The Eve Genome

by Joanne Brothwell

  THE EVE GENOME

  By

  Joanne Brothwell

  The Eve Genome

  Joanne Brothwell

  ISBN-13: 978-1492760160

  ISBN-10: 1492760161

  © Copyright Joanne Brothwell 2013

  All rights reserved

  Cover Design: Ravven Designs

  Editor: Karen Rought

  Layout/Typesetting: Joanne Brothwell

  EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away, as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Joanne Brothwell electronic publication: August 2013. www.joannebrothwell.com

  “The most robust statistical examination to date of our species' genetic links to ‘mitochondrial Eve’ – the maternal ancestor of all living humans— confirms that she lived about 200,000 years ago."

  -Science Daily

  CHAPTER ONE

  ADRIANA SINCLAIR

  “I’ve always wanted to try out the other twin,” said Derek, my twin sister’s boyfriend as he leaned into me, my back up against the wall. His muscular frame was taking up my entire field of view and his face was so close to mine I could feel the heat of his skin emanate onto my cheeks. His lips curled up into a sexy half-smile, an expression that didn’t reach his eyes.

  Six months ago I’d wanted to be with him so badly I couldn’t help but share my infatuation with my twin sister, Analiese. Our relationship was strained, and I confided in her with the hope of reconnecting over a topic I thought was neutral territory for us both. A crush. I wouldn’t have predicted what she did following my admission. I never expected her to seduce him.

  Why couldn’t I let it go? Why couldn’t I forgive her and move on? Why couldn’t I get over this need to even the score? I was a petty, petty girl. That’s why.

  “What do you think, Adriana?” Derek asked with a wink. He was one of the most gorgeous guys I’d ever met, with dark brown hair and powder-blue eyes that always made my heart pound. Before, I would have thought he was charming; his flirtation, flattering. But now, he was my sister’s player boyfriend. Was I going to become my sister’s betraying twin?

  “Why did you come here?” I asked. I’d never had Derek in my apartment before tonight. He was way too big for the space.

  “Analiese told me. She said you were hot for me, before we started dating.” Derek’s lip twitched. “And I had to find out for myself. I came straight over.”

  The image of Derek’s hands splayed across Analiese’s naked back in the dark interior of the camper that night seeped into my thoughts, unbidden. I had thought Derek was alone in the camper that night. I was wrong.

  They didn’t even notice when I’d walked in, probably because they were both… occupied. I’d stumbled out, and it wasn’t because I was too drunk. The pain of learning what my own sister had intentionally done to me made my reality tilt. My body felt unhinged, as though I was a paper doll in a pulp world. All make-believe. All bad comic book garbage. Veronica fucks Betty over by messing around with Archie.

  Derek swept a stray hair from my face with soft fingertips, pulling me out of my dark reverie and back into the present awkward moment. The moment of truth. Betty always gave in to Archie. Would I?

  “Hey, you,” he said. I shivered from the sensation of his hot breath on my skin. He smelled sweet and spicy, but with an artificial overtone. Like cinnamon hearts made with aspartame. “If only I’d known you were into me six months ago…” he trailed off.

  “Would things be different?” I asked. My voice hitched. This was all so wrong.

  His pupils were dilated and he lowered his face even closer. “Definitely.”

  This was the first time I’d ever been this near to Derek. There was a time when I’d yearned for this moment, dreamed of it, would have done anything to experience it. Here was my opportunity.

  I looked up at him and almost jumped at what I saw—something weird—about his eyes. At first I didn’t understand. His eyes weren’t the powder blue like I’d always thought they were. Instead, his right eye had a strip of muddy brown dissecting the blue. He had heterochromia, the genetic quirk that resulted in two distinct colors within the same iris.

  He still had my chin between his thumb and index finger with his muscular arm between us. I glanced down, his gaze too intense. I needed space. Oxygen. His thin cotton t-shirt was tight against his frame, the fabric fitted to his arms, highlighting thick biceps. A snake tattoo twisted from his wrist all the way to his upper arm, the forked tongue eternally lashing out at his heart.

  “What’s wrong?” Derek asked. The timbre of his silky voice made my legs feel like jelly. He leaned down and whispered into my ear, “I want the other twin, Adriana. I want you.” My body broke out in a rash of gooseflesh and I could hardly breathe. His saccharine sweet aftershave coiled around me and my head grew dizzy. I’d wanted him for so long…didn’t I?

  He was doing his best to charm me right out of my pants, but there was something about the way he said it… something disingenuous, dirty. I’d heard the way he talked to Analiese. It was always with the utmost respect. He changed octaves for her, his voice lilting and breathy, as if he was always telling her his deepest, innermost secrets. It sounded nothing like this.

  I placed my hand on Derek’s chest in a five-star and pushed him away. “Don’t.” I took a definitive step to the side, ducking away to put enough space between us so his hand fell away from my face.

  His mouth dropped open, as if he couldn’t possibly comprehend what I’d just said or done. Was he really that much of a cocky bastard that he thought I’d just let my clothes melt off for him? Did he think I couldn’t possibly withstand the power of his seduction that I would actually betray my twin sister for him? He held out his hands, palms up. I almost rolled my eyes at the brazen over-confidence.

  “I thought you were in love with her?” I said.

  “There’s lots of love in my heart,” Derek said with a wide grin. Looking at him now made my skin crawl. The oddness of his eyes—blue with a slash of sludge through the middle—made him seem so fickle he couldn’t even stick to one simple eye color.

  I glared at him and said, “I’m going to tell her.”

  The smile fell from his face in a flash. “What are you going to say? Hey, Analiese, your boyfriend wants me. That’s right. He wants me ‘cuz I’m the prettier twin.” Derek’s voice was high-pitched and snarky, like a tween back-talking her mother. “Yeah, that will go over really well. I’m guessing she won’t be thankful for the message. If she even believes you at all, which she won’t. Don’t forget, I’m the guy she fucks every night.”

  “You’re an ass,” I said. “I think it’s time for you to go—”

  The back door opened, hinges squeaking like an injured cat. Analiese!

  She stood there, her black hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing black running shorts and a tank top. The apples of her cheeks were flushed pink and the bright teal of her eyes smouldered within the surrounding circle of white. Her mouth hung agape as she took in the spectacle of her boyfriend at my place.

  “What the fuck…?” Analiese muttered.

  “It’s not what you think,” Derek said.

  Wasn’t that the guil
tiest thing a person could possibly say in a situation like this?

  Analiese’s eyes narrowed and turned stormy as she spun around and slammed the door behind her.

  “Analiese, wait!” I called as I raced to the door and pulled my shoes on. I went out into the hallway and could already hear Analiese’s engine start up outside.

  “Shit,” Derek muttered.

  “Get. Out!” I yelled back at Derek as I launched myself out into the hallway and down the steps. I ran to the street, but she was already pulling away. The engine roared on her little

  VW Beetle, and a swell of dust billowed up behind it.

  I stood, staring at her car. She’d obviously stopped by on her way home from the gym before we started our semester in college. She probably wanted to talk textbooks or syllabus or something. She definitely wouldn’t have been expecting to see Derek in my apartment, his body hunched toward me like he was about to dry hump my hip. Fuck.

  When she turned out of sight, I went back inside. Derek was putting his shoes on in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry, Adriana,” he said.

  I held the door open for him.

  Derek stepped out of the apartment. “Do you think she’ll forgive us?”

  I shut the door in his face, and turned the deadbolt.

  Where the hell was my purse? I glanced around, my heart thumping an erratic beat. It was on the floor. I rifled through it, got my phone out and typed in a message.

  I need to talk to u

  Several minutes went by as I stared at the screen of my phone, willing it to show a response. There was nothing. I typed in her number. After six rings, it went to voicemail. I hung up.

  Analiese would understand once I explained, right? She would hear me out. Once I told her it was all Derek, and I turned him down, she would know it wasn’t me. He was a dumbass boyfriend, someone disposable. But I was her sister. Her blood. She would have to listen. She would have to hear me out.

  I couldn’t just sit and wait. Grabbing my purse and keys, I left my apartment and got into my car. I pulled away, not knowing where to go. As if on autopilot, I drove toward my mother’s house. Once on her street, I drove by the front of my childhood home. Analiese’s bug wasn’t there. I turned to head down the back ally. No cars were parked behind the house. Obviously nobody was home. I left, wandering aimlessly, my mind spinning in circles, outpacing my erratic driving.

  I drove for an entire hour before I finally gave up and returned home. Now it was dusk and everything was tinged a shade of blue as the sun receded, turning away from the world. I shut off my engine and sat in my silent car.

  A strange sensation folded over me, like a shroud of darkness that clouded my vision, choked out all oxygen in my lungs and settled deep in my bones like a malignant tumour. My heart skipped a beat. I’d had this feeling once before. When Analiese broke her arm at soccer in fifth grade. Something was terribly wrong.

  Analiese.

  As if on cue, my cell phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket, my hands shaking as I pressed it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  My mother’s voice came through the receiver, her voice shrill and digressive. “There’s been in an accident. It’s Analiese.”

  #

  My knees buckled when the announcement came over the Emergency Room intercom – Trauma Team to Resuscitation Two. They were talking about Analiese. I grasped the wall to steady myself as the doors to the ER flung open with my sister on a stretcher pushed by frowning paramedics, her body nearly obscured by the wires, tanks, and piles of bloody gauze around her.

  They wheeled her straight into the trauma room. Others rushed in behind them and a woman in a medical mask closed the door. I looked down. Droplets of Analiese’s blood marred the white tile floor. Four round crimson circles, evenly spaced apart.

  I watched them work on her through the windowpane in the door. Analiese’s prone body was lit up by two huge overhead lamps. Part of her face was covered by a mask, and under that, a cervical collar. Her complexion was pallid, as if fine ash covered her skin. The intermittent whirr of oxygen tangled with the shrill beep of the heart monitor. My heart raced. I forgot to breathe.

  There were so many people around her. Like in an overwrought medical TV drama, they wore blue scrubs, some with huge plastic face visors and others in protective glasses and surgical masks. But this wasn’t television. At the time, the phone call from my mother didn’t seem real, but now, everything was in painfully sharp focus. Their movements were rapid and purposeful as they turned dials and grabbed supplies from the row of cabinets along the wall. A tray of barbaric steel instruments lay beside her examination table, tools that looked like medieval torture devices. The acidic stench of antiseptic burned up my nose. Someone brushed me aside and stepped through the door.

  A female voice rang out. “Get lab down here for a type and cross-match.”

  “There’s no time. Get O-neg,” the doctor said, authority in his tone.

  A blood transfusion? I took a deep breath, but it didn’t help, only serving to make me feel even more breathless and out of control. Where was mom? Why hadn’t she arrived yet? Why did this happen? Body trembling, knees like water, I leaned against the door for support.

  “Hang in there, all right?” a female attendant said, her face tilted down to Analiese. Was she conscious? Were her eyes open, watching this spectacle, unable to move? Was she scared? I wanted to go to her, hold her hand and tell her everything would be okay, just like I did when we were kids.

  A male voice spoke next, “There are going to be a few people working on you, now.”

  An alarm went off and the sound was like an electrical jolt through my body. Instantly, all movements sped up. The air in my lungs rushed out as if they were balloons deflated by the poke of a pin.

  “Code blue. We have a code blue.”

  An unwanted image flashed through my mind. Of Analiese’s cold, dead body, her skin bluish-gray, eyes glossy and rolled back in her head. I took a step forward, pushing the door ajar.

  “I told you O-negative. What did you give her?” the doctor barked out.

  “It was O-negative!”

  A string of muttering followed. “She’s rejecting it.”

  Another alarm sounded, one that droned on and on, flat and toneless. I stepped into the room, unnoticed by the harried staff inside.

  “Her pressures are dropping,” An edge took over the doctor’s voice, raising the pitch. He leaned over and began compressions on Analiese’s chest. Sweat broke out under my arms and my vision tunnelled. Every argument we’d ever had tumbled through my mind, one by one until our final conflict today. About Derek.

  “AED ready,” someone snapped.

  My hearing hollowed and stars floated in my vision as the whine of the AED charged. The thump of the current through Analiese’s chest made a shriek slip from my mouth. Compressions continued, and the process was repeated, over and over. Every time the electricity slammed through Analiese, I felt like my own heart was about to stop.

  All of the sounds died at once.

  Nobody moved. Then little by little, the posture of each and every person around Analiese’s hospital bed drooped. One by one, their hands fell to their sides.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “T.O.D. eight forty-one,” the doctor said.

  My body went ice-cold. I stepped backward, out of the room and turned to look down the long hallway, my muscles tightly coiled, shaking.

  The bridge was only two blocks away from the hospital. I could be there and in the water within two minutes.

  “Miss?” The ER doctor approached me with a steely gaze, mask pulled down, hanging limply around his neck, his visor pushed high on his head. He paused, mid-step, and then resumed walking towards me. His mouth was a tight, thin line. Like a slash made by a sharp scalpel. “I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

  I tried to respond, but nothing would come out of my mouth. I felt like
someone had punched a hole into my chest wall and ripped my heart out. Gutted. Like a pumpkin.

  The doctor scratched the dark stubble on his chin. “Has she ever received blood products and had a negative reaction before?”

  I shook my head, but my mouth remained locked.

  “In twenty-three years of practicing medicine…” The doctor swallowed. “I have never seen anything like this before.”

  Allele: An allele is an alternative form of a gene (one member of a pair) that is located at a specific position on a specific chromosome. These DNA codings determine distinct traits that can be passed on from parents to offspring.

  -Biology.About

  CHAPTER TWO

  ADRIANA SINCLAIR

  I approached the medical lab, the huge metal letters GenMed glaring down from above the stark grey building. There were giant boxy mirrors every few feet, the effect like a giant, colorless Rubik’s cube. Cold pragmatism.

  I reached into my purse and my fingertips brushed against Analiese’s yellow cotton t-shirt, the one she was wearing on our twelfth birthday, before everything between us went downhill. The fabric was soft, nearly sheer in places from years of wear. Her favorite shirt. Her lucky shirt. The one that helped her soccer team win the gold medal that season. The one she wore almost every day under her clothes to cover up and push down her new boobs. My matching shirt was long gone, but Analiese’s was still intact, tucked away in her room at mom’s house. I clutched the fabric tight and closed my eyes, squeezing against the permanent heat at the back of my eyes. An image of her, age twelve, in this exact shirt slid through my mind. She was carefree then, full of energy and ideas and plans for the future. Black hair flying in the wind, her wiry body would flit and jump and dance with all her exuberant energy. She would run up to me and do a pirouette a foot from my nose. Maybe we could be rock stars, Adriana? Or maybe you could play guitar and sing and I’ll play drums? But that was Analiese before.