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

by Mike Essex

  Our first step was to access the room’s computer which was password protected. Jill walked us through a simple hacking procedure to break through the initial password which loaded up the desktop. From here we could see a Government logo with an icon to access the computer’s files which were seemingly empty.

  “He must have deleted his files,” I said.

  “Nothing is ever completely deleted” said Jill whilst she told us a web address to visit that would give her complete access to the computer so she could work her magic.

  Whilst we waited for Jill we continued to explore the room. The tube that had contained Will was by far the most mysterious part; a large cylindrical glass container with metallic tips at the top and bottom. The floor of the tube was covered with a thick liquid that had mostly been evacuated via drains in the floor.

  Inside the tube was a large piece of foam that went from the top to the bottom but with enough space in front of it to fit a human. Curiosity got the better of me and I pushed my hand against the foam which quickly dispersed to leave an imprint of my hand. Once I moved my hand away again the foam regained its shape like I had never been there. It must have served as padding for the many months Will spent in there.

  We described the tube to March over the comms unit and he identified it as a “Mobile Preservation Unit” or an “MPU”.

  When pushed for more information March explained; “It’s a piece of TethTech kit that’s designed to sustain whoever stays inside it for years without the need for them to eat or take on other resources. The liquid you see in the tube acts as a natural food source for the body including all of the nutrients Will would have needed to stay alive down here until it was safe.”

  “Why would TethTech have created such a thing?” I asked.

  “It was designed for wars where there was a lack of natural resources for soldiers. It’s common in warfare for one side to cut off the food supply of another group to make them weak and easy to take over. These tubes were created to allow an army to stay in stasis whilst they waited for more food to arrive from their base.”

  “Wouldn’t the other army just open the pods and kill them?”

  “Only if they could find them. The shape of the pods means they can drill under the ground and back out again when it’s safe. It’s quite unusual to see one stored in a lab like this, unless it was for testing. But if anyone had the resources to get a tube moved here then it was your brother, back at TethTech he could get anything signed off.”

  This was the first time I’d heard March speak about Will and their years together at TethTech.

  “Do you miss him too?” I asked.

  “All the time. I should have seen what Tobias was planning for him sooner, all of us should have. You never really know what the people in power are planning until it’s too late.”

  Aside from a table of cutting supplies, no doubt acquired by Vlad, the other devices in the room seemed to be little more than health monitors designed to check Will had been revived correctly.

  By the time Chris and Tom returned with a box of medical supplies for Olive we’d searched the room from top to bottom and couldn’t find any extra panels or hidden doorways. A part of me wanted to keep searching for days but we had a responsibility to Olive and had already been gone for far too long. Once she had recovered we could always come back.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find something,” promised Jill, our best hope now of tracking Will down.

  ELEVEN

  Our planned return to Olive split us into two groups, one with the fastest runners – Tom and Chris – and the other with Grace and me. Both groups headed towards the large clock tower.

  The route there was relatively unguarded and I thankfully was not encouraged to use my ridiculous assault rifle for fear it would make too much noise and attract unwanted attention.

  “So why am I lugging this around again?” I asked.

  “You need a weapon Emmie, the soldiers carry assault rifles too, therefore that’s your weapon,” Chris rudely replied.

  We reached a small arched walkway with marble flooring and a rickety wooden door labelled “Clock Tower”. The hallway opened up to the outside leaving us exposed to any soldiers in the courtyard or the main road. We were so close to freedom and yet so close to being captured.

  For our part of the plan Grace and I went through the Clock Tower door and left Tom and Chris to watch the courtyard. After cautiously walking through the door I looked up and saw what looked like thousands of steps leading to the top of the tower. A black railing teased us to venture upwards whilst my body instinctively ached at the thought of so many stairs.

  “Don’t worry, there’s only 334 steps across 62 meters,” said Jill through our ear pieces, as if that was somehow going to make us less daunted by the long upwards climb.

  “Chris is lucky he’s such a good runner,” I joked, although his task was no easy feat either.

  The spiral staircase made me feel dizzy and despite my best efforts I couldn’t help periodically looking down at my progress and looking up at the long way left to go. We saw a sign which read “Please Do Not Run Down These Stairs” something I felt you’d have to be mad to attempt.

  When we were almost at the top we passed a room filled with cogs that had once powered the majestic tower. Large pieces of clockwork lay rusted and broken alongside missing pieces of track where other parts of the machinery had presumably been ripped out by scavengers. Tucked under the machinery was a black bin bag of rubbish that looked to be housing some old rope.

  “Just a bit further” we said to each other. For Grace the twenty minute long journey didn’t seem to have any effect, whilst I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. It was a reminder of how unfit I felt compared to the other members of The Deck who seemed like they’d been trained for war.

  We readied our weapons as we came around to the final step, careful to control our breathing so we could be as silent as possible. This made me want to inhale even more, especially following the long upwards journey.

  I closed my eyes and waited for a second, focusing on staying calm. When I opened my eyes Grace took my hands and my heart rate started to decrease. I mouthed the word “ready” and arched my way around the final corner with my gun at the ready.

  We spotted the soldier instantly. The same sniper who had shot Grace in the back was now surveying the ground below trying to pick out his next target. Stopping him was essential for a safe journey back and the reason we had climbed so high.

  I positioned the sights of my gun so they were over his head. Taking a life was not something that came easily to me but this was a threat that had hurt my friend and could do far more damage. Before I could pull the trigger Grace stepped in front of the crosshairs and began walking towards the sniper.

  “What are you doing?” cried the voice in my head, hoping for some way to relay that message to Grace so she’d stop. Yet she was determined to face the soldier head on. As she walked towards him she tapped a button on her comms unit three times, sending out the signal for Chris and Tom to run and not look back. This was their chance.

  Moments later a loud clatter came from the ground below. The sniper turned his attention towards the noise at which point Grace jumped onto his back, pulling him away from the window.

  She smashed the soldier’s back against the wall, shattering part of the glass clock face and bending the iron rails that held it in place.

  “Who are you?” he muttered, his left arm reaching for a knife I could see pinned against his leg.

  “I’m a vengeance girl,” said Grace, who drove a knee into his groin, causing him to drop the knife before he had chance to use it.

  From the street below we could hear heavy gunfire as Chris and Tom made their escape. Whilst Grace tied the soldier to a series of cogs I took his rifle and zoomed in to watch their mad dash.

  The streets had changed again, the small cubes now cleared away. The dirt and blood on the city streets had been wiped clean leaving them lo
oking brand new, aside from the cracks that were subtle reminders this was a city still healing. In time I had no doubt they would be fixed too.

  Chris had lost none of his earlier speed as he dashed across the road. The cleaning efforts meant that he had less hiding places; it was just an empty road out in the open. He fired at three soldiers on the bridge; two of them dropped down to avoid the gunshots and the third took a bullet to his head.

  Tom followed behind, taking on guards who emerged from the Underground station. He shot a soldier in the chest but it had no impact. The soldier stood tall and fired back without a moment’s hesitation.

  As the soldier lined up his shot to finish off Tom, I fired a shot from the rifle shattering the pavement next to him. It was distracting enough for the soldier to look away for a second and for Tom to scuttle around the side of the building and dash across the road.

  As Tom reached the end of the road more soldiers closed in on him darting down from the bridge and emerging from a nearby building. There were ten soldiers now, no twenty soldiers, who chased after Tom in a half circular pattern, trying to cut him off. I fired shots at the ground to distract them and some of the soldiers started to aim their guns in my direction instead.

  A bullet narrowly missed Tom’s head and shattered a streetlight. The soldier refined his aim but before he could shoot Chris fired a bullet at the soldier’s head causing him to drop to the floor. Rather than protecting himself Chris stayed out in the open covering Tom until he could make it safely over the railing.

  I lost sight of them as they darted down the embankment and towards the sewer entrance. I turned away from the opening for just a second and heard two final gunshots. I twisted back, grabbing the scope of the rifle in my hands to see what had happened and was only greeted with the sight of the soldiers turning and walking away.

  “Did you make it?” I asked into my comms unit. There was no reply. “Did you make it!?” I shouted louder.

  “Yes,” replied Chris, “we’re climbing down now, I’ll update you when we reach them.”

  “They made it,” I told Grace.

  She looked back at the soldier we had captured. “Why did you attack us? This is supposed to be a time of peace!”

  He offered no explanation.

  “We have a right to walk the streets. We are citizens of the UK and this is our city too.”

  “Your city?” the wording caught his interest. “This city belongs to the rich and powerful not poor cave dwellers. You are nothing more than have-not scum.”

  “What did you call me?” Grace raised a palm in the air ready to slap him. There was ample opportunity for me to stop her but I didn’t. As her palm caught contact with his face there was a satisfying crack that made me feel like I’d made the right decision.

  He laughed with a cackle. “You have-nots lack class. A slap? Really? I could kill you in seconds in hundreds of ways and all you can do is slap me? You’re weak. Pathetic. Cowardl ...”

  Grace placed a hand over his mouth cutting him off mid-sentence, not because she wanted him to stop talking – although that was a factor – but because there were other sounds echoing around our room.

  I looked out of the door to see soldiers flowing up the stairwell. We needed a new plan and we needed it fast.

  TWELVE

  Our original plan had been to take out the sniper and then dart down the stairs to escape once Tom and Chris had caused enough of a distraction outside. As we heard countless soldiers run up the stairs it was clear that plan was no longer an option.

  “How did they find us?” I asked Grace.

  She pointed to the sniper rifle in my hands and I knew it was my fault. The torrent of soldiers arriving to kill us was doing so because of me.

  “I’ve got an idea. Cover me,” said Grace opening the door to the room and starting to run down the stairs.

  Before I had time to ask her if she was crazy, she was gone. Heading after her I positioned myself in the doorway and angled the sniper rifle down towards the stairs.

  “She’s left you all alone. You’re done for,” mocked the soldier in my room.

  Grace ran quickly down the steps and had it been anyone else I would have assumed I’d been abandoned. I zoomed in on the steps and saw tens of soldiers making their way up them. She couldn’t possibly be hoping to push past all of them. Could she?

  The soldiers had covered a third of the stairwell and I started to fire on them in an effort to keep them back and stop them spotting Grace. She disappeared from sight and in amongst the countless rings of stairs I couldn’t remember where I had last seen her.

  “Where are you Grace?”

  “You are going to die here,” teased the soldier from behind me.

  “Shut up,” I shouted back, whilst reloading.

  “It’s pointless. There are thousands of us here. We own this city now.”

  I blocked his words from my mind. I couldn’t care less about this city and the soldiers within its walls. All I wanted to do was find Will. They could do what they wanted with London.

  I ran the rifle’s sights over the railing in a circular motion trying to see where Grace had disappeared to. The soldiers continued to run up the stairs, almost at the halfway point. After they reached the room with the cogs it wouldn’t take long for them to find me.

  “The cogs.”

  I quickly scanned upwards with the sight and saw Grace emerge from the room where the cogs had been carrying a large black bag over her shoulder. She tossed two grenades behind her which started to flood the lower levels with smoke, making it harder for me to see the soldiers, but hopefully impairing their vision just the same.

  With a watchful eye I continued to look out for any soldiers that had broken free of the smoke. As a warning I fired more shots into the stairwell to try and hold them back. Grace was slowly heading up the stairs with the bag but the smoke gave her the edge she needed to arrive without injury.

  She dived into the room as the smoke started to clear, the soldiers running up the steps desperate to make us pay. I closed the door tightly and Grace dropped the large bag in front of it.

  In the minutes that followed Grace quickly explained the new plan, fitted numerous grey hooks and pulleys to the outside wall and attached a black harness around my waist and shoulders.

  “You’re sure this will work?” I asked Grace as she fiddled with her own harness.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m sure but it’ll be fun. People used to pay to do this you know.”

  “Looters didn’t even want this kit Grace. It could be rusted through and snap at any time!”

  “We can but try.”

  “There is no try! We either survive or die!”

  “Only one way to find out,” Grace applied a red clip and a grey clip to my harness and grabbed my hand pulling me towards the edge of the walkway. “Are you ready?”

  I wasn’t sure why she asked as there really only was one way to go now. Grace turned around so her back was facing the opening and slowly bent her knees. She held a hand either side of the opening and lent backwards. “Your turn.”

  The noises were getting louder now and I could hear the individual sounds of boots hitting each step. Seeing no other way out I walked to the edge of the building and lowered myself down. As I positioned myself on the edge I tried not to look at the long drop below me.

  “Go!” shouted Grace and without thinking I released my arms from the side of the building, grabbed on to the chord tethering me to the building and jumped out into the void. For a split second I felt completely weightless; hanging in the air waiting for gravity to take me in its arms. Then I fell.

  I hurtled towards the ground, praying Grace had set everything up correctly and that the kit would hold. As the outside of Big Ben whizzed past my eyes, my vision started to blur and I found myself unable to focus. To gain some stability I looked down and to my side to see Grace closer to the ground than me and I watched her with a keen interest, knowing that if she survived I had a higher chan
ce of making it.

  As her body came closer to the ground I wanted to look away. It seemed impossible for her to stop in time and I didn’t want to see my friend die, especially if it meant I too would die seconds later.

  For a moment it felt like I was catching up to her, as her descent slowed but mine continued rapidly towards the ground. Had hers worked but mine failed? Thankfully a second before I could reach the floor my harness caught me and pulled me up and away from the ground. We both touched down in near unison and ripped off our harnesses as quickly as we could.

  The streets were quieter now, with many soldiers making their way up the tower, no doubt sure they had found a way to trap us. The soldiers I’d seen Chris kill had already had their bodies removed; hopefully disposing of them was another distraction for the opposing force.

  We used this to our advantage, firing at the remaining soldiers and pinning them back. The assault rifle finally came in handy, helping me to fire off a large amount of suppressive fire whenever I saw anyone emerge from cover.

  We ran behind the barrier and darted down the steps towards safety. Grace fired behind us to stop any soldiers from following us and I dived down the hole and grabbed on to the ladder. For a moment I had a horrific sense of Déjà vu, imagining Grace being impacted by a bullet and falling down the hole on top of me.

  When Grace appeared above me I was filled with relief and could only hope we hadn’t been followed. It wouldn’t take much for anyone to shoot us in this tunnel. Grace threw a grenade out of the tunnel and the outside world became flooded with smoke that slowly descended into the tube.

  “Go, go, go!” said Grace. We climbed down as quickly as we could, hoping that the smoke would stay and cover our escape.

  The middle of the tunnel was pitch black. The light from above could not reach us and the light of the sewers didn’t rise up. The moment when we reached that sheer darkness was filled with serenity. Then we heard the sounds of boots hitting metal as the soldiers started to follow us down. This time they wouldn’t be giving up.