Sever (Chemical Garden Trilogy)

by Lauren DeStefano

  Rowan squeezes my hands.

  “It’s like you’re back from the—” He cuts himself off.

  “I have been trying—” My voice fails me. I clear my throat. “I’ve been trying to find you. I saw what happened to the house.”

  He shakes his head, looks at our hands a moment longer, and then lets go and reaches past me to open my car door. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says.

  There’s a cool breeze that rustles the brittle cornstalks. Our steps sound like crumpled paper.

  “So this is your home now,” I say.

  “I keep telling Bee not to use that word,” he says. “This is just a temporary base. We’ve only been here a month or so. We go where we’re needed and try to stay hidden.”

  I stoop to pluck a blade of grass and toy with it so that I have something to do with my hands.

  “I want to ask you where you’ve been,” he says, walking at an even pace with me and looking ahead. “I’ve believed the worst, but you seem as though you’ve been well.”

  Well. I’ve endured the blackness of a Gatherer’s van, was married off to a stranger. I’ve been poisoned and swept up in hurricane winds. I’ve watched as a girl I cared for lay dying with her head on my knees, a girl whom my brother, who once knew everything about me, will never meet. I wore a wedding band, and I’ve had needles in my eyes.

  But I don’t know how to say any of this. I don’t know what can make up for this lost time in which we both began living different lives.

  “I’m sorry you had to see the house in that state,” Rowan says. “I had no choice. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else living there. It had to be done. I knew there would be no going back there.”

  “Why can’t we go back?” I say.

  “Things have changed,” he says. “I’ve met this brilliant doctor, and, Rhine—” He pauses when he says my name. I wonder if he’s been able to say it at all while I’ve been gone. “He knows things that I never would have thought could be true. Things about the world. Things about the virus.”

  Please don’t be Vaughn. The thought is spinning frantically in my head. Please don’t let this brilliant man be the same man who separated us in the first place.

  “This is the doctor who told you I was dead?” I ask.

  Rowan stops walking, catches my wrist to stop me in place. “He told me about a girl whose left eye was blue and whose right eye was brown, who signed up for an experimental procedure. She was a fraternal twin and she thought her eyes might be some sort of key, and she wanted to help find the cure.”

  I was Gathered because I responded to an ad that promised payment for bone marrow. It all turned out to be a ruse, though; there were no experiments—only Gatherers.

  “Where did you meet this man?” I say.

  “I thought you had been Gathered. I would take delivery jobs out of state so I could look for you in scarlet districts, but I always felt that you were alive. I always felt that you would find your way home, and so I always came back to the house. Several weeks after you disappeared, he showed up at the house. He had heard that I was looking for a girl who matched your description—a girl he thought had died in a research experiment. I didn’t want to believe what he told me—of course I didn’t. But while I had described you several times to strangers, I’d never said that we were twins. I’d never said your name. And he knew those things.”

  I feel dizzy. I take a steadying breath. Vaughn. It has to be Vaughn. Who else? But how would he have known about Rowan? How would he know that we were twins?

  “He even knew about our parents being scientists. And he took an interest. It was several months before I started to believe what he was saying. I went through Mom and Dad’s notes, and I found all of these things that we were too young to understand when they died. All these experiments. Notes about us, and about the children they had before us. I presented all of this to the doctor, and in exchange for my telling him about our parents, he employed me.”

  “Employed you?” I say. My voice is strange and faraway. It belongs to some other girl, in some other place. She can’t possibly be me.

  “He’s a popular doctor,” Rowan says. “He can’t denounce research. He can’t destroy laboratories. He needed someone else to do that.”

  “So he’s using you,” I say.

  “No!” He rakes his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “When the time is right, he’ll announce what this has all been about.”

  “What is this about?” I say. “How could you say that this research is pointless? How could you do those things for some brilliant doctor who’s too much of a coward to do them himself?”

  He smiles at me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him smile, but there’s something unfamiliar about it. Something wrong. “Let me tell you about people,” he says. “They don’t know what’s best for them. They need simple explanations. They need to be lulled into compliance, because they’ll only rebel against it if they’re forced. Of course I don’t believe this research is pointless—not all of it, anyway.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “You’re alive,” he says. “But that doesn’t change the fact that people die every day in experiments. It doesn’t change that the world has fallen apart hoping for answers that won’t come. All of these research labs—they’ve been recycling the same experiments for years. They aren’t the ones that are going to find a cure.”

  “How do you know that?” I say.

  “Because,” he says. He takes my face in his hands and pulls me toward him and kisses my forehead roughly. There’s wild delight in his eyes. “You have no idea the wonderful things I’ve seen.”

  “ROWAN!” Bee is calling. When I turn in the direction of her voice, I realize how far Rowan and I have walked. I can barely see her standing at the edge of the dead cornfield. “The doctor is here!” she bellows.

  In answer Rowan waves to her. “Come on,” he says. “I can’t wait for you to meet him. I can’t wait to show him that you’re alive.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that this doctor knew all about me and he told you that I was dead?”

  “If he lied about that, then he must have his reasons,” Rowan says. “I know he can explain.”

  “It’s not just a lie!” I say, and I have to pick up speed to keep pace with him, he’s so eager to get to his perfect doctor. “He told you that your sister died a horrible death. You aren’t angry about that?”

  He stops walking and turns to face me. And for the first time in I don’t know how long, I see his real smile. I see the brother who slept beside me when we were children, who stared at the night sky and spun stories with me about the planets having faces. “You’re alive,” he says. “How could I be angry?”

  He grabs my hand and tells me to hurry, and we run through the rustling field, toward this menacing doctor, but with the summer breeze in my hair, I let myself pretend that everything is going to be all right.

  That feeling is short-lived. When we get to the end of the field, I see a black limousine parked beside the rickety car that brought us here. And my brother, squeezing my hand, has no idea that it’s the same limousine that took me away from him. He has no idea that the doctor standing beside it has been the head demon of my personal hell.

  Vaughn sees me, and I can’t read his expression. He doesn’t come to meet us but waits for Rowan and me to reach him.

  “Dr. Ashby,” Rowan says, “I’d like for you to meet—”

  “Your sister,” Vaughn says. “We’ve been properly introduced, haven’t we, Rhine?”

  Rowan looks confusedly between us. “Then, you knew that she was—”

  “Alive?” Vaughn says. “Yes, of course. I had hoped to tell all of this to you when the time was right. But as usual your sister had her own ideas.”

  Rowan turns his back to Vaughn so that he can look at me, only me. “You know Dr. Ashby?” he says.

  “I—” I look at my feet. How can I say this? How can I explain my ha
tred for this man my brother adores? How can I tell my brother that he’s caused fires and murdered innocent people, that he’s divulged our parents’ lifework all for the man who has spent the past year of our lives manipulating him and imprisoning me?

  “And she’s been a delight to get to know,” Vaughn says. “My son is quite taken with her. He was never a rebellious boy, but she brought out that side in him.”

  Rowan turns to Vaughn. “You have a son?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to explain all of this on the way to the airport,” Vaughn says. “We’re running behind schedule.”

  “Airport?” I say.

  “You didn’t think my brother was the only one with means to fly, surely,” Vaughn says. “You’ll like my plane. Much safer. And it’ll actually leave the ground.”

  It horrifies me that Rowan doesn’t question this, that when Vaughn opens the door for him, he gets into the back of the limo and waves me in after him. How many times has he sat here, in this place where my sister wives and I were drugged into captivity?

  Any trace of my sister wives and me is gone. The leather smells of cleaning chemicals. The windows are spotless. I feel sick, but I climb in after my brother, because there’s nowhere on earth I won’t follow him, and because as much as I hate to admit it, I want to hear what my former father-in-law has to say for himself.

  Bee and the muscular one try to follow, but Vaughn holds up a hand to stop them. “Not this time,” he says. “This is a private party.”

  Bee frowns and looks into the limo. “Rowan?” she says.

  “I’ll fill you both in on the necessary details later,” he says.

  Vaughn climbs in after us, and I see Bee’s face as the door is closed on her. She’s got that unwavering adoration Cecily has for Linden, that lost look in her eyes because she doesn’t know how to be without him.

  Rowan seems unfazed.

  As soon as we’ve begun moving, Vaughn says, “I’ve told you a few lies about your sister, as you can see. But I promise you that they were necessary.”

  Rowan is looking at me, taking in the way that I breathe, reminding himself that I’m alive.

  “I’ll start with something I never lied about,” Vaughn says, “which is that she did sign up for an experimental procedure. A bone marrow donation, I believe, which promised compensation. Unfortunately, this was a trap set by Gatherers looking to make a quick dollar selling women to be brides. Imagine her good fortune when she was presented to my son as a bridal candidate. As soon as I saw those eyes of hers, I knew there was something special about her. Heterochromia might have occurred for a number of reasons in natural humans, but it’s practically unheard of in new generations. If my son hadn’t chosen her on his own, I would have been sure to convince him.”

  That’s not entirely true. While he was experimenting on me in his basement, he told me that if Linden hadn’t chosen me, he would have skipped that formality and kept me as an experiment.

  “There were other girls in the van that brought Rhine to my son,” Vaughn says. “After my son had chosen his brides, I paid good money to be sure the other girls were silenced. I couldn’t take a chance of word getting out that a girl with eyes like Rhine’s had been sold as a bride. The average citizen might think she was merely malformed, but imagine if someone well-versed in medicine—or worse, some deranged derelict searching for the cure—heard about it and tried to take her for himself? Imagine the danger she’d be in.”

  He made sure the other girls were silenced. I still hear the gunshots in my nightmares. I’m still haunted by the lost stare in Jenna’s eyes when she thought of her sisters.

  Rowan asks no questions; it’s as though he’s been trained to obey. How many other times has he taken Vaughn’s words for truth? I’ve learned to smother my anger in Vaughn’s presence, but this is especially challenging to take in silence.

  “Rhine has lived quite comfortably as my son’s bride. She’s been to lavish parties and had a domestic to wait on her hand and foot. She’s become quite close with her sister wives—one in particular, it seems.”

  “Rhine?” Rowan says. He peels back the curtain of my hair that’s hiding my face. “You’re married?”

  There’s no easy answer to that. Yes. No. Not anymore. I can’t bring myself to look at him.

  “I planned on telling you about your sister,” Vaughn goes on. “But the opportunity hadn’t yet presented itself. I didn’t want to distract you. And I admit I was afraid that if you knew she was alive and well, you would lose sight of what’s important. You would be so distracted with your own interests that you would forget that what you’re doing now is saving something much bigger than yourself.” He reaches right over me and pats Rowan’s knee. He’s showing me that my brother, the one thing I thought belonged to me, is in his control. “What you’re doing is saving the world.”

  When I find my voice, I say, “How did you know to look for my brother at all? How did you know that I was a twin?”

  He laughs, and all the kindness of his son’s voice is in the sound. “From the stories you told our dear Cecily, of course.”

  I’m shaking when the limo finally stops. Vaughn steps outside and says that he’ll allow us a few moments alone, but he reminds Rowan that we’re on a tight schedule. There’s a meeting we must attend.

  When the door closes, leaving us alone, Rowan says, “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to protect you.”

  I raise my eyes to meet his, and hope sparks in me. Hope that he sees Vaughn the way that I see him.

  But he says, “Do you have any idea how lucky we are? If Dr. Ashby hadn’t found you— I don’t even want to think about what could have happened.”

  “Lucky?” I manage to blurt out. “I was stuffed into the back of a van and driven down the coastline and married against my will. You were left to assume I was dead. How is that lucky?”

  “Because we get to be a part of something bigger now,” he says. “We get to live.”

  “Rowan, none of this sounds unbelievable to you?”

  “I’ve never been a believer in things I haven’t seen for myself,” he says. “You’re smart to have doubts. I’m not asking you to trust Dr. Ashby. I’m asking you to trust me.”

  I feel like I don’t know my own brother anymore. That’s what I want to tell him. I open my mouth, but I lose my nerve. He looks right into my eyes, and, oh, how I want to believe everything he says. How I want to change reality to conform to what he’s thinking. I can get us back to Manhattan. I can live with what he’s done; I can find a way to rebuild our parents’ home and spend the rest of my days planting lilies in the yard. I can never leave home again if that’s what it’ll take for us to be safe.

  I cannot turn against him. I cannot leave him in Vaughn’s clutches and say good-bye to him, because I’ve already lost my parents, and my husband, and a sister wife, and quite possibly Gabriel. But to lose faith in my brother would mean becoming a girl I wouldn’t know how to be.

  Vaughn opens the door and smiles that geriatric smile of his. “All set?” he asks.

  “I think so,” Rowan says, looking at me. “Rhine?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Vaughn leads us to the private jet that awaits us on the tarmac. It’s got President Guiltree’s emblem—the royal blue silhouette of an eagle flying across a white sun—printed on one of its wings. I add this to the long list of questions I don’t know that I want answered.

  Inside, the jet isn’t very much bigger than the inside of the plane Reed has in his shed. It is fancier, though, with a beige leather wraparound seat and an oriental rug, and curtains that also bear the president’s emblem.

  Once we’re seated, Vaughn orders the attendant to pour us glasses of champagne. When I only stare into my glass, Vaughn says, “I’ve found it settles the nerves for first-time flyers.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I say.

  “I’ve forgotten what a brave thing you are,” Vaughn says, and takes a sip from his glass. “Remind me to
tell you, Rowan, the story of your sister and the hurricane. For now I think I should tell her the story I told you. It’s the only way to make her understand.”

  “Keep an open mind,” Rowan says.

  In response I stare at him. He’s calm; he has already accepted whatever Vaughn has laid out for him. But the Vaughn I know is different. The truth may be in his words somewhere, sure, but it’s buried in his own version of reality, where things are never exactly as he would have one think. I should know. For a time I was married to a boy who lived in such a reality.

  “Picture a world that’s riddled with filth,” Vaughn says. It isn’t very hard.

  “The world was divided into continents, countries, cities, towns. America was at its height more than two centuries ago. It was among the world leaders in medicine and technology. It also relied heavily on foreign imports.

  “There was structure, a concept foreign to your generation now. You live among failed efforts and rotting crops, but once, there was order. The president at the time was more than a figurehead.”

  He takes a sip of his champagne and stares sideways out his window, as though the organized country he speaks of is directly below us.

  “The order didn’t last. History will tell us that it never does. War broke out, diseases, death. The president had a vision for what a precious commodity a country at peace could become. Maybe it would set an example and bring peace to the rest of the world. And while citizens were at their most vulnerable, he soothed them with promises of protection, promises that he could separate them from such devastation.”

  This isn’t an act of Vaughn’s imagination. History books have said such things, even though Reed tells me that the books aren’t very reliable.