PARADOX

  Tabitha’s ruby dreaming wandered into the banal hallways of her childhood home.

  There, at Briarnook Manor, the Hale ancestral estate, life looked much like any other privileged upbringing. On the surface, it was all tutors and chefs and maids, toys and hobbies and endless space to enjoy them. They had everything children could want for, or need, and even things most children did not know existed to want or need for. And on the other side of the coin, beneath the gaudy, palatial facade, and life of excess, the twins had only what a child would need to distract them from the truth of what they did not have.

  “Normalcy is not the benefit of a Hale.”

  It was their mother’s favorite maxim. Her own family motto for a family she married into. Tabitha had grown to hate it long before she truly understood why. It was the unscalable wall her mother hid behind, in order to justify her cruelty.

  This time, near one of the countless doors, down one of the manor’s infinite hallways she was dreaming her way through, Tabitha heard her mother’s favorite words squeeze, hushed, through a keyhole. For once, it was not being directed at her or her brother.

  Putting her eye to the keyhole, she saw the suggestion of her mother and father standing against the light of a fire. They were speaking to each other like they always did, regardless of who was listening. It was that quiet, calm way, with fury boiling just beneath the carefully chosen words. Not once had she ever heard them yell at one another, even when their faces read murder.

  “They need something to take care of, Eleanor,” her father said. “Something to take care of them. If you insist on driving that wedge, and alienating them from one another, they need a normal relationship to fall back on. Companionship. They need something—anything—they can count on, at the end of the day.”

  Tabitha flinched, as the click of her mother’s tongue struck her ears through the door.

  “But a pair of dox?” her mother asked, in a nearly irate, Italian accent. “Why a—”

  “—paradox?” Lord Tredici asked.

  Tabitha opened her eye to the stinging bright light of the interview room. She blinked off the teary pain, until it finally adjusted.

  In front of her, the blurry smudge of green clarified into an overly-dressed, older gentleman. He was sitting, one leg over another, in a metal chair, not even three feet from her own.

  “What?” she asked through her cottonmouth.

  “I said, you are quite the paradox, no?”

  “I’m…,” she flipped her tongue around in her mouth, then licked her cracked lips, “…what?”

  “Uffa,” he sighed under his breath.

  The dry taste in Tabitha’s mouth matched the awful look on the man’s face. “What—water…,” a harsh chuckle caught in her throat, and she continued in a British accent, despite intending mock Italian, “…water you on about, chap?” Another bubbling, stunted chuckle ripped through her. She did her best to shake off the airy feeling in her head. Beside herself, it felt like someone else was in control of her. Someone two sheets to the wind. Am I drunk?

  “Water,” she reiterated. “I need water…”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, waving his hand at someone in Tabitha’s blind spot. “It seems the cocktail they have you on has taken its toll.” Shrugging at her, Lord Tredici smiled apologetically. “I’ve tried my own hand at the dosage, so I hope you feel a bit more clear. Though, you may still experience hallucinations, or…,” he glanced at whoever was approaching in the darkness of her left side, “…see ghosts.”

  Just then, a straw fell into Tabitha’s vision, then the cup it was contained in, and the hand holding it. She turned her head what little she could, straining to see who it belonged to. Her eye traveled up the arm to the back lit face staring back at her.

  It took a moment for her eye to adjust to the fluorescent lights behind him. As the brightness cooled, and the shadows on his face softened, the light of recognition slowly crept across her mind.

  “H-hey Tabby—Tabitha,” he said, in a voice that had changed far less than his face. It was still annoyingly quiet and soft, made worse by the nonchalant inflection that permeated everything he said. “Here,” he shook the cup in front of her face, with a grimace on his own, “drink.”

  With his dark, brownish red hairline beginning to recede, Sebastian looked more like their father than ever. His glasses had changed, again, over the years, and the new-to-her stubble on his face had grown in patchy. For a moment, he looked simultaneously like a stranger and the strangest mirror.

  The surprise of the realization made Tabitha flinch, before she burst with laughter.

  It shook through her, until a dry cough found her, and suddenly things felt serious, again.

  Taking a long sip of the water, she kept a dubious eye locked on her brother. There was a look on his face that erred on pity. Something about it angered her.

  When she finally spit out the straw, Tabitha shot a glare at man in the chair. “What’s he doing here?” Her eye bounced to Sebastian. “What are you doing here?” Then around the room, across the giant glass window, and back to the old man. She let out an irritated, confused laugh. “What the hell’s he—what’s he doing here?”

  At a nod from Lord Tredici, Sebastian stepped back into the blind spot of her left eye.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Seb?!” she called out to him. “Sebastian? Hey!” Tabitha shook at her bindings. Her entire left side ached, and there was a faint, warm glow in her blind eye. “What the fuck is going on?”

  The intercom cracked to life. “Lord Tredici…,” a gruff voice interjected.

  Lord Tredici casually waved them off, before he smiled knowingly at Tabitha. “Do you recall what brought you here, bella?”

  Her mind snapped back to a memory of the sun ripping up her arm, just before it blinded her eye. The agony of the iridescent light plucking at every nerve it touched echoed back through her. A man’s screaming, as he was overcome by the radiance, forced her mind back into the present.

  “I-Issac…,” Tabitha cried out. Her welling eyes questioned Lord Tredici. “Agent Harris? He’s…”

  Lord Tredici’s face became serious. “What is it you and Agent Harris encountered in Hume, Agent Hale?”

  The glow in Tabitha’s blind eye flickered. The dull ache in her arm sharpened.

  Shaking it off, Tabitha choked out her words. “I-I-I don’t know—something—Cullers, I think.” As she tried to maintain a grip on the present, while walking through the past, her mind circled the shadow that they encountered. “No, a shadow—the shadow.” The more she thought about it, the more her perception wanted to slip away into the human-shaped emptiness. “Some kind of ritual, we thought. But it was like something else got there before we did.”

  “Shadow?” Lord Tredici pondered. “Tell me more.”

  Now, the glow was a needle in her eye, and the ache in her arm began to burn.

  “Ah—ah—what the fuck? My eye!” She cringed in pain, fighting her bindings. “What the fuck is happening? It hurts! Ah! W-what happened?!”

  The intercom clicked to life, but Lord Tredici’s hushing hand anticipated it. He shushed both it, and Tabitha. “Porca miseria,” he spit, throwing his hands up in the air. “Calm down! Calm down!”

  The glow struck, again, like a hot poker running from her eye to the tips of her fingers.

  “Stop!”

  Lord Tredici flinched at Tabitha’s scream. He leaned back in his chair, as if to get away from her, causing the leg to suddenly give way.

  Toppling backwards, he rolled out of it, and shot back up from the ground, without missing a beat.

  The guffaw that followed was deep and excited, with a hint of fear. “Brava, bella!”

  “Lord Tredici?” Sebastian’s voice was full of bewilderment. “What was that?”

  In response, the green lord held out his hand to Tabitha’s blind spot, while maintaining an unsettling smile on her.

  “Dai…,” Lord Tredici groaned, turning an annoyed look in the direction of his flapping, waiting hand. “The water, Dr. Hale, come on.”

  Sebastian hesitantly walked the water over to him, making sure to lean as far as he could to make the hand off.

  In one swift motion, Lord Tredici plucked the straw out of the cup, spun on his heel, and casually threw the water directly into the intercom beneath the observation glass.

  There was a sudden burst of sparks and crackling, as the panel next to the door exploded, too.

  And then the lights shifted to flashing red, with an emergency klaxon.

  On the other side of the window, everyone was panicking, with Director Charming pounding away, unheard, on the glass.

  Between each droning cry, Lord Tredici hollered wildly at Tabitha.

  “The moment they get that door open, they plan to number you, and lock you away beneath this tundra!”

  Number me? The red sound burrowed into her mind.

  “Same designation as the ring, they said! VIO-071! 0-7-1!”

  The ring? As the sound tolled, the pain crept up and down Tabitha’s arm into her eye. It was red, like pain, only redder.

  “A hole in the ground, for all eternity,” Lord Tredici howled. “Like they planned for me!”

  The klaxon emphasized his words, as the fingers on Tabitha’s left arm began to tingle.

  “Number for a name! 071! 071! And only your freedom for the trade!” He let out a crazed cackled, then turned serious, with the sudden return to white lights. “Unless you plan to act,” he told her. “With you two here, I can only do so much!”

  The klaxon ended, with another jolt of pain through her arm, as the door hissed open.

  Behind it, Warden Cutler stood, blocking the path through with as much, if not more, effectiveness than the massive door did. He was wearing heavy body armor, with lines of unvarite shimmering throughout it. In his hand, he held the smallest derringer Tabitha had ever seen. The two shot pistol floated comfortably at his hip, like one might hold a shotgun. Rather than only one target, he was marking the entire room with ill intent.

  “Everyone remain still,” the monster of a man commanded.

  From somewhere behind him, Director Charming yelled into the room, in his gruff voice. “Please, AB-5—Lord Tredici, I’m going to have to demand that you leave my site.”

  “Seb,” Tabitha whispered, futilely shaking against the contraption that held her. “Seb, you’ve gotta get me out of here. Help me.”

  “Remain still, archivist.”

  Lord Tredici looked over his shoulder at Sebastian. “She must do it herself, or she doesn’t leave!”

  “Lord Tredici!” Director Charming hollered. He was trying to push past Warden Cutler. “I demand you stop trying to provoke the variant and leave!”

  Variant? Tears began welling in Tabitha’s eyes. “Please, Seb!”

  Now, Lord Tredici’s head spun around to her. “Act now, or it’s to the freezer with you, bella!”

  His command reheated the needle in her eye, as it began to hum. She could feel his words run down her arms, like melted glass. Shaking against her bindings, she screamed out for her twin. “Please, Sebastian! Please!”

  “Remain still, while we secure the variant!”

  Warden Cutler took a step into the room.

  Behind him, a pair of SecCon members filed in. One was carrying a syringe, while the other kept his gun trained on Tabitha.

  “Seb, please,” Tabitha pleaded, voice lost to tears. “Don’t let them take me…”

  But Sebastian did not move, or could not bring himself to.

  Ignoring the warden’s orders, Lord Tredici turned around, and bent over. Face to face with Tabitha, his eyes shone green with all the wildness of nature. He spoke carefully and slowly, each word said with emphatic ire.

  “As Duke of Monte Sibilla, and all beneath it, I demand you free yourself.”

  At the end of his sentence, what felt like lightning cracked through Tabitha’s skull. With all the heat of the sun, it strummed across every nerve down to her finger. A gasp of air caught in her throat, as she tensed in pain, and gray began to creep into her vision.

  Just before it all went black, she heard the clink of a flip-top lighter from somewhere in the room. Through the wall of agony, a word cut through.

  Despite it being her idea to implement, Tabitha had not chosen the word. After a long night of trying to land on something, sitting in a dingy motel room, she decided to leave it to Agent Harris. Sitting on his twin bed, reading, he took all of five seconds to look up from The Grapes of Wrath, with a questioning eyebrow, before diving back down into the book.

  A moment of pondering the page passed, and then he had his pick.

  He could not remember if it was a word he read in the book, or simply something the story evoked. It was a place you could find refuge in, when the world turned sour, and nothing made sense. It was the person you could run to, when the monsters came calling. It was a promise between partners to prioritize each other over the job.

  And, most importantly, it was five letters.

  “Haven.”

  The moment the word left her lips, the interview room fell away from her, with the flick of flint.