The Sinister Shadows by Sian Webster (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📕

I felt a warm pair of hands wrap themselves around mine, and my eyelids fluttered open, heat tingling through my fingers and up my hands, melting away at the wrist where his touch stopped. “Is it happening again?” Will asked softly.

“No.” I snapped, more to myself than him. I sighed and met his eyes. “I’m sorry. I just… I want it to stop. The hallucinating.”

“What’s bringing it on?” He asked carefully. “Do you know?”

My gaze dropped to my hands, resting somewhere beneath his on the door handle. “The keys.”

He rubbed the back of my hand almost affectionately. “Let me unlock the door then,” he offered, “just tell me which key.”

I did as he asked, grateful that even though I never told him how the keys were causing the hallucination, he was careful to make sure they made the least noise possible until he dropped them into my hand with a clink, pushing the door open wide and holding it for me.

“Ladies first,” he smirked.

“Well it is my room.” I pointed out.

“Exactly my point. Don’t you want to make sure you have no dirty underwear on the floor? What if it looks like a bomb went off and you want to quickly tidy the place up?”

I closed my eyes as my breath caught in my throat. I could hear the echoes of explosions in the back of my mind, and the whispers of long-forgotten screams. I heard the chuckles of the other soldiers as they laughed at the soldier their Head had just punished for making advances on me. I forced myself to breathe, in and out, in and out, trying to clear my head. No, no, no, no, no. I will not go back there.

“Codi,” I felt Will’s hand on my cheek, his touch soft as I fell against the wall of the alcove behind me. “Codi, shit, I’m so sorry. Don’t give into it. Stay here. Stay with me, come on—!”

“Stay with me.” The Head Soldier told me harshly under his breath, his rough, calloused grip on my elbow tightening. “Don’t let the other men get their hands on you.”

I nodded stiffly, wondering why he seemed to be protecting me from them. In front of us, the soldier who had been punished by the Head Soldier in the bunker had a tight grip on Eli. My brother kept glancing back at me, his face pale. I tried to tell him with my eyes that I was okay, but how could I convince him when I couldn’t even convince myself? Instead, I trained my eyes to the floor beneath me, focussing on not tripping over debris. No matter how nice the Head Soldier seemed, I doubted he would like me falling over and wasting his time.

I don’t know how long we were dragged through the wreckage of the bombing, but every collapsed building we passed was being raided by other American soldiers, looking for survivors to send to other camps like the one Eli and I were now destined for. I wondered if my parents would be still alive, but a stern voice in the back of my head told me no. There was no way they could have survived. They had only just left the bunker when the first bomb hit.

Soon, the soldiers stopped, and I had to force myself to not walk into the soldier who had earlier been itching to get his hands on me. I dreaded what would happen if I did. Slowly, Eli reached behind him and took hold of my hand, squeezing it affectionately. One of the soldiers bashed loudly on the side of whatever stood before us; I still refused to look up.

“Open up!” He called, his voice stern. “We’ve got two for the Midlands Camp!”

The crowd of soldiers before Eli and I separated, and the back doors of a truck were opened. Eli’s hand was ripped from mine, and he was shoved forcefully into the dark abyss of the truck’s cargo hold. The Head Soldier, however, still gripped me tightly, his lips at my ear.

“Listen to me.” He whispered hurriedly. “You’ll learn quickly that you need to know how to protect yourself where you’re going. Start simple. Anyone gives you trouble, knee them in the groin. Or get creative. Just don’t let them take advantage of you like I know they want to.”

I nodded, a quick, slight movement. It didn’t matter; he still saw it. Before I could thank him for the advice, I was being thrown into the truck with the rest of the prisoners. I was barely landing on the floor of the truck when the doors were closed and we were enclosed in darkness.

“Codi!” Eli called, searching for me in the darkness. “Codi!”

“Codi!”

I blinked; I was in my room at the Compound, sitting on my bed. Will sat in front of me at the foot of the bed, his face worried. You’re okay. I told myself. It’s over. You’ve not been there for a long time. I stared at the purple bed sheets while my brain took its time to readjust to my actual surroundings. When my vision finally ceased flickering, I met Will’s eyes. “How long was it?” I asked, almost desperately. Sometimes the flashbacks could feel short, but last hours.

His face was still worried as he glanced down at his watch. “Just over five minutes.”

I nodded. Good.

He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, observing the sheets just as I had done seconds before. “So… I guess I’m gonna have to be a little more careful with what I say around you, huh?”

I nodded again.

He looked up hesitantly. “I know you… don’t talk about it… but what do you see?” He asked carefully. “What haunts you so much?”

I shrugged. “Which time do you mean?”

“All of them.”

I sighed. “The first time in the meeting, I saw my father.” I said softly. “He was burnt and bloody, the room was covered in blood. He was asking me to help him. I guess it haunts me that I never could.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “You said in the meeting that your parents weren’t here anymore.” He reached out and touched my hand. “It’s not your fault, Codi.”

I decided to change the subject from my parents before I broke down. “The second time, in the cafeteria, I saw a soldier. Half his body was burnt and blackened. The other half was filled with tiny glass shards. I… I… It was a bomb. I made it out of anything I could get my hands on in the cell, really. We needed to escape. Simple as that.”

“Cell?” His eyes widened as he repeated the word.

I shrugged again. “I don’t talk about it.”

“And just now?”

I pushed myself off the bed and walked over to my desk, determined to train the subject away from my experiences in the war. “The most common. I went back to the Bunker.”

Before he could respond, I reached around to the back of the desk and flicked the on switch, red and blue Projections appearing in the air above the desk. He started from the bed, the Projections sparking his interest and excitement once more. I fiddled with the windows open, arranging them in importance, trying to give Will all the information he would need to understand my research. He was leaning on the edge of the desk, his body angled towards the floating documents before him. His eyes scanned the pages, yet I could see no understanding there. He blinked and leaned back.

“I’m sorry,” he smirked, “but you’re gonna have to explain a whole lot of this to me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Where do you want me to start?”

He raised a single eyebrow of his own. Expectant. Waiting to be pleased just as he had the first day we met. “The beginning.”

I sighed. “This might take a while.”

The eyebrow was still raised. “If it will save the human race I don’t think it will matter how long it takes to explain.”

“Well the beginning…” I took a deep breath. “I’m not really sure what made me discover it. It… It might have been when I was working for Encorp at the beginning of the war. I—”

“You worked for Encorp?” Will asked, sounding almost breathless. “How are you even alive? I remember hearing about the lab explosion—”

I waved my hand as if I was waving away his worry. “I was like you. Didn’t go into work that day. Well, I was going to work when I heard about it on the radio.”

“Yes, okay, but you just said something about a cell. If they knew who you were, where you came from, you would’ve been slaughtered.” His eyes were wide.

“It’s okay,” I found myself reaching out and touching his arm in an attempt to comfort him. “They never figured it out. I can be invisible when I want to be. They were more bothered about me being a girl.” I explained, the soldier’s voice echoing through my mind once more. I pushed the thought away, willing myself to be calm.

Will, on the other hand, looked horrified. “I guess it makes sense now.”

I looked over at him, my eyebrows furrowed. “What does?”

“Why you’re worse with after-effects than the rest of us.”

I gave him a small smile. “It doesn’t matter right now.” I told him. “What matters is what I’m trying to show you, and you’re distracting me.” I bumped my hip with his jokingly.

“Right,” he said, the smirk appearing on his face once more, though it looked somewhat less confident. “So what were you doing at Encorp? I mean, they make bombs, what did they need a geneticist for?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Well, you know England, always thinking about the future. I was there to make sure the biological agents they created wouldn’t affect the future generations of those exposed to them with birth defects like they used to do with the Ancients. And now I think of it, it would make sense that I discovered all this from my studies there.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Will getting increasingly impatient; his desire for knowledge that had originally fuelled his studies of all possible aspects of science was suddenly visible in his face. It sent a slight thrill through my bones knowing that in that moment, it was my knowledge that he so desired.

“What is it?” He asked in earnest, his quickening pulse visible at the base of his throat. “What did you find?”

“It’s curious,” I said, leaning forward and enlarging one of the windows in the projection. “Seventy-five percent of couples who stay married have this in their DNA.”

Beside me, Will’s brow furrowed. “I… I don’t understand. They’re like… Shapes?”

I nodded. “Each couple has a different shape encoded into their DNA. And, from what I could gather, only one person on Earth has a ‘shape’ that matches another. Like, only one person on Earth has a shape that completes mine. Sort of like a two-piece jigsaw puzzle in our genes.”

He blinked. “Are… Are you saying you discovered scientific proof of soul mates and kept it to yourself for two years?”

I shrugged. “We were in the middle of a war, Will, no one would care about some silly little theory about soul mates. Besides, soul mates sounds so cheesy, don’t you think? I just call them Matches.”

“We need to use this. This… This is incredible stuff, Codi.” Will pressed.

I looked down. “I’m sure that compared to whatever the others think of, this is kindergarten stuff. I mean, what could we even invent to use this?”

Will thought about this for a moment. “A watch.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s your solution? A watch?”

He shook his head almost violently. “No, no, no, no, no; not an ordinary watch, Codi, we can just call it the watch. But maybe we could somehow figure out an equation or algorithm or something