by D. Laine
I couldn’t answer him. If I opened my mouth, I would only scream.
“Thea? Oh my God, Thea!”
Over the sounds of struggle beside me, I thought I heard a banging in the distance. Maybe it was the rest of the ceiling collapsing. Maybe it was God’s way of ending the pain quickly, because it hurt so bad. I considered many causes for the noise I heard, but none of them included the voice I thought I would never hear again.
At first I thought I’d imagined it. Just a trick of my imagination—and what a trick it was, to be thinking of Dylan up until the moment I died.
“We’re here!” David yelled. “Over here!”
Over David’s cries for help, I heard more banging and more voices.
“Thea?”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the unmistakable sound of Dylan’s voice somewhere above me, somewhere on the other side of the debris that had piled on top of me. Beside me, the splintered leg of the table holding most of it off of me groaned from the weight. Once that leg snapped, whatever had piled on top of the table would fall completely on me. It wouldn’t be long.
I opened my mouth to tell them, but no sound came out.
“She was talking to me a minute ago,” I heard David say. “Then she just stopped.”
“We need to move this,” Dylan said, and a voice I didn’t recognize added, “Grab that end. One at a time. Slowly so it doesn’t collapse on them.”
A few grunts and one loud bang later, a significant amount of weight lifted off my chest, permitting me the luxury of a deep breath. Suddenly inhaling all that dust-filled air resulted in an uncontrollable fit of coughing.
“Thea!” David exclaimed from beside me. I turned my head in his direction and for the first time since the rubble fell on the desk, I saw his outstretched hand reaching for me.
“A little more, Thea,” Dylan announced. “Try not to move too much.”
I wanted to ask what he was doing here. I wanted to know how he was here. I wanted to know if what the police told me was true, or if it had all been a huge mistake. More than anything, I wanted to get out from under this table and this debris and breathe big gulps of clean air.
Another series of grunts came from above, and then beautiful light filtered down on me. Another minute and the weight completely lifted from my legs. A pair of hands reached into the little hole I was encased in and pulled me out.
Dylan quickly handed me off to a guy I didn’t know before he reached back into the pile of debris to grab David. My friend appeared a moment later, covered in grey dust and blood, and I assumed I looked the same.
I ran my hand over my head, finding a sticky spot above my eye. Red smeared my fingers when I pulled them away.
“It’s superficial,” Dylan informed me when he turned back to me. He held up two fingers. “How many—”
My arm shot out to land a closed fist to his side—right in the solar plexus. Guaranteed to make a grown man cry if done correctly, according to my dad. Dylan hunched over, and though I didn’t see any tears, I was happy to see that he looked a little on the green side.
“Jesus, Thea,” he groaned. He glanced up at me, then wisely backed up at the sight of my closed fists—at the ready to strike again if he gave me a reason to.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Saving your life,” he sighed. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Is your name Jon Walters?”
“What? No, I already told you—”
“Why aren’t you in jail?”
I hated the neediness I heard in my voice. I needed him to tell me this whole thing had been nothing more than a huge mistake, that someone else with the name Jon Walters was the real killer—and that Dylan just happened to look like him. I needed to hear that the Dylan I knew wasn’t a murderer.
Hope was written all over my face when Dylan looked up at me. The guilt in his eyes nearly crumbled me. “Thea, I—”
“It was a big misunderstanding,” the other guy interrupted Dylan. “He wasn’t—”
“No, Jake.” Dylan held a hand out to stop him. Dylan’s eyes held mine as he righted himself and took a tentative step closer to me. “No more lies. Everything I tell you from now on will be the complete truth.”
The guy Dylan had called Jake shook his head. “Dylan, we don’t—”
“My name is Dylan Romero,” he told me. “You’re one of the few people that know that. Most of the time, I go by Jon. Never had a need for last names because I never stayed in one place long.”
I sucked in a shaky breath. He hadn’t admitted to much yet, but I knew more was coming. I expected something big, but never anticipated what he said next.
“I’m an assassin, Thea.” Dylan jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Jake. “We both are. We were sent here to find and eliminate four targets. I did kill Kyle and Vivian, but only because they weren’t who you thought they were.”
I gaped at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. Then it started. A bubble of laughter worked its way up my throat. It grew until it ultimately burst from my lips as an uncontrollable giggle. The somber look on Dylan’s face only made me laugh harder. It wasn’t until I glanced at David—and saw the subtle nod of his head as he stared at Dylan in awe—that I sobered.
Seeing the change in me, Dylan’s arms spread out wide. “This is the beginning of the end, Thea. This is the apocalypse. Our job”—he nodded at Jake—“was to prevent it, but they won. Others like Kyle, and Vivian, and Professor Thompson beat us. They’ve flicked the switch, and it’s happening. Right now.”
“Which is why we need to move,” Jake added softly. “Preferably now.”
“Unbelievable.” I turned away from both of them with a scoff.
Jake flew around Dylan, and put a hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was to stop me, or to encourage me to move toward the door, but the moment he touched me, I froze. The subtle hum of electricity that flowed from him to me wasn’t unpleasant . . . but unexpected. And strangely familiar.
As suddenly as it appeared, his hand jerked away. As odd as it sounded, I missed the contact. He was a stranger to me. There was no reasonable explanation for why his touch felt familiar to me. For the first time since I was pulled out from beneath the table, I really looked at Dylan’s friend.
An immediate sense of recognition washed over me. Images scrolled through my head like an old black and white film—all of them from a time I couldn’t remember. My parents had seen to it that I forgot my childhood, and the make-believe boy that had starred in my dreams. I knew with absolute certainty now that he had been real. He stood in front of me, all grown up.
“Oh, my God.” I took a step back. My hand flew to my mouth and my back crashed into Dylan’s chest.
Dylan’s hands came down on my shoulders gently. “Easy, Thea,” he murmured into my ear.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” David asked, but his voice sounded far away and distant.
I was trapped in a bubble with Dylan and a guy I knew, but I didn’t understand how I knew. I didn’t understand the flood of information invading my mind right now.
“You remember me?” Jake probed softly.
I nodded—or at least, I thought I did. “You—you’re . . .” I had an instinctive answer, but my brain wouldn’t let my mouth form the words.
Jake took a tentative step closer. “I’m your twin brother.”
I sagged under the weight of his words, though I had already expected them. Surprisingly, I found myself grateful for Dylan at that moment. He kept me from crashing to the floor.
“How? How is this . . .”
“You were abducted when we were five years old.” Jake answered the question I couldn’t finish.
His fingers skimmed my hand gently. Despite the familiarity of his touch, I shrunk away from it—even if that pushed me farther into Dylan’s arms. I turned my head to glance over my shoulder at him.
“And you . . .”
“I swear I had no idea who you were,” Dylan gushed. “
I don’t understand how I didn’t figure it out. You two look freakishly alike.” He glanced between Jake and me before running a hand over his short-cropped hair. “That is so fucked up on so many levels. Even for me.”
“Dylan,” Jake muttered. “Not now.”
“Right.” Dylan shook his head, then leveled a gaze on me. “He’s your brother. We’ve been looking for you for a very long time. And we’re both assassins. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, and all of it will be the absolute truth. Or if you don’t want to talk to me, Jake will tell you. But right now, we need to move. We don’t have much time. Right, David?”
I followed Dylan’s gaze to find my friend glancing between me and Dylan and Jake like he had just stumbled into a real life episode of Supernatural.
“David?”
“Yeah?” He settled his gaze on Dylan.
“How much time do we have before this thing blows?”
David shook his head as he turned to examine what was left of the equipment smashed on the floor. “I have no idea. Based on the severity of the last earthquake, and in comparison to the first one, given that it’s only been . . . less than two hours between the two . . .”
“Dave, my man,” Dylan prompted gently.
David shrugged. “A few hours. If that.”
Dylan turned to Jake. “We might not have enough time.”
“We’re going to try,” Jake responded.
Both Jake and Dylan turned to hold a hand out to me. I looked between the two of them—the one who I thought I had started to form a relationship with, and the other who was the other half of me that I never knew I had been missing. I felt pulled in his direction. My fingers nearly intertwined with his before I remembered that I didn’t know him. I didn’t know either of them. Not really. True, one of them shared my DNA and the other had shared my bed, but that didn’t mean I knew them or that I should trust them.
My gaze flicked to David, where he waited near the door. Out of the three, he was the one I trusted the most. I pushed between Jake and Dylan to take David’s hand. Then, with the apocalypse supposedly breathing down our necks, we ran.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I still had not let go of David’s hand. From the back seat of the Hummer, I stared through the narrow space between Jake and Dylan. I refused to look directly at either of them. I feared that would only encourage me to think about things I didn’t want to think about yet.
I needed time to process who Jake was, and what that meant to me. I couldn’t begin to grasp the significance yet. Then there was Dylan and everything he had told me.
I needed to know more. After all he’d admitted, I still needed to know more. I concluded I would hear him out. Eventually. Once we got through this night. If we got through it alive.
“I finally got service,” Dylan announced suddenly from his seat. He darted a glance at Jake, who kept his eyes on the road. He needed to at the speeds we were hitting.
Luckily for us, the interstate was nearly deserted. Unfortunately, that meant no one knew what was going to happen—assuming what I had been told was accurate.
I still had a hard time wrapping my head around what they’d told me. It couldn’t be possible—it shouldn’t be possible—but a natural instinct to survive had forced me to reconsider everything I thought I knew. Just in case they were right.
“Spence? It’s Romero,” Dylan spoke into his cell phone. “Any news?”
Aside from the sound of air rushing past the speeding vehicle, silence descended over us as Dylan listened to whoever he was speaking to.
After a moment, he said, “We’re only twenty minutes out. We’ll never—” He broke off as the muffled sounds of any angry voice barked through the phone. Dylan glanced at Jake with a smirk. “He’s pissed.”
“That’s nothing new,” Jake muttered.
Dylan shrugged and put his mouth to the phone. “Listen, Spence. Something unexpected came up. We’ll explain when we get there. I don’t suppose we could get a bird to lift us out—”
Dylan lowered his head with a shake. “Yes, sir . . . No, I understand, sir . . . And what about the people that live near the center? . . . With all due respect, sir, if you had listened to me when I—”
Dylan pulled the phone away from his ear with a scoff. “Fucker hung up on me.”
“I guess that’s a no to the helicopter then?” Jake questioned.
“He said they can’t risk the ash cloud downing another team for a couple of idiots,” Dylan responded glumly.
“He thinks you’re idiots because you didn’t leave sooner?” I guessed softly. Dylan turned to peer into the backseat, and I dropped my gaze to the floor. “You should already be gone by now? You should be somewhere safe. Is that right?”
When the silence stretched to an uncomfortable level, I glanced up to find Dylan’s eyes still on me.
“What did you expect? For me to leave you there?” he asked gently.
I darted a glance at the back of Jake’s head. “No, I guess not.”
“We came back for you, Thea,” Dylan added tightly. “Not Jake’s missing sister. We didn’t realize you were the same person until we had already turned back.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Jake volunteered over his shoulder. “I knew you by a different name. Dylan recognized you in the age-progression photograph I had after he convinced me to turn around.”
“That’s when we knew.” Dylan held out a photograph to me, and I took it with trembling fingers. It was obviously a computer generated image, but it was definitely me.
With my head bent down, I hid the swell of tears that rimmed my eyes while I tried to blink them away. Dylan had come back . . . for me. That had to mean something, right? He was risking his life . . . for me. I hadn’t forgotten the horrible things he had done nor all the lies he had told me over the weeks, but I wasn’t too proud to be grateful for what he’d done for me.
“Thank you,” I murmured. Finally lifting my head, I met his gaze.
“I wasn’t going to leave you there,” he whispered to me.
Despite the other ears in the vehicle, I felt the impact of the words that were intended solely for me. A few tears leaked out of my eyes, and Dylan flinched as if to wipe them away. He shot a glance in David’s direction and his hand froze. It dropped to his lap as he heaved a deep breath and turned toward Jake.
“We still need a plan or we’re all toast.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Jake muttered.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Dylan whirled around to look at David. “How big did you say the initial kill zone was?”
“Approximately two-hundred square miles.”
Dylan looked at Jake. “Spence said they’re predicting it to erupt within the next two hours.”
“We’ll get as far as we can,” Jake sighed warily. “It’s going to be close.”
“What if we pull over, and find a house with a basement?” Dylan suggested.
David shook his head. “That won’t be good enough.”
“It’s better than getting caught out in the open,” Dylan argued. “The Hummer—”
“We will need to be deep underground and closed off from the first ash cloud,” David insisted. “A basement won’t work. That is, unless you want to be burned alive.”
Dylan grunted his frustration. “So we just drive? Either we make it outside the kill zone, or we don’t?”
All three of them started talking at once. Stop. Don’t stop. Take cover. Don’t take cover. While they argued over our best option for survival, I fixated on a green sign illuminated by the headlights as we sped by it.
Missoula - 170 miles
My home was on the border of the kill zone. I had known that since I was old enough to understand what it meant. I also knew that my parents’ fallout shelter was built to withstand a cataclysmic Yellowstone eruption. If we made it there in time, we could survive.
“Uh, guys,” I called.
“—the force of one thousand atomic
bombs!” David yelled beside me.
I put my hand on David’s arm. “Wait, I—”
“Exactly why I don’t want to be in the Hummer when it fucking blows!”
“Shut up for one second!” I screamed. The order was intended to be for all of them, but Dylan was the one I looked at. His mouth snapped shut and he appraised me with a mixture of surprise and . . . admiration. I turned away from him to address David. “You know I grew up in Missoula. It’ll be cutting it close, but we might make it.”
“That’s still in the kill zone,” David pointed out.
“We’ll be fine in my parents’ fallout shelter,” I countered.
Dylan’s eyebrows shot up. “They have a shelter?”
“They’re doomsday preppers.” I nodded. “They’ve been preparing for this for as long as I can remember.”
“Who are these people?” Dylan muttered before glancing at Jake’s profile. In the rearview mirror, I watched Jake’s eyes harden. It took me a moment to realize what had angered him. My parents . . .
They took me. When I was five, they took me from Jake and the family I never knew I had. Though they had been wonderful, albeit strange, parents, they weren’t really mine. They were criminals who had participated in the abduction of a five-year-old girl.
For Jake, it was more than just asking two strangers to shelter us from the eruption. It ran much deeper than that. But we didn’t have any other options if we wanted to survive. Ultimately, even he realized that.
“We’ll make it.” The engine roared beneath us as Jake punched on the gas. “Or we’ll die trying.”
Dylan turned in his seat and held his cell phone out to me. “Do you want to call them? Let them know they’re going to have a few extra guests stopping by.”
I accepted his offer with a numb nod. My fingers pushed the numbers to my parents’ house line. I got a busy signal. Dialing my dad’s cell phone sent me straight to voicemail, as did my mother’s when I tried it next. I tried the house again, but found the line still busy.
Something wasn’t right. Dad had tested both phones for service inside the shelter. As long as the phone lines were operational, they should have a signal.