Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (27 page)

Still
beyond him. He’d hardly made it a third of the way.

A
long time ago, Aaron had heard the water was seventeen feet deep at the buoys.
Or was it thirty-seven? Aaron reached the buoy choking for breath, not sure he
could manage five.

After
catching his breath, he tugged the dive sticks from his pocket and released
them all into the water. He watched them sink.

They
were bigger than the vial, but their behavior would be the same underwater—they
would
sink
the same. And if everything went according to plan, the neon
dive sticks would roughly mark the area at the bottom where he should search
for the vial.

Aaron
stretched the goggles over his eyes and dipped his head underwater. A murky
green abyss swallowed his gaze. There was no hint of the bottom, and the buoy’s
chain sank deep into the haze, eerily still.

Aaron
raised his head, took a deep breath, and made the plunge. Scraps of kelp
materialized inches from his nose and whisked past him. He swam as deep as he
could, until his ears throbbed. But there was no sign of the bottom.

Back
at the surface, Aaron clung to the buoy, panting. But as he waiting for the
hollow feeling in his chest to subside, he had a chilling thought. Even now,
Dr. Selavio could be strapping Amber into his machine. Who knew how much time
she had left.

Feeling
sick and failing to push the thought from his mind, Aaron submerged his head
again and scanned the teal gloom for any indication of the sea floor. Nothing.
The bleak haze sank into infinity. It was hopeless.

No
it wasn’t. Aaron’s eyes settled on the crusty chain swaying gently in the
ocean’s current—the chain that anchored the buoy to the bottom.

Aaron
grabbed the rusted links, and slime oozed between his fingers. He dived again,
this time climbing down the chain. Seawater rushed around him, squashing him.
Still no sign of the bottom.

His
heart thumped in his ears, like impacts from a baseball bat. The goggles
pinched his sinuses. Again and again he plunged his hands through freezing
water and yanked the chain, dragged himself deeper. A cold, dark midnight
closed around him.

Without
warning, a vast black wall materialized from the gloom in front of him—the
bottom of the ocean. Three of the dive sticks gleamed in the sand: yellow,
green, and pink. He slapped the bottom and scrambled back up to the surface.

Afterwards,
he had to catch his breath for a whole minute. Waves lapped against the buoy.
If he could touch the bottom, then he could definitely recover the vial.

Aaron
dived again. Three more times. He scoured the seafloor with his flashlight, and
the dive sticks lit up in its beam. All eight of them.

But
he never found the vial.

It
should have been easy, like finding a glow stick at night. The vial held bright
red fluid—or was it buried in the sand? Aaron clung to the buoy and caught his
breath for the sixth time, and a gust of wind made him shiver.

He
simply
had
to find the vial.

On
his next dive, he swept his flashlight around a larger radius. For a
split-second, just inside the farthest dive stick, the sand glinted. He flicked
the beam back to the spot but saw nothing.

Aaron
swam through flakes of dead kelp and brushed his hand along the bottom. He had
to check now or risk losing the spot.

His
lungs heaved, pulling at nothing. He already should have surfaced. Aaron raked
his fingers through the muck, which billowed up in his face. He watched it
settle. Bits of silica, grains of iridescent shells. In the flashlight’s beam,
it all glinted—he hadn’t seen a damn thing.

Furious,
he shoved off the bottom, and his hand struck something invisible. Then he saw
it, skittering across the seafloor. The outline of the vial.

But
Aaron’s stiff fingers hardly obeyed him. The vial vanished against the sand. He
lunged for it, but only knocked it farther away.

He
needed air. The sea swarmed with black spots. His lungs convulsed, tore at his
chest. Aaron squirmed after the vial, but his fingers lost their grip on the
flashlight and it nosedived into the sand—and the vial tumbled into the
shadows.

Aaron
stared at the narrow cone of light, the particles as they swirled like snow in
front of headlights. The vial was gone. He couldn’t hold the air in any longer,
and bubbles exploded from his nose.

***

But
light behaves differently underwater. The index of refraction of fused quartz
is lower than glass. If the vial
had
been made of glass, he would have
seen it. But it wasn’t glass.

In
salt water, a vial made of fused quartz was nearly invisible. At the bottom of
the ocean, through a foggy pair of goggles, it would be like finding a poppy
seed on a beach.

Yet
right there, an inch from the flashlight and twinkling in its yellow beam, the
vial had come to rest.

Aaron
grabbed the vial, kicked off the bottom, and swam for the surface. Without the
air in his lungs he was denser. He thrashed at the water, but it resisted him
like syrup and he sank back after each thrust. The surface shimmered, miles
above him.

But
he kept going, willing the blood through his limp muscles. More air escaped his
nostrils, deflating him further. His body was on the verge of collapsing in on
itself.

Then
he felt warmth on his cheeks, fresh air in his lungs, but by then he realized
what was wrong.

His
swim to the buoy, the dive sticks, the underwater flashlight—none of that
mattered.

Aaron
pried his fingers off the vial and looked straight through it. Of course he
hadn’t seen it underwater.

It
was empty.

***

The
vial was Aaron’s last hope. There was nothing else to do, nowhere to go. In a
world where everyone was paired with their half, he was alone.

Aaron
drove home ten miles per hour under the speed limit, took a shower, and charged
his cell phone.

Sunday
passed. Absurdly, the digits on his clock continued to change. Around five in
the afternoon, when yellow-orange light slanted in through the windows, Aaron
laid the vial on his nightstand and sat with his back propped against his
bedframe.

Amber’s
perfume floated over him still. He wanted to feel her hair on his neck. He
wanted to hold her, whisper in her ear. He wanted to see her green eyes
sparkle.

Before
they sparkled for the last time.

Aaron
stared at the empty vial. Waiting. Just as he’d been waiting for his entire
life.

Only
there was nothing to wait for. His birthday had come and gone. He wasn’t
seventeen anymore. Now, for as long as he lived, nobody would ever break the
silence between his ears.

But
he would always be waiting.

***

Aaron
opened his eyes suddenly. He lay curled in a pool of sweat, still unable to
sleep at three in the morning. Yellow haze trickled through the blinds from a
solitary streetlamp. His heartbeat deafened him.

Then
he felt it, like hot breath down his neck, something else in his bedroom—something
alive
.

Aaron
kicked off his comforter and jolted upright. He scanned his room, wheezing, and
his eyes narrowed on the black hulk of his nightstand. A single shiver crept
down his spine.

The
vial.

For
a moment, Aaron lay very still, breathing in quiet gasps. There was something
in it that woke him up. He snatched the vial off the table, jammed his feet
into his shoes, and snuck into the hallway.

Outside,
frozen moonlight drenched his yard. Aaron darted through the shadows and
climbed into his car, parked just up the street. When he held up the vial, his
breath misted on the quartz.

It
appeared empty, but he knew it wasn’t.

At
three o’clock in the morning, nothing moved outside his car. The black contours
of hedges were fixed, frozen in place. Not a single leaf rustled. Aaron might
have been the only living thing in the world.

Except
there
was
something moving outside his car.

***

Aaron
sat forward, hardly breathing. One of the shadows had changed positions,
drifted closer—
crawled
. But now he wasn’t sure.

The
road was too dark. The moon hid behind the trees, and the porch lights that
hadn’t run out their timers barely flickered.

Then
he saw it again.

Across
the street, a figure darted forward and sank into the shadows between two
trees. Closer now. Aaron’s heart pounded. Who was out there?

What
was out there?

Aaron
stared into the shadows, straining his eyes, but saw nothing. Then a soundless
blur crossed to his side of the street—and he lost it at the neighbor’s hedge,
five feet in front of his car.

It
was pitch black, and Aaron couldn’t see a damn thing. He fumbled along his
steering column for the headlight switch. Through the corners of his eyes he
glimpsed motion, followed by eerie stillness. Then something hammered against
his hood. The sound froze his blood.

He
was only aware of a pale blur after that. Then a body slammed against his door,
and he nearly jumped out of his skin. The handle rattled.

Crouching
below the window, the thing outside yanked the door in every direction, trying
to get in. And the driver’s side door was loose. In a split-second, it opened.
Through the crack, Aaron heard gasps, a flurry of movement. He grabbed the door
just in time, wrenched back on the handle, and for a moment thought the tendons
would spring from his knuckles before the door slammed shut. 

Whatever
was outside scampered back to its hiding place. Aaron didn’t wait a moment
longer. His fingers closed on the lever, and he flipped on his high beams.

Brilliant
white light flooded the darkness in front of his car. Tree limbs popped into
focus, leaves burned in the glare. The shadows dissolved.

And
his headlights exposed a human figure crouched in the bushes. The figure raised
a hand to block the light, but not before Aaron recognized who it was.

At
first he felt relieved, bubbly almost, and he was about to let out a sigh when
he realized what he was seeing. After that, it was pure terror. Something was
wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

Crouching
in the bushes in front of his car, shading her eyes against the high beams and
shivering in a thin hospital gown—was Emma Mist.

Plus 1
Day, 16 hours, 30 minutes

Aaron brought her into
his car, started the engine, and cranked up the heat.

He
flipped on the cabin light. Emma’s pale skin was smudged with dirt. Her
frightened eyes darted around the inside of the car, barely registering him,
and Aaron noticed the sunken look to her cheeks. She hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“Emma—”
Aaron didn’t know what to say. The last time he saw her she had been in a
vegetative state, scarcely alive. Her half was dead; he had seen Justin’s
corpse just two nights before.

She
should have been dead too.

“Emma,
tell me what happened,” he said.

She
shook her head and hugged her knees to her chest. “I can’t remember,” she
whispered.

“Do
you remember me?”

She
glanced up at him, and then buried her face in the gap between her knees.
“Aaron, I shouldn’t remember anything,” she said.

“But
you do,” said Aaron. “Buff Normandy and I came to see you a few weeks ago. Do
you remember that?”

“I
wasn’t there,” she said, sniffling.

“Where
were you?” he said.

“Nowhere.”

“Are
you hurt?” said Aaron.

She
nodded. “I think there’s a hole—” She pointed to the back of her head and
swiveled so he could see. “Will you check it for me?”

Her
hair was crusted with flakes of blood, and Aaron was afraid to look. But the
scab was small. It was her half who
had the hole drilled through the
back of his head.

“It
looks fine,” he said.

“I
can’t feel him anymore. I think our channel broke,” she whimpered.

“What
do you mean?”

“I’m
not supposed to be here.” Her teeth chattered.

“Emma—”
Aaron pulled her into his arms to keep her warm. She was lighter than he
remembered, and he lifted her right off the seat. Her skin was cold and sticky
against him. She smelled like disinfectant. “Emma, tell me what happened?” he
said.

“I
woke up earlier . . . I didn’t know where I was—” her eyes froze on the vial, which
Aaron had dropped in the center tray, and she trailed off.

Aaron
looked down too. Miraculously, the vial was full now, glowing. The dazzling red
fluid lit their faces, blinded them.