Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) (20 page)

And
he would be eighteen years old.

He
switched off his bedside lamp . . . darkness, except for the green glow of the
clock’s display. He pulled his arm back, and the gash itched painfully. His
fingers scarcely resisted tearing into it.

One
minute. Exhaustion weighed on his eyelids, but he strained to keep them open.
All those nights he and Amber had stayed awake, all that time, and now the last
of it had drained away. Gone. He couldn’t fall asleep now.

Ten
seconds. He counted the blinks of the colon between the eleven and the
fifty-nine. Five seconds—
four
—
three
—
two
—
one
—  

A
violent crash from the front door jolted him upright. The sound of shattering
glass. Instinctively, he clutched the back of his head.

Aaron
stared at his bedroom door, toes tingling. He heard the distant toll from the
Chamber of Halves, officially announcing his eighteenth birthday.

He
listened carefully, his heart pulsing in his throat—and then he heard another
sound from the hallway. Footsteps.

Aaron
held his breath as the floor outside his door groaned under the weight of an
intruder.

The
door banged open.

***

Two
figures rushed inside. They wore black beanies stretched over their faces.

“Surprise!”
yelled one of them. He laughed, flipped on the lights, and yanked off his
beanie—Dominic Brees.

The
other one laughed too, and Aaron knew the voice—Clive Selavio.

Aaron
stood up, adrenaline flooding his veins. “Get out of my house,” he said. “I’m
sleeping.”

 “Not
anymore,” said Dominic. “This is your payback for what happened at the game.”

Clive
rushed in from the side and clamped his hand over Aaron’s mouth. “Shhh,” he
said, and Aaron could taste his sour breath. “Don’t cry!”

 Aaron
slapped his arm away, grabbed his throat, and shoved him against the wall. “I
said,
get out of my house.
”

Clive
snorted with laughter and squeezed Aaron’s wrist, dipping his fingernails into
the open wound. Aaron winced and yanked his hand back. He threw in the weight
of his other shoulder. They both fell.

 Aaron
seized the bedside lamp, snapped the cord free. Eight and a half pounds of hard
porcelain. But Dominic caught him from behind. The rugby player’s thick forearm
coiled around Aaron’s throat and dragged him backward.

Aaron
slammed his foot into Clive’s face and squashed Dominic against the other wall.
They toppled over the bedside table, and his choke loosened. Aaron broke free,
twisted, and buried his elbow into Dominic’s jaw.

But
Clive’s clammy fingers closed around his ankle and yanked him off his feet. He
crumpled onto the carpet and his attackers swarmed over him. A knee crunched
into his back, and he felt the ice-cold prick of the switchblade poised at his
throat. 

“Don’t
move,” Dominic hissed, his saliva splattering against his ear. Aaron twisted,
but the blade pried into his skin, dangerously close to his jugular. He froze.

Dominic
panted. “You made a mistake, number eleven, and now you’re paying for it.”

Aaron
felt rope uncoil on his back. While Dominic held the knife to his throat, Clive
bound his wrists and ankles and yanked the knots tight.

Dominic
waved for Clive to switch the light back off. They were still for a moment, and
they heard the creaking mattress from his parents’ bedroom.

Of
course. They weren’t alone in the house.

“Dad!”
Aaron yelled. “Call the police—” But Dominic smashed his head into the floor.

“Shut
your trap!” he hissed.

Then
they hustled him to his feet and out of his room. Aaron stumbled in front of
them, his feet tied, praying he didn’t trip—because Dominic didn’t know just
how close the blade was to slicing open his throat.

Outside,
moonlight flooded the front yard through a gap in the rainclouds. They had
driven the Beamer onto the grass and smashed the flowerpots. Dominic forced
Aaron into the back, handed the switchblade off to Clive, and climbed into the
driver’s seat.

It
felt like a bad dream.

Dominic
floored it and popped the clutch, and the Beamer lurched forward. They missed
the driveway completely, bounced off the curb. He shoved the stick into second,
and for a heartbreaking moment, the screech of stripping gears rattled the car.
The smell of burning clutch hissed from the vents.

“Want
me to drive?” said Clive.

Dominic
snickered. “You can’t drive stick, Selavio.” He checked the rearview mirror,
and the car swerved. “His
head
, you idiot!”

Aaron
felt Clive’s slippery fingers drag a pillowcase over his face.

They
drove for twenty minutes, and Aaron worked at the knots around his wrists. They
were already looser; apparently, Clive was never a boy scout. Even blindfolded,
Aaron knew where they were taking him. He could feel the static electricity
when they entered Dominic’s gate. He was aware of something else too. A sore
spot, an itch. At the back of his skull.

Halfway
up the driveway the Beamer pitched to the left, and they bounced along the
lawn. Bushes whacked the bumper and scraped the sides. Through the pillowcase,
Aaron saw tall, spindly shadows.

They
were taking him into a forest.

A
second later, he freed his wrists. And he didn’t wait a second longer. In one
fluid motion, he tugged the pillowcase off his head, yanked the door handle,
and threw himself from the car.

Bad
idea.

The
car was moving faster than he’d thought. Much faster. His shoulder crashed
through tree roots and splinters tore his skin. He tumbled, ate dirt, and
collided face first with the trunk of an oak tree.

Numb
with pain, Aaron leaned over and clawed at the knots binding his ankles, but
the fingers on his left hand felt weak, feeble. The gash in his arm had
reopened. The wound pulsed, and he couldn’t get the rope around his heels.

Two
pairs of hands seized his arms, and once again, the pillowcase smothered him.
They hauled him into the woods, in and out of the toothed hollows beneath tree
roots. Clots of fungus yielded under his face, squishing and splattering him
with pus. The sugary odor nauseated him.

Then
they jerked him to his feet, and the ground beneath him was solid—a slab of
concrete. His toes hung off a ledge. Dominic pressed the knife to his throat,
and Aaron realized they had taken him to an old water well.

Clive’s
hands fished through his pockets and removed his cell phone. He breathed into
Aaron’s ear.

“This
is so you’re not a nuisance on my birthday,” he said. “While I fulfill my duty
as Amber’s half, you can cry your heart out in a dark hole—”

Aaron
elbowed him in the solar plexus, and Clive keeled over, wheezing. He felt
Dominic’s foot crunch into his spine, and he lost his balance.

Aaron
tumbled down the well’s black throat.

***

His
stomach squeezed up into his windpipe as dank, rotten air whistled past him. He
crunched into the opposite wall, twisted, and kept falling. When he finally hit
the bottom, his legs crumpled. His ear gouged into the stone.

Then,
except for the violent agony in his limbs and the slosh of moldy water,
everything was silent. But at least his bones weren’t sticking out of his
kneecaps. The well walls must have broken his fall.

Aaron
pulled the pillowcase off his head, but it didn’t help. Perpetual blackness
caved in on all sides. He reached forward and his fingers collided with cold,
grimy rock, inches from his face. The well was hardly wider than his shoulders.
His eyes adjusted, and he became aware of the dark circle of sky, twenty feet
above him.

Aaron
untied his feet and tried to climb. He wedged his fingers into the slimy cavities
between stones and then kicked off the ground. He hung for a split-second, his
body trembling with exertion, before he collapsed.

As
he panted to catch his breath, decay soaked into his lungs, chilled his heart.
The walls were too slippery. He’d never climb them.

In
eight hours, he was due at the Chamber of Halves. Eight hours. And here he was
at the bottom of a well. Clive and Dominic were
not
coming back to get
him.

He
was going to miss his appointment.

It
was that simple.

Aaron
pictured his nameless half waiting all alone in a dungeon at the Chamber of
Halves, and he pitied her. Did she already know, as he did, that their channel
was going to break?

Then
the girl in his mind changed to Amber, and his stomach did cartwheels. He
needed to be there in the morning for
her
. Suddenly, Aaron balled his
fist and swung at the walls, tearing skin from his knuckles.

No
way in hell did Clive deserve her, not in a billion years. In eight hours,
Aaron would be there to teach him that lesson.

Just
as soon as he got out.

Aaron
squatted and raked the mud with his fingers. The air down at the bottom was
heavier, weighed down and humid with infection, morgue-like. He half expected
to find bones. But there was nothing so useful. He took inventory. Shoes, six
feet of rope, shirt, pants, belt, and a pillowcase. Somehow, they added up to
his escape.

But
seconds passed. Minutes. His body cooled, and it became hard to think. The cold
numbed his fingers, crept into the marrow of his bones. Then the shivering
began. And it occurred to him, between convulsions, that he could die in this
well. 

Ten
minutes passed. It was a terrifying kind of time, impaling him silently.
Nothing came to him. He raked the bottom again. Still nothing. He searched the
walls, probed for indentations, anything he could grip. Always nothing. Slowly,
inexorably, the walls of his tomb were closing in.

After
he traced the contours in the slimy walls enough times to memorize them,
reaching higher and higher, Aaron finally discovered an irregularity.

Almost
out of reach, he could just feel the lip of an opening in the side of the well.
Maybe he could haul himself up. But then what? He’d still be fifteen feet
underground. Still, it was worth a try.

Aaron
stood on his toes and curled his fingers over the lip. He strained his
forearms, and gradually, feeling like his tendons were going to peel from his
wrists, he lifted the weight off his feet. But then his fingers slipped and he
crashed backwards. When he held up his hands, they were frozen in the shape of
claws.

Aaron
tried everything. He backed into the wall, jammed his feet against the stone
for leverage. He spread his arms and wedged his fingers into crevices. He
untied his shoes and stood on top of them. But the inside of the well was caked
with squishy moss. He always slipped.

And
the blood had withdrawn from his cold fingers, the nerves throbbed. Aaron
gasped for breath, and his chest stung with each lungful of frostbitten air.
There was only one more thing to try.

Aaron
squatted, tensed his thighs, and jumped as high as he could. He slapped his
palm over the ledge. For a moment, he gripped the ooze, then everything slipped
and he collapsed painfully to the bottom.

It
was like volleyball. To get maximum elevation, you needed an approach, you
needed to build momentum. But even if you were directly under the ball, you
didn’t just jump straight up. You executed footwork. You shifted your weight,
and that got you a little higher. 

Aaron
closed his eyes and visualized a volleyball sailing over the net. An overpass.
The other team’s middle was already up, his arm cocked. Aaron had to get it
first, he had to set his outside hitter. He’d done this a thousand times.

Aaron
swung his arms and exploded upward. He got both hands over the top, kicked off
the back wall, and pulled himself up until his eyes were level with the ledge.

It
was a tunnel leading out of the well, scarcely large enough for a human. He was
clinging to the bottom edge. Before his strength gave out, he wiggled inside
the opening and collapsed onto his stomach, hands near his waist. His body
shook from the exertion, but he had done it.

Except
the tunnel went
deeper
underground.

Hopefully
it surfaced eventually . . . as opposed to plunging three-hundred feet to tap an
aquifer. He would just have to find out.

There
wasn’t enough room to swing his arms around in front of him, so he shifted his
weight and scrunched forward. Darkness swallowed him, and the stale, extinct
smell of moist concrete eroded his nostrils. With what little space he had, he
made steady progress downward, half sliding, half crawling—deeper into the Earth.

Too
deep. Aaron was about to turn back, thinking it was a dead end, when the tunnel
leveled out. He breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed himself into the level
portion of the tunnel. It was a tighter fit, and he felt his shoulders wedge
against cold, damp concrete—and he had a terrifying realization.