Tethered Twins

Vlad Givik

Vlad stomped around his cell impatiently. Where is the signal? he thought. By now that idiot Rex was probably at a hospital all patched up again.

Vlad didn’t care. He knew he still had control. No matter how many injuries were fixed Rex would spend the rest of his life afraid that Vlad would return. That’s real control, thought Vlad as he felt a tingling sensation in his brain. Now to prove just how far real control can go.

He grabbed his jacket and tore off one of the sleeves with all his strength. This created a long thick strip that he placed around his eyes and tied behind his head like a blindfold.

“What are you doing!” shouted the police officer on duty. “Stop that.”

Vlad knew it couldn’t be stopped now. His eyes turned to orange, hidden by the blindfold, as he gave control over to another force.

Although he no longer had his knives he had one trick up his sleeve. On the way into the station he had palmed a pen from the desk of an officer. He now held that pen in his hands and rammed it into his own throat.

Vlad removed the pen and continued to jab it along his throat in different places with no real care for where he stabbed. All that seemed to matter to him was creating the most damage possible.

A male police officer panicked and dashed into the cell, hoping to retrieve the pen and save this man. His kindness was the end of him. Although Vlad couldn’t see, he could still hear and it was hard to miss the shouts from the officer as he charged into the cell.

Vlad timed his forward motion perfectly and raised his handcuffed arms over the officer’s head and grabbed him around his neck. He twisted his arms over each other and pushed them outwards. The force broke the officer’s neck and ten miles away the officer’s brother, oblivious to the attack, grabbed for his neck and fell down dead.

Hearing the officer hit the floor Vlad removed the blindfold and looked over his freshly defeated foe. Vlad searched the man’s clothing and found a pair of sunglasses which he placed over his orange eyes, hiding them from view. Anything that could be traced back to Tobias had to be hidden.

He took his blindfold and wrapped it around his neck like a cravat to hide his wounds. To passers-by he would look just like another civilian and as long as the Tether held he wouldn’t bleed to death.

The Smyth West police station was poorly guarded. A common problem in small have-nots towns where resources were scarce.

A new set of orders was given to him. Emmie was still the target but his immediate concern was getting medical attention and for that he’d have to head back home.

As he left the station he broke into the evidence locker and retrieved his belt of knives. He spied a few extra knives that had been used by unsavoury characters in Smyth West’s history but he refused to use a blade that he hadn’t made himself.

After one final stop to the infirmary – which was nothing more than a small drugs cabinet – he patched up his stab wounds and applied an antiseptic gel to stop infection. Even though he couldn’t die, he wasn’t immortal and walking around with holes in his neck was asking for trouble. He wrapped the blindfold around his neck one more time and broke the neck of another officer at the entrance to the station.

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Tobias Zen

Tobias Zen sat in a blacked out room at the top of his tower. There were no windows and the only light came from the blinking orange glows of the machines around him.

As he sat there he smiled at what he had achieved that day. A multi billion pound launch of his stock, a huge PR success, and a meeting with Emmie. That last achievement was the one that thrilled him the most.

Her brother’s death was unfortunate but it was the only way to test the data. He had spent years trying to find someone who could survive the death of their twin. He had run every data sequence he could think of to pin down a candidate but had come up empty.

In the end it was Will who had helped him make his breakthrough. He had tasked Will with making a camera that would allow Tether events to be recorded between siblings. Officially the project was designed so the company could understand the link between twins but Tobias had a much darker plan.

He collected the data daily from the Dualcams and watched every piece of footage he could. Prototypes were given to every member of the TethTech team and Tobias saw the experiences of every one of them. He saw wonderful moments including an employee seeing their first born son and the first dance at a wedding. He also saw the darkest excesses of his employees; he watched violence, abuse and experienced an employee’s suicide.

Yet Tobias was unfazed by what he had seen; good and bad. He didn’t care about the footage. Which is why when he saw his employee Yun Tao take two bottles of pills, he did nothing. It’s why when he saw Yun start to convulse on the floor as the pills overwhelmed his body, he sat back with his feet up. Even when Yun let out his last breath of life Tobias didn’t notify his family and no one even knew he had died until two weeks later.

Tobias was far more interested in the data in front of him. He had watched countless videos and had seen a green line maintain a consistent motion over and over again. Yet there was one sequence of videos that stood out for him. Whenever he observed a Tether event between Will and Emmie the green line became erratic. It darted across the screen with a much faster pace.

The results were consistent and unlike any other videos. The bond between Emmie and Will was different. He couldn’t understand why but he started to become obsessed with it. Like all obsessions of his, the first thing he wanted to do was test it.

He gathered Will’s DNA from a routine employee blood trial and found nothing. This led him to wonder if Emmie was the key so he stole some blood of hers from a donation she made and the results were the same. There was nothing in their body chemistry to indicate a difference.

For nine months he studied their data and found no way to determine what he needed. He had collected every piece of data he could from their DNA. So he decided to take drastic action. If the Tether between truly was as strong and pervasive as he suspected then there was one last test he could perform. He knew it would mean getting his hands bloody but if he was to have his revenge then he knew it was necessary.

It wasn’t long before Will was gone and days later Emmie had sat in his office completely healthy. The very second he had seen her, his obsession had grown stronger. His suspicions had been confirmed.

At long last he had found someone else who could survive the death of their twin and he was never going to let her go.