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

I smiled and looked down.

“Then what about you, Codi?” Short asked. “Do you have an idea for the Invention?”

I shook my head. Beneath the table, Will kicked my shin. It took all my free will not to wince or cry out at the sudden pain as his shoe collided with the bone. I glanced up at him, only to meet an incredulous look.

“I…” I turned back to the director at the head of the table. “I have some research that I had been working on prior to the War.” I told him. “I still have more to discover, but”—I cleared my throat, glancing towards Will—“Mr Harper believes we could turn it into some sort of Invention. A watch, if you will.”

At the other end of the table, Li Yun scoffed. “A watch? To save the human race?” He shook his head. “The human race is dead already.”

“A watch,” Will spoke over him, “that has the ability to predict when you will meet your soul mate.”

I sighed. “Soul mate sounds so cliché, Will.”

He shrugged. “It’s alluring.”

Many people spoke at once, ending our bickering before it could start.

“You want to work with him?” Harley Gregory asked incredulously.

Sam barberry scoffed. “There is no science in soul mates!”

“How would you do that?” Edward North, unlike his two colleagues, sounded genuinely interested.

They then turned to talk amongst themselves, throwing around theories and insults as if they were gossiping old ladies who had not seen each other for years.

“Silence!” Director Short bellowed, before turning to me, his brown eye glinting. “That hardly sounds possible, Dr Watterson. Do you have proof? Could you truly create an object of this kind?”

I nodded. “It’s all in our genes. I discovered it by accident one day at Encorp—”

A collective gasp travelled through the room, and Li Yun’s head snapped up like a Venus fly trap for its food.

“Encorp?” Dr Barberry muttered gravely. “You should not be alive.” He met my eyes. “You are a very lucky woman.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Please,” it was Edward North who spoke, “continue. I wish to know how the watch could possibly work.”

“It’s… It’s like a lock and key mechanism, almost, in our genes. Over eighty per cent of people in stable marriages have are matched to their spouse through their genetics. Matches – that’s what I started to call them – are those couples that stay together until they die, not those who are happily married for twenty-odd years then divorce. Sixty-five per cent of people in affairs are Matched with the person with whom they are having the affair.” I explained. “If I could find the pattern there, and create an equation or algorithm, I could Match people who aren’t even born yet. If I could program this into a watch of some sort, along with a DNA tester, a GPS tracking system and a few other things, I could essentially discover how long it would be until a person meets their Match, or soul mate, as Will prefers.”

The director nodded. “If you believe you can do it, Dr Watterson, then I shall allow you to work on this watch of yours.”

A smile made its way onto my face. “Thank you, Director Short.”

He flashed a smile back, then turned to look past me at Dr Yun. “Dr Yun,” he said sternly, “you must choose a group to work with, or you will be detained. Do you wish to work with Dr Singh and the rest of the New York scientists on their contact lenses, or do you wish to assist Dr Watterson with her watch.”

Yun’s eyes narrowed more than they had before. “This is no fairytale world.” He snapped. “And I refuse to work with a traitor.”—he glared at Will—“I work with Singh and his men.”

Short nodded. “Good.” He looked around the room. “Meeting dismissed. Meet here again at the same time next week with some sort of progress on your ideas.”

Everybody stood up and made their way out of the meeting room. When I met Will outside in the hallway, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. “I’m proud of you.” He whispered in my ear, no louder than a breath. I nodded very slightly against his chest. No one else would have heard or seen the exchange, only the two of us embracing.

“Codi!” Eli called, obviously trying to keep the scowl from showing on his face. “I’m heading to the cafeteria, I’m in need of a coffee. Are you gonna come?”

“Mmmmm,” Will muttered, “I could do with a coffee too. Depressing Asians really do steal my energy.”

I slapped him on the arm, despite knowing that I couldn’t hurt him is I tried. I turned back to Eli before Will could react, stepping out from the circle of his arm. “I might head back to the room, I have a bit of a headache, and need to get back to my research.”

Eli nodded and headed towards the cafeteria, starting a conversation with Andrew, who apparently also needed an energy boost. Behind me, Will reached out and touched my shoulder lightly. I turned and met his eyes, a lazy smile playing around his lips.

“I’m grabbing you tea, and an apple, to make up for the other day.” He told me. “Sugar? Milk?”

I laughed, the sound echoing off the stark white walls surrounding us. “Two sugars and milk.”

He nodded. “I’ll meet you at your room later.” He said, slowly wandering in the direction of the cafeteria.

“I know you will.”

His smirk was the last thing I saw before I turned around and followed the hallway out of the main building of the Compound. The sky was overcast and grey above the building, a storm threatening to unleash its power on everything below it. The wind whipped harshly, and I pulled my thin cardigan around me tighter, hoping for a little more warmth. I had barely taken ten steps from the entrance before I felt myself being forced against the brick wall of the building, an arm pressed against my throat as all the air was pushed from my lungs. When my vision managed to focus again, I was met with the menacing glare of Li Yun.

“You will not beat me with some stupid school girl fantasy.” He snapped, his voice low, threatening. “I refuse to be beaten by you and that traitor.” He pulled his arm from my throat and took a step back.

I fell forward, gasping for breath, clutching my throat in pain. Doubled over and struggling to breathe, I looked up and met his eyes. “I thought… you said… you weren’t interested… in saving the world.” I managed to say.

The scientist shook his head, his eyes narrowed. “You.” He growled. “You should have died with the rest of them.”

The second I hear the keys jingle, and the front door of the cell block close, my mind is alert. The guard’s whistling echoes off the concrete walls, through the cold metal bars that trap me in their cage. My eyes slide along the floor in the path the guard will hopefully follow, and I smile slyly as I assure myself that the makeshift trip wire I had created in my cell is still in place, tied around a bar of my cell, and a bar of the one across from me.

The girl in the cell across from me is about sixteen, her parents nowhere to be seen. She had the Look, though. The look in her dazed eyes that screamed a single word; orphan. It took me only a few days sitting across from her to realise she was a mute. I know from watching her that this is a relatively new characteristic; it is a general occurrence for her to open her mouth and try fruitlessly to talk to the guards, before flinging her hand to her throat and staring at the floor, neither here nor there. Despite this, and her age, she managed to piece together my plan, until one day, I was hit in the back of the head with a scrunched up piece of paper. I turned and looked at the girl, hope twinkling in her eyes. I flattened out the paper to four simple words scrawled in blood, the only ink at her disposal.

Let me help you.

I look over at the girl now, her smile mirroring mine. She drops an eyelid in a wink before turning around, masking her face, void of emotion, as usual. I nod slightly, knowing she could see me in the corner of her eye.

I slowly stand up from my position at the bars of my cell, and move quietly over to the small, grated window in the back wall, the footsteps and the jingling keys moving closer and closer. I’m staring over at the cell block where Eli and the rest f the male prisoners are kept when the trip wire is triggered. One of the wood planks from my broken shelves in my cell swings down from the roof and hits the too-cheery guard in the back of the head. As his unconscious body sprawls across the floor, the keys that had previously been hooked onto his belt loops break free and slide across the floor. Right to the bars in front of my cell, just as I had predicted. I meet the eyes of the girl across from me as I pick up the keys and endeavour to unlock my cell.

“What is your name?” I ask her, suddenly feeling bad about not knowing.

It does not take her long to scribble down the two words and send them to me in a roughly folded paper aeroplane.

Calliope Grey.

“Right then, Calliope,” I smile as the lock clicks and the bars before me swing open, “time to get out of here.”

I run across the divide between us and quickly unlock her cell. She hugs me as she steps over the threshold. I know that if she could still speak, she would say thank you many times over, but the hug offers me so much more comfort.

I walk over to the cell beside Calliope’s and hand the key to the middle aged woman residing there. I tell her to wait for my signal to escape, and help everyone else to. When she asks what the signal will be, I simply say she will hear it. I then run back to Calliope and take her hand. The two of us run out of the door before freezing behind a stack of crates, waiting for the patrols to move out of sight. My heart pounds in my chest as I count the seconds that pass as we crouch in the dim shadows cast by the crates. Thirty-seven seconds later, we are running across the open space between the two cell blocks. We pause again at the entrance, and I reach behind my into my back pocket. I retrieve the deodorant can I managed to save from a dustbin, and place it on the ground before me. I roll it forward slowly with my foot, and at the press of the button in my hand,