“There you have it,” he said simply.
“Yeah,” I managed, feeling numb. “I wasn’t having an identity crisis or anything before, but I might give one a go now. Special Subject Lela, the nefarious pair-thief.”
He chuckled weakly, still facing the counter. “Of all the things you had to pick-up from Miro, you had to take the awkward stress-humour.”
I jumped up from the stool, shoving both of my hands into my hair and pulling. Jayden was there in a second, loosening my grip and forcing me to sit back down. I pushed him back and even though we both knew that he could control me, he let it go, allowing me to start pacing furiously while I intermittently pulled at my hair.
“I can’t flip out.” I spoke to myself, pacing with my eyes screwed shut in concentration. “I knew… ever since you gave me that memory back at the boathouse—or the Komnata, whatever I’m supposed to call it—I just knew. I had this feeling… like I had somehow forced a connection with Silas. He had fought against it, but I… I needed him. This doesn’t make any sense. It has something to do with me being a test subject—” I rounded on him, my eyes opening half-way. “You have to tell me what it means.”
“If I tell you… you’ll do what needs to be done?”
“I’ll trade myself for Silas. Yes.”
“You know that your pairs might never forgive you? Including Silas?”
“It’s not their choice.”
“Alright then.” He motioned the stool and I sat on it obediently, folding my hands in my lap and smothering my emotions. He said, “Weston’s father died when Weston was twenty-four. He wasn’t equipped to lead the people—his father hadn’t trusted anyone, including Weston. Maybe there was a reason for that, but it didn’t do him any good. By the time Weston took the helm, he was not only unprepared, but also highly underqualified. The pressure was extreme; the pressure to find his pair, to produce a Voda Heir, and above all… to keep our people safe. The human government saw this, and they struck. They started kidnapping Atmás, experimenting on them, trying to emulate or extract their powers. Now our Atmás, as you know, are generally very powerful people. If it were only them, things might have worked out differently, but the humans figured out our weakness. The pairs. They figured out that all they needed to do was threaten a pair, and the Atmá in question would do anything they wanted, even if it meant betraying Weston.
“So Weston started experimenting as well. He discovered Dominic and together, they created the first in vitro fertilised Atmás. The aim was to use gene splicing techniques to prevent his Atmás from forming pairs—making them stronger, more powerful, and less vulnerable. The ultimate soldiers. The champions of our people. Unfortunately, no amount of genetic mutation is going to change nature, and the Atmá magic proved too strong for the single receptacle of a pair-less body and mind. Most of the first batch died off in the first six months. There were only two survivors: the two that Dominic had performed extra testing on. They figured out that the drug Dominic had been feeding those last two subjects to amplify their powers, actually worked in a different way. For a paired Atmá, it did amplify power—dangerously so. For an unpaired Atmá, however, it acted as a substitute receptacle for the missing pair. They repeated the process, doubling the drug dosage that Dominic had used on the two survivors—but like before, they went too far and got too greedy. Most of the second batch died, leaving only a set of twins… and by then, Dominic had run out of time to repeat the experiment, because the humans had clued onto what was happening inside that medical centre. Are you following so far?”
I thought I nodded, but I wasn’t sure. My head may have simply dipped from the sudden overload of information. “Are you saying I’m a…”
“You’re an IVF baby.”
“Who were my parents?”
“Random volunteers. Really, the who is unimportant. Your true creator was Dominic.”
“And you’re one of the subjects?”
His face reddened, and he stayed quiet, averting his eyes to the bench top. My heart-rate kicked up and I jumped off my stool again. Before I knew it, my hand was around his neck, my injured fingers digging into skin. His eyes had gone wide, his hand against my chest. He wasn’t really pushing me away, and that gave me pause.
He couldn’t be my twin.
He wasn’t quite a decade older than me, but he was close to it. He waited, surprisingly patient, while I struggled with myself. I was breathing hard, but the sudden surge of violence had been born from an overwhelming fear, and that fear rose with each second that the anger ebbed away. Jayden wasn’t my twin; he was one of the survivors from the first ‘batch’ of test subjects. I was one of the survivors from the second.