Twins

by Francine Pascal

  “We don’t have any time for protocol here,” he shouted. “My daughter may be lying dead in that building, so you get your people through those guards and into that room, do you understand?”

  “Sir, yes, sir, I understand, but casualties will be—”

  “But nothing,” Tom snapped. “You’re trained for top priority, and this is top priority. If Loki gets what he needs from my daughter, then we’ve got a massive threat to national security on our hands, so this debate is over. I am authorizing maximum force. Send in your team. That’s an order.”

  Tom snapped his phone closed and crushed his foot on the gas pedal, doubling the speed limit as he raced down Seventh.

  “Come on,” he groaned with simmering impatience. “Come on….”

  His eyes darted back and forth between the road ahead and the numbered street signs up above. Thirty-seventh Street. Thirty-sixth. Thirty-fifth, Thirty-fourth …

  “Stay strong, Gaia,” he mumbled to himself. “Hang on.”

  normal

  She’d just started an entirely new life here on the bloody, glasscovered rug of this tastefully eclectic torture chamber.

  Absolute Expert

  “MAY I SAY IT IS A PLEASURE TO finally meet you, Ms. Moore.”

  Dr. Kessler raised his hand out to Gaia. He was younger and more handsome than she’d expected. When her uncle had mentioned the Germans, Gaia had instantly pictured a group of white-haired gentlemen with thick mustaches in the vein of Einstein and Freud. But with his dark, brushed-back hair and square jaw, Dr. Kessler looked more like he’d stepped out of a European car ad.

  “You may say whatever you want,” Gaia replied blandly, shaking his hand. The situation was too overwhelming for her to do anything but fall back into her default sarcastic mode.

  “Yes … well …,” he replied awkwardly. Maybe they didn’t have sarcasm in Germany. Or maybe he found the situation as overwhelming as she did. “I’ll need you to sit here in the chair so we can get started.”

  She sat down, locking eyes with her uncle. He stood a few feet behind the doctor, seemingly nervous.

  “Don’t worry, Gaia,” he said. “Dr. Kessler is an absolute expert. You’re in the finest hands imaginable.”

  “Your uncle is too kind,” Dr. Kessler said, flashing a brief smile as he stretched on a pair of latex gloves. He tied a rubber strap around the lower end of Gaia’s thick biceps and tapped a vein of her inner left arm. “Now lay your arm down here, please.”

  Gaia let her arm rest on the extended arm of the chair, the same chair into which she’d been strapped not so long ago. It was more than a little disturbing as she flashed back to her first few moments in this room. The moments when she thought her life was nearly over. In a way, she supposed, her life would be ending. Her life without fear, that is.

  Quite suddenly Gaia jerked her arm from the doctor’s grip. It had hit her unexpectedly, but a sudden blast of doubt was rushing through her body like a chill.

  “What’s the matter?” her uncle asked brusquely, almost as if he’d been holding his breath the entire time.

  Gaia had been so busy trying to weed out her uncle’s lies and searching for the truth that she really hadn’t stopped to consider what she was about to do. She’d been so focused on the past that she hadn’t stopped to think about her potential new future. She was about to embark on a new life. A normal life of some kind. But what exactly would that be? What would her life be if she weren’t fearless?

  How did it feel to kiss a boy when you were feeling fear?

  Seizure

  “NOTHING’S THE MATTER,” GAIA said, relaxing her arm back into the hands of Dr. Kessler. “Everything’s fine.”

  The tension dropped from Oliver’s face as his smile resurfaced. “Good, good.” He placed his hand on Dr. Kessler’s shoulder. “Let’s continue, then.”

  Dr. Kessler smiled kindly at Gaia and then strapped her wrist down on the arm of the chair.

  “What are you doing?” Gaia asked.

  “This is just to avoid any more sudden movements,” the doctor replied in a soothing tone. “We wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” He gave her another friendly-neighborhood-doctor grin.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” she mumbled.

  “Yes, of course,” he agreed, seeming to do his best to diffuse the uneasiness building in the room. “I’ll just need a blood sample before we get started.” He was working so quickly that Gaia had barely noticed the needle. The next thing she knew, she felt a slight prick and then watched as he filled two vials with her blood. “This is just to be sure we administer the right levels of the serum,” he said.

  “Good,” Oliver chimed in. “I want to be sure we’ve taken every precaution for her safety.” He smiled at Gaia. She didn’t smile back.

  She knew that her uncle was ostensibly doing this all for her, but that wasn’t how it felt. Oliver was taking such pleasure every step of the way; it felt more like this entire process was for his benefit. Every feeling Gaia was unable to experience, her uncle seemed to be having for her. He was more enthusiastic, more nervous … maybe even scared. It was disconcerting. Annoying. It felt wrong.

  The doctor scanned her blood under the microscope, then he picked up a syringe filled with a liquid that hovered somewhere between clear and yellow.

  “Now, a couple of things you should know,” the doctor said, tapping the needle as he approached her. Suddenly Gaia found his German accent vaguely disturbing. “All our tests have shown that the serum should take effect immediately, although we really can’t be sure of that in this case. You are, after all, our first human subject.”

  There was that word again. Subject. Gaia despised it. Especially when it was used in reference to her.

  “There will be some initial side effects,” the doctor continued. “Possibly drowsiness, disorientation. You may develop a high fever. I’m sure your uncle will take care of you, though.” He smiled and turned back to Oliver.

  “Yes, of course,” Oliver replied. “I’ll be watching over her every minute of every day.”

  “Good,” Dr. Kessler said, turning back to Gaia. “Then I suppose the only thing left to say is … hold still.”

  So this was it. Assuming this serum was for real, this would be Gaia’s last official moment of being unequivocally fearless. And she could think of no moment more appropriate than this one. Because this moment—just before an injection of God knew what, by a complete stranger, in front of a man who had been her worst enemy up until only twenty minutes ago—this moment should have been terrifying. It should have been avoided at all costs. Gaia knew this with every ounce of her reason and wit.

  But the only thing she felt was deep curiosity. The serum could be anything on God’s good earth—cleaning fluid, steroids, heroin…. For all she knew, this was a lethal injection of some kind and her uncle had simply wanted to stretch out the process of murder for his own demented reasons. This could be her last moment on earth, and she could be about to find out the nature of the afterlife, not that she believed there was one. But she wasn’t the least bit frightened. There was something rather tragic about that fact. Being fearless truly was a curse. She’d be ridding herself of a curse. Wouldn’t she?

  Gaia’s face went blank as she glued her eyes to the needle and watched it penetrate her vein. Within seconds she felt the blast.

  It was an explosion of excruciating pain that ripped through her muscles in one instantaneous chain reaction—as if her internal organs had been doused with gasoline and Dr. Kessler had just lit a match and dropped it down her throat. Her muscles began to constrict one by one involuntarily, curling in on her like a grand mal seizure. Her body became so contorted from the relentless sting that she froze in the same catatonic pose as an electric chair victim.

  “Is she having a seizure?”

  She could hear her uncle’s voice dripping with anxiety, and she could see his face blurred with fear as he grabbed the doctor’s shoulders and shook him for quick answers. But s
he couldn’t utter a word.

  “I … I don’t know,” the doctor muttered. He clamped his hands on Gaia’s face and stretched her eyes open, peering into her pupils. “We didn’t anticipate this reaction.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, do something!” Oliver barked, grabbing Gaia’s arms for lack of any other gesture. “Gaia, are you in pain?”

  Gaia couldn’t muster an answer at this point, nor would she have dignified such an idiotic question with a response. She had to control the pain. She had to overcome it. She shifted all her focus to her fingers, trying to will the exquisite aching from each digit, pushing to uncurl the right hand so she could shove her uncle out of her face.

  Dr. Kessler grabbed her left wrist. “Her pulse is racing,” he said, moving his fingers to her neck for another reading. He looked into Gaia’s eyes. “Ms. Moore?” He’d raised his voice and begun to overenunciate his words. “Ms. Moore, can you hear me?” As if Gaia couldn’t hear his booming Germanic voice. I’m sitting right here. I’m just in agony. “Ms. Moore, can you say something? Can you speak to us?”

  “Gaia, can you talk?” Oliver pleaded. “I’m right here, sweetheart, can you speak to me?” Gaia clamped her hand on her uncle’s wrist. And with his eyes this close …

  Somehow, in this pain-induced near-dream state, with his face only inches away, she could finally see something behind those ice blue eyes. The thing she’d been looking for the entire time. Something sinister and fundamentally false.

  Yes, she could speak now. She was sure of it. Slowly she forced the words out through her clenched teeth. “What did you do?” she uttered, searching her uncle’s eyes accusingly. “What did you do to me?”

  She could swear she saw a momentary lapse in his fatherly guise. For one subliminal tick she was almost sure she’d seen through to the cold and heartless void behind all his kindness and concern. But she’d never be able to prove it, and she wouldn’t get her answer. Because all the attention in the room had shifted to the door and the sound that had just exploded in the other room. The sound of rapid automatic gunfire.

  It erupted from the other side of the opaque glass door in a storm of ear-shattering mechanical clatter. The sound of piercing shots suddenly reverberated from every wall.

  Oliver didn’t speak another word, nor did he bother to check the door. He turned with a catlike reflex, grabbed the two vials of Gaia’s blood from the medical tray, and took two smooth steps to a door in the back of the room. Gaia hadn’t noticed it before. It was an old-fashioned door, designed to blend in with the patterned wallpaper and the wood molding. He unlatched it and stepped through quickly. The doctor tried to also, but the door had already been slammed in his face and locked. Gaia could see the terror in the doctor’s eyes as he turned back toward the sound of screaming injured men coming from just outside the room. He pounded on the hidden back door repeatedly, calling out Oliver’s name. But there was no response.

  Gaia willed her throbbing legs to step from the chair. But before she’d gotten her first foot down, the entire room shook from floor to ceiling. A blood-soaked body shattered the glass of the front door, driven by the force of spraying bullets. It landed on the Moroccan rug like a two-hundred-pound rag doll. Black bullet holes were exploding in long successive rows across the walls, destroying every delicately placed frame and objet d’art. Gaia dropped to the floor and threw her hands over the back of her head, feeling a sharp spike of glass puncture her cheek as she hit the ground.

  She heard the doctor plead momentarily for his life. “Please, I’m not part of this. I’m only—” His pleas were cut short by five deafening shots, followed by a loud thud and crunch as something massive hit the floor only inches from Gaia’s head. She turned up her face and realized she was staring directly into the motionless eyes of the doctor, who was now sprawled out on the ground next to her. She watched as his lifeless eyeballs filled slowly with blood. His neck was twisted in an inhuman position, and blood poured from a thick hole at its center.

  And suddenly a very new and horrid sensation had taken over Gaia’s body. It wasn’t the wrenching pain induced by the injection; it was something else. Something Gaia had never felt before and thus could hardly describe. It was like pain, but it affected no specific part of her body. It felt like the dark and miserable flip side of being thrilled. This torturous hollow buzzing made her heart race and drenched her in cold sweat.

  Gaia shut her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look at the doctor’s dark red eyes for another moment. She couldn’t bear the gunfire and the blood and the primal screams of all these brutal and efficient murderers, whoever the hell they were. She was in pain, and she was … desperate….

  I’m scared.

  That had to be what this was. Fear. Didn’t that have to be what this was? This awful racy feeling. This overabundance of sweat. This desire to hide her eyes from death and destruction. When had Gaia ever wanted to shield herself from blood or mayhem or … anything? This had to be fear or some version of it. The injection, it seemed, wasn’t a fraud. She was almost sure of it.

  So now what? she dared herself. She’d just started an entirely new life here on the bloody glass-covered rug of this tastefully eclectic torture chamber. She wasn’t about to let it end only two minutes in. This moment, in its own twisted way, was something Gaia had been looking forward to her whole life. A chance to overcome fear. A chance to be brave, just as she’d promised herself only minutes ago. You want to be brave? Then get your head out of your hands and get off the floor.

  She didn’t pause to think again. Nor did she pause to feel this dreadful alien sensation or the merciless ache in her muscles and joints. She simply raised herself to her feet and reacted.

  The shiny black metal of a rifle was in her face. She grabbed it with both hands and shoved it back into the black-hooded face of her assailant, denting his nose with a high-pitched crack. He let out a howl and dropped to the ground, writhing in pain.

  Two more hooded gunmen loomed directly behind him. They charged at her. Gaia ducked to the floor, tucking her body into itself and becoming a stumbling block for the attacker to her right. She ripped the machine gun from his hands as he toppled over her and then whipped the butt of the gun against his head before he’d even had the chance to reorient himself. The second man lunged for her, but she crammed the barrel of the rifle deep into his stomach.

  “Oomph,” he groaned. The gun fell from his hands, and he doubled over. Gaia didn’t give him another moment to think or regain his balance. She zeroed in on his chin and snapped his head backward with a pinpoint front kick to the face. But there were already two more coming at her from either side.

  She used all the momentum of one to flip him a hundred and eighty degrees and send him crashing into the other. It might have looked like the playful stunt of a professional wrestler, but the sound of the collision was more like the blunt, unholy thud of a traffic accident. She heard no cries of pain, as they had clearly gone unconscious on impact.

  Gaia whipped around for the next attack, but when her body stopped spinning, her field of vision did not. The entire room began to tilt to the right, twirling around her like a carousel on fast-forward. And she couldn’t make it stop. She could see more hooded soldiers in black, but they seemed to have gathered in a circle around her and begun to revolve, like a vindictive gang of taunting terrorists playing ring-around-the-rosy. She tried to narrow her focus, but it was impossible. Everything had turned into one big peripheral blur. Not only was the room spinning, but the lights had begun to dim.

  No, not now, she pleaded with her body. Not yet.

  But it wasn’t something she could control. She might have the bravery to take on ten men, but she’d overestimated her physical limits. Adrenaline had masked her substantial weakness for a few moments, but now reality was kicking in. Her strength had been ravaged by that injection. Her postbattle blackout was announcing itself prematurely. The room grew dimmer in a matter of seconds until it had begun to match the black hoods that
surrounded her.

  So this is it, she thought with cold resignation. Sixty seconds. Sixty seconds of a “normal” life was all she’d be granted by those assholes, the fates. One minute of bravery and now she’d be gunned down defenselessly. She wouldn’t even be conscious for her own death. How perfect. How totally appropriate.

  Gaia dropped to her knees, holding on to the last vestiges of consciousness as she felt what seemed like a hundred hands grab at her arms and stretch them—almost from the sockets. And then it was over.

  GAIA

  I wonder what fear feels like? It’s the question I’ve asked myself every day for as long as I can remember. Until now—now I wonder if I want to know what fear feels like.

  I mean, normal people would probably think I was the asshole of the century right now. As far as I can tell, people spend at least three quarters of their day wishing they weren’t so scared. Scared of whatever—scared of the dark, scared of boys or girls, scared of failing trigonometry, scared of their boyfriend falling for that bitch who’s always flirting with him. Scared of their boss or their father or poverty or loneliness or death. Everybody’s scared, right? Except me.

  But here’s the thing: at least they know how to live a life filled with different fears. They know what life feels like. You tell me, if it’s such a gift to be fearless, then why the hell does everyone but me always seem to be smiling so goddamn much?

  I think I know why. I think it’s because they’re taking all these little pleasures every day that I know nothing about. It’s like they can’t even feel like valid human beings unless they’re overcoming some kind of fear. That’s what it is. That’s what their smiles are all about. They smile when they get an A because deep down, they were terrified they’d fail the test. They smile when they get a job because deep down, they were afraid they’d live out the rest of their life unemployed until, someone found them in a Dumpster clinging to a bottle of Jack Daniels. They smile when they get a date because deep down, they were sure they were going to end up alone in some rocking chair, knitting sweaters for their sixteen cats. Hey, they even smile when someone says hello to them in the hallway. Because somewhere in their fearful heads, they were actually worried that this might be the day when all their friends took a private meeting and decided to hate them for the rest of the year.