The Sinister Shadows by Sian Webster (readnow txt) 📖

The walls shook, dust seeping through the cracks in the roof of the bunker. I pulled my knees to my chest in earnest, trying to make myself small enough to escape the pounding above our heads. It had only been five minutes earlier that the all clear alarm bell went off, alerting us it was okay to go outside – that we were safe for a while. They waited long enough for people who dared rise from their bunkers to get out into the open, and then rained down every type of bomb I could name, and even more I couldn’t. You even made some of those bombs, Codi. This is your fault. A voice in the back of my head screamed at me. I covered my ears with my hands, my forehead resting on my knees as I felt Eli’s arms wrap around me and his head rest on my shoulder. Silent words were communicated through his touch; we both knew mum and dad were gone. There were too many bombs. Another bomb dropped right above our bunker, and the roof cracked even more, before  falling in, barely missing the two of us. Sunlight burned my eyes and—STOP. I blinked, trying to erase the memories. It was no bomb; those days were over. Someone was at the door, knocking. That was all.

I spun around, dropping the watch noisily on the table, hopefully behind my back. The possibility of a UN representative turning up at my door at that hour was far too great for me to continue work. We were supposed to be working on the Invention together, even though it was a widely known fact I didn’t get along very well with other scientists, especially Americans. It was a bad grudge to have, seeing as it was that kind of grudge that got us into that mess as it was, yet I wouldn’t throw it away. It was because of them I had no parents and was left alone with Eli.

“Just a second!” I called out, hoping my voice wasn’t as shaky as it sounded.

I spun back around to face my workbench, searching with my eyes for somewhere to put the watch, to hide it from whoever was behind that door, but there was nowhere. I didn’t think the person pounding at the door was Will – it wasn’t his knock. It was far too heavy handed. Far too urgent. Hands shaking, I slipped the watch on my wrist, flinching as the tiny needle dug into the skin of my wrist, hacking into my nervous system. I shuddered – a result of the connection with the watch – and pulled my sweater down to cover it. I paused – unlike usual, the watch wasn’t flashing twelve zeroes at me. Instead, it was flashing one minute and about forty-three seconds. I blinked, expecting the numbers to flicker back to zero, but they didn’t. I shook my head in confusion before pulling the sleave of my sweater back down to cover the black band, and made my way over to the door.

I stood on my side of the door awkwardly. If the watch was really working, if I had absent-mindedly fixed my mistake, my true love would be standing on the other side of the door. The person on the opposite side of the door knocked again; harder, more urgent. I jumped back, closing my— Fire was everywhere, the sound of the bombs infinitely louder now the roof had collapsed around the two of us. I felt flames flicker at my hip, but between being crushed by debris from the explosion, and Eli’s tight grip around my shoulders, I couldn’t move even a tiny bit to flinch away from the pain. Dark, black ropes dropped down through the huge hole in the roof of our bunker, before army personnel slid down the ropes and landed gracefully in front of my brother and I. The one closest to us smiled.

“We’ve got ourselves a girl,” he drawled in his American accent. He had barely finished his sentence when the three others crowded around and eagerly started pulling the debris off us. At first I thought they were there to help us, but that was wishful thinking at its best.

 The first soldier dropped to the ground at my side, his face uncomfortably close to mine. As he spoke, his hot breath blew against my face, making me nauseas. I tried to scramble away from him— STOP IT. My eyes fluttered closed and I placed a hand on the wall beside the door to keep my balance. I took a deep breath and opened the door, trying in earnest to blink the tears out of my eyes.

To my surprise, it was – in fact – Will.

 “Codi!” He said breathlessly, pulling up the sleave of his shirt excitedly to reveal our watch. The black band flashed twelve zeroes up at us.

“What?” I asked in perplexity. “It’s doing what it normally does.” I sighed, closing my eyes again. We would never get it right.

“No, no, no!” He blabbed. “No, Codi, it was counting down! It was! So I ran straight over to tell you and—” He stopped, his eyes widening. “Codi, it’s—”

I blinked, reaching down and pulling my own sleave back to reveal the black bangle. Just like Will’s, it was flashing twelve zeroes up at us. “I…” I looked up at him wide-eyed. “I put mine on to hide it – I didn’t know who was at the door; I mean, it could’ve been anyone. And… it started… mine was counting down too!”

A wide smile spread across his face. “It works, Codi,” he told me. “It works,”

My eyes flickered between the watches, my cheeks turning red. Will. It was Will. Of all the 3 billion people left on Earth, it was Will. Slowly, hesitantly, my eyes moved up his body until they met his. “You think so? You think this is right? This… This can’t be real!” I said breathlessly.

“Is this real?” He asked me softly. Before I could ask what ‘this’ was, I found his lips pressed against mine and his hands on my waist. I slipped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer to me. After what felt like hours, I pulled back.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “I’d say that was pretty damn real.”

He smiled, his hand trailing down from my shoulder until he could lace his fingers through mine. “So...” he said casually, “soul mates?”

I met his eyes. “Well we can’t exactly deny it,” I laughed, “we’re a Match.”

“Come on then,” he tugged on my hand, pulling me outside, and he closed the door behind me. “We have something to show the UN.”

“You’re confident they’ll like it?” I asked, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest.

He shrugged. “Well, they can’t say we haven’t tested it on human subjects.” He winked and squeezed my hand.

I sighed. “Fine,” and I let him drag me from the alcove of my apartment.

He swung our arms leisurely as we walked hand in hand.

Two bodies. Two minds. Two soul mates.

One Match.

One invention that changed the world forever.

Stark white. I was surrounded by it. The walls, the roof, the linoleum floor, the lab coats of the people around me, the blank projector screen at the front of the room. I blinked, and the white was suddenly covered in deep, crimson blood. I saw my father standing before the blood splattered projector screen, half the flesh of his scolded face peeling away to reveal a burnt, charcoaled skull. The rest of his body was red and black and blistered, burns swirling between the blemishes. He reached towards me, trying to force himself to step forward as fire ignited at his feet, spreading up his legs—NO. I flinched, scrunching my eyes closed. When I opened them, I was once again surrounded by stark white walls, and my father was gone.

Eli placed his hand on my shoulder lightly. “Codi, are you sure you’re okay to be here? I-I’m sure they’ll understand if you can’t handle—”

I shrugged off his touch. “I don’t have a choice, Eli. If it’s my sanity or the human race, I’m going to pick the human race.”

“Screw the human race.” Eli said a little too loudly. “You should be back in Nottingham, where Doctor Walters can keep a close eye on you. You said it yourself, Codi, you’re not ready to be back out in society.” He reminded me, before adding softly, “Especially not in American society.”

I turned and faced my brother. “I also said that I needed to do this to regain a little normalcy in my life.” I snapped.

“Saving the world isn’t exactly normal, Codi.”

“My job is.” I said harshly, gaining some worried looks from the seven other scientists in the room, sitting around the table with us. I ignored them, turning to the front of the room once more. I was glad to see my father wasn’t there again. “The population had already halved, Eli. I’m not leaving three billion more people to die simply because of something that happened to me in the War.”

“Something?” Eli asked exasperatedly. “You were in the hospital for six months and you still have severe anxiety and an unstable level of PTSD. You should still be under watchful observation.”

“And now I’m moving on with my life.” I told him. “Like Doctor Walters said I should.”

“Somehow, I don’t think this is what he had in mind.” Eli muttered under his breath. His eyes travelled around the room, taking in the other scientists the UN found alive. Eight, including me. One of the most popular war strategies was to attack any laboratories the different Governments had set up, stopping countries from gaining the upper hand with new scientific inventions.

At the beginning of the War, I had worked in one of England’s scientific set-ups, working with biologists on biological agents I was in charge of determining whether the biological weapons they created would impact on the genes of the offspring of any surviving soldiers. Even in the middle of the War, England was still thinking avidly about the future. They didn’t want any faults in the future generations because of the War. One day, when I was travelling to the laboratory, I got a message through the interface. The laboratory had been bombed. There were no survivors. After that, my family and I were forced into hiding. Luckily for Eli and I, they never discovered my identity when we were captured by the Americans.

“Look at them.” Eli said through gritted teeth. “Any of them could be responsible for their deaths.” Our parents’ deaths, he meant.

“I could be responsible.” I pointed out. “There’s no use pinning the blame on anyone. The War is over. They’re dead. We’re alive. And so, we move on with our lives. And if that means saving the human race, I will damn well save the human race, whether my parents are a part of it or not.”

He was quiet for a while. Then he pointed to the man