I’m surprised that they have held up this long. The Preservation was hundreds of years ago. Even in its brokenness, this world is beautiful. Deep browns and grays of sand and mountains spread out across the horizon. Decrepit buildings stand with overgrown greens. What was it like when it was thriving and alive with people? When the buildings were whole? It’s not nearly as bad as the Elders painted it, but then again, if they had told us of its beauty, maybe more of us would have been discontented by the Compound.
I walk down a street of endless nothing. There are no remains of other buildings, no houses, just trees and dirt and hot concrete. Everything is hot in Texas. The street I’m on turns left and onto a bridge. Xenith said Cecily would be on the other side.
Pieces of the bridge are missing when I walk across. The holes are small enough that I can go around them, but there are more as I continue on. What if the piece I’m standing on decides to crumble and take me with it down into the water? I would die here before I even made it anywhere. I’d be dead just like all the people in the Burrows. Like Bayard.
An ache forms in my chest. He would never have fought to get out. Even if he was harsh at the beginning of our journey, I understand him now, and I miss him. Bayard made it clear that the Burrows were his home, that there was nothing that could separate him from them and nowhere else he wanted to be. He wouldn’t have been able to live, to press on and move forward, while carrying so much grief. He would never have liked it above or been able to carry the loss. Those were the people he loved. He would die for them, and he did.
Selfishly, I hope that’s not my fate.
A breeze blows around me, whipping my hair through the air, and Thorne would love it. He would love the way this bridge stands here, even though it’s falling apart. He’d stick his hands through the holes and touch everything-the sides with the jagged edges and the beams that run every way. I can almost feel his excitement coursing through me, even though he’s not here. He’d call it “marvelous” and “unique,” and he’d joke about jumping into the water, even though he’d never, ever let either of us do it.
I miss him.
Across the bridge, the landscape leads to more brown. There’s not much green here, trees or leaves or otherwise, and a large, red building fills my view. That’s the one. Xenith said I would know it.
The doors open when I push them, and step inside slowly. It’s so eerily quiet that everything inside me wants to run out.
“Anyone here?” I call into the dark, stale room. I prop the door open to let in some light, and then rub my hands together nervously. A tingle jolts through my body, the same way it does when Thorne and I feel each other through the connection. I miss him so much I’m imagining things now. “Hello? I’m looking for Cecily Lopez. I come from SMC128.” There’s no response. No indication that anyone is even here. I have one more card to play. I inhale the stale air. “Xenith Taylor sent me here.”
There’s only silence. I feel the tears building up inside, but I push them down. I haven’t come this far to cry. They’ll let me in. They have to.
I lean back against a large machine, and a pole hanging off of it rams into my arm. At closer inspection, the pole is more like a handle. I pull down on it but nothing happens. There are four little squares above the lever, and all of them contain pictures. One looks like a cherry.
A loud voice echoes in the darkness. “Nay-hm?”
I jump at the sound and brace myself against the machine. Someone is speaking to me-a man’s voice- but I’m not sure what he’s asking for or where he is.
“Excuse me?” I ask, searching the darkness for movement.
“Don’t move,” the voice calls, and I freeze, ignoring the prickles running up my arms. “State your name.”
“Neely Ambrose,” I say quickly.
There’s only more silence on the other end. Then a loud buzzing sound fills the room.
“The door is to your left,” the voice says to me. “Go down the hallway. Turn left. Knock twice on the third door.”
I do what he says, and it’s easy to find. The hallway is simple enough and the ceiling is tall, wide open, and vast. I try to imagine what it was like to see this place in its prime. Large chandeliers bright and beautiful when they were lit. Tall ceilings and long hallways. There are no pictures on the walls, only marks where they used to hang. Like everything in this forgotten world.
The third door is white, and my fingers run across the grain as I knock on it. There’s a scuffle behind the door, a thud, and then a click as it opens to me. A man hovers over me, big and tall, muscle and fat interweaving to make him monstrous. He grunts in my direction.
“I’ve journeyed here to meet the survivor,” I say.
He holds a hand up to me. “Neely Ambrose?”
I nod. The big guy looks me over, top to bottom, before he grunts and pushes the door open. I exhale and take half a step forward.
“We’ve been expecting you,” he says. I catch a glimpse of an object that catches the light tucked into his belt-a gun?-as I enter. Something heavy settles in my stomach, the familiar feeling of anxiety.
Candles and a large fireplace dimly light the room. It’s warm in here. My body is tingling. Directly in front of me sits an older woman. She only has one eye-the other is covered with some kind of patch, and my stomach leaps into my chest as her eye follows us across the room.
“Are you Cecily Lopez?” I ask.
She gives a curt nod but doesn’t greet me otherwise, only watches me through sallow skin and sharp lines that decorate her face. Her hair is streaked brown and gray, wrapped in a tight bun atop her head. “Have a seat.” Her voice is rough and hoarse, as if she grew up eating glass.
There’s a chair opposite her. I’m halfway to it when I see him and gasp, sudden emotions flooding my body all at once.
Thorne is standing right in front of me.
3 DAYS BEFORE ESCAPE
THORNE IS IN FRONT OF ME on the other side of the opened door. His back is to me, but I would know him anywhere. When I see him, I wedge myself behind the wall and door and try not hit it. If it moves, then he’ll see me, too. Why is he here? I press my ear to the wood, careful not to close it the last half an inch, though I’m sure he can hear my heart pounding against it. If the door closes, he’ll know someone else is here, and he can’t know that. Why is he here? I can’t see his face, and I want to. The thought makes my heart pound faster.
I try to calm myself, but his voice trails through the space. Xenith yells something I can’t make out, and then there’s a crash and the sound of glass breaking.
This is because of me.
I shouldn’t, but my hand is on the doorknob. Thorne is here, and everything inside of me wants to go to him. His voice is clearer, and I catch my name.
“She’s dead, Thorne. I’m sorry, but Neely is gone,” Xenith says. I’ve never heard him apologize to anyone, especially not to Thorne. And his voice sounds so convincing. I’d believe it if I didn’t know the truth.
I peek around the corner and see Thorne shaking his head, holding Xenith against the wall, a bookcase shoved over on the floor. Xenith is so tall, but Thorne is stronger, and the sight of them both there like that is almost too much. I’m causing all this pain to the people I love.
Thorne releases Xenith. “Why do I feel her?”
Xenith straightens out his shirt. “Why does someone who loses a leg still think he can walk?”
I take a step into the living room where they are as every cell in my body urges me forward.
Thorne’s back tenses, and I wish I could feel what he was feeling, but the blockade is keeping that away. “It’s not like that. I wake up in the middle of the night, terrified and alone. That’s not me-that’s her. Sometimes I’m overly confused, conflicted, unsure, scared. That’s not me either. How do I feel her if she’s dead? It’s the worst kind of torture. Losing her is bad enough, but some days it’s like she never left. Like one day I’ll wake up and see her.”
Xenith’s
eyes catch me in the doorway, and they grow fierce. I take a breath and realize I’ve opened the door wider. What am I doing? I’m going to ruin everything. I inch backward, back toward the room so I lose sight of them. I shouldn’t, but I try to feel Thorne’s confusion, his sadness. There’s nothing because of the blockade.
“I miss her.” His voice trails back to me. I have to hold my breath so I don’t call out to him. “Don’t you miss her?”
I can’t see Xenith’s face anymore, but I imagine it. Etched with pain, deep lines that appear in an instant. “Every second.”
He’s really good at lying.
I lie on the floor of Xenith’s bedroom, sneaking peeks through the crack of the doorframe, waiting for the shadow that tells me Thorne is gone. It doesn’t come. Not for a while. So long that I fall asleep like that, and my name the last thing I hear.
Over and over.
My name.
DEADLINE: 30D, 11H, 28M
ODESSA, TEXAS
I’M NOT SURE HOW MANY TIMES Thorne has said my name now. I can’t stop staring at him. This has to be a joke. A trick. Maybe I’m dead, and this is the afterlife. He touches my hand, my arm, my cheek, and in an instant my chest hitches. He whispers my name, and his relief crushes me so deeply I have to exhale in order to stand correctly. I can’t believe he’s here. How is he here?
Tears fill my eyes as my brain, my body, my entire being shifts with elation. That I’m alive. That he’s touching me. And all of his emotions add to mine. The relief, the longing and joy as he touches my cheek. It feels like floating. Heat runs through my branding and down to my toes.
I meet Thorne’s dark gaze, and he pulls his hand away swiftly. His emotions change, and I intake a breath as I get hotter. He’s disappointed and angry. I don’t need to feel that; it’s evident on his face, the way his eyebrows dip together and he slides his hands into his pockets.
I’ve imagined our reunion every night since I died, since before I left the Compound. There would be kissing and tears, and he’d look at me in that way that only he can because I’d just found a way to save him from a fate he didn’t know was coming. It’d be the most blissful kind of dream, and I’d never want to wake up. It wouldn’t be like this-in the presence of strangers and shrouded in confusion.
This is not as blissful.
“How are you here?” I ask.
I search Thorne’s eyes and see the spark that lives there. The one he tries to hide when he’s with everyone else. The one that’s only for me. I missed him so much. Looking at his face, seeing how tired he is and his heavy eyes-all I did was miss him. I reach out through our connection, trying to search his emotions for something, but he’s blocking me out. I hate when he does that. It so rarely used to happen that he didn’t want to let me in, but now? This is what I’ve done, what I’ve caused.
“How are you here?” he asks back. I almost see the word on his lips. Dead.
Next to us, Cecily clears her throat. I turn to her, nearly shaking. “How is he here?”
“Something to eat?” she asks. As soon as she mentions it, my stomach churns. I nod slowly. Maybe food will wash away the aching and fill the pit in my soul.
“Boris!” Cecily yells. His name makes me want to laugh, though I’m not sure why. The feeling fades as soon as he appears again. “Get our guests some sandwiches.”
He nods and leaves the room without a word or a sound. My eyes keep drifting to Thorne as he sits, and I can’t help it. I never thought I’d see him here.
“He’s a lump, not good for much other than protection, but he makes a great grilled cheese, so I keep him around,” Cecily says, and then her focus is straight on me. “Have a seat, Miss Ambrose.”
I do as she asks and sit next to Thorne.
“Mr. Bishop here tells me you’re on a secret mission, though he didn’t seem to know the details.”
I look at him curiously. He doesn’t know anything. Knowing Thorne, he wouldn’t need to. He’d go anywhere for me, do anything, and this is no exception.
“Why are you here?” she asks, pulling my eyes from Thorne to her.
“Xenith Taylor sent me. I need sanctuary with your people,” I say. The Remnants. Because they know him and his family and I need them to help me get safely to the Mavericks.
Silence closes in around us, and lets my doubts about Xenith sink in. Maybe he’s not as powerful as he thought he was, but then Cecily nods her head slowly.
“Young Mr. Taylor has a tendency to overstep his bounds. What makes you think I will help you? You are the director’s daughter, after all. How can I trust you?”
“I’m here in front of you. I’ve made it all this way, and Xenith trusts me. He trusts you. That’s enough.”
I feel Thorne’s emotions then. A sudden impulse of red-hot anger and irritation. I try not to look at him, not to be thrown by it, but it’s hard.
“Even in my circles, some cannot be trusted,” Cecily says. That’s the same warning Xenith gave me. Not all Remnants are innocents. “Why do you seek the Mavericks?”
“The Elders are enacting a plan against my Compound, and we need help to prevent it.” I feel another ripple that sends my head spinning, and I steal a sideways look at Thorne. He’s confused, and right now I can’t tell him all the reasons I had to leave. It’s not the time or the place.
She nods from her chair, and her eye widens. This woman has survived so much, and sitting here with her eye narrowed on me, I can’t help but wonder what evils she has faced.
Seconds slip away from us. I push up the hair on my neck and angle myself toward her. Cecily stares at my branding and adjusts her position in the chair. Her face remains blank, keeping her secrets locked tight, but I know she bears the same mark because she and her twin were born in the Northern Compound. All twins back then got the branding.
Cecily doesn’t look convinced of anything. If she’s surprised or cares, she doesn’t show it on her face. Her lips remain in a thin line. Thorne takes my hand, lacing our fingers together, and every place our bodies touch sparks through to my soul. It’s been months since I felt our physical connection, and I have to fight away the urge to kiss him so I can feel this more intensely.
We only connect through the branding when one of us is feeling a stronger-than-normal emotion or when we want to feel what the other person is feeling. Usually, it’s just a steady hum, like a heartbeat, and I carry my own feelings. But when Thorne is around, when he’s feeling something intense, when I’m tuned into him or touching him, then it’s a different thing entirely. It’s like a drug sometimes, our connection, and I can’t get enough. Other times it’s a burden I don’t want to carry. The two change too often to keep track.
He pulls us to our feet and shows her his branding. Together, we are complete. If our branding was put together, it would be beautiful. Where mine is dark, his is light. Our curves of color fit into the emptiness of the other person’s-two halves that make one whole and fill in the void. We each have the opposite half of a circle, with a line in the middle where our halves would join. That line is crossed with another, so if I look at it sideways, it resembles an X. The same X that exists across the regular branding.
“Sit,” Cecily says, and as we do, she turns to show us her marking. Her half is the same as mine.
Thorne releases my hand, and the change inside me goes from burning to nothing. Stillness. The usual pulse of my heartbeat. But the loss of the fire always leaves me wanting more.
Cecily stands up and walks around the room, her shape silhouetted on the ceiling.
“You are not twins,” she says as a statement instead of a question.
“It was to save my life.”
“How?” she asks. Her voice is weak.
I glance at Thorne, but he doesn’t move and avoids my gaze. “For the first two years I was alive, it was said I was his twin.”
“Seems like a big mistake to make.”
I nod, gulp down a lump in my throat at the thought of my mother. “My mother died g
iving birth to me, and Thorne’s twin died at birth. I was switched with his biological sister as an act of protection. No one except Thorne’s mom, Sara, knew until I was two-not even my father.”
“Why would one lie about that?”
The room is quiet but anxious, and I feel it in the air and in Thorne’s emotions. I need to tell Cecily all I know so she’ll help. Maybe we can use the branding to connect, to remind her where she came from and how she fought her way out.
“My grandfather had malicious plans, from what I know, and they switched me to hide me. I honestly don’t know all the answers. No one ever really talks about it.”
“How old are you both?”
“Seventeen,” Thorne answers.
“You were born two years before my sister and I got out,” Cecily says with a pause. “They spent years separating-years killing-twins after Deanna and I escaped. Why would they let you remain together?”
“Your escape made the Elders test and separate twins. It was revealed, at the time of our test, that we weren’t related,” I say. “Since we weren’t blood relatives, they didn’t believe it would affect us. There was no proof of anything abnormal.”
Because Xenith’s mom lied, but I don’t say that. Thorne is quiet, his eyes not leaving me. I have a lot to tell him about the things I’ve learned. I hope I get the chance to explain all of this.
Cecily’s head bobs around in a way that makes me worry it could fall off her neck. “When we escaped, the Elders began to fear twins instead of treasure them. Before then, twins were special and desired- preferred, even. After that, they were no longer allowed to be born.” Cecily’s voice is heavy. “There were no twins born in the decade after us. If the Elders really feared them, they’d go to any means to prevent their birth.”
Prevent their birth….
Thorne’s brow creases, but he says nothing.
“I know they started treatments early,” I say, trying to keep the conversation going.
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