We’re both quiet. My brain is on the verge of exploding. Seventeen years ago, Asher knew we would come. He waited, got a job as a Chainer, and happened to save us when we needed him. Just when I think there’s no way out, there’s a moment of hope. This
world has more questions than I ever knew possible.
“Ready?” he asks, opening the door for us again.
DEADLINE: 11D, 17H, 26M
SOMEWHERE IN THE OLD WORLD
“WHY DIDN’T YOU EVER
come back to the Compound?” Thorne asks from the passenger seat. I sit in the back, but I lean into the open space between their seats. How different would his life have been with Asher in it?
“I would’ve upset society. If they saw me, if I’d tried to go home, they would’ve wiped my memory or sent me to another Compound. Or worse.”
My mind flashes back to the safehouse and the torture room, but somehow, I know there must worse things in the Compound. Even if I have never seen them.
“What will you do with us?” I ask.
Asher smiles. “I have a man near San Francisco. His name is Eddie. We can be there in two days’ drive.” “Then how long is it?” Thorne asks.
“Another two days. Maybe three.”
I don’t want to smile, but I can’t help it. Five days until I’m there. I have eleven days left. I can still do this. The impossible suddenly seems a little more reachable.
DEADLINE: 11D, 15H, 26M
SOMEWHERE IN THE OLD WORLD
I STARE OUT THE WINDOW
while we pass through the Old World. This part of it is beautiful. Where the other pieces were dead and broken, this one feels newer. It’s mostly desert sand and blue sky, but the clouds in the morning roll over each other with equal lightness, and as far as I can see, there are mountains and sand.
Thorne laughs, and I watch him with Asher. It’s almost like they have never been apart. They’ve spent the whole car ride talking, and I felt it was better to not be included. I knew the stories Thorne told Asher in great detail because I had been there. Sometimes, he’d pause and ask me if I remembered a point and I’d answer, but then I’d retreat into myself again. I don’t want to ruin this reunion for them.
“Kai’s a Healer’s aid. One of the best. He was always taking care of people, so it was a pretty easy fit for him.” Thorne pauses. “Remember the shop Dad kept in the basement?”
“The wood shop?” Asher asks.
Thorne nods. He’s relaxed around Asher; the tension in his body is gone. “Kai uses it now. He’s really good at making things. He can spend hours down there shaping, sawing, building. Made a whole set of table and chairs in three weeks.”
“Dad loved it down there,” Asher says, and both boys get quiet. Then Asher turns his head to his brother and smiles. “I remember once when Mom made dinner and Dad wouldn’t come up. We were halfway through whatever it was that she cooked when she stood up and started carrying it all downstairs. ‘We eat as a family, Richard,’ she’d said. I think we ate dinner down there every day that week.”
“I’ve never heard that one. She doesn’t talk about you and him much,” Thorne says.
Aside from the mention of them on their birthdays and sometimes when Sara was feeling some kind of nostalgia, Richard and Asher Bishop had always been a mystery that we never investigated. At least not when I was around, and I was there a lot. They were a source of sadness for Sara, a weakness that she didn’t want anyone to see. She was too strong for that.
“What about Mom? What does she do?”
Thorne pauses, and in the silence, I see Sara. A woman who is always smarter, braver, more determined than most. Never afraid to push the limits.
“When I was six, she delivered a baby for one of the neighbors,” Thorne begins. “They came for Mom. She took us with her and sat Kai and me in the living room to wait. I don’t know how long it was before we heard the baby crying. Ever since then, people want her to help. The Healers don’t like it much since she’s not one of them, but no one stops her. Not like they could anyway.”
I remember hearing about that after it happened, years later, and Kai and Thorne talked about how the sound in the room went from silence to screaming to a baby crying. Kai would poke at Thorne and say he freaked out, but Thorne would insist that was Kai. And I would sit there, listening to a story I wasn’t part of, in this family that had been mine for two years and still felt like mine, but wasn’t. Then I went home to my father. I know he tried his best, considering his job and Mom and the lie we all lived for two years, but he has never been family in the same way they have. He loved me and I loved him, but he was only one part of me and they were the rest.
Asher stays silent after the story. What does he think? Does he miss his family? Sometimes having no family at all seems better than losing one. Especially that one.
“Mom always was feisty. I think she’s still the most courageous person I’ve ever met,” Asher says with a smile.
“You have her smile, you know,” Thorne says.
Asher looks at Thorne and lets his smile really show. Thorne’s right; it’s exactly like hers. I can see it even from the backseat. And then the car is quiet, filled only with the sound of the wheels on the road. I long for more of their hushed voices.
9 MONTHS BEFORE ESCAPE
THERE’S A HUSHED CONVERSATION
coming from the kitchen when I open Sara’s door. My arms are full of food from the grocer, and Sara’s gentle voice floats toward me, her words lost in the shuffle of my feet.
“Don’t tell me what Amelia wouldn’t have wanted!”
I freeze. It’s my father. What is he doing here? Why are they arguing about my mother?
Sara’s voice is still calm. “Lucian, you’re being irrational. You’ve been irrational like this for months. Rowan Perkins was a nice boy, an innocent boy, and the Elders were wrong in their reasons.”
I gulp. Rowan was transferred earlier this week. They found some books from the Old World in his house- books that were forbidden, books that I’d been reading, too-and sent him away
.
“Their judgment isn’t mine to question, and it’s not yours either. In case you have forgotten, it’s treason.” Treason? I try to see around the corner, but all I can make out is my father’s head
.
“Don’t threaten me,” Sara says. Her voice is fierce and has an edge to it. It’s not a tone I’ve heard her use before, but then again, I’ve never heard my father, or anyone, talk to her that way. “I’m not afraid of you. I know who you are. I remember the scared little boy who cowered in corners from his own father. That’s all you’re doing now-cowering. Amelia would be disappointed.”
“Do not push me,” my father says through gritted teeth. I know the sound. Almost every conversation we’ve had lately has been forced like this one
.
“This is my home. If you don’t want to be pushed, you can leave.”
The sound of a chair scoots across the floor. My father’s voice is sharp. “If it’s true, then I hope you are wise enough to tell me. I can protect them. She is my daughter. Her safety is my concern. The Elders are wondering, all of a sudden, the same questions from years before, so whatever has happened-”
“There is nothing to know. Neely and Thorne are perfectly normal. They won’t become what you say. Their branding is merely a marking like all the others. The Elders ran all those tests years ago, Lucian. Even if it weren’t, I would not throw our children at their merciless feet.”
“They believe those tests to be corrupt because of Liv Taylor. They want to know, Sara, and they will do whatever is necessary to find out.”
“And you’ll just let them do it? To your own daughter? To my son?”
The bottom of the bag I’m carrying collapses, and fruit scatters across the floor. I wince and try to catch it, but I’m caught as my father and Sara both look at me. For a brief reprieve, it’s like it was a year ago when they were friends and we were some sort of weird family unit. Not whatever they are now. Whatever it is that he’s becoming, I don’t recognize it
.
We all stare at each other while oranges roll across the floor
.
“What are you doing here?” I ask my father. I try to look surprised, but I don’t think he buys it. He knows I’ve heard too much
.
“Just leaving,” he says. He kicks an orange in my direction as he steps over an apple. Sara and I watch him as he goes, and when his hand is on the door, he looks back at us. “They warned Liv Taylor, too. Before.”
Xenith’s mom. I look between Sara and my father before he turns away. The door opens, then slams shut. Sara exhales. She closes her eyes for a moment and then opens them with a smile
.
“Let’s get this mess cleaned up,” she says, pulling the remaining bag from my hand and setting it on the counter
.
“What was that about?” I ask, bending over to pick up an apple. I examine it for bruises, but it’s fine
.
Sara shakes her head and gathers up the oranges. “It wasn’t anything.”
I watch her and join her in silence until all the fruit is safely in a big bowl on the counter. She puts some water in the kettle
.
“Why did he mention Thorne and me?”
“You heard that?” Wisps of hair fall away from her bun and line her face as she looks at me. Her mahogany eyes look darker. “What else did you hear?” she asks before she moves around the kitchen, putting the kettle over the fire in the hearth. At my silence, she looks back at me and sighs. “Lucian says the Elders are questioning the decision they made to keep you and Thorne together with the branding, but he won’t tell me why. I don’t think he knows. They don’t really explain things to him.”
I gulp back the truth. I know that no one has the twin branding anymore, that it had some results the Elders felt were deadly to others. What if they find out about the connection? Would they separate us? They must not know anything, or we wouldn’t be here right now
.
“What did the Elders warn Liv Taylor about?”
She sets some mugs on the counter. “When we were younger, I did things that challenged the Elders. We all did. We had secrets-Liv and your mother and me
.
Secrets even your father doesn’t know. It seems Xenith knows these secrets. Your father fears you and Thorne might know them as well.”
“What secrets?”
We stand around in silence, and I wonder what secrets she’s keeping. They have to be big ones if she can’t talk about them. Finally, she looks at me. “The three of us protected each other until there was no one left to protect. But I will protect Kai, Thorne, and you. It’s all I can do.”
“Protect us from what?”
She hands me a mug. “It doesn’t matter.”
DEADLINE: 11D, 12H, 26M
SOMEWHERE IN THE OLD WORLD
THIS MOMENT MATTERS.
It will forever be the time when Thorne met his brother for the first time, maybe the only time, and because of that I don’t want to intrude. I want him to have this. I rest in the back of van, eyes closed but not really sleeping as the road bounces me around.
“Do you still have the branding?” Thorne asks.
I peer toward the front of the van through my eyelashes. Asher stiffens next to him before turning his head. I can’t see anything else, but Thorne says something. I re-close my eyes and try to focus on sleeping, but I hear Asher’s voice instead.
“I saw you have the twin branding with Neely. How’s that work?”
“My twin sister died at birth, and Amelia died giving birth to Neely. Do you remember Neely’s grandpa?”
“The director then? He’s a hard man to forget.”
“Mom says he wanted Amelia and her child for something, and Lucian wasn’t able to protect them. When Amelia died and my twin died, Liv Taylor saw an opportunity to protect Neely, so she switched them. Mom says she didn’t even know at first. That she woke up and there were her two babies in her arms.”
I listen and imagine that it’s Sara telling us the story of waking up and holding us, how it was when she learned the truth. She’d always told it in a whisper and only on the beach where it wasn’t monitored, as if she was always scared someone would hear something different in her story.
“We were two when the director died and Lucian Ambrose took over. With him at the lead, I guess Liv came forward with the truth. It was a confusing year for everyone, but when I got older it seemed more obvious since Neely never looked anything like us.”
Asher doesn’t respond, at least not in a tone that I can hear. Thorne and Asher talk in low voices, and my mind runs back to what that must’ve been like for Sara. To hold me and think I was hers, only to find out it was a lie. To let me go. To watch me grow up and fall in love with her son. A part of her family, but not really.
Asher’s voice is louder. “Deanna and her sister shared dreams, visions of sorts. It was the craziest thing how they could communicate. Do you and Neely have that?”
I watch Thorne through my half-closed eyes and see him nod his head. “I know how she’s feeling all the time. When she’s sad or happy or any strong emotion. We feel each other.”
Asher whistles. “That can’t be easy-not being your own.”
Thorne shrugs. “I see it more like I’m part of something greater than just myself.”
I’ve never seen us that way, not ever.
“Isn’t it weird?”
I hold my breath, waiting for his answer. He’s never been honest with me about it. Or if he has, it’s not anything I’ve believed. I guess I expect him to feel the way I do.
“Sometimes,” Thorne says. Relief fills my chest because all this time I never thought he felt anything about our connection except acceptance. “But it’s always been part of me, and knowing her like that, knowing what she’s really feeling? I wouldn’t trade it. And trust me, sometimes it’s intense.”
Intense is an understatement. Sometimes I don’t know which emotions are mine and which emotions are his.
“Neely can feel a hundred things at once, and she doesn’t even realize it. She gets an idea in her head, and then she goes with it. It can be frustrating, but I always know why she does it. I can feel how positive she is that, whatever the outcome, the decision was a good one.”