Tethered Twins

Emmie Keyes

This was bad.

I couldn’t escape on the ground level and I refused to go anywhere near Tobias again. Then I remembered the basement area. Can I get down there? I wondered.

I looked down but all I saw were mirrors. Although I’d seen the basement from above, it couldn’t be accessed from the tube. The mirrors must help Tobias to see into the room but there had to be an entirely different way for him to get there.

My options were limited. I was trapped and to make matters worse I could see guards starting to walk towards my location. If Tobias had told them where I was, then there’s a good chance they’d know how to open the base of the tube and catch me.

Then I heard a loud banging on the side of the tube.

The banging grew louder and I watched as a panel on the tunnel wall above me began to loosen. With a final loud thud, the panel was released and yet it didn’t fall. It just hovered there thanks to the low gravity.

Unable to hide, I looked up to see the face of the man who would kill me.

“Grace?”

“Emmie?” asked Grace. “What happened to your disguise?”

“It’s a long story and we have more important things to worry about,” I motioned to the glass mirror and Grace saw the guards preparing to breach the door. They seemed more organised now and three of the men carried a battering ram.

“Get out of there now!” shouted Grace, as the men began to run towards the door with the battering ram raised in preparation.

I thrusted my arms downwards which sent me rising back up the tube and towards Grace. As I reached her level she grabbed me and pulled me inside. The return to normal gravity hit me instantly and I could feel the extra weight on my body dragging me down. I almost pulled Grace from her ladder when I swung round and grabbed the rungs below her.

The door on the lower level was breached in one hit and sent the panel flying. If I had still been down there the door would probably have killed me from the force.

Before the guards could enter the tube Grace pulled the panel next to us back into place. “Are you ok?” she asked me. I looked down to see a twenty foot drop and wasn’t sure how to answer.

“You’ll be ok, Emmie. Here,” said Grace, as she clipped my jeans onto her harness.

“Great, so if I fall at least my trousers will be safe.”

“Those are good jeans. It’d be a shame for them to go to waste.”

--<><>--

Tobias Zen

A guard entered the tube and lifted up the broken door. He looked around but could find no one. “Sir, they are not in the tube,” he stated into a headset.

“Impossible! I told you to guard every exit. Where have they gone?” boomed the voice of Tobias Zen.

“I don’t know but we will find them,” replied the guard.

Tobias turned his imposing figure towards Jacobs and asked him. “Is General Kull ready?”

“We’re hooking him up to his twin right now. He’ll be online in five minutes.”

Without saying another word Tobias jumped into the tube and descended down to the base of the tower. He was far more skilled than Emmie and had a smooth journey down to the bottom.

His orange sneakers touched the floor without making a sound, so elegant was his landing. He walked out onto the ground floor and tightened his orange tie. “The media are waiting for me, don’t screw this up.”

As the guards looked on confused, trying to determine how he had suddenly appeared, he walked out into the roars of the crowd. As important as Emmie was, he needed the media and his investors even more right now, especially if he was to make the world right again.

--<><>--

Emmie Keyes

We heard a whooshing noise as someone else descended the tube.

“It has to be Tobias,” I said to Grace.

“Emmie, what happened?” she asked.

“He killed Will.”

“No! He confessed?”

“Yes 100%. He killed Will to see if I would survive, like some crazy lab experiment. Now he wants to capture me.”

“We have to stop him,” said Grace. “He can’t be allowed to stand out there with all that praise and all that glory after what he did.”

“I know but what can we do? There are so many guards. It’s impossible.”

“You’re right,” said Grace, being surprisingly level headed. “Right now, all we need to think about is escaping.”

“No Grace, there’s something else. Something we have to do now. I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t. I saw something in a basement level. A large room filled with animals in cages that were being experimented on.”

“That’s awful. You’re right. We have to save them.”

“It gets worse. In one of the cages I saw a man that was bound. His clothes were torn and he wore an army uniform.”

Grace gasped, “Gabe?”