Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (21 page)

It
was only with the help of gravity that he had been able to slide down the
tunnel. He would never be able to backtrack the distance he’d come. Either the
tunnel led to the surface or—

There
was a splash in front of him, and then liquid slipped under his torso and
trickled between his fingers. Aaron lay still, panting. Had there been water in
the tunnel all along?

He
wiggled, moving only inches, and more water splashed against his chin. It was
flowing from somewhere in front of him, submerging his hands and pooling
underneath him. Sweet, icy droplets dribbled onto his lips—he knew the taste.
Fresh rain.

It
must have been raining again—no,
pouring
. The runoff from the hillside
twenty feet above him was somehow draining into the well system, filling it up.
Water gushed around him, drenching his shoulders now. Aaron strained against
the cement, anxiety oozing in his stomach. He needed to lash out, tear the
walls apart. But his arms were straitjacketed at his side.

And
what if Clive and Dominic had already returned to find the well empty? They
would assume he escaped and never check again. He was going to drown in this
tunnel, alone.

Hours
before meeting his half.

Aaron
squirmed into the blackness, thrusting himself slug-like into the icy flood.
Water rose in the tunnel, trickled down his back and sloshed up his nose. He
stretched to keep his nostrils above the surface, but his head scraped the
ceiling. His windpipe tightened in his throat. He coughed, but he couldn’t fill
his lungs. It was terror that kept him moving, terror that kept him arching his
back and jamming himself deeper.

Then
white foam crashed around him, and before he even had the chance to hold his
breath, his face was plunged underwater.

***

Amber stuffed her hair
straightener, skin lotion, and shampoo—the last of her essentials—into the
duffel bag, and was all ready to run away. Except the zipper wouldn’t close.
She took out her socks. She’d be better off without the useless things anyway.

 She took one last look
around her bedroom, and the hollow feeling in her stomach deepened. Tomorrow,
Aaron would meet his half and forget all about her while she would be trapped
forever with Clive.

Unless, of course, she
was nowhere to be found.

Amber hauled her bag
down the stairs. Her mother was waiting at the door.

“Amber, darling, where
do you think you’re going?”

Her mother’s voice made
her flinch. “Isn’t it like a hundred years past your bedtime?” said Amber,
stopping right in front of her.

“André will be here at
six.”

“In the
morning?
”
said Amber.

“You do want to get
ready
before
your wedding, don’t you?”

“Who says I’m going?”

Her mother ignored the
comment, but her lower lip twitched. “Clive says he hasn’t been able to reach
you.”

“That’s because I
blocked his calls,” said Amber.

“You did
what?
”

”You heard me, mother.”

In one sudden movement,
her mom slapped her across the cheek. Amber glared at her, though the sting
made her eyes tear up.

“The potentate arranged
this for you. It’s your duty. Now go to bed.”

As her mother walked
away, Amber could see the tattoo under the deep v-back of her nightgown—the
tattoo they carved into her nine days after she was born that said she belonged
to Amber’s father.

Amber would get one
too.

Defeated, Amber walked
back upstairs and collapsed onto her bed. Her mother was right. The idea of
running away from her half, from Clive, was almost laughable, like trying to
escape from her own body. There was a part of him inside her—in a place she
couldn’t reach, otherwise she would have torn it out already. Their bodies were
linked. No matter where on the globe she fled, he could always track her.

And now that their
channel was mature, prolonged separation would be agony. After a few months of
evading him, her body would start to wither. After a few years, they would both
die. Being with her half wasn’t a choice—it was a biological need.

Amber buried her head
in her comforter and screamed. Why couldn’t she choose her own half? She wanted
Aaron.

And she wanted to hear
his voice. Right now.

Hands trembling, she
dialed his number. Maybe she could sneak over to his house and feel his arms
around her too. Maybe they could run away together, abandon their halves
and
live like outlaws for a few bittersweet months—

“Hello, Amber,” said a
cruel, cold voice.
Clive’s
voice.

Her stomach shriveled
into a knot.

“Where’s Aaron?” she
said, her heart sputtering.

“Don’t you want to talk
to me?” he said.

“Clive,
where is he?
”
she repeated.

“He’s fine.”

“Then put him on.”

There was silence. “Why
do you hate me?” he said.

“Why do you
think?
”

“But you love me too.”

“Can we talk about this
later?” she said.

“Amber, we were chosen
to be halves,” he said. “The potentate wanted
us—
”

Amber hung up the
phone. Just like her mom said.
The potentate arranged this for you
.

What did it matter what
the potentate arranged? She was Clive’s half
because of her own bad
luck, not because the potentate arranged it. Halves
were born, not
chosen—

Or could they be
chosen?

Suddenly, what both
Clive and her mother said made perfect sense—not chosen . . .
faked
. She
scrambled off the bed and brushed her hair from her eyes. She had to get to
Aaron before tomorrow, before it was all too late.

Then her skin prickled.
She felt breathless, like cold water was closing around her lungs.

Aaron
.

***

Aaron
was twenty-five feet underground, trapped in a tunnel full of water. His lungs
writhed for oxygen. He thrust his head back, struck concrete, and raked his
scalp to shreds. He scratched the walls, terrified, but there were no air
pockets.

The
closest air was back in the well,
minutes
away.

Aaron
opened his eyes underwater, felt the sting, and glared up the submerged tunnel—wondering
only which thought would be most fitting for the last few seconds of his life.

He
chose Amber, fixed his mind on her, and just for a second pretended they spent
their lives together. He imagined finding out tomorrow, on their birthday, that
they were halves, that they always had been, always would be,
forever
—a
spasm in his chest jarred him back to the tunnel. He couldn’t hold his breath
any longer, he had to breathe.

But
he felt warm despite the death congealing in his skin. There was light up
ahead, conveyed through the water like clairvoyance. But how far? Too far. And
how long before his chest was rent wide open? Aaron fought the current and
crawled forward, buoyed by the liquid, his brain slurry. Then his breathing
reflex took over, his mouth sprang open.

He
thrust his head back one more time. But this time, there was no ceiling. His
mouth cleared the water and he filled his lungs with air. He felt a breeze on
his face, raindrops. A circle of sky glowed twenty feet above him, pearl gray
at the top of a vertical maintenance shaft. Fastened inside the shaft, a rusty
ladder led to the surface. He grasped the first rung and climbed.

Aaron
burst through a layer of roots and sprawled out on the grass under an oak tree,
just beyond the meadow behind Dominic’s house. He had never loved the taste of
air so much. As rain kissed his cheeks, he gazed at the mansion through the
trees. Golden strips of light sprinkled the meadow from tall, radiant windows.

Somewhere
in there was Dr. Selavio, the man who could supposedly cure half death and
treat a ruptured channel. Now that Aaron was here, he might as well
investigate. Today
was
his birthday, after all. It was now or never.
Plus he needed his cell phone back.

Still
panting, he untangled himself from the roots and climbed to his feet, but
before he took a step, something odd caught his eye off to his right, in a
clearing between two oak trees. An oddly shaped mound glistened in the rain.

Aaron
breathed in slowly, and he noticed the smell. Odor didn’t carry in the rain. He
shouldn’t have smelled anything from that distance, just wet soil. Yet he did—a
wretched smell slinking through the rain, impervious. And Aaron was certain the
mound in that clearing was its origin.

Aaron
edged closer, and details materialized under the raincloud’s feeble silver
glow. A glossy plastic sheet had been stretched over a lumpy mass. Droplets
splattered on the material and drizzled off in the folds. A shovel stood
propped against a tree beside a pile of mud, and an unfinished hole—a grave.

Suddenly,
Aaron choked on the stench of rotting flesh. He clutched his stomach as the
black fumes pried into his nostrils, scorched his sinuses. His knees jerked and
he lost his balance, tripped forward and caught himself inches from the
plastic. By then he knew what was underneath, and he realized it would be a
mistake to visit Dr. Selavio.

The
mound was a corpse wrapped in cellophane and turned on its side, a boy; he
couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Blisters festered on his waxy skin.

It
was like someone turned up the volume inside Aaron’s head. His heart drummed.
The oak leaves crackled beneath him as he stumbled backward.

The
boy had to be Justin Gorski.

But
there was one thing about the body that disturbed Aaron more than anything
else. Under the faint light from a nearly full moon that beamed above the
clouds, it was clear.

It
couldn’t have been any clearer. Justin’s head had been shaved, and a dark “X”
had been drawn across the back of his scalp. And in the very center, scabbed
over and crawling with maggots, a hole had been drilled into the back of his
skull.

0 Days, 9
hours, 51 minutes

Justin’s corpse proved
Casler had committed murder—no, worse than that. He had punctured the boy’s
channel and drained his sacred connection to Emma Mist into a vial, killing
them both.

And
he claimed he
cured
half death.

Aaron
turned away from the corpse and faced the house. A surge of prickly blood
blurred his vision. Rain boiled off his skin, and he stumbled forward and
crossed the meadow. He snapped off fistfuls of gnarled stalks, splinters and
all, and wiped his face. He reached the door in the east wall of the house and
yanked the handle.

The
door creaked open, and he stepped inside a laundry room. Murderer or not, Aaron
just wanted his fucking cell phone back.

As
soon as he was inside, static scampered across his skin. The floor vibrated
from the drone of Casler’s machine. Once again, he noticed the sore spot at the
back of his head, like a finger pressing out from the inside.

Aaron
climbed the nearest staircase. He found Clive’s room empty, but what he saw
from the doorway knotted his stomach. There wasn’t a square inch of wall
exposed—Clive had plastered images of Amber’s face into every last corner.

His
collage of her was complete.

Aaron
heard voices from the living room down the hall. Just as he spun and marched
toward them, though, the voices faded. Aaron hesitated, hearing only his jerky
pulse. He crossed the hall, backed into the shadow of an armoire, and peered
around the corner.

Seated
in a black leather couch opposite a fireplace, Clive and Dominic were speaking
in low voices. In the glow of dying embers, their mouths hardly moved. Aaron
crept closer.

“ . . . Father
wants to test it again.” Clive tapped something metallic against the coffee
table then covered it with his fingers, which were trembling. “He’s found a way
to reseal the channel once he’s made the cut, so that not that much leaks out.”

Dominic
swirled a glass of whisky, and the ice clinked and crackled. He shook his head.
“Not after what happened to Justin.”

“But
he’s fixed it—”

“Then
he can test it on himself,” said Dominic. “No one else gets involved.”

“He
needs someone who hasn’t met their half.”

Dominic’s
eyes narrowed. “And who might that be?” he said. “Me? Amber?”

Again,
Clive tapped the metal thing against the glass. “He wants Harper.”

“
Harper?
You’re kidding.”

“When
my father examined him, he noticed something really weird about his channel.
Said it looked like . . . like . . . ” Clive whispered the rest, and Aaron missed it.
Damn.

“I
seriously doubt that, Selavio.” Dominic drained his whisky and slammed it down
on the coffee table. “It’s been long enough. Let’s go fetch him. You can tell
him what you told me . . . maybe he’ll even volunteer.”