Unravel

by Imogen Howson

  No. Not now. Really not now. She said it out loud, feeling the need to speak the words whether it was actually necessary or not. “Not now, Lin.”

  She hadn’t yet looked up fully when Lin spoke. “Yes now.”

  Elissa met her sister’s eyes, surprise jolting through her at Lin’s tone. If she’d expected anything, it would have been the tears and remorse of the previous day. But there were no tears in Lin’s eyes. And no remorse, either. Instead they were blank and blazing with rage.

  Oh for goodness’ sake, what’s she got to be angry about?

  But Elissa didn’t get any more time than that to wonder.

  “You’re not to talk about me to him!” Lin’s voice shook. Again, not with distress, but with absolute, consuming anger.

  Elissa put up a hand. “Lin, I don’t want to talk—”

  “Then don’t! Don’t talk to him! Don’t tell him about me!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Elissa snapped. “You mean Cadan?”

  “Of course I mean Cadan!”

  “And I’m not supposed to talk to him?” Elissa pulled her hands out of her pockets so she could fold her arms, a wave of fresh irritation sweeping over her. God knew she didn’t want to talk to Cadan right now, but it wasn’t Lin’s business either way.

  “Not about me!” Lin’s voice quivered on the edge of a shriek. “I don’t want to be shared! I’m your twin, not his! You’re allowed to be angry and upset with me—he’s not. He’s not allowed!”

  Elissa gave an exasperated sigh. She was so seriously out of patience with having to handle Lin’s emotions. If it’s not bad enough I’ve got to deal with my own . . .

  “Jeez, Lin,” she said, “talking to him about you doesn’t mean you’re his—” She stopped.

  Just now, she had been talking to Cadan about Lin. About being angry with her, about being upset—God, more than upset. But how did Lin know? It wasn’t the first time Elissa had gone off to be alone with Cadan. How did Lin know that this time it had been to talk about her?

  A fresh rush of anger rose inside her. “You were listening? You were listening to me and Cadan?”

  There wasn’t the slightest bit of compunction in Lin’s expression. “How else am I meant to know if you’re talking about me?”

  The one last thing that might have tempered Elissa’s anger—the possibility that Lin’s listening in had been inadvertent—evaporated. Blind fury rose through her like sheets of flame. When she looked at Lin, her eyes were so blurred she could no longer see her sister’s face. “You did it deliberately?”

  Lin shrugged. “Like I said, how else am I meant to know—”

  “You’re not meant to! You’re not meant to know! When people are alone they’re supposed to be private, what they’re talking about is meant to be private. That’s the whole point! If I’m talking to someone and you’re not there, you don’t listen in! You don’t spy on me!”

  Now Lin’s voice rose all the way to a shriek. “But you were talking about me! You’re not supposed to talk to him about me!”

  Elissa threw her hands out, so furious she felt she’d explode if she couldn’t express it in movement as well as words. And now she was shouting too. “I’m not the problem here! It’s not me. It’s you. You’re not meant to know what I’m talking about!”

  For a moment they both stared at each other, locked in an equal outraged lack of understanding. It’s like trying to get through to an alien. The thought rose through Elissa’s brain, as thick and black as the smoke from burning rocket fuel. Like trying to talk to someone . . . God, someone who’s not even human.

  “What?” said Lin.

  Her gaze clashed with Elissa’s, furious and outraged. And now, as well as anger, there was hurt there too. Hurt as deep as if Elissa had stabbed her.

  Oh, so now she’s hurt? She drags me into killing the people she wants to kill. She refuses to help me save the people I want to save. She listens in to my private conversations with my boyfriend—and into my Private. Freaking. Thoughts—and then it’s her feelings that get hurt by finding out what she wasn’t even meant to know in the first place?

  She didn’t try to hide what she was thinking, didn’t try to soften the impact of what Lin had just read—was still reading—in her mind.

  “You heard me,” she said.

  For a long moment everything stilled. Hurt rose like a slow tide in Lin’s face. All the blood seemed to drop from under her skin. Elissa watched the pain pour into her sister’s eyes and didn’t care, didn’t care, it was only fair that Lin should get hurt as well—

  Then all at once it was as if the pain had bled far enough to reach Elissa, too. She was still angry, but this was Lin, her sister, her twin. She swallowed as much as she could of her anger, managed to reach a hand out toward her. “Lin, look, I’m sorry—”

  Lin flinched. Actually flinched, as if the touch of Elissa’s hand would bring further pain. Her face was blank with hurt. She didn’t say anything. She shook her head, backing away, then turned and walked off down the corridor, the way Elissa had come. She moved clumsily, as if her feet, her whole body, had gone numb.

  “Lin,” said Elissa, but her sister didn’t turn around. Her feet stuttered once on the shiny-clean floor, as if, whether she willed it or not, she couldn’t help but respond to Elissa’s voice, but she continued walking, down the corridor and around the corner at the far end.

  Elissa took a step back, found the wall behind her, and slumped against it, dragged down by a weight of misery so strong it felt like exhaustion.

  It’ll be okay, she told herself. I’ll sort things out with Lin, I’ll make it better. She has to forgive me, she always has to forgive me, just like I always have to forgive her. And once we’re off-planet . . .

  As it had once before, the idea seemed like the only bright light in wastes of darkness. Getting off-planet. Getting onto the Phoenix, breaking out of Sekoia’s atmosphere into the cold, clean, safe emptiness of space.

  Here, on Sekoia, she and Lin were being continually forced to use their link. And every time they did, every time one of them reached out to the other, to communicate, to tap into Lin’s electrokinesis, the telepathy that had drawn them together wound itself still tighter. Like the strangle-grass that grew in patches on the desert outside Central Canyon City, that you had to burn to the roots if a patch of it seeded itself in your garden or window boxes or even in an edge of dirt collected in a crack between wall and window . . .

  Once we’ve left, once we’re not dealing with crisis after crisis, we’ll stop reading each other’s minds like this. We’ll stop passing emotions back and forth. If the link was meant to die off with distance and disuse, it must be that it’s getting stronger just because we have to keep using it.

  The image of burning a patch of strangle-grass came to her. It was a native Sekoian plant, back from before the planet had been terraformed. If you touched a lighter to the tips of its lethal, spikelike blades, it would burn down to the ground, but it was super resistant—even fire would leave its root cluster unharmed, and within days it would be growing again. To kill it off entirely you had to run a narrow, sharp-ended tube beneath the base of the plant and pour a capful of acid into the funnel at the top of the tube so it would soak, smoking, into the ground and destroy the plant from the roots upward. It was a legal obligation to do it, and there were strict penalties if you let a patch go, but the process was easy enough, and you could order the kit online—tube, funnel, acid, protective disposable gloves and goggles.

  And it was a relief, knowing you’d done it right, knowing the plant wouldn’t grow again.

  Elissa moved her head sharply, shaking free of the image. That’s not what I’m thinking about, though. I’m not thinking about destroying the link. I wouldn’t think about doing that, not ever. But this—what’s been happening since we landed on Sekoia—this has to stop. I can’t handle it anymore. I need my mind to be just my own again.

  Having an identical twin was one thing. She’d been sho
cked to start with, but she’d gotten used to it, she’d adapted. This, though, was a whole other nightmare. She was starting to feel . . . Ugh, what do I mean? What do I feel like?

  What she meant came to her all at once, in frightening clarity. This connection between us: It doesn’t feel like just a link, something that can be made and unmade, something that’s in the control of both of us—and of neither. It feels like it’s hers. It feels like she’s taking me over.

  AS ELISSA stepped out of the spaceport passenger shelter to cross to where the Phoenix waited on the flight pad IPL had cleared for Cadan’s use, hot wind, gritty with sand and full of the scent of rocket fuel, swept across the plateau and into her face, dashing dust in her eyes, edging her tongue with an acrid taste. Although now the sun was sliding, a white-hot coin, down the fathomless blue of the sky, the plateau had been soaking up its heat all day, and every gust of wind was like the breath from a dragon’s throat.

  She screwed her eyes up, raising a hand to protect them, and at the corner of her vision saw Lin, like a mirror image, perform exactly the same gesture.

  A hand made a pretty ineffectual shield. The dust blew past Elissa’s fingers, crept under her eyelashes. Her eyes began to water, and she had to force herself to let the tears come, force herself not to instinctively scrub at her eyes, to let the liquid wash the dust away.

  It seemed like she wasn’t any better at making a mental shield than she was a physical one. She hadn’t spoken to Lin in the two hours since her sister had walked away from her, was avoiding looking at her now, trying not to notice what she was doing, trying not to listen when she spoke—and Lin seemed to be doing exactly the same. But all the same, Elissa kept getting gusts of Lin’s emotions, bitter and laden with pinpricks of hurt like blowing specks of sand.

  She’d planned on finding Lin, talking to her before they left the hospital to board the ship, but Lin had more or less disappeared the whole time, appearing just once, and only then when so many other people were around that Elissa couldn’t face trying to talk to her.

  Sofia and El were back with the others now, Sofia bandaged up and looking pale but okay. Felicia had regained consciousness but wasn’t being allowed to walk: She’d been stretchered on board the ship a short while ago and was going to be traveling in the med-bay, with Ivan—was there anything he couldn’t turn his hand to?—watching over her during liftoff.

  Next to Elissa, Ady said, “Are you okay?”

  She looked at him, biting her lip. She still felt he was the one among all the other twins who’d have the best chance of understanding what she was going through, but if she talked to him now, Lin would know. And would experience it like another betrayal. A weird, uncomfortable mix of loyalty and pride held Elissa back too. She and Lin had come back to Sekoia so full of noble ambitions, hopes for saving their world, and they’d screwed up everything so badly. She didn’t think she could bear to articulate how stupid they’d been, how unreasonably idealistic. She was ashamed of what Lin had done, and scared it had been her fault, but also, she was ashamed of how she, Elissa, had treated her sister.

  I’m so freaking bad at relationships. It’s like I forgot how to do them in those three years when I was ill.

  “Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. “Stuff . . .”

  “Yeah,” said Ady. He was looking ahead to the upright squid-shape of the spaceship, his eyes narrowed against the blowing dust. His voice sounded as if he was, not sympathizing, but identifying.

  Elissa glanced at him, a little puzzled. His jaw made a hard line, as if he was gritting his teeth.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Ady gave a little snort, half laughter, half not. “Not really. I’m worried about Zee.” There was no hesitation in his voice—he hadn’t been agonizing over whether to tell her. In fact, Elissa thought, he’d probably been waiting to tell her.

  She looked ahead to where Zee walked at the edge of the original group of Spares and twins, a little separate from the larger group of further Spares, twins, and carers who had been assigned for evacuation on the Phoenix and who had arrived in the last hour. As she did, she realized that was where Ady had been looking too, rather than toward the towering shape of the ship, colorlessly flaring in the sunlight.

  “What about?” she said.

  Ady’s gaze skated to hers for a second. “I’m not even sure. That sounds crazy, right? I mean, if it was anything . . . concrete . . . I’d talk to Clement or Emily. They told us about, like, post-traumatic shock and the stuff to look out for, and they said it wasn’t our job to, you know, try to do therapy on our twins. They said to just refer any concerns to the people in charge of our group.”

  “Shouldn’t you, then? Anyway—whether it’s concrete or not?”

  Ady lifted a shoulder. “But like I said, I don’t even know if it is anything. How much of a douche am I going to sound if I say I don’t like the way he looks at me? Not even all the time, but it’s only been in the last couple of days. I don’t think he was doing it at all before.” He shrugged again. “But even now, it’s only sometimes, not often—and there’s not even anything wrong with what he’s doing. . . . And God, you know, he’s been majorly traumatized and I’ve had everything, and . . .” He trailed off, and the look he gave Elissa showed he was pretty sure that whether he finished the sentence or not, she would get what he meant.

  She did. Within her, a despairing voice asked how any of them were ever going to manage normal relationships with their Spares while each one of them bore this guilt. This guilt of having had a normal life when their twins were being strapped onto torture tables and told they weren’t human.

  “What do you mean, you don’t like the way he looks at you?”

  Ady’s shoulders slumped, as if he were already giving up the hope that she’d understand when he told her. “He . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s not even at me . . . I . . . it’s like he goes into a fugue state?”

  Elissa blinked at him. If it had been Cadan who’d used the term, she’d have been instantly trying to work it out from the context, trying to avoid admitting she had no idea what it was. With Ady, though—according to him, she and Lin were already heroes; she didn’t exactly need to try to impress him all over again. “I have no idea what that is,” she said.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s this weird psychiatric thing when someone just, like, checks out of their normal consciousness. A kind of temporary amnesia? Then they come back to themselves, without any memory of what happened—or what they did—during the fugue state. It sometimes happens as a response to major stress. I mean, I haven’t asked Zee, so it might not be anything like that. But major stress would totally apply, and that’s kind of what it looks like . . . the checking out, I mean.” He sighed. “Okay, that sounds crazy. Does it make any sense at all?”

  The description had sparked memory. “Yes, actually. I’d forgotten, but back on the med-flyer, I thought he was going into shock or something. It was just like you said—he went all blank and starey, then he snapped out of it. And I forgot, with everything else that was going on.”

  They’d come into the endlessly elongated shadow of the Phoenix now, and were climbing the slope of the cargo-bay ramp, drawing a little nearer to where Zee and Cassiopeia walked.

  Ady dropped his voice, but she could still hear the relief in it. “So it’s not just me. God, I’m so glad, you don’t even know. Not that I want something to be wrong with Zee, but at least something like that . . . with what he’s been through and everything, it makes sense. I was”—he gave her an almost shamefaced look—“I thought I might be imagining the whole thing, that it might be something going wrong with me. Like . . . paranoia or something? A reaction to all the weirdness and the . . . well, the whole guilt thing I told you about?”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  He gave her a friendly little nudge with his shoulder. “Well, yeah, of course you do. Thanks, okay? At least now I know there is something. I will talk to Clement. I mean, not this evening, obvio
usly! But tomorrow, you think?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.” She laughed a little. “You’re right, I can’t see him being grateful for more stuff to think about tonight, not after . . . oh jeez, everything. But it’s not like he’ll have a ton of stuff to do tomorrow, not until we land.”

  “And once we’re on Philomel they can, like, run tests or whatever, can’t they? Do all that psychiatric help they’ve been talking about offering us?”

  They were too close to Zee now to continue the conversation, and Elissa didn’t want to risk answering. She nodded again, and it seemed like it was enough. Ady didn’t say any more, just flashed her a brief, grateful smile.

  They went up into the chill shadow of the cargo hold, then climbed the long flight of steps leading to the walkway that would take them to one of the corridors into the main body of the ship. After a quick word to his father, Cadan, accompanied by Markus, drew swiftly ahead of the rest of the group. They would be going straight to the flight deck, to the controls of the ship.

  Entering the Phoenix, her home for the past few weeks, Elissa’s first instinct was to go to her cabin, which had come to feel as if it were really her room, her own space, not just a temporary resting place like a room in a motel. But of course it wasn’t just hers, it was hers and Lin’s. She couldn’t go there and be sure of being alone. She needed to put things right with her sister, should have done so before they left the hospital. But now, with Lin clearly avoiding her, it seemed so difficult she didn’t even know where to begin.

  So she followed the group as they, in turn, followed Mr. Greythorn along the bluish-lit corridors, then into the amber-lit corridors of the passenger section, and finally into the passenger lounge, with the viewing window that made up its exterior wall. Someone—Cadan? Mr. Greythorn?—must have decided that was the best place for them all to be during liftoff, and of course it was the area—aside from the flight-deck—where you got the best view. Now, though, the idea of standing on the Phoenix, with fractured relationships all around her, watching Sekoia, the place she’d thought they could save, the place where they’d failed—where she’d failed—dwindle behind them, did nothing but fill Elissa with a cold weight of misery.