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

by Mike Essex

  “What do you expect to find there?” he asked.

  “My brother.”

  FIFTY SEVEN

  We heard footsteps coming from the halls of the prison, edging their way closer towards us.

  “What’s it going to be?” I asked the snatcher.

  “You would give up your body to save your own twin?” he asked.

  “Suri did the same for you,” I replied.

  He locked the door to the warden’s office and ushered us into an adjacent room which held a large curved table and swivel chairs. “This way,” he whispered as he started to fiddle with a vent on the side of the wall. He yanked it free and proceeded to climb inside the vent with Grace quickly following behind.

  I helped push Grace into the vent, her burned hand making it hard for her to grip tightly. She did the same for me, pulling me up with her good hand, whilst my broken arm made it hard for me to force myself upwards. I felt like I’d already been tortured and the thought of what he might do to me in the future made my skin crawl.

  As insane as he was, the snatcher and I were not that dissimilar. We both loved our twins and were prepared to do anything for them. Today I would give my life to save Will, as he had appeared to do for me, in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  First we had to find him and that meant crawling through a mouldy ventilation shaft suspended above torture chambers.

  I pulled the hatch to the ventilation shaft closed just in time to see a group of soldiers burst into the room and search for us. We made our way down the shaft before I had chance to see if they had spotted us. The alarm continued to ring throughout the prison, echoing down the shaft all around us.

  The snatcher led the way, taking us through the tight turns of the shaft and down towards a lower level. I almost screamed out loud when a group of rats made their way past us, their little teeth and claws looking far more intimidating in the small space than they ever would have done outside.

  My knees ached from the journey and all that we had done to get this far but I hoped it would be over soon. I could see Grace push forward weakly, trying not to put pressure on her burnt hand, whilst I pulled myself forwards with my one good arm. We had been through so much.

  The vent temporarily led us outside of the prison and I could hear the sound of gunshots ringing out in the courtyard. In the midst of the gunfire I heard a loud male scream as the sound of a gun firing rang out. He didn’t scream again; his life ended in an instant. The thin gaps in the shaft did not offer enough light for me to see what was happening or which side had suffered the loss.

  We continued on and soon reached a wider section of the ventilation shaft. The snatcher motioned for us to gather around a hatch in the centre of the space. We moved forward, with both Grace and I pushed up against the man, trying not to touch him.

  I watched Grace reach a hand towards the knife on her belt and start to remove it from her holster. She wanted revenge. I placed my hand on top of hers and pushed it back down slowly. Turning to her I mouthed “we still need him,” and she put her knife away.

  He motioned to the hatch below us and I started to reach my hands towards it. He slapped them away and pointed to his eyes. Picking up on this I bent down and looked through the gaps in the hatch and into the room below.

  It was hard to see exactly what I was looking at but I could just about make out the silhouette of a black chair, with someone secured tightly to it. Their body was slumped forwards, only held upwards by the force of the metal arms holding them in place.

  I moved away from the hatch and turned to Grace. “There’s someone in there. I think it’s him.”

  Before Grace could reply the snatcher grabbed hold of her tightly. She grabbed the knife from her belt and drove it towards him.

  He moved away from her, avoiding the knife but banging his head on the back wall and sending a loud sound echoing through the vent. He pushed Grace backwards and she landed heavily, causing more sound to ring out.

  They both realised what they had done and quickly moved away from the wall and the floor. Grace held the knife in front of her, her eyes trained on the snatcher. He held his hands in front of him in self-defence. “Put the knife down,” he asked.

  Grace refused. “You attacked me.”

  He moved his hands in front of him. “I’m not attacking you, I was only trying to stop you going down there.”

  “Why?”

  Our question was answered by the sound of bullets piercing through the ventilation shaft, cutting tiny holes through the bottom and sides. Whilst Grace was startled by the bullets the snatcher grabbed her side and pulled her towards the hatch. She kicked back against the side of the shaft to try and stop him but he was too strong.

  As a last resort she placed her hands against the walls but the searing pain of the burns on her hand meant she lost her grip and was tossed down into the room below. “Grace!” I shouted as her body landed on the floor below.

  “You again?” said Grace. Before I could see who she had recognised the snatcher grabbed me from behind. “You are my prize now. I’ve shown you what I promised and now you are mine,” he said.

  “Get off me,” I replied, kicking my legs against the sides of the shaft.

  I could feel him reaching into his pocket whilst he grabbed me tighter with his spare hand to compensate. He gripped tightly around my chest, pushing his hands past my breasts and squeezing my side. Sensing an opportunity I placed my feet flat on the metal base below me.

  “Stop fighting it,” he replied, as I pushed off with my feet and raised my body upwards sharply. Distracted by the hand in his pocket he kept hold of my chest and pulled himself upwards as I rose. His head reached the top of the shaft before my own, cracking against it from the upwards force.

  We were both knocked backwards and his body rocked the entire ventilation shaft as it landed. As his hand hit the shaft he released a needle from it which snapped against the floor.

  I could see a large figure looming over Grace’s body, which lay weakly on the floor, a shadow of her former self. The figure had dropped his gun and now held a large blade which he skimmed over every inch of her body. As he raised the blade into the air, ready to strike, I grabbed hold of the edge of the opening and jumped down into the room.

  As my feet left the vent I kept hold of the edge with my good arm and used the momentum to swing towards Grace’s attacker, hitting him with the full force of my body. He tumbled backwards, swinging his blade towards me, until he crashed onto the floor. My shoulder ached from holding the weight of my body and I let go crashing down onto the floor below.

  Without her attacker pinning her down, Grace helped herself up and reached for her gun. “I never thought I’d see that psychopath again,” she told me.

  She aimed her gun at the man as he stood up again, his hand running across the selection of knives on his belt, contemplating which one he would use to end us. He turned his scarred face towards me and a deep feeling of dread hit me.

  His name slipped from my trembling lips. “Vlad?”

  FIFTY EIGHT

  Vlad’s eyes shone a cruel orange. Unlike the soldiers he was not wearing an earpiece and there was no clear sign of who or what was controlling him.

  He ran towards Grace, knife in hand and she emptied an entire magazine’s worth of bullets into him. The bullets cut through his clothes, revealing the bulletproof gel beneath. As Grace reloaded, he grabbed the gun from her and tossed it to the floor.

  She moved away from him and reached for her knife instead, which she held outwards, swiping it to the left and right. “Come at me. I dare you,” I’d never seen Grace look so crazy or desperate for a fight.

  He charged and swung his knife towards her, which she countered by holding out her own knife to block the impact. As the two knives scraped against each other it was clear Grace couldn’t keep this up, his knife was far larger and she barely had the energy left to stand.

  Desperate to help Grace I started to rise up from the floor, my entir
e body aching and the pain from my broken arm making my feel like I wanted to blackout.

  She pulled her knife away and quickly jumped backwards to avoid the swipe of his weapon. The full force of his attack had caused him to turn away from Grace slightly, an opportunity she used to drive both of her elbows into the back of his neck. He stumbled away from her, slightly dazed from the impact.

  “I killed you!” shouted Grace. “I watched you die, how are you doing this?”

  He threw his knife to the floor and retrieved a curved scythe from his belt; dark blood stained across it. From the way Grace had described his death to me, I suspected this weapon was the same one she had used to kill him. Now he wanted to return the favour.

  As he swung the scythe it took a far larger arc than his other knife, making it harder for Grace to avoid. Yet despite the larger size he was just as quick with this weapon, putting the full force of his weight behind it. She kept hold tightly of her small knife, angling it towards the shape of his swings, waiting for a chance to parry.

  Grace saw me edging towards Vlad in an effort to help her but she shouted out for me to stop. “I’ve got this. Trust me,” she explained. I had no weapon to defend myself and quickly looked around the room for some other way to help.

  “Come on then, you little bitch,” said Vlad, his face distorted from his rage. “Show me how you killed me.”

  Grace was far too smart to fall for such an obvious trick. He was trying to lure her towards him and I knew that even in her weakened state she was still an excellent fighter.

  “Oh I will show you and this time I’ll make sure it’s final,” she replied and then she did something I didn’t expect. She ran towards him with the knife held out directly in front of her. It seemed so foolish, so easy for him to swing the scythe around her and cut into either one of her sides, her only hope was to guess which side he would choose.

  As she reached him he moved his knife to the right, and she mirrored the angle. Her knife crashed against his, sending sparks flying out as they scraped against each other.

  “You aren’t Vlad. He was a much better fighter than you could ever be,” said Grace.

  “Shut up!” he replied, sweat forming on his face.

  “Every single swipe you’ve made has been in the same direction. You have none of his flourish. Who are you?”

  “I’m your killer,” he grunted as he pushed harder with the scythe, wrapping both of his hands around the handle and forcing Grace to do the same with her own knife. “I still have all of his strength, you cannot beat me.”

  “But I can,” I replied as he saw my hands holding Grace’s gun and bullet it had fired pierced its way through both of his hands. The scythe fell to the floor, holding his gaze intensely. His fingers recoiled towards the centre of his palms and he screamed out.

  He bent down to pick up the scythe but couldn’t form a fist around it. Panicking he tried with the other hand but the result was the same. Vlad may have been immortal but with a severed web of tendons and ligaments in his hands, he wouldn’t be picking anything up without medical help.

  At that moment I noticed the man in the chair lift his head up and for the first time I saw that it was my brother.

  “Will?” I asked. He weakly nodded his head, his eyes filled with orange pools, his face a dark red. I ran over to him, placing my hand on his own and feeling the intense heat that ran through him.

  He gripped my hand with his own and cried out in pain. The heat surged through his hand and into me, igniting the fire that lingered in me. As Will screamed out Vlad started to laugh.

  “You’re too late,” explained Vlad. “Every have-not in this city will be destroyed.”

  “Stop this,” I screamed out as Will kept his grip tightly on my hand.

  Grace tried to help remove the binds from Will, but she recoiled in fear from the intense heat coming from the machine, the mental scars of her own burning holding her back.

  “Why aren’t you dying?” Vlad asked me. “You are just another have-not, you should be crying out in agony.”

  “Maybe your plan hasn’t worked?” I asked.

  “Oh it’s working. Right now your friends are screaming into the sky, their senses being overloaded one by one. It is a beautiful sight.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I can see everything my family see. We only spared your friends from the gunfire so we could watch them die together in glorious union.”

  “So now you’re working for SO13?” asked Grace. “The Vlad I knew was a man to be feared, not a weak puppet.”

  “You can’t reason with him. That Vlad is gone,” he replied.

  The vessel we knew as ‘Vlad’ wrapped his arm around my neck. “I’ll kill you myself,” I felt the muscles in his arm tighten in an effort to choke the life out of me. As I felt my airways start to shrink, the panic of suffocation running through my mind, he released his grip.

  He tried again, wrapping his arm around my neck and pulling it, this time forcing it with his other arm on top of it. The same thing occurred and his arms released themselves, falling to his side.

  Grace used the opportunity to cut through the gel on his side and ram her knife into him, where it stayed wedged into his flesh and muscle. He fell to his knees from the shock. She removed her jacket and together we bound his arms, pushing his body up against the door to stop any other soldiers from entering the room.

  I ran to Will and started to remove the restraints around his arms. The inferno inside him mixed with my own, causing my body to ache but I carried on, his freedom all that mattered to me. “You can fight this Will; just hold on a little longer.”

  As I removed the restraints from his arms, I could feel the fire inside of me building ever higher, working its way toward a crescendo. “I’m losing it Grace.”

  “Just hold on,” she told me.

  “You promised.”I replied, handing her the gun back.

  “I know, but it won’t come to that.”

  I felt the straps around Will’s legs start to give and eventually come free. There was just the clamp around his chest to go. “Almost there, Will,” as I spoke those words my vision started to blur and the room phased between different colours. I tried to regain focus but could feel my resolve start to weaken: the monster was taking over.

  “Just let me do this, and then you can have my body,” I cried out. “Let me save him.”

  “Don’t,” Vlad spoke weakly. “If you remove him, you’ll cause another worldwide Siege. He is the only thing stopping the signal from killing everyone. He is the capstone.”

  Jill had described the capstone as a force that could control the signal and focus its energy. Was it not a psychical object? Had Will always been the capstone? “You’re lying.”

  “Fine. Remove him. You’ll be responsible for the death of billions, if not the entire world.”

  “I will not be responsible! You did this!”

  “We’re all just following orders.”

  With his arms and legs now free Will started to thrash uncontrollably in the chair. He cried out in pain as blood started to seep from his eyes.

  “Stop this!” I shouted, hoping the people behind the attack would listen. I desperately wanted to free Will but if Vlad was right I couldn’t risk hurting the entire planet.

  “His senses will shut down one by one as the rest of this city does the same,” he explained. “When his last senses fail their Tethers will be broken and they will all die together.

  My entire body felt like it was engulfed in flames but the cooling breeze didn’t come. Vlad’s words only fuelled my rage ever higher, stronger than anything I had felt before. I had to find a way to release the energy before I lost control.

  “You son of a bitch,” shouted Grace, holding the knife tightly to Vlad’s neck.

  “If you destroy this body I will just find another,” he replied. “We are all connected.”

  It was in that moment I knew exactly what I had to do.

  “Remembe
r the promise,” I told Grace, as I slid my pistol across the floor towards her.

  I grabbed Will’s hand with my own and felt the heat circle around us. I closed my eyes until all I could see were the flames in my mind, destroying me bit by bit. As the fire raged inside me I started to feel more than just my own fear, as other people’s sensations started to creep in.

  “This is it,” I thought, “I’m losing control.”

  As I readied myself for the gunshot from Grace I realised that the feelings that were running into my mind were from one person in particular: Will.

  In that moment I felt everything he could feel. The fire burning inside his body, the sound of orders being issued into his ears, the smell of burning. All of these feelings and more ran through my body as our minds connected with each other.

  We were Tethered again, and it felt worse than I could ever have imagined.

  FIFTY NINE

  For months I had longed to feel what my brother felt again. To share his life with him and for him to see how much I had grown. I just wanted us to feel connected again. Now I had my wish and all I felt was pain.

  “Save them,” I heard Will’s voice echoing and I tried to speak out to him. My words made no sound, lost in the ether of his mind. I wanted to say that I loved him and would save him but I couldn’t tell if the words were given form, or merely dissolved into nothingness. I was a passenger in his mind.

  The other feelings started to seep in again; thousands of souls crying out in pain, as Will allowed me to feel the torment surging through the citizens outside the prison. I could feel their senses being overloaded and punctured by sensations far too intense for their bodies to handle.

  “Save them,” repeated Will.

  I tried to ask him ‘how’ but the words didn’t come again. This only caused the heat to intensify around me, raising my fiery prison into newfound levels of burning destruction. Trapped in this world of horrors I had no idea what was happening to my body on the world outside. Was the monster controlling it? Had Tobias found his way back to my body? Would Grace do the right thing?