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

by Mike Essex

  “Help me!” I shouted.

  “Help you? You did this!”

  “You did this?” Those words filled me with chills. He couldn’t think I’d deliberately set the fire, could he? All Jacobi had to go off were the first hand accounts of his men on the horizon. Maybe he did think I’d done this. That was not good news for everyone I loved.

  “I told you not to betray me!” his voice was full of anger.

  “I promise I didn’t do this. Please do not hurt my friends,” I begged but he didn’t reply. “If I die here please promise you’ll keep them safe.”

  “Let me make one thing clear. If you don’t make it back to my colleagues then your injured friend will die. It’s that simple,” the radio crackled as he cancelled the call.

  There was no time to think about Jacobi’s lack of heart, all that mattered was getting out alive. Even if I got injured, burned or close to death, so long as I made it to the edges of the then Olive would be ok. That was all that mattered.

  I circled around the base looking for an opening in the grass and spotted a small clearing where the greenery parted. It must have been how the soldiers got to and from the base without braving the jungle around it.

  I coughed as much of the smoke from out of my lungs as I could and took in a deep breath of air. Savouring that last breath, I raised my jacket over my head to lightly cover my face and dashed forwards into the clearing.

  The clearing would normally have been wide enough for a car but the fires pressed inwards and swirled through the air shrinking the route significantly. I couldn’t see where the path ended and it was all I could do to keep my head down and run in the direction of the gravel path under my feet.

  My hands stung from the fire as it brushed against my knuckles, urging me to let go and release the only protection I had. I kept following the gravel until I heard a loud crack roar out through the sky. I looked up towards the sound and watched as a large sycamore tree plummeted down onto the grass in front of me.

  Flames shot out through the air, propelled by the falling tree and came to a rest on my jacket. They quickly worked their way through its fabric and I tossed it to the ground. I raised my foot to stamp out the flames and remembered the vial inside it. I flipped the jacket over and reached inside, the fire tickling at my exposed arm.

  All I wanted to do was cry from the pain but the vial was all that mattered. I frantically felt around for the pocket and retrieved the vial, sheltering it with my hands. The liquid was still safe but the container had started to form small cracks. If I couldn’t escape soon it would surely break.

  I stepped on my jacket until the flames subsided. My face was exposed to the smoke now and I could start to feel it take over my body, affecting my breathing. I placed the jacket back over my head but there was no more air to trap. Where moments ago there had been light, now I was surrounded by nothing but the darkness of the smoke.

  With no idea how much distance there was left to go I started to run down the gravel path. The running caused me to use up my remaining oxygen quicker but meant I could cover more ground. I felt like a child again, running to avoid the raindrops in a storm. It didn’t matter that the rain would always still hit you, if you were running it felt like you were unstoppable and that you could somehow avoid every raindrop.

  That’s how I felt in those moments as the fire scratched away at my body. “If I keep running it can’t hurt me,” that’s what I told myself.

  For those few moments I didn’t feel the fire or the smoke, all I could feel was my body fighting to run as fast as it possibly could. All I cared about was the feeling of running and of my body pushing itself to the limit. It helped me block out the pain and the fear. When my knees became weak I focused on Olive and Will, and imagined myself running to them.

  My mind wanted to escape and my body tried all that it could but in the end the smoke took over. I could ignore the burns but I couldn’t ignore my lungs and when the smoke filled them completely I fell to the floor gasping for air. I tried to raise myself up again but my body had finally given in. My mind soon followed, unable to convince my body to carry on it soon switched off and then I felt the pain.

  All at once my entire body felt the searing heat my mind had been blocking out. It overwhelmed my senses and I let out a scream from the pain. My last sight was of a scalded red hand reaching out to me and closing my eyes so I would no longer fear what was next to come.

  It was the touch of Death.

  PART TWO

  TWENTY ONE

  When I opened my eyes again it was not Death who greeted me but the faces of “John” and “Doe”.

  “You … saved … me” I weakly spoke in between fits of coughing.

  “Not us,” said John, “we just found you like this. You are lucky to be alive.”

  I raised my head and coughed for minutes. The air was clear here and I savoured every last breath that I could.

  Looking down at my hands I could see the burns that were etched across them. A permanent reminder of how close I had come to death. The tops of my knuckles were worst affected, all blistered and chapped from holding the jacket over my face. It hurt to bend them now and I hoped something in the medical centre would be able to soothe the aching.

  My arms had red blotches burnt into them in wavy patterns and I could feel stinging across my face where the fire had scorched its way through the jacket. Seeing my burns reminded me of the hand that had helped me. It had been profusely scarred and burned, especially on the finger tips which were almost purple in colour. I asked “John” and “Doe” to hold out their hands but aside from a few scratches and dirt that you’d expect from a have-not they showed no signs of heavy damage.

  Then I remembered something else about my saviour. Their sleeve had been a dark purple colour with red and yellow circles crisscrossing up and down the arm. I had seen a pattern like it before but my head hurt too much to remember where. I decided to keep their existence secret for now. Jacobi and his colleagues were the last people I trusted.

  “Did you get it?” asked John.

  Instinctively I patted my hand against my jacket pocket to find the vial. Panic set in as I realised it wasn’t there. I took my jacket off and frantically searched through the pockets. “Where is it… where is it?” I mumbled to myself.

  After I’d searched through the pockets I tossed the jacket to the floor and a realisation hit me, “My jeans!” I reached down into my pocket, my hand aching from the burns, and retrieved the vial. Its outer casing had cracked on the surface but it hadn’t penetrated deeper. A few more knocks or longer in the fire and it probably would have smashed to pieces.

  On seeing the vial John held out his hands but I placed it back inside my pocket. “Not until my friends are free,” I stated. It was the only bargaining chip I had left; there was no way I would be giving it up. “I’ll hand it to Jacobi myself.”

  “Very well,” said John and he held out a hand to raise me to my feet. I ignored it and stood up on my own. It took a little longer and hurt a lot more but I wasn’t ready to accept any more false kindness from them.

  They walked me towards a white stone building with a small plaque identifying it as H.M. Treasury and we made our way inside.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “This is where the rich made decisions on how everyone else lived,” replied John. “They punished the poor and increased the wealth of the rich. No one fought back, they just took it.”

  “So they’re the reason we ended up with haves and have-nots?”

  “Exactly, not the Siege. Our country was broken long before that. The Siege was just the trigger that caused our country to fall.”

  In the treasury we made our way past ransacked computer desks and offices.

  “Isn’t this where money was created? Shouldn’t this place be full of machinery?” I asked.

  “Money is nothing more than a digital illusion,” replied John. “It’s no wonder the system fell.”

  We ma
de our way towards an imposing metal door propped open inviting us inside. I expected to see security boxes for money or shelves for valuables but the safe was empty except for a table and chair which lay shattered on the floor.

  Doe removed a panel from the floor to reveal a staircase which took us down into tunnels beneath the building. They walked me through them without a blindfold this time. I made a mental note of our route through the tunnels in an attempt to piece together where we were travelling. As the routes twisted round and back on us it became harder to create a map in my mind.

  “Are you taking me round in circles?” I asked.

  “Not quite,” replied John. “It’s a pretty tricky route to remember. This place wasn’t designed for people to find it easily. The royals spent months remembering the routes and years protecting them from intruders.”

  “The royals?”

  John stopped talking, a sign that he had said too much. For the rest of the walk he remained as quiet as Doe. This suited me fine; the last thing I wanted was to be apprehended by soldiers before we could return the vial.

  Our return journey took us to another gated wall with cameras. John stood patiently on the spot whilst the camera checked him over and then the large doorway opened granting him access.

  As the doors opened a familiar figure was waiting for me; Jacobi.

  “Welcome to Q-Whitehall,” he exclaimed. With his right arm he ran a sensor over my ear and the earpiece released its grip falling into his hand. He pocketed it and then held out his hand again eagerly “Well then, what did you get for me?”

  “Help my friends first,” I showed him the vial and quickly pocketed it again to protect it.

  “Very well, you have passed the test after all. Come with me.”

  Q-Whitehall was an impressive structure to behold. The entrance walkway was fitted with gold fixtures and a floor made of vibrantly coloured tiles. The ceiling was decorated in classical paintings, depicting the royal family through the centuries but lacking the final royals that had disappeared after the 20 Day Siege.

  We walked through three large rooms; one of which contained hundreds of rows of clothes in stacked wardrobes. Shoes, bags, scarves, underwear, jackets, dresses, trousers, tops; there must have been millions of clothing combinations in there, each neatly hung on shiny metal railings, everything organised immaculately.

  The second room contained more neatly stacked shelves, this time containing canned foods, large jugs of water and cooking materials. This was the most bare of all the rooms, only a small amount of the available space housing food, the rest gathering dust.

  The last room was filled with bookcases twenty feet high, with walkways running around them. The curved ceiling was a beautiful white, embossed with a royal crest weaving its way around a golden chandelier that illuminated the space, along with electronic candles at the end of every bookcase.

  The warmth of a crackling fireplace at the end of the room and the glowing lights for a second made me forget that I was underground, allowing me to become lost in the space. I wondered how such a sight could be possible when minutes before we had been navigating through a sewer.

  “What was this place?” I asked.

  “A safe haven for the royals,” said Jacobi, “except it is our home now.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Who knows? They’re probably hidden away in some manor house living out their days without worrying about this city or this country any more. Blissful ignorance, much like their time in power.”

  I looked up at the ceiling at the empty space where a painting of the last royals should have been hung and hoped they were safe somewhere. I knew it was just a fantasy but I wanted to believe that the world would be better with them back in it; that somehow having royals in charge would be better than the corrupt politicians we had now.

  I wanted to believe in someone who put the public first and stopped the divide between haves and have-nots. Except no-one like that existed any more. Just staying alive another day was all most of us could ask for.

  TWENTY TWO

  We made our way back to the medical centre which felt more like an entire hospital. There were rooms with X-Ray machines, CAT scans, incubation chambers and countless other machines that I had never seen before. I had no doubt that with the right surgeon, every available medical procedure could be performed here. The royals really had been prepared for everything.

  All of this made it even crueller that Olive had yet to be treated. All of this equipment and yet my friend was struggling with captors who refused to help. When I saw her lying on the bed I dashed to her side and held her hand.

  “It’ll be ok now. They’ll treat you now,” I said.

  She looked at me, her head burning hot and her eyes red from the tears. Her lips tried to move to form what looked like a thank you, but they were too sore, her body too weak for the words to escape.

  I grabbed Jacobi’s hand and placed the vial into it. “Here. Now help her like you promised!”

  He looked at the vial carefully and I hoped that David had given me the right one; that this hadn’t been another betrayal.

  “As you wish,” replied Jacobi. He tossed the medical kit Chris had retrieved over to me and I quickly opened it up.

  “It’s empty!” I shouted.

  Jacobi started to laugh.

  I tossed the medical kit to the floor and in anger shouted. “After all this! You still won’t help her! What about trust Jacobi? What about trust?”

  The anger flooded my body and made the burns on my arms and face start to flare up. I could feel the heat from them intensify, a reflection of the frustration I felt.

  “I have given you the item you wanted. As you trusted me to do so,” he replied.

  My mind ran through everything I’d been through to get to this point; all the fighting and all the pain reflected back at me, intensified hundreds of times over.

  It had all been for nothing.

  The hope I’d held for her safety started to fade and instead was replaced by a dark haze in my mind, a fire burning inside of me. The heat continued to grow, not just propelled by my own feelings; it felt like it had a life of its own. I tried to focus on other thoughts, on happier things, to try and regain some hope to stop the heat from rising but it continued on.

  “What are you doing to me!?” I screamed out.

  The look on Jacobi’s face was a new one. The man was scared for his life and he and his colleagues were looking for a way out of the room. Their fear fed into me, their senses powered me on and I started to feel what they felt. My view point started to shift from my own eyes into John’s and then into Jacobi’s.

  I was looking back at my own body now and could see what Jacobi was so scared of. My skin had turned a bright red, whilst a pulsing orange glow started to emanate from my body. I was no longer aware of my own actions and could only watch as my body bent backwards, my eyes staring at the ceiling and my mouth screaming out.

  Jacobi, John and Doe didn’t run; their bodies were fixed to the spot now. My mind had control of them and refused to let them go. I felt like another passenger, another voyeur of the show.

  Olive seemed immune to the chaos, her lack of a twin the only thing keeping her safe but she could hardly stand let alone walk. Despite all she had been through she still found room for more tears. The horror of what was happening to me was enough to bring on a new level of fear in her. Her lips moved twice to form two single sounds “Emm” “Eee”.

  I was pulled back into my body for the crescendo. My head rolled back onto my shoulders and the orange light around me burst outwards wrapping itself around John. His body started to go into shock and I was hit with a wave of emotions. I felt them shut off one by one and soon I could no longer hear the sound of his screams, smell the sweat on his body, taste the dry feeling of his throat or feel the cuts on his fingers. The last sensation that hit me was the final image he ever saw; my body standing over his drawing the life from him.

  S
oon that image was gone as well.

  He collapsed on the floor and with the Tether broken his brother, Doe, did the same. They lay there comatose and devoid of every sensation. Everything that made them human was gone; they were now just empty vessels.

  The realisation of what I had done sent my body into a shock and a cold sensation started to spread over me. The orange glow started to fade and I saw Jacobi drop to his knees and then the floor, freed from my grasp for now.

  My body felt numb from the freezing cold as it took over every inch of me. That suited me fine; I wanted to be numb, to block out all feeling.

  I wanted to die.

  TWENTY THREE

  Death didn’t come to me that day but it was too late for “John” and “Doe”, two men whose real names I had never known yet who I had killed in cold blood. I couldn’t understand what powerful force had taken over my body but it was a part of me that had already taken so much.

  The first sight I saw when I awoke was of the last man I wanted to see; Jacobi. He shook my shoulder and woke me from my dreams. “Emmie. You have to wake up.”

  His face was not filled with the anger and judgement I expected but was marked by sadness. “Trey and Taylor are dead,” he stated, without so much as an explanation.

  Trey and Taylor. At least now I had names for those I had killed; which only made their deaths somehow more personal.

  “I didn’t …” I started to try and protest my innocence but Jacobi filled in the gaps for me.

  “Trey had a heart attack which killed them both. We’re just checking them over with the medics now but it looks like they won’t be coming back. Apparently we both fainted from shock.”

  Was that what had happened? Did I imagine everything? The fire burning over my body. The rage building. The destruction of Trey’s senses? Was it all just some horrible nightmare I’d imagined to cope with his heart attack?

  Olive’s eyes told me all I needed to know. As soon as I looked at her she frantically looked away and when I tried to go towards her she used what little strength she had to slowly back away. This was not the behaviour of someone who trusted me, it was a clear sign that something had happened.