The Rebecca twin had shrunk back a couple of steps as Martha approached, and Will saw from the way she was moving that there was something wrong with her leg. She also seemed absolutely petrified by Martha. She began to babble at Will. “I’m alone … she’s not here … my sister … she threw me down the Pore.”
“On your knees and put your hands on your head,” Martha barked.
“My sister … she … she pushed me down the Pore,” the Rebecca twin continued to babble as she did what Martha told her.
“Why would she do that?” Will asked.
“I wouldn’t go along with her anymore. She’s insane…. I told her I wouldn’t be a part of it.” Rebecca was crying openly now, her slim shoulders quaking. “She’s just sick, Will. She made me do those things. She made me do everything. I had to — she threatened to kill me, so many times.” Her hands on top of her head, Rebecca peered up at Will, her raven hair scattered over her face.
“You must think we’re complete idiots!” Chester yelled. Will hadn’t even been aware that he was there. “You lying little cow!” He was so crazed with fury that spittle was flying from his mouth as he yelled. Then he whipped up his rifle and aimed it straight at the kneeling girl.
“No! Chester!” Will screamed, reaching for him. Will managed to knock the rifle just as it discharged. The bullet cracked against the rock somewhere behind Rebecca. Whimpering, she flung herself onto her side, her face buried in the dirt.
Chester was working the rifle bolt so he could take a second shot. In the heat of the moment, Will pushed him hard in the chest. He was so surprised at Will’s intervention that he relaxed his grip on the rifle, allowing Will to grab it away from him.
“What are you doing? Give it back to me!” Chester demanded. He hunched his shoulders like a linebacker about to charge.
“Steady, Chester,” Will said, holding the rifle across his body, ready to fend off the boy if he had to.
“She’s a Styx,” Will heard Martha growl. He whipped his head around just in time to see what she was intending to do. Acting on pure instinct, he jabbed at Martha’s crossbow with the rifle stock. It was enough to deflect the bolt, which swished into the shingle. It had missed the prone girl’s trembling body by a whisker.
“Enough! Both of you — stop!” Will shouted. “Just stop!”
Chester and Martha were both facing him now, and from their expressions he truly thought they might go through him to get at the Styx girl.
“What’s wrong with you? You nearly shot her!” he cried.
Chester’s voice was cold and low. “Yeah, that’s right. Too right. Give me the gun back and I will —“
“But —” Will began.
“But what? You weren’t in the Hold. You didn’t go through what I did,” he said. He jabbed his finger at the Rebecca twin. “That little witch was there when they were beating me! And she beat me, too. She was laughing like it was all some big joke.” He glared at the girl. “Well, I’ve got a punch line I’d really like to try on her!”
Will pulled himself up to his full height. “We can’t just kill her, not here, and not like this. She might be telling the —”
“The truth? That it wasn’t her, it was all her sister?” Chester interrupted. “Come on, Will, get real. They’re both exactly the same; they’re both evil! What about Cal, Tam, your grandma? Are you forgetting that these psychos slaughtered them? And what about all the other people they killed? She has to die.”
“I’m not going to let you do it,” Will said. Releasing the magazine from the rifle and working the bolt to make sure the chamber was empty, he threw the weapon back to Chester. “Not in cold blood.”
“Why not?!” Chester rasped. “You’re with me on this, aren’t you, Martha?”
Martha nodded. “All the way. You need to finish her,” she urged Will.
“No,” Will said, his voice breaking with the strain of the confrontation. “No. We’re not like them. Killing her makes us just like them.”
Chester fixed Will with a stony glare, then spat at the Styx girl before he stomped off back inside the barricade.
Martha stood motionless, holding her crossbow as if she was thinking about recocking it. “So,” she said to Will, “let me get this straight. This is one of the twins you spoke about, one of the fakes who pretended to be your sister and has done everything she can to make your life a living horror … to hunt you down and kill you. And you’re prepared to let her off scot-free?”
Will ran his hand over his long white hair several times, at a complete loss as to how to answer. “I … I really don’t know, but … but we should hear what she has to say.”
Martha shook her head, and smiled sourly. “Make me a promise, Will.”
“What?”
“Let her say her bit — and after you’ve heard all her lies — you’ll bring her back out here again, and finish her off yourself?”
“I … I …,” Will stuttered.
“This is how it starts.” Martha suddenly looked extremely weary, her head drooping. “The Blackheads worm their way in and before you know it, you’ll wake up with one of them standing over you with a knife.” She took a deep breath and stared hard into Will’s eyes. “I hope you know what you’re doing, dearie.”
Will looked confused. “No, I don’t. I really don’t,” he admitted. He heard the Styx girl’s sobs and turned to where she lay. “Get up, Rebecca or whatever your name is. You’re coming with us.”
The girl didn’t move.
“I said get up!”
She scrambled to her feet, shaking with fear, her large frightened eyes on Will.
“Martha?” Will said.
“Yes,” she answered, her scornful gaze burning into the pitiful Styx girl.
“I found some leg irons in the stuff Nathaniel brought back from the galleon.”
“Now you’re talking,” Martha snarled, seizing Rebecca’s arm and twisting it behind her back. Then she shoved her roughly through the doorway and toward the shack.
Will paused for a moment to search the darkness outside before he shut and locked the door of the barricade.
Unseen by him, a Limiter slipped away, his mission accomplished. He swung his makeshift spear in front of him, ready to dispatch any further spiders unlucky enough to cross his path. “Child’s play,” he said in a gravelly voice as he sped down the tunnel to rendezvous with his comrade. This may have been because he already knew the lay of the land as well as he knew the lattice of scars on the back of his hand, or because the spiders and the other fauna he’d encountered so far were so easily dealt with; it just wasn’t true.
13
CHESTER CAME OUT onto the porch holding a mug. He lowered himself into the empty chair next to Will and made a long humph noise as he crossed his legs.
“All right?” Will inquired tentatively.
“S’pose,” Chester mumbled in reply, not looking at his friend. “Will … it’s …,” he began, throwing him a brief glance before taking a large sip from his mug.
“What?” Will responded, knowing only too well what was coming.
Chester’s drink was evidently much hotter than he’d been expecting, and he had to take a couple of rapid breaths to cool his mouth before he could answer. When he did, his speech was clipped with anger. “That twin tried to kill us … and you just let her off, like it was nothing.”
“I haven’t let her off,” Will countered. “It’s just —”
“It’s just what?” Chester said, growing even more heated. “Come on, Will! You’re acting like a … I don’t know … like a complete wimp!”
“No, I’m not,” Will objected, doing his best to keep his voice even.
“Well, I think you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.” Chester looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, one of them, anyway.”
“Look, Chester, it’s like this,” Will said as he massaged his forehead, trying to alleviate the throbbing headache that had come on after the incident. “It would have been
the easiest thing in the world for me to let you and Martha kill her.”
“Yeah, so why didn’t you?” Chester challenged him.
“Because afterward you’d have regretted it. Haven’t you had a bellyful of all the killing? If we’d finished off the twin, we’d be no different from her and all the other Styx. We can’t let ourselves sink that low.”
“Don’t you dare compare us with them,” Chester said, outraged. “We’re the good guys.”
“Not if we shoot twelve-year-old girls in the face, we’re not,” Will said.
Chester clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Aren’t you forgetting that she’s downright dangerous? What if her sister’s outside that barricade, with a soddin’ army of Limiters? What if they’re waiting for a sign from her before they storm this place and kill us all? What then?” Chester snorted through his nostrils like an irate bull.
“Why wait? They could do it any time they wanted,” Will reasoned.
Chester waved his hand through the air as if brushing Will’s answer aside, then he changed tack. “And as for sparing the Rebecca twin, what’s that expression? Live by the sword —”
“— die by the sword,” Martha interjected as she came onto the porch and deposited a metal plate on the floor by Will. “Here’s your prisoner’s food.” As she promptly returned inside, Will noticed she had her crossbow slung over her back. It was clear she was as nervous as Chester about more Styx showing up.
Will regarded the plate but didn’t make a move toward it. “Don’t you think I want revenge, too, Chester? Don’t you know I live every minute with the weight of what they did to Cal, Uncle Tam, my real mum, and Granny Macaulay? And if they’d looked after my dad, he might still be alive today. But shooting the twin isn’t … isn’t the answer.” He thumped the arm of Chester’s chair. “You’re not listening to me. Look at me, will you?”
“What?” Chester asked, as he met Will’s resolute gaze.
“You’ve got to believe me when I say this — I have not forgiven her. Not for one single second.”
Chester gave a small nod.
Will got to his feet and collected the plate of food. “And you never know — perhaps she can help us. Perhaps she knows a way out of the Pore — so we can get Elliott some medicine. If we’d just killed the twin … well, she’d be too dead to tell us.”
“You might have a point,” Chester conceded. “So ask her for three tickets on the express train back to Highfield, will you?” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand as he added, “First class.”
“I’ll do that.” Will was so relieved that he and Chester hadn’t fallen out over the situation. The last thing he wanted was for them to be at loggerheads again — he’d had enough of that in the Deeps to last him a lifetime. “And, Chester, I’m sorry I pushed you like that and grabbed away the rifle.”
“Sure,” Chester said.
Will started down the front steps, then turned to his friend.
“By the way, did you just burn your gob on that tea?” he said, breaking into a grin.
“Get out of here!” Chester laughed.
Rebecca was being kept in the dry-log store, the sturdiest of the outbuildings at the rear of the shack. Martha was taking absolutely no chances and had supervised Will as he patted the twin down for any weapons, then placed shackles around her ankles, each secured with a massive padlock. As if this wasn’t enough, Martha looped a heavyweight length of chain around the manacles and one of the huge beams at the four corners of the shack — there was no way the girl was going anywhere.
“Twins,” Will said under his breath as he carried the plate over to the hut. Even though he’d seen it with his own eyes at the top of the Pore, he had to keep reminding himself there were actually two Rebeccas. They’d been taking turns spying on him, one on, one off, for all those years in Highfield. It didn’t really matter which of them this was, as they seemed to be indistinguishable.
Rebecca was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, her head hung low. She looked up as he entered. Her hair — which he’d never known to be anything but perfectly groomed — was all over the place, and her face was daubed with filth. Will was actually a little alarmed by her disheveled state — for all those years in Highfield, she’d never once let her standards slip.
Back in the Colony the Rebeccas wore the Styx uniform of a black dress topped by a white collar — a uniform that gave them an aura of immense power and authority. As Will regarded the sorry-looking specimen before him now in her torn Limiter fatigues, she didn’t appear quite so powerful or commanding anymore. Whichever Little Miss Perfect this was, she had fallen a long way.
Cautiously, as if approaching a highly dangerous animal, he placed the plate on the ground before her, then stepped back.
“Thank you, Will,” she said meekly. “And thank you for what you did out there. You saved my life. I knew I could count on you.”
“Don’t!” Will snapped, holding up his hand. “I don’t want your gratitude.”
“OK,” Rebecca said quietly, poking at the food on the plate. “But I hope you believe me, Will. I was forced to do what my sister and the Styx told me. If I’d refused, they’d have tortured or executed me, or both. You’ve no idea what it’s been like, living in fear for so long.”
“Oh, I don’t know — you and your people have given me a pretty good idea,” Will said, his face expressionless.
“It wasn’t up to me, Will.”
“Just stop it!” he flared up, his face turning bright red as his temper snapped. “What? Do you expect me to simply take your word for everything? I’m not that stupid!”
“I was following orders,” she said, quailing at his outburst. “You have to believe me, Will.”
“Oh, fine, let’s just be brother and sister again. We can play ‘happy family,’ just like we used to,” he snarled mockingly. “Talk all you like, you’re wasting your breath.” As he spoke, vivid memories of their previous life in Highfield ran through his mind. Time after time, in the way that only a younger sibling can, Rebecca would needle him until he blew his top — exactly what she wanted him to do. And now, as his heart beat rapidly and he breathed shallow breaths, it was as though nothing had changed, despite all the terrible events he’d been through since those days.
Bartleby pranced in, his tail swishing. He made straight for Rebecca and sat himself smartly next to her. She scooped some of the dark meat from the plate and offered it to him. Will’s anger gave way to surprise as the cat took it from her without any hesitation at all, as if he knew and trusted her. Rebecca noticed Will’s frown.
“I nursed him in the Colony,” she explained. “Bartleby was in a real state when we brought him home.” She gave the cat another handful of the meat, carelessly dripping the gravy over her ragged Limiter’s jacket.
How very un-Rebecca-like, Will thought to himself.
Bartleby purred as he gulped down the food. “Food equals love,” Rebecca pronounced, peering up at Will.
“I have some questions for you,” he said. “And if I think you’re lying to me, I’ll turn you over to Chester and Martha. Got that?”
She gave a single nod.
“Are you really down here by yourself?”
“Yes,” she replied unequivocally.
“So your sister’s not with you? Or any other Styx?”
“I’m totally alone,” she confirmed.
“And you fell down the Pore, same as we did?”
“I was pushed down it,” she said.
Will wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw her lower lip tremble, as if she might be about to cry; but then she helped herself to some food.
“We have to find a way out of the Pore. Elliott’s ill — she needs a doctor, badly,” he said.
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I don’t know how to get back,” she answered immediately.
“What about the De Jaybo story?” Will shot at the girl. “Did he really climb out?”
“Yes, he did, though nobody knew h
ow he did it,” she replied. “I was told Dad asked to see his drawings, but was refused permission.”
Will bristled. As far as he was concerned, she had forfeited any right to call Dr. Burrows her father. She sensed his annoyance, her whole body appearing to sag, as if she was suddenly overcome by grief. “I miss him, too, you know,” she murmured. “I did my best to make sure he was left alone when he was in the Colony.”
“You saw him there?”
“I wasn’t allowed to. Oh, Will, I wish I could have done more for him.”
Closing his eyes, Will pressed against his eyelids with his fingertips. His headache didn’t seem to be getting any better. He longed to go back to the shack and bury himself in the oblivion of sleep, somewhere he could shut all this out.
“You have to believe me, Will — I was forced to do all those things, all those awful things. I had no alternative.”
Will finally opened his eyes.
“How can I convince you I’m telling the truth?” she asked.
Will shrugged.
“What if I were to give you this?” she said. She pulled at the shirt collar around her neck with her gravy-stained fingers, then lifted out a thin cord on which hung two small glass phials. “What if I give you Dominion and the vaccine, as a gesture of good faith?” With a flick of her wrist, she snapped the cord and offered the phials to Will. “Here, take them. They’re the only specimens we had, and … and now they’re yours.”
Unspeaking, he reached over to take the phials, then held them up by the light so he could examine the clear fluid inside. “How do I know if it’s really Dominion?” he finally asked.
“Because it is,” she said with a small shrug. Her leg irons rattled as she shifted her position in the dirt so she could see Will without straining her neck.
“But why would you and your sister have these in the first place. Why you?”
“Because we’re important,” she said casually.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you gathered in the Colony that we don’t have family units, not like Topsoilers do. When my father lost his life at the hands of your uncle Tam —”
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