Tethered Twins Saga: Complete Trilogy (Twins, Souls and Hearts)

by Mike Essex

  “We have to go, now!” said Chris and he ran out into the light.

  SEVEN

  I ducked out from the safety of the river’s edge and out onto the street. I had initially planned a slow crawl between the cars but that was no longer an option if I wanted the vehicles to be there long enough to hide me. My only option now was to follow Chris and hope that I could keep up with his energetic pace.

  He moved fluidly between the cars, keeping low and hiding his body between the remaining streams of vehicles but also maintaining a fast pace. Tom ran on ahead of me, chasing after Chris and trying his best to imitate every leap and movement of his mentor. Although I knew she was faster than me Grace ran behind, presumably to protect me.

  The clashing of metal on metal continued and the air from the drones blew up dust and debris into the air. This was both a blessing and a curse. The clutter helped hide us from the soldiers on the bridge but made it hard to see what we were running towards. I could barely see more than two cars in front of me.

  I lost sight of Chris and Tom when they leapt over a large 4x4 vehicle. By the time I’d reached the same vehicle they were nowhere to be seen. I looked around at the cars, trying to get my bearings. On my right I could make out the large bridge and further around I could see the reassuring structure of the clock tower.

  The wind swirled around me clouding my vision, and the drones continued to make my ears useless, yet by pushing forwards I eventually made my way through the maelstrom and reached the security of a large brick wall.

  “Portcullis House,” mouthed Grace, her voice inaudible in the chaos. She showed me her GPS display, held up a single finger and mouthed, “One more thing.”

  Grace’s GPS display changed to show a white circle with a red line through it. I recognised it from history lessons as the London Underground symbol and Grace confirmed that was where we would be heading.

  The wind forced us to press our backs up against the wall of the building. With our movement restricted we used our arms to drag ourselves along and towards the edge of Portcullis House.

  I looked around the corner with the force from the drones threatening to tear the head from my body and saw that they had not yet reached the road ahead. We still had several hundred yards to go completely exposed. The only glimmer of hope was the London Underground sign and steps descending down to a momentary safe haven.

  Looking back at Grace she gave me a reassuring thumbs up and I moved around the corner. As I escaped from the path of the drones my body was pushed forward into a run by the escape of air. It propelled me forwards and gave me no option but to dash for the stairs. My eyes snaked left and right trying to quickly take in as much of the road as I could. Hoping that we’d found a moment without soldiers on patrol.

  The London Underground sign passed over my head as I darted down the steps. As I reached a larger step I placed my hands on my knees and gasped for air. I turned around to see Grace reach the top of the stairwell, just in time to hear the thunder of a gunshot as it pierced through the air. Her body tumbled down the steps towards me.

  EIGHT

  Grace’s body hit the steps with a horrific crunching sound and it was only through lucky timing that I managed to grab her head before her jaw smashed against the floor.

  I cried out her name and held her head in my arms. She was all I had now. One of the only people left I could trust. I couldn’t lose her. Not now.

  Tom came dashing down the steps whilst the sound of more gunshots echoed outside the tunnel. Chris jumped in and pulled a large steel grate across the entrance, sealing us inside and trapping us in an underground cave filled with only darkness.

  I held Grace against me and sobbed. Overhead lights kicked into action causing my eyes to sting and I kept Grace close to me whilst Chris and Tom checked her over.

  “It’s ok,” said Chris. He placed his hands around the sides of my face to reassure me but I batted them away. He placed them back there again. “Listen. She has a pulse.”

  I looked down at Grace to see her eyes open and hear her utter a groan. “I hate bruises,” she said.

  Seeing the look of shock on my face Grace lifted her shirt to show me a thick layer of orange gel that coated the clothing beneath. “You’re wearing it too Emmie.”

  I lifted the top Grace had given me and sure enough there was a second layer of thick gel on the clothing she had given me. The last time I’d seen this gel it had been worn by soldiers employed at TethTech and acted as body armour, The Deck must have repurposed the technology.

  “March, you are a genius. That is all,” said Grace to her comms device.

  “So we’re bulletproof?” asked Tom, presumably wanting to go on an invincible rampage.

  “Only when we are wearing this clothing and only from a long distance. A close range shot or a knife will still break through the seal,” clarified Chris.

  “So can’t we just cover our faces with the gel?” asked Tom.

  “Sure,” replied Chris, “if you don’t want to breathe.”

  With Grace now on her feet we looked to her for guidance on what to do next. In the fall her GPS device had smashed against the floor leaving her without instructions.

  “Jill?” asked Grace. “I need directions to the elevator.”

  The instructions were complicated but Jill promised she would walk us through them step by step.

  “But won’t we lose signal underground?” I asked.

  “Not thanks to TethTech,” said Jill, “The earpieces you are wearing were made to be used for warzones in urban areas. So long as they can find signals from other technologies such as the Underground Wi-Fi they will keep us in constant contact. It’s the same way March kept in touch with you in the sewage tunnels.”

  The underground was surprisingly warm, given the mild climate outside and it felt like someone had left the heating on full blast. As uncomfortable as it made me feel, anything was preferable to the dank cold of the sewers.

  We proceeded down the stairs and into what had once been the main ticketing area, past freshly printed posters declaring ‘A New London, A New State.’

  Whilst the city above us had become a twisted shadow of its former self the station was seemingly unaffected.

  Its tiled floor shone as if recently waxed and the metal structures around us reflected the interior onto beautifully polished surfaces. The ticket machines looked as if they had just been installed and even the screws and brackets that held in place the fittings had a bright grey shine.

  In this broken city the most worrying place to be was not the streets of decay, it was this pristine prison. If the station had been cleaned and renovated then that meant people were here and that this was not a safe place to be.

  “The first part of warzone regeneration,” said Chris. “They fix the city’s infrastructure, so that soldiers and workmen can travel easily and then they get started on the rest.”

  We jumped over the turnstiles and made our way down a giant double escalator. The room was flooded with light, highlighting the giant stone structures which ran across the ceiling above us. We ran down the escalator knowing that this room would not be a good location for a shootout.

  At the bottom of the escalator the corridor branched off to different platforms. A giant bronze coloured circle sat flat on the ceiling above us indicating the end of the walkway. It snaked around to the platforms with white florescent lights shining across it; little glowing beacons perfectly illuminating our location.

  Grace went through a passageway marked ‘Jubilee Line’ and quickly turned back towards us. Her face said all we needed to know; people were here. We quickly looked around for an exit. There was nowhere to run. We’d never make it back up the escalator in time and the room we were in now was completely exposed.

  She motioned for us to come towards her and we pressed our bodies up against the wall. Grace stood next to the walkway on one side with Chris on the other. They looked up at the newly polished ceiling and could see the reflection of
the soldiers as they approached through the opening.

  Working in unison Grace hit the first soldier in the jaw whilst Chris pulled his soldier out from the opening, placed a hand across their mouth and smashed their head against the wall. Grace’s soldier lay unconscious on the floor but Chris was not yet finished with his. He retrieved his gun and held it up towards the soldiers’ head.

  “How many more of you are there?” said Chris, his voice quiet so as not to draw attention but still filled with malice. He removed his hand slightly from the soldier’s mouth but the soldier started to scream out for support.

  Chris shoved his hand back in place and jammed his gun into the soldier’s temple. He clicked the safety off his weapon and asked the question again, louder this time. The soldier looked back at him without fear. The man did not shake or wince, he welcomed his fate.

  Angry now, Chris fired his gun several times towards the escalator. The sound of the gun firing made little noise thanks to his silencer but it did make the tip of his gun incredibly hot, something Chris relied on as he pressed the barrel of the silencer across the skin of the soldier where it started to blister him.

  “I have a lot of bullets so I can do this for quite some time.”

  Now we could see fear in the soldiers eyes as he realised he was no longer dealing with a bunch of amateurs. The searing pain caused his eyes to tear up. He nodded his head to indicate he was willing to help, so Chris removed his hand.

  As the last one of Chris’ fingers gave way the man moved his jaw forward and clamped his teeth around it. He pulled his mouth to the side breaking Chris’ finger with a loud crunching sound.

  The soldier reached down for his weapon but before he could fire, a bullet ruptured through his skull. We looked towards the source of the bullet to see Tom holding his weapon, a look of horror on his face.

  He looked at the gun, then back at the soldier and at the gun again unsure what he had just done. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” he mumbled.

  “It was life or death, kid,” said Chris as he cracked his little finger back into place. He seemed untroubled by any pain. “You could have saved my life back there. You did the right thing.”

  Tom’s face seemed to clear as the guilt was lifted from him. It was an easy way to justify what he had done and to gain some connection again to the real world. Tom was not a stone cold killer yet but he was well on his way.

  NINE

  Chris took some grenades from the fallen solider and handed me his gun.

  “I’ve never used anything like this before,” I stated, looking at the automatic rifle.

  “It’s easy,” said Chris, “just don’t point it towards me when you fire.”

  Chris seemed unwilling to swap his weapon for the rifle so I swung it over my shoulder in the hope that I’d never have to use it.

  We walked through the ‘Jubilee Line’ entrance carefully checking for more soldiers. At the end of the platform there was a waist high yellow gate which we jumped over as we carried on forwards. We walked down another stairwell and reached a curved elevator embossed with the royal seal.

  “Jill, can you hack a terminal for me?” asked Grace.

  “You already know the answer,” replied Jill, echoing across my headset.

  Grace read a serial number from the terminal and Jill relayed to us a sequence of numbers that allowed us to reset it from an access panel. The elevator quickly came down to us and opened up.

  Chris checked the walkway behind us for any last signs of soldiers and when all was clear we made our way into the elevator and rose up to the Houses of Parliament.

  “I wonder where we’ll end up?” I asked, rhetorically.

  “In the main hallway,” replied Jill, already one step ahead. “I’ve checked the building schematics and it seems the elevator you are in was used by members of Parliament to quickly access meetings.”

  “And quickly escape if there was any sign of trouble?” asked Grace.

  “Definitely.”

  True enough the lift did open up onto a large entranceway with ornate statues, extravagant décor and gold plated ceiling fixtures. This building had yet to be reclaimed in the renovation efforts but was still a magnificent sight despite the decay.

  We decided to head for the elevator that had taken us down to Tobias’ lab last time we were here; it seemed likely that it would also take us to Will, or at least the place he had been hiding. Our memories were a little shaky on the route – Grace and I had mainly taken the path whilst either chasing someone or being chased – but we combined our knowledge and with the help of Jill were able to identify its exact location.

  The route took us back into the main chamber but it was a different sight than before. The room had previously been filled with people but now lay vacant. The only signs of any change were the abandoned bags and sleeping materials.

  “They left here in a rush,” said Grace. “This wasn’t a planned escape.”

  “Probably by force,” explained Chris, pointing to the bullet holes that peppered the room. “What’s theirs is ours now,” he jumped up on to the seats and started searching through bags.

  It felt wrong to take from their supplies but there was no indication that anyone would be returning. Whatever had driven them from this place had done so with such unrelenting force that people had been prepared to leave behind their food and their shelter. It made staying here a daunting prospect.

  We each filled our backpacks with food and a sleeping bag in case we needed to rest on our journey. There were no medical supplies amongst the packs; a worrying sign for Olive. Despite this we remained confident that the lab would have supplies that had not yet been discovered.

  From the main chamber we passed through a broken set of double doors and a destroyed library. Both locations were a reminder of the day Vlad had chased me, knife in hand and a reminder that he was now working with my brother and a mutual friend.

  Upon reaching the elevator at the end of the library it was disappointing not to see Will when the doors opened but it had been hours since our Tether event. He could have covered a lot of ground in that time.

  From The Deck’s base Jill hacked the elevator and we descended down to level U8.

  “So what are you hoping to find Emzie?” asked Grace, using her pet name for me.

  I was secretly hoping Will would be sat in a chair, waiting to see me but that seemed somewhat unlikely. “Any clue that will lead me to him.”

  I had no idea what type of clue would help but there had to be something, anything. Unfortunately as the elevator doors opened we were faced with nothing. Just a large, but empty room with white padded walls. No clues and no hope.

  TEN

  “I’m not crazy!”

  As I stared at the vacant space I uttered those words partly to convince myself but also to reassure the others that I hadn’t led them on a wild goose chase.

  “He was here. Right here!” I motioned my hands to the room. Hoping that what I had seen was real.

  At first no one uttered a word of doubt but the more time we spent searching the room for secrets the more it seemed like everything could have been imagined. The room contained nothing more than four identical white walls, one of which held the lift and the others were just heavily padded surfaces.

  The room was brightly lit with every inch illuminated; further filling my mind with fears that this was all there was down here.

  Eventually Jill uttered “Perhaps it was a different floor?” her words deliberately chosen so as to ensure there was still hope. Ultimately they sounded a little flat, like even she was starting to worry this was all we would find in this cavernous white space.

  “No this has to be right,” I explained. “U8. That’s what the elevator panel said in my Tether event and that’s where we are now. This is it.”

  It was Chris who said what everyone had no doubt been thinking. “It can’t have been real,” his words were so cold, so stark and so final.

  Was this it? Would we be
forced to go back to the others and explain that Olive had been injured for nothing? Would we even survive making it out of the city?

  “Let’s go to another floor, get the medicine for Olive and go,” said Chris, not wanting to waste another minute on my mad fantasies.

  “You go,” said Grace, “I’ll stay for a little longer.”

  “You’re wasting time!” realising his argument was pointless, Chris took Tom out of the room and they disappeared into the elevator.

  “I’m not crazy, Grace. It didn’t feel like a dream, it felt exactly the same as when Will and I had been connected before.”

  “Then we’d better keep looking,” she smiled at me and starting running her hands across the floor, the one surface we hadn’t checked.

  The second Grace placed her hands on to the floor the right side wall started to shake.

  “Are you doing that?” I asked.

  “No,” she removed her hands but the wall continued to move, splitting in two and then opening up to reveal a hidden room. We called Jill to see if she could explain what had happened but we remained unsure whether it was the elevator rising or touching the floor that had given us our answers. Nevertheless the how was not important, we cared more about the why.

  As we walked into the room and I saw the large container that Will had slept in, it confirmed for me that this was where he had been hiding. He had closed himself away from the world in a secret room on a hidden floor. “What other secrets are you hiding?” I asked Will silently.

  The room was exactly how Will had left it in my vision; with a large glass tube, medical equipment and a solitary computer. I was thankful for the proof I wasn’t crazy and that he was truly out there. The only question now was where. We needed to find clues.