“No,” Doran whispered. “That’s crazy.”
He shook his head again and again, never stopping, because denial was the only way to bat down the prickle of hope quickly swelling inside him. He couldn’t afford to hope. It would only hurt that much more when reality set in again. His brother couldn’t be alive, otherwise Doran would have sensed it somehow. And what about his parents? If their other son had survived, they’d know it, and they would never keep a secret like that from him.
Solara was wrong. She had to be.
But then the lab doors swung open and revealed something that shifted his very center of gravity. Renny and Kane strode inside with their hands folded behind their heads, both of them led at gunpoint by a furious, distorted mirror image of himself.
At once, a memory washed over Doran—an emotional snapshot from his childhood that he’d nearly forgotten. On the night he was snatched from his bed, he recalled lying blindfolded on the cold floor of a shuttle and holding his brother’s hand. Fear had choked him in tandem with a musty rag shoved inside his mouth, but the grip of Gage’s fingers had kept Doran grounded, connected to something safe and familiar.
Now those fingers were curled around a pulse pistol.
Doran had to remind himself to breathe. Impossible as it seemed, Gage Spaulding was alive and well. But how much of the boy Doran remembered was still in there?
“Gage,” Doran whispered, his body as stiff and motionless as a tomb.
The twin’s eyes moved toward the sound of his name, then flew wide in a way that told Solara this encounter was just as shocking for him as it was for the rest of them. He studied his brother, no doubt taking in the subtle differences that set them apart. Gage’s skin had the slightly golden hue of someone who bathed in artificial light instead of natural sun, with a silver web of scar tissue tugging down the corner of his left eye. He wore his hair in a low ponytail that disappeared behind a pair of broad shoulders that could pass for Doran’s. And both of them had the same arrogant tilt to their chins, the one she’d taken months to recognize as a defense mechanism. Each boy peered at the other through an identical mask of reserved wonder, as if afraid to believe what their eyes were telling them. The similarities were uncanny.
Except this twin knew how to wield a gun.
When Doran took a step toward his brother, Gage aimed at him and warned in a shaky voice, “Drop your pistol and stay back. I’m pretty sure I know why you’re here.”
Doran tossed his weapon to the floor and held both palms forward. His mouth seemed to have stopped working, because it took a few tries before he spoke. “How are you alive?”
Gage faltered, as if the question had caught him off guard. “The same way you’re alive. I got out of the house before it burned down.”
“But we buried you. There was a body.”
Gage didn’t look too surprised to hear that. He glanced away from his brother, staring thoughtfully at the discarded pistol before picking it up and tucking it inside his waistband. “The body wasn’t mine. I ran for two blocks and hid behind a garbage bin. That’s where Mom found me. She wanted to keep me safe from Dad, so she let him think I was dead. But she said you knew our secret. She never mentioned it to you?”
“Never mentioned it?” Doran echoed. “She sat next to me at your funeral.” For a long time afterward, Doran went very still and quiet. His eyes were shimmering with unshed tears when he finally broke the silence. “And then she left me with Dad and brought you here to live with her for all these years. Because you were the science prodigy, not me. I was just average. I wasn’t…”
Useful to her.
Solara didn’t need to hear the final words—they were written on Doran’s face. Her heart broke as she watched him try to blink away the moisture welling in his eyes. Abandonment was one thing, but his mom had left him in favor of another child. Solara had never told anyone, but that was the real reason she refused to seek out her birth parents. She couldn’t bear the possibility that they’d started a new family without her.
“Is Mom here now?” Doran asked, and wiped a sleeve across his eyes.
Gage shook his head.
“Good,” Doran muttered. He swallowed hard, his gaze turning sharply to ice. “As far as I’m concerned, she died that day instead of you.”
That seemed to ruffle Gage’s feathers. His chin jerked up, along with the barrel of his pistol. “Watch your mouth.”
“You’re defending her?” Doran asked, flinching back like he’d been slapped. “She faked your death and kept us apart for almost a decade. And for what? To take revenge on Dad? To invent the perfect fuel and drive him out of business? It’s sick!”
Solara agreed. The Spauldings made her glad to be an orphan.
“And Dad’s a total saint, right?” sneered Gage.