on the island certainly hadn’t made us stronger, if anything it left us weaker, at least physically, but we couldn’t allow that to become our death sentence.
Three more shots followed, none of them hitting us, but my heart still jumped with each one. A memory hit me then, the image of my mother, her voice calling me Panda…and it wasn’t something I remembered from my childhood, but recently, on a screen. Next to her was Fiona’s mother, not her stepmother Carla, and though I’d never seen her biological mother before, I still recognized her. They, along with Leon, waited for us, counted on us to make it through this in whichever timeline was the real one.
Finally, we reached one of the few doors that stood ajar. We slipped inside and closed it behind us, turning the wheel handle to the locked position, hoping it would win us a little more time. Then we continued farther inside, down the hallway. There was barely enough light for us to see where we were going, and the ground was littered with papers and metal pieces.
Instead of going up, we made our way down. The stairway was missing a few steps here and there, making the descent into a much darker part of the ship not any less scary. The sound of our pursuers throwing open the main door and running down the hallway after us, though, made me forget my fear of the dark awaiting us and muster the energy to go quicker, jump across a gap of two steps, and then farther, farther…I would’ve preferred the disembodied hammering and shadows instead of this.
“There,” I said and opened a door relatively close to the stairs. “I have an idea.”
Fiona went inside and she grabbed my arm as I stepped back out into the hallway. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Trust me?” I requested, my eyes meeting hers, and a moment later, she let go. I nodded and then moved closer to the stairs, picking up a section of pipe lying on the floor as I went.
Our pursuers’ footsteps echoed across the space, coming closer and closer. Just as they reached the stairs, or at least it sounded that way, I threw the pipe farther down the staircase, the clatter obnoxiously loud. They moved just as I did, their steps coming down the stairs while I went back to the door and slipped into the room, my hands on the door pushing it until it was almost closed, too afraid that it might make a sound otherwise.
Taking Fiona’s hand, which felt oddly wet and sticky, I moved farther into the room, everything around us pitch-black except for the sliver of light coming through the door, the sound of footsteps continuing accompanied by words in a foreign language and something that I was pretty sure were curses, judging by the way they sounded—sharper, harsher. My back hit the wall on the other end of the room, Fiona bumping against me, then wrapping her arms around me, her head against my chest, my arms around her pulling her closer before flipping our positions. That way they’d hit me instead of her.
Time crawled by as our hearts raced, my breathing ragged, my ears turning as sharp as possible, listening for any little sound. Footsteps, groaning metal, the two of us. Could it be this easy? Would this be enough? It was a giant freighter, the number of rooms too great for them to actually go around and check each and every one of them, and why would they even bother, anyway? What did we have that they wanted?
“Are they gone?” Fiona asked in disbelief once the sound of footsteps disappeared completely. I wasn’t sure if they’d walked back upstairs or searched farther down and then took a different staircase, and really, I didn’t care as long as they w
ere gone.
“I think so,” I said, quietly, “but we should wait some more just to be sure.”
And so we did, my legs screaming with exhaustion, my shoulder aching, and my arm burning in almost the same place as earlier, though this time it was a much sharper, pinpointed pain.
Maybe it was the privilege speaking, but I wasn’t made for all of this, running from predators in an endless game of cat and mouse. I wasn’t nearly athletic or mentally strong enough for it, and I had no desire to be. Neither of us should be in this mess, and yet we were. Because of our very own parents. Thanks for nothing, Dad.
“Why is there blood on my hand?” Fiona asked, her eyes on her open palm before her. Even in the dim light I noticed the deep red standing out against her skin, smudged across her fingers, palm, and wrist. Looking up, her eyes raced across my face, neck, shoulders, and finally landed on my right arm. A gasp escaped her.
With that one little sound, I immediately understood. The pain in my arm. I’d been shot.
But what I didn’t understand was why I’d had sensations of that pain, in the very same place, before they ever fired their guns.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Villa
Acting like we were fine and completely different people had always been difficult, but keeping up that facade after finding out about our mothers, the truth behind Leon’s actions, and the fight I’d had with Fiona, it was far worse. The prospect of actually seeing my mother again after thirteen years only added so much more to how off I felt, antsy and restless, barely able to focus on anything.
Doc Bowie’s questions seemed even more pointless and a waste of time to me that day, answering the same ones again and again about Berlin or a freighter neither of us had any recollection of whatsoever, but we still played along like we had every day so far. If he noticed something, a shift in our behavior, a nervousness different from the usual, he didn’t show it.
As much as most of my focus was devoted to our impending conversation with our mothers, I was also painfully aware of how much our likelihood of succeeding in the simulation had to be falling, quickly. There was no way for us to check how much time we had left, but I was sure there wasn’t much, a few more days perhaps.
We’d survived this long by sticking together, and I refused to give in to the worry of what if we wouldn’t this time, if this would be where our story ended.
In the afternoon we returned to our room, to the safety of those walls that didn’t watch and listen, and it was time to see if the people who waited on the other end of the connection would really be our mothers. Leon said going in at night was a bad idea, the tablet surely using the Villa’s network, or some kind of backdoor Leon had hidden, but it still meant we could be noticed. Meanwhile, during the day when everything was alive and in use, chances were we’d fly under the radar, blend in, just another fish in the pond.
To avoid temptation, I hadn’t looked at the tablet last night, not trusting myself to be able to resist using it if I did. We sat down on the bed and turned it on. It was a pretty old model, a bit clunky, missing the sleek design of the latest tech, and the system it ran on was simplistic. There wasn’t much on it, just the basic apps that came with every tablet and smartphone. But there was one app I’d never seen before named Message.
“Leon isn’t very creative when it comes to names, is he?” Fiona joked.
“Clear and to the point,” I said. “Our father would approve. It gets the job done.”
“Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. You?”
Fiona shrugged. “I’ll meet a stranger, and you’ll meet someone you thought was dead, so it’s a bit different for me.”
She was right, but looking at how her hand trembled I knew she was just trying to keep up an air of it’s not that big of a deal to remain relatively calm. I took her hand in mine and smiled at her, reassuringly I hoped, and she nodded back at me.
Here we go.
The app opened up to a black screen, then transformed into a vertical split screen, one third for what I assumed would be text messages and the other two-thirds for a video feed. A smaller window appeared at the bottom, showing us what the other person would see—the two of us against the wall, Fiona’s hair spilling across her shoulders and my shaved head, nervousness in both our eyes.
Suddenly, black turned into white, overexposure, and slowly the camera adjusted, the white balanced and the saturation giving way to a normal feed, a woman’s face illuminated by the screen before her and some other light source. I gasped so instinctively that the unexpected sound made me flinch. My eyes and mind were barely able to process what I saw, memories rising, the pictures matching for the most part, recognition hitting me like a freight train.
The years had aged her, of course they had, her face marked by wrinkles that hadn’t been there before, laugh lines around her mouth and eyes, her hair graying in places, yet still just as long, and dark like mine and Leon’s. Her eyes were kind, the darker shade of hazel I used to dream about for years, unique, unforgettable, all these things proving that she really was my mother.
How was this possible?
“Panda,” my mother said, her voice sounding almost exactly the way I remembered it, though slightly distorted from the microphone she used and the speakers of the tablet. Suddenly I was a little boy again, looking up at her, at the warm smile on her face, the way she used to call me that name, softly, quietly. My heart practically ripped through my chest, my stomach performing flips.
The impossible was somehow possible. She wasn’t just pictures on walls or my computer anymore. Or a fragmented memory.
“Maman,” I said, the word like a treasured possession I’d kept hidden and close to my heart for so long that it felt odd to bring it out again.
My mother turned to her right and called out for someone, another woman sliding into the frame a few seconds later, the sound of her office chair rolling across some kind of stone floor rumbling through the speakers. The shape of her face, her eyes, the hair, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it had to be Alessia, Fiona’s mother. Their resemblance wasn’t quite as evident as that between my father and me, or Leon and me, but it was still very much there.
“Hello, Fiona,” the woman said as all color visibly drained from Fiona’s face. “Hello, Miles. It’s great to see you two alive.”
I wanted to say something, anything, but I couldn’t move even a single muscle. My body felt unresponsive, my mind unable to keep up with all the input.
“My name is Alessia Mayson,” the woman continued, “and I’m your mother, Fiona.”
“And I’m Victoire Joubert, formerly Echo,” my mother added, her French accent clear as she said her name. Growing up I always found it impossibly amusing how often my father failed at pronouncing her name right, since I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for him. He picked up a little French only after he’d met my mother, and he’d always been terrible with accents.
“How…?” I croaked, barely intelligible.
“That’s a very broad question,” Alessia pointed out. “Though if I had to guess, the question you’re thinking of is how Victoire is alive?”
I nodded.
“It’s a story that requires an explanation, being told from the start, but I’m unsure if you have that much time,” my mother said, a statement and a question all in one.
“Dinner is hours away,” Fiona said unsteadily.
Alessia smiled. While Fiona was seeing her for the first time, I was sure Alessia had seen pictures of Fiona over the years thanks to Google and other sources. But was it the first time she saw her like this, live instead of a recording?
“I know you must think I abandoned you,” Alessia began, a certain shade of shame or sadness tainting her voice, “but the decision hadn’t been mine. It’d been Carla’s all along.”
“What?” F
iona’s voice went up in pitch.
“Before things changed, before you were born or even something your father and I thought about, Carla used to be my best friend. She was also my adoptive sister.” Her words hung heavy in the air as she paused and assessed our reactions. “Of course, she hasn’t told you. I once trusted her, but when she found out I was pregnant, things changed.”
Fiona scooted closer to me as we listened, her hand squeezing mine. I’d imagined meeting her parents, or her meeting mine, a little differently. Then again, at least we had a bizarrely unbelievable story to tell in the future. But at least now it made sense why the document we were given on the yacht listed Carla as Fiona’s family—though not why her file hadn’t.
“What’d she do?” I asked, feeling brave enough to trust my voice.
“Seventeen years later I’m still unclear on how she did it,” Alessia said and frowned. “But somehow, I was accused of a crime I didn’t commit, and the only option she gave me was to leave or else she would hurt you. And she did that anyway.” She shook her head, then sighed before continuing. “I moved to Europe, Switzerland to be exact, and took up a completely new identity and life. As time passed I created a network around me with powerful contacts and business relationships, acquired all the money I needed, and watched what Carla was doing. It wasn’t long until her trail led me to Briola, which became the thing I focused all my energy on ever since.”
“Briola has smart people,” my mother said as Alessia paused to take a sip of water. “They’re hidden behind extensive layers of safety, no money too big or outrageous for them, but every system has a flaw, you just have to find it. And once you do…”
“You can set it all on fire and watch it burn,” Fiona finished, her voice steady, her eyes smiling.