Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (26 page)

And
he thought of Amber.

She
had known all along that Clive was her half. All last week, all those nights
together, she’d been living with an expiration date.

Aaron
passed his house but kept on driving. Street names repeated. The hours blurred
together. He couldn’t face his parents—not without a half
.
Not alone.

Not
when his final glimpse of Amber was branded into his eyelids, flashing every
time he blinked. Amber, all dressed up as a prize for the Brotherhood’s heir,
for Clive.

At
sunset, Aaron found himself alone on the cliffs overlooking the pink streaks at
the ocean’s edge. Alone, when the word itself meant nothing. And he wondered
what they were doing to her.

***

Amber
caught a glimpse of the Chamber’s distant towers, soaring like sunburned fists
as the last sliver of sunlight cleared the peaks—before she was led into the
church.

The
dying light slanted in through
stained glass windows, dusting the empty pews. Amber and
Clive walked in front of their parents down the aisle toward the priest waiting
at the pulpit. They were no longer in their wedding clothes.

Clive reached Father
Dravin first and knelt briefly in front of him. “Father Dravin, I present my
half, Amber,” he said.

Dravin turned his
large, golden eyes on Amber and waited. She did nothing.

He straightened his
glasses. “Genuflect on the left knee, sweetheart.”

Amber was mystified as
to what this meant until she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, forcing
her to kneel.

“Dravin, are you sure
this is the best place?” said Amber’s father. “If anything happens to her—”

“Then it would be best
you waited outside,” said Dravin. “The potentate specifically requested my
services. That should put your worries to rest.” With that, he spun and
signaled for Amber and Clive to follow him behind the altar, where two tables
stood side by side in a circle of light.

 “Shirts off,” he said,
moving to an open leather bag on a third table. He slid on latex gloves, then
extracted three glinting scalpels. As he arranged his tools on a folded towel,
Amber felt her throat tighten. She heard Clive’s shirt fall to the floor then
felt the heat of his gaze, but she refused to look at him.

Amber swallowed and
pulled her own shirt over her head. Her loose hair swished across her back,
prickling her bare skin.

Dravin glanced up at
her and straightened his glasses. “The brassiere too, sweetheart.”

Amber glared at him and
climbed onto the table, and only when she was lying on her stomach did she
unclip her bra.

Clive lay down on the
other table.

Father Dravin walked between
them, and Amber felt his fingers brush her back, trace her shoulder blades, and
run down her spine. She tensed, hardly breathing. He leaned over Clive next and
touched the scars on his back.

“Curious,” he said,
finally. “I understand now why this was to be conducted in private.”

“Can you duplicate it?”
said Amber’s mother.

“Hers will be cleaner,”
said Dravin.

Amber felt something
cold dab her back, and she squeezed her eyes shut, helpless against the shivers
that followed.

“It’s just alcohol,
sweetheart.”

The priest grabbed
something off the towel and leaned over her, blocking the light, and she
gripped the front of the table. He pressed a sharp object against her spine.
She winced, but it was just the tip of a pencil.

Dravin’s hand curved up
the side of her torso, where the pencil jerked over her ribs. He lifted the
pencil, referred to Clive’s tattoo, and made another arc below the first. By
nightfall, the outline was done.

He picked up the
scalpel.

Once again, his shadow
swallowed her. He pressed the scalpel to her skin, moved it slightly—and then
the blade sank in. Prickles surged through Amber’s body, and her throat
squeezed shut. As he sliced her skin, everything inside her screamed. She felt
spasms of pain, electric shocks. Her body twitched.

Dravin dabbed at her
back, and his rag came away spotted with blood. He went over the line twice,
then started a second cut. Droplets of blood cooled on her skin and dribbled
down the side of her waist. As the pain blurred into a prickly fog, she
whimpered, and her tears pooled under her cheeks.

Her parents watched
proudly as the priest carved the mirror image of Clive’s tattoo into her back.
Clive’s clairvoyance was in her blood.
He
would prevent the cuts from
healing, and they would form white scars forever branding her as his half.

When the incisions were
done, Dravin reached for another tool—and Amber felt him peel away the strips
of skin, exposing what was underneath to the cold, cold
air.

***

“In
the woods, you say?” said the deputy.

“I
can show you where,” said Aaron.

“A
body?”

“Justin
Gorski’s, there’s a hole drilled through his head. They’re going to hurt Amber
next,” said Aaron, fearing what they might have already done to her.

The
deputy scrunched up his eyebrows. “How old are you again?”

“I’m
eighteen.”

“Are
you jealous or something? Where’s your half?”

“There's
a
body,
” Aaron repeated slowly. “Casler murdered Justin Gorski, and he’s
going to hurt Amber next.”

The
police officer regarded him for a moment then rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes. “You're
going to have to give me more than that,” he said. “Our community values the
contributions of Dr. Selavio. I can’t start a criminal investigation based off
a crack-pot story from a jealous seventeen-year old.”

“Eighteen,”
said Aaron.

“Maybe
you should spend some time with your half,” said the deputy, and his eyes
flicked to the picture frame on his desk.

Aaron
followed his gaze to a photo of the deputy’s half
and their kids. A
normal family. Except something in the picture was off.

Aaron
glanced at the other photos behind the deputy, also of the same woman, then
back to the one on his desk—and he felt a chill.

In
each photograph, the deputy’s half
had the same blank look, like there
wasn’t anything behind her eyes.

The
officer saw where he was looking and twisted the picture away from him. He
stood. “Let me show you out, Mr. Harper.”

***

He
needed more proof.

When
he was sure his parents were asleep, Aaron snuck into his house and tiptoed to
his bedroom. He took a deep breath and flipped on the lights. His room was just
as he left it.

Aaron
hesitated in the doorway, breathing slowly, as the smell of sunscreen and
vanilla floated over him—
her
smell. It was all over his clothes,
floating out of his laundry hamper, just as strong as the first time they met.

He
remembered meeting her at the bonfire. Now, on his birthday, if not for the
throbbing in his lungs, if not for that smell, everything in between could have
been a dream—Dr. Selavio’s machine, the body, the vial full of clairvoyance.

There
was no proof.

But
as Aaron watched his wrinkled, mud-smeared jeans sway on the back of his chair,
a terrifying idea took hold of him.

The
vial was
proof.

It
had tumbled off his fingers. He knew exactly where it sank . . . He could recover it.

Before
he backed down, Aaron opened the bottom drawer and closed his fingers around
the hem of his bathing suit. Instinct pressed against the back of his mind,
screaming at him. The vial was buried in the sand under thirty feet of water.
He’d
never
find it.

But
what if he could?

Could
a vial full of clairvoyance save Amber’s life? Could it give her a new half?

That
was what truly scared him.

***

Entanglement

Aaron
googled the word after he parked outside the Arroyo Beach Café, using their Wi-Fi
and his mom’s laptop which he balanced against the steering wheel. The word was
thrown around every five seconds, but he still didn’t understand it.

The
sun was just rising.

He
clicked on the second link, a wiki page titled “Quantum entanglement,” and read
from the top.

Quantum
entanglement
(commonly known as
entanglement
or
clairvoyance
)
occurs when particles such as photons, electrons, and even molecules as large
as DNA interact physically and then become separated such that each resulting
member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical state . . .

Fat
lot of sense that made.

Aaron
scanned the rest of the page, but none of it meant jack. Frustrated, he clicked
on random keywords, jumping through page after page about halves until he ended
up on a page titled “Quantum teleportation.”

Aaron
waded through more dense physics, again comprehending none of it, and he was
about to slam the laptop shut when a sub-heading caught his eye.

He
stared at the strangest phrase he had ever seen.

Entanglement
swapping

A
film of dust coated the laptop’s display, catching the morning rays and
obscuring the text. He grabbed his shirt and wiped the screen, and read the
first thing all morning he did understand.

If
Alice has a particle which is entangled with a particle owned by Bob, and Bob teleports
it to Carol, then Alice’s particle becomes entangled with Carol’s.

***

At
nine in the morning on Easter Sunday, Aaron peeled off his shoes and stuck his
feet into the sand at Arroyo Beach. Fog whisked past him. The month-old charred
logs from the bonfire had long since been broken apart and buried.

Entanglement
swapping.

There
was no way.

Aaron
felt thunder against his back and glanced up to see a wall of white foam smash
against the sand. The surf looked especially rough today.

But
he had come prepared.

He
threw down his backpack and extracted a pair of goggles, an underwater
flashlight, and a package of eight neon dive sticks.

Aaron
tore open the package with his teeth and jammed all eight of them into the
pocket of his bathing suit. Then he slid the flashlight into his other pocket,
took off his shirt, and stumbled toward the water.

A
wave rose and smashed in front of him, stinging his eyes with mist and parting
around his ankles. The water wasn’t nearly as cold as the night he swam with
Clive, but it still stung. He stepped up to his knees in foam, and goose bumps
rushed across his skin.

After
he nearly drowned in the well, the thought of diving for the vial made his
lungs ache. For a month, he had tortured himself brooding over its hiding
place, knowing it was just out of reach—and knowing that it
could
be
reached.

Now,
wading thigh-deep through the ocean’s thrusts, he wished more than anything
that he never had the thought.

What
exactly was he planning to do once he found the vial? Take it to the police? A
doctor? Or find a way to use it himself.

Aaron
rotated his shoulders, crouched, and charged through a mountain of water. He
popped up on the other side and climbed another wave, struggled over a third, a
fourth, then broke free of the pounding surf.

A
vial full of clairvoyance could be capable of anything, but he prayed it never
came to that.

Aaron
swam as hard as he could, and his uneasiness reminded him, once again, that he
had no idea what Dr. Selavio was up to. Or why he even filled the vial in the
first place.

Around
him, the fog thickened, blocking his view of the buoy. He slowed and treaded
water, and a crisp breeze whistled in his ears. He patted his pockets to make
sure he still had the flashlight and dive sticks before he started up again.

Soon
he couldn’t see the beach, just swells and white caps, and the same arctic gray
in all directions. His arms throbbed with fatigue. He should have reached the
buoy by now.

Aaron
pressed on, but his strokes felt heavier, burdened by anxiety. He stopped
again, now gasping for breath, and scanned three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of
bleak horizon. A swell drove him skyward then gave out beneath him.

No
way he’d swum this far, not at midnight, not after a volleyball game, and not
in freezing March waters. He must have passed the buoy in the fog.

Aaron
angled his body back to shore—or what he thought was shore—and once again
lugged his arms through the brine. He had wasted his energy, and now he had
precious little left to recover the vial. 

But
the fog thinned. For a few seconds, he glimpsed the beach—and the buoy?