Follow Me Through Darkness

by Danielle Ellison

  He smiles-not in the funny way, but in some sort of way that puts me at ease. “Come with me,” he says. He removes a pair of silver keys from his pants pocket and opens his office door.

  Handler leads us down the hallway to a set of elevators. We ride them down to the basement. It’s a long way down from the eighteenth floor, and the silence rests between us awkwardly.

  DEADLINE: 8D, 10H, 10M

  MAVERICKS HEADQUARTERS

  WHEN THE ELEVATOR doors open, there are groups of people in line along the walls. Some are in lines at the computers, and some sit in circles and examine blueprints. Agent Handler leads us around the room toward the back. As we pass, people look up at us, some longer than others. There’s a group of three people-one with green, pointed hair-encased in a glass room in the back, and they all look up at us when we enter.

  The door hisses as Agent Handler closes the door. “Neely, Thorne, these are the commanders. Agents Carrigan, Mitchell, and Bane. They are my next in command.”

  I feel dirty next to Agent Carrigan’s pristine white skin and blonde hair that falls across her ears. She smiles at me, her eyes sparkling, and greets us happily. Agent Mitchell, the one with the green hair, raises his eyebrows as he shakes my hand. Agent Bane, with his shirt really tight against his muscles, nods to us.

  “What is all this?” Thorne asks, poking one of the buttons next to him. A screen changes, and Mitchell jumps in to change it back. Thorne stuffs his hands into his pockets.

  Handler removes his jacket and leans against the wall. Even the white shirt is crisp underneath. A month ago I would’ve been like them, and now I’m more like a Remnant but not quite that either. I’m my own entity. A survivor.

  “Those people out there,” he says, pointing beyond the glass, “are helping us by providing possible extraction routes and strategy plans. Each group works on a different piece of the puzzle, and we will put the best elements together as an action plan for unification.”

  “Unification?” I ask. I’ve never heard of that.

  Agent Carrigan is the one who answers, her voice high and light. “Everyone in the Compound is altered by the branding. It’s something the Elders mastered before the Preservation so they could keep control.” They mastered it before the disease even came, before they made a show of saving some. Carrigan points to my neck. “It changes the brain to subdue curiosity. The marking is made with an ink that contains a neurochemical compound. It’s constantly feeding low doses of medicine into the brain. Without curiosity, there are no questions. Without questions, there is no search for truth and no need for free will, for decisions.”

  “It’s quite effective when you think about it,” Agent Bane adds, his messy brown hair sticking up all over the place like he’d been running his hands through it. He leans over the back of Carrigan’s chair. “When people like you come to us or when we save them, we remove the branding and then place them in our new society. Unification.”

  “Why aren’t we affected by the branding? I’ve never had a problem asking questions,” I say.

  I’m sure my life would have been easier if I had.

  “The twin branding is different. In all cases that we’ve encountered, it created something new instead of taking away the curiosity. When the Lopez twins escaped, the Elders stopped the branding and separated all those who had received it before,” Carrigan says.

  “How does it work?” Thorne asks.

  Agent Handler crosses his arms. “Twins were given a prenatal treatment to help the Elders find immortality. They use a different chemical compound for twin branding-something that is supposed to complete the process-although our researchers haven’t been able to isolate the chemical. From what you’ve told me, Thorne had the treatment, but Neely did not. Her body was not properly prepared for the branding, so when they branded you two together, they created something else entirely.”

  I stare sideways at Thorne. One little lie from Liv Taylor changed all of our lives, made us something else. Every decision has led us here.

  “And I have a feeling they didn’t know what they’d created,” Mitchell adds. “I mean, if they had known, they would’ve made the two of you the biggest new experiment.”

  Liv Taylor saved us from that. It’s why she lied to them. They’d suspected something after Cecily and Deanna escaped, after the branding effects were revealed. They wanted to make sure we hadn’t been altered since we weren’t properly branded, and her second lie kept us together.

  Bane points to a screen, and a few images flash by. They look like pages from Old World storybooks. He stops on one of a man bent over a spring. “The Elders love to experiment.” With a flick of Bane’s wrist, the images change to small spheres forming, moving, turning into babies. “With twins, the Elders saw an opportunity to examine the effects of genetic splicing and connections from conception. Identical twins were viewed as the ideal study subjects-natural clones. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, added power to the idea that two separate beings could still be strongly connected. Both of these things were of interest to the Elders, so they did whatever they could to find some answers. The tests have major side effects-morphing DNA into new abilities-but they didn’t notice those for centuries.”

  “Like the way Cecily and Deanna could share dreams?” I glance toward Agent Handler, and he adjusts his glasses on his nose.

  “Exactly.”

  The images around us shift to pictures of children. Two in every shot-twins. Agent Carrigan smiles at me. Then she straightens up in her chair. “These are some of the identical twins from the last hundred years,” Agent Carrigan says. She pauses on a picture of two girls, one with brown hair and one with blonde. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  “They have different color hair,” Thorne says.

  She nods and flashes another. Identical twins with hair or eyes that are different colors, one boy with freckles and one without. “The tests made small superficial alterations after a few generations. “Some were even stronger, smarter, and in tune with each other. There’s a study of twins who were placed in two different Compounds, and they could still communicate. Those effects, the mental more than physical traits, went to fraternal twins too-any children who shared a womb during experimental treatments.”

  I wonder if that’s how it works for Thorne and me. We can’t communicate verbally or mentally, but emotion is a form of communication.

  “But then, both kinds of twins started developing more significant traits, actual skills.” Agent Carrigan flashes through some more pictures. Each of these people could do something unique, and it’s because of the Elders. Pictures of children zoom through my line of view, and one with blonde hair makes me think of Delilah. I hope she’s okay.

  The images pause on a picture. In it, the girls look identical, and it’s easy to imagine the lines in Cecily’s face now. Her eyes are the same shade of gray, but her hair is a dark shade of black.

  “Cecily and Deanna Lopez were the first people who talked about what they could do, but I guess dreams of the future would cause that. There are others,” she says, flashing through pictures. “Twins developed enhanced mental connections that manifested in different mental abilities-moving things with their minds, sensitivities to sound and light-more things than we can categorize. For every set of twins that were altered and survived, hundreds more died.”

  Everyone is quiet until Agent Bane shouts from across the room. “What do you guys do?”

  Shouldn’t they know this? They seem to know everything.

  “We share emotions,” Thorne says.

  “But they’re not really twins, and the branding didn’t work the same way,” Mitchell adds. “Which explains that.”

  Everyone in the room grows quiet, and Mitchell doesn’t even notice. I stare at him, waiting for something else. “What does it explain?” I ask.

  “Sorry, he’s like that,” Carrigan says quickly.

  Mitchell nods and stuffs a hand into his pocket. “Every record we have is of
mental abilities-things controlled by the mind-and none of the twins were inhibited by the branding. But yours is emotion- based. Do you feel each other’s emotions in a physical manifestation?”

  “Yes,” we both say. The fire, the intensity, the swirling in the head, the weight in my stomach.

  “That’s because Neely wasn’t prepared for the branding. It makes your connection different,” he says. Agent Mitchell moves around the screens. His fingers move quickly, pulling up images. “You’re the director’s daughter, right?” I nod, and he rubs his hands together. I’m glad someone is excited. “Then your whole connection has adapted to each other because you have the gene. If you didn’t, you would’ve been branded with no problem or effects at all since you didn’t have the prenatal preparation treatment.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  Mitchell looks at me like a rock has been dropped on my head, and I cross my arms. This is the first I’ve heard of a gene, but my heart rate increases. I can’t help but feel like everything is about to change. I’m about to change.

  Mitchell sighs, pokes around on the screen, and changes some images. “About a century ago, the Elders tried to change the branding to be a control source, rather than a blockade. They tested in small groups, and your family was one of them. Three families were tested in that first trial. Two families were successful; one was not.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yours. It took the Elders a few decades to figure out why, but then it was discovered that the Ambrose family carries a rare gene with this amazing plasticity to survive, to adapt. You bounce back quicker than most people. You survive,” Agent Mitchell says. He barely has to pause for a breath, but I can’t seem to catch mine.

  “That’s not true. This trip has been hard. The darkness, the sunlight, the heat-I’ve felt it all just like any normal person.”

  Thorne touches my arm. “Not since you were poisoned. Neely, I didn’t tell you this, but you weren’t breathing when they found you. You were dead. They only went to get you because I felt when it happened.” “What?” I died? How did I die? That’s not possible. I would know if I had been dead.

  Thorne’s voice is low. “It was like before, when you drowned, only more intense. It felt like my body was dying with yours. I don’t know how to explain it. They breathed life into you, shocked your heart, and then you slept for five days. You haven’t really seemed tired since then, not like I have.”

  This whole thing is ridiculous. I didn’t die. It’s something else. I’ve been tired since then. Haven’t I? I slept in the car ride with Asher. No, I didn’t; I only listened and pretended.

  “It’s been activated, then,” Mitchell says. I pull my gaze in his direction, and he looks so excited. It’d be adorable if it wasn’t all because of me dying. “The Elders discovered it while on their quest for immortality, and then they placed the Ambrose family in a position to be directors, starting with your great-grandfather, so they could track you. Obviously, everyone in your family has died, but it’s because they were missing genes-and this gene needs other genetic material, other traits, in order to be fully expressed. They perfected and altered the Ambrose line, trying to create the perfect specimen that they could replicate, and we think they finally did. You. They need you.”

  I shake my head. This is too much to process. I’m some sort of creation that was manipulated into existence? “You’re saying that they set up my mother and my father so that I would be born?” Even as I deny it, I remember what it said in my father’s papers about pairing up marriages for reproduction.

  Carrigan kneels down so she’s closer to me. “They’ve been prepping your family for years, Neely. The Elders aren’t immortal; they can die. Their study on twins has only postponed their death. They age, but at a way slower rate than us. If they could pair that with you, then they could survive anything-and live forever. As it is now, they can be killed or stopped, but if they are able to splice in that gene of yours, replicate it and the other genetic contributions that allow it to be fully expressed, they would be invincible.”

  They need me. That’s why my father was fighting so hard to get me to take his place. That’s why they were sending Thorne away. I finally sit down, head spinning. They’d planned for me since before I was born, a child with the perfect genetic makeup, so they could use me and live forever. My mother died only wanting to keep me away from them. Liv Taylor lied to keep it a secret and protect me.

  I really have been a pawn. Since before I was born.

  “Because you have plasticity, when you were born and rewired to Thorne, your genetic code adjusted. You became completely connected, which is how you feel each other. That makes you even more special.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a threat. They can’t control you, or they never could before. They could’ve found a way around that, but you’re safe right now,” Mitchell adds.

  “I don’t understand. How?”

  “That branding. If it was ever removed or if anything happened to Thorne, then you’d be susceptible to the Elders. The chemical used to limit curiosity causes fatal reactions when paired with the one used in twin branding. But if your twin brand was removed or inactivated, you’d be susceptible to the mind control from the other branding neurochemical. They could take whatever they want from you, and you wouldn’t stop them. The active twin branding is a safety net for you; without it, they can manipulate your elasticity gene, and you, for their purpose.”

  That’s why the Elders wanted to transfer Thorne. Then they’d change his branding and ruin our connection. Have they known this whole time about our secret? Or was it just to get rid of him? If Thorne wasn’t connected to me, I would only be a tool for the Elders’ messed-up cause.

  “Basically,” Bane says, “without the branding, you’re dead and the Elders win.”

  The one thing I’ve wanted to destroy is the only thing keeping me safe. I look at Thorne and he squeezes my hand, but it does nothing to calm the crashing in my stomach.

  30 DAYS BEFORE ESCAPE

  THE WAVES CRASH and squeeze into each other as I snuggle closer to Thorne. This is one of our last nights together before I die. I shouldn’t be thinking about that, but the truth consumes my thoughts. I have one month, and Thorne will be gone for most of it. He leaves tomorrow for a weeklong fishing trip, and then he has another at the end of the month. Him being gone will be easier.

  And not. Even sitting next to him, my body is on fire at his touch, and the branding does that. What would we feel like to me without our connection? If Liv Taylor hadn’t lied to the Elders time and time again. If none of this had happened. What would being normal feel like? “You okay?” Thorne asks me.

  I nod, but I know he doesn’t believe it because he inches my chin up toward his face. “You can tell me whatever you’re thinking.”

  I sigh heavily. Can I really? “Do you ever wonder who’d we be without the branding?”

  We’ve never had this conversation before. There was never a reason to, but now there are too many reasons. I know more than him, and it all feels false.

  Thorne runs a hand through his hair and stares past me into the distance. “Of course I have.”

  “I guess sometimes I wonder how we would be if it wasn’t that way, if we didn’t have this.” I touch the branding on his neck. “If we were our own people, completely without the other’s emotions. If we had our own secrets and desires.”

  He smirks at me. “I have my own secrets, Neely.”

  “You do?” I ask.

  He nods. “Sure. It’s not like you’re reading my mind. You’re only feeling what I feel, and only when it’s intense or something I want you to feel.”

  I scrunch up my nose. “It’s almost the same thing, isn’t it? Our pull is getting stronger. I can feel you more. When you’re out with the boats and you get closer to shore, you get this moment of complete happiness, and I feel it like a shock to my chest.”

  “You make it sound like it’s an annoyance
,” he says.

  “I don’t mind the happy things, but sometimes…” I pause. Sometimes I want to be my own person. This is a lost cause. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” he says.

  I move so I’m facing him instead of lying curled up in his arms. “I guess I wonder sometimes what it’d be like if I carried all my own emotions and you carried yours, and we were normal.”

  “Harder,” he says, as if it’s the simplest answer in the world. “Right now we’ve got each other, and that’s always made sense to me. Sure, it’d be nice sometimes to not have to worry so much about what you’re feeling and why, but at the same time, if I didn’t know that, I know you wouldn’t tell me, and you’d be this mystery to me.”

  “You like the connection because it helps you understand me?”

  “No,” he says quickly, inching me closer so our bodies are touching. “I’m saying it wouldn’t matter.”

  “But why?”

  “With a connection or without one, we are still the same.”

  I nod, but I wonder if we really are. If we didn’t have this huge emotional pull, would we be anything at all?

  Thorne pulls me close, and I know he’s done talking about it. I curl back into him, trying to clear my brain and stare over the ocean. How can he dismiss it so easily? The branding is everything we are, and without it, what are we? If I could ever get rid of it, what would happen to us?

  “Look, a shooting star,” Thorne says, pointing up. I see it too, a bright flashing light drifting through the star- filled sky and hurling down toward us. A dying star, the schoolhouse teacher taught us once. “Make a wish.”

  “What?” I explore his face, take in as much of it as possible. The soft angles and warm colors that are all him. I know I won’t be seeing it much more.

  “People in the Old World used to wish on stars. Shooting stars are the luckiest. Make a wish.”