by Mike Essex
He gathered Will’s DNA from a routine employee blood trial and found nothing. This led him to wonder if Emmie was the key so he stole some blood of hers from a donation she made and the results were the same. There was nothing in their body chemistry to indicate a difference.
For nine months he studied their data and found no way to determine what he needed. He had collected every piece of data he could from their DNA. So he decided to take drastic action. If the Tether between truly was as strong and pervasive as he suspected then there was one last test he could perform. He knew it would mean getting his hands bloody but if he was to have his revenge then he knew it was necessary.
It wasn’t long before Will was gone and days later Emmie had sat in his office completely healthy. The very second he had seen her, his obsession had grown stronger. His suspicions had been confirmed.
At long last he had found someone else who could survive the death of their twin and he was never going to let her go.
THIRTY-SIX
Emmie Keyes
As our helicopter rose into the sky I looked out of the window constantly. I wanted to at least see the weapon that would shoot us down from the sky.
We were in a small helicopter so we felt the wind outside as it battered against the sides. The force shook the helicopter and it made my stomach ache.
March saw me as I gritted my teeth in pain and he administered another shot of morphine. I felt the warmth wash over my body almost instantly and the edges of my vision started to blur. I’d never done hard drugs before but I imagined this must be what it felt like. A mixture of curious pleasure with an edge of fear.
A voice crackled over the radio. “This is the Birmingham control tower. Please confirm your destination and your airspace code.”
“Ok everyone. This is where it gets tricky,” said Saloma as she increased our speed.
“I repeat,” said the voice on the radio. “Please confirm your destination and your airspace code or we will be forced to take extreme measures.”
“Don’t we have one?” I asked, starting to feel hazy from the drug kicking in.
“No,” replied Gabe, “but Saloma is the best pilot I know. She’ll get us out of this.”
I hoped that was true, because getting into the city hadn’t been easy. I imagined getting out as fugitives would be even harder.
“You have thirty seconds to confirm or we will take action,” said the voice on the radio.
“Thirty seconds!?” shouted Saloma. “That’s not right. They usually allow longer. This helicopter is fast enough to reach the city limits in two minutes but not thirty seconds. We’re in trouble.”
“What!?” shouted Gabe. “Can’t you try?”
“This is all I can do now,” Saloma increased her acceleration and tilted the helicopter down slightly to give us an extra bit of speed. I started to roll forward in my wheelchair but the supports I’d been tied to helped keep me in place.
“Emergency,” a computerised voice could be heard inside the helicopter. “Emergency,” it repeated.
The dashboard in front of Saloma lit up in a dark red and the words “Emergency,” appeared on the screen. She watched the radar as a small red dot closed in on us.
“What is that?” asked March.
“It’s a surface–to-air missile. We’re out of the main part of the city now. If we crash land in the poorer areas no one will bat an eyelid. The people who fired on us will be called heroes. I’m sorry everyone but we can’t outrun it. We have to grab parachutes and go.”
“I have two wounded. There’s no way they can make it out in time,” said Gabe.
“Then I’m very sorry. I’ll try everything I can to dodge the missile but it will hit us.”
A solemn air filled the helicopter. We’d gotten so far but couldn’t survive a missile. To try and calm the situation I spoke to Grace about our favourite TV show and tried to remember what life had been like before all of this.
I heard a beeping sound as a message appeared on Gabe’s phone.
“Saloma. Get on the radio now!” shouted Gabe.
She flicked the radio on and repeated a code as Gabe read it to her. “887-6359-271, Newcastle. Do you copy? Over. I repeat 887-6359-271, Newcastle. Over.”
The computerised “Emergency,” voice continued to shout over the radio and the red dot got ever closer to our position.
“Confirmed,” said the voice on the radio as the missile behind us rose up higher and higher into the air until it exploded far above us. Debris rained down around us, small chunks of metal from the explosion just missing the sides of the helicopter. “Don’t leave it so late next time.”
We breathed a sigh of relief. Gabe would later ring his mystery texter back, who explained to us all she had seen our position rise by ten thousand feet and she figured we might need an airspace code. It seemed even Gabe was surprised by just how good a hacker she was.
We flew over the main train station and the large gates that led into the city. Somewhere down there my motorbike sat in a giant garage unlikely to be seen again. A remnant of my old life. Just another thing that I’d lost.
As I looked around the helicopter at my new allies I hoped I wouldn’t have to lose them too.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Emmie Keyes
As the helicopter started to descend I wondered where we could be. Newcastle perhaps? That had been the destination Jill had given us. Although it seemed unlikely she would have said our real destination, in case Tobias found out about our flight later.
The wheels hit solid ground and I felt relieved. I’d definitely developed a fear of heights recently. One near death fall and a helicopter escape had put me off heights for life.
Gabe wheeled me out of the helicopter and I looked around. The first thing I saw was the food stand I had helped give power to earlier. The owner looked stunned that a helicopter had arrived in such a remote place and I was too. I tried to guess why we were back here, there surely couldn’t be anything of use in such a damaged place.
I wondered if we were just making a quick stop off to meet Grace’s contact for more fake documents but Gabe’s statement of “Home sweet home,” put an end to that theory.
As March pushed Grace out of the helicopter, Gabe spoke to me. “Emmie. This location is secret, ok? If you tell anyone about this place you are risking the lives of a lot of people.”
I nodded, unsure exactly who I would tell. My best friend already worked for The Deck so there weren’t many people I could run around screaming this too. Yet I still wasn’t exactly sure what I’d be telling them about. A dodgy burger stand and a burnt out shopping centre? None of it seemed particularly worth protecting.
Saloma was handed another airspace code so she could get back into the city and we all thanked her for getting us here safely. “Wow. I wish my other passengers were so grateful,” she said, as if saving the lives of fugitives was something she did every day. She flew off into the distance, probably hoping for her sake that she would never see us again.
Gabe pushed my chair towards the shopping centre and we had a good conversation. I put his earlier outbursts down to the extremity of the situation. He hadn’t shot anyone, nor had he injured me so I was willing to write off his violence as that of a man affected by a war I had yet to see.
However when Grace and I were alone I would speak to her about it. If he was violent to her in any way then I would not be so forgiving.
We headed towards the shopping centre and the smell hit me. A damp smell, coupled with the sight of ash and debris made me feel sick again. “Are we going in there?” I asked, looking up at the triangular windows that hung perilously to the outside wall.
Gabe didn’t reply; he simply pushed me inside, probably as that was the easiest way to answer my question. The centre itself was the most destroyed building I had ever been inside, and that was quite a challenge considering some of the locations in Smyth West. Every step Gabe took I felt like something could kill me.
Metal
shutters hung down from the store fronts, their rusted metal spiralling outwards and waiting to cut visitors who strayed close to them. Shards of glass were loosely clinging to the ceiling and grains of metal flaked down on to our heads from their fixtures, taunting us that they could fall at any moment.
In amongst the decay was a glistening pillar of shiny metal unaffected by the fire of the elements that had destroyed this centre. Gabe entered a code on a keypad next to the large metal panel and the doors opened revealing an elevator that was every bit as pristine as the door that housed it.
“It can only fit two. You first Emmie,” said Gabe. March took my chair from Gabe and pushed me into the elevator. I looked at Grace. Her smile said it was safe and I didn’t resist.
As the door closed I realised I was probably about to enter the den of a terrorist group. Did this officially make me a terrorist now? Was I already one? The word ‘terrorist’ had taken on so many different meanings today that I didn’t know what to believe any more. Maybe it was worth being seen as a ‘terrorist’ if it meant I could help stop something horrible from happening.
“It’s ok Emmie. I trust these people with my life. They are good people,” said March and I realised I trusted him too. He’d done so much for me today it was hard not to.
The door opened and I was greeted by an extremely tall man. “Hi I’m Chris and you must be Emmie.”
He was wearing a grey army uniform with a Jack of Clubs playing card around his neck that was held in place by a metal chain. He reached out his palm and opened it to reveal a playing card with the back facing me. The back of the card was a green colour, with diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs interlocking to form a ‘D’ symbol.
I turned the card over, to find it was a ‘King of Clubs’ card. “That’s your profile in the group,” said Chris. “If we need to communicate with you in private then we will contact you as the King of Clubs. It means we can operate in secret so all emails are safe.”
“Does that mean I’m your boss?” I joked, knowing that a King was far more important than a Jack.
“Kind of,” he replied. “Cards indicate how important someone is to the group and who we need to protect. A King card is the most important of all and anyone of a lower rank should do everything they can to protect you.”
It all seemed overwhelming but strangely comforting to know I would be protected.
Behind Chris I could see The Deck’s base. It was a concrete structure with white panels inside it that had been spray painted with the different suits of a deck of cards. Aside from the spray paint, decorations were sparse and interior design was clearly not a concern of theirs.
What was clear was that the base itself was huge, easily the size of the centre I had walked through and I could see the room went far back and then spiralled off into other rooms that were divided by white temporary walls and red or black doors.
Before I could assess the room any further I felt an intense pain in my stomach and screamed out in agony.
“I need the medical room now!” shouted March.
“Ok I’ll get a support team ready,” replied Chris.
“No. I have no idea what they did to Emmie and I don’t want to risk anyone else. I’ll operate on her alone.”
His courage was impressive. I couldn’t tell if he cared for me or simply for the rest of The Deck but the sentiment was nice all the same.
The medical room looked like something out of a murder scene. It was a completely concrete room on all sides apart from a single temporary wall. The floor was covered in plastic sheeting, presumably for easier cleaning and the bed was nothing more than a slab of metal with four legs and three thick green towels placed on top of each other.
The medical equipment looked no better than the machines we had in Smyth West and they were mostly hand me downs that we’d found abandoned from other towns. There was a heart rate monitor that was upside down apart from the digital display which appeared to be the right way up. March moved a glass light over my head, which had a large crack in it and which made a horrible creaking sound as he moved it around. The Deck was not a state of the art operation.
Despite these problems this was the safest I had felt all day. As March administered the anaesthetic and I fell to sleep I knew he’d take good care of me. The last image I saw was March’s smiling face.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Emmie Keyes
I don’t know if it was the mixture of anaesthetic and morphine or simply the longing I’d felt that day for family to talk to but the dreams I remembered from my time asleep were all about my mother.
We had never met her but Will and I had kept pictures of her with us for as long as I could remember. She had died in childbirth, on one of the worst days in history. On that day over one hundred and twenty five million people had died and that was but a small part of the final death toll in the 20 Day Siege.
My mother was one of the last people to die on the last day of the Siege, an event that would take over a billion lives.
It felt so wrong that an event I had no control over had taken my mother from me. The people who had caused her death had been sent to jail or hunted down by the public. Justice had been served but it wasn’t enough for my father. He blamed himself for her death and never really got over it.
He moved us from London out to the small town of Smyth West. It was his way of protecting us from what the other large cities would become; sprawling masses of reallocated population and stark contrasts of wealth anderty. For him Smyth West represented a fresh start and a chance to get away from his past.
Yet it wasn’t enough. We lived with my father until our sixteenth Birthday but by then it was clear that he would not be able to come to terms with what had happened to his wife and our mother. On the day he left he told Will to look after me and explained that he could no longer live with what he had done. He simply could not forgive himself for what had happened. It wasn’t his fault but her death changed him.
Although we were saddened and it took us years to get over it, we knew he had changed long before the day he left. My earliest memory of him was at five years old watching him in his study with newspaper cuttings all over the walls. They told the events of the 20 Day Siege. One word was prominent across all of the cuttings and was circled in red by my father.
The Separationists.
In school or at least the large church hall in the centre of Smyth West where people shared knowledge, we had learnt about the deaths that occurred over those grim three weeks.
The first death was accidental. Despite the carnage they would unleash, the Separationists were not terrorists. They were scientists who believed that breaking the Tethers between twins would reduce casualties. It didn’t seem fair to them for someone to die if their twin died of an illness. They hoped that in cases where a twin was critically ill they could find a way to keep the healthy twin alive.
It was a noble idea and having survived the death of a twin I could now relate to what they wanted to achieve. Their research had ceased twenty one years ago but I did wonder if they played a role in my current unique situation.
On the third of June the Separationists made their breakthrough. They were able to isolate the frequency that Tether events used to transfer the emotions and sensations between twins. Their plan was a simple one. If they could replace the frequency with a different sound, it could break the Tether whilst allowing both subjects to live and die independently.
They aimed to test the theory on a small sample of people and not wanting to harm the core population they gained permission to run the study in Javon Prison, which was located in the heart of London.
The World Health Group reviewed their preliminary study and approved the experiment. Ten Government officials poured through their pre study data and gave them the go ahead. This was not the work of mad scientists operating on the edges of the law. This was a fully sanctioned study with good intentions.
Yet it was not meant to be.
They isolated the
frequency used by Tethers and added a small noise on the same wavelength designed to block it out. They tested it by using just enough noise to affect the participant in the room with them. Yet as soon as the quiet noise reached the same frequency as Tether events it drastically increased in volume and the researchers were killed instantly by the sound.
Scientists analysed these events over many years and found that the sound did break the Tether between people but it did not replace it as intended, therefore killing them instantly.
Prison guards tried to enter the room to stop the frequency but as soon as they approached the room the sound killed them too. Whilst power was stopped to the entire prison, effectively disabling the device, the signal was already out there and now it had started there was no one to stop it.
Even a desperate effort to contain the signal via a controlled explosion did nothing to stop it. Half of the prison was destroyed, crashing around the device but the signal was out there in the ether growing all on its own.
It was a crisis of epic proportions. The sound wave should have stopped itself instantly but it continued to grow louder and spread. There was no way to block the waves from travelling. Within two hours the prison was evacuated, with those who were not quick enough dying in the process.
Within eight hours the centre of London had to be evacuated as the sound grew in force.
It continued to grow, pulsing outwards and for every person it killed their twin would also die. Within four days the entire City of London had been evacuated. People stayed with family in other cities and hoped they could return home. At this point, the death toll stood at fifteen thousand but it was nothing compared to what was to come next.
The sound wave splintered as it emerged from London and travelled out across the globe, piggybacking its way through telecommunications networks. With no warning people started dying in every city of the world. Every scientist tried to find a solution and ultimately it was a team led by Tobias Zen who would save everyone.