Twins

by Francine Pascal

  “No,” Josh scoffed, shooing away the accusation. He dodged Loki and headed back toward the couch. “What, just because he has the same face as me? He’s not my brother. It’s not like we had the same mother or something. He didn’t even have a mother.” Josh turned away and took another long, uncomfortable swig of beer. “There just aren’t many of us left, that’s all—I mean, them. There aren’t that many of them left.”

  “I know that,” Loki said. “That’s exactly why I’m changing the plan.”

  Josh gave Loki a puzzled stare. “What are you talking about? Since when are you changing the plan?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Loki said, walking back toward the couch. He switched on the small brass lamp on the side table. By this point the spacious loft was bathed almost entirely in darkness.

  “Well, what are my new directives?” Josh demanded. He leaned his head over awkwardly, trying to win Loki’s attention away from his work.

  “Don’t worry,” Loki mumbled with a dry half smile. He didn’t honor Josh’s request for eye contact. “I think you’ll be quite pleased with them.”

  “Well, what are they?” he pushed.

  Loki slapped the tests back down on the table. Perhaps it was QR3’s untimely death that was making Josh so invasive and pushy. Whatever it was, Loki needed to cut it short before it caused any further disruption. He’d obviously have to give Josh something to appease him if he wanted him to stay quiet. It was not unlike dealing with an infant. “All you need to do for now is wait for your instructions,” he explained, speaking as deliberately as possible. “I’m still ironing out the finer points. Once that deal is settled, our new agent will have full and unlimited access to Gaia and Tom. And when the time is right—only when the time is right—that agent will permanently remove Tom from the scenario. That will no longer be a concern of yours.”

  “But what about Gaia? What about all the plans you’ve made with the doctors?”

  “I’ve already told you,” Loki huffed. “The plans have changed. We have Gaia’s genetic material—that’s all we need from her.” He raised the blood tests and waved them in Josh’s face for clarity. “Now we just have to find out how Dr. Kessler’s serum affected her.”

  “Why?”

  Loki took a long, deep breath, realizing the extent of explanation that was required. He leaned forward from the couch to be sure Josh was paying close attention because his patience was wearing extremely thin. “The serum is basically … Are you familiar with the drugs in the antipsychotic category—Thorazine, Haldol, Risperdal?”

  Josh’s expression remained blank Loki shook his head and swallowed hard with frustration. “They’re medications. They’re administered to mental patients who suffer from schizophrenia and similar disorders. They help to reduce their frightening hallucinations and control their paranoia. To put it simply, this serum has the opposite effect of those drugs. Dr. Kessler’s serum actually induces frightening hallucinations and paranoia. It’s the ultimate test of her fearlessness. Do you see now?”

  “I think so,” Josh offered unconvincingly.

  “Think harder,” Loki ordered. “Gaia will be experiencing the menacing hallucinations and paranoid delusions of the average schizophrenic. If she can remain fearless under those extreme psychological circumstances, then we will know for sure that her fearlessness stems purely from her genetic code. We’ll know that it is completely impervious to any external or psychological stimuli. We’ll have the proof we need to continue on.”

  Josh sat in silence for a moment, and then he eased back in the couch, trying, quite arduously from the looks of him, to process all the information. His eyes rolled down toward the floor as he slowly formed his conclusions. Finally he brought his head upright and looked into Loki’s eyes with a surprising degree of intelligence. “So basically … we’re just trying to scare her.”

  “No,” Loki said calmly as he leaned himself back on the couch. “We’re trying to terrify her.”

  Repulsively Feminine

  GAIA HAD AWOKEN FROM A SERIES of horrid nightmares that she couldn’t even remember, and she was thankful for that. Whatever they had been, they’d left her entire body shaking uncontrollably. Not only that, but she was also drenched in a pool of sweat so thick, it almost felt like she was in a shallow salty pond and she was the pond scum that had floated to the surface. But that simply didn’t matter anymore. Because the moment Gaia had opened her eyes … she was there.

  Gaia tried to stretch her swollen eyes wider to adjust to the beautiful bright light and witness all three elements in perfect harmony. Her mother’s glowing smile was in delightfully close proximity. Her silky voice glided through an unforgettable Russian tune. And a spoonful of delectable cold borscht was being pressed to Gaia’s lips and poured down her burning throat as she lay in bed. There was no sense to it, but Gaia didn’t care. Her body ached too much to care. The fates had obviously taken a meeting, considered the amount of undue torture Gaia had been exposed to over the last few years, and decided to give her a gift. One of the only gifts she truly wanted. Her mother had been returned to her.

  “… So beautiful,” Gaia breathed, reaching out her numb fingers from the bed to caress her mother’s cheek. “You are, Mom” she uttered. “So much more beautiful than me.”

  “Oh, Gaia.” Her mother laughed with a dismissive smile as she always did when Gaia suggested it. She shook her head with bemused disapproval, speaking to Gaia with her elegant Russian accent. “Will you look in a mirror, for goodness’ sake? Someday … someday you will look in the mirror and you will see what is real. Instead of all this foolishness in your head, no?”

  “My head,” Gaia croaked. “My head hurts so much.”

  “Mine too,” her mother said, flipping her long, honey brown hair off her face. “The head hurts very much. You see? Like mother, like daughter.”

  “Your head hurts, too?”

  “Yes.” Her mother placed the spoon down in the bowl. She raised a finger to her forehead, rubbing her left temple. “It hurts,” she complained. When she pulled her hand away, there was suddenly a dark red splotch on her skin where her finger had just been.

  She picked the spoon up again, lifting another spoonful of borscht to Gaia’s lips, but Gaia couldn’t take her eyes off the dark red stain on the side of her mother’s head. It grew darker by the second. Darker and darker. And then slowly the ugly, crimson splotch of skin began to bubble and crack, at first like a scab, but then like nothing Gaia had ever seen. Melting and deteriorating of its own free will until a dark red fissure bubbled to the surface. The fissure crackled across the wound until it split open, and small drops of dark blood began to trickle from the gash and roll down the side of her mother’s cheek.

  “Mom …?” Gaia asked weakly. “What’s happening?”

  “It hurts me so much, Gaia,” her mother repeated. “So much …”

  “Mom, you’re bleeding….”

  Her mother’s head began to quiver. She let out a painful moan as her entire face trembled in agony. She clamped her hand against the bleeding wound, dropping the spoon into the bowl with a loud clank and splattering dark red borscht all over Gaia’s white blanket.

  “Mom?” Gaia had no breath left to support her voice. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m bleeding, Gaia,” her mother said. “You need to help me. It hurts so much.”

  Gaia pushed herself up from the bed and grabbed her mother’s shoulders. “Just tell me what I can do,” she pleaded. “Just tell me what I can do.”

  “Don’t let me die again, Gaia.” Her mother pushed both of her hands against her head and gasped for every breath. “Don’t let him kill me again. Please.”

  That awful hollow buzzing returned to Gaia’s chest. The horrid sensation she’d felt when those men stormed her uncle’s lab. But Gaia had no time to reflect on it. No time for any selfish internal debate as to whether or not she was again experiencing fear. She had to take action.

  �
��God, I don’t know what to do” Gaia shouted. “Let me see it.” She grabbed at her mother’s hands and tried to pull them away from her head, but her mother wouldn’t allow it. “Mom, please! I’m trying to help you!” Gaia tugged and tugged at her mother’s wrists.

  “Gaia, don’t!” her mother shouted. “Please don’t!” Gaia used every ounce of her strength and ripped her mother’s hands away from her head. And that’s when the piercing crack of a gunshot echoed through the room. Her mother’s head snapped to the right from the force of the bullet, exposing the smoking black hole that had erupted in her left temple. Gaia screamed as she held her mother’s shoulders and watched her lifeless head fall forward over her chest. A steady flow of blood poured down from her head and soaked her white floral blouse.

  But still her mother wasn’t dead. Her hands sprang up and grabbed Gaia’s arms as she lifted her wounded head to Gaia and shouted her name. She screamed the name again and again right to her face, shaking Gaia relentlessly. “Gaia! Gaia, look at me! Look at me!”

  The more her mother shook her, the more her face began to change. Suddenly the wound disappeared from her mother’s head. And then, piece by piece, her mother’s face began to morph into the face of another woman. I know this woman, Gaia told herself as the stranger shook her aching body back and forth. I know her name…. Natasha. Her name is Natasha.

  “Look at me, Gaia!” Natasha shouted. “Look at me.”

  And then she was back. Back somehow to reality.

  Everything had become incredibly quiet. Gaia stared into Natasha’s eyes and then rolled her own tired eyes around this strange room. She had no idea where she had just been. She couldn’t have been asleep because she knew what it felt like to wake from a dream. But she hadn’t exactly been awake, either.

  The most inexplicable combination of sorrow and relief passed through her heart, which was now racing. Gaia would never see her mother again. She knew that. But she also realized that there was at least one merciful aspect of this life: you only die once. At least Gaia knew that she’d never have to watch her mother die again. In Gaia’s dismal existence, that fact actually passed for relief.

  She looked back into Natasha’s eyes, squinting from the bright light by the bed. “Let me go,” she breathed. “I’m all right—just let me go.”

  Natasha obeyed her request, freeing Gaia’s arms from her firm grip. She helped to guide Gaia’s head back to the cold, wet pillow. “We should change these sheets. They’re soaked. When you feel strong enough to get up.”

  Gaia pulled her heavy head up on the pillow so she could see the room better. Her sheets were now covered in dark red stains, as was Natasha’s floral blouse. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Borscht,” Natasha said.

  Poison, Gaia thought. This woman was trying to feed me poison.

  Natasha leaned down to pick up the flipped-over bowl and spoon from the floor. She looked at Gaia uncomfortably. “You needed to eat, so I thought … I am very sorry if you thought I was your—”

  “I didn’t think anything,” Gaia interrupted coldly. She didn’t need to discuss a single element of her life or her past with this woman.

  “It’s all right, Gaia,” Natasha said. “You have a very high fever. Yesterday, too, you thought I was—”

  “Were you singing something?” Gaia cut her off. “Something in Russian?”

  “Just a little song,” Natasha replied.

  “How do you know that song?” Gaia pushed.

  “It’s just a song,” Natasha replied defensively. “All my family has been singing that song for generations.”

  Gaia didn’t respond. The blurry film had finally cleared from her eyes, and she focused closer on Natasha’s warm, glowing smile. There was something about it. Something that wasn’t right.

  Gaia let her eyes pan across the room. It was like surveying some kind of alien landscape. Everything about it was so mannered and pristine, so repulsively feminine. It had been painted some sort of textured cream color, with all the moldings and trim painted white. There was another bed on the opposite side of the room. Both bedspreads were white with a pale cream-colored floral print, although Gaia’s was now covered in bloodred stains.

  But there was an aspect to the room that Gaia had skimmed right over. She slowly turned her head back toward the dark corner on the opposite wall and confirmed it. There was a girl standing in the shadows. Gaia had seen this girl before, too. But she couldn’t remember her name. Perhaps she’d missed her the first time because she always seemed to be hidden in darkness. Or perhaps, in this case, it was because of her outfit—white tailored shirt and cream-colored skirt. She was perfectly camouflaged against the wall. At least now Gaia knew who had decorated the room.

  Everything about the girl was swanlike—as if invisible strings were holding up her head, her long, graceful neck, and all her limbs. Her blond hair was tied up tightly behind her head, so tightly that it almost seemed like her whole face had been pulled taut and tied behind her head. She remained stealthily still in the corner and stared, emotionless, at Gaia. No, she wasn’t just staring. She was doing something with her hands….

  She was writing. She was jotting something down in a small black notebook. Gaia looked up at her invasive eyes. The girl wasn’t just staring. She was examining. She was taking notes.

  “What are you doing?” Gaia asked sharply from the bed. The girl slapped her book closed and hid it behind her back. She didn’t say a word. She only looked at Natasha.

  “It’s all right, Tatiana” Natasha said to the girl. “Gaia is still very sick.”

  “Where’s my father?” Gaia demanded, dissecting Natasha’s wide smile suspiciously.

  “He is gone,” Natasha said.

  “Well, when will he be back?” Gaia’s eyes darted toward the girl in the corner. Tatiana. “I want to talk to him.”

  “No, no,” Natasha said, placing her hand over Gaia’s. Gaia quickly tugged her hand away. Natasha’s smile curved down into an expression somewhere between sympathy and pity. “Oh, I am afraid your fever was too high, perhaps, when your father spoke to you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gaia searched desperately through her memory banks. She’d had no sense of time since her uncle had pricked her with that sedative in the back of his limousine. How long ago was that? It could have been hours or days. She was reasonably sure she remembered her father speaking to her. Why else would she be asking for him at this moment? How else would she have known this woman’s name was Natasha? But as for the details … Gaia was extremely weak on the details.

  “Gaia, your father will not be coming back to this house for a while.” Natasha leaned in closer. “We’re all going to live here together now. You and Tatiana and me. Tom has helped me to get a job interpreting at the United Nations, so I will be able to take care of you both. This will be our home now. Until your father returns.”

  Gaia stared numbly into Natasha’s eyes, watching the sadistic pleasure she was clearly taking in this turn of events. And Gaia found herself paralyzed. Not by the sweltering heat that had engulfed her entire body or the horrific reenactment of her mother’s death. She’d just been overcome by sheer disbelief. Stricken by a level of disgust as yet unknown. It couldn’t be that her father actually thought Gaia would accept such a fate. It couldn’t be that he would be so foolish and ignorant and cruel as to believe that he could actually drop Gaia in another foster home with another set of total strangers. Strangers who, once again, clearly couldn’t be trusted.

  It was as if her father’s sole purpose in life was to work as diligently as possible to prove himself an evil, heartless son of a bitch. Even if Gaia was nothing other than his fearless guinea pig—his Project Intrepid—even if he’d known when he left Gaia in George and Ella Niven’s care that Ella would try to kill her, this offense was still by far his worst. Because this time her father knew exactly what he was doing by leaving Gaia. He knew the dangers. He knew what it would do to her heart and soul. And he
did it, anyway.

  And then her uncle’s voice blew through her mind. Something her uncle had said about her father that suddenly made such undeniable sense. He’s testing you, he’d said. They’re all testing you.

  Gaia slowly looked over at Tatiana, moving her eyes down toward her lower back, where her crisscrossed hands clung to her little book of observations. Then she looked back at Natasha. She fixed her eyes on Natasha’s “kind” face, burrowing through her motherly facade to what was clearly a cold, calculating mind. “You know I can see right through you?” she said, struggling with all she had to tug her covers off. At least she was still dressed. That would make what she was about to do much easier.

  “What are you talking about?” Natasha asked. “Please, you should keep the covers on.”

  Gaia forced all of her muscles to work, stepping out of the bed in spite of the overwhelming dizziness. She pushed her matted wet hair out of her face.

  “Please, I do not think you should be standing yet.”

  “You can’t keep me here,” Gaia warned, backing toward the doorway as she shot bullets at them with her eyes. “You people are sick. Truly sick.”

  “Gaia, what are you talking about?”

  “You tell him that I’m through taking his tests. Tell him I failed this one because I ran. A fearless person wouldn’t run, right? Well, then I must be terrified because there’s no way in hell I’m staying here.”

  “Gaia.” Natasha rose from her chair and stepped toward her. “I think your fever has—”

  “Don’t take another step,” Gaia warned, “or I swear to God, Ã11 break your neck. I’m sure you know I can do it. Just tell him….” The mere act of standing had left Gaia weak and short of breath. But her anger was providing all the power she needed. “Tell him to stay the hell out of what’s left of my life.”