She waves the antenna back and forth until the voices come through more clearly. “Maybe they’ll play something soon,” she says.
“Doubt it, kid,” Reed says. “I’ve heard this guy. He runs his own broadcasts out of his home.”
She frowns and reaches for the knob again, but Linden says, “Wait. Did you hear that?”
“What?” she says. The sound has gone to static again, and she repositions the tinfoil wrapped around the antenna.
Voices cut through, trying to reach us. At first when the words come, they mean nothing. I’ve heard them all my life. “Genetics.” “Virus.” “Hope.” It’s become like white noise, especially having parents who spent their evenings listening to such broadcasts.
I take a spoonful of the gray liquid, purposefully avoiding the cubes of meat. The taste isn’t terrible.
“There,” Linden says. Cecily moves her hands away from the antenna, and the static has subsided to make way for the voices.
She looks disappointed. “It’s only that same guy again.”
Linden’s listening intently, though.
“So-called doctors have been at it for years,” the voice on the radio says.
Another voice responds, “The Ellerys’ work has developed a cult following among doctors and extremists alike in the wake of these recent terrorist bombings. Their research, which as we all know was cut short by an act of terrorism that killed them, had faded into the grain with all the rest.”
The small bit I’ve eaten immediately feels like it’s gone to stone in my stomach. My body goes cold, a sort of numbness clouds my judgment, and I think: Not the Ellerys I know. How could these strange voices possibly know anything about my parents, who have been dead for several years? They were scientists and doctors, and their life’s work was to pursue a cure, but they were small-time compared to nationally recognized doctors like Vaughn.
Oh, but the broadcasters know about Vaughn as well. “Even revered experts like this Dr. Ashby have cited the Ellerys’ study of twins. Dr. Ashby theorizes that the Ellerys’ children, twins themselves supposedly, were a part of their research.”
“If they even existed,” the other voice says. “They may have been metaphors.”
Cecily is pulling at a lock of her hair that’s come free of her ponytail, and I swear her eyes are getting wider as she stares at me and the words on the radio get stranger.
“Dr. Ashby is essentially revamping the Ellerys’ theory that the virus can be duplicated in a way similar to vaccinations. Given in small doses, it can build up the immune system to make its victims resistant.”
The men are having such an impassioned discussion, and the static keeps interfering, and Linden adjusts and readjusts the tinfoil trying to make the voices stay. But it doesn’t matter, because I can’t hear them anymore. There’s static in my head, making it impossible to concentrate. The room feels twice as hot, and the lightbulb dangling from the ceiling makes so many shadows. How have I never noticed all these shadows?
“What about these claims by one of the terrorists heading these attacks that he’s the Ellerys’ only surviving twin? He very well could be who he claims to be.”
“How many extremists have claimed to be products of some research project or other? That’s if the Ellerys’ research isn’t an urban legend,” the other voice counters. “The Ellerys ran these nurseries as part of their supposed Chemical Garden project, nurseries that also served as research labs. If their children existed, they were probably killed along with the other subjects. The only reason the Ellerys are getting attention now is because of this terrorist claiming to be their son.”
The static overtakes the voices until they’re gone.
Everyone is watching me. Their eyes bore into me, but I can’t face them.
The heavy feeling in my stomach has moved to my chest, and it’s hard to breathe. I need to get outside, where there are breezes and stars and no walls. I’m moving even before I realize I’ve stood up.
I stagger out to the porch. Dizzy, I sit on the top step and try to catch my breath. There are so many thoughts whirling through my head that I can latch on to none of them. I never thought I’d hear my parents mentioned again, much less in a discussion that involves my ex-father-in-law. It’s true they all have genetic research in common, but Vaughn is the madman. My parents only wanted to make things right. Didn’t they?
How did those men on the radio know about my brother and me?
Rowan said that he was the only surviving member of our family?
What theory that the virus could be duplicated? What are Chemical Gardens?
The questions are bits of blackness, arranging like puzzle pieces until I can hardly see, can hardly think.
And for what? What answers do I hold? My brother and I—the apparently famous Ellery twins—aren’t an urban legend. We exist. But we hold no keys, can’t offer even a vague promise of a cure.
The screen door slams behind me, making me flinch.
Reed’s heavy footsteps make the planks in the porch creak. He’s never without his boots, even at night, as though he’s always prepared to run at a moment’s notice. He’s not so different from the people I knew back home, before the sheltered life I led in the mansion. He’s not so different from my brother and me.
He sits beside me, reeking of cigar smoke, although he hasn’t had a cigar in hours. Cecily throws a fit if the smoke comes anywhere near the oxygen Bowen breathes. It only enrages her more when Reed counters that the smoke is totally harmless. It used to cause ailments that no longer exist, and a little coughing won’t kill the kid, he says.
“You’re in some real trouble, aren’t you, doll?” Reed says.
I draw my knees to my chest, and my voice comes out broken and small. “I don’t know what any of it means.” I can hear the static in the kitchen as Linden and Cecily try to bring the station back.
“Does my brother know the Ellerys were your parents?” Reed’s expression is unsettlingly grave.
The notion is overwhelming. It’s terrible enough that I was ripped from my home, but to have been a specific target rather than a random victim of Gathering? It puts Vaughn’s madness into a whole new light. He could have been looking for me all my life.
No. No, it couldn’t have been that. Like the men on the radio were saying, there are plenty of scientists, plenty of theories. My parents hadn’t broken any new ground. Vaughn wouldn’t have heard of them until my brother said what he did, about being their only surviving twin.
My brother, with his unmistakable resemblance to me. With his eyes that are heterochromatic just like mine. All Vaughn would have to do is look at him to know we’re related.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “If Vaughn does know, he’ll come after my brother, too.”
I’m too stunned to process any of this. Too stunned even to cry, though my eyes are starting to ache. My legs are trembling.
“No matter what, you’re safe here,” Reed says.
“Am I?” I say. “Or is your brother just letting me think that while he plans his next move?”
“He’ll never get through my door,” Reed says. I want to believe that. Just as Reed never goes without his boots, he never goes without the handgun that’s holstered to his belt. But Vaughn has his ways. He comes peacefully, never raises his voice, never draws a weapon, and he wins virtually every time.
Strange new voices from the radio are coming toward me. Cecily carries the thing out onto the porch. Her face is solemn and sympathetic. “We couldn’t get that station to come in again, but there’s a news broadcast. There was another bombing yesterday; that’s what those men were talking about.”
Linden comes after her, frowning. “Why don’t you take that back inside, love? Leave her alone now.”
“She needs to hear this,” Cecily insists. She holds the radio in her hands like an offering. The news is telling a horrible story.
“Fourteen are confirmed dead and at least five wounded following yesterday’s bombing in Charleston, South Carolina.” The same state where Madame’s deranged carnival is. This of course would mean nothing to the newscaster, who goes on, “The trio of bombers has made no secret about their activities, and though they haven’t disclosed their next target, they have spurred public rallies and spoken openly on camera about their actions.”
There’s a sharp pain in my head, like a kite string has lassoed my brain, tugging me to the speakers. And I know that I am about to hear something I have not heard in a very long time. A simple thing, the absence of which has parched something deep within me.
My brother’s voice.
He’s riled up, shouting into the crowd. The tape recorder that captured the sound is buried somewhere in all the cheering and jeering voices, rustling, picking up the rush of wind. But Rowan is the maestro of this cacophony. I concentrate on my brother, imagining him standing someplace high, and I hear him say, “—research is pointless. All this madness trying to find a cure is more dangerous to us than the virus itself. It kills people. It killed my sister.” There’s a devastated pitch when he says that last word. The word that symbolizes me. “It’s gone too far, and it must end!”
The clip is over, and he’s gone.
A sound comes out of me; something like a choke or a whimper.
There’s no doubting it now. He thinks I’m dead. He’s given up on me.
“Rhine?” Linden shoves past Reed and kneels on the step before me. He pushes the hair from either side of my face and cradles my skull with his fingertips. His eyes are searching mine, like he’s checking a vase for chips and cracks.
“It was my brother,” I manage to say. My voice is strained, like I’m only inhaling, which maybe I am. I can’t tell. I’ve never felt like this. There was the adrenaline and terror of being thrown into the Gatherer’s van, and again in the back of that truck with Gabriel, but in the darkness all of that melted down to a sort of malaise after a while. Then came the planning. I’d kept myself together with logic. I’d been taken. I’d escape. I’d make it home, and my brother and my house would still be waiting for me. But my brother has made a crater of our house. He has made a crater of himself and everything he touches.
“You have to breathe,” Linden says softly. He’s always so careful with me, even when I’ve hurt him. Bright spots move around him like someone shook the stars from a blanket and they all went flying.
“This is my fault,” I say. “We were supposed to look out for each other, and I left him. He’s gone now. I’ll never get him back.”