by Erin Grey
“There’s more,” he said. “Our life force is linked, too.”
My stomach turned weightless. “Tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
“If one of us dies—”
“—the other dies too.”
“Not completely. But they might want to.” Aidon blew out a long stream of air, like he’d been holding his breath for years. “Your energy weakens. You’re never whole again.”
I fiddled with a twist of hair that dangled in my face. “And if I leave? What does that do to the link?”
“I have no idea. There isn’t exactly a precedent for this sort of thing occurring outside of twin relationships. Or across planets.”
I tilted my head to see his face. “You said we could feel each other’s feelings. Could you—”
“I felt your sadness.” He watched his thumb rub more viciously against the outcrop. “I know you still wanted to die when you left, despite everything I said.”
I sat up. “You were willing to let me go? Knowing I might still go through with the suicide? And … you might … lose your energy?”
Again, he nodded, eyes never leaving his busy fingers.
“Aidon, why didn’t you … you should have told me.”
“I wanted you to be happy. If that was the only way for you …” He shrugged. He didn’t need to say anything else.
I watched his thumb push against the knob of stone, watched his fingers dig into it, his nails too short to scratch it.
“Do you still feel that I want to die?” I asked.
“Right now, yes.”
“But there was a time when I didn’t feel that way.”
His lip tilted in a half-smile. “I know. When you were with me, learning how to use your energy.”
“But you still helped me get to the portal.”
“I knew you couldn’t be truly happy knowing your family was in trouble. I couldn’t stop you from helping them.”
I had never believed in soul mates. But he was mine.
“He would have given up his energy so you could die? My hero!” Gwendolyn swooned. Then she realised what she’d said. “Wait, I don’t want to die. I want us to ride off into the sunset together.”
“You are well aware that is not an option,” said Jasper.
“He was willing to sacrifice himself so that you would have a choice,” said Sandy. “I have no response to that.”
“I ruined everything,” I said, heart sinking.
He grimaced. “You didn’t trust us. You didn’t trust me.”
“It wasn’t that! I just couldn’t bear to see you in danger because of me. You didn’t deserve it.”
“It wasn’t your choice.”
I nodded. “You’re right. It wasn’t my choice.” And he’d risked everything to give me a choice.
He ran his fingers through his hair and clutched great chunks of it. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to wake and find you’d left without even saying goodbye? And then, and then, to know that you were facing the Regulators on your own, using tech you don’t understand, on a freaking foreign planet!” He dropped his hands, leaving his hair sticking out at opposing angles. “It was hard enough knowing the goodbye was coming. But then, to find I didn’t mean enough to you to deserve even that …”
“It’s not like that! You did deserve a goodbye, deserve a lot better in fact. I didn’t mean to betray you, I just wanted to protect—”
“This is not about what I deserve. It’s about what I want.”
>BIOS ACTIVE_
>WARNING! WARNING!
>Uncomfortable string detected!
>Awkwardness levels: Rising
>ABORT THIS OPERATION!
“I … um … I’m sorry. And really tired.” I rolled over so I was facing away from him. “I’ll just go to sleep—”
“Jane.”
I didn’t want to turn around. This was going to hurt.
“Jane.” His voice fractured my bones. “I want you.”
Not ‘I love you’—that phrase that gets thrown around before sentences like, ‘but this is for your own good’ or ‘and that’s why you need to get better’ or ‘please don’t do this’.
I want you. As you are. You. The broken, twisted, flawed creature in front of me. I want you.
“You can’t mean that,” I choked out.
“I can, and I do.”
I still wouldn’t look at his face. Sandy never believed words like that. Gwendolyn and Mitch and Emmy were desperate for them. Jasper wasn’t having any of it.
I stayed completely still, hoping he’d think I’d fallen asleep. Aidon didn’t say anything, and for all of two seconds, Jasper thought he’d won.
His triumph sunk like an ornamental trident in a dirty fish tank at the sound of Aidon moving over to my side.
He grasped my arm. “Jane.”
The voices were shouting and arguing at such a level that I couldn’t string a single thought together.
“Jane. I don’t say things I don’t mean. I don’t play games.” His grip tightened. “I want you.”
I pressed my fingertips to my temples and tried to rub the voices into silence. “It’s not … what am I … I don’t know what to do with this information!”
I practically heard his lip pull into a taut line. “Do you want me?”
I couldn’t say it. Jasper was piling on the guilt. The Deep Dark was rising. “I can’t …”
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t …” I sat up, keeping my back to Aidon. “I can’t be with you, ok? I have to go back to Earth. I don’t have a choice.”
He dropped his hand. “That’s an excuse.”
Mitch winced at the hurt in Aidon’s voice and pushed a sob up my throat. Gwendolyn screamed that I was making a huge mistake and none of this was fair. Sandy pretended she didn’t care and had never liked him anyway. Jasper gripped me with a fist of iron and propelled me to my feet and forward. Away from Aidon. Because there was no way we could be together in this life. I had obligations, commitments. Max …
Mitch twisted my stomach in revulsion at parting while the Deep Dark pushed up all the guilt and shame I deserved.
I needed to leave Eorthe—leave Aidon—forever. And quickly.
47
Mitch
When Nana dies, the little girl is devastated. No one can tell her where she’s gone. She cries and cries until the babysitter, Mary, calls mom, who is still cleaning up after the memorial service.
“I can’t come right now,” says mom. The little girl remembers mom’s puffy red eyes and the black rings under them. “I have work to do.”
The little girl can’t stop crying.
“Listen to Mary and go to sleep. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“Please stop crying,” says Mary when the little girl’s pillow is sodden but the tears continue to fall.
The wails only get louder. The little girl feels more than she can carry.
Mary gets angry. “That’s it. If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.”
The little girl gets frightened and tries to hold it in, but it hurts so much.
Out of the night, a voice says, “Mitch here now. I’ll hold it. I’ll keep it hidden where no one can see.”
48
The bit where I remember stuff
When Aidon woke me, it was beyond awkward. He didn’t speak or touch me. Metal clanged next to my head, and I opened my eyes to see the dagger Quirinus had given me before—the one I’d left at the campsite before I deserted—lying on the ground.
I’d hurt Aidon worse than before. He thought that, after everything he’d said, everything he’d done, I didn’t want him.
It wasn’t true. But telling him that wasn’t going to make it possible for me to stay.
His words had made a difference though. He’d woken a small something inside that must have survived my personal apocalypse. For his sake, I needed to get far away. And, if I could accomplish nothing else, I n
eeded to help my family as I’d set out to do.
As we sat by the fire he’d lit to dispel the cold of the damp cave, I enlisted Jasper to deliver the news of the plan I’d concocted. “I thought of something,” I began.
“Yeah?” He didn’t look at me.
“Before I met you, neither of us knew about the link. If I leave Eorthe, maybe … maybe it will go back to that.”
“You can’t leave Eorthe,” he growled. “You blew your only opportunity at getting to that portal. There’s no way I can get you back there.”
“It’s ok, you don’t have to get me back there. That’s one thing I learned while I was with the Regulators: where the other portals are.”
His eyes shot to mine at that. “Which portals?” he asked. “Most of the ones Ric found were inaccessible.”
“There are a lot more portals Ric didn’t find. And they must be accessible, because the Regulators are planning to use all of them.”
He shook his head. “You don’t even know where you are right now. How can you possibly know where the portals are?”
“Well, I don’t know how to get to them from here. But I do know that Examiner Atropus had a list of them on her tablet.”
“The one you stole?”
“The one I stole.”
Aidon rested his arms on his knees and clasped his hands. “So, you want me to get you the list and get you to another portal.”
“No,” I said, my hand lifting to touch him, then dropping away as Jasper vetoed it. “You’ve done more than enough. Just point me in the right direction, and I’ll get myself there.”
“Dammit Jane, are you ever going to learn?” he shouted.
I reeled from the echo of his voice in the hollow space.
“I promised I would get you home.” He gritted his teeth. “If there’s a way to do it, I’ll do it.”
“My hero!” cried Gwendolyn.
“It is not his responsibility,” said Jasper.
“We need him,” whispered Mitch.
“We’re better off alone,” said Sandy. “He’ll get hurt again if he sticks around.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, will you just let him help?” screeched Gwendolyn. Eorthe—or maybe everything that had happened on Eorthe—had brought out a whole new side of her. “If we’ve learned anything on this ridiculous planet, it’s that we’re hopeless on our own.”
I had to accept that Gwendolyn was right. “Thank you,” I said to Aidon.
Aidon peered at me from the corner of his eye. “Does that mean you’ve decided to accept my help?”
“Yes,” I answered firmly. “And I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
* * *
“You sent the tablet remains with Quirinus, right?” I asked, as we trudged through more caves and stone passages.
“Yes,” said Aidon. “He’ll get it to Charis before he and Ju go to ground. He’s probably already done so.”
“If you’ve ordered complete radio silence, how will you get the list from her?”
His mouth twitched into the little half-grin he wore so well. “I always have a contingency plan. There is one way I can contact her.”
“Can you do it from here, or do we need to be above-ground?”
“It’ll work from anywhere. But I want us to be in the safest place possible before I risk it. That’s why we’re heading further in.”
I’d noticed our path was sloping gently but consistently downwards. I pushed away the suffocating feeling being buried in the ground gave me. Mitch whined until Jasper instigated some breathing exercises.
“There’s something else,” I said. “If Charis can get the list of portals off that tablet, maybe she can get proof about the Regulators’ plans.”
Aidon stopped walking, but didn’t turn around to face me. “You’re never going to give up on this, are you?”
“Computer says no,” I mumbled.
“What was that?”
“I just … I think there’s still a chance we can do something. Maybe we can’t stop them, but, surely we can throw a spanner in the works, slow them down until we find another way?”
Aidon turned around and leaned against the wall, folding his arms with a heavy sigh. “You still believe saving the world is the only way your life can have meaning?”
I stared at the ground and scratched at my arm, trying to pick away the imperfections. I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to sound like I was fishing for compliments. I said it anyway. “What else is my life good for?” Maybe I did want compliments.
Aidon stalked towards me and grabbed my shoulders. I avoided his eyes. “Look at me.” I stared at a spot over his shoulder. He shook me. “Look at me, Jane.” With a sinking heart, I obeyed. “You can’t save the world. Do you hear me? No one can save the world.” He gentled his grip. “But sometimes, you can save one person. And it’s okay if that person turns out to be yourself.”
I dropped my gaze because tears were falling. “I can’t save me.”
“You can,” he insisted. “You’re still here. Still fighting. You’ve been knocked down over and over, but you haven’t given up.”
“I did give up. Before. I was going to end it. It could happen again.”
He thumbed away a tear. His fingers were rough and gritty from our journey. “I know. But today is not that day.”
My nose was running. The only thing for it was to wipe with my sleeve and sniff furiously.
“How’d you get so wise?” I asked with a watery gurgle.
Aidon gave his little half-smile that made Gwendolyn weak at the knees. Ok, not just Gwendolyn.
“Not wise,” he said. “Just otherwise.”
49
The bit where I have an idea
“I was thinking …”
“Uh oh, here it comes,” muttered Aidon. We’d been walking for some time, and the wheels in my brain hadn’t stopped spinning.
I smiled. I was going to miss him. “I was thinking: exposing the Regulators could be easier than we think. What about Dooklr?”
“Dooklr?”
“It’s like … have you heard of critical mass?”
“Are we talking about nuclear physics? Because bombs aren’t always the answer,” he said with a snigger.
“Which means they’re sometimes the answer, right?” I teased back.
Aidon raised his face heavenwards in mock frustration. “Once again you insist on misunderstanding.”
“Ok, ok, but seriously, critical mass is when you cause a chain reaction: the size and shape and temperature and everything are the perfect amount, so you perform step one, and the rest takes care of itself.”
“Ok?” Aidon was not with me yet.
“Then you get super-critical mass, where the chain reaction is self-sustaining, meaning it goes on forever without any interference.”
“Are you sure we’re not talking about bombs?” Aidon asked worriedly.
“No, listen.” I geared up for the grand delivery. “If we get the proof of the Regulator’s plan onto Dooklr and similar platforms, to the right influencers, they’ll take care of getting it to everyone else. It will be re-dooked until it’s viral.”
“You mean a pestilence?”
Naturally they’d have a slightly different concept for it. “Right, that.”
“It won’t work,” he said. “The Regulators monitor the Knit. The moment we put out any information about them, they’ll delete it. It will never have a chance to reach critical mass.”
“Oh,” I drooped.
“We ought to have deduced that,” said Jasper. “Naturally the Regulators would flag the use of words pertaining to them.”
“So we don’t use those words, then,” said Sandy.
“How can we tell people about their plans without using any words?” asked Gwendolyn, flustered.
“Wanna story,” said Emmy.
“I’ve got it!” I said. “We tell a story.”
“A story?” said Aidon. “You know they’re forbidden.”
“As long as people believe it’s the truth, we’re safe. No one will know we made it up.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Humans need story. They use stories to understand the world and how to live in it. If we can tell a story that makes people think about what happens when you target a group, how it never ends when that group is gone, because thinking like that just leads to targeting another group, and another, until you become the target and the world is a place of fear and terror … if we can tell that story and spread it as far as possible, using an innocuous hashtag—”
“Hashtag?”
“Um … a label that you attach to a post that people can search? So they can find messages around a specific topic because they all have the same label?”
“Oh, you mean an octothorpe.”
“Okay, yes. So we use an innocuous octothorpe to mark the messages about the story, then when we release the truth about the Regulators, critical mass will already have been reached. We use the same hashtag … uh … octothorpe … and the information is instantly viral … I mean … a pestilence.”
Aidon pondered my words.
“You can do it without giving away anyone’s hiding place, right?” I asked nervously.
He tapped his fingers against his leg. “It’s possible,” he said. “But where will we get this magical story you’re suggesting?”
“I have an idea for it already. I just need to write it out so I can tweak it until it’s perfect. Can you get it to the eyes of the right people?”
“I can ask Charis to make a list. She knows who’s who on the political and social scenes.”
“And the Dooks and messages would need to all go out at once. So no one has time to stop it before it hits critical mass.”
“Super-critical mass,” corrected Aidon.
I beamed. “You’ve been listening. I thought you zoned out for that bit.”
“I always hear you,” said Aidon. “Even when I’m trying not to.”
A tiny fluorescent-blue gnat flew between us, and I watched as it bumbled along the passage ahead. When it landed on the wall, a thousand gnats lit up in response.