Follow Me Through Darkness (33 page)

“Mine?”

“Yours. It took the Elders a few decades to figure out why, but then it was discovered that the Ambrose family carries a rare gene with this amazing plasticity to survive, to adapt. You bounce back quicker than most people. You survive,” Agent Mitchell says. He barely has to pause for a breath, but I can’t seem to catch mine.

“That’s not true. This trip has been hard. The darkness, the sunlight, the heat-I’ve felt it all just like any normal person.”

Thorne touches my arm. “Not since you were poisoned. Neely, I didn’t tell you this, but you weren’t breathing when they found you. You were dead. They only went to get you because I felt when it happened.” “What?” I died? How did I die? That’s not possible. I would know if I had been dead.

Thorne’s voice is low. “It was like before, when you drowned, only more intense. It felt like my body was dying with yours. I don’t know how to explain it. They breathed life into you, shocked your heart, and then you slept for five days. You haven’t really seemed tired since then, not like I have.”

This whole thing is ridiculous. I didn’t die. It’s something else. I’ve been tired since then. Haven’t I? I slept in the car ride with Asher. No, I didn’t; I only listened and pretended.

“It’s been activated, then,” Mitchell says. I pull my gaze in his direction, and he looks so excited. It’d be adorable if it wasn’t all because of me dying. “The Elders discovered it while on their quest for immortality, and then they placed the Ambrose family in a position to be directors, starting with your great-grandfather, so they could track you. Obviously, everyone in your family has died, but it’s because they were missing genes-and this gene needs other genetic material, other traits, in order to be fully expressed. They perfected and altered the Ambrose line, trying to create the perfect specimen that they could replicate, and we think they finally did. You. They need you.”

I shake my head. This is too much to process. I’m some sort of creation that was manipulated into existence? “You’re saying that they set up my mother and my father so that I would be born?” Even as I deny it, I remember what it said in my father’s papers about pairing up marriages for reproduction.

Carrigan kneels down so she’s closer to me. “They’ve been prepping your family for years, Neely. The Elders aren’t immortal; they can die. Their study on twins has only postponed their death. They age, but at a way slower rate than us. If they could pair that with you, then they could survive anything-and live forever. As it is now, they can be killed or stopped, but if they are able to splice in that gene of yours, replicate it and the other genetic contributions that allow it to be fully expressed, they would be invincible.”

They need me. That’s why my father was fighting so hard to get me to take his place. That’s why they were sending Thorne away. I finally sit down, head spinning. They’d planned for me since before I was born, a child with the perfect genetic makeup, so they could use me and live forever. My mother died only wanting to keep me away from them. Liv Taylor lied to keep it a secret and protect me.

I really have been a pawn. Since before I was born.

“Because you have plasticity, when you were born and rewired to Thorne, your genetic code adjusted. You became completely connected, which is how you feel each other. That makes you even more special.”

“Why?”

“You’re a threat. They can’t control you, or they never could before. They could’ve found a way around that, but you’re safe right now,” Mitchell adds.

“I don’t understand. How?”

“That branding. If it was ever removed or if anything happened to Thorne, then you’d be susceptible to the Elders. The chemical used to limit curiosity causes fatal reactions when paired with the one used in twin branding. But if your twin brand was removed or inactivated, you’d be susceptible to the mind control from the other branding neurochemical. They could take whatever they want from you, and you wouldn’t stop them. The active twin branding is a safety net for you; without it, they can manipulate your elasticity gene, and you, for their purpose.”

That’s why the Elders wanted to transfer Thorne. Then they’d change his branding and ruin our connection. Have they known this whole time about our secret? Or was it just to get rid of him? If Thorne wasn’t connected to me, I would only be a tool for the Elders’ messed-up cause.

“Basically,” Bane says, “without the branding, you’re dead and the Elders win.”

The one thing I’ve wanted to destroy is the only thing keeping me safe. I look at Thorne and he squeezes my hand, but it does nothing to calm the crashing in my stomach.

30 DAYS BEFORE ESCAPE

THE WAVES CRASH
and squeeze into each other as I snuggle closer to Thorne. This is one of our last nights together before I die. I shouldn’t be thinking about that, but the truth consumes my thoughts. I have one month, and Thorne will be gone for most of it. He leaves tomorrow for a weeklong fishing trip, and then he has another at the end of the month. Him being gone will be easier
.

And not. Even sitting next to him, my body is on fire at his touch, and the branding does that. What would we feel like to me without our connection? If Liv Taylor hadn’t lied to the Elders time and time again. If none of this had happened. What would being normal feel like? “You okay?” Thorne asks me
.

I nod, but I know he doesn’t believe it because he inches my chin up toward his face. “You can tell me whatever you’re thinking.”

I sigh heavily. Can I really? “Do you ever wonder who’d we be without the branding?”

We’ve never had this conversation before. There was never a reason to, but now there are too many reasons. I know more than him, and it all feels false
.

Thorne runs a hand through his hair and stares past me into the distance. “Of course I have.”

“I guess sometimes I wonder how we would be if it wasn’t that way, if we didn’t have this.” I touch the branding on his neck. “If we were our own people, completely without the other’s emotions. If we had our own secrets and desires.”

He smirks at me. “I have my own secrets, Neely.”

“You do?” I ask
.

He nods. “Sure. It’s not like you’re reading my mind. You’re only feeling what I feel, and only when it’s intense or something I want you to feel.”

I scrunch up my nose. “It’s almost the same thing, isn’t it? Our pull is getting stronger. I can feel you more. When you’re out with the boats and you get closer to shore, you get this moment of complete happiness, and I feel it like a shock to my chest.”

“You make it sound like it’s an annoyance,” he says
.

“I don’t mind the happy things, but sometimes…” I pause. Sometimes I want to be my own person. This is a lost cause. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” he says
.

I move so I’m facing him instead of lying curled up in his arms. “I guess I wonder sometimes what it’d be like if I carried all my own emotions and you carried yours, and we were normal.”

“Harder,” he says, as if it’s the simplest answer in the world. “Right now we’ve got each other, and that’s always made sense to me. Sure, it’d be nice sometimes to not have to worry so much about what you’re feeling and why, but at the same time, if I didn’t know that, I know you wouldn’t tell me, and you’d be this mystery to me.”

“You like the connection because it helps you understand me?”

“No,” he says quickly, inching me closer so our bodies are touching. “I’m saying it wouldn’t matter.”

“But why?”

“With a connection or without one, we are still the same.”

I nod, but I wonder if we really are. If we didn’t have this huge emotional pull, would we be anything at all?

Thorne pulls me close, and I know he’s done talking about it. I curl back into him, trying to clear my brain and stare over the ocean. How can he dismiss it so easily? The branding is everything we are, and without it, what are we? If I could ever get rid of it, what would happen to us?

“Look, a shooting star,” Thorne says, pointing up. I see it too, a bright flashing light drifting through the star- filled sky and hurling down toward us. A dying star, the schoolhouse teacher taught us once. “Make a wish.”

“What?” I explore his face, take in as much of it as possible. The soft angles and warm colors that are all him. I know I won’t be seeing it much more
.

“People in the Old World used to wish on stars. Shooting stars are the luckiest. Make a wish.”

Thorne closes his eyes tightly. A smile spreads across his face like he knows I’m watching him. I close my eyes, too. The words are all jumbled in my head because there’s so much I could wish for
.

For all of this to be a dream. For me to not have to leave soon. For another way. For Thorne to come with me. For everything to go according to plan
.

I don’t wish for any of those things
.

When I open my eyes, Thorne is smiling down at me. His warm caramel eyes are bright in the darkness, and a smile plays on his lips. There’s this joy radiating from him that completely overtakes any of my own emotions, so overwhelming I’m tempted to let it consume me
.

“What did you wish for?” he asks me
.

I shake my head. “Isn’t it tradition that you can’t tell wishes?”

“That’s only for birthdays. They have more power if you speak them.”

I laugh. “I don’t want to risk mine not coming true.”

“You won’t.”

“What did you wish?” I ask, changing the subject from me. I don’t know how to tell him my wish
.

Thorne stretches his lean, tall body without his hand leaving mine. The movement is so swift and graceful. How did he end up being so good?

“I shouldn’t tell you…”

“Because you don’t want to risk it? I told you,” I joke
.

He shakes his head. “I won’t be risking anything. I’m not worried because I already have you,” he says, locking eyes with me
.

My heart slows down and speeds up at once. He captivates me, and his emotions run through the branding, all lust and joy and passion. I feel my own guilt bubbling to the surface, but I hide it away as much as possible
.

I’m not sure who moves first, him or me. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the feel of his lips on mine. Fire moves through me when we kiss, rushing over me like waves. His hand runs through my hair and over my skin, and I lean in so he’s closer to me. The branding is burning through my body while our mouths are entwined
.

I steal a glance at the sky through half-closed eyes. I take back my wish, and I wish for him instead-forever
.

But I don’t mean it as much I as should
.

I didn’t wish for him the first time. I wished for the truth, for Liv Taylor to be wrong, for the branding not to be the reason we are connected. I wished for a life with no branding. A life that’s completely my own. Even if it means that he’s not connected to me
.

DEADLINE: 8D, 8H, 34M

MAVERICKS HEADQUARTERS

THORNE’S HAND IS
connected to mine as we follow the agents into another room. This one is deeper underground, and when Agent Carrigan flips on the light, it’s a gray stone, small and cold, with a large machine in the middle of it that we can see through some plastic framing.

My head is spinning from all the information, from the idea that my whole life really was manipulated. That I died a few days ago and didn’t even know it. That I’m really here. I don’t want to admit I feel a little scared of what else I’m going to learn. Thorne lets go of my hand and sits next to Mitchell as he explains to him the way the computer works. Bane pulls up some more of those electronic files. A picture of an older man, balding and no smile, appears. Some more documents with the word “Unification.”

Agent Bane clears his throat. He’s all hard edges and angles and facts, even in the minutes I’ve known him. “There was a founding scientist, Leonard Taylor, who didn’t agree with the Elders. After starting the Preservation, he learned he couldn’t stop the branding, but he decided he could counter it. The Mavericks were started so we could establish Unification-the destruction of the Compounds, the salvation of the people, and their reintegration into a new life.”

A new life. It sounds so easy when he says it that way. An ache burrows in my chest. I want a new life, a new chance to live it. Freedom. That’s why we’re here, but we can never have it.

“Part of this allows us to remove the branding so that everyone can fully integrate into society,” Carrigan adds. She points toward the machine. “It’s a laser that removes the ink and the effect.”

My ears are burning. “How do you do it?”

“It’s something we’ve mastered. It’s only ink, the branding, but they lace the ink with a drug,” she says. I watch as a video plays, showing the ink being mixed with some clear liquid, like water, but the ink turns darker.

“They insert it into your skin, like a tattoo,” Agent Handler says,. “Everyone we’ve removed it from has behaved normally, once the drug clear from their systems. They ask questions and have a desire for answers. There are no noticeable side effects.”

It’s amazing that they can do that, return us all to the way we were meant to be.

“Giving people back their free will to live normal lives is one of the only things we can do,” Mitchell adds.

This is what I’ve wanted for a long time, and it’s totally possible. Just not for me. That feeling is a sinking pit I could fall into. I can never be unbranded, never be my own. The only thing I’ve ever wanted can never happen.

“That’s why this news of the new Ultimate Compliance is alarming,” says Agent Mitchell. I notice for the first time that his eyes match his hair, both dark shades of brown. “This machine was created with the Preservation. If the Elders are changing the way the branding works, we may never get to save them.”

What would the Elders do with the people they make serve them? What’s the purpose? Why have they been taking down their own Compounds throughout history? Maybe they’ve changed their minds. Or they have found a way to make something better.