Follow Me Through Darkness (21 page)

The Elders were studying twins? They wanted to live forever? To prolong life and rebuild themselves? Why would someone want that? How could they do this? What happened to all the twins? But there are no answers on the pages. Only more disturbing facts and experiments outlined. Test subjects with no names
.

Between the branding and the twins, I can’t shake the feeling that the Elders are up to something incredibly dangerous. I toss the paper down and scan the last one. The one with my name on it
.

It talks more about twins before it mentions me
.

Experiments are conclusive. The twins who receive the twin branding are not altered in the same way as others. They have no inhibition with free will as the others do, but have something more powerful that could destroy all that has been built. This is an unforeseen consequence. It shall be remedied and stopped
.

I think about the other people in the Compound. Thorne and I are the only ones here with the twin branding. There are no others. Is this what they did- removed twins?

The true identity of Cornelia Ambrose leaves many questions, and to start, we must determine how the twin branding has claimed her and Thorne Bishop. Liv Taylor will execute the experiment
.

The next entry says, Cornelia Ambrose failed
.

That’s the end
.

I lower the page back to the floor and close my eyes. The room spins, from exhaustion or confusion, and I realize that the life I know is completely false. There’s nothing here that’s my own. The Old World does exist. The Elders are manipulating everyone, lying to everyone, and no one even knows it’s a possibility
.

And if they are lying about all this, what else are they lying about?

I pull myself up off the floor and move toward my father. When I look down at him, he doesn’t look calm, like himself, anymore. He looks tortured. The Elders have betrayed him, used him, and he has no idea. I take my father’s hand, and even though he’s asleep, I’m almost positive he squeezes it
.

DEADLINE: 19D, 4H, 30M

REMNANT CAMP: EL PASO, TEXAS

DELILAH SQUEEZES MY HAND
tighter as another call for lights out sounds around us. Her board full of letters is completely finished. It’s half her size. Some of the letters are big and some are small. They’re all crooked, but that doesn’t matter. The point is, I taught her that. I taught her something lasting.

“Will I see you again?” Delilah asks me.

“We’re leaving at dawn,” I say. I don’t look at her. I can’t look at her because she melts me.

She digs in her pocket with her free hand and pulls out a small, folded piece of paper from a book. The words on it are typed and perfectly spaced on one side.

“I wrote a note for you,” she says. She kisses my cheek quickly and whispers “I love you” in my ear. Another bell echoes, and Delilah pulls her hand from my own. I smile and look down at the paper. There, written in the margins, is her name spelled in crooked letters, and the word thanks, but the “N” is missing.

DEADLINE: 19D, 1H, 12M

REMNANT CAMP: EL PASO, TEXAS

IN MY DREAM, I’M DROWNING.
It’s the same feeling of the water surrounding me and pulling me under. I’m relaxed and devastated all at once. I move my legs, my feet, my hands. I try to swim. Try to kick. Try to scream. There’s only more water. Only more water filling up my lungs.

His face is the last thing I see-Xenith’s-and he’s telling me words that I can’t hear.

“Neely, wake up,” Thorne says, his voice tired. He keeps shaking me, pushing on my shoulders, his gruff voice calling my name in my ear. “You’re dreaming again.”

I open my eyes to find Thorne staring down at me. “You okay? That was intense. What were you dreaming about?”

I shake my head. “It’s nothing. I’m okay.” He reaches out for my hand, but I don’t take it. His shoulders tense and he turns his back to me, and I know he’s waiting for me to tell him that I’m scared. But I can’t say it, so I stare at the ceiling in the darkness and wonder when all of this will end and I will wake up.

7 DAYS BEFORE ESCAPE

“NEELY, WAKE UP,”
Xenith whispers in my ear. He shakes me, and I jerk at his touch and sit up, panting. His blue eyes peer back at me. “You were dreaming again. You were yelling his name.”

I pull my legs in toward my chest and rest my chin on my knees. “I keep having the dream.”

“The drowning one?”

I nod. “I keep feeling it. All of this is going to come crashing down on us, Xenith, and then what?”

“It won’t.”

A pause. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You can.”

“Not without Thorne,” I whisper
.

Xenith sighs heavily. His arm is too close to mine. His chest is too bare and his body too warm, so I force myself not to look at him. “You have to. You’re going to destroy the blockade I built if you keep calling out to him. It will only stop so much from getting through to him in the connection.”

I nod silently. Xenith gave me an injection, right into my branding, that numbs a connection, like putting it to sleep temporarily. If I use it too much, the injection’s effect will break. He’s never done it before, so we’re not sure how long it will work
.

“I feel like the wrong girl for this.”

Xenith brushes a piece of my auburn hair behind my ear. His gaze is so intense on me that I can’t look anywhere else
.

“You aren’t,” he says
.

I stare at him. Four days together and I still can’t figure him out at all
.

“You have me. You can call on me if you need me.”

“I know.”

“I’m right here. I’ll be right here,” he says, his voice as deep and dark as the night around me. He doesn’t leave until I’m asleep
.

DEADLINE: 18D, 19H, 22M

EL PASO, TEXAS

THE MORNING AIR IS MOIST
with humidity. Joe and Benny stand next to us, Joe with his arms crossed over his chest and his hair ruffled from sleep. Or lack of sleep. Benny stands with him, but neither says much to us as we wait in the silence. I expect something to happen. Noise or crickets or birds. There’s nothing aside from breathing and the slight rustle of the wind.

Thorne won’t look at me. He hasn’t met my eyes since we woke up, and he’s blocking whatever it is he’s feeling. Where did he learn to do that so well? A month ago Thorne would never have hidden anything from me, but I wouldn’t have, either. Yesterday we seemed to be in a good place, like we were on the same journey. Today? Today it feels like yesterday didn’t happen. We are further apart than ever.

The sound of a gunshot echoes in the air. I jump. It has to be a Trooper coming back for us, but there’s no sign of movement. No whistling whir of the Cleaners, and Joe doesn’t look alarmed. Just down the road, a vehicle moves toward us. As it gets closer, the sea- green door of the truck stands out against the dark blue of the rest. It jerks and sputters before stopping.

A man jumps out, hugs Benny, and shakes hands with Joe. They talk back and forth in the Remnant language, and I pick up a few words of it here and there but not enough to completely understand. Thorne and I stand there in awkward silence, unsure what to say. The new man is short and scrawny, dirty. His hair is gray and pointing in all directions. When he speaks with Joe, I notice one of his teeth is missing. He nods at us.

“This is Len,” Joe says. “He’s goin’ to a camp in Phoenix for a delivery. He’ll take you with him.”

That’s all that’s said about it. Joe says goodbye to Thorne and thanks him for all of his help. Thorne was always better at people than me. When he turns to me, he simply says, “Be safe.” Then he steps back and nods at us. “Best of luck to you both.”

“And to you,” Thorne says. “Good luck with the baby.”

Joe beams at the mention of the baby.

Benny holds out a hand to Thorne, who shakes it. Then he snaps his fingers and digs around in his pocket. “Delilah wanted me to give this to you,” he says, reaching out to me. He opens his hand and drops a small green band into my palm. It’s thin, no bigger than a piece of wire, and made out of some sort of plastic. I saw her with this on her wrist, but it doesn’t fit mine so I tie it around my finger.

“Thank you,” I say.

He nods, and then we watch him and Joe disappear underground. Len stretches behind us and lets out a groan.

“Reckon we should get going. Can’t stay in one place too long. There’s a seat in the back the girl can probably fit in. She’s small enough.”

I maneuver around the front seat and squish my feet up in the cramped space of the back. I exhale, grabbing the side before the truck starts to move forward.

“What’s your names?” Len asks after we’ve barely started going.

Thorne says his name first and doesn’t offer mine. In the silence, I tell him.

“Them are weird ones. Lots of weird ones nowadays,” Len says. “Hope you don’t mind the music. It’s a long drive.”

DEADLINE: 18D, 16H, 48M

SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT

WE’VE BEEN DRIVING FOREVER.
Len stops a lot, dropping things off from the back of his truck to people who appear out of the trees, out of the ground, out of nowhere. We stay in the truck and don’t move when he makes stops. He doesn’t want anyone to see us.

Len isn’t so bad. He likes to sing loudly while he drives, to some funny songs called
show tunes
. My injured leg is cramped up in the back seat, and it reminds me of the safehouse. Thorne says something to Len that I can’t really hear because of the music. Whatever the question, the response is a scowl and a snort.

We’re silent again. The bump of the truck on the road and the rhythm of some lady’s voice fill the air. We move on that way, none of us wanting to be where we are, for the next hour of our trip.

I listen to the girl sing about freedom. The music stops sounding so strange after that.

DEADLINE: 18D, 15H, 22M

SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT

THORNE’S HEAD RESTS AGAINST
the window, slightly bobbing as we move. I check the countdown watch Xenith gave me. We’re about four hours into the eleven-hour drive, with no more stops scheduled until we’re there, when Len finally turns off the music. Thorne’s not asleep, but he’s quiet. I’m quiet, too, feeling the hours slip away from me. Eighteen days from my deadline and we’re not there yet. The pressure is starting to grow.

Len groans and hangs a hand out the window; the wind rushes back into my face. “You two sure are a silent pair,” he says.

“It’s better that way,” I say after it becomes obvious Thorne isn’t going to speak.

He laughs. “I used to think so, too. When I was a kid, I never said anything to anyone. I just walked around with a dazed look on my face and tried to figure it all out.”

“Figure what out?” Thorne asks.

Len looks at him with a smile. “Exactly.” I can’t see Thorne’s face, but I can imagine it, furrowed and hinting at his frustration. He hates answers like that. I should know. Len chuckles. “Everything, you know? It was all a mystery. This world is so full of things that a little kid can’t understand. It’s not right, the way we live.”

“You’ve got it better than some,” I say. I think of the ones who died in the Burrows. Of Delilah. I turn the little piece of green plastic around my finger.

“I reckon,” he says. He looks at me through the rearview mirror. “I never said anything. Not ‘til I was five. My parents and brothers thought I was a little off, but then I opened my mouth and said a whole sentence. A few of them. Nothin’s stopped me from talking since.”

Thorne laughs. It’s light and half-pretend, but it makes me smile. I want him to laugh again like he used to. I need it to feel like it did before everything happened. I know he’s just as lost as I am, and that’s all because of me. I want him to find himself again. Maybe when he does, I can, too.

“What business do you have in Phoenix? There ain’t much there anymore,” Len says.

Thorne looks at me through the side mirror. I feel his question just as loudly as I hear Len’s.

“Just passing through.”

We don’t have a plan, only a dot on a map and the memory of Xenith telling me it’s off the road. Telling me I’ll know it when I see it. But I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. “A place you have to stop. It’s part of history,” was all he’d said.

Len grunts back. If he knows I’m lying, that I have no plan, he doesn’t say it. He simply nods his head in reply. I look out the window to evade any more glances.

3 YEARS BEFORE ESCAPE

XENITH AVOIDS MY GLANCES
and ignores me when I talk. It’s been like this for days. He barely looks up. We were paired up to complete a presentation for our Old World history class. By “paired up,” I mean I volunteered to work with him. Since his mom died a couple months ago, no one else has really wanted to be near him. Thorne wasn’t happy when I raised my hand, but it’s not fair. Xenith never asked to be different. Thorne and I should understand different more than anyone
.

I stare at Xenith while he scribbles on some paper in black ink. Our project is to outline the movement of Raven’s Flesh. Each group has a different aspect of history to explore. From life before to destruction to the disease and the Preservation to the Compounds. We have the progression of the disease
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“Why are you looking at me like that?” Xenith asks
.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m going to break.”

“Your mom just died-”

“It’s been two months. I’m fine.”

“You can talk to me, Xenith. I’m your friend.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I always have been.”

“Neely, everyone you know tells you to stay away from me. Maybe you should. Maybe I’m dangerous.” “Please.” I roll my eyes. By “everyone” he means Thorne, and that’s because they don’t like each other. Though his closeness is odd. I can smell him, mint and musk all rolled together. I’ve never noticed it before
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