A MESSAGE FROM CHICKEN HOUSE

The idea of having a soulmate has always fascinated me – but what would happen if my whole fate was linked to some unknown soul? And would I choose to sever the bond if there was a way? Melissa Welliver scares me, makes me laugh, and intrigues me beyond measure. You’ll not want to put this down. It’s the deadliest love story of them all!

BARRY CUNNINGHAM

Publisher

Chicken House

2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS
www.chickenhousebooks.com

For Callum
For putting up with all my imaginary friends
and helping me to make them a reality

Also by Melissa Welliver

My Love Life and the Apocalypse

1

Zoe

It’s kind of funny how quickly you get used to the bodies.

The man was laid out in the middle of the road outside our house. He wasn’t there last night when I put the bins out so he must have dropped dead on his way to work. Train station was at the bottom of the hill, made sense. Of all the ways there are to go nowadays, this seemed like one of the dullest.

‘Hey, Bari, when was the last Dearly Departed report in our area?’

My screen lit up with the computer-generated face of a Bernese mountain dog. You could pick any avatar for Bari, but I always wanted a dog. Besides, a digital dog doesn’t poop, doesn’t need feeding, and won’t slow me down when the inevitable end of the world arrives.

‘The last report within an eight-kilometre radius was eight hours and fifty-three minutes ago, Mistress Zoe,’ Bari replied. His lips didn’t move when he spoke – because of course, that would be ridiculous – but he did tilt his head knowingly from side to side as my speakers played his voice.

And the mistress thing – I know, I know. But I couldn’t resist being the master to my very own electronic pooch.

‘So the man outside my window probably hasn’t been reported yet,’ I sighed. I really hated going outside unnecessarily, even on a sunny summer day like today.

‘Accessing front door camera for analysis,’ Bari said. His avatar turned around on the screen like he was doing a trick at Crufts. ‘Accessed. Judging from the lack of flies around the body, I would advise filling out a DD report, Mistress Zoe.’

‘Yeah, I know you’re right. OK, in your bed, Bari.’

At the sound of my instruction, Bari ran to the side of the screen and disappeared through a digital doggy door.

I pulled out my phone and opened the Dearly Departed app, the red DD symbol appearing in my recently used folder as soon as I unlocked the thing.

Thank you for logging on to DearlyDeparted.gov.

Are you registering a KinTwin or a Departed?

I smirked every time I was asked the question. Knowing who my KinTwin was would sure be helpful, but the day I register them on this chuffing app is the day I sack off survival training. Basically, it isn’t happening.

Thank you for selecting: DEPARTED. Have you checked the subject’s pulse? Please click here to see a video tutorial if you are unsure.

I hesitated over the yes button and looked back out the window. Poor man couldn’t have looked more dead. It was 5.30 a.m. and I saw him there when I got up at five for cardio training. That said, it wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes your KinTwin falls into a coma or gets a really bad head injury and you could just be knocked out right where you’re walking.

I had to go check.

Safety first, though. I grabbed a face mask out of the box in my bedside drawer and secured it with the nose clip I kept in my cargo pants pocket. I’m assuming the poor man died through his KinTwin because there isn’t any obvious sign of trauma, but still.

I headed downstairs and saw Mam through the open door of the kitchen as I walked past.

‘Morning love. You finished with cardio already?’ She didn’t look up from her tablet. I assumed she was meticulously copying in exactly how much dried pasta we had left and then converting that into calories and numbers of meals on her spreadsheet.

We kept track partly because the end of times didn’t tend to tell you when it was starting, so always good to be prepared, but also because we were always penny-pinching. When the government grants tax breaks to anyone who lives with their KinTwin, they don’t massively care about single mothers who haven’t met theirs yet.

‘All good. There’s a possible DD out front, so I’m just going to check for a pulse before I report.’

‘Mask on?’ she asked, still not looking up from her tablet.

‘Mam, please. It’s like you don’t know me at all.’ I rolled my eyes and headed for the front door.

I undid the three master locks and stepped out into our front garden. The body was still there, right at the top of our drive, like he had taken one look at our weeds and the rusted old bicycle and the overgrown hedge and keeled over on the spot. Which, you know, Mrs Jones next door would totally say is what happened. But who has time for gardening while living through the world’s slowest apocalypse?

I headed to the top of the drive and bent down next to the body. The street was quiet still, but it was sunny and warm, typical for June. The house opposite had been empty since the couple living there DD’d, same as the houses either side of it and one of the ones next door to mine and Mam’s. Funny how a housing crisis can be solved with something as simple as a mass thinning out of the population.

The man was wearing a grey suit, matching grey tie, and to be honest, matching grey expression – his eyes were closed but he looked tired and weather-beaten, with deep wrinkles on his forehead. There was a slow purple bruise growing just above his left eye – he could have hit his head when he fell, but the shape of the bruise suggested he was alive when he hit the ground. Definitely not KinTwin behaviour. I had a book on cadaver bruising in the house, but it was a bit far to go and leave the poor man if he really was dead. Besides, if Mrs Jones found a body this close to the rusted bicycle, she’d probably report us to the landlord again.

I tilted his head gently to expose the carotid artery and pressed two fingers firmly against it. His skin was still warm, but so was the sun. If he was dead, he’d start to smell soon, and the last thing we needed was that bloody urban fox sniffing around on bin day.

Was that a pulse? I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the possible sound of a heartbeat. Hmmm. Maybe? It’s possible that a heartbeat can slow if put into a medicated state, like under anaesthetic. Maybe his KinTwin was having an operation? But no, that made no sense. He wouldn’t have been granted permission to go to work if that was the case.

I leant in closer, trying to see if I could feel his breath on my cheek.

‘Mmphelp.’ A small, muffled noise came from the man’s lips. He was alive. Was he trying to breathe?

‘Help!’

Nope, not trying to breathe. More trying to take out my eardrums, clearly.

I fell backwards and the guy sat up, fully conscious and definitely not dead.

‘Help!’ he screamed this time, looking around, eyes wild. He was loud enough that birds flew off the roofs and curtains twitched across the street.

It took a second for him to notice me sitting next to him. ‘Hey, calm down. I just – I thought you were dead.’ I scrambled to my feet and dusted down my clothes before adjusting my mask – still intact but slightly dislodged by the whole ordeal.

‘Sorry. Oh my god, I’m so sorry,’ he said.

He sat forward and tried to catch his breath while I deleted the report from my Dearly Departed app. My hands were shaking and I took a moment to count my breaths in and out. Stress-related conditions were one of the top causes of death. By keeping my emotions in check, I kept a killer at bay.

‘I was about to report you. Thought you had DD’d,’ I said, sliding my phone back into my cargo pocket.

‘Holy . . . Yeah, to be honest, I thought I was departed there too. I was walking to work, and then I got this horrible headache . . .’ His eyes widened as he came to the same conclusion I had.

‘You married?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘My wife is at home. She’s pregnant.’

‘Well, she’s not dead. Yet, anyway. Best go check on her, then.’

He blinked at me. I wasn’t sure if it was because of his head injury, or because of how I’d just told him that his wife’s life could be in danger. Either way, I get that confused blinking look a lot.

The man got to his feet and off he went, running back up the hill away from the station. I wondered what had happened to his wife. Maybe she fell and hit her head. Hard to say. At least he knew she was still alive. Some people weren’t so lucky.

I headed back inside to get ready for school.

Getting ready to go to school for most people means running a brush through their hair and deciding how short they could roll up their skirt. For me and Mam, it’s more of a lifestyle choice to choose to go outside at all.

‘Shall we take stock of the Bug-Out Bag?’ Mam said.

She came out of the kitchen and tapped her tablet with a stubby fingernail. Some of the girls at school got their nails done – I couldn’t get past the hygiene issues to do it myself. A recent study had found MRSA under the nails of half of all hospital patients and workers. So I kept mine short like Mam – not as pretty but a lot more practical. Besides, nail bars are breeding grounds for flesh-eating bacteria. I’d rather get Dearly Departed than that.

‘Can’t, sorry. Have to get to school,’ I said.

‘All right. It can wait – just be careful,’ Mam said, like careful wasn’t my default setting. She checked the monitors in the hall, the ones that showed our outdoor camera set-up. Once she was happy there were no immediate threats, she let me out. If she had her own way, I’d still be homeschooled. I had to gently point out that Mam wasn’t exactly well versed in maths and sciences and if I wanted to do well in those, I needed a proper schoolteacher.

I elbow-bumped Mam goodbye and set off. The familiar weight on my shoulders of my Bug-Out Bag, clipped to the side of my school bag, was strangely comforting. Even without Mam’s audit I knew I would find my spare battery pack, monkey solar charger, three bars of compacted protein meals, a torch and one pack of iodine pills. That would be enough to get me home in case of an emergency, although what really qualified as an emergency any more was a matter of opinion.

I joined the masses of other people now filtering down the hill to start their day. No one really spoke to anyone else, but that was the norm. You didn’t want to start a conversation with someone who could drop dead any moment, and besides, you’d only be responsible for registering them if you got too close. The DD app was supposed to make the whole process easier, but really it just made people more angry about the whole situation.

It was a nice enough town to grow up in before all this, was Lufian Bridge. Big enough to have a couple of decent primary schools and a high school, which is why Mam and Dad bought a house here, but also small enough that there wasn’t much to worry about when pottering about town. Plus it was just outside Manchester, only thirty minutes on the train – when it was running. Or hadn’t crashed. Or both.

At the end of the road the first rows of shops began – well, if you could still call them shops. Most were closed, shut ages ago by dead owners or dead customers or both. The shutters were pulled down and covered in grim graffiti.

I popped my earbuds in. Bari would have transferred to my phone once he detected I had left the house via GPS. ‘Bari, listen for ambient noise within ten metres, OK?’

‘Affirmative, Mistress Zoe. I will alert you of any immediate threats. Would you like to resume your podcast, Ten ways you’ll die in the first wave of the Apocalypse?’

‘No, ta very much,’ I replied. I usually listened to a podcast on the way to school. Sometimes when I was on a run too, but with the morning’s distraction I didn’t have time for cardio this morning. I could have squeezed a run in maybe, but that was a worse idea than just skipping it. Running without warming up first or wearing the correct clothing could lead to risk of heart attack, stroke, injury or sudden death syndrome. Better that I slow my pace before school and catch up on what’s happening in the world.

Ouch. A dull pain, faint enough that I could almost ignore it, shot up my leg. I had been getting them on and off for a few years, since the KinTwin mutation was discovered, so I knew it was nothing seriously wrong with me. At least I was old enough to understand the pain when it started – the KinTwin mutation was present from birth. There were some poor babies experiencing toothache from their toddler KinTwins, or even extra scraped knees when their KinTwin fell off the slide in the playground. I felt bad for those who were born after the KinTwin mutation hit the world – they were bonded to another human being from birth. They never had sole control over their own lives. I’d had six mutation-free years to myself – six years where my life was my own.

What was more alarming than the pain itself was that my KinTwin – and as much as I wanted to pretend otherwise, I had one – was really one to throw themself about. I could assume it was a boy, as KinTwins were – according to studies – romantically destined to be, and I was pretty sure I was straight. That said, I hadn’t so much as kissed anyone before so I guess I could still be surprised. Any pain he, she or they felt, I could feel around 10 per cent of, and I seemed to have a small twinge or ache every other day.

Which did not bode well for his safety, aka my own safety. I sighed. What if my KinTwin lived somewhere dangerous, like a war-torn country? There were cases of KinTwins who didn’t even speak the same language, so it was possible. Not every KinTwin lived in the same country, but some reports did say they were drawn to each other.

‘Bari, can you run off today’s headlines, please?’

‘Of course, Mistress Zoe. Reading headlines for United Kingdom for today, 24 June 2045. Most popular news headlines as dictated by internet traffic.’ Bari still spoke with the same posh accent I had downloaded for him. I knew if I got out my phone he would be right there on the screen, tilting his head and twitching his nose, but I knew better than to use my phone now I was on the main road. Over a hundred deaths last year were linked to pedestrians distracted by their phones on major roads.

And if you add in their KinTwin deaths, really that’s over two hundred deaths.

‘Most popular headline: GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE RAISES CONCERNS OVER SPIRALLING DEATH RATE AS SHARES IN DEARLY DEPARTED APP SKYROCKET.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I muttered.

‘Affirmative, Mistress Zoe,’ said Bari, taking me literally, as per usual. Not that I minded, really. Someone who took me literally saved a lot of time over the nuances of typical human interaction. And seeing as we’re probably looking down the barrel of an incredibly slow apocalypse anyway, I might as well get used to digital company.

‘Next most popular headline: MY KINTWIN IS SERVING A LIFE SENTENCE FOR MURDER. AM I THE ASSHOLE FOR NOT WANTING TO MEET HIM?’ Bari read.

‘That’s way too dark. Next, please, Bari,’ I said. I had a recurring nightmare that I found out my KinTwin was some awful human being who should be in prison. Imagine being forced to connect with an actual murderer. See, this was the dark side of KinTwinning that barely anyone seemed to talk about. Life, just like love, wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I’d rather have no KinTwin at all than a bad one.

‘Next most popular headline: DIVORCE RATES AT ALL-TIME LOW AS GOVERNMENT GRANTS FOR KINTWINS MAKE MARRIAGE MORE PROFITABLE THAN EVER.’

‘Ugh, nope. Next, please, Bari,’ I said. It was true, marriage success rates were insanely high for married couples in KinTwin partnerships. Nobody talked about when it went wrong, though, like when your dad dies and your mam doesn’t, revealing the worst-case scenario: they aren’t KinTwins. What does that even make me? A pity baby? I felt a nudge from my watch as my heart rate rose, and took a deep breath. No point feeling sorry for myself.

‘Next most popular headline: TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF KINTWIN MUTATION DISCOVERY BEGS THE QUESTION: CELEBRATE OR DESPAIR?’

‘So I see the tabloid press is as chuffing cheerful as ever. And that’s coming from me,’ I said, a small smile playing around my lips. I did try to smile as much as I could, because I read once that smiling releases endorphins that help battle stress hormones. Besides, contrary to what most people thought of me, I wasn’t miserable. I was just content in quiet emotion.

‘Alert. Incoming threat detected. Alert.’ Bari interrupted the next headline with the stark message.

I pulled out my earbuds and froze on the pavement.

It was obvious, now that I didn’t have my noise-cancelling headphones in, what the issue was. Because the plane was incredibly noisy and, at that low altitude, pretty hard to miss. In the distance, a light aircraft with two fiery propellors was wobbling across the sky, headed straight towards where I stood. It moved impossibly fast, leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake.

Two women waiting at the bus stop screamed, and that caused something of a stampede. People dashed into the road and pushed past each other on the pavement. Cars driving towards the direction of the plane U-turned, horns blaring as they tried to clear the road.

All this panicking happened in the space of a few seconds. But the number one rule of survival? Panic is deadly.

‘Bari, estimate how far away that plane is,’ I said, pointing my phone’s camera at the fast-approaching aircraft.

‘One-point-two kilometres away and closing,’ Bari responded instantly.

‘It’s coming down fast. I don’t think it will hit us,’ I said, tucking into the alcove of a newsagents as people ran past screaming. A man ran out into the street and a motorbike swerved, narrowly avoiding hitting him.

Today, as per usual, stupidity will probably kill more people than anything else.

‘I think we sit tight, stay out of the road, and wait for the plane to—’

I didn’t finish my sentence, and I’m not really sure who I was speaking to anyway. Bari didn’t have emotion, didn’t care about his – or my own – mortality. I was cut off by the noise of an explosion so loud people fell over in the street in front of me, and all I had time to do was cover my ears. The plane had come down.

I wish I could say this was my first plane crash, but it wasn’t necessarily uncommon with Dearly Departed Syndrome around. Sure, the authorities tried to regulate pilots as much as possible, make sure their KinTwin was registered and safely detained during flight; that the autopilot was on. But still, accidents happened, and while the government could control commercial flights that way, it wouldn’t cover everything. Small planes just had a single pilot, no autopilot either. Heart attacks, brain aneurysms. Bad luck stuff. That was the danger we all faced every day. We couldn’t stop living just because, oh I don’t know, sometimes the odd plane came down.

And that was my attempt at sarcasm. Is it working? I read once that sarcastic humour can help de-escalate feelings of woe or panic. My ears were ringing, but there wasn’t pain so hopefully the damage wasn’t permanent. Plus, the screams all around me were drowning out my tinnitus. It was a huge explosion for a small plane – maybe the fuel tanks were full and it had only just set off.

I peeped around the doorframe of the newsagents and saw the orange glow of a fire raging in the distance. Surely no one directly in the landing zone survived.

Which meant dozens of KinTwins just went down, too.

‘Alert. Incoming threat detected. Alert,’ Bari barked at me from my phone.

‘Bari, I saw the plane. We’re good. We just need to wait for people to calm down before we keep walking,’ I said. It crossed my mind that Mam would have heard the boom, but that wouldn’t make her leave the house. She hadn’t texted me either, but she’s connected to my smartwatch, which in turn detects my heart rate. She knew I was alive, that’s why she hadn’t texted me. True maternal love at its finest.

‘Alert. Alert. Alert.’ Bari was still whining, so I turned away from the glow in the distance and assessed what he could be talking about.

I heard the screech of the tyres before I saw the bus.

The last thing I remember seeing was the bus swing around the corner, plough through a dozen people still in the road, and head straight towards the newsagent. It was electric, like most cars were, and therefore silent, so I never heard it coming until that screech. The bus closed the gap between us fast, so fast that I could see the slumped-over figure of the driver, newly deceased.

It was like my brain worked faster than everything around me was happening. I could see a gap to run out into, but I knew I wouldn’t make it in time. It might even make the impact worse if I was smeared across the store front. The door might at least afford me some cushioning.

Don’t. Panic.

I did the only thing I could do. I braced for impact.

2

Milo

I pulled down the notifications screen to refresh my status, but it made no difference.

Social Media apps: 104 new notifications.

Messages: 5 new notifications.

Dearly Departed app: No new notifications.

I flicked on Do Not Disturb.

I hovered my thumb over my social media hub. Everyone would have heard about Eden dumping me by now, which explained the explosion of notifications.

Nope, can’t handle that yet.

I mean, dating wasn’t all bad, even if my soulmate was out there and I had no idea who she was. Aisha thought it was presumptuous to think it’s a she, but I dunno, I feel like she just is, you know? Sometimes those people who were already KinTwinned up told me I was lucky, I still had choices. Although with Eden being the fifth girl to dump me this school year, it didn’t really feel like I had a lot of choices, you know? Especially when, like the three girls before her, she had literally dumped me because she finally got her KinTwin notification. Some nice lad in the year above, apparently.

Lucky beggars.

I thumbed over my contacts and punched in Aisha’s number.

‘Milo, mate. I texted you like a million times.’ Aisha didn’t even bother to say hello, picking up after half a ring.

‘Yeah, sorry. Couldn’t face checking anything yet,’ I said.

‘I bet you checked the DD app though,’ Aisha replied.

How does she just live in my head like that? When we were still kids and the KinTwin mutation was discovered, I thought we’d be slam dunks for a Happily Ever After. Until Aisha told me she liked girls, of course.

‘Nah, I told you, I turned off notifications for that,’ I lied.

Aisha laughed. ‘Yeah, OK, big man. If you say so. Where are you? I thought we were meeting for diving before school?’

‘I’m . . . nearly there,’ I lied again. In front of me was the beach below the cliffs we always jumped from, the ones where we knew where the rocks were and exactly where was safe to dive. The quarry was busy in the summer holidays as a party spot, but no one came before school. I’d arrived there twenty minutes ago and hid behind a bush as Aisha parked up in the main visitor’s car park, her bright pink VW Beetle the only car there. They’d lowered the driving age to sixteen when the whole ‘death rate has doubled and the population is suffering so better learn life skills quick’ thing happened.

‘See, now this time, I’ve caught you out.’ Aisha’s voice seemed to echo and it wasn’t until her hands were on my shoulders that I realized she was right behind me. ‘Busted.’

‘Yeah, yeah. You caught me, always do.’ I held my hands up in mock surrender. She high-fived them, her sleek dark hair swishing around her face.

‘You are forgiven. Let’s go, we have time before school starts.’

This used to be our place, before Aisha got a girlfriend. Sure, I brought girls here too, but it was Aisha and me that had been coming here the longest. The rocks, the quiet beach, the seemingly endless lake beyond. The rush of the jump. It had me buzzing in a way I couldn’t describe to anyone else.

If Mum and Dad knew, they would totes ground me from going. It was a little reckless, sure, but I knew what I was doing and it was the only place to get a thrill. The government already shut down theme parks, and the French authorities closed all the ski resorts last year due to KinTwin-related accidents and deaths.

There were less and less ways to have fun, like they didn’t trust us. Well, that was a bit unfair – obviously I had a KinTwin out there I was responsible for. But KinTwins were our soulmates, so surely she was an adrenaline junkie as much as me, right? There was no way I’d be paired with a Meek Maggie. We’d both be taking risks . . . right? And why should my entire life stop for a stranger I’ve never met? Mum and Dad were obsessed with my KinTwin. It’s like they forgot I was a whole person, too.

At least, that’s what I told myself when the adrenaline bug bit me.

‘So I heard about Eden,’ Aisha said as we walked arm-in-arm across the car park towards the beach.

That broke me out of my guilt trip. ‘Do me a favour. Name someone that hasn’t heard about Eden,’ I said. I kicked at a smooth rock and it bounced away from us.

‘Look, mate. It’s her loss.’ Aisha said the same thing she said when Belle broke up with me. And Gracie. And Seema. ‘Besides, now you don’t have to pretend to like that bloody awful band any more.’

‘Hey,’ I said, nudging her gently, ‘I . . . didn’t mind some of Pussy Brigade’s songs.’

‘Any more lies today and your nose will grow, Pinocchio.’

OK, that one made me smile. Single life wasn’t so bad. At least I had Aisha to take pity on me. ‘Yeah. They were . . . is shouting even music any more?’

‘You know, and this is a pretty crazy thought . . .’ Aisha began. We reached the gate to the beach so she broke off from me to open it. ‘But maybe, just possibly, you could try asking out a girl because of what’s in here –’ she paused and tapped her head – ‘instead of what’s going on . . . you know, all around here.’ She gestured to her face, chest, and then stuck out her bum and pouted at me.

‘I take offence at that,’ I said, but I was still trying not to laugh at the pout. ‘I take very serious offence at that.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Listen, from what I understand, the average hetero femme finds you attractive. I don’t know why, but I don’t make the rules.’ Aisha held open the gate for me and we let it swing shut behind us. ‘So I get it, you have your pick. Believe me, and I love Bri with all my heart, but let’s be real, there weren’t exactly hundreds of girls for me to choose from. And I’m, like, a ten on a bad day.’

Aisha sat down on a nearby rock and pulled on her rubber climbing shoes, the ones with the toe separators that freaked me out. I plonked down next to her. Aisha loved the rush as much as I did, and her KinTwin totally supported her. She knew the risks, but she didn’t want Aisha to feel stifled. You can’t wrap people in bubble wrap, you know? Although I couldn’t lie, I felt better knowing it was Aisha, who I’d cliff-dived with a hundred times, taking the risk than her KinTwin. Aisha I trusted. She knew what she was doing – calculated risk and all that.

‘But at least you know Bri is the one. That saves a lot of time,’ I said with a sigh.

Aisha didn’t even know Bri’s name until she got the alert from the DD app, because she was in the year below and wasn’t on any of the sports teams. She felt sick for a few days and thought it was food poisoning, then one morning her mum found her unconscious in her room. They blue-lighted her to hospital and there was a girl who had come in that morning with a burst appendix, started hurting the same day Aisha got stomach-ache. They did the test and hey presto, they were a match. They had their first date in the hospital café and have been together ever since.

‘Hey, seriously, bro, you’ll get the call,’Aisha said, adjusting the rubber seal on her ankles.

‘Maybe my KinTwin lives on a remote island somewhere. Or doesn’t speak the same language as me. Or hates dogs,’ I muttered. I smoothed a finger over my lock screen, where my Bernese mountain dog Bernie took up the whole background.

‘Well, that wouldn’t happen because you wouldn’t be KinTwinned with a cat person,’ Aisha said. She grabbed her toes for a hammy stretch. Getting a cramp when free-soloing was not the one.

‘I wish you could just, like, do a blood test and know immediately. Have you asked Bri’s dad whether they thought of that over at KinTwin Discoveries?’ I said.

Aisha rolled her eyes. ‘Milo, I think a team of scientists all like Bri’s dad have maybe tried that. Even, whatshisname, that billionaire guy who discovered everything in the first place . . .’

‘Argo Duff ?’ I asked.

The guy was the richest man in the world, it wasn’t that hard to remember his name. He’d just been on the news for apparently calling in his whole crisis management team for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant. And that was the third time this year he’d changed out his staff at his social media company. Always over champagne and canapés. Bloke was a total mentalist – although at least he was rich enough to pay for your dinner before letting you go without severance.

‘That’s the fella. Even he doesn’t know why it works so weird, but it just does. You know this. The mutation is visible when you’re in close proximity with your KinTwin, so they can’t just flat-out test everybody at once. There’s still some luck involved, innit? Look, humanity managed to find their soulmates before all this. We don’t need an app to tell us. You’ll find your dream girl.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

Aisha shrugged. ‘There were plenty of married people when the discovery was made who found out they were each other’s KinTwins. They didn’t use the app.’

‘And there were plenty that got divorced when they found out they weren’t each other’s KinTwin,’ I countered. I picked up a handful of sand and watched it fall between my fingertips like water. ‘Sometimes I think dating was easier before we had a definitive right and wrong answer.’

‘Definitive? Wow, a four-syllable word. Did you get some word-a-day toilet paper?’ Aisha asked, grinning.

I took a swipe at her but she was off, bolting across the beach towards the cliffs.

‘Yallah. Come on, nerd. Start warming up so I can beat you climbing to the first perch fair and square,’ she shouted as she ran.

Before I got up to follow her, I unlocked my phone and had a quick glance at the messages on my socials. I ignored the DMs and pulled open my main page. My profile picture was still me and Eden, a picture of me giving her a piggyback which Bri had taken at the quarry last weekend. I was laughing, two years of train-track braces having done their job, and a five o’clock shadow across my jawline. I never really looked at myself in the mirror for long – seriously, who did? – but I didn’t think I was hideously ugly. Eden had seemed happy enough, but now Aisha mentioned it, we never really . . . talked. Most of the time we just kissed or went out as a group. Nothing exactly earth-shattering.

And as for whoever my KinTwin was? Well, I think they were pretty careful. I had never fainted for no reason, or felt the tell-tale shooting pain meaning they busted up a leg, or worse. Actually, it was usually me breaking things, what with cliff diving and dirt biking and everything else we got up to at the weekends. I dropped the phone and it hit my knee, the one I skinned pretty badly in a BMX accident the year before, and I winced at the pain. Case in point. I kinda felt sorry for my KinTwin, if anything.

I closed my profile and on my home page was a picture Mum had just posted. Her and Dad covered in flour, at home in our kitchen, baking something. I could see my dark eyes on Mum and my black hair on Dad. They met in high school, and of course when the KinTwin discovery came around, they found out they were a match when Mum fell and broke her arm in the garden and both she and Dad passed out from the pain. I swiped up and the next photo was on Bri’s profile, her and Aisha at a beach party. Bri had her arms around Aisha’s neck, red hair like a cloud around her head in the wind, and they weren’t even looking at the camera, they were laughing at a secret joke.

‘OK, this is getting sad now, even for you,’ I said out loud, despite Aisha jogging on the spot at the base of the cliffs, too far away to hear me over the cool wind. ‘Hey Aisha, wait up.’

Jumping helped when I felt down. There was something about the initial jump, being in thin air, then the rush as the water raced towards you. We could only do this in summer because we wouldn’t dry in time otherwise, and I had my uniform to change into in the car. By the time we climbed up the rock face a third time, I was laughing at Aisha’s bad jokes and she was complaining that I cheated by missing the first few minutes to scroll on my phone.

‘Really, you’d be . . . knackered if . . . you hadn’t cheated,’ Aisha puffed. She kept her legs high to avoid the algae as she marched out of the water.

We collapsed in a heap by the rocks and caught our breath.

‘Well, I’m glad I was here to mend your broken heart,’ Aisha said once she could speak again.

I snorted. ‘I think broken heart is a little far. And to be fair, Eden was really nice about it. They’re all really nice about it. And before you ask, yes, she did feed me the “it’s not you, it’s me” line.’ I leant back on my elbows and stared out at the water. ‘I dunno, man. I just want what you have, and what my parents have, you know?’

‘You mean, you’d like to meet your KinTwin, preferably before they accidentally kill you by, you know, dying?’ Aisha said.

‘That would be nice, not gonna lie,’ I said. ‘Mate, you are bleak sometimes.’

‘Moi? Sir, I’m here to spit straight facts, not sugar-coat the truth. That’s why I’m going to tell you that the new hair wax you’re using makes your roots look greasy.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘But seriously, M. I get it. I guess if we’re all slowly getting, I dunno, wiped out by this KinTwin thing, it’d be nice to get something out of it. And once you know, it is pretty nice. Did you know that before I got KinTwinned, my dad still thought I was “going through a phase”? Now I can say, “Seriously, Dad, I just don’t like stinking, horrible boys. Is that so hard to understand?”’

‘Yeah, I remember,’ I said. Aisha’s dad had always been a bit weird when she was still unsure about her sexuality and he overheard her talking to her mum about it. But she was right that KinTwinning had done a lot for the Queer community. Even the local Pride Month march felt a little different since there was literally scientific evidence proving that love really did win.

Until, like, death do you part, I guess.

‘I think there’s two ways of looking at this thing. Glass half empty, and glass half full,’ Aisha said. She propped herself up on her elbows, sand covering both forearms. ‘Sure, the death rate has doubled, even more if you think about all the accidents that keep happening, and it might possibly have overtaken global births and soon we might all be living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland when we run out of people for society to function and—’

‘Really not helping, A.’

‘But, and I was getting to the but, we’re getting a handle on it. You know, they’re taking more precautions with stuff. Remember that time there were no cars allowed on the road at all? Plus, obviously knowing who your soulmate is, the person you get to spend the rest of your life with, is pretty sweet too. I’m trying to say, it’s not all bad. Love conquers all and all that.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. I leant back on the grass. I hated to say it out loud, but I agreed with Aisha. All I wanted was a love like hers, like my parents had. And the KinTwin thing would save me a lot of time, as long as mine hurried up and showed themselves. There was a girl out there that loved sports and recreational cliff diving and BMX and guitar music as much as I did, I knew it. I just had to find her. ‘You know what I’m feeling, Aisha?’

‘A lot better because your best friend just said some insanely profound shit?’

‘Actually, yeah. And that means I’m ready to kick your ass at climbing.’ I grinned and leapt to my feet.

‘Oh, I see how it is. Game on. Last one to the highest jumping spot buys the other lunch,’ Aisha said. She jumped up too and started stretching out her arms.

And this was it, the thing I loved most in life. When the adrenaline kicked in and my heart sped up in my chest. Spending time with Aisha. Not taking life too seriously, which was tough the last few years.

‘All right, should we do a countdown or just set off ?’ I asked.

But Aisha didn’t answer. She was distracted as seagulls, hundreds of them, took off from the clifftops, all squawking and yelling and whatever that noise was that birds make when they’re . . . what? Scared? Did birds get scared?

‘That’s weird,’ Aisha said.

We stood in silence for a few seconds, the only noise being the bloody loud birds in the distance.

Something didn’t feel right. It was like the air was thinner for a minute, like the world’s volume had been turned down.

Then the explosion hit us.

Not, like, a bomb explosion, like one you see on TV with fire and wreckage and that. This was a noise, like a firework had gone off right next to my ears. Both me and Aisha hit the deck and I put my arms over her back, like I could protect her from the noise.

‘What was that?’ Aisha shouted, even after the noise stopped. Her ears must have been ringing like mine.

I looked up and clocked smoke rising in the distance. It was cut off by the edge of the quarry, but I thought I could make out the glow of fire too.

‘I assume it’s that,’ I said, nodding at the smoke.

Aisha lifted her head. ‘Well, bleeding Nora. That’s a big one.’

‘Yeah, I haven’t seen a crash that bad for a while. Do you think it’s just cars?’ I flicked open my phone to check socials for any live feeds.

‘Maybe a petrol tanker? That thing was loud, my guy. I think I’m like, deaf. If I can’t listen to my musical soundtracks any more, there will be hell to pay.’

It was a decent attempt to crack a joke – that’s what we always did when shit like this happened. But I could see it written all over Aisha’s face. She was scared. And why wouldn’t she be? We were all scared. It had been years, and obviously everyone took all the precautions they could, but accidents happened. And then there was the domino effect: first one person died, so their KinTwin went down. Then those deaths would snowball into others, like in these big accidents. And for each of those, more KinTwins would . . . nah. I didn’t want to think about that.

I scrolled my timeline. There were a few videos tagged as nearby, showing the aftermath of a huge pile-up. In the background of one video, a plane looked dangerously close to the ground.

‘Blimey! Aisha, look at this.’ Her eyes darted back and forth, taking in the video feed on my phone.

‘I-I need to call my parents,’ Aisha stuttered. ‘I’m OK, so Bri is OK, but that happened in the middle of town. My mum is at work today. I have to check.’

‘Yeah of course – I’ll check my rents too.’

My heart sped up as I switched over to our Family360 app. My dad had insisted last year that we all get smartwatches so we could keep an eye on each other. It measured heart rate, location – the works. Obvs I would have had an alert if anything had been wrong with them, but that didn’t stop my mind from racing as I checked each individual reading. Mine was set as at school using the VPN Aisha and I shared, because, you know, my parents didn’t need to know everywhere I went. But I could check on everyone else.

Leon Spencer. Heart rate 68 bpm. Location: Home.

Jackie Spencer. Heart rate 72 bpm. Location: Work.

Milo Spencer. Heart rate 101 bpm. Location: School.

Stella Spencer. Heart rate 80 bpm. Location: School.

My heart rate was high enough that it might set off an alert soon – I was more freaked out than I thought. I took a second to slow my breathing but, as expected, two texts came in.

FROM: Mum. MILO, WE HEARD A CRASH. ARE YOU OK? CALL ME.

FROM: Dad. MATE, I THINK YOUR PHONE IS ON DO NOT

DISTURB. I CAN SEE YOUR WATCH SAYS YOU’RE ALL RIGHT,

MATE. ARE YOU WITH AISHA? GIVE ME A CALL WHEN YOU CAN.

Aisha was off the phone. ‘All good?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, thank god. My parents are all good and my brother is— Milo? You OK?’

I tried to answer, but it was like trying to see and speak underwater. Aisha’s face shimmered in front of me, her concern rippling like a reflection in a puddle.

‘I don’t – I don’t feel right,’ I slurred. I dropped to my knees and my phone slipped from my slack hand, the messages from Mum and Dad unanswered. ‘Aisha, I don’t . . . I can’t breathe.’

Panic coursed through me and my watch started to beep. The elevated heart rate alarm.

‘Hang on, mate. Hang on. Let me call an ambulance. You’ll be all right. Hold on.’ Aisha talked at a million miles a minute, but her voice was fading in and out.

Then everything went black.

3

Iwoke up in the hospital. Well, there were worse places to wake up, although I’d prefer somewhere with less infection risk.

Last time I was in a hospital it was to see my dad.

I tried to remember what had happened. Screaming, tyres screeching . . . a plane? This was why Mam wanted to homeschool me. Less reason to leave the house that way.

I checked the blinking monitor next to my bed that kept a constant check on my heart rate and blood pressure. A steady 115 over 75 for the blood pressure, nice. My heart rate had been a little elevated when I woke but had settled down again. Good. Thinking of Dad had probably not helped, so best to think about something else. Like escaping.

I didn’t know how long I had been there because there was no clock in the room. I was alone with curtains drawn either side of me, separating me from the other beds. I knew that even if they had called Mam, she wouldn’t come to visit unless it was life or death. And I respected that.

‘Bari?’ I croaked. My throat felt like it was full of gravel. ‘You there?’

‘Greetings, Mistress Zoe,’ Bari replied. I could just about hear him but his voice was muffled. I traced the sound to a bedside table and pulled it open. Inside, in a see-through plastic bag, was my phone and a few cash cards. Bari’s brown and black furry face lit up the screen.

I reached my other hand around to pull out the phone and felt a twinge in my back, so did a quick health assessment. Bandage on my head and what felt like four stitches underneath, right by my hairline. Bruising around my ribcage, but nothing broken. Pain I was actually pretty good with. Cardio taught you about pain thresholds pretty fast. There was also a pain in my collarbone but I couldn’t see any damage or bruising. Odd, but I also couldn’t twist my chin enough to see. I’d have to check my reflection in my phone.

Knowing there was no permanent damage, I pulled out my phone so I could speak to Bari. The time in the top corner told me it was 11.30 a.m., so a few hours had passed since I set off for school. There were notifications from the DD app too but I muted them. Probably just proximity alerts for the accident I only half remembered.

‘Bari, do you know what happened after we left the house? Why am I in hospital?’ I asked.

Bari tilted his head to one side and froze for a split second.

‘Internet search complete. Here are articles I pulled up from the last three hours occurring within eight kilometres of your home, Mistress Zoe.’

Bari disappeared back to the side of the screen with his doggy door and was instantly replaced with overlapping articles. I skimmed a couple of headlines, which read things like MASS DEARLY DEPARTED SYNDROME PILE-UP KILLS SIX, INJURES DOZENS, and spotted a photograph of a plane propellor indented into the side of a bus.

I hated to admit it, but I was lucky to be alive. It wasn’t the number one killer on my list, but it was a floating entity that terrified me: bad luck. This was an umbrella category for things like terminal illness, meteorite strikes and now, falling plane parts. I always said I was prepared for anything, but that could never be true, especially with Dearly Departed Syndrome hanging over all our heads. And until I worked out who my KinTwin was, I would never truly be able to relax. At least it would knock something off the Bad Luck category. Perhaps I could even make them a Bug-Out Bag.

‘Bari, I should check what Mam’s up to. Can you access—’

‘Who are you talking to?’

The voice came from behind the curtain separating my bed from the next one. Before I replied I swiped Bari up and away from my home screen and leant forward to pull back the divider.

‘Woah. Little privacy?’ The boy in the next bed held up his hands, obscuring his face as if the paparazzi were leaning into his car to take photos.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Bit rich coming from the person who was nosing in on my conversation,’ I said. I pushed myself up to a sitting position, grinding my teeth through the brief pain spasm.

‘Ha. Fair play, fair play.’ The boy lowered his hands and looked at me. ‘Sorry, my head still hurts a little.’ His head looked fine to me, but perhaps my pain threshold was higher than his.

I knew him. We went to school together, if you could say I do anything more than exist in the same space as my so-called peers. I was looking at Milo Spencer, arguably the most popular boy in our year. Everyone either wanted to be him, or be with him. As far as I knew he hadn’t been assigned a KinTwin yet, much to the dismay of every girl he had ever dated. He blinked at me with long eyelashes that caught on the edges of his perfectly styled black hair.

My heart monitor beep sped up a fraction.

‘Hi, I’m Milo, anyway. And you are?’ he asked, all white teeth and smooth skin.

Of course he didn’t know who I was. Milo Spencer didn’t record any foreign objects outside his own miniscule orbit.

‘Zoe Quinn. You’re in my year at school? We have maths, and English, and French together,’ I stated.

Milo looked blank. There was that blinking stare again.

‘Right. Of course, yeah. Maths and French, I remember now,’ he said, a fraction too late.

‘And English.’

‘And English. Yeah, sure.’

We sat in what could possibly be assessed as the most awkward silence of all time for a moment before Milo spoke again.

‘So, do you know what happened? Why are we here?’

‘Check your phone. You must have got caught up in the accident, same as me,’ I said. I was not helping Milo Spencer any more than absolutely necessary. He got enough of that in his real, sparkling life.

‘Good point. To the internet,’ Milo said.

I reached out to pull the curtain across, mostly so I wouldn’t have to keep talking to him, when he reached out a hand to block me.

‘Hold up. I’ve got a notification from DD,’ he said. He sat bolt upright, the bandage over his clavicle clearly giving him no trouble at all.

If anything, he looked . . . excited?

‘Don’t worry about it. Probably just proximity alerts from the crash,’ I said, turning back to my own phone. I flicked Bari up on to the screen, put him on mute, and gave him a belly rub.

‘No . . . oh my god, no way . . . it says I have a KinTwin notification. I have a KinTwin! Finally. I have one, I have— Ouch! Jesus, that hurts.’ Milo bounced so excitedly on the scratchy bed that he twisted his ribs and nearly dropped his phone.

‘Good for you. I’m sure I’ll see the announcement on whatever social media platform you choose to project your life on to,’ I said. I never had quite understood social media. I was on it, just to keep track of what was going on, not to post or engage really. People like Milo were always posting their selfies, or photos from whatever reckless party I hadn’t been invited to. I only saw them because they came up on my feed, not because I sought them out or anything. His selfies were so prolific they were impossible to avoid, really. Besides, from what I had researched, social media mostly caused anxiety and anxiety was a killer if left unchecked.

What didn’t cause anxiety, of course, was belly rubs. They even alleviated it according to some studies. I refocused on Bari, digital legs akimbo with his tongue hanging out.

‘It says I’ve matched with . . . This can’t be right,’ Milo said.

‘Really, Milo – and I mean you no harm when I say this – I honestly don’t care.’

‘I’m not having you on, Zoe. Check your phone.’

‘I already checked. I know what happened and if you don’t mind—’

‘Seriously.You’re gonna want to see this.’

I sighed. ‘Sorry, Bari,’ I muttered before popping him back behind his doggy door.

I flicked open the red DD app, which had a matching red circle indicating three new messages for me.

9.45 a.m.: Congratulations! We have received a report that you have been matched with a new KinTwin. Please stand by as we verify this data.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The beeping on the monitor next to my bed sped up.

10.03 a.m.: It’s official! Your testing centre, Derbyshire County Hospital, has confirmed your KinTwin. Stand by for location.

10.35 a.m.: You are within ten metres of your KinTwin, who is registered as MILO SPENCER. Please confirm you have viewed this message. We hope you live happily ever after!

Milo Spencer. Milo Spencer. Captain of the football team. The boy who has come into school with more casts on more body parts than I cared to count. The boy with a death wish, was my KinTwin.

There had to be some mistake.

‘Uh, I don’t think so,’ Milo said. I hadn’t realized I said that last part out loud. ‘You need a blood test to confirm a KinTwin, and we’re in the hospital. They must have confirmed it when we were out of it.’ Milo, for his part, did his best not to look too disappointed, a wry smile on his stupidly handsome face.

I did not do as good a job at not looking disappointed.

‘No. No, that’s not right. Nurse?’ I called out to a man in scrubs nearby who was tending a patient opposite us.

He turned around and smiled before crossing the room. ‘Oh good, you’re awake. Did you hear the good news? I was just saying—’

‘If by good news you mean the clearly incorrect notification about my clearly wrong KinTwin on my phone then yes, yes I have.’ The monitor was beeping so fast now that the nurse glanced at it, concerned. ‘I don’t – I can’t – how did this happen?’

I took a few deep breaths as his smile morphed into a frown.

‘Oh, most people are quite pleased when they . . . OK, yes, sure. So you both came in from different locations. Ms Quinn, you were at the scene of a DDS pile-up and Mr Spencer, we got a call from a girl at your school saying you had collapsed. When you got here, you had different injuries but you were both reacting, even while unconscious, to both sets of injuries. When we were stitching your head, Ms Quinn, Mr Spencer kept wincing. So we did a blood test on you both and hey presto, it’s a match. Of course we had to report it to the DD org, or we’d lose our licence. We didn’t realize until then that it was a new match.’

It was my turn to blink. The head injury that Milo clearly felt when I pulled back the curtain. The twinges I always had that I couldn’t explain. Milo was always breaking bones, and everyone knew that KinTwins could feel mild versions of their twin’s ailments.

But no. KinTwins were supposed to be soulmates. When this whole thing started they were mostly married couples or already in love. KinTwins were expected to get married, look after each other.

I’d rather Milo DD’d me in some stupid stunt than have to marry him. The mere thought made me feel slightly nauseous.

‘Ugh. I feel a little sick. Do I have a concussion?’ Milo said.

Of course. Reacting to my own sickness.

‘OK. Great. Thanks for that,’ I said before the nurse could reply. I reached forward and pulled the privacy curtain, blocking him out from Milo’s and my space.

‘This isn’t happening,’ I said. I opened the KinTwin app and tapped on the report.

100% match! Your KinTwin blood markers are a total match with MILO SPENCER. This means you are completely made for each other. We hope you’ll be very happy together, until you Dearly Depart!

‘Yeah. I mean, you’re totally right. There must be a glitch or something,’ Milo said, scrolling through his own phone. ‘There’s no way we’re a match. Do we even have anything in common? Isn’t your KinTwin supposed to be your, you know, person?’

Strangely, watching Milo panic as much as I had calmed me down. Even my heart rate monitor seemed to slow, and I couldn’t help but notice Milo’s did the same, until the beats matched up exactly.

‘Weird. I feel a bit better now,’ Milo said. ‘But like, this can’t be right. We need to sort this out.’ At least we were on the same page: this was a mistake, and we needed to fix it.

Someone pulled the curtain back and I was just about to tell the nurse to take a very long walk off a very short plank when a girl poked her face through the gap.

‘So how’s the patient? Some nice guy said you were awake and might want some company?’ the girl said.

Well, not just any girl. Milo was never seen around without Aisha, who was in every way the girl version of Milo. He captained the football team, she captained the hockey team. He went cliff diving, she went cliff diving. They both took slow-motion videos for social media. I take an interest, occasionally.

‘But it looks like you made a friend?’ Aisha said, looking at me. She was everything I wasn’t: long hair, tall, piercings. If anyone was Milo’s KinTwin, it was her.

‘We’re not friends,’ I said. I pushed a hand through my short, mousy hair, aware of how messy it must be after lying in bed for hours. ‘We’re just . . . trying to work something out.’

‘Aisha, the app says we’re KinTwins. Me and Zoe, I mean. Look,’ Milo said.

I raised an eyebrow, partly surprised he had remembered my name and partly surprised he wanted to volunteer the information to Aisha. Surely someone like her would want someone like Milo as their KinTwin?

‘Oh my god! Bri, you won’t believe this, our boy’s got a KinTwin,’ Aisha called to someone out of eyeshot. Within seconds she was joined by Bri, another of Milo’s beautiful friends from his socials. Not that I looked often, you understand.

‘Awww, he’s all grown up,’ Bri said, her orange hair poking out of her scrunchie like it was trying to break free. She rubbed the top of his head like a big sister would with a little brother.

‘No, he doesn’t. Have a KinTwin, I mean. There’s clearly been a mistake,’ I said.

They all looked up at me as if they had forgotten I was there. Which, of course, they had.

Aisha and Bri looked me up and down in the same way I scan the security cameras at home before I go outside: with a mixture of curiosity and assessment of danger.

‘Hey, I know you. You’re in our maths set. The girl with the mint haircut, remember, Bri? I said I wanted a chop and that Zoe’s haircut would be rad?’ Aisha pulled at her dark hair as if it were strangling her.

‘I know when I’m being made fun of,’ I sighed. ‘Not that it bothers me, I just don’t have time for it. This is an emergency.’ I meant what I said. Sticks and stones and falling planes and dangerous KinTwins will break my bones. I didn’t need friends. I had Bari.

Aisha’s eyes widened. ‘I’m being serious. Right, B? Tell her.’

‘No, seriously. She did say she thought your do was cute. Like, literally yesterday,’ Bri said.

‘So you’re not just saying this out of some weird jealousy that I’m supposedly Milo’s KinTwin?’ I asked.

Milo’s cheeks went red and both girls burst out laughing.

‘Me and Milo? How do I put this . . . he isn’t our type,’ Aisha said between fits of laughter.

‘All right, it’s not that funny,’ Milo said.

I frowned, then I saw Bri lace her fingers through Aisha’s. Oh. Oh.

I never was very good at reading people. Digital dogs were about my limit.

‘Honestly, what is it with heteros and this damn KinTwin thing? You crack me up,’ Bri said.

‘Ah. Apologies, I don’t really . . . I don’t know a lot about the social pyramids at school,’ I said, as if I knew about any social pyramids. Or any type of social constructs. Period.

‘Guys, seriously. We need to focus,’ Milo said, clearly over Aisha’s attempt to humiliate him. ‘Zoe agrees with me – and uh, she’s – I mean you, Zoe, you’re very . . . nice and everything, but, uh, well . . .’

‘Don’t worry, Milo. The feeling is mutual,’ I said.

Aisha tried not to laugh again.

‘Wow. M, is this the first girl to ever turn you down? Yep, must be a glitch in the matrix, you’re totally right,’ she said.

Milo just stared at his phone. I checked his monitor and his heart rate was a little slow. If he wasn’t careful, he would go into shock, and shock’s a killer.

And if he died, I died too.

‘All right, let’s be logical here,’ I said. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to keep Milo alive, and that meant keeping him calm. ‘First off, we need to check if this is a mistake. There is no way that Milo and I are compatible. We have to speak to the man in charge, so to speak.’

‘You mean the head of KinTwin Discoveries? I don’t think Argo Duff takes cold calls,’ Bri said.

I was glad to see one of Milo’s friends seemed to be reasonably intelligent.

‘Well, probably not. But we could at least speak to a representative. There must be someone, somewhere we can talk to. There must be a complaints department.’

‘A complaints department? For the happiest firm on earth?’ Aisha rolled her eyes and turned to Bri. ‘Any ideas, B?’

‘Well, I was thinking we could write a strongly worded email. I was just about to look up a contact address,’ I said, pulling out my phone.

‘Why don’t we just ask Bri’s dad? He still works there, right A?’ Milo said.

‘Hear that sound? That’s the sound of a penny dropping. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’ Aisha smirked at me.

Bri sighed. ‘All right. I’ll call him. No promises, though,’ she said.

A plan. A plan was better than no plan, and a plan was infinitely better than accepting Milo Spencer as my soulmate. With that albatross around my neck, I’d be dead by morning.

‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

4

When I imagined finding out who my KinTwin was, it wasn’t exactly like this.

Look, I’m not saying I was imagining, like, a Disney movie meet-cute or anything like that. But I at least thought she might look at me like she liked me. Zoe looked at me like I was an escaped sex offender.

We checked ourselves out of the hospital. It had been pretty easy to leave; no one exactly stopped us. They had enough to deal with, both with the pile-up and KinTwin deaths to register. Plus, school knew all about the crash, as Aisha had updated them and my parents. Apparently, Dad had been desperate to come down, but half the roads were blocked following the pile-up, so I just called to let him know I was fine, really, and that I’d be back home soon.

And that was how we ended up taking the back roads, on foot, towards our local KinTwin Discoveries building, which is where Bri said her dad worked in the apps department.

At least the chaos could give us some cover. We had to check out how the Dearly Departed app could have got it so wrong.

I winced. Not just from the dull ache of my recent injuries, but that even in my own head, I sounded right up my own arse. This wasn’t about looks, or anything like that. Zoe was really kinda beautiful under that short hair. She had just the right number of designer freckles, big blue eyes, and that sort of porcelain skin you only saw in cartoons.

We just . . . seemed, well, different. I didn’t even remember seeing her around school, but Aisha had doubled down that we have loads of classes together. And you know, school is school. I’m usually just counting down the minutes until I can get out on the field, or drive to the quarry for some recreational danger. I didn’t exactly notice every little thing.

‘So, Zoe, what’s in the bag?’ Aisha broke through my thoughts. We had been walking in the heat of the midday sun for a while and I blinked away a bead of sweat that had slipped into my eye.

‘My school stuff. I was on my way in,’ Zoe replied. She didn’t look back at us, but kept staring at her phone like she had been the whole time we were walking.

‘No, I mean the other bag? The one attached to your school bag?’ Aisha asked.

Zoe stopped walking and turned to us. I exchanged a look with Bri. Aisha always meant well, but she could be a bit of a nosy bugger.

‘In the interest of saving time, because I can see you’re the sort of person that wants to know everything, that is my Bug-Out Bag. And if you want to know what that is, you can look it up,’ she said. She turned to Bri. ‘How much further down this road?’

‘Uh, I’ll tell you when I see the turning,’ Bri said.

Zoe turned on her heel and kept moving, so we followed her. Aisha’s fingers were a blur over her phone screen. ‘Oh my god. It’s a bag for, like, the apocalypse and stuff. Says here it’s a survival kit for any eventuality. Has, like, dried food, iodine tablets, spare batteries . . . Huh. Actually, kinda smart for a post-KinTwin world.’

‘Really? It’s also sort of . . . I dunno, pessimistic, don’t you think?’ I said.

‘I’m not pessimistic. I’m pragmatic. There’s a difference.’ Zoe didn’t even bother to stop this time. I was sort of embarrassed she had overheard us.

Aisha and Bri pulled a face that said, Well, that’s you bloody well told.

‘Let the record state that I thought it sounded cool, future Mrs Spencer,’ Aisha called to the back of Zoe’s head. Bri sucked in her cheeks, trying not to laugh.

‘It’s not cool, either. It’s just practical. I don’t do . . . I’m not interested in how I look to other people. I’m interested in staying alive.’ Zoe pulled on the straps of her backpack and picked up her pace. ‘Besides, even if I was ever forced to conform to gender norms and marriage, I’d never change my last name. Bri, are we nearly at the turning?’

Aisha smirked. I could tell she liked Zoe already, but we couldn’t get too attached. This would be over soon.

‘Uh, yeah. Next left,’ Bri replied, shrugging at us.

Great. Not only was I stuck with someone who didn’t want to look at me, she wasn’t interested in talking to me either. Perfect. I kicked at the ground and we walked the rest of the way in silence.

I pulled out my phone and checked the headlines. Loads of depressing stuff about the death toll caused by the accident, so I swiped past that. In the entertainment section was a story about Argo Duff. Apparently, he had already dumped the pop star he knocked up last summer, and now he was thinking of becoming a Buddhist monk. Weird that no one ever seemed to ask about his KinTwin, despite the fact he literally invented the world’s primary system of finding them. He wasn’t even a doctor, just had a team of scientists like Bri’s dad on hand to carry out his every weird whim. Proper eccentric billionaire, that one. Maybe he would get more beef if he were a woman, that’s what Aisha would tell me. But I guess when you were that rich you didn’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of us. I swiped away his grinning face and cold grey eyes and put my phone in my pocket.

It was impossible to miss the building at the end of the road Bri turned us in to. It sat at the top of the hill, all glass and concrete moulding, like the HQ of a supervillain. At the top corner of the building, in red lettering that matched the font in the app, it read ‘KinTwin Discoveries: Home of the Dearly Departed App’.

At the front gate, a security guard met us.

‘Hi. I’m Bri Smythe. I’d like to come in and see my dad, please? He works in the IT department, in the genetic engineering division. Dr Aaron Smythe.’ Bri stood with her hand on her hip like she was the one with the taser, not the guard.

The guard’s eyes flicked over the rest of us.

‘And you all need to come in, huh? What for?’

‘Uh . . . his lunch. Yeah, that’s right, Dad forgot his lunch. Mum asked me to bring it for him.’ Bri flashed her brightest smile.

‘Where is it, then?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘The lunch, girlie. You don’t even have a bag. Where’s Daddy’s lunch?’ The guard smirked and Bri stuttered.

‘Uh, well . . .’

‘Save it. Even if you had it, you can’t come in. Whole campus is on lockdown because of that plane crash this morning.’

‘Why would a plane crash five kilometres away cause you to lock down?’ Zoe asked.

‘Because sometimes when shit like that happens, people want someone to blame. And KinTwin Discoveries is usually pretty high on that list. Which is bullshit, if you ask me. All they’ve done is work something out, give people a way to track it, and provided some jobs. But you try telling people that. It’s like they think KinTwin invented the mutation. Absolute liberty.’

‘We didn’t ask for your life story,’ Zoe said.

My eyes widened. Had she not seen the taser at the man’s waist? The angry way he spat when he was talking? For a girl who wanted to live, she didn’t seem that good at reading people.

‘All right, girlie. Keep your hair on. Don’t know why I’m wasting time talking to you anyway,’ he muttered. He headed back into his guard house and slammed the door shut.

‘Great. Now what?’ I said, glaring at Zoe.

‘Now we go see Bri’s dad,’ Zoe said, pushing the short tufts of hair out of her eyes.

‘Uh, did you not hear the guy? No visitors allowed,’ Bri said.

‘So we don’t visit. We break in. There’s a hole in the hedge a few metres down the road. I saw it when we walked up,’ Zoe said. She was already headed back down the road.

‘Hey – Zoe, wait. Hang on,’ I said. We jogged to catch up with her as she marched down the road. ‘We can’t just break in.’

‘Why not?’ Zoe replied. She stopped by the hole she had mentioned, which was just out of eyeshot of the guard house. She still didn’t make eye contact with me. ‘Do you want this to go down on your medical records? If it’s a mistake, and we leave it, who knows how long it might take to change? How much red tape we’d have to cut through for you to find your real KinTwin?’

I noticed she only referred to my KinTwin, not her own. Did she really not want to know who her soulmate was?

Zoe checked both ways – the road was dead, probably because of the lockdown and the crash, like the guard said – and dug into the buggy bag thingy she was telling Aisha about. After a few seconds, she pulled out a small red multitool, and folded it into a pair of bolt cutters.

‘Huh. Bug-Out Bags for the win,’ Aisha said, nodding.

‘Uh, what are those for?’ Bri said. She was shifting from foot to foot. ‘Look, Zoe, I don’t want to get my dad in trouble.’

‘They’re for the chain-link fence behind the hedge,’ Zoe said. She pointed through the hole and we all peered through to see the crosshatch of a wire fence beyond. ‘And Bri, you don’t have to come. You keep watch here. I only needed you to get inside. Once I’m in, I can find out what I need to know.’

‘Charming. Really, what a catch,’ Bri hissed at me and Aisha. ‘Fine. Zoe, you’re on your own. Me and Aisha will keep watch, whatever.’

‘Awww, I was kind of hoping to get in on the sneaking— Uh, no, you’re totally right. Keeping watch it is.’ Aisha changed tack with one look at Bri’s expression. She perched on the kerb beside Bri.

‘And that means I get to go with Zoe. Great,’ I said through gritted teeth, to no one in particular.

‘You don’t have to come either. I’m usually better on my own,’ said Zoe. Her voice was muffled because she was already deep inside the hedge, fiddling with the fence.

Jeez, did this girl have super hearing or something? I threw one last pleading look at Aisha and she just shrugged, lacing her fingers through Bri’s. I sighed and crawled into the bush behind Zoe.

‘No, it’s fine. We need to know. I can be helpful sometimes, you know,’ I said. The space in the hedge was so small, I had to lean into Zoe’s side to avoid branches. She smelt like lemons and fresh-cut grass. Or maybe that was just the hedge.

‘Doubtful, but I guess if one of us gets caught, the other one can carry on,’ Zoe said.

‘That’s the best you’re gonna give me, right?’

‘Correct.’ She cut the last link on the fence and opened up the bottom like a cat flap. ‘Come on.’

The car park beyond was as dead as the street. It was full of cars, obvs, but no people around. Probably because of the lockdown. Zoe and I crept around the edge of the building, keeping to the concrete parts of the wall and avoiding the windows, which was tough when the whole place seemed to be made of glass. We rounded a corner and stopped – the entrance to the building was right ahead, but there were two technicians walking in wearing lab coats, so we hung back and waited for them to head inside.

‘Zoe, can I ask you something?’ I whispered. I was crouched behind her and my legs were starting to ache.

‘You just did.’

‘You know what I mean.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, I do. Go on, we aren’t moving any time soon. Does anyone even do any work around here?’

I ignored her dig and pressed on. ‘Why are you doing this with me? I mean . . . I’ve only known you for what, an hour or so? But you don’t seem massively interested in finding out who your soulmate is. So why are you so mad that it’s me?’

Her head twitched slightly to one side and I was glad I couldn’t see her facial expression.

‘Because you, Milo Spencer, are a walking accident waiting to happen. And I don’t do accidents.’

‘Because you just want to stay alive, right?’ I asked.

Her shoulders relaxed. ‘Well remembered. And this whole soulmate thing? You need to stop putting so much faith in that. First and foremost, the KinTwin mutation is a medical condition. That’s what I focus on.’

‘But . . . don’t you think it’s crazy how most people are KinTwinned with their husband or wife? Or that pretty much everyone eventually moves in with their KinTwin? Have you read the studies?’ I asked. I hadn’t read past the headlines, but she didn’t need to know that.

‘Well, if my mam had been KinTwinned with my dad, she would have dropped dead at the same time he crashed his car. Instead, it was just him and his KinTwin lover. Which meant I wasn’t made an orphan. So all in all, I’m not exactly swept up in the romance.’

I rocked back on my heels. Well, shit. What can I even say to that?

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.

‘Don’t be. I’m not,’ she said.

I let my arm drop back to my side. Yikes, this girl had some issues.

‘Look, they finally went inside. Come on.’ Zoe stood up and walked up to the sliding doors that the science guys had been stood between.

I followed her. Luckily, the chair behind the reception desk was empty. In fact, as I peered down the long corridors, half the building looked deserted.

Zoe walked around behind the desk and swiped the mouse.

‘Left unlocked. Their mistake, our opportunity,’ she said, fingers already flying across the keyboard.

I checked both ways and edged closer. While Zoe typed I scanned the desk and spotted a post-it note:

THURSDAY

WHOLE TEAM MEETING

12.30-2

‘Explains where they all are,’ I said, pointing to the note.

Zoe raised an eyebrow. ‘Well spotted, Milo. Now, I’ve found a map of the building on the central server. There’s a label here for a Dr Smythe’s office. That has to be Bri’s dad, correct?’

I blinked. ‘Wow. Yeah, must be.’

I leant down so I could get a better look. We were nearly cheek to cheek. Zoe didn’t flinch, her blue eyes reflecting the soft glow of the screen.

‘So, looks like it’s just down this hall here,’ I said, tapping the screen while pointing along the hall near the entrance with my other hand.

‘Looks like it,’ Zoe said. She hoisted her bag on her shoulders and leapfrogged the desk. ‘Let’s go. There’s at least six cameras in here so we probably only have a few minutes until we’re spotted anyway.’

‘Wait, what?’ I hissed, following her across the reception area. Zoe was half jogging again so I was too. Every step we took, I scanned the ceiling and seemed to spot another CCTV camera. Why didn’t I think of that? ‘Aren’t you worried about getting caught?’

‘My family’s motto is to stay alive. My mam isn’t hugely interested if I’m remanded in custody. In fact, prisoners who suffer heart attacks are twice as likely to survive than members of the general public.’

‘My mum will give me a heart attack if I’m arrested,’ I muttered. We turned a corner at the end of the corridor. In front of us was a closed door with a plastic sign: DR A. SMYTHE. GENEALOGIST TECHNICIAN.

‘He’s not here,’ Zoe said.

She was right. The lights behind the small window in the door were all off. He must have been at the meeting with everyone else. I tried the door, to see if we could wait there for him and throw ourselves on his mercy, but it was locked.

‘What do we do now? If we stay out here we’ll be—’

‘Shhhhh,’ I hissed. We paused and both heard the footsteps, getting louder as they headed towards us.

I grabbed Zoe by the arm and led her to the door next to Bri’s dad’s office, one marked ‘CLEANING SUPPLIES’. Thank god it was open. I pulled her inside and eased the door shut just as the footsteps sounded at their closest.

It was only when we heard the creak of a door open and close in the corridor I realized I had my hand over Zoe’s mouth. We were both stood in front of the door, her back pushed into it, me facing her with my great bloody hand over her mouth. I was only a few centimetres away from those blue eyes, although she was a lot shorter than me. She still smelt like fresh-cut grass.

Under my fingers, she mumbled something.

‘Oh god, sorry, I don’t know – I’m so sorry. It was instinct, I just wanted to stay quiet,’ I stuttered. I pulled my hands away and stepped back into a mop and bucket, which clanged noisily to the floor. Were my cheeks burning? Yep, deffo burning.

‘Well, you made a pig’s ear of that job,’ Zoe said, eyeing up the mop. ‘And for future reference, I don’t like to be manhandled against my will.’

‘Of course. Er, sorry. I’m a feminist, you know.’

Zoe raised an eyebrow. Did I really just say that? If Aisha was here, she’d tear me a new one.

‘If it’s any consolation, I feel like I could die of embarrassment any minute,’ I said, faking a laugh. Self-deprecation was always my fallback.

‘Over my dead body,’ said Zoe. The very corner of her mouth twitched with a smirk.

‘Did you . . . did you just make a joke?’ I asked. Relief washed all the heat of embarrassment from my body.

‘I’m not always miserable. I can make jokes too,’ she said.

‘Well, colour me—’

But I didn’t finish that sentence. Because at that moment, someone threw open the closet door, blinding us with the fluorescents beyond.

5

Milo was possibly the most peculiar boy I had ever met. Then again, I hadn’t met many boys, so maybe they were simply all this ridiculous.

Milo also talked a lot. He would mither and mither until he got an answer out of you, too. I was all about conciseness of language, to save time and communicate my point as efficiently as possible. And I certainly had no time for embarrassment. Embarrassment was confusing, and confusion could kill in the wrong situation.

So when the door opened behind me and pushed me into Milo, I was definitely in danger in terms of confusion.

‘What are you doing in here? Are you kids?’

The man in the door was illuminated from behind by the lights in the hallway, so it took a moment for our eyes to adjust. He carried on berating us so I searched his lab coat for anything that might help us out of what was, admittedly, a bit of a mess. Finally, I found it: a plastic photo ID clipped to his top pocket.

‘Dr Smythe? We’re friends of Bri’s. She said you might be able to help us?’ I said, reading the name badge and attempting to fix my best smile on to my face. What were the chances the one person we were after had found us?

‘How did you even get in here during a lockdown?’ Bri’s dad asked.

‘You have some holes in your security. We can tell you all about it if you let us ask you a couple of questions,’ I said.

I plastered on my smile again but Dr Symthe didn’t move from the door. His fingers flexed over a walkie-talkie attached to his belt.

‘Or, you know, we could just go now and explain how you let us in during a lockdown.’

‘You little— I didn’t let you in. You’ve just barged your way in,’ Dr Smythe said. His hand lowered from his walkie.

‘Well, we can see who your boss believes if you wish. But we don’t have a career on the line, so really it would be simpler to talk to us, and then we’ll be on our way.’

Dr Smythe narrowed his eyes at us. ‘Fine, but be quick. Step into my office, and if you’re seen when you leave, I never spoke to you.’

‘Naturally,’ I said.

Dr Smythe stepped out from the doorway and towards his office.

‘Nice one,’ Milo whispered behind me. He was close enough that his breath tickled the back of my neck and made the hairs stand on end. My watch vibrated against my wrist as my heart rate elevated.

No. Not this. I was not about to fall for a strong jawline and pretty eyes like every other girl in school. This needed to be nipped in the bud.

Dr Smythe’s office was small and fairly nondescript, save for a photograph of his daughter on the desk. Bri was much younger but it was still clearly her, with the same lopsided grin and red hair. Milo and I sat on the sofa against one wall and Dr Smythe sat behind his desk.

‘You have five minutes. And I’ll be talking to Bri about this later. What do you want?’

‘Sir, we wanted to let you know that your software has made a mistake,’ I said. Milo looked at me and slowly nodded.

‘Impossible,’ Dr Smythe said.

‘No, it’s true. Zoe and I got KinTwinned on the app today, after ending up in the hospital. The DD app says we’re a match, but we can’t be. We’ve got nothing in common, we don’t really fancy each other, I didn’t even remember we went to the same school, never mind the same classes—’

‘Yes, all right, Milo, I think Dr Smythe gets the picture,’ I said. I could feel the heat building in my cheeks and I tried to swallow it down. Milo didn’t like me, which was fine because I didn’t like him either beyond, well, the obvious general attractiveness of his face. But bone structure did not make a KinTwin, last I checked.

Dr Smythe sighed. ‘Show me your app and I’ll bring up your details.’

Milo passed across his phone and Dr Smythe took a few moments to enter the information into his computer. Seeing Milo’s phone made me realize I hadn’t checked in with Bari since the hospital. As soon as this mess was sorted out, I’d pay some play coins to take him on a spacewalk along the lunar surface. He seemed to love that last time. And yes, I was aware that Bari’s enjoyment of said spacewalk was due entirely to the fact the programmers wanted me to spend more money. And it was working. Bari was my one weakness; I didn’t need Milo there as well. Soon, everything would be back to normal.

‘Everything appears to be in order,’ Dr Smythe said, handing Milo’s phone back.

I must have misheard him. Dr Smythe looked at our faces, sighed again, and spun his computer screen to face us.

‘See these strings of numbers here? That’s your DNA mixed with the DNA of the KinTwin mutation,’ Dr Smythe pointed to the screen with a biro, circling the matching pairs of numbers that appeared on the screen. Our names were neatly digitized across the top to show whose information was whose. ‘It’s a match. The KinTwin mutation appears to be the only thing as certain as death. You – Zoe is it? – you are a match for Milo, and vice versa. It’s all right there in the science.’

My stomach dropped into my feet. If my watch vibrated any more warning signs at me, it would vibrate right off my wrist. I glanced at Milo and he had his head in his hands.

‘This is . . . Surely there must be some other way? Another test you can do?’ I asked.

Dr Smythe seemed to soften. He leant on the desk, fingers interlaced. ‘Listen, Zoe, you aren’t the first pair to turn up here, and you won’t be the last. Why do you think we went into lockdown after that crash? We’ve had plenty of unhappy customers here at KinTwin Discoveries, but they all settle down eventually. “Happily ever after” is our motto, after all. But we’re not just here to make you happy, we’re here to tell you the truth, and the truth is, Milo here is your soulmate.’

‘Please don’t use the word,’ I said.

‘Fair enough. KinTwins don’t have to be together, you know? We have many asexual customers, for instance, who have matched up with a best friend that they know will do anything for them. It always works out in the end.’

‘This one won’t,’ Milo muttered.

Dr Smythe actually had the gall to chuckle at that. One look at my face and he coughed before taking a hold of himself. ‘Sorry, kids. Perhaps you’ll need to make a visit to Madame Scissor. She seems to have the magic touch for unhappy pairings.’ Dr Smythe laughed again and swung his computer screen back into place. ‘Now, you should really go, before we all get in trouble. The admin department meeting ends soon, so you should be able to get back out via reception—’

‘Who’s Madame Scissor?’ I asked.

Milo looked up at that. We both waited for Dr Smythe to respond.

He scoffed. ‘It’s just an urban legend around here. Madame Scissor is supposedly this woman who can cut the bond between KinTwins.’

‘Meaning we wouldn’t die when the other does? And wouldn’t feel each other’s pain?’ Milo asked. He was leaning forward in his seat now and my heart rate was going up for a better reason: a glimmer of hope.

‘Well, in theory, but it’s just a story. There is no escaping the KinTwin bond. If there was, don’t you think we would have done that already, given the spiralling death rate and end-of-the-world doom and gloom out there? Obviously if there was a way to make this go away, soulmate finder or not, then we would. But there isn’t.’

‘But someone started a rumour. And there’s rarely smoke without fire,’ I insisted.

I don’t know why I was clinging to this story like my life depended on it. Although, actually, my life really did depend on it. And as Dr Smythe said, if we could somehow sever the KinTwin death bond, we could potentially save humanity.

Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but we had to at least try.

Dr Smythe stood up. ‘Look, I was OK when we were talking about the science but now we’ve moved on to fairy stories, I really must insist that you leave. Please.’

Dr Smythe pointed to the door and Milo and I stood up. We’d got more than we bargained for and it was clear there were no more answers to be had here. We said goodbye to Dr Smythe, and quickly made our way out of the same doors we came in by.

When we got back to the hole in the fence, I was half surprised to see Aisha and Bri still waiting for us. Huh. Is this what it was like to have friends? They would wait around for you to do something incredibly reckless even if they didn’t want you to do it in the first place?

Friendships were weird.

‘You’re back.’ Aisha stood up and threw her arms around Milo’s neck.

Bri mirrored me, arms crossed and waiting for our next steps. If I had to choose between them so far, I liked Bri the best.

‘What, did you think we would both have carked it already?’ Milo said once Aisha had let him go.

‘No, not now you have Zoe. She’s a one-woman SAS team,’ Aisha said. She nodded to me. ‘I was just surprised you managed to get in and out so fast.’

A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. Mam didn’t really do praise, even when we were training together or running drills. It was nice to get some from Aisha, even if she wasn’t a survival expert.

‘Well, the bad news is that there isn’t a mistake. It appears that, through some colossal natural mistake, Milo and I are indeed KinTwins.’ I looked at the ground, suddenly embarrassed to look Milo in the eye. I don’t know why, though. He was just as keen to cut ties with me as I was with him, and I didn’t usually care what people thought when I spoke. But I was stuck with Milo, and apparently his friends, for the foreseeable. I had to keep relations cordial at the very least.

‘Possibly not all bad news, right M?’ Aisha nudged Milo, who just shrugged.

‘The good news is,’ I said, brushing past Aisha’s comment, ‘is that there may be a way to fix it. Have either of you ever heard of Madame Scissor?’

Bri and Aisha exchanged a look before shaking their heads.

‘Apparently, there is an urban legend, a rumour that this woman – or, I suppose, it could be an entity for a whole organization – can break the soulmate bond between KinTwins. If this is true, it won’t just be myself and Milo that benefit from her services.’

‘Yeah. We could, I dunno, like, maybe end all the KinTwin death ties and basically save the world. Or something. Maybe.’

I would say Milo finished my sentence, but there is very little chance I would have spoken as erratically. The major points were all there though, so I didn’t waste time correcting him.

‘How do you spell Madame, with an E on the end?’ Bri asked. She pulled out her phone and started typing. ‘I bet there’s something on SoulBait about it. If there’s any truth to it, that’s where it will be.’

‘Ooooh, good shout. You check the message boards and I’ll scroll through archived topics,’ Aisha said. They both fell silent, tapping away at their phone screens.

‘Isn’t SoulBait that website full of conspiracy theories?’ I asked Milo. I’d followed a link or two there by mistake before, but I never chose to visit it. Everyone knew everything on there was nonsensical.

‘Oh, you don’t go on there?’ Milo said. ‘It’s like this massive online community sharing stuff about KinTwinning. Sure, it’s not moderated or anything so it can be a bit like the Wild West, and there are some mad theories on there, but if you can dig through all the shit there’s usually something useful. Why don’t we all look, and then we can share links to any useful stuff we find? Might as well have your number if we’re DNA-markered to be together for all eternity, and all that.’

‘Of course,’ I said. Maybe I had written off SoulBait too quickly, although I was yet to be convinced.

As I switched numbers with Milo it occurred to me that I had never given my number to another sixteen-year-old before, someone the same age as me. The only other saved numbers I had in my phone were the doctor, the dentist, school and Mam. Milo’s name nestled neatly below hers, another number I hardly ever called.

We sat in a row along the pavement, all quietly tapping away on our phones. I took the opportunity to check on Bari.

Bari popped his head out of his kennel as soon as I returned to the home screen. I put him on mute and made the motion for him to roll over so I could tickle his belly. Sorry for ignoring you, old friend. We’ll be back to one-on-one time before you know it.

Then, I tentatively opened the SoulBait home page. It loaded with a huge green banner across the top that read:

SOULBAIT: FOR SOULMATES, SOULDATES
AND SOULFAKES. THE LARGEST COMMUNITY‐LED
KINTWINNING ARCHIVE ON THE INTERNET.

That didn’t fill me with the most confidence, but I scrolled through anyway.

The first page was filled with conspiracy theories about Argo Duff. He took up enough digital column inches every week that he might as well run the world, and he sort of did with KinTwin Discoveries under his belt. I flicked past the first few stories:

ARGO DUFF GIVES GOVERNMENT ‘DUFF’
INFORMATION AS KINTWIN DISCOVERIES
WORKERS GET EXTRA TAX CUT.

WOMAN AND HER THREE SISTERS CLAIM
TO ALL BE ARGO DUFF’S KINTWIN – IS IT
POSSIBLE TO HAVE MORE THAN ONE?

ARGO DUFF’S POP LOVECHILD – WILL HE TAKE
A PATERNITY TEST? AND IS BABY IMMUNE
TO KINTWIN GENE AS MYSTICS PREDICT?

Each post was accompanied by a paparazzi shot of Argo Duff himself, usually walking into a restaurant or out in his car. The thing I found most creepy about him was even when it seemed like he was caught unaware, he was always looking at the camera. Same dead eyes, same smirk playing around his mouth. He was an enigma, all right.

Bri was right: if there was going to be anything about Madame Scissor outside the KinTwin Discoveries offices, it was going to be here. The home page listed popular chat threads and pages, each of which discussed things I had never even considered before.

One forum was for people looking to find their KinTwins by causing themselves physical injuries, which would create the pain response in their KinTwin. All parties were to maim themselves and then post what hurt at what time on the forum to try and narrow down who their KinTwin could be. But knowing that only strong pain caused the KinTwin response outside of death . . . I closed that page quickly.

The next page was tips and tricks to help men cope with KinTwin period pains. I’d never thought about that one before – I got cramps, but never anything too bad, and Milo wouldn’t feel them at full force anyway. Plus, it wasn’t like I could avoid them.

‘Oh yeah, I’ve seen that before,’Aisha said, looking over my shoulder. ‘Men can’t cope with anything. What about lesbian couples? Me and Bri basically have two periods a month, it sucks.’

‘I’m hoping if we spend enough time together we’ll sync up,’ Bri said, not looking up from her screen.

‘But maybe then we’d have, like, one monster period per month.’ Aisha shrugged and went back to her phone.

Milo looked up and caught my eye before quickly looking away. ‘Just so you know, it’s a bit uncomfortable a few days a month, but never anything I really notice. So, uh, I’m glad you’re . . . not in . . . that your cramps are . . . you know what I mean.’

He kept staring at the phone and the tips of his ears turned pink. Aisha laughed and winked at me before going back to scrolling, so I did the same. Milo had suffered enough.

The next post was labelled ‘KINTWIN SWINGERS PARTY’. I could guess what that one was about. There was also one labelled ‘POLYAMORY AND MY KINTWIN: HOW TO KEEP GOING IN A FORCED-MONOGAMOUS WORLD’.

Nothing connected to Madame Scissor, then.

I scrolled back to the top and found the search bar, typed in Madame Scissor, and hit enter.

‘Oh my god,’ I screamed and dropped my phone on to the pavement. Luckily, we were sat down and I had a life-proof hard cover on the case. Milo smirked, like he knew what I had seen without even looking.

‘Ah, you found the porn stuff, huh?’ Aisha asked without looking up from her phone. ‘I guess a name like Madame Scissor, especially an urban legend, was bound to make some disgusting old beggar happy. As the old proverb says: the sex industry will always provide.’

‘I don’t think that’s a real proverb,’ I said, dusting off my phone. Thank god it had been on silent. I don’t think I could have coped with the noise to match those videos.

Aisha shrugged. ‘Someone says it, it’s a proverb. Hey, put that on my gravestone, will ya, B?’

‘The actual proverb, or that crap you just made up about proverbs?’

Aisha thought for a moment. ‘Both, I think.’

I swiped as fast as I could past the videos that flooded my screen until I got to the text posts again.

‘There are thousands of results. How will we find anything in all this?’ I asked.

Milo peered at my screen. ‘Hey, you’re not searching right. You want to use quotes, like this, to get rid of anything that isn’t an exact match. And try searching with keywords, like “soulmate”, “bond”, “cut”, that kind of thing. That should help.’

I stared at the new search term Milo had tapped into my phone: ‘MADAME SCISSOR’ + SOUL + MATE + CUT’. I hit enter and the number of results dropped from the thousands down to just over a hundred.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He smiled and I felt the familiar vibration of my watch alerting me to my heart rate rising. I looked back at my phone. Obviously we needed computers just to function in everyday life, but I didn’t like to be reliant on them. I always assumed that when the world ended, computers would be the first to go, so I instead learnt the Dewey Decimal system and did most of my research out of books at the library.

Just as I was scanning the new results – without any pornography this time – Milo nudged me.

‘Jackpot. Listen to this post: “MADAME SCISSOR SPOTTED IN NIGHTCLUB”. It has over three hundred comments and a bunch of photographs too, but those are all blurry. The comments look spicy, though. I think some of these people actually saw her.’

‘Send me the link?’ Aisha asked.

Two seconds later, Milo shared the link to all three of us. It opened to the forum page, full of responses to the original post.

‘Look at this. The nightclub’s in the middle of town. We need to go ask if anyone actually saw her – doesn’t open until eight on Friday, though.’

‘Sounds like we’re going out. And I mean out out. Let’s do it,’ Aisha squealed, like she had just been invited to a party, not on a fact-finding mission to possibly save billions of lives. ‘There’s just one question. What’s everyone going to wear?’

6

When I got home, Mum and Dad were all over me like a rash. It was nice that they cared but at one point Mum said I shouldn’t go to school for the rest of the week and I had to remind her that firstly, I wasn’t even the person injured, Zoe was, and secondly, that I had a big footy fixture on Saturday and they wouldn’t let me play if I’ve just not turned up to school all week. Thirdly, we had a secret mission to carry out in a nightclub on Friday night, but I wasn’t telling her that one.

My sister Stella was grumpy because I didn’t have a cast she could sign. I did try to tell her it wasn’t me that got hit by a bus, it was my KinTwin, but I think probably six is a little young to really start explaining that dark shit to kids.

I flopped down on the sofa next to her. She was glued to her tablet, playing some soulmate card-matching game for kids. I turned up the TV so I could ignore Mum and Dad’s whispers from the other room. There was a piece running about Argo Duff, something to do with the anniversary of him registering the KinTwin Discoveries patent ten years ago.

‘I began KinTwin Discoveries with one goal: to unite people with the loves of their lives,’ he said. His beard was green, which meant the footage was quite old, as I knew he was clean-shaven these days.

‘And how did you manage to create this detection technology so quickly?’ asked the journalist with a shark’s grin. ‘It’s been barely six months since the first confirmed KinTwin-related death. It’s quite an achievement to roll out the Dearly Departed app next month.’

Argo Duff smiled back, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘This new discovery is a gift. We as human beings have evolved, and with this evolution comes great opportunity. Soon anyone will be able to match with their soulmate, and to keep each other from harm’s way. Until death do they truly part. There was nothing more worthy of pouring my investments into these last few months. Nothing.’

He winks at the camera. It popped into my head that I didn’t even know if Argo Duff had ever been married. Surely the inventor of the thing we used to detect the KinTwin gene would be matched up, right? But a quick internet search turned up nothing except his string of baby mamas and piss-poor break-ups in yet more overpriced restaurants. Weird.

The news switched over to the next story and Stella was still playing her game, so I sucked it up and headed back into the kitchen where Mum and Dad were.

They hadn’t chilled out at all since I left them. Mum was desperate to meet Zoe. I tried to laugh it off and push past it but man, she was persistent.

‘So should I buy a hat?’ Mum asked.

I rolled my eyes. ‘People don’t have to marry their KinTwins, Mum. Especially if they’re only sixteen. I’m just giving her some space, like.’

‘But think of the benefits! You’ll get a twenty-five per cent tax cut, ten grand towards your wedding, discounted private school fees for your kids . . . these things just weren’t set up yet when we first sent you to school, Milo, you don’t know you’re born.’

‘With parents like you, how can I forget,’ I muttered.

‘What’s her last name? I’ll look her up on socials,’ Dad said.

‘Oh, great idea. I want to see what my future grandchildren might look like,’ Mum said, pulling out her phone.

I’d already looked for Zoe on socials, to see if there might be something we had in common. Apparently, we were biologically destined. It would be nice if we had something else connecting us, too. But she was a ghost online. Even Bri couldn’t find anything on her.

‘Well, she doesn’t have social media and I’m gonna give the poor sod her privacy and not give you her last name until you’ve, like, calmed down a bit. OK?’ I said.

‘All right, OK. I know you think you’re a little young to KinTwin and settle down but if this had been around when your dad and I were your age, it just would have been so magical. And we want that for you, Milo,’ Mum said.

‘I know. I’m . . . I’ll get excited, eventually. It’s just a lot to take in right now. I just need some time to process,’ I said. Honestly, I had no idea what they’d say if they knew the truth. That my KinTwin didn’t want anything to do with me.

That shut them up for a bit, but Mum couldn’t stop smiling at me over dinner. It was actually quite weird.

So the next day, for once in my life, I left early for school. I bolted from the house before Mum and Dad got up for work, desperate to avoid another KinTwin conversation. Which was bonkers, really, because I’d waited all my life to have these sorts of chats and then boom – I’m paired with Zoe. Forever. Till death do we part.

Fan-flaming-tastic.

Aisha picked me up outside my house earlier than normal so I could get away. She had an electric three-door, so Bri had to hop out of the passenger seat and I slid into the back. I was tall enough that it was more comfortable to sit at an angle than concertina myself behind Bri’s seat once she was back in.

Cars were a bit of a touchy subject, what with how risky it could be to drive. But I loved driving, the thrill of the wind rushing through my fingers as I cruised down the dual carriageway to the quarry, but maybe Zoe didn’t. Maybe we could carpool to school, once she stopped being repulsed at the sight of me.

‘Wow, you’ve got a face like a slapped arse,’ Aisha said, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror as we set off.

‘What? I’m fine,’ I said, looking out the window to avoid her.

‘Nah, you definitely have a cob on,’ Bri said.

‘Is your insta-romance not everything you thought it would be?’ Aisha made kissy faces at me in the mirror and I rolled my eyes.

‘Let’s be real, A. Zoe hates my guts. You saw the way she looked at me,’ I sighed.

‘Well, me and Aisha didn’t immediately get on like a house on fire,’ Bri said. ‘Remember, Aish, when you told me you were a United supporter?’

‘That’s true. That was nearly a deal-breaker,’ Aisha laughed. ‘But then you bought me that pack of wine gums from the vending machine because I said I hated the jelly pudding thing they gave us, and the rest was history.’

‘I think this might take more than a pack of wine gums, mate,’ I said.

‘Two packs of wine gums?’ Aisha suggested.

‘Stop trying to make me laugh. I’m trying to wallow in being mardy,’ I said, but I couldn’t help smiling.

‘Look, it can still take some time to open up to each other,’ Bri said. ‘Give yourself a break.’

The way things were going, a century of time wouldn’t be enough to melt Ice Queen Zoe.

We got to school at the normal time despite setting off early, because of the diversions around the plane crash site. The second we stepped into the entrance, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I might see Zoe today. Well, if she was well enough I guess, but the hospital gave her a clean bill of health and she didn’t strike me as a skiver. I kept my sights on the floor as we rushed up the steps and into the main hallway.

‘Hiya, Milo,’ a voice came at me, so I had to look up.

It was Emma, a nice girl in the year below who’d slid into my DMs after Eden went public with her new KinTwin. She was smiling at me, cheeks flushed. Aisha and Bri were pretending to gag just behind her so she couldn’t see. I narrowed my eyes at them.

‘I was really sorry to hear about you and Eden. You were a really cute couple,’ Emma said.

I met her eyes and she blushed even harder. It hadn’t actually occurred to me until now that no one else knew I’d been KinTwinned yesterday. With everyone clueless, I could just put Emma right, tell her now that I was off the market – grim – before this convo got any more awkward, but I hesitated. Zoe probably didn’t want anyone to know, at least not yet. She didn’t even have socials to announce it on.

‘Yeah, cheers Emma. But you know, dead happy for Eden and all that,’ I said.

Aisha raised an eyebrow at me from over Emma’s shoulder.

‘I’m sure you’ll get matched soon,’ Emma said. She grabbed at the straps of her backpack until her knuckles turned white. ‘But in the meantime, if you ever wanted to, you know, hang out or whatever, I’m around.’

I smiled and hoped it looked more believable than it felt. Emma was stunning, tall and tanned with waist-length hair. But even if I were in the headspace for dating, I really couldn’t any more. I knew who my KinTwin was, so what was the point? It wasn’t like I could choose another one.

‘That’s really nice, Emma, thank you. And you’re lovely, it’s just . . . I’m not quite ready to be seeing someone else, you know?’ I said.

Emma nodded so fast I thought her head was about to fall off. ‘Of course, yeah. Well, you follow me online so . . . you know where I am.’

She ran off before I could reply.

‘I see the resident heartbreaker is back on campus,’ Bri said, and Aisha cackled.

‘The irony, Bri, considering I’ve been dumped more times than I can count this term,’ I muttered.

Aisha slid her arm through mine. ‘Cheer up. We’ve got geography first, but then we’ve got a double free. I’ll take you to the quarry if you’re nice to me.’

We weren’t supposed to leave school during frees, but as long as we were back on time, no one noticed. Plus, I probably had a free pass today if they rang my mum and dad. I needed to feel that rush of wind as I jumped into the air, the adrenaline lighting up my veins as I fell into the water, just between the rocks. That would clear my head like nothing else could.

But first, registration. Me and Aisha were in the same form but Bri wasn’t so we broke off and headed to our classrooms. It was dead today, only half the desks filled. Could be that people were late because of the roads being closed, but I had a heavy feeling in my stomach that wasn’t it. The death toll for yesterday was sitting at fifty-eight, according to the news last night. I’m not saying the other kids got DD’d, but maybe their parents or close relatives did. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

It was too grim to think about, so I slid into my desk and let Aisha put on her playlist, one of her headphones in my ear, the other in hers. While she was finishing some late homework I got out my phone.

Feeling more than a bit thick, I opened my browser and typed in ZOE QUINN + LUFIAN BRIDGE into the search bar. Not much came back considering it wasn’t the most unusual name, and the first result was from our school web page.

I clicked the link. It opened on the landing page for school awards. I scrolled down, scanning for Zoe’s name as a bunch of photos popped up on my screen. Near the bottom I found it, under a group photo of a bunch of kids standing out in the fields behind school. The caption read: GROW YOUR OWN! CLUB.

Underneath was a list of names, including Zoe’s. Weird. Zoe grew her own veg? The only reason I would even attempt to grow my own stuff is if there was a zombie apocalypse that shut down the supermarket. And even then, I’d probably wait until we ran out of tinned spaghetti hoops.

Wait. I’m being dumb. She told us about her Bug-Out Bag. Zoe really was waiting for a zombie apocalypse. Once again, I just totally missed the bigger picture. Of course she knew how to grow her own food. Meanwhile, I killed the cactus Aisha brought me back from her holiday to Egypt last year.

Another thing that just made us seem like the two most different people in the world.

I zoomed in on the photo and found Zoe. She was stood a little to the left of the group, like she was photo-bombing or something. She was holding a massive bunch of carrots though, so she was supposed to be there.

I zoomed in a bit more on her face. She had the same choppy haircut that left wisps of hair around her huge blue eyes. Some of the other girls were turned slightly to the left, hands on hips, angling their chins down. But not Zoe. She just stared right down the lens, not smiling, but not frowning either. She actually looked sort of proud of herself.

Woah, I could look at those eyes all day. They reminded me of the water at the quarry, right before a jump. The longer I looked, the more I felt like I was falling right into them.

‘Whatcha looking at?’ Aisha asked, pulling out my headphone and straining to look at my screen.

I locked the phone and put it face down on the table so fast I trapped my fingers between the screen and the desk. ‘Porn. I was streaming hardcore porn in school.’

Aisha shrugged. ‘Very funny. Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll get it out of you later.’

Luckily, Miss Fairfield came into the classroom and started taking the register. In all, only sixteen out of thirty of us had turned up. Miss Fairfield didn’t make any comment on it.

Next up, just as Aish said, we had geography, which was in a building on the other side of the playing fields. We never had much time to get there so if we wanted to avoid a detention during our free, which would totally scupper our quarry plans, we had to move fast. The bell rang and I jumped up and swerved out of the classroom door, the first one out into the corridor. I wasn’t looking, though, ’cause I was in a rush, so I ran headlong into someone pretty much immediately.

We bounced off each other and while I just took a step back into Aisha, stepping on her toes, the other person fell fully flat on their arse, bags and papers going everywhere. The corridor was pretty full and a few people nearby burst out laughing.

I looked down and my mouth hung open. I didn’t say sorry, like I was going to. I didn’t help her up. Because, you guessed it, Zoe was sprawled out in front of me, her stuff all over the hall.

Well, at least she didn’t hurt anything but her pride, because I didn’t feel a thing.

‘Watch where you’re going, dickhead. You nearly took out our best shot at getting to the semi-finals,’ Rob, a boy on the football team with me, shouted out across the corridor.

‘Milo, can you please— Zoe, I’m so sorry. My friend is a total arsehole. Let me help you up.’

Aisha stepped around me and gave me a death stare before bending down to stack Zoe’s papers. Zoe hadn’t even looked up at me, she was so busy stuffing everything back into her bag. She had the Bug-Out Bag from yesterday but that was secure and nothing had fallen out.

I wanted a sinkhole to open under my feet and swallow me whole. It was bad enough I hadn’t known her name, now I was practically assaulting her. I am the worst KinTwin ever.

I finally got my brain in gear. ‘Jesus, Zoe, I didn’t see you. What can I do?’ I said, bending down to grab at paper that Aisha had already picked up.

‘Nothing. You can’t do anything. Give me those,’ Zoe snapped, yanking the papers out of Aisha’s hands.

‘OK. Sorry, mate. Here you go.’ Aisha handed Zoe the lunchbox that had also scattered across the floor.

Zoe took it, shoved it in her bag, and looked at me, those big blue eyes dark like a thunderstorm. ‘You know what, there is something you can do for me. Watch where you’re going, stop hurting yourself, and stay alive. Just be careful.’ She pushed past us both and headed into the classroom we’d just left.

‘Oooooh,’ a group of girls who saw the whole thing sang in unison, and then they started giggling.

‘Yeah, yeah. Very funny. Let’s bloody well move on now, all right?’ I said. Slowly, people started moving and Aisha and I headed out on to the school grounds to the mobile classrooms.

‘All right, I take back my previous statement,’Aisha said as we walked. ‘I don’t think wine gums are gonna cut it. Not even two packs. That girl hates your guts, mate.’

‘Yep, got that, ta very much,’ I hissed.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Zoe had said as we headed over the parched grass to geography. She’d asked me to be careful, not hurt myself. I’d always been clumsy. As a kid I was always falling out of trees or taking tumbles off my bike. My parents said it was because I was adventurous, not afraid of anything. I always thought it was a good thing.

Then the KinTwin thing happened. We were, what? Six or seven years old? I’d just got my BMX and I would take it out every weekend. I saw on the news about the thing where if your KinTwin suffered a really bad injury, you’d feel it, but maybe only at 25 per cent of the pain. I never felt any twinges, any sudden or weird shocks of pain. But I kept going out on my bike. I must have broken a bone at least once a year for the whole of my teens.

Last year I broke both arms when I came off my bike at the track and even though they were only hairline fractures, they killed. Worst pain I had ever felt. I remember Dad ended up in one of the stupid pile-ups caused by DDing a couple of years ago and he got really bad whiplash from being shunted in the car. I was home with Mum at the time and she deffo felt it, but it wasn’t excruciating. She didn’t cry out or anything, but it was enough to make her drop her favourite mug on the kitchen floor. She knew something was wrong then and there, and she called Dad straight after.

It’s not that it never occurred to me that my KinTwin felt the same pain I did. Obviously I knew that. But because it was never happening to me, because my KinTwin was super careful, I didn’t think about how horrible it was to make someone feel pain, no matter how little, through no fault of their own. And seeing Zoe’s face, it told me everything. She wasn’t just pissed off at me. She was frightened of me, of how reckless I could be. I’d been causing her pain for years, and it was even worse now she knew who I was.

Shit. I’d hate me, too.

‘Hey, Aisha?’ I said. We reached the geography classroom but I held her back. I wasn’t worried about being late any more. ‘Listen, I don’t fancy the quarry any more. Can we just stay here?’

Aisha’s forehead creased up with worry, but she didn’t question me. ‘Sure, M. Anything you want.’

Adrenaline junkies, that’s what Aisha’s hockey friends called us. And it was true, I loved the rush. I knew it was dangerous, and Mum would never let me go if she knew what I was doing. The way we jumped wasn’t safe. There were proper ways of doing it that we never bothered with, but I had to be better now. Because it wasn’t just me I was thinking about any more.

Frustration tickled the backs of my eyeballs. It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t born into this stupid KinTwin shit. I grew up snowboarding on holiday, before they banned all the resorts, and riding BMX and climbing trees. In fact, this whole KinTwin thing seemed like a good idea before I found out who Zoe was, what with my parents and Aisha and the rest of Planet Earth acting so bloody pleased with themselves. But now this thing had real-life consequences. I wanted to be free to live my life, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody. It was just my way of feeling in control in a world of predetermined living . . . or as Zoe saw it, pre-determined dying.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had to pray this wasn’t forever, that one day I’d be able to cliff dive with my friends again. Maybe there would be a way to persuade Zoe that I could be trusted, like Aisha had done with Bri. I couldn’t exactly be mad at her for being worried. Thinking about how my actions affected other people was just something I’d have to get used to.

So long, reckless behaviour.

Hello, training and proper safety equipment.

Goodbye, fun.

7

As if it wasn’t mortifying enough that my KinTwin had no sense of self-preservation, now he was actively trying to kill me.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t always like this, either. Me and Mam didn’t always have the special shelves full of dried food and Bug-Out Bags and trips to the wholesaler at weekends. We were normal once, before the world started falling apart. Before Dad DD’d.

Although I couldn’t just blame KinTwinning for that.

But we weren’t normal any more, which is why when I got home yesterday I had to beg her to let me come in to school at all today. Mam had never trusted doctors, so she did her own concussion check.

‘And you say they did a full MRI?’ Mam had asked, pulling her finger from side to side in front of my face.

‘That’s what it said in my discharge notes, Mam,’ I said, following her fingers with my eyes.

I told Mam that in the chaos on the way home from the hospital, I lost the discharge notes. That was because the notes also mentioned the results of my KinTwin test, and I just didn’t want to deal with that right now. Mam didn’t even know who her KinTwin was, and with Dad and everything that happened . . . I would tell her. Eventually.

‘Well, you don’t seem to have a lasting head injury. I can’t believe the doorway protected you so well. If I believed in them, I’d say it was a flaming miracle,’ Mam said. She put down her finger and held me by the shoulders. ‘And you really don’t mind that I didn’t come to see you in hospital? I could see where you were the whole time, and your watch let me know you were OK.’

I took a deep breath. Yes, it did hurt that Mam didn’t come to see me in hospital. Milo said his parents were desperate to come and he had to convince them of the chaos to keep them away. But I also knew it wasn’t Mam’s fault. She was right to be afraid to go outside – planes literally fall out of the sky now – and what use would it do for us both to be out when we didn’t need to be? Plus, like she said, I was fine. Bruised, but somehow, fine.

‘’Course, Mam. Totally get it,’ I said. She pulled me into a hug. ‘Now stop being so soft and let me get some sleep before school tomorrow. I don’t want to miss any more, I’ll already be behind from missing today.’

I was shattered when I finally fell into bed but I hadn’t checked in with Bari for ages, so I opened my phone and tapped on the door of his kennel.

He popped out right away, tail wagging, and licked the screen.

‘Hey, boy. Sorry it’s a bit late,’ I said, rubbing his digital belly.

‘That is quite all right, Mistress Zoe. Data from your smartwatch tells me you were involved in a crash or collision today. Are you all right?’ Bari tipped his head in concern.

‘Oh yeah, right as rain now. Nearly DD’d myself but you gave me a heads-up, and that probably saved my life. Gave me time to get into a shop porch and they think that was enough to stop the runaway bus. So . . . ta very much, Bari.’

‘You are quite welcome, Mistress Zoe. I am so glad you are all right,’ Bari said.

I sighed. He sounded more excited to hear from me than Mam had, and he was an app on my phone.

I fed Bari some treats that cost me 99p, but I was too tired to care, then I fell asleep. In fact, I slept so long I missed my alarm and ended up rushing out of the house, which was a blessing, because I had underestimated how scary the outside would be after everything that had happened.

I was halfway down the hill when I saw the ROAD CLOSED sign and reality hit me. Behind the barrier, the street was a mess. Cars concertinaed into each other like toys made from cheap plastic, and there were still loads of emergency workers checking the wreckage. People in overalls bustled around a big white tent. I could even see the bus that nearly hit me, still wedged into the front of the derelict newsagents. The sign for the shop hung down at an angle and rested on the top of the bus.

I knew I was lucky to be alive, but I don’t think I realized how lucky until right then.

I turned away from the barrier, where there was a policeman shouting something at me, ran into the nearby bushes of a front garden, and threw up my rushed breakfast of a cereal bar and water.

‘You all right, love?’ the policeman shouted.

‘Oh yeah, brilliant, me,’ I muttered. I wiped my mouth and looked up at the house of the garden that I had just ruined the flowerbeds of and to my own sheer relief, the windows were boarded up. Another empty shell, so at least I didn’t have to add vandalism to my breaking and entering rap sheet from yesterday.

‘I’m fine. Dodgy kebab last night,’ I shouted back to the police officer. But he was too busy to actually care what I was doing. He nodded once and jogged back across the road.

I closed my eyes. Breathe. Don’t panic. Panic caused stress and stress released cortisol and cortisol, especially if followed up with adrenaline, made you make bad decisions. I needed to keep my head straight. It was so weird that yesterday, during a literal plane crash, I handled things, but today? Today a white tent and a broken sign had sent me barmy.

I opened up my phone and asked Bari to pull up my breathing exercises app, which he did in two flicks of his tail. I concentrated for a full minute on just getting air in and out of my lungs. I was still stood in the front garden but no one was looking at me. The only people hanging around were rubberneckers who had come down for a gawp at what had happened yesterday.

After the minute, my heart rate went back to normal, signalled by a haptic tap of feedback on my wrist. Hopefully Mam hadn’t seen that my pulse had spiked, but also she’d be able to see it had come down again. If she didn’t come out to the hospital, she wasn’t about to run down the hill just because my heart rate was a little high for a minute.

No, that wasn’t fair. Mam had her reasons.

I popped my headphones in and set off on the long route to school, the one that took me behind the road closure and through the housing estate opposite. To my right and rising up into the sky, the black plume of smoke from where the plane had come down was still there, but it was a lot thinner than yesterday. At the end of the day, this sort of thing was what the emergency services were used to. Just because it was the closest brush with death I had had, didn’t make me special in a post-KinTwin world.

The thought of death sent my heart rate spiralling again, so I asked Bari to put on a calming podcast and tried not to think about it. If I thought about things in the past, I wasn’t focused on what was in front of me. And that could be dangerous.

‘Mistress Zoe? Apologies for interrupting your podcast, but I can detect that you are still zero point three kilometres from school and the bell for your first lesson rang one minute ago. Were you aware that you are late?’

I checked my watch and Bari was right: 9.01. I’d thought I might be a few minutes late but not so late I’d miss half the first lesson. I broke into a slow jog, turning through the gates to the fields that ran behind our school. I needed to be there. I needed a distraction. I needed to learn and feel useful, and not keep chucking my guts up.

I took the steps into school two at a time and found the corridor behind the main entrance packed with people. I’d missed registration, but I wouldn’t be the only one what with the road closure. I just had to make it to biology. Everything would be fine.

I pulled both straps of my bag and my Bug-Out kit on to my back and threaded through the crowd. It was like wading through waves as the tide was coming in, but I was nearly there. I wanted to get to biology early so I could sit at the back and check on Bari if I needed to without Mr Byers noticing. The door was right there, I just had to pull it open and I was in.

But then it opened by itself, and a tall boy with dark hair was standing in my way. I felt a shoulder bounce off my bruised chest, and I went flying.

And that was how I ended up on the floor, with everyone laughing at me, and my KinTwin standing over me, not moving, as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Aisha tried to help, but I knew I was blushing. I didn’t care that everyone saw me fall – they already thought I was weird or, better yet, didn’t even know who I was. But seeing Milo standing there, with that sharp jawline and relaxed bit of hair over his eyes, hands in his pockets, pretending he didn’t know how great he looked? It was a lot to deal with.

I never actually expected to find my KinTwin attractive. In fact, I’d always sort of assumed that we would just reach an agreement to be careful and not really speak to each other. I was so obsessed with the Dearly Departed part of KinTwins, that I’d forgotten all about the soulmate part. Not everyone got together with their soulmate, but the success rate of marriages between KinTwins was insanely high, around 98 per cent according to some studies.

So yeah, there was something in it. And yes, Milo Spencer had a smile that made my heart race and my stomach feel like there were a thousand butterflies in there. And yes, I probably had fancied him forever, but he’d never even noticed me, so it was just a silly crush. A completely safe, never-going-to-mean-anything flight of fancy.

Until yesterday.

Not that he would ever look at me like that. Plus, there was the cliff diving and the BMX tricks and I’m sure I even heard someone on the football team once talk about jumping off the roof of the mobile classrooms. Support base jumping, they’d called it, because they didn’t use a parachute.

I had spent all my life preparing for an apocalypse, and here it was in the shape of Milo flaming Spencer. The one danger I never saw coming. He would be the death of me if we didn’t find this Madame Scissor. That much I was sure of.

But that could wait until Friday. The club wasn’t open during the week anyway and now we had school, so I grabbed my stuff, shouted something at Milo that I barely even remember, and finally made it into the biology classroom.

It turned out I didn’t need to rush because the class was half empty. Loads of people hadn’t come in after what happened yesterday, and I didn’t want to think about why that was. I pulled my hat down over the small cut near my hairline and hoped it wasn’t obvious I’d been there. Don’t think about it. Just ignore it.

I couldn’t escape everything, though. Mr Byers was talking us through our coursework.

‘Remind me, who here has already been KinTwinned?’ he asked.

A few hands went up around the room. I was not one of them, obviously. No one needed to know about that. One of the hands belonged to Eden, a pretty girl with ramrod-straight hair and a perfectly white smile. I think I heard a rumour she was going out with Milo, but obviously that wasn’t who her KinTwin was.

While Mr Byers congratulated the people with their hands up like they had just done something impressive, as opposed to doing absolutely nothing except probably cause themselves an injury to be tested in the first place, I flicked open my phone and fed Bari a treat.

Why couldn’t I be KinTwinned to you, Bari, huh? I thought. I’d get on better with a dog any day of the week over a human. Especially a robotic one that couldn’t get hurt.

‘So, who can remind me of the reaction that happens when you are physically near your KinTwin, on a cellular level?’ Mr Byers wrote the question on the board and circled it.

‘I know, sir,’ Eden said, her hand up. ‘So apparently, like, your actual cells will react in the same way as your KinTwin however far away you are from them, such as when you experience pain and that. But when you are near your KinTwin, that’s when you can actually see the cells react in, like, real time.’

‘That’s right, Eden.’ Mr Byers jotted some notes on the board. ‘When samples of blood taken from a set of KinTwins were studied in close proximity to each other, it was found that both would react to stimuli even if only one sample was exposed. This explains the feeling of pain we sometimes feel when our KinTwin gets themselves into bother, though luckily we only feel a small percentage of that feeling.’

‘Sir, is it true that when they were studying the blood and that, the blood cells would also run together?’ asked Josh, a lad on the front row. ‘It’s just my mum got my dad this well-cheesy card with, like, the blood cells hugging, and he said that was true. He works at KinTwin Discoveries, too, sir.’

‘Not quite the way I would put it, but your dad would and does indeed know best. Let me show you.’

Mr Byers tapped on the smart board to bring up a browser and navigated to a science video. It was a split screen of two blood samples, filmed under a microscope so the cells were visible. A timer appeared at the top and, over the course of a minute or so, the cells on the left of the screen shifted right, and the cells on the right shifted left, until they were next to each other, just separated by a single pane of plexiglass.

‘As you can see here, the mutation does mean that, left to their own devices, the blood of KinTwins can almost sense each other, and therefore seek each other out. It’s also why they only release the hormone we need to test for KinTwins when they are in close proximity to each other, such as in the same room. Now, I’d like you to turn to page fifty-three of your textbooks and fill in the answers to the questions on KinTwin bonding theories. Remember, even scientists don’t fully understand KinTwinning yet, so it’s our job as the scientists of tomorrow to try and theorize the best way forward.’

The class groaned, but everyone settled down.

Page 53 of the textbook told me everything I had already known about the KinTwin mutation: no one knew where it had come from, and no one fully understood what it did. The top of the theory page had a bullet-point list of everything we did know for sure, and it was scarily short:

• The KinTwin mutation links you to your soulmate. Nearly 100% of those linked end up romantically involved, if they aren’t already, with their KinTwin.

• KinTwins share pain, including unconsciousness caused by injury, to some extent.

• When one KinTwin dies, they both die. There is no known cure for this. This is commonly known as being Dearly Departed.

My eyes hung on the words ‘Dearly Departed’ until my vision blurred.

I couldn’t be stuck with Milo forever. Even without all the ways he was constantly being a muppet, KinTwinning just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t built to be sociable; I was built for staying alive. I just had to keep my head down, avoid these mushy feelings that reared their ugly head whenever I was around Milo, and make it through to Friday. Hopefully this Madame Scissor would be real, and all our problems would be over. Maybe even the whole world’s biggest problem would be over, if it was true.

And if it wasn’t?

No. That was added to the list of ‘Things I didn’t want to think about or my blood pressure really would finish me off’. And that list was getting longer by the hour.

Everything was fine before I met Milo Spencer. I was going to make it fine again, and that was a promise.

8

Sometimes I stop and question things, like why I’m letting Aisha paint my face with neon make-up at 7 p.m. on a Friday just before we try to sneak into a club, underage, to solve a mystery that could possibly save the world.

Other times, I just go with the flow and let it happen. This was one of those times.

The person I actually felt most sorry for was Zoe. She was flinching every time Bri came near her face with the rave paint, like she was dabbing on poison or something.

‘Hold still. You don’t look like the fake ID photo as it is. A bit more paint and it’ll be hard to tell who is under there,’ Bri said.

Zoe sighed and sank down in her chair. ‘Fine. But I want to check the hypoallergenic properties of this paint like you promised before we started.’

‘Of course,’ Bri said. I watched as she kicked a can of cheap paint that was anything but hypoallergenic under my bed.

I tried not to laugh. ‘All right, I’m going to go get us some snacks. Be right back,’ I said, pushing Aisha off me despite her protests.

I felt kind of bad leaving Zoe in the lion’s den, but sometimes you need a trial by fire. And it wouldn’t be for long.

I headed down to the kitchen and searched through the fridge. I reached for the cheese at the back, winced a little and put my hand to my collarbone. Still sore even after a couple of days, and it was only a quarter as bad for me as it was for Zoe. I guessed Zoe must have felt a real twinge, if it was strong enough for me to feel. That would have well annoyed Bri, if she flinched during her makeover.

I grabbed a handful of olives and shoved them in my mouth. When I was nervous, I got hungry, and I had no idea what to expect tonight. When I shut the fridge door, a face was waiting behind it that scared the bejeezus out of me.

‘Christ, Zoe. You scared me,’ I said. It actually took me a second to realize it was her. Her face paint was complete and she looked, like, totally different. Her eyes were rimmed with green glitter that made them pop. Even the rave paint was working on her. Aisha had forced her to wear a sequinned green jumpsuit after Zoe had flat out vetoed any skirts for ‘survival reasons’, and hey, survivalist club chic worked on her.

‘Wow. You look nice,’ I said.

I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand. You look nice? I sounded like my dad.

Zoe blinked at me and for a second I thought she was gonna smile before she looked down at the kitchen island. ‘If you say so. I only came down because Aisha told me you have a dog. Let’s say I’m feeling a little out of my comfort zone and dogs . . . soothe me.’

‘You have a dog too?’ I asked.

‘Sort of,’ she replied.

I raised an eyebrow. Zoe sighed and pulled her phone out of her jumpsuit pocket.

‘This is Bari,’ she said, sliding the phone across the island.

On the phone, a Bernese mountain dog leant forward and licked the screen.

‘You chose a dog avatar for your smartphone personal assistant?’ I asked her. ‘Man. I just use the boring bloke that comes with the phone. I didn’t even know they did animals.’

I moved my finger across the screen and tickled Bari’s tummy. He rolled over, tongue lolling out of his computer-generated mouth. Sure, it was a little weird, but was it any weirder than what I did, speaking out loud to a disembodied voice to ask what the footy scores were? At least this little guy seemed pleased to see me.

‘So, Aisha told you Bernie is a Bernese mountain dog too? I assume that’s why you changed Bari before showing me, right?’ I looked up and for once, Zoe looked lost for words.

‘Bernie, your dog, is a Bernese mountain dog?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t know. I only have that avatar for Bari – I chose it two years ago.’

‘We picked up Bernie from the shelter two years ago. Woah. Spooky. Maybe we had more in common than we thought.’ I felt awkward suddenly, but powered through. ‘Uh . . . yeah. Bernie’s not the most original name, I know, but my sister Stella picked it and she was only four at the time, so, you know . . .’ I trailed off and walked across the kitchen, pausing to check if Zoe was following me. We went across the main hallway to the second sitting room at the front of the house. We never went in there, so Bernie had sort of co-opted it as her space. She didn’t even bother to get off the sofa any more when we came in the door.

‘Your parents seem nice. Are they KinTwinned?’ Zoe asked. She pointed to the wall of photo frames and at my parents’ wedding picture, all smiles and glossy, perfect hair.

‘Um, yeah. They’ve been together since basically high school, so they were thrilled when the KinTwin thing happened and they were, like, confirmed soulmates. Plus they got some of the government benefits even though they were already together. A cash payout and stuff.’

‘Wow. So they’ve loved each other for a long time,’ Zoe said.

‘Well, I guess so. But loads of married couples KinTwinned right away, didn’t they? They’re not unusual or anything,’ I said.

Zoe shrugged. ‘Not everyone is as lucky as they are,’ she said. ‘They chose each other and they know their choice was right. Must be pretty nice to know your choices are the right ones.’

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but she interrupted me.

‘You have a big house,’ Zoe said, her voice echoing off the double-height ceiling of the hallway. ‘Are you rich?’

I paused at the entrance to Bernie’s living room. ‘You really get straight to the point, don’t you?’

Zoe shrugged. ‘I enjoy conciseness of language. I don’t see the point in communication if you’re going to dance around the point.’

‘So I guess you’re not much of one for nuanced conversation. Or just, like, trying to ask something nicely, so the other person doesn’t get too offended?’ I asked her.

Zoe thought for a few seconds. ‘Sorry. I can see that what I asked could be construed as rude. Not that I think it’s rude to ask about money from inside someone’s mansion. But I understand why someone might think that.’

I smiled. She made a good point, to be honest. Why was asking about money such a bad thing? Maybe if we talked more about how we felt and spent less time on trying to hide behind social niceties, we’d get to say a lot more to each other.

‘Apology accepted. And to be honest, you’re right. Yeah, I guess we’re kinda rich. My parents don’t like talking about money, though – but who does?’ I pushed open the door to the living room. ‘Now, do you want to meet Bernie?’

Bernie must have heard us talking outside the door because she pushed her nose through the gap as soon as I opened it and forced her way out into the hall. And believe me, keeping a door shut on a determined Bernese mountain dog is not the thing to do.

Bernie sniffed my hand but as soon as she saw Zoe, she became target practice. Bernie ran full pelt and nearly knocked Zoe off her feet. She never went up to strangers when we went on walks, and barked her head off every day at the postman. But this was like . . . I dunno, like she already knew Zoe.

Zoe went into full dog-patting mode, sitting on the floor and everything. And then, she smiled. Not the sarcastic half-smile she’d given me sometimes, but a proper, fifty-watt grin. I realized I didn’t even think I’d seen her teeth before that. We’d said hello in classes at school the last couple of days, but nothing more than that after the plane-crash day. This was like looking at a new person. There was something about the way she scrunched up her nose as Bernie tried to lick it. It made me want to smile, too.

‘All right, losers. Let’s roll,’ Aisha shouted from the landing that overlooked the hall. Zoe jumped like someone that had been caught shoplifting, and Bernie sloped back off to her living room.

‘Did I . . . interrupt anything?’ Aisha asked when nobody moved.

Bri smirked over her shoulder and my cheeks felt like they were on fire. Which was dumb, because nothing was even happening. So. Yeah.

‘Just get down here. I’ll call a taxi,’ I muttered, pulling out my phone.

We got to the club just after opening so there was no queue and it was still pretty quiet. Bri was worried that that would mean the bouncer would check our IDs more closely, but in all honesty he was half asleep so we waltzed right in. Didn’t stop Aisha complaining about Zoe insisting on bring a Bug-Out Bag despite, and I quote, ‘it not going with her outfit at all’.

Inside it was almost pitch dark except for the neon lights placed around the bar and the DJ booth. There were already a few people nodding their heads on the dance floor, and the bartender was throwing bottles like cocktail waiters do in films.

‘Where should we start?’ I shouted to Aisha over the pounding music.

‘I think we ask at the bar. Be rude not to put some money behind it while we’re here.’ She grinned, laced her fingers with Bri’s, and headed for the bar. I nodded to Zoe to check she’d heard the plan before we followed them.

Aisha shouted something to the bartender and he lined up eight shot glasses before pouring a clear liquid into each one. He said something else we couldn’t hear over the music; Aisha laughed, then asked something else. I caught Bri’s eye and she just shook her head and laughed. Yeah, if Aisha had a superpower, it was putting people at ease. I turned to check on Zoe and she was looking around, holding her arms like it was cold despite it being a million degrees inside.

‘Hey, wanna dance?’ I shouted over the beat.

‘Literally would rather do anything else,’ Zoe replied.

I grinned. ‘Yeah, don’t know what else I expected, really.’

Was it just me, or had Zoe just . . . blushed? Nah, it was too dark and like an oven in here. No way to tell.

Aisha had finished talking to the bartender and was on her way over with a tray full of shots, which she settled on to our end of the bar.

‘OK, so here’s the tea,’ Aisha said, handing Zoe a shot from the tray on the bar.

‘This is not tea,’ Zoe said. She pushed the shot away.

I smirked. ‘She’s got you there, Aisha.’

‘No, Zoe, obviously these are premium vodka. The tea is what I got from Mr Cocktail over there.’

When Zoe still looked blank, Aisha downed her shot and started talking.

‘OK. So apparently, a lot of people have been asking about Madame Scissor. I said, bit of a coincidence that she lives here, but that’s exactly it: the bartender says he has a buddy in London who runs a bar and gets the exact same questions. Don’t you see? Madame Scissor is code. This is like, a network or something. Not just one lady with a rad nickname.’

‘If there are multiple people involved, that could mean we’re on to something. Did the bartender say when she comes in?’ Zoe shouted over the music.

Aisha grinned. ‘That’s the best bit. She’s due here in like an hour, so he told me to sit tight. Even gave us these shots on the house.’ She downed another one as if to make a point.

‘I mean, that’s very generous, but free shots? And he didn’t even ID you? It’s a bit . . . I dunno, does that seem off to anyone else?’ I said.

‘You’ve clearly never been a fit girl ordering drinks in a half-empty bar before. Chill, it’s totally fine,’ Bri said.

I exchanged a look with Zoe. Her eyebrows were knitted into a frown.

‘All right. I say we stay an hour, but keep a clear head. Did you hear me?’ I spoke the last part louder as Bri took one of the shots.

‘Jeez, grandad. Keep your hair on. It’s a club, it’s Friday night, we’re young and free. Let’s dance and this hour of waiting will be up in no time.’

Aisha grabbed Zoe’s wrist and pulled her out on to the dance floor. She looked over her shoulder at me and I couldn’t not laugh. She looked like someone was making her jump off a cliff. Which, to be fair, would be our usual activity of choice, so she was getting off easy.

Aisha pushed her way to the middle of the dance floor with Zoe in hand and Bri and me trailing behind. It wasn’t as full as it would be later, so we weren’t pressed into the crowd, but there were still a fair few people already dancing. Aisha let go of Zoe once she was happy with the space and looped her arms around Bri’s waist.

We were nearer the speakers and it was even harder to hear myself think, let alone talk to Zoe. She leant into my ear.

‘If you think we’re dancing like that, you’re dead wrong,’ she said. Her breath tickled and the hairs on my neck stood on end.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said. ‘Besides, I only throw shapes solo.’

I put one hand behind my head and stuck the other one out in front of me, then slowly slicked my outstretched hand to the left. ‘This baby is called the Sprinkler,’ I yelled over the music.

The corners of Zoe’s mouth twitched.

‘Come on. You know that I’m a funny dancer,’ I said. I switched up to my second-best move, putting both hands in front and fake-driving around Zoe in a circle. ‘You can’t hate on the Lawnmower.’

Zoe finally laughed, the same smile I had seen earlier, but when I smiled back she quickly shut it down. It was like she didn’t want anyone to see her happy.

‘These moves are very gardening focused. I’m more into farming than gardening,’ she yelled. She wrapped her arms around herself again.

‘Fair point, well made,’ I said, remembering the Grow Your Own! Club photo. I stuck my hands in my pockets and looked around the room for anything that would distract from that total crash and burn.

Something caught my eye. At the corner of the bar, a bloke dressed all in black was leaning over the counter and talking to the bartender. The bartender listened and then pointed to the dance floor. More accurately, he pointed right at us. Then the guy in black nodded and two more men in black appeared behind him. They were like clones. The first guy reached to his belt and I could see a glint of metal. I hadn’t exactly seen a lot of guns in real life, but I knew enough from movies and video games to recognize one.

I looked over my shoulder at Zoe and she had seen it too. She moved closer to me, her breath tickling the back of my neck again.

I reached out and caught Aisha’s arm. She was in full dance mode and looked mad, but one look at my face and she knew something was wrong. She grabbed Bri’s shoulders and yelled something in her ear.

The men were coming for us, but the increase in bodies on the dance floor was slowing them down. I reached out for Zoe’s hand and she stared at it. For a split second I thought she wouldn’t take it – but then her fingers were laced in mine and I started walking.

We moved as a snake, our hands connecting us as we slipped through the clubbers. It really was starting to fill up already. Every now and then, I looked back to see the scary blokes with guns, but they were too bulky and slow. We were moving faster than them.

The thump of the bass was the only thing that kept me focused on not panicking and moving through the crowd as fast as we could. I’d never been so happy to be freakishly tall because I could see over most of the crowd towards the door we needed most, labelled with a neon-green EXIT sign.

We were nearly at the edge of the crowd, metres from the door. We had made it. Nearly free.

I felt a force push into me and I was winded before I hit the floor. Zoe let go of my hand. I fell hard, landing in the middle of a group of dancers. A man in black was stood over me, pointing at the girls and yelling something I couldn’t hear. I was an idiot. He knew we would run for the exit, so he went around while his buddies chased us through the crowd.

He reached for his belt loop.

Zoe pulled a can of something out of her Bug-Out Bag and sprayed it in the goon’s face. He dropped to his knees, his fall silent against the drop of the beat, and grabbed at his eyes.

There was no time to wait. Zoe held out her hand and I pulled myself to my feet before we all rushed for the fire exit.

It was dark out but the streetlights reflected off every speck of neon paint, so we ran into the alley across the street, turning left and then right, making ourselves lost so the goons wouldn’t be able to chase us. We only stopped when Aisha called out to say she’d broken the heel on her shoe. Leaning against a brick wall next to some bins, we tried to catch our breath without gagging on the smell of rotten vegetables.

‘Zoe . . . You were right . . . about the shoes,’ Aisha panted. If I didn’t have a stitch, I would have laughed. ‘And . . . the buggy-bag-thing . . . pepper spray . . . smart.’

Zoe held up the can she was still holding from the club, labelled ‘StayStrong Hairspray’.

‘Just as good and multi-use,’ she said with a shrug, pushing a hand through her short spikey hair.

Huh. Maybe being prepared can be better than being impulsive and winging it. You know, when life or death situations with kidnappers arise.

‘You’re full of surprises,’ I said, ‘but also, who the hell was that?’

9

I don’t think they were with Madame Scissor,’ Aisha said. She slipped off her broken shoes and pulled out a pair of roll-up flats from her tiny handbag.

I tried to regulate my breathing by taking slower breaths than my body wanted. First rule of cardio: slow your heart rate. That said, my old friend panic was waiting on the sidelines. I had never been to a club before, but I got the feeling that those men were not part of the usual experience. And they had guns. They weren’t just there to scare us. They wanted to hurt us.

‘Do you think they can find out who we are, where we live?’ Bri asked, chewing her lip. Aisha put an arm around her and squeezed.

‘No. We used false identification and the neon paint on our faces would bounce light into any CCTV camera, so it would be hard to identify us. I think we’re safe,’ I said. The paint had seemed so trivial earlier, but might have just saved our lives.

‘Well, they were talking to Aisha’s new bestie, the bartender. Do you think he . . . I dunno, called them?’ Milo said.

‘It had crossed my mind, yes,’ I said. Everyone stared at me.

‘But why?’ Bri asked.

‘I think they’re the men people call when someone asks about Madame Scissor,’ I said. ‘Think about it. It’s so unlikely that the one person who could help us, the person mentioned all over the internet, lives specifically in our city, right? Even if Madame Scissor is an organization, not just one person, it was a little too easy. I think that was a trap, an anonymous post put on SoulBait to catch out people looking to break the soul bond. Or worse, to intimidate the real Madame Scissor into hiding.’

‘You really think she’s still real after that?’ Aisha asked.

‘You don’t send an armed squad after a group of teens over an urban myth. I believe it more than ever,’ I said.

Everyone fell into silence again.

‘So Madame Scissor is probably real, but if we keep chasing her, we might get kidnapped by an unknown band of armed gunmen? Great. Super-positive news, that is,’ Aisha muttered, tapping at something on her phone. ‘Come on, I’ve called a taxi. Let’s get off the streets and we can regroup tomorrow.’

It was gone 10 p.m. when the taxi dropped me off, but Mam was still awake. She was in the front room, folded into the lotus position with her eyes closed.

‘You’re back late,’ Mam said, not opening her eyes.

I perched on the edge of the sofa. The living room was a cramped space, made even more cramped by the extra shelving we had put up to keep our bulk buys of toiletries and loo roll.

‘You know it’s Grow Your Own Club on Fridays,’ I answered.

It was strictly true, usually, but the club hadn’t met for the last two weeks. On the other hand, I’d never really had to tell Mam where I was before, because she tracked me on my watch.

Ah. The tracker. If she’d checked it, she knew exactly where I’d been, hence the worry. I was too involved in what we were doing to even remember that. I’ve never been anywhere that I might have to lie to anyone about, never mind Mam, so I just . . . didn’t turn it off. This sort of thing just hadn’t come up before in our relationship, so it didn’t occur to me to take it off. And I was regretting that more by the minute.

‘But you weren’t at Grow Your Own Club. It might have been nice to have a text, Zoe,’ Mam said.

That one stung a little. I really should have texted.

‘Well, I knew you could track my watch. And it’s a Friday. Most of my peers would be out even later than this,’ I said.

Mam’s eyes snapped open. I swallowed hard. Clearly, I’d made an error in my tone of voice.

‘Perhaps most of your peers, Zoe, want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend there isn’t an apocalypse bearing down on us, but there is. Am I allowed to even ask why you were at a nightclub, underage?’

Ah, to be fair to her, I had no excuse for that one.

‘I was . . . invited. By some new friends at school. They’re . . . nice,’ I said. I still hadn’t told her about the KinTwinning. With any luck, soon it wouldn’t be something I would have to worry about anyway.

Mam narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you have any idea how many germs there are in nightclubs, Zoe? Do I have to show you the documentary again?’

‘No, Mam. I know. Bar snacks and glasses have been known to contain bacteria as dangerous as E. coli. But I didn’t eat or drink anything, I swear.’

‘And what about if you’d been abducted? A nightclub is not a safe environment for women. Thank god you have your watch on, so I could at least recover your body after you’re left for dead in a ditch somewhere.’

‘Mam, honestly, I don’t think—’

‘And you wore your face mask?’

No, Mam. I did not wear my face mask because two girls who actually seem to like me spent an hour doing my make-up, and I didn’t want to spoil it.

‘Yes, Mam, of course I did,’ I lied. I had never lied to Mam before, so I didn’t know how this would go.

Luckily, my track record saved me. ‘I believe you. And I was young too once, you know. But you can’t just leave me in the dark like that, OK, Zoe? It’s not fair.’

‘I know, Mam, sorry. You’re right. I won’t do it again.’

‘I know you won’t. Because you are banned from nightclubs and late-night jaunts. I mean it, Zoe,’ Mam said.

I nodded. I was getting off easy but only because this was my first offence, and she was still able to see where I was. Partly because she trusted me, partly because she tracked me. It was a weird dynamic, but whatever made her feel calmer. Stress was a killer.

Mam sighed. ‘Fine. Get to bed – bad sleep hygiene can cause serious health defects, as you know.’

‘Yes, Mam.’

‘And, please, Zoe, no more underage clubbing,’ she said, closing her eyes again.

‘Believe me, I’ve been put off for life,’ I muttered as I left the room.

When I got into bed, I pulled my phone out of my Bug-Out Bag and pulled up Bari.

‘Hey, friend,’ I said, scratching him behind the ears.

‘Greetings, Mistress Zoe. Your screen time is down forty per cent over the last three days. I have missed you,’ Bari said. He licked the screen.

‘Sorry about that. I’ve been busy with . . . some new friends of mine.’As I said it, I realized it was true. Aisha, Bri and even Milo were the closest things to friends that I had ever experienced. I’d known them less than a week but they had been nice to me, tried to make me laugh, and even helped save me from armed kidnappers. You know, friend stuff.

‘That is good to hear, Mistress Zoe. Friends are important,’ Bari said.

I bought him a digital food package out of guilt and fed him some digital gravy bones before I switched off the light and tried to go to sleep. I knew it was impossible that they knew where we lived, but I still had three nightmares about men in dark body armour grabbing me and trying to bundle me into the back of an unmarked van.

I woke up the following morning to a text from Milo. The way my heart flipped when I saw his name pop up on my screen both fascinated and annoyed me. I could find someone attractive without wanting to be in a relationship with them. Attraction was healthy. Relationships in a post-KinTwin world, not so much.

Hey. Aisha and Bri are going to probe B’s dad for any more info on Madame Scissor this weekend. I thought we could put our heads together and see what we can find online, without following any more bogus leads. You around? X

I stared at the kiss at the end of the message for longer than I’d like to admit.

After a quick pep talk with Bari, which involved me petting his tummy and giving him more digital treats, I texted back.

Sure. Come here if you like. Mam is out today. I’ll drop a pin for the address.

I decided against sending a kiss back.

The first Saturday of the month was pretty much the only day she went out of the house, and she was usually gone all day. The survivalist supermarket, SaveLife, was in the centre of the city, and so a fair drive from the house. Plus, we were low on dried food, so I knew she would be hours choosing flavours. In fact, when I opened my curtains, the car was already gone.

Milo arrived an hour later on his BMX. The motion camera on the doorbell alerted me to his presence and I found myself smoothing down my short tufts of hair before I opened the door, then got a hold of myself and messed them up again.

‘S’up?’ Milo asked when I opened the door. He had on a blue shirt and matching blue jeans and yep, there was that pesky heart flutter again. I took a deep breath.

‘Come in. You want a cup of tea before we go up?’ I asked, stepping back from the doorway.

‘Sure,’ he said.

He stepped over the threshold and I led him into the kitchen. The kettle was trapped under a box of 1,000 teabags so I pulled it out and popped two of them into mugs. Mam did inventory, but even she didn’t count over 1,000 teabags. She wouldn’t miss two.

‘Your house is . . . really interesting,’ Milo said.

He was eyeing up the stacked shelves as we waited for the kettle to boil.

‘If that is code for weird, I already know,’ I said. The tips of Milo’s ears turned red and I smirked. ‘We’re not hoarders, we’re survivalists. We just like to be ready.’

‘Ready for what?’

‘For anything, really,’ I said.

The kettle clicked off and I poured the tea before topping both mugs up with long-life milk.

‘So, survivalist. Like your Bug-Out Bag?’ Milo asked, sipping his tea.

‘Exactly.’

‘And you need to be prepared for literally anything? Is that even possible?’

‘Of course not. But we try to be as close as possible,’ I said. I pointed to the stairs back in the hall and Milo followed me up to my room. We passed more shelves groaning with supplies on the way up. ‘We at least try to be aware of the rule of three, so we’re prepared in a mega emergency.’

‘Rule of three?’ Milo asked.

We reached my room and he had a quick glance around at my sparse floor – rugs were tripping hazards – and walls – mould could collect behind photos and infect you before you knew it. Eventually he perched on the edge of my single bed and I sat at my desk in my swivel chair.

‘Yes. Actually, while we are still KinTwins, you should learn that one. So, the rule of three is a handy guide for how long you can last without crucial survival elements, set in the order they are most crucial. It’s three minutes without air; three hours without shelter in a harsh environment; three days without water; and three weeks without food. Air is a tough one depending on the situation, but our house is fully reinsulated and off-grid, plus we have much more than three days or weeks of water and food at any one time. It’s just common sense, really.’

‘Right. Of course it is,’ Milo said. ‘Can I ask, and if this is like, a rude survivalist question, you don’t have to answer—’

‘Well, that’s very big of you.’

‘Ha. Yeah. I was just wondering why you and your mum got into all this? Because it is, like, a bit . . . unusual.’ Milo put down his mug.

I thought about it for a minute.

‘It started after Dad died. When his KinTwin passed out, he lost consciousness at the wheel at full speed on the motorway so, yeah, that was that. Mam, she . . . Anyone wouldn’t take it well, their husband being KinTwinned to someone else and dying over it. She just wanted to make sure we were safe and could survive no matter what happened in the world.’

‘And does she know who her KinTwin is?’

‘No. She’d probably have a coronary if she knew about you. I haven’t told her about . . . any of this,’ I said.

Why was it so hard to talk about Milo when he was sitting right in front of me, smelling of spicy aftershave and toothpaste?

‘She just doesn’t want to think about it,’ I continued, ‘not after Dad. It’s something we can’t control, so everything we can control, she does.’ It occurred to me that I’d never really thought about all this before. And no one had ever asked me to, not until Milo. It felt like a weight had lifted off my chest and I was amazed how much lighter I felt.

‘Do you miss your dad?’ Milo asked. He took another sip of tea. ‘You don’t have to answer that either, by the way. Death sucks. What happened to you and your mum – it sucks.’

‘I do miss him, despite what he did. And . . . thank you. Thank you for asking.’ I bit my lip. I did miss Dad, more than I had told anyone before. I couldn’t really talk to Mam about it. Emotions were the enemy of logic, and logic saved lives. Maybe we needed to talk about it.

I turned away in sheer mortification as a single tear slid down my face. Get a grip, Zoe.

Milo seemed to get the message and immediately changed the subject.

‘Well, at least I know where to come when the zombie apocalypse hits.’

‘Well, only if we are still KinTwinned by then. If we aren’t, I’d leave you outside. Too high of an infection risk to take you in. Sorry,’ I said, turning back to him now the tears had stopped.

‘Wouldn’t expect anything less,’ he said, and he smiled at me. He wasn’t afraid of anything I’d just said. He wasn’t embarrassed by it, or shocked. He just listened. It was the first time anyone had done that except Mam. At least, before Dad died.

I took a deep breath. ‘So, shall we get started?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Madame Scissor. We need to find her,’ I said.

Milo sat up like he had just woken up from a daydream. ‘Right. Madame S, of course. Let’s do this thing.’

Milo had brought his tablet so I worked at my desk and he propped himself up on my bed. I tried to ignore the fact I had left last night’s pyjamas balled up under the pillow he now had his head on, and focused on my search terms.

I remembered what Milo had taught me about search tips and decided to start there, back on the SoulBait website. I made sure to set the location to local. I pulled up the forum we found the nightclub details on and found the comments mentioning Madame Scissor. They were all made from burner accounts, anonymous nicknames with a string of numbers and no profile picture. I was annoyed at myself for not checking before, but I had been excited. We had to find her. It wasn’t just Milo and me at stake any more. We could help a lot of people.

Maybe we could help Mam get out into the real world again.

I clicked through to the search box again and added a new search term: MADAME SCISSOR + ARMED GUARD, then hit enter.

Two results were returned.

Both were responses to a different thread titled: MADAME SCISSOR ONE OF THE WOMEN UNDER ARMED GUARD?

Hmmm. Not the type of guard I meant, but could be a clue. I clicked the link and saw the last response had been left only three days earlier.

The original post had a blurry photo attached showing what looked like a woman standing at the window of a large house. There were bars at the front of the photo, like the person taking it had been standing behind a gate. They had zoomed and the photo had lost a lot of focus. The woman wore a white dress and her mouth was open, like she was screaming. A shiver ran down my spine.

‘Woah. You OK?’ Milo said. He hopped off the bed to read over my shoulder, massaging his neck. ‘I just felt a little . . . was that you? Did you see something . . . creepy, I guess?’

‘You be the judge,’ I said, swinging my monitor round so we could read the post accompanying the photo together.

So, this is a house down the street from a place I clean at. Really nice estate, gated community, millionaire’s row kinda shit. So when I usually clean this house, the wife is there. She doesn’t work and the kids are at some posh boarding school, so she just naps on the sofa while I clean. Like, sure, whatever.

But when I was last there, the husband was in. He’s some hotshot lawyer and never usually around, so I asked where his wife was. He said she went away, I said for how long, and he got well mad and told me to stick to cleaning toilets. Yeah, he’s a total dick.

Anyway, I was cycling home and I passed this other McMansion a few doors down and saw something, so I stopped and took a closer look. This was the best photo I could get before some guy dressed all in black told me to eff off. I swear man, this looks like the wife of the guy I clean for. There was an insane amount of security and I shit you not, one of the guys who told me to leave had a gun.

So like, why lock them up, right? And yes, I did smoke a lot of weed before writing this, but hear me out: I think they’re keeping their wives in check so they don’t like, top themselves while their husbands are at work. I think it’s to stop them getting Dearly Departed, you know? Anyway, drop a comment below and I’ll read in the morning when I’m less stoned. Peace out.

TL;DR: I think millionaires are locking up their wives to make sure they don’t accidentally get DD’d.

The second post, a reply from an anonymous burner account a few days ago, simply read:

Please. This is all true. I stole a phone, I don’t know how much time I have or I would explain more. If anyone reads this, here is our location. Help us, Madame Scissor. You owe me.

Attached was a pin on a map, maybe an hour’s drive away.

‘I think you might have cracked it,’ Milo said, squeezing my shoulders.

I turned to look at him, grinning from ear to ear, and he smiled back, his face only a few centimetres from mine. I held his gaze and for a split second, I could have sworn he leant forward. Then I turned away.

‘You’d better text Aisha,’ I said, hoping he couldn’t tell how fast my heart was beating.

10

So explain why we’re entertaining this insane plan again?’ Aisha asked.

She and Bri were sat in the back of my car, Zoe was up front with me. We were in my silver Mini Cooper that I had taken out on my own exactly once since I rear-ended a motorcycle on my first go out. Mum and Dad nearly banned me from driving for life. Thank god they didn’t because there was nothing quite like being behind the wheel on my own in a real, proper car. Not one of these boring self-driving numbers.

I get why they lowered the driving age, but all in all I’m not sure letting sixteen-year-olds on the road will help with keeping the death rate down. I’m not the Prime Minister, though, to be fair. Anyway, it had taken nearly an hour to drive to the pin location, so I was glad we had waited until the next day to make the journey.

‘Because the message was too specific to ignore. “Help us, Madame Scissor. You owe me”? Come on, Aisha. Stop scriking,’ I said.

I turned left into a side road and the average house size went from big to humongous. I bet even Zoe would agree that these people made me look poor. You’d think DDing would be the great leveller, but that wasn’t true here. Not one house boarded up. It looked like summat out of a magazine. I guess all that inheritance from the dead people had to go somewhere.

‘Yeah, and it was sent from a burner account. No other messages left, nothing. This could be another trap for all we know.’

‘But it just feels too random. There were no other replies, this wasn’t a popular post like the last one. We have to at least look,’ said Zoe.

Aisha sighed and folded her arms. Bri stared out the window. After the clubbing incident we were right to be on edge.

I checked my satnav and saw the dropped pin from the forum was on the next street on my left, so I pulled up the car and we set off on foot.

Good thing we left the car, because we wouldn’t have got any further once we turned. At the end of the street was a huge gate, and a big old guard house on either side. There were cameras set on to each corner of the guard houses, but there was no one else around except a team of blokes in reflective jackets repainting part of a nearby wall. Plus, it was super sunny and we were in combat trousers because Aisha insisted we might have to crawl through a bush again like at KinTwin Discoveries and didn’t want to scratch her legs, so we stuck out like four incredibly sore thumbs.

‘Bloody hell. Now what?’ hissed Bri. We were crouched in some bushes at the corner of the street.

Think. I looked around at what we had to work with and one of the reflective jackets temporarily blinded me. Like the neon paint at the nightclub. The cameras couldn’t see us back then, but what if this time, we wanted to be seen?

‘Aisha, I’m gonna need your powers of being gobby again, please,’ I said.

She pushed her hair over her shoulder. ‘Charming. But I’ll bite. What do you need?’

I explained the plan to her and watched as the others’ eyes lit up with understanding. When Zoe nodded her approval, my stomach turned over. Obviously because she was so hard to impress normally. That was it, nothing more. She half smiled at me, a tuft of hair escaping from behind her ear, and it took everything in me not to tuck it back again.

‘OK, ready? Let’s go,’ I said.

Bri and Zoe hung back while Aisha skipped across the road to the workers that were repainting the wall. They’d reached a corner, just out of sight of the cameras, and because of the heat most of the workmen had taken off their shirts and even their high-vis jackets. The work clothes, including hard hats, lay in a pile at the side of the road.

Aisha’s distraction technique, of course, was second to none.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Aisha called out.

All eight of the workmen turned to look at her and one or two grinned, which was pretty grim, but I had to keep focused.

‘I was just wondering if you could tell me where the nearest corner shop is? I’m, like, super lost.’

Within seconds, the men had put down their tools and walked over to talk to Aisha. Sometimes, I wished men weren’t as predictable as Aisha always claimed they were. Today was not one of those days.

It only took a minute for me to sneak around the corner, grab four jackets and four hard hats, and creep back to the bushes where Zoe and Bri were. Then I held up a hand to signal Aisha.

‘Oh, you know what? I just remembered I don’t need to go to the shop any more. Byeeee!’ Aisha waved and walked away from the men, who were all left scratching their heads.

We thought we were in the clear until Bri dropped a hard hat, the sound reverberating off the hot tarmac. I winced and looked over to where Aisha had been.

‘Oi, they’re nicking our stuff,’ one of the workmen called.

He was pointing straight at us and the yelling made Aisha turn around.

Nobody moved for a split second.

‘Leg it,’ I shouted. None of us needed telling twice. I grabbed the dropped hard hat and we sprinted down the street away from the workers. Luckily we were all pretty fast, so we lost them after a few minutes, but we still had to hide out behind some nearby cars until they stopped looking for us. After a few minutes, they headed back to work, effing and jeffing as they went.

‘Do you think they’ll report us?’ Bri panted. ‘Like, is this cover blown?’

Zoe shrugged. ‘Maybe, but they probably don’t get paid enough to care. Besides, they might think we were just messing them about. That said . . . maybe we should try and be quick about it, before they do trigger any alarms.’

‘Sounds perfect,’ I muttered. We dusted ourselves down and I handed Aisha a hard hat and jacket. ‘Nice job, A. Does it ever get tiring proving how awful men are all the time?’

‘Not really, no,’ Aisha said, and even Zoe smiled at that one.

We stood up, newly dressed in our work gear, and inspected each other. Aisha dusted paint off Bri’s shoulders and I noticed that Zoe’s hat was way too big for her.

‘May I?’ I asked her, pointing to it, and she nodded.

I pulled on the plastic strap next to her hairline until the hat looked more secure, then held my hands either side of her face until I was sure it was straight. And then at some point, I was just staring into those huge eyes, and she was staring into mine, and my heart felt like it stopped beating.

Although obviously, if that were true, we’d both be dead.

‘OK, all set then,’ I said after what felt like a million years. What was up with me recently? Zoe and I were complete opposites. See, she looked just as embarrassed as I felt. I needed to snap out of it. We had lives to save. ‘Let’s go.’

The guards didn’t even question us as we walked up to them. One of them, in a blue uniform, looked up and nodded before buzzing us through. On the other side of the gate I got my phone out to track the pin from the message board. Three more houses and we would be there.

‘Jeez. You really can get away with anything if you’re wearing one of these, huh?’ Bri pulled on the lining of her high-vis.

‘Yallah. Can we hurry up please? This place gives me the creeps,’ Aisha said. She was pointing to the first house on the left, which actually had a real-life white picket fence.

‘Didn’t think they were actually real,’ Zoe said, reading my mind.

Maybe we aren’t complete opposites. She caught my eye and I smiled at her. Why did that make me feel lightheaded?

We reached the third house, the one with the location pin, and I pulled up the blurry image from the photo online to make sure we had the right house. The image showed a black barred gate and a large window with white bars, identical to the house up the long drive in front of us. Bingo.

‘So, what now?’ Aisha hissed, nodding at the bars and the security camera on the front gate. We all instinctively lowered our helmets over our faces.

‘We keep doing what we have been doing. Don’t hide, be bold,’ Zoe said. She shrugged, strolled up to the gate, and pressed the silver buzzer set into the post.

‘What?’ came the gruff voice at the other end.

‘Hello, sir. Maintenance here for the inspection,’ Zoe replied.

Aisha got a fit of giggles so her and Bri stepped back out of camera sight.

‘What inspection?’

‘Oh, the annual inspection, sir? To test the electrics . . . fuses . . . all that stuff,’ I said.

Zoe let go of the buzzer so it wasn’t broadcasting. What was that weird voice you just put on? she mouthed.

I was trying to sound like a builder type person, I mouthed back. From the look on Zoe’s face, it wasn’t working.

‘I wasn’t told about no inspection,’ the speaker’s tinny voice replied.

Zoe held down the buzzer. ‘We did inform the gentleman that lives here. I’m sorry if he didn’t tell you. The last time we couldn’t get in for an inspection, he fired all the staff. Real temper, I hear. But if you’re sure you don’t need us—’

‘Wait. An inspection, you say?’ The voice over the speaker paused. ‘All right. But make it quick. Someone will meet you at the front door. Come up the drive and no funny business, yeah?’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said as he buzzed us in.

We walked up the manicured drive past a team of gardeners working on a front lawn that expanded past where we could even see. The house was, as the OP wrote, a total McMansion, everything brand new and all glass and steel.

Some guy dressed in a black suit welcomed us at the door and let us into a huge hallway, complete with chandelier and double staircase. It was the whitest room I’d ever been in. Even the rug was as white as the tiled floor, to the point I almost didn’t see it.

‘You look very young for electricians,’ the suited bloke said, turning up his nose.

‘We’re training. So, like, thrilled to be here,’ Aisha said.

I held my breath and Zoe’s eyes bulged like she wanted to strangle her.

‘OK. Just be quick. I have a lot on my plate and I don’t want to babysit you.’ The suited man turned on a heel and walked across the hall to a built-in cupboard. ‘Here is the circuit-breaker box for the house. Anything else you need? Good,’ he said, before we could reply.

He stormed off through another door off the hall and we were left on our own.

‘I’ve never felt so unseen in fluorescent yellow,’ Bri said, picking at the edge of her jacket.

‘I know. It’s sort of wild,’ I said. I opened the cupboard and stared at the wall of switches in front of me, each with their own label saying stuff like WEST WING BATHROOM and SCULLERY KITCHEN. ‘Anyone got an idea where to start?’

‘Well, you can shut that for a start,’ Aisha said. ‘We’re only pretending to be electricians, remember?’

‘Wait,’ Zoe said. She reached forward and put her hand over mine to stop me closing the cupboard door.

It felt heady, like I’d stood up too fast and got dizzy, and it was everything I could do not to close my hand around her fingers. She’s not interested, remember? We’re literally risking our lives to prove how uninterested she is.

‘Look at that –’ Zoe let go of my hand and my heart rate returned to normal – ‘that label on the second row of switches. “Second floor cells”. What do they mean by cells, do you think? Batteries? Or the sort where people might be locked up?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Aisha said. ‘Me and Bri will stay here and look busy. You go upstairs and have a looksie. Then we can work out what to do.’

I looked at Zoe and she nodded. It was like when I spoke to Aisha without opening my mouth, and it felt sort of amazing. We wasted no time climbing the stairs – not even the cleaners asked who we were once they spotted our high-vis vests – and up again until we were on the second floor of the mansion.

For a big place, it was pretty obvious which way we had to go. To our left, the hallway was blocked by a huge metal wall with a door set into it that would look more at home in a bank vault than it did in a house. There was a digital keypad set into one side of the door which signalled we needed a code.

‘Now what?’ I asked Zoe, pointing at the lock. ‘You don’t happen to have, like, a laser cutter in that Bug-Out Bag of yours, do you?’

She thought for a minute, biting her lip. I looked away because what right did she have to look so good doing that?

‘Hang on,’ she said, getting out her phone. She tapped in a contact and put it to her ear. ‘Aisha? Yes, we’re upstairs but there is an electronic door blocking our way. Can you see that row of circuit breakers labelled “cells”? Is there one named something like “door” or . . . yes, great. Switch that, it shouldn’t affect the rest of the house.’

I watched as the panel on the door went black.

‘It worked. Ta, Aisha. We won’t be long.’ Zoe hung up and looked at me.

‘Wow. Maybe we really could get apprenticeships as leckies, now,’ I said.

As usual, Zoe tried not to laugh and shrugged off the compliment. ‘Maybe. Let’s try the door. I don’t know if it might be alarmed in the case of a power cut, so we might not have much time.’

I froze. ‘Say what now?’

Zoe shrugged. She was always the absolute picture of calm and it did help to slow my heart rate a little. ‘I can’t be sure, but it’s what I would do if I were holding a group of women hostage. Let’s just be quick.’

I didn’t need asking twice. I pushed at the door, and while it was insanely heavy and thicker than my waist, it did push open. Huh. One–nil to Zoe.

The corridor beyond was a series of more metal doors, and the whole place really did have a prison vibe. There was one window at the end, with white bars over the outside, and that must have been where the woman in the photo online was standing when the cleaner guy took it.

‘Yep, this feels totally legit. Not terrifying at all,’ I muttered.

Zoe said nothing and motioned me over to the first door. There was a small window set into it like it was on a submarine or something, and beyond the window was a pretty large room. There was a four-poster bed, a monster sixty-inch TV, what looked like a small kitchen, a dining area, a chandelier not unlike the one in the hall, and the entire plush red carpet on the floor was covered in piles and piles of designer-looking clothes.

We were about to move to the next door when a woman’s face appeared at the window and threw itself against the door. The noise she made was loud enough that I instinctively put my arm in front of Zoe to hold her back.

‘Help me,’ the woman shouted, her voice muffled on the glass. Her eyes bulged and her skin was pale like someone who didn’t get outside much. Her hair was wild too, a bush of knots and matted bundles on her head. ‘Please, help us. I know it sounds crazy but we’re being held here against our will, our husbands, they lost their minds—’

‘We know why you’re here, and we believe you. We’re here to let you out,’ Zoe said.

A single tear rolled down the woman’s face and she visibly relaxed.

Zoe and I heaved her door open and she collapsed out into the hall, staring at our shoes in disbelief. The strong smell of expensive perfume hung in the air from her . . . bedroom? Prison cell? It was hard to say.

‘They thought giving us expensive things would keep us happy, but . . . we just want freedom,’ the woman said. Her voice was hoarse, like she had been screaming, or hadn’t spoken to anyone in a long time. Eventually, she looked up at Zoe. ‘Did Madame Scissor send you?’

‘No. We were hoping you might be able to tell us where she is. We saw a message online, that she owes someone a favour?’

The woman smiled, her teeth a perfect row of pearls that matched the ones hanging around her neck.

‘I stole his phone. I had to be so fast . . . I’m glad it worked.’

She grabbed at Zoe’s hand and I stepped forward to help, but Zoe waved me away.

‘Madame Scissor was our friend. She got away before . . . If you free us, I can tell you everything. I can tell you where to find her.’ The woman looked at me too this time, her eyes filled to the brim with tears. ‘But how do we get out?’

Zoe looked at me and I felt the pleading looks of two women burrow into me. I looked down at my high-vis, wracking my brains for a plan.

We leave the same way we came in. In plain sight.

‘Don’t worry, Ms . . . ?’

‘Celeste,’ the woman said. ‘My name is Celeste.’

‘Don’t worry, Celeste. I think we deserve to go through the front door, don’t you?’

Zoe raised an eyebrow as I pulled out my phone, loaded up my socials, and hit livestream. ‘I think five thousand pairs of eyes might cover us, Zo?’ I said, pointing to my follower count in the corner. I realized too late that I had given her a nickname, but she just smiled.

‘That’s . . . actually genius. Let’s get going,’ Zoe said. She even half waved to the camera as I held up the phone.

We heaved open the other doors and found eight more women, all trapped in the same freakishly gilded cage as Celeste. By the time we were headed down the stairs, over 6,000 people had tuned in to watch our rescue, and the comments were rolling too fast to keep up with.

WTF is happening?

Is that the fanciest prison I’ve ever seen, or is it just me?

Go on, Milo lad!

Who’s that other girl with Milo?

Aisha and Bri were pretty surprised when we came into the hallway with nine dishevelled women dressed in designer clothes, but they realized what was happening pretty quickly.

‘What you gonna do about it? And what? Jog on, mate,’ Aisha shouted in the suited man’s face, who had come out into the hallway to see what all the noise was about.

But it was too late. We had photographic evidence livestreaming to the world, so he had to let us out. We laughed and whooped and danced all the way to the community’s front gate.

11

It had been three days since we rescued what the press had dubbed ‘THE BEJEWELLED CAPTIVE NINE’.

Milo, Aisha and Bri said they had been inundated with press requests and could barely leave their houses. Even school had let us off, sending work home instead of risking a press pack following them to the playing fields. The footage was all on Milo’s social media and the video had been shared all across the SoulBait message boards, drowning out even the vague references to Madame Scissor we already had.

As soon as we’d got to a safe space we’d called the authorities, and the captive women were swiftly admitted to hospital. The police investigation into the husbands was ongoing. None of them were happy with us, of course, but Milo’s trick of recording everything had paid off. It meant that the eyes of the world were on us and so there was nothing they could do. We were untouchable.

Besides, if they hated being locked up so much, they should have thought twice before locking up their wives. I believe Aisha would call that karma.

Somehow, my intense anonymity at school translated to viral videos. My teachers had recognized me and sent me home with work too, but my peers hadn’t. If anyone recognized me, they didn’t say, as it was Bri, Aisha and Milo who were getting all the interviews. To be honest, I could have easily gone to school if I wanted to, but Mam was always happier when I was at home. It helped that I didn’t give out my name and had no active social media accounts I actually posted on, as opposed to using for online-stalking my classmates, so the press pack just moved on to the other three, local stars before they even hit the national news. Mam was thrilled not to be bothered by it all. She had given me a nod of approval for bravery, but scolded me for over an hour about how reckless we had been and how badly we could have been hurt. We hadn’t said more than a handful of words to each other since she’d run out of steam.

Luckily, Celeste had kept her end of the bargain. Obviously there was no way we were going to leave those women there after we saw what was happening, but she promised me that she knew Madame Scissor, and now she was out of hospital she had invited me to meet her at a café to talk. I texted Milo and the others but the press packs on their driveways were still running riot, so there was no way they could get away discreetly. I set off to meet Celeste on my own.

The café was on the side of town that had avoided the pile-up and plane crash from the previous week, so the roads were open and I got there in good time. The police had finished up their initial investigation into the crash the same way they always did – realized it was a sad case of Dearly Departed Syndrome, wrote the report, and started clearing away the mess as quickly as possible so people could forget.

I walked past a lamp post covered in flowers and cards and stopped for a minute of silence. I had survived, many hadn’t and for every one of those that died, so did their KinTwins. How many people had been left orphaned, friendless and alone? I used to think being alone was my best survival strategy, but when I asked Bari, loneliness accounted for 54 per cent of mental-illness development in a recent study. Maybe being alone wasn’t the solution. Maybe Milo and I could find Madame Scissor and save everyone from this.

When I walked into the café, Celeste was sat in the back corner wearing the floral scarf she told me she would be wearing in her text. I didn’t blame her for wanting to stay out of the spotlight after her viral video ordeal, but she said she understood why Milo did what he did.

I ordered a bottled water – caffeine was directly linked to 25 per cent of heart disease diagnoses, after all – and sat down opposite her.

‘Darling. So lovely to see you again.’ Celeste’s voice now she wasn’t trapped behind a solid wall of metal was almost velvety smooth, the sort of accent that you would expect to hear from a 1950s movie star’s mouth. I noticed she was still wearing the pearls and someone had cut her hair into a chic bob, the wild bush forgotten.

‘Likewise. Freedom suits you,’ I said.

Celeste flashed a red-lipsticked grin. ‘It really does. And for that, I owe you my life. But I can’t give you that, so I’ll tell you what you need to know instead. How to find my dear old friend, Nina.’

‘Is that Madame Scissor’s real name?’ I asked. I got my phone out and tapped open my notes app. ‘What’s her last name?’

‘Now that would be telling.’ Celeste tapped the side of her nose. ‘I can’t trust you with all the information, not yet.’

I opened my mouth to object and Celeste raised one perfectly manicured finger, so I let her continue.

‘You see, her husband was a very bad man. You think ours were bad, locking us up in that mansion? Nina’s husband was the original bad husband, so to speak.’ She paused and sipped her coffee. ‘We used to live next door, in the same community, before the KinTwin mutation was discovered. Her husband worked for a water supply company and somehow managed to get a monopoly over the whole country, alongside a string of other businesses. He made the rest of us look poor. Anyway, Nina told us she wanted to leave him, and the next thing you knew, she was gone. But so was he. Packed up the house the very next day, and we never saw him again.’

‘Then how do you know she left him? How do you know she didn’t leave with him, I mean?’ I asked.

‘Because Nina sent me a postcard. It was blank, of course, save for a single postmark. Battersea Power Station. It arrived a few months after the KinTwin mutation was first discovered. The world was panicking, naturally, so I was amazed the card made it to me at all. She had a brother that lived down there, you see. He came to stay from time to time and we often got talking over a few neighbourhood drinks . . .’ Celeste trailed off, lost in thought.

‘So you think she sent the postcard to let you know she was all right? That she got away?’ I pressed.

Celeste nodded.

‘And what makes you so sure that Nina and Madame Scissor are one and the same?’ I asked.

That seemed to snap her out of it. Celeste laughed and set down her mug. ‘Because Madame Scissor isn’t a nickname those fools on SoulBait gave her. It’s a nickname I gave her. Nina is French, and she used to have her own clothing line and designed clothes, before her husband made his millions. She used to mend and tailor all the clothes for the ladies in the community. If you needed something adjusting tout suite, you went to Madame Scissor’s house.’

I blinked at her. I had assumed that Madame Scissor was a pun on her somehow ‘severing’ the KinTwin bond. It never occurred to me that it might be from something else.

‘Right. And she’s in Battersea now?’ I asked once I had regained my composure.

‘No idea, darling,’ Celeste said. She drained the last of her coffee and stood up. ‘But if I had to guess, that’s where I think I would find her. I don’t have an exact address, but maybe you just need to ask around for a French beauty named Nina. I can’t do all the legwork. And if she did end up KinTwinned to that ghastly husband of hers after she left, and she found a way to leave him permanently, to cut the soul bond? That’s exactly where she would go to hide out. She was certainly clever enough to do it.’

Celeste swung her Chanel bag over her shoulder. ‘If you find her and work out how to break the KinTwin connection, do give me a call, darling. I have a husband rotting in a cell and a life to live.’ She air-kissed me either side of my cheeks and walked out of the café.

For a woman whom I had rescued mere days ago, living with raggedy hair and no one to talk to, she really seemed to have turned her life around. For better or worse.

I called Milo on my way home and filled him in.

‘So she can’t give us an address, won’t give us a last name, and has given us a massive area of London to comb through?’ Milo sighed loudly enough that it blew static down the phone. ‘Well, that’s just great. Last time I barge into a mansion full of armed guards to save a bunch of rich ladies.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ I said. Another sigh came in response. ‘And to be fair, she doesn’t know where this Nina lives and I think she’s genuinely scared for her, after everything that’s happened. I got the feeling she was checking whether we knew more than we were letting on, hence she held back the last name. But it’s still a lot to go on. I think we need to go to Battersea and follow it up.’ ‘Hence?’ Milo replied. ‘All right, Sherlock Holmes, calm down. We don’t even know if this fashion designer woman is even the same Madame Scissor. All right, it’s sort of a big coincidence, but still. Plus, how are we going to get to London?’

‘The train?’ I said.

‘Very funny. Not with these press in my front garden, mate. I get mobbed carrying the dog poo to the outside bin.’

He made a good point.

‘Leave it with me. The school said in the last email of homework that they’re closing for a few days, so everyone can go to the memorial services for victims of the plane crash and pile-up. So that’s one less thing to worry about for getting down south. I’ll think of something to get around your press pack.’

‘Miss Quinn, are you asking me to trust you?’ Milo asked. Something about the playful tone of his voice made my heart flip and I was glad he couldn’t see that I was smiling.

‘Maybe. Do you?’

‘With my life. Not that I have a choice, of course,’ he replied, without skipping a beat. ‘But when I do have my choice back, I reckon I’d trust you even then.’

I hung up and tried to ignore my watch buzzing constantly on my wrist. Even speaking to Milo on the phone set me off now. Maybe this was part of the KinTwin bond, and would go away once we reversed it.

Maybe.

When I got home, Mam was waiting in the hallway.

‘Zoe, why am I getting non-stop notifications about your heart rate?’ she asked, pointing to her phone. ‘Did we not learn our lesson about dangerous activities from the other day? Where were you just now?’

‘Surely you know, seeing as you can track my phone, Mam,’ I said. It had come out sharper than I intended, and I knew I’d made a mistake when I saw the vein bulge in her forehead.

‘Do you not understand why I worry about you, Zoe?’ Mam said. There was an edge to her voice that sounded like she was on the brink of tears.

‘Of course I do, Mam.’

‘Planes falling from the sky, people dropping dead in the street, women kept hostage in golden cells. The world is not a safe place. I don’t want you to end up like your . . .’

‘Like Dad?’ I finished for her. She sank down on to the sofa and I sat next to her. ‘I understand, Mam. And I know that maybe you’re not ready to go out there just yet. I know that’s why you track my phone, and why you didn’t come to the hospital. And I’m OK with that.’

Mam turned and looked at me, tears in her eyes.

‘But I am ready. I want to see what’s out there. I need to see other people, before it’s too late. Do you understand?’

‘We have everything we need here. There isn’t anything we need out there, Zoe. I work day and night to make sure we are safe and well and have everything we could possibly need to survive.’

‘But I don’t want to just survive, Mam,’ I said, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. ‘I want to live.’

We both went silent, the air thick with unsaid things.

‘You know,’ Mam said eventually, so quiet it was a whisper, ‘your dad said something similar to me once. Even before he . . . died, before KinTwinning, I was always worried something would happen. When you were born, I didn’t leave the house for six weeks. I didn’t let you go out with Dad. I was convinced something bad would happen out there and that we were safe in here.’

‘Oh, Mam. I didn’t know that,’ I said, reaching out and taking her hand.

Mam shrugged. ‘Why would you? But that’s the thing. You, your dad, you’re right. Bad things happen. I can’t stop them by hiding in here, and neither can you. Your dad would have met his KinTwin eventually, I know that now. I can’t control fate. I can’t control you either, love. I’m sorry.’

‘No Mam. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.’

Mam smiled. ‘Sometimes we need a push. And I need to let you go. Your dad hid behind an affair because he was afraid of what I would say. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason. You’re being honest with me now and I couldn’t be prouder. And I really will try harder to . . . get out there. In my own time.’

‘That’s fine, Mam. That’s better than fine.’

‘And in the meantime, I’ll . . . I’ll trust you. I’ll turn off the tracker, because I trust you to be safe. And clearly I can’t stop you living your life. You’re old enough to keep safe. You’ll be safe, right?’

‘Always. You taught me well,’ I said, holding up my Bug-Out Bag.

Despite the tears, Mam smiled, and a huge weight lifted from my chest.

‘So, Mam, I might have to test that trust now,’ I said.

Mam sighed and wiped away her tears. ‘I thought as much. It’s never one thing with teenagers. Go on, what do you need? I guess I owe you one for putting up with your old mam for so long.’

I smiled. ‘I need to break a friend out . . . from his own house. In front of a full paparazzi press pack. With no one noticing.’

Mam looked like she wanted to protest, but she held it back. ‘So we’re starting off with something easy then.’

My smile grew to a grin. ‘Was that a joke?’ I asked, remembering the first time Milo asked me the same question. Now I knew how he felt. When someone tries to make you laugh, someone who isn’t exactly seasoned at it, you appreciate it all the more.

‘Maybe. This wouldn’t happen to be the boy from the news, would it?’ Mam asked.

I felt the hot flush of embarrassment creep up my neck.

‘Maybe.’

‘And he’s your KinTwin, right?’

I stared at Mam.

She sighed. ‘Mums know these things, Zoe. Plus, because you’re underage, I got an alert about it when you were in the hospital. I was just waiting for you to tell me in your own time, but better late than never.’

So Mam knew I had a KinTwin, and the world hadn’t ended. For someone who tries to be prepared for everything, I was not expecting that.

‘OK. Let’s go and break out your boyfriend from his press prison.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I corrected her, standing up to grab some of our dried noodles from the shelves. Less to prevent Milo and me starving to death, and more to hide my burning cheeks.

Mam smiled. ‘All right. I know you’re up to something else and you aren’t telling me, but I trust you,’ she said as though she was trying to convince herself. ‘And why do I get the feeling that I won’t be seeing you for a few days?’ she asked. I turned around and she was eyeing up my bulging Bug-Out Bag.

‘Oh, erm . . . yeah. I’ll . . . OK, but Mam? You have to try and stay calm. It’s really important.’

‘No promises there, obviously,’ Mam said.

I sighed, then I told her everything. I told her about Madame Scissor, and the possible cure, and about why we really went to the nightclub. I let it all come out, because I knew I couldn’t ask her to trust me without being honest.

Mam was quiet for a full minute after I stopped speaking. I could see her taking it in, her eyes darting back and forth like she was reading an invisible riot act that she was about to give me.

But I was wrong. She looked up at me and clasped her hands together. ‘So what you’re telling me is there might be a way to stop all of this? Stop planes falling from the sky and people dropping dead in the street?’ she asked.

I nodded.

She bit her lip. ‘I believe you. You think I haven’t had a look myself over the years, trying to understand how best to ride this thing out? I heard the rumours about a cure. After your dad died . . . I wanted to keep us safe, but it felt impossible. Too many variables, too much to protect you from. But . . . does it . . . does it have to be you who does this? Save the world? Couldn’t the police, or . . .’

I smiled. ‘Not to be too dramatic, Mam, but if we don’t do it, I don’t see who else is stepping up. We’re ten years into this thing and it’s just getting worse. People who want change are too stretched or tired to find it, and everyone else has been brainwashed into thinking KinTwinning is the best thing since sliced bread. The police wouldn’t believe us if we told them. Maybe other people already tried and didn’t manage it, but we have to give it a go. I can’t just give up on this and accept it any more.’

That got her. If there was one thing Mam and I had in common, it was that we were . . . we liked to call it ‘control enthusiasts’, but others might call us control freaks. We didn’t sit around and wait for other people to get things done. We didn’t believe in the inevitable. We believed in taking responsibility for our own lives.

‘You know I loved your dad, don’t you?’ Mam said. She was staring at me so intently I thought she’d forgotten how to blink. ‘I chose him and I loved him and he gave me you, and I would never have it any other way.’

‘I . . . I think I did know that, Mam, yeah,’ I whispered.

We never spoke about Dad, never remembered him out loud like this. It was easier to remember him for the betrayal that was only revealed by some insane genetic mutation. But he was still my dad. He still made me bacon butties on Sundays and took me to the park, I remembered that much. Just because someone isn’t your one and only soulmate doesn’t mean they have no reason to be in your life. Soulmates are enforced in our world. Friends and family were still a choice.

Mam sighed. ‘OK. I’ve taught you well. I know I can trust you. But you keep your Bug-Out Bag with you at all times, OK? And don’t forget the rule of three. Remember, three minutes without air, three days without water—’

‘Yeah Mam, I know the rule of three. But I think London has its own clean water and everything, so we’ll probably be fine,’ I said. ‘And we’ll be careful. We’ll get the cure, and we’ll come straight back. Keep our noses clean. I promise.’

I drew in a deep, involuntary breath. I had never asked Mam to trust me on something this big, not ever. The one downside of living with a fellow control enthusiast was that it was hard to get them to let go, to trust you to do something. But Mam was doing just that – once she had given us a little bit of help first.

I gave her a big hug and she held me so tightly I could hardly breathe. Trust was a huge thing with Mam after how Dad betrayed her. And in her eyes, the world betrayed her too with this KinTwin thing. I couldn’t let her down.

‘If you go and get yourself into any danger, any at all, I’ll be right here. If you need me at all or something gets too much, just call or text or put the tracker back on. OK?’ she said, pulling away and holding my head in her hands.

‘OK. Thanks, Mam,’ I said, and we headed out to the car. Just before we got in, I gave her a quick hug, and she squeezed me so hard I thought my ribs might break.

I directed Mam to Milo’s but we had to park at the end of the street because of the press. Cars were double-parked to the extent they blocked long driveways, and there were crews with heavy camera equipment stopped on the pavement, eating sandwiches and checking their battery levels.

It was strange being in the car with Mam. Usually she stayed home unless it was a supply run, and if we did go out together, she would be quizzing me on survival techniques in different scenarios; how to save myself from a snake attack, the usual stuff. This time, she stayed quiet and we listened to an old song on the radio. It was almost enjoyable until we turned on to Milo’s street to chaos.

‘Not to state the obvious, but this isn’t going to be easy,’ I said.

Mam narrowed her eyes, thinking. ‘There’s always a way, Zo,’ she said.

She undid her seatbelt and took a shuddering breath as she checked herself in the rear-view mirror. She always had to give herself a pep talk when she left the safety of our front garden.

She had the same short haircut as me but hers was blonde, and mine was mousy brown. She never wore a scrap of make-up but working for hours on our vegetable patch had given her an all-over tan that lasted all year round. Her KinTwin was the luckiest man alive.

‘OK, I’ll get out and distract them. You go and get that not boyfriend of yours,’ she said.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Distract them? How?’

‘That’s for me to worry about.’ She gave me a quick hug and then opened the car door. ‘Now, go on. Go and save the world. Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ I shouted as she shut the door. It was only then I realized I was crying.

I got out of the car and shot off a text to Milo telling him to be at the back door that led to the driveway, ready to go.

‘Hey, you want a story?’ Mam shouted to the nearest press team, who immediately dropped their sandwiches and scrambled to their feet. ‘How about this: I’m one of the Bejewelled Captive Nine.’

Well, that did it. People poured into the street from Milo’s front garden, tripping over themselves to get to Mam. In seconds she was surrounded by men and women in suits with microphones and cameras.

It was more than easy to creep up to the house, sticking to the shadows of the trees that lined the driveway, and meet Milo at the back door.

‘Uh, you wanna explain why some lady is lying about being one of the Captive Nine in the middle of my street?’ Milo asked. He had a backpack and was wearing a denim jacket and a pair of aviators.

‘That’s not some lady, that’s my mam. And no, I do not want to explain what she’s doing. I want to get us out of here before she stops doing it.’

‘All right. Fair point, well made,’ Milo said. ‘Let’s go, Zoe Quinn.’

He held out his hand and I hesitated, looked back one last time at Mam, but I couldn’t see her any more. She trusted me. Milo trusted me.

I took his hand and we disappeared into the bushes.

12

I scrolled through some texts from Aisha while Zoe slept.

I can’t believe you’re going to that there London without me!

Bring me back a souvenir – the tackier, the better!

Bri says she misses you! Look after each other, you daft apeth!

I flicked away the message bubbles and scrolled my socials. Everyone else in our year seemed like they were enjoying the break from school and had tagged themselves at the quarry, at a party, camping. I stopped scrolling on a repost of a news story about Argo Duff. Bloke seemed to be bloody everywhere. It was a short video with subtitles summarizing the story:

So apparently the world’s favourite billionaire, Argo Duff, may have been involved in the Bejewelled Captive Nine?

Even though the phone was on mute, the caption went straight through my chest like a knife. I glanced at the account’s follower numbers. It was in the thousands, but less than five figures. Would Argo Duff even see this? Would he be fuming – with us?

The video rolled on and a clip of Argo Duff played in the background. Someone had spliced up a picture of him, waving from the doors of his private jet, with a fire-breathing dragon. His usually cold eyes turned red and fire came out of his mouth as the caption continued.

As you know, three courageous schoolkids, who will not be named in this video for legal reasons, rescued the poor women last week from a mansion in a gated community.

Four schoolkids. They always forgot Zoe, and it proper irked me.

Some posts online in the immediate aftermath of the story breaking suggested that Argo Duff not only used to do business with many of the VIPs that lived in the community, but that he knew several of the husbands arrested for imprisoning their wives.

The video switched to photos of the sods that were arrested after we freed Celeste and her friends. We couldn’t see their faces, of course, because they had a million lawyers on speed dial and they’d covered their faces with their designer suit jackets when they were arrested. But if you dug around online you could find them if you wanted to. Bellends.

We are yet to confirm Duff had anything to do with it, but viewer, what do you think? Like for Naughty Daddy Duffbucks, and repost to vote our KinTwin King as innocent!

The video looped around to the beginning. I checked the interaction: 105,000 likes, 98,000 reposts. Not everyone was convinced either way on Argo Duff.

The train rounded a corner and Zoe’s head rolled over on to my shoulder. The way her head fit into the crook of my neck felt weirdly comforting, and it took every ounce of strength not to lean my chin on top. But no. Sleeping does not equal consent.

I exited the app and double-checked our tickets again. Two open returns from Lufian Bridge, headed for London Euston. One change at Stockport. When I got the text from Zoe, I told Dad that I needed to get away from all the press craziness for a while, and he had agreed. Which was good, because Mum was at work and would have said no, so that was my get out of jail free card sorted.

Luckily there was a train we could get that afternoon, so once we had walked to the station, we set off. We didn’t know how long it would take to find Madame Scissor, and that depended on if, you know, she was actually real. But we had to give it a good try. The train journey only took two hours, and because they were self-driving they were still running even after the plane-crash chaos.

The train jolted the other way and this time Zoe woke up. She had left a little pool of drool on my shoulder and I tried not to laugh at her as she cleaned the corner of her mouth.

‘All right there, Sleeping Beauty?’ I asked.

‘You really should consider your own one-man show when this is all over. You’re just that funny,’ Zoe growled.

‘You know, I think I liked you better when Aisha and Bri were here as a buffer,’ I said.

She rolled her eyes. ‘How much longer?’

‘About twenty minutes until we pull into the station, the tannoy said. Nearly there. In fact, I’ve got to have a waz before we get off. Be right back.’

‘Charming,’ Zoe said.

I stumbled along the carriage to the loo at the far end. The train shunted again and I nearly fell into the lap of some bloke just trying to have a quiet coffee. I’d never been on a train this rocky. Self-driving trains were pretty smooth for the most part, just cruising down the tracks.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some difficulties with the buffers on our braking system. Rest assured that this does not affect the safety of the train. Thank you.’ The announcement made half the train groan, but we’d all lived through worse. KinTwin life did that to you.

There was a queue for the loo so I stared out the window while I waited. We were in that weirdly wooded bit just before you hit the outskirts of London, on a curved bit of track which meant I could see the path cut through the trees ahead. The train turned and lurched us to the right, and the track became even clearer. Ahead were the red and white barriers of a crossing, next to blinking lights to warn a train was coming. They were down, obviously, but the path wasn’t clear.

‘Is that a car?’ A passenger in the seat next to where I was standing jabbed her finger at the window.

I looked. A red car was parked in the middle of the crossing. As we raced towards it, I was sure I could see the driver slumped over the wheel.

People on the left side of the train started to panic, screaming and standing up to move. The train straightened on to the bit of track where the car was, sending it out of sight.

We were about to run right into it.

‘Attention all passengers. Obstruction on the line. Return to your seats and brace. Brace. Brace.’ The message this time was an automated one, no doubt sent from the train’s driving AI once it spotted the car on the line.

I looked back at Zoe, around twenty rows behind me, and watched as her mouth formed into a little ‘o’ of shock.

Next thing I knew, the force of the impact pushed me so hard from behind that I went flying. I was still facing Zoe, so I fell back through the train towards her. Except, it wasn’t really like falling. The train was moving beneath my feet faster than I could fall, so it was like I was flying. My mind was sluggish, and I dunno if I was just hallucinating, but bags and people and shoes and travel pillows seemed to move around me like they were in water.

Then I saw the roof of the train, strip lights flickering, coming straight towards me. Or I was headed towards it, I couldn’t tell any more. The sound of the screeching brakes felt like it was going to perforate my eardrums.

A hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. My body slammed into the armrest of a chair and my skin burnt on my arm from them pulling but they didn’t let go. I looked up and saw Zoe – she had wedged herself between the seat and the window, her legs braced on the same armrest that had winded me.

The train came to a stop and jolted me to the other side of the carriage, into a now empty luggage rack, but Zoe never let go of my arm. I unclenched my jaw and the taste of blood flooded my mouth. I had bitten down hard and cut my tongue, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I nodded to Zoe to tell her it was OK to let go and I dropped down to the right side of the train, which had become the floor in the crash.

There was blood everywhere. Up the walls, splattered over bags, dripping from shattered bits of glass still left in the windows. People screamed and cried; others didn’t move at all. Joints stuck out at angles. It was a mess.

I turned away from Zoe and vomited all over what was left of the luggage rack.

‘Come on. You’re in shock. Come on,’ Zoe said. Her voice sounded muffled, far away. Something hurt in my side but I was far enough out of my mind not to notice it too much. I knew it must be bad, though, because Zoe was gripping the same area, just below her ribcage.

‘I’m in shock? You’re in shock,’ I slurred, like I was drunk. I felt drunk. I felt like I was at one of Aisha’s parties and we were spinning around and around on the dance floor.

‘Milo? Listen to me. We need to get off the train.’

Zoe came into focus, just centimetres in front of my face. Her hands were either side of my head and her eyes were so big and blue and sad. The feel of her fingers against my skin was electric. In that moment, I forgot the train and the bodies and the blood and the pain. There was just Zoe. Only Zoe.

I leant forward and kissed her.

Stars danced in front of my closed eyes. Her skin smelt like fresh-cut grass. Her lips on mine were soft and safe and warm. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest.

She pulled away first. ‘You taste of vomit and blood,’ she said.

‘That good, huh?’ I said.

The kiss sobered me up a little. Or maybe it was all the vomit, who knew? I’d kissed Zoe, and she hadn’t immediately kicked my arse. Later. I’ll have time to think about that later.

Sound was slowly coming back to me and I looked around the carriage. People were getting up, slowly, and turning over others to see if they could save them. A massive crack had appeared on what was now the ceiling, and live cables hung down into the carriage, snapping and hissing like snakes.

‘See? We have to get out. It’s dangerous here,’ Zoe said.

I looked again and below the snapping cables, something moved in a pile of bags. A single bloodied hand reached out into nothing, narrowly avoiding being electrocuted. The fingers moved. Someone was alive under there.

‘Zo, we can’t leave them. People need help,’ I said, pointing to the hand.

‘How bad is that concussion you’re nursing? You need help, Milo. You got really hurt back there. And if you hurt, I hurt,’ Zoe said. She was gathering her Bug-Out Bag on to her back and climbing down on to the luggage rack. ‘We need to protect ourselves.’

Other people that could still walk were climbing out of a smashed window back on the side of the carriage I fell from. I looked around and saw more people, moving ones, some covered in blood but still needing help.

‘No. We need to protect each other,’ I said. Zoe shook her head. ‘Zoe, who are we if we just leave these people? It’s not just their deaths on their hands. It’s their KinTwins’ deaths, too. You know how slow the authorities are. We have to help, or what’s the point? What’s the point of finding Madame Scissor and trying to solve all this if we step on everyone along the way?’

Off to my right, a slow clap started.

Man, I was talking louder than I thought, because the bloke clapping was someone with a head injury and a ripped suit about three rows away. People had paused climbing out the window and some of them had actually climbed back in. Another woman even joined in with the applause, if it could be called that. They said nothing, but slowly, some of the passengers that could walk spread out and started trying to talk to those who were still lying in the mess of the train.

Zoe grabbed my arm and I whipped my head back around.

‘If someone had stopped for my dad’s KinTwin, he might not have crashed that car. You’re right. Let’s go help.’

She smiled at me and then stepped past, bending down to move bags off the disembodied hand we had seen.

‘Careful of the wires,’ Zoe instructed.

There was something about the calm way she moved, the way she stood with both hands on her hips and delivered instructions, that made people listen to her. I sank down against a broken armrest and watched as she organized an area to clear out bags into and showed someone else how to use the first aid kit that she had just pulled out of her Bug-Out Bag. She even knew where the train had a fire axe for helping to get people out of mangled seats, but that didn’t surprise me. No doubt she had a typical train carriage mapped out from memory in case of literally this happening.

After a while, everyone still able to move or talk on the train had either been bandaged up or carried out of the smashed window and laid on the embankment outside. I’d slumped down a bit, my head leaning against what had been the seat back, and the pounding in my head had got ten times worse, but at least I was a bit more focused now. I forced myself to check everything and nothing seemed to be broken – mostly just some gnarly bruises.

‘Sorry I didn’t really do much,’ I said to Zoe. She had packed up her bag and come back over to me, happy she had done everything she could before the ambulances showed up. ‘I made that big speech and then just sat here on my arse.’

‘I’m actually sort of glad you did that,’ Zoe said. She hooked her arm around my shoulders and helped me to my feet. ‘Because I couldn’t very well look after you and a bunch of train passengers, could I?’

‘Right,’ I said, gritting my teeth against the shooting pains in my chest as we walked. Zoe winced a little, but at least the pain was slightly dulled for her.

‘Plus, you weren’t really in your right mind.’

‘Wasn’t I?’

‘Yeah. You were saying all sorts, doing . . . all sorts.’ Zoe adjusted my weight on her shoulders as we joined the queue of people waiting to climb out of the train window.

‘Yeah. And if my brain is remembering correctly, I meant every single one,’ I said.

We stared at each other for what felt like a million years.

‘Yo. You want a hand?’ A voice above us snapped our attention away and a hand reached into the carriage, belonging to a burly-looking bloke who had been helping people climb out of the train.

‘Right. Yep. Sure, cheers mate,’ I stuttered. Bumbling gentleman I forever was, I let Zoe climb out first, and then they both pulled me up. There were still some horrible scenes in the carriage, but we had done all we could.

On the embankment next to the train, people were laid out and it sort of looked like a makeshift field hospital from one of my video games. People milled about with bandages from Zoe’s kit and checked in on each other. In a post-KinTwin world, I was used to seeing bad things happen, but usually everyone just moved on afterwards. No help, no questions asked. They went back to their houses and stayed inside, protecting their KinTwins with everything they had. But it was amazing to see what happened when we actually worked as a bigger team. Maybe we were worth saving.

‘We really should make a move now,’ Zoe said. ‘You’re basically famous and I’m amazed you haven’t been recognized yet. Plus, if Madame Scissor really was friends with Celeste, and she watches the news, she might even know we’re coming. We could do without another press team confirming we’re coming to London, you know?’

‘See, I knew there was a reason I kept you around,’ I said. I tested my feet gingerly, but I was OK. I could walk on my own.

‘Don’t push it. Let’s go,’ she said.

We started walking, following the train tracks round the way we would have been going if we never derailed. The car had been obliterated and scattered god knows where when the train hit it, so at least we didn’t have to look at that too. I could have done without being able to see into the other carriages, though. The one in front of us had been pushed so far off the track it lay in pieces in the forest on the other side.

We kept moving. My side hurt like a bitch, but it didn’t stop me from walking. The forest made it seem like we were in the middle of nowhere but after about twenty minutes, we came across an alley that led on to a local high street.

Zoe flagged a taxi and gave them the address of the hotel she’d booked when we were on the train, before she fell asleep. The guy looked us over in the rear-view mirror once he saw we were covered in blood and mud, but surprisingly said nothing about it. I’d say he was weird but I probably still had some vomit caked around my mouth, so.

Zoe had booked us into a cheapo hotel in the centre of Battersea – and that wasn’t saying much, because Battersea was expensive. Still, it was deposit only and payment upon checkout, so we had some time before my Dad rang me, fuming, to ask why I was melting his credit card. We were originally gonna get a tube from the city centre but I’d had enough of public transport for one day. All I knew about the place was that it had some mega-expensive flats that used to be a power station, a cat and dog home, and now possibly the solution to saving the world, so I didn’t really bother to read the hotel reviews or check what tourist attractions were nearby. If anything, I was hoping we would have time to go to the dogs’ home before we left. Maybe after we saved humanity, Zoe would be feeling pumped enough to get a puppy.

After. It felt like there was a rock sitting in my stomach whenever I thought about it. It’s not like I didn’t want to save everyone, to cut the KinTwin link once and for all, or anything. Obviously, it was the pits. Look what happened just today. But the soulmate part . . . Would that just go away? Because head wound or no head wound, I felt just as drawn to Zoe now as I did when I kissed her on the train.

Was there really no chance she felt the same way?

I leant my head against the taxi window as the first fat drop of rain fell against it, quickly followed by another and another. Zoe hadn’t said anything since we got into the taxi. We were exhausted from the hike, or the adrenaline, or both. It was all I could do to stay awake, but I knew falling asleep wasn’t the best idea with a head injury, so I looked around the car instead, tried to find something to focus on. On the back of the seat was the taxi driver’s licence, with a serial number and a photograph.

I froze.

A photograph of a woman.

I knew it was weird that a taxi driver would ask no questions about a couple of kids covered in the world’s worst-smelling things getting into the back of his nice, clean car.

I looked up at the rear-view mirror and met the eyes of the very-not-a-woman driver. He must have known just from the look on my face, because the bloke actually rolled his eyes and sighed.

I nudged Zoe, who was almost dropping off, and pointed at the taxi licence. Her eyes grew wide.

‘All right, you got me,’ the driver said. He pulled a gun out from the glovebox and held it on his lap, the other hand on the steering wheel. ‘But trust me, I’m the good guy here. Sure, I stole a taxi. But there are worse people around.’

‘Are you serious? Trust you? Who even are you?’ I asked, my eyes on the gun.

I reached across and squeezed Zoe’s hand. She didn’t pull away.

‘Who am I? I think the better question, my friend, is who are you, and why are you looking for the wonderful Madame Scissor?’

13

The taxi driver didn’t say much after his opening gambit. We refused to tell him who we were, and he refused to tell us who he was, so we drove along in silence. Both Milo and I tried to open our doors in the back, but they were locked. The only way out was for the driver to let us out.

I was furious with myself for not checking the licensing in the taxi properly. Assaults by taxi drivers were up 20 per cent in recent years, and the first rule of thumb was to check they had the right licensing. But I was so tired, and the chaos of the day had made me sloppy. Never again. At least I still had my Bug-Out Bag with me. The first aid box was depleted, but I had my hairspray if I needed it.

The suburbs sped past and slowly turned greyer in the pouring rain. We skirted several unfamiliar buildings until I could see the outline of what had once been Battersea Power Station. So maybe he was the good guy and he was taking us to see Madame Scissor, after all. Celeste, the postcard, the nickname – it all seemed to be leading to something, and I had to hold on to that if nothing else. And Celeste had said something else about who Madame Scissor was living with, too.

‘Are you Madame Scissor’s brother?’ I asked.

The driver looked in the rear-view mirror at me. After a second, he gave the briefest of nods.

Well, at least that added up.

We pulled into a side street lined with townhouses made from that familiar yellow London brick. The rain was still pelting down so it was hard to see properly out of the window, but the houses looked well maintained and some even had fake Roman columns either side of the entranceway.

‘End of the line,’ the taxi driver said. He spoke with the merest hint of an accent and perfect English, which someone only got from living here for a long time. ‘I’m going to unlock the doors, and neither of you are going to run, because I’m the guy with the gun and you two aren’t faster than a bullet. Clear?’

‘Crystal,’ Milo said. He hadn’t let go of my hand since we first saw the gun and I was reluctant to let go now, but we had no choice. We broke apart and got out of either side of the car into the rain.

The man with the gun locked the taxi, which I found ironic seeing as he was the one to steal it in the first place, and jogged up the steps of the first townhouse on our right. He turned around to check we were following and after a quick glance at each other, we did.

The man knocked on the door, and as we stood there my watch vibrated to tell me my heart rate was elevated again. There was a knot in my stomach and for the first time I could remember, I realized I was scared. No backup plan. Mam wouldn’t even know where I was without turning on the tracker, but at least that meant she was safe and wouldn’t try to come after us. I had no idea what was going to happen next. I wasn’t prepared, it was outside of my control. And that was terrifying.

I gripped the handle of my Bug-Out Bag so hard, my knuckles turned white. There was always a way. I just had to watch out for things I could control.

There was a lot of noise from behind the door. I counted six clicks for six locks. Definitely more in common than I would have thought, but it fitted with the story Celeste had given me. Madame Scissor was on the run, after all.

After a few seconds, the door opened a crack and stuttered as it fell back against a chain lock. Clever. We always kept our chain on too.

It was too dark beyond to see who had opened the door but after they saw us, it shut again and I heard the chain being slid across the wood.

The door opened and a woman was standing inside. She was dressed in a patterned silk kaftan with one silk scarf around her shoulders and another wrapped around her head, and so many bangles that she jingled as she stepped back to let us inside. I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be for a pursuer to grab at her scarf, or how hard it would be to hide when you were basically wearing an alarm on your wrist. Not so much in common, then.

She said nothing, gestured for us to come inside, so we did. The hallway was papered floor to ceiling with a floral design, and precisely nothing in the room matched another pattern. She led us through to the first room on the left, another explosion of colour but with a black painted ceiling. The fake taxi driver gestured for me and Milo to sit down but there were so many cushions on the sofa they just spilt on to the floor as we tried to make room.

Once we were all sat down, Madame Scissor said her first word to us. ‘Tea?’

We blinked at her.

‘Mon doudou, go and make our guests a pot. I know how you Brits love your tea.’ I could hear it now, the lilting French accent that honeyed her words.

‘So, you are Madame Scissor, right?’ Milo said, once our kidnapper had left the room.

Madame Scissor nodded. ‘Nina to my friends. And we are friends, not enemies, oui?’

‘I hope to be,’ I said. She turned to me and laughed.

‘Everyone wants to be friends with Madame Scissor. Isn’t that right, Milo?’

‘Well, if the rumours are true, you can’t be surprised,’ Milo said.

I put a hand on his knee to stop him from talking. ‘We never told her our names,’ I whispered.

Milo’s eyes grew wide.

‘Mademoiselle, please. I have been tracking Monsieur Spencer ever since I saw my wonderful friend Celeste being rescued on the news. I have many friends due to my . . . abilities. Friends in high places. I can guess why you are both here. I know you were KinTwinned, and you want my help to sever the bond, oui?’

‘Uh, yeah. I mean, oui,’ Milo said. He leant forward. ‘But if you do it for so many people, why have us tracked? Do you track all your . . . uh . . . customers?’

Madame Scissor smiled. ‘Oh no. But you have been too conspicuous in your search for me. Now you have been on the news, after all your meddling? I know that my husband will want you dead.’

At that moment, Madame Scissor’s brother came back into the room with a tray of tea and set it down on the ornate carved coffee table, before sitting in an armchair on the far side of the room.

Ice slipped through my veins as I tried to process what she had said. Why would anyone want Milo dead? Madame Scissor’s husband didn’t even live on the estate any more. It just didn’t add up. I glanced at Milo and he just stared straight ahead, mouth slightly open. His hand was trembling on his knee.

‘What does us rescuing women from captivity in your old neighbourhood have to do with your ex-husband? Does he want me dead too, or does he just assume that’s a given once he kills my KinTwin?’

Milo shook his head and closed his eyes. He was clearly in shock.

‘No, no, Zoe. I, and presumably my husband, know your name from Milo’s Dearly Departed app file. No offence, but you were very missable on that video. Milo, he is the picture of confidence. Wild. Dancing in the driveway as you made your escape. Someone like that won’t just want to keep the cure to KinTwinning a secret. People like that want to be the hero. They want to save the world, and that is bad for my husband’s business.’

‘All right, I let you go on there, and yeah, the bounty on my head caught me a bit by surprise. But I am not a hero. You want to know who the real hero is here? It’s Zoe. Every time, it’s her.’ Milo speaking caught both me and Madame Scissor by surprise.

For a moment I was speechless. Milo was looking right at me, a determination in his eyes that I’d never seen before. I always felt like a coward, I was so afraid of the world. I had felt so ashamed on the train when Milo made his speech that it had moved me to help people. But Milo never saw it like that. He saw the good in people, and that’s why people always followed his lead.

‘Well, that’s very sweet, but that isn’t how my husband will see it.’ Madame Scissor broke the silence and Milo and I turned away from each other.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘I have no doubt from what Celeste told me that your husband is powerful enough to assassinate someone, but why? You said it would affect his business. How does this affect water pipelines?’ I had made notes – that was definitely what Celeste said Madame Scissor’s, or rather Nina’s, husband did.

Madame Scissor sighed. ‘You know more than I thought. Bravo. But that’s not his only business. You see, he was always invested in the next big thing, and at the time, that was dating apps. The business of amour is très profitable. The waterways were simply how he implemented it. The chemicals needed to affect our DNA enough to match to our soulmates, combined with my husband’s technology . . . ? Well, it was the perfect solution. A couple of deals with water companies in Europe, and after that . . . it was just everywhere. Full global assimilation.’

My breath caught in my throat. It was like time stopped. I looked at Milo and his eyes were darting back and forth, like he was watching an invisible tennis match, processing everything. But all the clues were there. I just couldn’t put them together.

‘What is your last name, Nina?’ I asked her.

Madame Scissor smiled. ‘Until he grants me a divorce, you can call me Mrs Argo Duff. I think you’re there now. I am married to the creator of the Dearly Departed app, the founder of KinTwin Discoveries.’

‘Then . . . it wasn’t a discovery at all. He created the KinTwin mutation?’ Milo asked.

‘Ah, now that was an accident. He wanted a way to scientifically measure a soulmate connection with another person. He did it to prove how real our love was. It is almost funny, really. They were close to making a breakthrough, but he stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong and it all spiralled out of control, anyone’s control. He’s not a scientist, but he certainly thinks he is a god. At the end of the day, he’s just a businessman. He isn’t sure why the bond creates a death tie, none of the scientists are, but here we are. As it always is with my husband, he found a way to turn tragedy into money. We cannot put the genie back into the bottle.’

‘But you can. According to many anonymous reports online, you can stop all of this. Is that how you know how to break the bond? Because your husband created it?’

Madame Scissor shook her head. ‘Non, that is not my department. I was having an affair with Argo’s head technician, who had been tasked with creating a cure for the KinTwin bond, just in case it was necessary. Don’t look at me like that, child. Not everyone is supposed to be with their soulmate. Look at those poor women you rescued. They were trapped in more ways than one. You’ll understand when you are older.’

I thought about how happy Mam and Dad had seemed, but he still had the affair. Was it possible that there was more than one right person for him?

‘I’m not judging, I just . . . My dad had an affair, around the time the KinTwin gene was discovered. He died in a car accident after his . . . the woman he was KinTwinned with – who he was having an affair with – fainted in a queue at the supermarket during a heat wave. It caused him to pass out at the wheel on the motorway. It’s actually how we found out he was KinTwinned to someone else.’

Milo stared at me and squeezed my hand. I shook my head at him. Now was not the time for tears. It was in the past, but I had to know. I had to ask her the question I could never ask my dad.

I cleared my throat. ‘Why did you do it? Have the affair, I mean. I always assumed Dad did it because he felt, I guess, pulled to his KinTwin. But you were already married to yours. What happened?’

Madame Scissor smiled. ‘Love is not some beast of burden that needs to be caged and tamed, Zoe. Love is many things. We can love someone as a friend, or as a lover. We can love more than one person at once. The KinTwin mutation shows a mirror to our hearts, selects the person biologically and psychologically suited to ourselves. And I suppose that does make them a soulmate of sorts. But never forget, you have a choice. Just because someone tells you something is best for you, doesn’t mean it is.’

‘I never thought about it like that,’ I whispered.

I assumed, because the government painted it that way, that everyone with a soulmate was stuck with them forever. I always saw it as a trap, a destiny none of us can outrun. But it’s not like that. Love is still a choice, even though it’s hard to see it like that. Would I have ever even looked at Milo if it weren’t for the gene? Would he have looked at me? Would Aisha have met Bri?

And if we were all cured tomorrow, would we feel free, or lonely? Was there any real difference? I was free before I KinTwinned, but did that really mean I was trapped now? Milo didn’t feel like a trap. He felt like coming home.

‘Listen. As I say, affairs of the heart are complicated,’ Madame Scissor continued. ‘When Argo found out, he was furious. It was not my first time straying from our marriage, but it was the first since we had been KinTwinned. You see, Argo is the sort of person who must meddle in anything he isn’t already involved in. Everything has to be his way. Every hair on his head, every employee in his company. And he extended that control over everyone else. He owns half the banks in the world and has major stakes in the other half. He created most of the utilities delivery systems for the UK and beyond. The KinTwin gene is quite possibly the only thing that affects every human being on earth, and now he controls that, too. I assume to this day he had my paramour killed – I never saw him again. That was when I realized I had to get away. So I stole the formula for the cure and I ran.’

‘Why didn’t Argo have you killed too?’ Milo asked.

‘I am not stupid, dear Milo. I never used the cure on myself. I wanted to, but I soon realized it is the only thing keeping me alive. If I did take it, Argo would have every reason to kill me. Plus, deep down, I know he still loves me. So I remain bound to him. KinTwinned. He lets me live here, and he does not darken my door, and that is how I live my life now. I sell the cure to make ends meet, to those smart enough to find me.’

‘But you could do so much more,’ Milo pressed. ‘Why not go public, save everyone?’

‘If I advertised my services, we would have the whole world knocking down our door. I am aware of how many get Dearly Departed each day. I know the end is coming, but Argo, he does not care. He only cares about his profits and he knows he would go to jail if this got out. If I cured everyone, even myself, he would kill me. So this is the best I can offer.’

We sat in silence again, tea untouched.

‘And what about Milo?’ I asked eventually. ‘Can’t we just promise not to say anything?’

‘Oh, no, child. You and your friends have brought too much attention to yourselves. The other beautiful girls in the video, he may be able to forgive, but Milo? Do you really think that if I was able to track you to that train crash, my husband could not also? Once he knows you have been to see me, he will know that you know everything. He will not trust a child to keep it to themselves like my other, more discreet clients.’ She turned to Milo. ‘I saw the press at your house, Milo. You were on every news station at one point. I would say the only reason you are still alive is because you have so many eyes on you. But keep one eye open. The moment he thinks no one is watching, my husband will strike.’

‘This is ridiculous. There must be something we can do,’ I said. My watch was practically jumping off my wrist and it was so hard to catch my breath it felt like I had just gone running. I couldn’t even look at Milo.

‘Of course. I see you, child. You are a survivor, like me.’ She pointed one false fingernail at my Bug-Out Bag. ‘For you and your Milo, I can offer you my cure at half price. Just because your love may die, doesn’t mean you have to. Here.’

She snapped her fingers and her brother stood up and handed her a velvet box from his jacket pocket. In any other situation, it looked like it would have contained an engagement ring, but when Madame Scissor popped it open, two pink pills were settled into the velvet pillow inside.

‘There are instructions under the pillow, here. But essentially, you both take the pill, and – poof – no more Dearly Departed Syndrome. You will both be free to live your lives. Well, for as long as you can, anyway.’

‘We’ll take them. How much?’ Milo said.

I stared at him as he took out his wallet, calm as anything.

‘You can’t be serious,’ I said. A hot tear rolled down my face and I brushed it away.

‘Zoe, listen, we’ll work something out with me and the crazy billionaire who wants to kill me. It doesn’t mean we can’t save you in the meantime. Just in case.’ Milo reached out and squeezed my hand. I knew what he said was right, and logical, and everything else I usually clung on to. So why did I feel guilty, like I was leaving him alone to deal with his own problems?

Madame Scissor smiled. ‘C’est bon. Here, I take card.’

To my absolute horror, she pulled out a card machine from under the coffee table, tapped something into it, and presented it to Milo, who tapped his card without even reading the display.

‘Wait,’ I pleaded as Milo pocketed the pills. ‘Wait. Just. Can I ask one more question?’

‘Just one, please. Time is money and I have other clients.’ Madame Scissor folded her arms.

‘Will we feel different? Once we swallow the pills. I mean, can I confirm, does it always take away the soulmate part, as well as the death link? Will our feelings change towards . . . each other?’

Milo looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

Madame Scissor raised an eyebrow. ‘Remember what I said about choice, dear girl. Do you really believe there is only one for you? My husband certainly thought he had cracked the secret, and with the number of couples that soon found out they were destined, he was probably right. But for every single one? I always assumed there was some sense of duty, that once you are told you are destined for another, you will create the feelings you need. Perhaps it is all real, perhaps not. My clients are all people looking to escape their KinTwins. There are no feelings to break. I suppose there is a thin line between love and hate, like with myself and Argo, but . . .’

She trailed off and looked out the window.

‘I believe the death bond is severed in the process of taking the cure. I have seen proof of that myself. I do not know whether the feelings of love are linked to the death bond, or not. You will have to work out whether it is worth taking the risk.’

‘But—’

‘No buts. No refunds. Your appointment is over.’ Madame Scissor’s brother stood up and ushered us out of the room. I was so numb with shock that I hardly noticed as he pushed us out into the rain and slammed the door of the house behind us. Milo pulled the box out of his pocket and turned it over in his hands, like he was a prospector inspecting a lump of gold.

‘Now what do we do?’ he asked, so quietly I could hardly hear him over the sound of nearby traffic.

‘Now we go to our hotel and work out a way to keep you safe,’ I said. The cold feeling of dread was still numb in my fingertips, but dread wouldn’t help Milo. I had to follow my number one rule: Don’t panic. Panic was a killer. ‘Come on, let’s get off the street.’

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, put the location of the hotel into my maps app, and we set off.

14

Well, it wasn’t every day that you survived a train crash, just to be told by some mysterious woman wearing too many scarves that her husband was out to kill you. Oh, and the whole thing cost me the best part of a grand. On my dad’s credit card.

If Argo Duff didn’t get to me first, Dad was going to kill me.

I was an absolute plonker. But I’d deal with all that when I got home.

Zoe was navigating us to the hotel she’d booked, and I was trailing behind with the collar of my jacket up. Partly to keep the rain out, and partly to try and hide my face. What did a hitman look like anyway? Would I even see them coming? I avoided eye contact with everyone we passed by staring at the pavement. Was this my life now, always looking over my shoulder?

Luckily, because Zoe had booked the hotel, as long as no one saw us, I should be able to get at least one good night’s sleep before going on the run, or whatever you called it.

She had booked somewhere in Battersea, because we knew Madame Scissor was there, but it was still a twenty-minute walk in the pissing rain. London is pretty big, who knew?

At least ‘big’ meant ‘more spaces to hide’.

The hotel itself had three plastic stars set above the door and was called ‘The Power Station’. Well, it was actually called The Pow Sta n because so many of the letters had fallen off, but I was OK with that. The Pow Stan was a better name for a hotel than somewhere you could possibly get a steam burn, anyway.

‘Hi, I booked two rooms under Quinn?’ Zoe asked at the reception. The reception desk was set behind plexiglass and the walls were carpeted with the same fabric as the floor.

‘Quinn . . . Quinn . . . here we go. One twin room for two nights.’

‘No. I booked two twin rooms for one night. I did the special offer over the phone? Maybe you wrote it down wrong?’

The receptionist sighed and sucked on her vape before letting out a huge cloud of vapour that condensed on the plexiglass. ‘Well, whatever happened, we can’t give you another room. It’s summer and we’re fully booked with Americans come to experience the joys of the capital.’

She said that in the same tone of voice that someone would use to tell you they just used the last of the bog roll.

‘But . . . fine. Just . . . It’s a twin room at least, right?’

‘Sure is,’ said the receptionist. She slid across a plastic room card. ‘Room Thirteen. Fourth floor. And the lift is broken, so have fun with that.’

‘Great,’ Zoe said through gritted teeth.

We trudged up the stairs, dripping rainwater on every step. They were steep too, because the hotel was set into a townhouse that had been split in two to put in a crap-looking sushi bar next door. We finally made it to the top floor and Room 13, and it only took Zoe three goes with the grotty old card to get the door to unlock.

To be fair, the room was all right. Pretty clean and not much else going on. There was a TV, a kettle, an open wardrobe with a few hangers. I still had vomit breath so I slipped into the bathroom with my bag and cleaned my teeth. When I came out again, Zoe was staring at the twin beds. I hadn’t noticed in my rush to get to the bathroom but they were shoved up right next to each other.

‘I thought she said . . . these aren’t twin beds. This is practically a double.’ Zoe dropped her bags, walked over to the beds, and immediately tried to force them apart.

Trouble was, the bedside tables were nailed to the wall so the beds didn’t budge. The room was so narrow there just wasn’t anywhere for them to go.

‘Well, at least there are separate sheets. And don’t worry, I don’t snore,’ I said.

Zoe’s shoulders sagged. ‘How can you be joking right now?’

‘Hey, look, it’s not so bad sleeping next to me. I promise I’ll wear clean boxers and everything.’

‘You know that’s not what I mean.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I know,’ I said. I flopped down on to the nearest bed and the lumpy mattress gave my bruises from the train a good once-over. ‘Ow.’

‘You still in pain?’ Zoe asked.

I nodded.

‘Let me have a look at your back. I have some deep muscle stuff in my bag that might help,’ she said.

Zoe rooted in her bag and I moved to the edge of the bed and slowly pulled my shirt off. Slow because at first, it hurt like a bitch, but then I felt insanely awkward. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been shirtless around a girl before, and I wasn’t even counting Aisha in that, it was just . . . I dunno, man. This wasn’t just any girl, this was Zoe.

I felt Zoe lean on the bed behind me. Her hands were so cold that when she touched me I flinched.

‘Sorry. Did that hurt?’

‘No, just . . . cold hands,’ I said. I couldn’t turn around, couldn’t even think of looking her in the eye right now.

‘Oh, sorry. Well, this isn’t going to be any warmer, just warning you now,’ she said.

Zoe slicked something cool and slimy up my back and yep, it was freezing. I was prepared this time and tried not to flinch. Manly, Milo. Super manly.

‘Yeah. There are a few bruises here, but I don’t think anything is broken. We were incredibly lucky.’

The gel adjusted to the temperature of my skin and actually now had a nice warm feeling that I felt deep in the muscles of my back.

‘That actually feels much better.’

‘Good. It should help with some of the bruising that runs deep,’ Zoe said.

She ran her fingers up and down my back, probably to rub the gel stuff in, but they weren’t cold any more either. They were warm and – wow – whatever she did on my left shoulder blade felt amazing.

I closed my eyes and leant back a little. It was the first time in days I’d felt completely relaxed. We were both silent as Zoe’s hands travelled up my spine, across my shoulders, round to the base of my neck. I rolled my head as her fingers pressed deeper into the top of my spine, and it took everything in me not to make a noise. I opened my eyes.

Zoe was staring right back at me. She still had her hands on my back but she had leant forward over my right shoulder, and she was so close to my face I could feel the tickle of her breath on my lips.

It really would be nice to kiss her without the taste of blood and vomit in my mouth.

I leant forward a little, and she leant in too. We were so close we were practically touching. I don’t think either of us blinked the whole time. I went a little further, to finally close the gap between us, and something small and round pressed into my hip.

The pill box.

I jumped up like I had been electrocuted. Zoe was so surprised she nearly fell off the bed, and I scrambled to pull my shirt back on while she righted herself.

‘Thanks for that. Really helped,’ I mumbled. I pulled my shirt on the wrong way around and nearly punched myself in the face trying to pull it the right way.

‘Uh. Yes, of course. No problem at all,’ Zoe said. She was standing next to the bed, hugging her arms in a way that screamed how uncomfortable she was.

Well, being uncomfortable is better than being dead.

‘So, listen. We need to take these pills Madame Scarf Lady gave us,’ I said.

I pulled the box out of my pocket and for a split second, it felt like the world’s worst proposal.

‘I don’t know if that’s the best move,’ Zoe said.

‘I don’t mean to fact-check you, Zo, but wasn’t this your idea?’ I tipped one pill out into my hand. ‘Plus, you know, they cost me – well, my dad – a lot of money.’

‘What if they’re dangerous, or have . . . unwanted side effects?’ Zoe mumbled the last part and dug the toe of her trainer into the carpet.

Despite everything, I smiled. ‘What sort of unwanted side effects?’ I asked her.

She looked up at me, jaw set. ‘I’m not leaving you to deal with this on your own, all right? I’m the one that flagged us up with Argo Duff in the first place, by making you break in with me at KinTwin Discoveries to talk to Bri’s dad. If anyone painted a target on your back, it probably started with me. We’re in this together now. We’ll think about the cure when this is all over, OK?’

I closed the gap between us in three long strides, tipped her chin up, and kissed her. I wrapped my arms around her waist and felt her lean in to kiss me back, her hands in my hair, on the back of my neck. I felt like I was breathing her in, everything was fresh-cut grass and skin contact and electricity. Eventually, we broke apart and looked at each other, still wrapped in each other’s arms.

‘Well, I guess we’re stuck with each other a little longer,’ I grinned.

‘Yeah, well. Statistically, teams achieve goals faster than loners,’ Zoe said.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Of course. It’s just a numbers game to you.’

‘It’s not just a numbers game. We make a good team, don’t you think?’

I grinned. ‘Yeah, we do.’

Was it bad that I was secretly chuffed to bits that she wanted to stay with me, literally through life or death situations? I mean, yes, obviously it was bad. It was selfish. But it would be nice to keep this feeling a little longer, and to not feel as alone as I did before finding Zoe. She hadn’t actually told me she was head over heels or anything, but this was a good sign, right? Although I’d been wrong with girls and their feelings before. Maybe Zoe really was weighing up the options for our survival team, or maybe she really did just feel guilty about getting so involved. ‘Listen, it’s your call when we take the pills,’ I said. ‘I won’t make you do anything yet.’

‘Then let’s park it. We can keep the pills in case we change our minds. But for now, better the devil we know . . .’ Zoe put the pill box into her backpack and then came back to hug me. ‘Well, now all we have to worry about is saving you from a billionaire’s team of assassins,’ she mumbled into my shirt.

‘You think he’d hire a whole team? Let’s be honest, without you I’d probably die tripping over my own shoelaces, no assassins required.’

‘Mmmm,’ Zoe sighed. She leant back and looked at me. ‘So, in the interests of keeping you off the streets and out of the way of would-be assassins, shall we order a takeaway and watch stupid videos on our phones until we pass out?’

‘Only if I get to give Bari a treat this time,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen you buying those extra treats from the online game store. It’s only fair I have a go.’

‘Fine. But we can use stuff from my digital garden to make him something organic. I’ve been growing some carrots,’ Zoe said, pulling out her phone.

I smiled. ‘You grow them online and in real life? You must have two green thumbs.’

‘How did you know I liked gardening?’ she said.

I blinked. Even now, I wasn’t about to admit mooning after her and online-stalking back when I thought she hated my guts. ‘Oh, you know. A guess. You wouldn’t be this prepared for the end of the world and not grow your own. Plus I saw some seeds in your house,’ I babbled.

She narrowed her eyes at me. I held my breath.

She looked back at her phone. ‘Pretty good observational skills. I didn’t give you enough credit,’ she said.

Phew. Internet-stalking skills hidden for another day.

We ordered a Chinese banquet feast and Zoe made a playlist of dog videos to watch while we ate. I was a little nervous when I went down to reception to pick up our food, but there was no one around except the receptionist, who completely ignored me in favour of her phone.

It was only when we were eating I realized how hungry I was. We hadn’t eaten since before the train, and it felt like a week had passed since then. We ate in bed, with crumbs all over the covers, but we didn’t care. I realized this might be the last night we could have together for a while. Who knew what we were going to do tomorrow, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t include spring rolls and skateboarding-dog videos.

Zoe fell asleep first. Her head was on my chest and I was scared to breathe too much in case I woke her, but she was spark out. I took the phone from her hands and gently pushed her up in the bed so I could turn the light out. The curtains weren’t shut, and the windows were open because it was so hot without any air conditioning. It had stopped raining though, and the street was quiet.

I checked my watch. It was just after midnight, and it was a weekday, so it made sense the street was quiet. I looked out at the building opposite, a concrete block of flats with a flat roof and a handful of lights still on. People living their lives, probably no idea that there was a cure for the KinTwin mutation out there. Or maybe they were content with their lives and their KinTwins, like Mum and Dad. Aisha and Bri.

Aisha. Should I text her, tell her about the cure? Would she even be interested? I guessed I had to at least give her the choice. We hadn’t even tested it yet. Breaking the death bond was a good outcome, of course, but what about how we felt about each other? Madame Scissor didn’t know what would happen with that part. She said it was for us to decide.

I grabbed my phone off the charger, carefully to avoid disturbing Zoe, and swiped to open it to Aisha’s number. I should text her. Had she seen the train crash on the news? She hadn’t texted me, so it was possible the crash was buried under all the other horrible things that probably happened today.

And there it was. The guilt was back. Ugh. Maybe I’d just text her tomorrow when it wasn’t so late. She’d be asleep by now.

I put the phone away and it took my eyes a minute to readjust to the darkness after looking at my bright screen. I blinked and stared at the wall, trying to get rid of the spots dancing in front of my eyes. Eventually, they all went apart from one.

Weird. I squeezed my eyes shut and realized I couldn’t see it, so I opened them and looked at the wall again. A single red dot, right in the middle of the door to the en suite. Then the dot moved, down the wall, across the carpet, and up on to the bed. It moved up on to my chest, right next to Zoe’s face.

I’d played enough video games to know a laser sight when I saw one.

‘Get down!’ I screamed, scrambling off the bed. Zoe shot up, a confused look on her face, but all I could see was how close to the window she was. The windows that faced straight on to the guy with the assault rifle that was trying to kill me. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her over to my side of the bed, the side nearest the door to the room.

We made it on to the floor just as the first bullets turned the bedding into a snowstorm of stuffing and cloth.

15

The gunfire made me realize I wasn’t dreaming. It was deafening, like explosions going off all around us.

Milo pulled me off the bed and I landed on my back, winded. Feathers fell like leaves caught in a strong wind all around us as gunfire tore into the bed we had been lying on just moments before. Milo put a hand over my head and we ducked, hiding behind the bed frame. It was the only thing between us and the constant bombardment of bullets from the window. After a few seconds, it stopped, the silence hanging like tinnitus in my ears.

‘We have to move. They must be reloading or something. Zoe? You OK?’ Milo shook my shoulders and I blinked at him.

‘Y-yes. OK, I just need my Bug-Out Bag.’

‘Are you crazy? No way, we need to leg it. Now!’ Milo pointed to the door.

I sucked in a breath. ‘I’m sorry, but I need the bag. Hold the door open, I’ll be right there.’

Before he could stop me I vaulted over the bed to the side nearest the window, where my bag was. As soon as I moved, more bullets started. Glass smashed above my head and wood splintered into the room as they hit the bed and the doors and the wall. Within a second, I had the bag and crouch-walked back around the bed to the fire door that Milo was holding open.

‘Hurry hurry hurry,’ he screamed over the gunshots.

I rolled through the door just as Milo let it close. The dull sounds of metal on wood hit the other side of the door, but it held.

‘They must have seen us leave. They’ll be here any minute. We have to go,’ I panted.

Milo’s eyes widened. ‘Well, yeah, that’s what I was trying to tell you – whatever else you have in that bag better be worth it. Come on.’

I squeezed the strap of my Bug-Out Bag. It was always worth it, especially now. Mam would never forgive me if I lost it on my first solo trip.

We ran down the corridor and took the stairs down to the next level two at a time. A couple of the doors we ran past popped open and sleepy heads woken up by the gunfire watched us sprint. We raced to the next set of stairs, Milo ahead, me right behind him, and continued like that until we got to the reception.

‘I’m calling the police, you hear? And don’t come back!’ It was the same receptionist as earlier, shouting at us through a cloud of vape smoke as we sped past her.

We ran out into the street and it suddenly felt very empty. No bullets came, but that was probably only because they were coming down to kill us with their bare hands.

Milo skidded to a stop in front of the hotel. ‘Which way? We can’t just run randomly. We need to be smart.’

I put both hands on my knees, catching my breath, and looked up and down the street. The horrible-looking sushi restaurant was one way, but that was closed. No way we could hide in there. In the other direction was a rank of electric cars attached to rental points.

‘You’re not serious?’ I asked, tracing Milo’s eyeline to the cars. ‘Milo, over twenty-two per cent of all DD accidents happen in a vehicle. And we wouldn’t be looking to drive safely at the correct speed limit if we want to outrun these people – we’d be better to hide until they’re gone.’

Milo reached out and squeezed my hand. ‘I know you want to keep us safe, but you don’t shoot off guns like that in a public area because you give up easily. And I’d rather take my chances behind the wheel than with a bullet. Do you trust me?’

I hesitated. What he said was logical, I knew that. Maybe a little reckless behaviour was better in this scenario for keeping us safe? I didn’t have time to run the numbers. We had to make a decision.

‘I trust you,’ I told him.

He grinned. ‘Then let’s dip.’

We ran to the nearest car and Milo tapped his phone to the paypoint, which lit up and asked how far he wanted to travel. He held down the up button until it read MAX CARD LIMIT, and hit enter.

The car doors clicked to unlock.

I ran around to the passenger side just as the doors of the concrete block opposite our hotel burst open. Two men in black clothing ran out on to the street and looked both ways. One was holding the stock of a long gun. The other a pistol.

They turned our way, and one of them pointed at us.

‘Go go go!’ I shouted at Milo, ducking into the car and barely clicking my seatbelt in before the engine turned over.

‘I wasn’t thinking of hanging around!’ Milo shouted back.

He put the car in reverse and we shot backwards so fast I was thrown forward against my belt. I looked behind us to see where the men with guns were.

The street was empty.

‘Where did they go? They were right there,’ I said.

Milo changed gear and the car lurched forward. ‘Maybe we lost them. Which is good, because I don’t think these things have the best acceleration.’

I watched as the houses slowly went by. He wasn’t wrong. It took at least ten seconds to get up to 65 kph, which was breaking the speed limit as it was. We turned left at the end of the street, anywhere to put as much distance as possible between us and the gunmen.

‘How do you think they found us?’ Milo said, eyes on the road.

‘The obvious link is Madame Scissor. This weird relationship with her ex-husband . . . it’s possible she told him where you were. I don’t know. Argo Duff is a powerful man, who knows what other sources he has?’ I stared out the window at the buildings flashing past. At least there was no traffic to worry about this late at night.

‘Zoe, I’m so sorry,’ Milo said. He bit his lip hard.

‘What for?’

‘For bringing you with me. Maybe we should have just taken the pill, so we weren’t KinTwinned any more. No matter what the weird side effects might have been. It was selfish to stay linked, to keep you in danger.’

I stared down at my hands and picked at the skin around my nail. ‘Milo, we stick together. Sorry, but you’re stuck with me.’

Milo reached across and squeezed one of my hands. ‘All right. Well, as soon as we stop, we’re coming up with an actual plan. I don’t even know where I’m driving to right now. Any ideas?’

‘Let me look. Just keep driving.’

I pulled out my phone and opened the maps app. Bari tried to nudge the digital window with his nose in the top corner but I swiped him away. Later, boy, I promise.

The map for London was so detailed, with shop names and roads and overlapping tube stops, that I was overwhelmed. Where did I even start? Nothing was familiar here – neither of us were from London.

I needed to ask someone who was.

I opened up SoulBait. The keywords came to me as I typed them: LONDON + KINTWIN + SAFEHOUSE.

The search returned over a hundred results so I ordered them by most popular and tapped the top one. The title was ‘THE ANTI-KINTWIN CLUB. A SAFEHOUSE FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO EXPLORE ANOTHER WAY’.

‘I think I found somewhere for us to go. It doesn’t sound like anyone associated with Argo Duff would go here, anyway,’ I said to Milo. ‘Listen to this: Do you disagree with the KinTwin regime? Do you want a space to express yourself freely? Come down to the Anti-KinTwin Club. Open seven days a week, eight till late. Two-for-one cocktails on Fridays.’

‘You probably didn’t have to read the last bit out,’ Milo smirked.

‘Yes, probably, but I’m just a bit nervous after getting shot at and driving over the speed limit. Look, this could very well be a trap, but I can’t think of anywhere else to go. Do you want the directions or not?’

‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ Milo said. I pulled up the dropped pin that the poster had attached. The club was about ten minutes away, so I transferred the pin to the dashboard screen of the car and let Milo navigate to it. To give myself even the smallest peace of mind, I scrolled the other comments attached to the post. There were pages and pages of them, from real accounts with actual profile pictures, and some even had photos taken inside the club. It looked as real as it could do on my phone screen.

‘Nearly there,’ Milo said, turning right.

I sat back and looked at the lights reflecting in the raindrops on the wing mirror. Then a black van turned into the road behind us.

I sat up. ‘Milo, can you take the next left turn, please?’

‘Why? The satnav is saying turn right—’

‘Just humour me. Turn left, but don’t signal. Just trust me,’ I said, echoing his own advice back at him.

Milo shrugged and took the next left turn sharply enough that we were thrown in our seats. He drove down the street and after a few seconds, the black van turned in behind us.

‘We’re being followed,’ I whispered, as if they could hear us.

‘Shit. You sure?’ Milo asked. He checked his mirrors and his eyes grew wide. ‘The black van?’

‘I think that’s why those two men didn’t shoot at us. I think they went to get their van.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off the wing mirror. The van’s reflection was getting bigger by the second.

‘Do you think they know that we’ve clocked them?’ Milo asked.

As if answering him, the wing mirror shattered into a thousand pieces in front of my eyes, followed by the distinct sound of a gunshot.

‘I don’t think they care. Can you lose them?’

‘I can try,’ Milo said.

He put his foot down on the accelerator and we shot forward. It wasn’t as fast as Milo’s car accelerated when he’d driven us to the Captive Nine estate, but it was still fast enough. The car behind was a van, so they didn’t have much power, either.

Milo glanced at the dot on the satnav and swung right. ‘If we can get to this club, they might be our best chance of getting help. We just have to shake these guys first.’

The lights up ahead were red, but Milo put his foot down even more. We shot across the junction and two cars swerved to avoid us, horns beeping. I looked over my shoulder and the van just weaved between them like they were barely there.

‘He’s still on us,’ I said.

Two more gunshots split the air and the rear window shattered. I covered my head with my hands and Milo ducked in his seat.

‘Shit. What do we do? We can’t outrun a bullet,’ Milo said. He swerved as another shot went off and a lamp post to our right burst into a shower of sparks.

I looked around, desperate for a solution that didn’t end with us both dead. There were roads off to our left and right, so this was obviously a residential area. That also meant next to no traffic, so we couldn’t loop into a line of cars and hope they lost sight of us. That left very few places to hide.

Another shot from behind and this time it hit Milo’s wing mirror. ‘Well, their aim is getting better,’ he shouted over the sound of cracking glass.

I took a deep breath. Don’t panic. Panic wastes time.

Milo kept driving and I scanned the road ahead. There was a bridge coming up, a low arch with a sign stating the clearance. I grabbed my phone, switched to camera mode, and zoomed in on the bridge sign to read the writing. Two metres’ clearance. Thank god for old London streets and their inability to be compatible with the modern world.

If Milo had taught me anything, it was that there were absolutely times in life where being impulsive and willing to risk a little danger could be good for you.

‘Don’t turn. Go straight, as fast as you can,’ I said to Milo.

His eyebrows shot up into his hairline. ‘Are you insane? I was always told that if a madman is shooting at me, don’t go straight, zigzag,’ he said. ‘We have to turn, or their next bullet might find a target.’

‘No. Look at the bridge ahead – it’s too low. We’re in a rented electric car with no speed, way below the limit. But the van behind—’

‘They won’t make it,’ he said. ‘And they probably won’t know that until it’s too late. Smart.’

Another shot rang out and this time the front windscreen shattered. I screamed as it cracked outwards like a spider’s web, and Milo swerved with shock.

‘I can’t see. Shit, I can’t see!’

‘I’ve got it,’ I said. I shunted down in my seat and kicked my legs over the dashboard. With one strong kick the glass fell out of its slot and crumpled outward on to the road. The wind flooded into the car, taking my breath away and whipping stray hairs around my face.

‘The bridge,’ I shouted over the wind. It was just up ahead, maybe less than fifty metres away. ‘Just head for the bridge.’

‘Hold on tight,’ Milo shouted back, and he floored the accelerator.

Even though we weren’t going much over fifty, with nothing to shield us from the wind, it felt like being on a downwards rollercoaster. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open, and tears streamed down my face from the exertion. I turned around one more time and the van behind was close enough that I could see both the faces of the gunmen in the front seat. The passenger leant his head out of his side window, lifted up the long nozzle of his gun, and closed one eye to take aim.

‘Made it,’ Milo screamed.

I whipped my head forward just as we disappeared under the bridge. The lights suddenly going out in the shadow of the overhang temporarily blinded me, my eyes taking their time to adjust.

The thing I did hear, though, was the crash of metal as it hit 200-year-old brick, at speed. It was no contest. I blinked as we flew out the other side of the bridge into the tinted streetlights, and turned around to check we were free. Behind us, the van’s hood was wedged into the tunnel under the bridge, but that was the only part that had made it. There was already a billow of smoke creeping out above the bridge, outlined in the artificial lights, and it was impossible to see what had happened to the gunmen trapped inside.

‘Holy shit! We did it. We did it!’ Milo screamed as we sped down the street.

I let out a huge breath. ‘We did. So, Milo, can we slow down a bit now? I don’t want to be arrested for speeding after escaping a near-death experience, thanks.’

Milo nodded and moved his foot over to the brake. We slowed to a much more respectable 50 kph. Every hair on my body was on end as adrenaline flooded through me, and my watch beeped like crazy, but I didn’t care. I knew I shouldn’t, but I felt unstoppable. Milo and I had successfully fended off people trying to kill us. With guns. In nothing more than a rented electric smart car.

I leant across and kissed Milo on the cheek, completely on a whim, and he turned to grin at me.

‘Watch the road,’ I said, trying not to smile. I didn’t want him to get too big a head, after all. ‘And get us to the Anti-KinTwin Club. We have to get rid of this car if we’re trying to keep a low profile.’

‘Yeah, I don’t think I’m getting my deposit back,’ Milo said, but he didn’t stop smiling.

While Milo followed the dot on the satnav that miraculously hadn’t been taken out in a hail of bullets, I tried to calm down. Just as panic was a killer, so was an adrenaline rush. Thrill seekers were 85 per cent more likely to make decisions they later regretted, I read once. I had to keep a straight head if I was going to keep Milo alive. I had a feeling that Argo Duff had many more people willing to do anything for money. And he had a very large pot of money to go around.

We had to go back on ourselves a bit after the detour under the bridge, so we turned into the street SoulBait had tagged the club on around 1 a.m. The car bumped along the cobbles on the road until something lit up on the screen.

‘Damage detection activated. Insufficient funds. This ride has been forcibly deactivated.’ A tinny voice read out what was on the screen and after a few seconds all the lights on the dashboard went out, and the car rolled to a complete stop.

‘Well, I’d say that’s fair enough. Sorry, car,’ Milo said. He patted the steering wheel. ‘Thanks for keeping us safe. Hope you get fixed up soon.’

I shook my head and he shrugged, then we both got out. I pulled up the pin on my phone to see how far from the club we were.

‘It should be just along here,’ I said, looking from the phone to the building in front of me. ‘But everything looks shut. Do you see any lights on?’

‘No. Maybe they’re closed, and we missed them?’ Milo asked.

‘I mean, shouldn’t there be a sign or something? This doesn’t feel right.’ I put my phone in my pocket and wrapped my arms around myself.

Milo put his arms around me and rested his head on top of mine. ‘Don’t worry. At least we lost Argo Duff’s bloody goon squad. We’re safe. We’ll think of something.’

I sighed and looked out over Milo’s arm into the darkness. A figure stepped out into the light of a nearby lamp post.

‘Did I hear you slag off Argo Duff ?’ they called out. It was a short boy, not much older than us, dressed in a long raincoat. He smiled. ‘Then I think you might be in exactly the right place, after all.’

16

To be fair, I wouldn’t usually follow an underage kid down a dark alley in the middle of the night on a deserted London street. Then again, it wasn’t every day I escaped my own death in a car chase, so I guess it was a day of firsts.

Zoe squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. At least I wasn’t alone. Without Zoe, I figured I would have died at least eight or nine times already, and that was just today. I knew we would have to split up eventually, before Argo Duff started to clock that she might know the same level of stuff he wanted me killed for, but it was nice to have her around.

The boy in front of us stopped by a metal door inset into the wall and knocked three times. A small vent opened midway up, like a hole in a prison door for passing food through.

‘Password?’ a woman’s voice said from behind the door.

‘Are you really gonna make me sing it, Shirley?’ the boy moaned.

I tried not to laugh. Here we were, running from a death squad, with a boy from the shadows and a secret password, and he had to sing it? ‘I’d sure like to hear it. You know, in case I need the password for next time,’ I said.

Zoe narrowed her eyes at me.

The eyes in the hatch door flashed from me, to the boy, and back again. ‘If you’re vouching for them, I need to hear the password,’ Shirley said.

The boy sighed, looked over his shoulder at us, and cleared his throat. ‘Oh for god’s . . . All right. Ahem. Make friends, make friends. Never ever break friends. If you do, you’ll catch the flu, and that will be the end of you. There. You happy now?’

‘Very,’ said Shirley.

Man, I’d never thought of that nursery rhyme in that way before. I heard it loads as a kid, but hearing it here and now, it really did seem to describe the KinTwin mutation. I wondered if Argo Duff sang it as a kid, too. I wondered if he was ever anything other than a billionaire monster out for himself.

The locks on the door clicked a few times and the door opened. ‘Get in here, quick,’ Shirley said.

We filed in behind the boy in the oversized coat and past Shirley, who looked about Mum’s age and had on dark eyeliner and a sequinned dress. Beyond the door was a small cloakroom, which Zoe refused to leave her Bug-Out Bag in, and a velvet curtain that sectioned off the rest of the bar. We didn’t have coats, but I had never been so glad that I fell asleep in my clothes with phone and wallet in the pockets.

‘You’ll have to excuse my KinTwin,’ the boy said, nodding to Shirley. ‘She thinks she’s dead funny.’

‘I am funny. And you still sang it.’ Shirley smirked and headed back through the curtain to the front door.

‘So Shirley’s your KinTwin?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I’ve heard of age gaps, but . . . Man, good for you, I guess.’

He bristled. ‘There’s only actually ten years’ difference between us. And besides, I don’t exactly bat for the right team for living happily ever after with any woman, let alone Shirley. We’re merely platonic.’

The boy pulled out his phone and checked something and Zoe and I exchanged a look.

‘How is it possible to KinTwin with someone like that?’ Zoe blurted out. ‘I mean, if you can’t have a romantic connection?’

The boy locked his phone and grinned. ‘Man, you’re about to learn a lot. Romance means different things to different people. Neither of us see ourselves as the . . . I guess you might say, settling-down types. I’m not really interested in long-term monogamy, and neither is Shirl. That’s why we work. I like boys, she likes most people with a pulse . . . but that’s just how we want to live our lives. She’s my favourite person in the whole world, we have an absolute blast hanging out together. I can’t imagine a better KinTwin.’

He turned into the bar area, leaving me and Zo kinda speechless. When I was younger, I sort of always wanted Aisha to be my KinTwin. It was no secret I had a massive crush on her and she almost found it funny when she came out and crushed my dreams. But to know we could have been KinTwinned hits differently.

But no, that’s not right either. I loved Aisha, but we weren’t similar, not in the way Zoe and I were. Aisha and I sometimes rubbed each other up the wrong way, and we couldn’t even share a popcorn at the cinema because she liked salty and I liked sweet. She was allergic to dogs, too. Aisha was my best friend, but she wasn’t my soulmate. Madame Scissor said how important choice was, even if it’s going against the norm.

Man, KinTwins were way more complicated than the news let you think.

This bar was quieter than the club we’d been to back home, with around twenty people sat around in different velvet-lined booths, talking. The music was low and there was a stage at the front with a four-piece string band cleaning their instruments. There were no windows, and everything had an underground vibe, like no one in the world would ever hear us. It was way better than the first club we went looking for Madame Scissor in. The vibe was totally different.

‘It’s like a speakeasy,’ Zoe said, looking around.

‘A what?’

‘You know, those secret bars they had during Prohibition in the US. An underground bar with a password to get in. It’s like a safe space, for like-minded people to meet.’

‘Absolutely correct.’ The kid had taken off his coat and joined us in the bar. ‘I’m Lonnie, by the way. And before you ask, no, that’s obviously not my real name. We try to keep things discreet here, plus we’ve seen more than a few copycat posts trying to pinpoint other places as safe. Can’t be too careful nowadays.’

Lonnie paused and looked us up and down. I looked down at my shirt and noticed a shard of broken glass had landed in the top pocket.

‘Yeah. It’s a jungle out there,’ I muttered, carefully pulling out the glass and putting it on the edge of the nearby bar.

Lonnie nodded to the bartender and he nodded back before sweeping the glass into a bin. He filled three cups with ice and topped them up with a clear fizzy drink.

‘First one is on the house. And we don’t serve alcohol. We like to stay sharp in here,’ Lonnie said. The bartender put our drinks on a tray and Lonnie picked them up. ‘Let me introduce you to some of the others. From what you said outside, I think we can swap some war stories. Oh, and have a think what you want us to call you. Pick whatever you want, just not your real names.’

He walked away from the bar and started weaving between tables. Some people looked up and nodded at us, others were in deep conversation. The string band started playing again and jazz music filled the room. Not exactly my vibe, but actually Bri would love this. I remember that Aisha told me she played the violin really well. My heart felt like it skipped a beat, same as it did that time I fell off my BMX at the track and broke my arms. If I was even missing Bri I was really homesick, that’s what Aisha would tell me.

Lonnie stopped at a table near the stage where four people were sat talking. They looked up when we arrived and I reached for Zoe’s hand, my fingers weaving their way through hers.

‘Hey, guys. So this is . . . ?’ Lonnie paused and waited for us to introduce ourselves. Right, shit, the aliases.

Luckily Zoe was ready. ‘I’m Jane Doe, and that’s John Smith. We weren’t KinTwinned until recently, but we went to see Madame Scissor and, yeah, that’s it really.’

I raised an eyebrow at Zoe. It wasn’t like her to be vague at all. Conciseness of language, and all that jazz. But maybe she was as nervous as I was.

‘Uh, yeah. What’s up?’ I waved awkwardly and then dropped my hand.

‘OK then.’ Lonnie frowned at us and put our drinks on the table. ‘Not talkers, these two. OK, so Jane and John. Sure. Here we have Bryce, Nell, Hari and Rosebud. I’ll let you all settle in. Have fun.’ Lonnie ushered us into the booth. It was a bit of a squeeze but the others moved up for us and smiled. ‘Lovely. Toodles, then,’ Lonnie said, and left us for the bar.

‘Welcome to the Anti-KinTwin, although if you’re a regular you call it the AKT. Is it your first time?’ asked the person Lonnie had pointed out as Nell. She had a shaved head and a sleeve of tattoos going down one arm that almost blended into her dark skin in the dim light.

‘Yes. First time,’ Zoe said. She squeezed my hand under the table.

‘Great. If Lonnie found you, I’m sure you have a story to tell. Let me fill you in.’

Nell told us about everyone in the booth in, like, a lot of detail. None of them seemed to mind though. Her KinTwin was Bryce, a non-binary, asexual Londoner. Bryce had long purple hair and a fishnet vest on, and they seemed pretty shy. Nell herself was aromantic, so she told us that she and Bryce were very happy living together in their Camden flat, although they didn’t like the assumption that because they were KinTwins, they should get married or even have kids. Sometimes they even lived apart, and Bryce had their own apartment, but that made people talk about them even more.

‘Mate, I’m sorry. People should just mind their own business,’ I said.

On the other side of the table were two blokes, Hari and Rosebud. They looked like polar opposites: Hari – all dark features – had deep brown skin and was dressed in a smart shirt and tie; while Rosebud was dressed in a floral pink blouse and had skin so pale it looked like he was a vampire. They were KinTwinned a few years ago, but as a polyamorous couple, they brought a third member into their relationship last year. It was always hard enough being accepted as gay, but once people found out they were looking outside their soul bond for love? Yikes. Their neighbours had said some pretty shitty things to them, so now they only met up with other like-minded couples in the club.

‘I had no idea KinTwinning made things so . . . complicated,’ I said. ‘I think I always saw it as making things easier, especially for me. But nothing’s ever easier for everyone.’

‘Exactly. Now I see why Lonnie let you in here,’ Rosebud smiled, his dark hair falling over his face.

When it was our turn to tell our story, Zoe just clammed up. Maybe she was more nervous around new people than I remembered, I dunno, but she had been acting weird since the car chase. Then again, what is the normal way to act after a car chase? So I took over, filled them in on everything about Madame Scissor, and our visit. The pills. I let it all hang out.

‘So you took Madame Scissor’s pills? Wow,’ Hari said. ‘There are a couple of people that come in here that took them, but that was because they just couldn’t get on with their KinTwin, no matter how much they had in common. They seemed sort of sad though. I was never sure if you should mess with something as strong as fate, like KinTwins.’

‘Oh really? We didn’t take them yet. We’re still considering our options.’ I glanced at Zoe and she shrugged.

I opened my mouth to tell them the other bit, the part about Argo Duff being the one that made the KinTwin mutation, that fate had nothing to do with anything. But Zoe squeezed my hand again and gave me the smallest shake of her head. She was right. I was in enough danger now I knew the secret. If these guys hadn’t even been to see Madame Scissor, then I didn’t want to paint a target on their backs, too.

‘So, what’s Lonnie’s deal, anyway?’ I asked, changing the subject. ‘Kid looks younger than me. How did he end up here?’

‘Ah. Lonnie sort of lives here, with Shirl,’ Bryce said. They didn’t make eye contact but I knew they were talking to me. ‘He’s just turned eighteen and Shirl, well, she’s had a rough ride. There’s, what, maybe a ten-year age gap? Not that either of them fancies the other anyway, it’s just not like that. They were KinTwinned, and the government were offering grants to KinTwins that live together, so it seemed obvious to move in together. Besides, Lonnie’s Mum had cancer, she was KinTwinned to his dad, and that meant the poor guy was about to lose both his parents before even finishing school. So Shirl really wanted to take him in.’

‘But . . . if Shirley is his KinTwin, and she runs this bar, didn’t she know about Madame Scissor from her customers? Couldn’t she have found out where she lived and tried to save Lonnie’s dad?’ said Zoe.

‘She did try that,’ Nell said, ‘but Lonnie’s dad wouldn’t take it. From what I heard, Lonnie’s mum begged him to but . . . he was scared, you know? Scared of carrying on without his wife, scared at what some creepy pill from a back-end bar would do, when he’d never even heard of Madame Scissor. You know how it is. Argo Duff won’t let that rumour grow. That’s why Madame Scissor mentions only exist on unpoliced forums, like SoulBait. Most people who find the posts don’t actually believe she’s even real, so, you know, lots of sad endings, unfortunately.’

‘Man. That Argo Duff guy really is the biggest bellend going,’ I said.

‘That is incredibly sad,’ Zoe said.

I watched as a single tear rolled down her face and she swiped it away, so I put my arm around her and squeezed her shoulders tight.

‘You OK?’ I whispered in her ear. The others had the decency to look away after seeing the state Zoe was in.

‘Yes, I’m fine. I just . . . I was always so obsessed with surviving, and controlling everything, that the thought of someone walking around out there that could kill me at any moment was my worst nightmare. But I never thought about how the KinTwin mutation could stop other people living their lives. I was living exactly how I wanted to before I met you, and I’m living how I want to now. People need to be free of all these expectations. The KinTwin matching system just stops people living their life to the fullest, and that’s sad.’

‘I know. But hey, we still have the pills, if we decide to take them. We have a choice. And maybe we can find a way to give everyone that choice, right? We’ll think of something,’ I said. Another tear rolled down Zoe’s face so I squeezed her harder.

‘How are you always so positive about things?’ Zoe asked. ‘I’ve spent years preparing for the worst, assuming the worst. But you always see the best in every situation. How do you do that?’

‘Practice,’ I grinned, and Zoe gave me half a smile. ‘I dunno, really. It’s maybe my parents, maybe Aisha. We’re just all about living life to the fullest, you know? Jump off the higher ledge, go that little bit faster on the bike. That’s how we live our lives. No moment wasted. And do you know what my best moment was? The one where my heart raced the fastest, when I was the most scared and absolutely buzzing, all in one go?’

Zoe shook her head.

‘It was yesterday. Not the car chase, or the kidnapping. It was when I kissed you on the train. It was that first kiss, Zo— I mean, Jane. No amount of cliff diving or bike racing or base jumping can compare to that first kiss with you.’

She leant in and kissed me then, a long, hard kiss that made me lose myself in it. I ran my thumb over the curve of her jaw and finally she pulled away and smiled.

‘I thought you were supposed to be the shy one,’ I said.

‘I was never shy. I don’t care what people think of me. I just don’t want to waste time,’ she said.

That much was true. Zoe maybe seemed shy, but she wasn’t exactly afraid to tell people what she thought. She hadn’t said much when we came in, but maybe she was just taking in everything the others were telling us. It was a lot. We sat in silence for a while, listening to the band and letting the ambience soak in. I hadn’t been this relaxed in a while, and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to last, so I enjoyed it while I could.

‘Milo,’ Zoe said eventually. She put a finger on my jaw and turned me to look at her. Her face was serious, her brow creased. ‘I think . . . maybe we should talk about the cure—’

Lonnie chose that exact moment to slam down his hands on the table. I hadn’t even noticed him coming over. ‘We have an emergency situation, gentlepeople,’ he said, but he only looked at me and Zoe. ‘Turns out leaving a shot-out car in the middle of the street, and a rental at that, isn’t exactly part of keeping a low profile. We’ve got some burly-looking gentlemen in black outside, according to the CCTV. At least one seems to have a gun. You have to go.’

‘Go? Go where?’ I said. Zoe was already stood up, out of the booth and shouldering her Bug-Out Bag. ‘If they’re outside, where can we go?’

‘There’s a back door. I’m not completely heartless, but we have to protect the club. You understand.’

‘We do,’ Zoe said. She turned and reached out her hand to me to help me up.

‘But you were about to tell me something,’ I said, scrambling out of the booth.

‘It can wait,’ she said.

We said quick goodbyes to the others and, while everyone in the club watched, Lonnie led us out to the side of the stage where there was a barred fire door.

‘This leads out to the back of the building, next street over from your car. If you’re fast, and they come here, we can try and cover for you.’

‘Lonnie, I can’t thank you enough,’ I said, and I wanted to say way more. In the hour Zo and I had been here, I’d learnt more about KinTwins and myself than I had in all the years since the mutation discovery.

‘It’s OK. It’s what I do. You know, me and Shirl haven’t taken the pill yet. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Maybe one day we’ll live in a world where we can just be who we are, instead of an acceptable version of ourselves. Whichever it is for you guys, I wish you luck.’ Lonnie smiled and pushed open the back door, peering out into the alley beyond. It was only a bit after 4 a.m., but it was summer, so the sun was starting to come up. ‘All right, looks clear. Go.’

Zoe didn’t need telling twice. She shot out into the alley, checked each direction herself, and turned to wait for me.

As I was leaving, Lonnie grabbed my arm. ‘Listen, my guy. If you’ve got yourself in Argo Duff’s crosshairs . . . you need to lay low for a bit. Look after yourself, OK? You need to come back one day and actually pay for a drink, you know.’

‘And I will. Cheers, mate.’ I shook Lonnie’s skinny hand.

‘Good. Listen, there are a lot of empty buildings around here. Population isn’t what it used to be since, you know, the death rate doubled.’ I nodded. ‘Head across this street and take a right, then right again. Yellow-brick building with green windows, you can’t miss it. Been dead for years, no squatters even. They shouldn’t find you there. Get your head down, make a plan. I want that drink, you hear?’

‘Thank you, Lonnie. For everything,’ Zoe said.

I grabbed Zoe’s hand and we slipped out into the growing light of the dawn.

17

We found the building Lonnie told us about easily enough. It was boarded up, but we found a rotten piece of plywood over a downstairs window around the back, and Milo and I pried it off with a little effort.

Inside, the place was dusty, but not damp, thank god. There were signs of other people that had been there before us, but they all seemed to be gone now, just old sweet wrappers and threadbare sleeping bags left behind in a hurry at some point.

Milo sat and sent off some texts at one point, which I pointed out wasn’t the best idea all things considered. He showed me his phone, a text he had sent off to Aisha:

HEY A. HAVING THE BEST TIME IN LONDON, MIGHT STAY A BIT

LONGER. SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT MY UMBRELLA THOUGH,

IT’S BEEN A TOTAL WASHOUT. SPEAK SOON! M XX

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I asked him.

‘Well, Argo Duff already knows I’m in London, right? So it’s not exactly like I need to hide that. But umbrella was our . . . you’re gonna think this is so dumb. Umbrella is our secret safe word.’

I raised an eyebrow.

‘You know, when you’re little and you think, what if someday I get kidnapped and I have to like, write my own letter or whatever to say I’m OK, what is the secret word that means it’s an emergency, but no one else can tell?’

I nodded. ‘I know what you mean, I just . . . never had a friend like that. So I don’t have one.’

Milo turned off his phone and squeezed my hands. ‘You can use umbrella, if you want. Aisha won’t mind.’

‘Umbrella it is. Although I don’t know what you think Aisha can do from three hundred kilometres away,’ I said.

Milo shrugged. ‘I dunno either. I just thought . . . in case anything happens, and I know it won’t, but just in case . . . someone should know why I go radio silent, that’s all. Especially if it’s not safe for you to let them know, yet.’

I didn’t say anything to that. Instead I thought of Mam, and whether I should let her know what was going on, or whether that would put her in more danger. At least she wasn’t tracking me any more, that should keep her far away from all this, literally. There was no way I was turning the tracker on from my side either. She just had to keep trusting me and not turn it back on, or she might panic, and panic was bad. Aisha was still stuck at home surrounded by press, if the news bulletins on my phone were anything to go by. She was safe in plain sight, plus it wasn’t Aisha that came to see Madame Scissor, it was us. Argo Duff should leave her alone. I hope.

And I didn’t have a secret code word to send Mam, anyway. What probably seemed to Milo and Aisha like a fun game when they were little was probably a more helpful survival technique now than everything in my Bug-Out Bag combined. Plus, Mam said she trusted me, so I had to trust in myself too. We could get through this. Operation Umbrella was just a precaution.

A thought shoved its way into my head. ‘Wait, what about cell towers? If Argo Duff is as powerful as everyone says, maybe he can track us?’

‘Ah, is this something I’m more prepped on than the famous survivalist, Zoe Quinn?’ Milo smiled and showed me his screen as he tapped in a few commands. ‘I use a VPN. All the good TV shows are always on the American regional streaming services, so me and Aisha have it set up so anything scanning our phones thinks we’re in America. Plus, I don’t need my location broadcast to my parents all the time. I need my privacy, you know? And I used a messaging service over internet, not phone signal, so they shouldn’t find us.’

‘That’s . . . really smart,’ I said, annoyed at myself for not thinking of it. Maybe sometimes, survivalist thinking can keep you blinkered. Milo worked this out through a desire to watch more trashy TV, and it was a pretty genius move. ‘Possibly not foolproof, though?’

Milo shrugged. ‘It works for watching TV, so maybe we’re safe for now, but keep an eye out for trouble? I still think it was worth sending the text. Trust me, she’ll know what it means.’

‘OK. Let’s stay alert, but rest up here for a bit,’ I said.

Milo nodded. ‘Listen . . . Zoe? I’ve been thinking about safety a lot and . . . I think we need to take the pills,’ he said.

I rounded on him so fast my neck cracked.

‘How can you say that, after everything I said at the hotel?’ I asked, then realized I might have come on a little strong and backed up. I couldn’t tell Milo how strong my feelings were. He’s had loads of girlfriends. He’d probably think I was crazy. ‘I mean . . . we’re in this together, remember?’

‘Well, there’s that. But there’s also the fact that right now, we aren’t choosing each other. Not really. You heard those guys at Lonnie’s bar, and Madame Scissor. I know it’s early days, but do you want our whole relationship to be caused by the crazy plan of an eccentric billionaire? We need to know if this is real. I believe that it’s real. Do you trust me?’

I swallowed so loudly I was sure Milo could hear it.

‘I know. I know what you’re saying is right. It’s just . . . what if it’s different after we sever the bond? What then?’

‘Then it wasn’t meant to be. And we’ll be free,’ he said. ‘Free to choose, no matter what that . . . might mean. I’m terrified of taking the pill, OK? I’m also terrified of being killed, and having to go on the run, and . . . lots of things. But I’m the one with the expiration date, here. And we’ve been given a way out, the chance for you to live.’

I tried to smile and hoped I didn’t look as terrified as I felt. A few days ago, I would have done anything to stay alive. But now? Mam had been absent for a long time. Dad was gone. I had no friends for the longest time, and now I did. I had friends and a . . . someone that truly cared about me. And that was the most meaning I’d had for a while.

‘Come on,’ he said. He walked across the room and pulled the pill box out of the side pocket I had stashed it in at the hotel. Milo pressed the box into my hand and my fingers limply closed around it. ‘Let’s do it together. Madame Scissor said we both have to take a pill for it to work.’

I swallowed. I tipped the pills out of the box and studied them in the palm of my hand, where they rolled around from how much I was shaking. I wanted to be brave. Could I do this? But the pills didn’t answer me. They stayed round and pink and silent.

The pills were control, and control was the opposite of chaos. Was that really so bad?

‘OK. You win. Let me get us some water and we can do it,’ I said, the words dripping off my tongue like poison.

Did Milo look a little disappointed for a second? But no, the shadow over his features dissolved as soon as it had arrived.

I walked into the small kitchenette off the reception area and dug out two glasses, my hands shaking as I cracked open the lid on the water bottle from my Bug-Out Bag. I was scared, but not so out of my mind with it all that I dared to use defunct taps in an abandoned building.

On the one hand, freedom was just one tiny pill away. On the other . . . freedom wasn’t always safety. Milo thought it would keep me safer, but I couldn’t be without him, not now I knew what it was to have him.

I brought the glasses out to Milo and handed him one. It felt more like a weird drinking game than a huge life decision, but that didn’t make it any less scary.

We both had to take the pill for it to work, right? Even if Milo took his . . . surely I could just take a few more days to decide?

‘Ready?’ he asked.

No, I thought.

I forced a small smile and nodded. ‘On the count of three.’

‘Three.’

‘Two.’

‘One,’ I whispered.

Milo put the pill on the back of his tongue and tipped back his water. His eyes were closed, and I made the decision in a split second. I slipped the pill back into the box and closed it, then drank my water. He never saw a thing.

‘Uh . . . did it work?’ he asked, after a few seconds.

My heart raced. I couldn’t let Milo know what I’d done. I tried my best to steady my breaths and slow my heart rate. Everything that made him want to take the pill in the club, made me not want to. He was right, and logical, and sensible. But how I felt wasn’t logical. These emotions weren’t sensible, and I couldn’t lose them any more than I could lose Milo. He’d find out eventually, maybe. But maybe he would have changed his mind by then. For now, I had to make him believe I took it. I swallowed again, guilt lodged in my throat like the phantom of the pill I never took.

‘Without killing one of us, hard to tell. Maybe if one of us felt enough pain? Try pressing on one of your bruises,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even, calm. I couldn’t help but feel like I had just betrayed him. But this was for the best. I was helping us both, right? We couldn’t lose each other, not now. Sometimes control is better than choice.

‘Oh yeah, can’t wait to try that,’ he muttered.

I braced myself.

He pulled up the corner of his shirt where I knew there was a purple, angry bruise growing around the top of his hip. He pressed as hard as he could, gritting his teeth against the pain.

It was agony, and I swear a bead of sweat rolled down my forehead and collected in my eyebrow from the strain of not showing pain on my face. Just when I couldn’t stand it any more, he let go and looked at me. But it was what I deserved. The pain eased my guilty conscience, even if just for a few seconds.

‘Anything?’

Relief. The relief was palpable. I felt like I wanted to gasp with it.

‘Nothing here,’ I said.

‘And do you feel . . . differently? About me?’ he asked.

Obviously not. But he didn’t know why.

I smiled. He wasn’t getting it out of me that easily. ‘Who are you, sorry?’

‘That’s not funny,’ he said, pulling me closer into him. I burrowed my face in his shoulder.

‘Come on. Let’s look at bedding down for a bit. We haven’t slept in a long time,’ I said, changing the subject so my guilt would stop gnawing at me for a bit. ‘We’ll just have to hope your VPN trick worked. Lack of sleep can get us killed just as fast as Argo Duff’s goons could.’

Milo yawned. ‘Agreed. Plus my plans always work. Trust me, Zoe, we’re safe. For now.’

I slipped the pill box back into my bag when he wasn’t looking. I felt physically sick, but that was the price of what I’d done. And I could always take the pill when I felt more confident in our relationship, once I knew it was real. And I’d be able to tell that with time, right?

Then why didn’t I feel any better?

The building used to be a dentist’s office, from the look of the reception area and the posters of smiling models plastered all over the walls. We walked around the whole thing to check if we were alone and found dentists’ offices upstairs too, but we decided to stay on the ground floor in case we had to leave quickly. It was simple enough to make a bed out of the waiting room chairs, and Milo found some tooth-shaped cushions for us to use on the hard plastic seats. We didn’t use the sleeping bags, that was a step too far, but it wasn’t cold and Milo squeezed me tightly before we went to sleep.

I knew I had to tell him at some point, but I couldn’t, not now. No time would be a good one, but he had to know eventually. I stared at my bag on the other side of the room, the one that held my secret. I would tell him. Just not yet.

When I woke up, it was dark again. We must have slept through the whole day, and I still felt tired. Milo’s arm was heavy over my waist and his breaths were long and slow. He was still fast asleep.

I moved, as gently as I could, out from under his arm and let it fall back around one of the tooth pillows. He didn’t even flinch as I moved across the room to the window that faced on to the street. They were boarded up the same as the others, but these ones had metal shutters with holes drilled in to avoid damp, so you could see through to the street beyond if you got the angle right.

The street seemed quiet enough. There was a lamp post that flickered on the corner, casting shadows all over the road. Then one of the shadows moved.

My breath caught in my throat. I was tired, so I couldn’t be sure. We had been through a lot, maybe I was imagining things. I watched the flickering light until my eyes watered.

The shadow moved again. Not just one this time, but five of them. And once they reached the second, unflickering light, it was obvious they weren’t shadows. They were people, dressed all in black, moving like one unit. A death squad.

The man at the front held something in front of him, something that kept moving around. It was definitely a person, but much shorter than the rest of them. Surely it couldn’t be a child? I squinted as they crossed in front of another streetlight. They were getting closer, and the holes drilled in the metal were tiny, so I stepped around the window to adjust my view. The hostage with the front man was a boy, no older than me or Milo, face and coat covered in blood.

I stepped back from the window and my hand went over my mouth. I’d know that oversized jacket anywhere. It was Lonnie.

I grabbed my Bug-Out Bag and went back to Milo to shake him awake.

‘Mmmm . . . hey . . . what’s going on?’

The last part of his sentence was muffled as I pressed my hand over his still-moving lips. ‘Quiet. We have to go. Goons outside, and they’ve got Lonnie. He’s . . . he’s hurt, so I don’t think he gave us up willingly. But we have to go. Now,’ I whispered.

Milo’s eyes widened and I took my hand away from his mouth. He nodded and stood up, pulled his shoes on, and we both went to the window to see what our options were.

They were gone. The street was completely empty, like they had never even existed.

‘Are you sure you saw them?’ Milo asked.

I set my jaw. ‘Milo, this wasn’t a dream. They were right there,’ I hissed. I moved back and forth along the window and the holes switched from solid to transparent to solid again, but Milo was right. There was nobody there.

Milo yawned and rubbed at his eyes. ‘OK, let me look again—’

The sound of wood cracking and breaking was so loud compared to the relative silence of the street that we both jumped. I whipped my head around and saw the black uniforms through the wooden hatch over the back window, the one we’d managed to get in through, the one that was growing bigger by the second. The first face to come through was covered in blood. Lonnie.

His eyes grew wide. ‘Run, run, run!’ he screamed.

A huge arm in black fabric swept him aside and one of the masked men in black pushed their way through the hole.

There wasn’t time to think about my guilt over leaving Lonnie, or about how we were going to get out. I ran for the furthest place from our pursuers: the stairs up to the dentist treatment rooms. I felt the thud of Milo on the stairs right behind me so I didn’t look back for him, I just kept running.

‘This way.’ On the landing, Milo grabbed my arm and ran to the left, towards a treatment room he had cleared earlier when we were looking around. He kicked open the door. I stole a look back through the doorway just as the first of the goons reached the top of the stairs.

‘We’re trapped,’ I shouted. We shut the door, but before it closed I saw all of the men hit the landing and point our way. There was no sign of Lonnie.

I grabbed the dentist’s chair, the trolley with all the dentistry tools on, the stool for the hygienist, and threw them against the door. I wedged the trolley under the door handle, narrowly avoiding slicing my hand open on the instruments that still lay on top for a patient who would never come. I stepped back as the door handle started to rattle. It would hold, but not for long. These people had guns. They would find a way through.

Milo stood at the window, trying to pry it open.

‘What are you doing? There’s nowhere to go out there,’ I said, crossing the room in two short strides and looking through the glass. The windows weren’t boarded up here, and the window led to a flat roof attached to the side of the building, but after that was just a steep drop.

‘There’s always a way,’ Milo grunted. He pulled at the sash window until the tips of his fingers went white.

Behind us, someone was banging at the door. And from the way it was stuttering in the doorframe, they were hitting it with full force.

‘Yes!’ Milo yelled. I whipped my head back and he had the window open, a cool breeze flooding into the room. ‘Come on, I have an idea.’

He climbed out and dropped a half-metre or so to the roof. The door wasn’t going to hold much longer, and there really was nowhere else to go so I followed right after him, swinging my legs over the sill.

I landed in a crouch just as I heard a loud bang behind me. They were in. Milo pulled me to my feet. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We have to jump.’

‘Jump?’ I asked him, but he didn’t have time to reply. A bullet shot past his head and exploded in a hail of splinters next to our feet.

‘They’re shooting. We need cover. Come on,’ Milo yelled.

He grabbed my hand and dragged me behind him in a run to the edge of the building. Bullets flew so close that I swore I heard one whistle as it went past my ear. The end of the roof was coming up fast but we weren’t slowing down. The only thing ahead of us was the three-metre gap between this building and the next.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. All that went through my head was the number of people who died falling off buildings last year taking selfies. Twenty-seven – well, fifty-four if you included their KinTwins, which you always should.

‘We can’t jump,’ I said. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Trust me. I’ve done it before, and if Aisha can do it, you can too,’ said Milo.

The problem with being a prepper? It didn’t leave room for spontaneous, crazy ideas. But Milo had used his bravery and confidence to get us out of trouble before. I knew I could trust him. He could still live his life and keep me safe. I knew that now.

The roof edge was only steps away. My watch was vibrating under my sleeve and my heart felt like it had climbed up my throat. How many people died from a panic attack, again?

A bullet struck the chimney to our left and brick dust burst into the air. At least jumping gave me more chance to survive than a bullet to the chest did.

I sped up so I was next to Milo rather than him dragging me. We ran together, hand in hand, and at the very edge of the roof, I pushed up as hard as I could.

Then we were flying. My legs kept moving like I was running but there was nothing under my feet but air. Everything was in slow motion, even my heart felt like it stopped beating. I looked down and I thought I saw a small, bloodied face looking up at us from the alley floor.

The landing was so hard it forced the air from my lungs. We rolled a few times and our hands broke apart, looking for a way to stop our bodies propelling forward. When I stood up I had holes in my trousers and blood dribbling down my legs from my knees, but I barely felt anything. That was the adrenaline again. Maybe if we weren’t trying to outrun bullets and assassins, I might understand why Milo enjoyed doing these activities.

‘Keep moving,’ Milo said, grabbing at my wrist. The bullets had stopped and when I looked back, I realized the chimney on the dentist’s roof was blocking the line of sight from the window. Instead, the men were now running out from behind it, having dropped down on to the roof when they grasped what we were doing.

The roof we landed on was also flat, but layered with gravel, which had cut into me when I landed. Milo was fast running towards the next roof on the street, but this one wasn’t flat, it was pitched and tiled.

‘How are we going to stay on?’ I shouted at him, pointing at the roof.

Behind us, I heard the crunch of gravel as the men chasing us landed on the roof and rolled as badly as we had. They were strong, but we were faster, lighter. All my cardio and running training was for this. If we could keep this up, we could lose them. There wasn’t time for them to stop and take aim before we were on the next roof.

If we could survive the jump, we could make it.

‘We go for the cable.’ Milo pointed at the apex of the roof, where an old television antenna poked up, and below it, the long tail of a cable that ran down the side of the building, out of our eyeline. ‘We grab the cable, pull ourselves up, and we’re out of here. You ready?’

No. No, I was not ready to take a flying leap across a two-metre gap with a big drop and grab on to a tiny, rusted cable that must have been sitting there in the wind and the rain for decades. But I also wasn’t ready to die, not yet. I took Milo’s hand and nodded at him.

‘Here we go. Three . . . two . . . one . . . jump!’

We sprinted into mid-air, just like the other jump, scrambling for the cable on the roof in front of us. Milo stretched his fingers out and reached for the wire, which was looking rustier and thinner by the nanosecond. His fingertips grasped the edge and we both slammed into the roof tiles, Milo to the left of me, his hand wrapped around the cable.

I was too far right. I missed.

The tiles shifted under me and I started to slip, like a child on a slide, headed for the lip of the roof. Milo shot a hand out and grabbed my wrist, which slowed me down but meant I ended up swinging under him in a semicircle. When I got to the end of his reach I jerked against the tiles but he held me tight enough that I was sure he wouldn’t let me fall.

Unfortunately, the old cable on the roof had other ideas. When I jerked Milo downwards, the cable buckled, and now the whole thing was coming off. Tiles slipped off in different directions as the pins holding the cable to the roof gave way.

And then I couldn’t see the men chasing us any more. I couldn’t see the other roof at all, because I fell off the tiles and down towards the concrete of the alley below. The distance wasn’t enough to break bones, not when we were falling instead of jumping, but it still looked like it would hurt. I slipped over the broken guttering at the edge of the roof and Milo lost his grip on my wrist.

The fall lasted less than a second. Then all I felt was pain shooting up my legs as we smashed into the hard concrete below. Milo landed next to me, in a heap but also on his legs.

I tried to stand, but it was too much. I felt dazed, like someone had hit me around the back of my head, not my legs. Milo tried to sit up and then slipped back down to the ground again, like a puppet with the strings cut.

I blinked but everything was spots and stars and blurry outlines. We had to get up. Who knew how many men were after us? There was no time to check. Some could be here, on the ground. Split up, it’s what I would do if I were them. Outflank us.

I stretched for the bag on my back with the last of my strength, closed my hand around my secret, and stuffed the contents deep inside my trouser pocket, so deep no one would be able to tell it was there.

Then I reached out for Milo, to check he was really there, to tell him we had to go. But he wasn’t there. Something was blocking the light from the street and I looked up to see two dark shadows standing over me. I tried to focus on their faces, but they were covered with black ski masks.

They didn’t say anything as they grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me to my feet. They didn’t say anything when they threw me and Milo into the back of the van either, into silence and darkness.

18

We were in deep shit.

I’d thought that before, when I forgot to hand in my coursework and Mr Manus threatened to get me kicked off the football team. I’d thought it when Mum caught me and Aisha smoking out the back of the house once when we were fifteen. But I don’t think I quite knew how deep the shit could get until this very moment.

I got the feeling back into my legs slowly on the van ride. Nothing was broken, so that was something, but I was getting pretty sick of being thrown around so much. And who thought I’d ever say that? Sure, being reckless had got us out of some scrapes – but it had caused some too. Like, physically. Train crashes, car chases, an impromptu rooftoppers jump . . . I hadn’t felt so rough since I broke my arms coming off my BMX.

I’d do anything to be in the back of that ambulance right now.

Instead I was here, handcuffed to a radiator in some dingy basement, and Zoe was chained up opposite me. They put hoods over our heads when we arrived, so I had no clue where we were, except we drove for maybe half an hour before we got here. Obviously they had taken our phones and Zoe’s bag the moment they unloaded us, so there was no point trying to use those.

We were stuck with just the clothes on our backs, tied up, with no way to signal anyone and no way for anyone to find us. Perfect.

‘At least they haven’t straight-up killed me yet,’ I said eventually. ‘That’s something.’

We had been sat in silence after trying to shout for help for half an hour. Zoe said it was best we rest our voices, but my mind was racing. I got nervous, and I ran my mouth, that’s how it had always been. Aisha was the same.

But Zoe? She got quiet. Just like when we were in the bar, or even getting ready for that stupid club. When her mind was working, it was all kept inside. And that was making me nervous.

‘Zoe, I know, I know, rest our voices. But talk to me. We need a plan. You always have a plan, right?’

‘Not this time,’ Zoe said. She didn’t even look at me when she answered, just stared at the floor.

I took a deep breath. Things looked bad, but we weren’t done yet. I could at least save Zoe. ‘Maybe they’ll let you go if you promise not to say anything and I promise to stay,’ I said.

Zoe’s head whipped up. ‘Absolutely not. You are not sacrificing yourself for me. You don’t get to do that.’

‘Zo, listen,’ I said. The sour taste of bile filled my mouth and I swallowed it down. I didn’t want to die, of course I didn’t. But if the handcuffs and the basement and the guys in freaking ski masks meant it was going that way anyway, then at least I could save her. ‘We took those pills for a reason. You can still get out of this. Don’t be a hero.’

‘I thought Madame Scissor said you were the hero,’ Zoe said, but her voice cracked on the last word.

‘Nah. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s always you. But you don’t have to be this time. We have to try and get you out. There’s no point us both . . . not getting out of here.’ I struggled to finish but I did it.

Zoe looked at me. ‘Milo, I really have to tell you something,’ she said.

I was ready to listen, but then I heard a scratch at the big metal door that they had locked us behind. ‘Wait. Someone’s coming. Leave this to me, Zo, yeah?’

‘But—’

The door creaked open and one of the guys dressed in black stepped in carrying what looked like . . . a pile of folded clothes? He was followed by a second guy with a massive gun.

The guy with the clothes stepped forward while the guy with the gun stayed in the doorway. ‘All right. Get dressed. We’ll be back in ten minutes. Hurry up, and no funny business, or we’ll DD you. You get me?’

‘Oh yeah, we get you,’ I said, looking at the gun.

The bloke with the clothes put them down in one corner and then came to undo our cuffs from the radiator. I rubbed at the skin where the ties had been and Zoe did the same. At least both guys had the decency to leave us to it once we were free, but I didn’t hear the footsteps fade away. They were waiting outside the door, there were no windows, and everything in here was bolted to the floor and walls. No weapons. They weren’t dumb.

I helped Zoe to her feet and we checked out the clothes.

‘What the hell is this?’ I pulled out a black suit jacket, matching trousers and a white pressed shirt. ‘And is that . . . it’s a bow tie. Are we being kidnapped or are we going to prom? Make your mind up, Duff.’

Zoe pulled out what was supposed to be her outfit from the pile. It was a red jumpsuit with trouser legs so wide, it almost looked like a dress. There were tiny sequins sewn in along the straps and waistline. It looked damn expensive.

‘Well, at least they’re not making me wear a dress,’ Zoe said.

I shrugged. What choice did we have? It was wear the ridiculous clothes or get a bullet in the brain. Tough pick.

Zoe went behind one of the massive boiler tanks to get changed but I still faced the wall to give her some privacy. I pulled on the trousers and shirt easily enough and I was relieved to see that the bow tie was a clip-on. There were even shoes for both of us, mine a pair of brand-new shiny black loafers, and Zoe’s a pair of red Doc Martens. I kept my top button undone which sure, was a little childish, but I wasn’t going to give that billionaire psychopath everything he wanted. Small rebellions rule.

‘Zo? Am I OK to turn around?’ I shouted out.

‘Yes. I think I’m ready, anyway,’ Zoe said.

I turned to take her in. Sure, we were trapped in the basement of what was probably a murder factory and at least one of us was probably going to die tonight. But we would look pretty good on the way out. Zoe’s jumpsuit fit her like a glove, the sequins reflecting the fluorescent lights, and the Docs were ready to stomp on a few toes.

‘Man, you look . . . amazing. You look bloody amazing,’ I said.

Zoe smiled for the first time since we got there and butterflies took flight in my stomach. ‘You scrub up quite well yourself.’

‘I mean . . . it’s almost like you’ve had a personal stylist or something,’ I said, walking around Zoe, taking it all in. It wasn’t a dress, which Zoe would never wear, or heels, which Zoe would rather go barefoot than wear. It was pretty, but still very much her.

‘I think we have. Did you not check the label?’

‘No. I wasn’t really worried about what stupid amount of money Duff had spent on us for the next step of his game.’

‘Here, check mine. It’s in the back of my jumpsuit.’

Zoe turned around and lifted her short hair so I could see the nape of her neck. I swiped a finger under the lining of the jumpsuit and tried to ignore the jolt of electricity I felt every time I touched her. I found the label and scooped it out, craned my neck to read it: MME SCISSOR. DESIGNS BY NINA.

‘Designed by our kidnapper’s estranged wife who he would kill if he got half the chance. Well, that’s not creepy at all,’ I said.

I smoothed the label back into the seam and ran my hands across Zoe’s shoulders and down her bare arms. She spun around and we found ourselves face to face, noses almost touching.

I pressed my forehead to hers. ‘We’ll get through this,’ I whispered. I didn’t know if it was true, but I wanted it to be.

‘I know,’ Zoe said in return.

There was a loud bang on the door and we broke apart. ‘You ready in there? It’s time for dinner.’

I raised an eyebrow at Zoe. Dinner? I hated that I hadn’t eaten for so long, my stomach actually growled at the thought.

‘Like pigs to slaughter,’ Zoe muttered.

The door opened and our friends with the guns stood either side of the doorway, nodding for us to go ahead of them. I took Zoe’s fingers in mine and squeezed hard.

We were led down a hallway that looked a lot like the room they had been keeping us captive in. The building was some sort of industrial unit, and we were in the basement. At the end of the hall was a lift, which we possibly got into to come down here in the first place, but it was hard to tell when we’d had hoods over our heads.

We got in the lift and the bloke with the gun hit the highest-up button, floor twenty-five. When the doors closed, some muzak was pumped in through the lift speakers and I suddenly felt hysterical. I had to literally bite my lip to stop from laughing and Zoe gave me a look which said she would actually punch me if I dared to let it out. But come on – evil billionaire’s lair, and he still hasn’t shelled out to avoid royalty-free music? If I lived through tonight, Aisha would love this story.

The lift went up so fast that my ears popped, and the doors were back open again in less than a minute. We stepped out on to a plush carpeted floor and a room so huge and tall, it felt like stepping out on to a football stadium pitch. Glass ran the length of a whole wall and showed off incredible views across the city. From here, you could see all the empty areas that Lonnie had been talking about, the dark patches of streets where there were no lights on. But for the most part, London was still bloody impressive from twenty-odd stories up in the sky.

The apartment, if you can call a place bigger than even my house that, was split into different levels all the way up to the tall ceiling. There were several galleries, all facing the city view, and a few chandeliers hanging down at different heights to light the space. I was so busy taking it all in I didn’t even see the table in front of me until Zoe nudged me.

Directly in front of the lift was a huge mahogany dining table, with six places set with gold knives and forks. Two of the chairs were empty, presumably for us, but the other four were filled and that’s what Zoe had obviously nudged me about.

Madame Scissor sat closest to us, dressed in more silk scarves and a million gold bangles, but she didn’t look at us when we walked into the room. Opposite her was the man I recognized from TV but had never met, Argo Duff. He wore what he always did – blue jeans and a crisp white tee – and he was stood up with his hands clasped together like he was about to introduce us as his favourite people.

He was shorter than he seemed on TV, too.

Usually someone with that white a smile would take over the room but I couldn’t stop staring at the other two occupied seats, where two girls sat, looking sweaty and terrified. A girl with straight dark hair and another with orange curls, the girls I had spent most weekends with since they KinTwinned. Aisha and Bri.

‘What the f—?’ I started, but then I was hit in the small of my back with the barrel of a gun and that shut me up.

‘Welcome, children,’ Argo said. He even had the same silky voice he had on TV, the one he used in his annual conferences to introduce new features of the DD app. ‘Please, sit. We’ve been waiting for you.’

Duff gestured at the two remaining seats, the ones wedged either side of the table between him and his estranged wife, and Bri and Aisha. Zoe was led round next to Madame Scissor and I had the great displeasure of sitting next to the world’s richest asshole. At least Aisha was to my right.

I glanced at her and Bri and saw they were also wearing crazy expensive clothes, probably more pieces by Madame Scissor. Bri was dressed in a silk green mini-dress and Aisha wore a gold sari that tucked neatly over her left shoulder. Bri looked like she had been crying. My stomach twisted. I blinked at Aisha, tried to communicate without talking like we used to be so good at doing. My eyes screamed, What are you doing here? But her brown ones just stayed as wide as the dinner plates in front of us.

Then it hit me. The SOS text, with the safe word. Umbrella. She must have come to London looking for us, and where better to start than the HQ for KinTwin Discoveries? Bri’s dad would have known exactly where it was. And, Christ, Bri’s dad probably thought it was safe. He worked for the company after all – Aisha would have been worried and Bri’s parents probably happily covered their travel costs to set their minds at rest. Maybe they just strolled up to the front desk, Aisha demanding to know where we were, and that’s when Duff made the connection to us.

‘Well, now everyone is here, I think introductions are in order,’ Duff said. He clapped his hands together and the guards that had brought me and Zoe up fell back into position with the other armed blokes already scattered around the room. ‘Milo, Zoe. I believe you know our surprise guests, Aisha and Bri.’

Bri scowled. She hated when people knew more than they let on, and they even knew her nickname, so they must have looked her up. Aisha didn’t say anything.

‘Nothing to say, girls? Not even after you lied your way past my security and got caught in the act?’

Bri looked up at that one, her face like thunder. If there was anything she hated more than people referring to her and Aisha as ‘the girls’, then I was yet to find it.

Looked like I was right, too. This was KinTwin Discoveries HQ. Why was it even surprising that Duff would live at the top of his workplace, like some sort of crap supervillain? I stared out at the view of London opposite and saw the dawn sun painting the sky pink. It wasn’t really light yet, but light enough to see the balcony that ran the length of those windows. This would be a mint place to visit normally, you know, if I weren’t about to be murdered in it.

‘Well, we are quiet. I would be too after all the information I had to share with you when you arrived, girls. Nina filled me in on everything, you see, Milo, and I let Aisha and Bri know exactly what you’ve been up to and how you got everyone here into so much danger.’

I glared at Madame Scissor but she didn’t say anything, just stared at her empty place setting and fiddled with the gold fork. What was she even doing here, anyway? Didn’t she hate Duff ?

‘He didn’t get anyone into danger,’ Zoe said, jaw set. ‘We can think for ourselves, thanks.’

‘No, no. Thank you, Zoe. Thank you for actually letting me know you’re listening,’ Duff said.

He signalled to one of his goons and the guy came up behind Zoe, gun raised. I half rose out of my seat and found Aisha’s hand clamped around my wrist, warning me. I sat back down.

‘Now, now,’ Duff said, watching my reaction. ‘Would be a shame to DD both of you in one swoop, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, that would be hard, seeing as we severed our bond,’ I said, adrenaline flooding through my veins like fire. Guess he didn’t hold all the cards. Zoe still looked terrified though. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth.

‘Oh really? Let’s check,’ Duff said.

He clicked his fingers again and the guard hit Zoe in the side of her head, hard, with the butt of his gun. The moment he raised the weapon, I threw myself forward, Aisha’s hand on my arm the only thing stopping me from vaulting the table. But then I couldn’t stand, couldn’t move, the pain in my head was excruciating. I felt like I had been knocked sideways.

Right on the left-hand side of my head.

I slumped down into my chair and Aisha leant over me. ‘Milo? Can you hear me? Where does it hurt?’ she asked.

I blinked and saw stars, but behind those, there was Zoe. She was holding the side of her head and mouthing something at me. That was the pain I felt. Had Madame Scissor lied to us? Did the cure not even work? No, that can’t be right. The guys in Lonnie’s bar said they knew people who had taken it.

I frowned at Zoe. She was still mouthing something at me. What was it? I focused on her lips but it was hard with the pounding pain in my left temple, and Zoe was struggling too, clutching the same side of her head, where the guard had hit. KinTwin pain wasn’t even as powerful as the pain felt by the first person either, so if I was hurting this much, she must be in agony.

Focus, Milo. What is she saying? I narrowed my eyes and isolated the words coming out of her mouth.

I’m . . . sorry. That was it. She was saying it over and over, like a mantra. Like someone desperate to be forgiven. I looked up and there were tears in her eyes, but I’d assumed that was from the hit. But maybe they weren’t. Maybe she really was sorry.

I looked at Madame Scissor. She still didn’t look up, staring at the gold fork as if it would offer a solution. Then I looked at Duff and his shit-eating grin, before looking back at Zoe.

I was still in pain. Zoe felt responsible, because she was telling me she was sorry. Madame Scissor specifically said we both had to take the pill for the bond to be severed. My breath caught in my throat.

The pill does work. Zoe just never took it. She pretended to, but she couldn’t break the bond. She didn’t give me the same choice I gave her.

Zoe had taken control. We were still KinTwinned.

19

Milo was looking at me like I was the one who’d just hit him in the face, not the guard with the gun.

Although he was almost right on that one.

My idiotic attachment to our relationship had caused Milo pain already, and if something worse happened to me, it would cost him his life. Separating would have better protected both of us, but I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t even think of the danger Milo would be in if I got hurt, and that wasn’t like me at all. I usually thought about every possible outcome, but my selfishness had totally blinded me. It was bad enough not taking the pill, but faking it and lying about it was even worse. If I hadn’t had the initiative to put the pill deep in my pocket, they would have found it and taken it from me along with the rest of my stuff. My phone. Bari.

I’d do anything to ask Bari’s advice right now. Or even just to rub his digital belly.

The side of my head hurt but there was a growing pain in my chest. Milo was looking at me like a stranger, which meant he had worked out what I was trying to say to him. Everything he was feeling right now, all the pain both physical and emotional, that was on me.

Why hadn’t I just told him I didn’t want to sever the bond? But that was me all over. I couldn’t trust someone else to do the right thing. I was as paranoid as Mam. I was controlling. I was just as bad as Argo Duff, and that made me feel sick to my stomach.

‘Looks like our new KinTwins aren’t on the same page after all,’ Duff said. ‘A pity. I think we should begin the meal, and then we can talk more. Service!’

Within seconds of Duff finishing his sentence, a team of women in chef’s whites came around the corner of the room, presumably from wherever the kitchen was in this place. Plate after plate of breakfast food was brought to the table, everything from fresh bread rolls to continental meats and crispy fried eggs. There were items that I hadn’t seen for months due to daily supply chain issues. Chocolate muffins. Pancakes. A vast selection of fresh fruits. The extravagance was like something out of a Renaissance painting. I thought of The Last Supper and then quickly put it out of my mind.

By the time the chefs were finished, the pounding in my head had receded, which at least meant Milo would be feeling better. I tried to catch his eye but he wouldn’t even look at me. Aisha gave me a sympathetic half-smile and Bri squeezed my knee, but I didn’t deserve it. I had lied and now I had to pay the cost.

‘Please. Eat. You must be famished,’ Duff said.

I didn’t want to pick up anything, but my mouth was flooded with saliva at the spread before us. If we were going to survive this, I needed food. The survivalist in me told me to eat whenever I could, especially when I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from.

‘Wait,’ Bri hissed as I grabbed a spoonful of eggs. ‘What if he’s poisoned it?’

‘Bri, to distribute poison equally through a dish, especially a hot dish, is actually very difficult. If Mr Duff wanted us dead, he would have shot us with one of the six assault rifles in this room. And those are just the weapons on show,’ I said.

Bri paled.

‘Very good, Zoe. Very true. And I’m impressed at your attention to detail, too. Something I very much admire in my wife. Right, Nina dear?’

Duff put a hand across the table to take Madame Scissor’s. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t close her fingers around his hand, either. She just let him hold it, like it was a bread roll he was caressing, not the hand of the woman he loved.

A wave of nausea wafted over me and I put down my fork.

‘All right. Enough games. Why are we here? What do you want?’ Aisha slammed her hands down on the table like she was in charge. ‘I know you told us everything about your wife and my bestie, and yeah, OK, I get that you probably want us all dead now, because we know so much already. So why are you playing with us? If you’re gonna kill us, like Zoe said, why not just shoot us and that’s the end of it?’

My mouth dropped open. Milo stared at Aisha, eyes wide. Bri got so pale, I was worried there wasn’t enough blood flow to get to her brain.

Duff smiled. ‘Aisha, if I had my way, I would have had you all shot on sight, chopped into tiny pieces, and dumped in the nearest rubbish bin,’ Duff said.

That shut Aisha up. Milo put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

‘But,’ Duff continued, ‘you all proved rather tricky to get to. First, you were all surrounded by press packs, and then when two of you did break away to come to London, you kept slipping through my fingers. Rather annoying, actually, especially considering I didn’t really register Zoe here until my agents found the hotel booking. I just didn’t believe how close the two of you had got, considering your quest to meet with my beautiful wife and have the soul bond severed forever.’

‘So why didn’t you kill us? We’re all in one place. Why bring us here?’ I asked him.

Duff laughed, an unpleasant sound that sounded more like the motor of an old car struggling to start. ‘You think I invited you? Oh, no. It was my wife that called for this dinner.’

I froze. I glanced at Milo and he met my eye, just for a second, before looking back at Duff.

I’m sure I read that it was Argo Duff that called the dinners where he fired everyone, not his wife. I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. What was this?

‘I don’t believe you,’ Milo said, teeth clenched. ‘You haven’t killed us because you wouldn’t dare. It’s not in you.’

‘Oh really?’ Duff raised an eyebrow, then stood up and pulled a handgun out from a holster on his hip.

He pointed it at one of the chefs, who was busy arranging something on a trolley in the corner of the room.

Duff pulled something back at the top of the gun, and it clicked. The chef still didn’t even notice. Nobody moved.

He pulled the trigger.

The noise made me jump and my body jolted into the table. The chef keeled over the trolley, pulling down plates and cut crystal glasses as she went. It was a perfect headshot, right between the eyes. She stared at us from the plush carpeted floor, which was soaked in her blood.

At the same time, there was a crash in the kitchen. It sounded like more plates smashing to the floor, and Duff clicked his fingers at a guard, signalling for him to go and look. A few seconds later, the guard returned with a body slung over his shoulder and dumped it next to the woman Duff had shot. Another of the chefs.

Duff frowned and put his gun away. ‘That’s a pity. I wouldn’t have done that if I’d know she was KinTwinned to Geoffrey. He’s the best pastry chef I have. Well, had.’

Duff sat back down and smoothed out his napkin over his lap. Bri started crying again.

‘My love, do you want to take over now? Because quite frankly, while I’m enjoying all this rambunctious fun and games, I am rather wondering myself what it was you needed to say in front of four nuisance children and myself,’ Duff said. He speared a piece of fruit with his fork while another guard covered the two chefs with a white tablecloth.

Madame Scissor looked up for the first time since we entered the room, and slowly rose to her feet, like she was making a speech at a wedding. She was sat to my left and I watched as she slid a golden knife across her place mat and into her dress pocket as she did so. It was such a fluid movement I don’t think anyone else noticed. At least, if Duff had seen, he would have put an end to it very quickly. Why she needed a knife, I struggled to understand. For a woman who said she was hiding from her husband, hosting a joint dinner party with him seemed a little rogue.

‘Yes, thank you, Argo,’ Madame Scissor said. She turned to each of us in turn. ‘Zoe, Milo. Thank you for visiting me. And thank you for showing me that love means more than one idea about soulmates.’

‘Uh . . . you’re welcome?’ Milo said.

He looked at me and I shrugged. Where was she going with this?

‘And to you, beau Aisha and Bri. I am so sorry you have been caught up in this. But I promise it will all be over soon.’

Duff grinned again, his million-dollar smile dotted with bits of spinach and egg. My stomach flipped over. What did she mean by ‘it will all be over soon’?

‘But, now is the time to come clean,’ Madame Scissor continued. She turned to her husband this time. ‘Mon chéri, I came to you in good faith to tell you about Milo and Zoe. I am glad they are here to witness, but it was you I wanted to speak to.’

Duff blinked and for the first time, either in person or television, he seemed to be lost for words. ‘What? You can speak to me any time – why invite the children, and do all this, if you wanted to speak to me?’

‘Because I knew you would kill the children before I had a chance to speak to you, especially once I heard you had captured them. Plus, I know how much you like a touch of the théâtre,’ Madame Scissor said simply.

The blood ran cold in my veins.

‘This is . . . Nina, what’s going on? Why do you care about these kids, why now?’ Duff dropped all pretence of knowing what was going on and slammed his cutlery down on the table.

That’s when I saw him for what he was. Not a billionaire, not some clever dick who took the right opportunities in life. A child. A child that had all his toys taken off him.

Although children don’t usually have an armed guard available at the snap of their fingers.

Madame Scissor raised an eyebrow. ‘See? I got your attention. And you need to hear what I have to say.’ She turned to me and smiled. ‘Zoe, tell me. Why do you think my husband created the KinTwin mutation?’

I looked across the table at Milo, who looked as blank and numb as I felt. ‘I don’t . . . Money, didn’t you say? He did it to become even richer, and now he’s the richest man on earth.’

‘I am still here, you know,’ Duff muttered.

‘Wrong,’ Madame Scissor replied, ignoring her husband. ‘Argo knew exactly how dangerous the KinTwin mutation was, but he released it anyway. Think, Zoe. Why would you want someone who you are supposed to love, to share more with than anyone else, to die, just because you yourself had died? This isn’t Romeo and Juliet. This is real life. Surely no one would want that, right?’

I felt the realization wash over me, clearing the numbness until it felt like I had pins and needles dancing up and down my arms. ‘Because Duff didn’t want to let you go. Because if he couldn’t have you, in life and in death, he didn’t want anyone else to.’

‘Correct. What we have is not love. It is toxic, it is a poison. And it is that poison that my husband inflicted on everybody else, just to fuel his ego and, as a nice bonus, his bank account.’ Everyone around the table sat, slack-jawed, as the pieces fell into place. ‘I do love you, Argo, in the darkest part of me. And I know you love me, love the little games we play with each other. Even the pain we inflict on each other. But I know now that is not a healthy love, and certainly not a love you should force on everyone. We have to let them be free now.’

‘Straight people love is so weird sometimes,’ Bri muttered under her breath, barely loud enough for me to hear.

‘The love part of matching soulmates is very real. Love takes different forms, but that part of the process does indeed work,’ Nina continued. ‘Despite everything, I shall never love like I love my husband. But the shared pain when your KinTwin is injured, and the death tie? That is the toxic part. And it has to stop, even if it means we go back to seeking out our love the old-fashioned way.’

The whole table stared at Madame Scissor. Duff was the first to break the silence.

‘Nina . . . let me get this straight. After years of running from me, refusing to take the cure you stole so we are still bonded, you want me to now – what? – Cure everyone? Save the world?’ Duff pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

‘Yes, mon chéri. Look at these children. They are innocents, non? And they were too scared to even take the cure, even though it meant saving their lives, in case their feelings changed. Please, Argo. I will come back to you. I won’t take the cure. But you have to let people have the option. The world is dying out there. Planes fall from the sky, people drop dead and orphan children . . . it has gone far enough. I have met so many people hurt by this over the years. Meeting Zoe and Milo was, how you say, the final straw. We must put this right.’

Madame Scissor looked from Milo to me and smiled, her eyes heavy with unshed tears. I glanced at Milo and felt the sudden urge to reach out to him, to hold his hand, but it was hard to read him after my betrayal.

Duff let go of his nose and revved up that car-engine laugh of his. ‘Why this sudden obsession with the children, Nina? And why did you possibly think this, all this nonsense, would change my mind?’ He waved his arms around the table. ‘I was never interested in saving the world. In love. I own everything from water treatment companies to train manufacturers to, yes, the world’s largest dating app. But don’t you see? Every time a train crashes, every time a dam is blown and water contaminated from another freak accident, every death, it’s music to my ears. It’s more pounds in the bank, it’s more jobs provided for my teams. I own the stock market because I am the harbinger of death. Everybody knows you have to pay the ferryman in the Underworld. Well, this ferryman found a way to make money off the living, too. And I’m not giving that up. Don’t you see? I did this for us, for you. To keep us together forever, and it paid off in so many more ways. I hold the whole world in the palm of my hands, and that includes you. That is how much I love you. I changed the entire world just for us.’

Madame Scissor let a single tear roll down her cheek. Duff wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood up. I glanced at Milo again, his brow furrowed, his hand squeezing Aisha’s shoulder so tightly that his knuckles were white. My heart threw itself against my ribcage like a real dog, not like Bari waiting patiently on my phone. My life had been so simple, so easy.

But also, it hadn’t. I was surviving, but I wasn’t living. Even Mam understood that when I last spoke to her. If this is how I died, after all my prep work, I had said what I needed to say. I had started to live, even if it was just before I died.

‘I see you’re finally speechless, my love,’ Duff sighed. ‘Enough of this. I’m bored. Shoot them all. Obviously not Nina, but I would like her to watch. I’ll deal with her later. And do it on the balcony. It’ll be easier to hose down afterwards.’

‘No, please. Don’t do this,’ Bri said, as one of Duff’s henchmen grabbed me and her by the shoulders and lifted us out of our chairs. I felt strangely calm, because at least I understood this behaviour better than a dinner – or even breakfast – party. Self-preservation at all costs. It was a mindset I understood. Hated, because I saw some of my old self in there, but I understood it.

Aisha swung around and actually bit the guard that went to get her up, which earned her a hard slap across the face. Bri gasped and fell a little to her right at the impact. KinTwinning was the worst of both worlds, I could see that now. It can make love selfish, like me lying to Milo, and it can cause all the pain. But there was nothing we could do now.

Milo tried to lunge at the guard who’d slapped Aisha, but he was held firmly in place by his own goon. We were all marched out on to the balcony. It was sunrise, and the night hadn’t been all that cold, but the wind whipping this high up was sharp and stung my bare arms like a thousand tiny needles. Duff remained inside, right by the window, just out of reach. He stood, arms crossed, like he really was bored of the whole thing.

Love, I was finding out, was a very weird thing.

The balcony had a table and chairs at the far end but the guards lined us up next to two potted plants, alongside the low stone wall. I felt like any other building would have more safety railings, but that would block the view, and Duff owned the building, so it was probably built to his exact specifications. The guards made sure to pair me with Milo, Bri with Aisha, with Madame Scissor off to one side, ready to watch. I wondered whether the blood spatter from my skull would splatter over her dress or not. I felt delirious, like I was in a dream. I looked at Milo, who looked through the window at Duff, his jaw set, the muscle twitching under the strain he was keeping it under. Aisha was shouting words that I couldn’t even repeat and Bri was sobbing. The guards adjusted their weapons and raised them to point at us.

I grabbed Milo’s hand and he whipped his head round, like he was surprised I was even there.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m an idiot. If it’s not obvious already, I like you, Milo Spencer, OK? I really like you. I like your stupid grin and your patchy five o’clock shadow. I like how you make me braver, even if it means being reckless sometimes. I even like how you’ve brought me closer to probably my first proper friends with Aisha and Bri. I didn’t know what would happen to those feelings if we took the cure. And I didn’t want to lose you either, but that’s no excuse. I’m no better than Argo flaming Duff. I’m a control freak, through and through. It was wrong of me to take away your choice by lying. It was more than wrong, it was unforgivable.’

Milo’s tense look broke. He smiled his huge grin but a tear slipped down his cheek at the same time. ‘I know. And I know why you did it, and I know why you regret it. But trust me, no one is as bad as him. You had good reasons, even if it was a bad decision. He didn’t. It’s bad Zoe, I can’t lie, but . . . I think I get it. And I still trust you. You thought you were doing the right thing and even then it was eating you up.’ He leant in and whispered, ‘Plus, that’s the first time you’ve actually admitted you really like me.’

I smiled back. ‘Don’t push it,’ I said.

Milo nodded, and we were both forced back to the task at hand. We turned back to the guards.

‘Stop this madness,’ Madame Scissor pleaded. She tried to take a step towards us but one of the guards trained his gun on her, so she froze. They wouldn’t actually kill her, of course. She was still linked to Duff.

From the look on Madame Scissor’s face, this realization hit at the same time that it crossed my mind. A smile grew slowly into a deranged grin. She turned to the window, waved at her husband with a flick of her manicured nails, and then turned and jumped up on to the wall of the balcony.

Chaos broke out. Duff ran to the door and on to the balcony. The guards lowered their weapons and waited for instructions. Even Aisha stopped yelling and we all turned to stare at Madame Scissor, stood on the wall of the balcony like a superhero, hands on hips, legs spread, scarf fluttering in the high winds like a cape. She was still smiling.

‘Nina! Nina, get down from there,’ Duff shouted over the wind. He reached out to Madame Scissor and she responded by jumping on the spot, as if she were about to take off and fly away.

But she couldn’t fly. We knew that. I leant back to look over the balcony and the vertigo of looking directly down a twenty-five-storey drop made my stomach flip over. The cars were so tiny, they looked like toys. The people were so far away, they looked like ants.

I looked back at Madame Scissor and found she was staring at me. Still grinning, scarf still flying. Duff was shouting at his guards, moving them into a semicircle around her. She winked at me.

‘Bonne chance, mes amis,’ she shouted. She blew us a kiss, didn’t even look at the ex-husband who was still shouting at her to get down, then stepped backwards into thin air.

20

Everything happened so fast it was hard for my brain to keep up with my body. Duff raced forward, throwing his hands over the side of the balcony with so much force that he nearly went over himself. Several of his goons dropped their guns and grabbed at his legs to stop him from going over. They hadn’t clocked that it was pretty pointless if Madame Scissor was already gone. Within a few seconds, her guts would be spilt across the pavement and Argo Duff would be totally DD’d by his own design. Sort of poetic, in some ways.

Zoe was leaning over to see what was happening on the other side of the wall. I didn’t know if I could stomach the sight of the fall, but Zoe had that intense look she does when she’s thinking about something, so I peeked over her head to see what was going on, and Bri and Aisha joined me. On the other side of the low concrete wall, Duff had one hand wrapped around Madame Scissor’s scarf, and he was trying to pull her up while she swung eighty metres above the concrete pavement.

And this all happened in the space of a few seconds.

‘Argo, let me go,’ Madame Scissor screamed, the wind whipping her words up to us. ‘For once, please. Let me go.’

‘You know I can’t do that,’ Duff shouted back.

His guards kept holding on to him and one was reaching over to Madame Scissor, trying to grab her hand, but she kept batting him away. She looked at me and Zoe, smiling again. Then she reached into her sleeve, still hanging by the scarf that had wrapped itself around her dangling wrist, and pulled out one of the gold knives from the dinner table.

‘It’s over, mon chéri,’ she shouted. Then she stabbed at Duff’s hand, the one hanging on to her scarf.

He screamed, and so did she, as they both felt the force of a knife go through their hands. Madame Scissor didn’t let a bit of pain stop her, though. She made sure that knife went through his skin, blood gushing down on to her face below, and then she twisted it. My mouth dropped open with the horror of it, the blood, the pain they must be in.

‘Milo, come on,’ Zoe whispered in my ear. I looked back, glad to have something pull me away from the scene over the balcony, and all three of the girls were staring at me. Zoe put a finger to her lips and then nodded at the guards. I saw them all crowded around their boss, guns forgotten and hanging at their sides.

No one was looking at us.

‘We have to move,’ Zoe hissed, and I nodded. I looked back once more at Madame Scissor, still screaming as loudly as her ex as she pushed at the knife, and then we ran.

We threw open the massive glass door that led back into the apartment and raced across the room, past the unfinished dinner and the table and the dead chefs and the massive chandeliers. One of the living chefs peered from the kitchen, took one look at us, and disappeared again. They didn’t want anything to do with what was going on outside, and luckily Madame Scissor’s stunt had forced all of the guards out on to the balcony in a panic.

We reached the lift and Aisha smashed the call button a million times. I knew how she felt; we needed to move, and who knew how long Duff would hold on for before Madame Scissor got her way? Sure, once Scissor was . . . gone, Duff would be too. But that wasn’t a guarantee of stopping the guards. We knew a lot, and this company kept a roof over their heads. We couldn’t take anything for granted.

‘Hey, Aish,’ I said, while we waited for the lift and caught our breath. ‘How did you find us?’

‘Well, you used the umbrella code word, so I knew something was up. And then I went round to Zoe’s to see if her mam knew anything, and she said that she could turn on the tracker on Zoe’s wrist because, hello, we were worried. Actually, Zoe’s mam wasn’t too keen on invading her privacy like that, but when we told her it was an emergency because you used our code word, she got on board. It suddenly stopped moving when you got to this street, so we knew it had, like, been properly switched off this end, and Zoe’s mam knew she wouldn’t do that. Then Bri checked with her dad where the London HQ for KinTwin Discoveries was, bish bash bosh. We’re actually pretty smart, you know,’ Aisha said.

I grinned. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘I’m proud of Mam for trying so hard to trust me, but I’m really glad she listened to you. Maybe she’s starting to trust my friends, too. Thanks, Aisha,’ Zoe said.

‘No worries, mate. Now, what is taking so long,’ Aisha spat, smashing the call button again and totally ignoring the fact I just called her smart. ‘Note to self. If I’m ever rich enough, and evil enough, to have a penthouse on top of my dodgy company, it has a dedicated lift.’

She glanced over her shoulder through the glass at the balcony beyond and I followed her lead. No one seemed to have even noticed we had left. Not yet, anyway. The guards were still crowded around close enough that, from inside, we couldn’t see what was going on.

‘Hey, Zo,’ I said. She looked up at me. ‘I know this is probably the wrong time for a heart to heart, but while we’re stuck waiting for this stupid lift . . . a few minutes ago, I thought we were going to die, and that took the sting out of, you know, you lying to me about taking the pill. And I’m not dumb, I know why you didn’t do it. And I’m still mad a little, and don’t get me wrong, the lying was not cool, but I’m also sort of glad that we feel the same, you know? And I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . erm . . .’

I trailed off and Zoe stretched up on tiptoe and kissed me softly on the lips. Despite everything, my heart jumped like it did when I made a jump on my BMX and a warm feeling washed through me from head to toe. When she pulled away, I was grinning like an idiot.

‘Actions speak louder than words, sometimes,’ Zoe said. She took my hand. ‘And thank you for understanding.’

‘Um, guys? Hate to break up this moment, but, uh, I think we have a situation.’ Bri pointed out the window and we all looked out at the balcony.

The guards all moved back and Duff stood completely upright, a colourful scarf in his right hand, the sleeve of his shirt covered in blood. He turned to look at us and the guards stood around him, dazed, waiting for instructions. He opened his mouth to say something.

Then he dropped to the ground like a sack of spuds.

I blinked. The guards didn’t move, then one of them looked up and saw us. His hand moved to the gun that was slung over his shoulder.

Behind us, the lift dinged and the doors slid open, bathing us in fluorescent light.

‘OK, time to go,’ Aisha said.

We launched ourselves into the lift so fast that I skidded across the tiled floor. Aisha rammed straight into me while Bri and Zoe managed to jump in and find the buttons.

‘Which one?’ Bri said, scanning the labels on each button. There was everything from ‘RECEPTION’ to ‘DEVELOPMENT’ to ‘BASEMENT’, which was obviously where we were held before the world’s weirdest dinner party.

‘Babe, and I say this with love, I don’t care. Just pick one fast,’ Aisha said.

The doors were still open and the guards were back in the apartment now, running across the massive space towards us. Guns raised.

Zoe stepped forward and slammed the ‘door close’ button. The doors slid shut just as the first guard reached the dining table in the middle of the apartment.

‘Press something,’ Aisha screeched.

‘All right, OK, I’m doing it,’ Bri hissed in reply.

She hit the button marked ‘RECEPTION’ and my stomach dropped as the lift quickly moved down the tower.

‘Reception must be where people, like, people come in, right? So that’s our best way out. Nice one, B,’ Aisha said.

Bri rolled her eyes.

‘Wait,’ Zoe said. ‘Someone just fell off this building and there are armed guards in here looking for us. They’ll be expecting us to take the lift to the ground floor, and they’ll be radioing ahead to put guards down there right now. I think we should get off somewhere else.’

I bit my lip. She was right, and we had limited time to make another decision. The digital display at the top of the lift was counting down the floors pretty fast. We were already passing floor nineteen.

‘So, where, then?’ Aisha asked.

Zoe blinked. She had worked out the hard part, but without her bag of tricks that got us out of so many situations, that was as far as the plan went.

Floor fifteen.

I scanned the buttons. The basement we knew there was no way out of, and it was a total maze down there from what we’d seen. But we had to get off before the ground floor, where the reception was, or the doors would pop open anyway and we’d have exactly the same problem. That meant we had to get out on to one of the offices or development floors that were labelled above reception.

Floor ten flashed past.

I found a labelled button that gave me a quick brainwave and smashed it. Level five: RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.

‘I’m sorry, did you want to learn more about DDing or did you want to actually live?’ Aisha asked.

‘A, listen. Five floors is high enough they won’t expect us, and low enough down that if we find a staircase, we can run the rest of the way and find, like, a fire exit to escape out of,’ I said. I took Zoe’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Plus I can’t get Madame Scissor out of my mind, man. She just sacrificed herself for us, and she wanted to save the world. I dunno, if anywhere is going to have info on the cure . . .’

‘It’ll be in Research and Development. Clever,’ Zoe finished. I grinned at her. She got me. ‘Plus, I still have this.’ She dug in her pocket and pulled out the small pink pill. ‘If we can’t find anything, I’m sure there’s someone who can analyse what’s inside. It’s something, at least.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Anyway, too late now.’

The doors slid open on to level five, a white corridor with windowed labs either side. It was still early morning, but people in white coats were already moving around the labs. There were massive machines blinking and whirring in each lab, and long lines of computers. We stepped out and immediately ducked so the people inside wouldn’t see us.

‘So, do you, like, think they know the boss’s wife just jumped or . . . ?’ Aisha whispered.

‘Aisha, that’s really insensitive,’ Bri hissed back. ‘Madame Scissor made some . . . questionable decisions, but she did try to make things right.’

‘Sorry, babe, you’re right. You know I just make jokes when I’m stressed. And right now, I’m pretty fucking stressed.’

I reached out and squeezed Aisha’s arm. ‘We’re getting out of here. Come on. They’ll have CCTV and spot us any minute. We have to find the stairs,’ I said.

We all turned and crouch-marched across the tiled floor, avoiding the windows as much as possible. Within the first minute, my calves started to burn. Once we found the stairs, we’d have to run anyway. Plus we should really try and look for some evidence of the cure, but I had no idea where to even start with that.

We rounded the first corner, Zoe in front, and Aisha and Bri behind me. I crawled around and rammed straight into the back of Zoe, who had stopped dead.

‘Oi, what are you doing here? You get lost on a tour or something?’ The gruff voice belonged to another guard, dressed in black, with a pistol on his waist.

We all stood up, hands above our heads.

The guard chuckled. ‘All right, kids. Calm down. It’s not the first time some of youse have snuck off a tour. I’m not gonna shoot you, am I?’

My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears, like I was underwater. Maybe this would be OK. The guard didn’t know who we were – it made sense that not all the guards had the same security clearance as the death squad in the penthouse. Maybe he would lead us to the exit, no questions asked.

A second later, an alarm started. It sounded like the school fire alarm, but there was also an automated announcement over the top of the noise.

‘INTRUSION ALERT. CODE RED SITUATION IN PROGRESS. DANGEROUS INDIVIDUALS STILL AT LARGE. REPEAT: CODE RED. THREAT TO LIFE IS IMMINENT. STAFF, STAY AT YOUR WORKSTATIONS. NO ONE IS TO LEAVE THE BUILDING.’

The alarm continued even after the announcement stopped. I watched as it dawned on the guard’s face that maybe the code red and the four of us might be related. His smile melted from his face and he pulled up his pistol and pointed it at us. I stepped in front of Zoe, put my hand across her chest, but she wouldn’t move fully behind me.

The guard’s hands shook as he pointed the gun. ‘What’s going on? Who are you?’ he demanded. None of us said anything. Zoe moved on my left and the pistol turned to her in retaliation. ‘Oi, you, girl. Don’t move, you hear me? Don’t. Move.’ The guard lifted one shaking finger to his earpiece and spoke into it. ‘Five-nine-eight-six here. I believe I’m, erm, looking at the hostiles. Please advise,’ he said. I watched as the colour drained from his face while he listened to the answer.

Inside the lab to our right, the lab technicians had cottoned on to what was happening outside their window. A few of them bunched together by the computer terminals, terrified. Which was laughable, because we were a bunch of kids, and we certainly weren’t the ones holding a gun to someone’s head.

‘Roger that, sir,’ the guard said eventually.

He put his other hand back on the gun and shook even more, but he didn’t say anything else. I could guess what the guard over the earpiece said, especially after what we saw on the balcony. He’d been told to kill us, but there was no way he could get all of us on his own. I had to rush him. I had to try and give the girls a chance to run.

Zoe shifted at my side again, so I looked to see what she was doing. She put something in her mouth and swallowed. My mouth dropped open. She had taken the pill, but why? Why now? So we wouldn’t both die if the time came?

It meant I was open to tackle him, though. It meant all three girls would get out, even though we just lost our only scrap of evidence. Not that there was time to think about that now.

‘Oi. What did I say about moving?’ the guard yelled, swinging the gun back around to her.

‘Don’t point that thing at her. Hey! Point it at me,’ I said, waving to get the guy’s attention. Zoe still didn’t move no matter how hard I pushed her back; it was like she was superglued to the floor. I looked at her and she was slightly crouched, completely ignoring me, her eyes firmly on the guard. And that’s when I realized what she was going to do, why she took the pill.

We were even more alike than I’d realized.

‘Zoe, no!’ I screamed, reaching out to grab her by the shoulders.

But she was ready. She knew I would try to stop her, and she knew she might not be able to dodge a bullet, so she took the pill to separate us. She easily dodged under my outstretched arms and charged.

Aisha tried to grab Zoe’s jumpsuit but she was too fast. She half-crouched, aiming her shoulder right at the waist of the guy with the gun. My heart leapt into my mouth as I saw the guard flex his trigger finger.

But nothing happened. There was no gunshot, no bullet ripping through Zoe and dropping her dead. Instead, the guard’s eyes got very wide as he realized Zoe wasn’t stopping and he dropped the gun. Zoe reached him and shouldered into his gut with all her might, sending him flying across the corridor and into the wall opposite. He hit his head hard on the glass that looked into one of the labs and slid down, eyes closed, clearly unconscious.

I hoped his KinTwin wasn’t driving at the time, because they were about to have a very bad day.

Me, Aisha and Bri hadn’t moved. The people in the lab seemed equally as stunned.

Zoe had skidded to a stop in the middle of the hall. She picked up the gun, turned it over in her hands, and checked the chamber.

‘It’s loaded, but he didn’t turn the safety off,’ she said. She looked at me and shrugged. ‘Don’t think our friend here has ever had to use it before. Bit of a shame I just swallowed our only cure evidence, but I didn’t want to risk killing my KinTwin as well as myself.’

I blinked at her. ‘If you ever do anything like that again, I’ll kill you myself,’ I said. I closed the gap between us in two long strides and hugged her close.

‘That seems fair,’ she muttered into the sleeve of my dinner jacket.

I pulled back and saw she still had the gun.

‘Now that’s something that might help us find more evidence,’Aisha called out, pointing at the gun and smiling at the people in the lab. ‘Let’s go chat to some science nerds.’

21

Everyone was smiling at me, which made it even more difficult to not throw up all over the tiled floor.

I don’t know what had come over me, but all I knew in the moment that the guard pointed the gun at us was that Milo would sacrifice his life to save us in a second. It was something I had never even dreamt of, especially not in any of my survivalist plans or preparation drills. Jumping in front of a bullet was something that people did in films, and those were the films I usually turned off. I’d always thought I wasn’t a hero. But Milo believed in me, and I knew I had to do something.

Plus, in the end, there were no bullets to heroically jump in front of anyway, so I could still turn off those silly films. If we got out of here with our lives.

The other thing I was worried about was my feelings for Milo. In that moment, all I felt was adrenaline sending shivers down my spine, but would Milo and I still like each other when this was all over, or was this trauma bonding? Would our relationship survive? Would the pill have even worked that quickly?

But there wasn’t time to worry about that. Aisha stepped forward and took the gun off me, carefully, and then turned back to the window where the scientists were still cowering from us inside their lab.

‘See? They’re super scared. They’ll give us this cure thingy, recipe, whatever, if they think we’ll blow their brains out. Who needs hostages when you’re KinTwinned to the one person you’d die for, right?’

I stared at her as she weighed the gun in her hands. Aisha talked a big game but holding something that could kill someone, she suddenly looked like a little girl. Her hands shook slightly and she couldn’t look us in the eye. Something twisted in the pit of my stomach. This didn’t feel right at all.

Aisha opened the door to the lab and held the gun by her side like a toddler might hold on to the arm of a doll. ‘All right. We have a gun. One of you must have access to the cure for this thing. Let’s trade.’

Milo, Bri and I followed through the door after her. ‘We need to be fast,’ Bri said. ‘They’re probably sending people to this floor right now. I remember Dad got stuck at work in a code red once . . . Remember the day with the plane crash? That was just a code blue. Red sounds worse than blue, right?’

The gun still hung limp by Aisha’s side. One of the scientists broke into sobs.

‘Aisha. We don’t have to do things this way. Put it down,’ I said.

Aisha looked at me, then the gun, then put it on the nearest bench. Then she let out a huge breath, like she had just burst out of the water. ‘Thank god. I didn’t even know how to hold that thing without looking like something from a bad movie.’

Bri moved to put an arm around her.

I stepped forward and held my hands out, flats of my palms up, to signal that the gun was gone and we were peaceful. Milo stood close to my left-hand side, arms folded, but he didn’t interrupt me. ‘There. We don’t want to hurt you, we really don’t. But there’s something you can help us with, and I think when we explain ourselves, you’ll want to help.’

‘What could we possibly help you with?’ one scientist, a short man with glasses still sat in a grey office chair, piped up. ‘Code red means there’s been a death in the facility, and then you lunatics come in holding a gun. You’ve knocked out Kenny, the security guard. Why would we help you?’

‘Yeah. You think we haven’t been held hostage before?’ another scientist said, one with a messy blonde bun. ‘People get angry about what we do. We get threatened a lot. You aren’t the first.’

I thought about the first conversation we’d had with Bri’s dad, the one where Milo and I broke into his office. He also said he was sick of everyone being angry all the time. How he had heard of Madame Scissor, what she symbolized. That was our in.

‘I get it. I understand why people are angry. But I think we can work together to fix that,’ I said.

The scientists shifted on their feet but they didn’t say anything else.

‘Listen. You said code red means a death. That was Madame Scissor. I know you know who that is. She just jumped off the roof of the building. We were there, we saw it.’

The scientist with the glasses took them off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Wait. If Nina jumped, then that means . . .’

‘Argo Duff, your evil boss? He just DD’d. He’s dead,’ Milo said bluntly.

The scientists looked at each other and started muttering.

‘Please. We don’t have much time,’ I said, trying to get their attention back. Milo’s eyes flicked from the door to the window by the lift constantly, looking for the next ambush.

‘Madame Scissor was our friend. We went to her for the cure – and please, don’t insult us by pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ I said. Some of the scientists looked at the floor, avoiding my eye. ‘It doesn’t matter that you knew about it and did nothing. It matters that you act now, or Madame— I mean, Nina, died in vain. Duff is dead. He can’t hurt you. If you give us access to the cure, we will leak it to the press. We’ll keep your names out of it, I promise.’

Nobody said anything. Pretty much all the scientists avoided eye contact. I looked at Milo. We knew we were running out of time. We could go now, run to the exit stairs in the corner of the floor, but we were so close. We couldn’t leave empty-handed after everything.

‘My dad works for KinTwin Discoveries,’ Bri said. We all turned to look at her and the tips of her ears went red. ‘Um, yeah. He’s Dr Smythe, I’m Bri. I know it’s a good job and I know that just because you work here doesn’t make you a bad person. But surely you’ve all lost someone to Dearly Departed Syndrome? I lost my aunt and uncle on the same day. Aunt died from cancer. My uncle obviously followed.’

‘My cousins, Allah yerhamo,’ Aisha said, squeezing Bri’s hand.

‘My godfather and godmother,’ said Milo.

‘My dad,’ I said quietly. Milo put his hand on the small of my back and I sucked back the tears. ‘Bri is right. We can’t let this keep happening. Please. I know Nina was having an affair with one of the KinTwin technicians, someone high up in research who invented the cure. Did anyone here know him? Maybe he trusted you with his research, maybe you could avenge him by releasing it to the world? We know Duff had him killed. Help us. Please. We don’t need to be afraid of him any more.’

I finished and looked around the room. No change. That’s what years of conditioning do to someone. I was about to turn to Milo and tell him that we should go, try to escape, when I heard a small voice.

‘His name was Ralph,’ it said. I followed it to a tiny scientist, no more than five foot tall, who stepped out around the others. She had grey hair and nervous eyes that darted back and forth between us. ‘Dr Ralph Davies. I’m Dr Mara Giles. Ralph was my best friend, until . . . He was the best of us. We came up in KinTwin Discoveries together.’ She paused and wiped her eyes. ‘I knew something bad had happened, but to hear it from you . . . Thank you for speaking the truth. You kids, so young and so brave. You could have used violence, but you didn’t—’

‘Not from lack of trying,’ Aisha muttered, and Bri nudged her.

‘But you didn’t. You’re different from them, from Duff. You deserve the truth in return.’

The woman reached around her neck and pulled up the long chain of a necklace with a key on the end. She shuffled across the room to a bank of lockers, fitted the key, opened a door, and grabbed something from inside. When she came back to me, she opened her hand and there was a memory drive on her palm, like the ones you used if you didn’t want your data on the cloud. It was no bigger than my thumb and had a small loop in the corner for a lanyard, to keep it safe.

‘This is everything Ralph had on the cure, and on Duff, even how he made this whole mess in the first place. Ralph was on to him long before he got involved with Nina. That’s probably how they— It doesn’t matter now. Take it.’ She pushed the drive into my open hand and closed my fingers around it. ‘Now go. The fire exit stairs are right over there. If they come, I’ll try to send them the wrong way. Run.’

‘Thank you,’ Milo said. The other scientists didn’t say a word. If anything, some looked almost ashamed.

‘OK, thanks and thanks. Let’s go.’ Aisha grabbed my arm and brought me back down to earth. It was a matter of minutes until security would be all over us, and we had to move.

I smiled once more at Dr Giles and then we ran to the emergency exit stairs, lit by a bright green sign. The codered alarm was still ringing out so the fire alarm didn’t go off when I opened the door. We did have to step over the guard on the way out, but I could see that his chest was slowly falling and rising. He was OK, and so was his KinTwin, wherever they were. We left the gun behind.

The exit led to a stairwell that we started jumping down two and three steps at a time. The quicker we got out of there, the better.

I squeezed the memory drive tightly in my hand, because Madame Scissor wasn’t quite feminist enough to include pockets in my jumpsuit. I wasn’t about to lose our only piece of evidence, not now. I’d already swallowed the pill, I was cured, but not everyone had that chance.

I had to assume it took a while to digest, so I wasn’t even sure if it had taken effect yet, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how things might be different once we got out of here. My feelings might be different. Are soulmates made, or are they destined? I never was very good with destiny. I glanced at Milo as we rounded the final set of stairs and he grinned at me, high on adrenaline and the thought of freedom. I couldn’t think about any of this now. I just had to wait and see.

Aisha got to the bottom of the stairs first and pushed against the door that led out into the street. The light was blinding at first compared to the emergency lighting of the concrete tower we had just run down, so it took a few seconds for our eyesight to adjust. We held our hands up to visor our eyes as we stumbled out into the fresh air.

Everywhere we looked was absolute madness. At least a dozen police cars were scattered around the street in front of us, blue lights flashing, blocking the street beyond. We had come out at one corner of the building, and opposite a huge glass skyscraper reflected back the red letters several stories above our heads: KINTWIN DISCOVERIES: HOME OF THE DEARLY DEPARTED APP.

‘This is the front of headquarters,’ I said. ‘And I’m pretty sure Duff’s balcony faced on to the front of the building for the views, so that means . . .’

‘Madame Scissor fell on this side,’ Milo finished.

We walked around the back of the nearest police car and looked over the flashing lights at the mess beyond. There was an ambulance and several uniformed people crowded around where I assumed the body of Madame Scissor lay. But they hadn’t covered the body with a sheet, and let the police come in to do their work. One of the ambulance crew even had a small electronic device near his feet, with wires that went into the middle of the crowd of people.

‘Is she . . . Did she survive the fall?’ I asked Milo, pointing at the ambulance crew.

Before he had a chance to reply, the exit door we had come through seconds earlier burst open. We all whipped around to see several armed guards, dressed head to toe in black, run out into the light, guns raised.

‘There they are,’ one of them shouted. He signalled to a nearby police officer, and a few of them turned to see what was going on. ‘These are the kids that killed her, officer. They pushed Nina Duff. We saw it with our own eyes. Then they held our scientists at gunpoint and stole classified information. Arrest them.’

I took a step back and Milo followed, glued to my side.

‘What are they on about?’ Aisha asked, her face even paler than usual.

‘Jesus. It’s over. Why can’t they just accept that it’s over,’ Milo muttered.

The guards lowered their guns, but someone in a bright yellow jacket caught my eye – a police officer stepped around the car and started speaking into his radio.

‘They can’t be serious, right?’ Bri said. We had all taken a few steps back and were stood in a row, just like we had been on the balcony. But this time, instead of a firing squad in front of us, we had the force of the Metropolitan Police to deal with.

‘Leg it,’ Aisha yelled, and she broke off running.

She tried to drag Bri with her but she was frozen to the spot, too scared to move. Aisha was thrown to the ground within seconds by a police officer who’d had the sense to realize she was going to run. The next thing I felt was the heavy hand of another police officer on my shoulder, who asked me to put my hands on the back of my head.

Milo, Bri and I all did as we were told while Aisha shouted bloody murder as she was hauled off to a car by two more officers. Our hands were lowered behind our backs and the cold metal of handcuffs stung my wrists. We were frogmarched towards the nearest three police cars and more officers stepped forward to open the doors.

They were splitting us up.

Milo turned to say something to me as he was pulled off to the car on my left, hand on his head to force him into the back, but he never managed to get it out. As I was lowered into the back seat of my own car, all I could think about was whether I would ever see him again. Or Mam. Or Bari. If Madame Scissor had survived, that meant Duff had too. And he was definitely powerful enough to have us locked up and the key thrown away.

And then there was the dissolving time bomb in my stomach. The pill. When did it start working? Would I suddenly reach a stage where I didn’t like Milo any more? Or even forget him – or would nothing change, and I would miss him forever from behind bars? Was that worse? If we did go to prison, would I be in the same one as Bri and Aisha, at least?

Breathe. Remember the old mantra. Panic doesn’t solve anything. I hadn’t even spoken to a lawyer and at this point, the guards were desperate and clutching at straws. Right?

But what if Duff was alive?

The police car drove by where Madame Scissor lay. Some of the paramedics had moved back to the ambulance to get a stretcher, and I could see a bundle of colourful scarves dotted across the road. Nearby, two trees hung over the entrance to the building, and there were several branches scattered around Madame Scissor’s body. Did a tree break her fall? It was so unlikely. But then again, so was everything about the world we lived in.

Ninety-nine per cent of people don’t survive a tenstorey drop. Madame Scissor fell more than twice that.

Then the car swung around and we were driving away from the scarves and the flashing lights and the broken trees. We raced past the buildings Milo and I had weaved through to avoid the car chasing us down. We drove past the hotel where bullets had flown, which now had a police cordon around it. We meandered down lanes with white townhouses that reminded me of Madame Scissor’s brother’s house. Did we really survive all that, plus train crashes and planes falling from the sky, to end up here? To end up without each other?

We pulled into the police station. And I had never felt more alone.

22

It’s funny how quickly you get used to things.

I drove with all the windows open. It was school holidays, although the school never properly reopened after the plane crash, so we had been on break for weeks now and it was the middle of a heatwave.

We were only held in the police station for a few hours. Because we were minors, our parents were called, and my mum and dad brought a string of lawyers down with them. In fact, we were only there for so long because our parents had to drive, seeing as the train line was closed after the crash me and Zoe had been in.

Zoe’s mum had looked petrified when she came into the station. She had an identical Bug-Out Bag to Zoe and she was picking the skin around her thumb the whole time my parents were talking to her. It was even bleeding. Zoe later told me that she wasn’t great at driving long distances from home, so it was pretty cool that she came all that way to get her. More than that, it was bloody brave. Plus, her turning on the tracker, and listening to Aisha when she knew something was wrong – that really helped Aisha and Bri to find us. She was a proper hero. I tried to give her a hug but she took a step back and adjusted her face mask. Zoe showed me how to do an elbow bump instead, and I liked to pretend she smiled even a little bit behind that mask.

Bri’s dad was fuming, though. He couldn’t believe that we had been held hostage by the company he worked for, and he managed to somehow get hold of all the CCTV we needed by calling in a favour with a work friend, so that was a total slam dunk for us. It even showed that Aisha never pointed the gun at the scientists we asked for help. We had Zoe to thank for that one.

Then Dr Giles, the scientist who gave Zoe the flash drive, arrived and totally put us in the clear. The police weren’t exactly amazing at deciphering all the DNA and science stuff on the drive, but Mara was able to help them understand it. They made a copy to start an investigation into KinTwin Discoveries, but we haven’t heard much about that since. Luckily, they gave Zoe back the drive but said she would be like, in breach of the law if she released it during an ongoing investigation, or something.

It had been three weeks since the showdown at KinTwin Discoveries HQ. I knew from the cuts and bruises that were still healing that it happened, but from the outside, no one else would. Through the ethereal power of eff-tons of money and owning half the world, Argo Duff’s people had managed to keep the whole thing quiet, despite the police investigating it. There were no press at the house and the only thing that hit the news was about his wife falling off the skyscraper he lived in.

By some bloody miracle, Madame Scissor had survived. She hit a massive tree on the way down, broke more bones than I could name, and suffered a punctured lung, but she was alive. Last I heard she was still in a coma in some fancy hospital in London. There were rumours, mostly on Soul-Bait forums, that she and Argo Duff shared a room. Seeing as his KinTwin was in a coma, so was he. No one knew if they would ever wake up, and he had enough money to keep them both alive forever if whoever controlled his estate wanted to. And I reckon a guy like that had left strict, legally binding instructions that no life support was to be switched off. Felt sort of karmic, in a way, considering Argo was the reason he and Madame Scissor were KinTwinned in the first place.

I parked up at the café and headed inside before pulling up a chair at my favourite window, from where I could people-watch. No one bothered me. Even the press from the Captive Nine story had abandoned me. It had gone completely dead. Everything was back to how it was before I even knew who my KinTwin was.

Well, not quite everything.

I looked up and saw a girl right outside the window, only glass between us. My date was here. She was looking at her phone, tapping away at something, then she looked up and we locked eyes. She smiled before coming inside.

‘Hello. Fancy seeing you here,’ Zoe said.

I kissed her lightly on the lips and pulled out her chair so she could sit down.

‘Indeed. I’m actually stalking you. I’m just not very good at hiding,’ I said, sitting back opposite.

She grinned this time. It was still a little weird seeing her smile so much, but my heart grew like a balloon whether she was scowling or laughing or even angry at me. Even after she took the pill, after all this time, I didn’t feel any differently. And I had to trust that if she ever did stop liking me, she would just tell me. Without a death bond forcing you together, trust took on a totally new meaning.

‘When are Aisha and Bri coming?’ Zoe asked.

Aisha and Bri were even less involved in everything that went down than we were, but they had also been keeping a low profile. They’d talked about maybe speaking to Madame Scissor’s brother to get pills to break their soul bond, but in the end, they decided against it.

Zoe thought they were nuts, which was rich coming from someone who lied about taking it. But she did in the end, and it didn’t change anything except the fact that now I could stub my toe without worrying I was causing her any pain. She kept asking Aisha why she wouldn’t sever the bond, knowing the pill works, but Aisha just said she wasn’t ready, and we respected that. If we forced the cure on everyone, we’d be no better than Duff. It had to be a choice. Love was a choice, and it always won out in the end.

Lonnie was thrilled about the whole thing. We tracked him down to a local hospital shortly after being let out of the nick, and luckily he didn’t suffer any serious injuries. The idea that anyone hit him at all still made my blood boil, but he was a forgiving guy. I was looking forward to taking Aisha and Bri with us next time we visited the Anti-KinTwin Club.

Aisha and Bri met us at the café about ten minutes after Zoe arrived. I’d thought they were inseparable before, but since everything that happened with Argo Duff, they were more glued at the hip than ever. Zoe and I weren’t quite the same, but it wasn’t because the pill had made us feel any less for each other. We were just different, and different was cool.

As if to make my point, Zoe pulled out her phone and swiped up to start playing with Bari. Obviously we had all our stuff taken off us when we got to Duff’s place after he kidnapped us, but once the police realized what was going on, they managed to recover everything for us. I’d never seen Zoe so happy than when she turned on her phone and saw that Bari was still there. I did try and explain that Bari would have been backed up to the cloud, just in case she needed a new phone, but she wasn’t having any of it.

‘Zo, will you put down the digital life-suck and focus?

We have stuff to talk about,’ Aisha said.

I narrowed my eyes at Aisha, but she just shrugged, and Zoe slipped her phone and Bari back into her jeans pocket. I brushed my thumb along Zoe’s thigh under the table until I reached her hand and threaded my fingers through hers.

‘All right, A. Let’s hear it. Why did you call us all out here?’ I said.

Aisha looked over her shoulder before speaking, like she was in a spy movie, and then leant in across the table, like she was about to tell us some big secret. ‘We have to leak the stuff on the flash drive.’

‘Sorry, say what now?’ I asked. I looked at Zoe, but she was staring into her cup of green tea. Bri looked shifty too. I leant back in my chair. ‘Wait. Why do I feel like I’m the last to hear about this?’

‘We wanted to tell you, Milo,’ Zoe began. She leant across and stroked the back of my wrist with her thumb. Dammit, she knew I loved that. ‘But we were a little worried that you might not exactly be on board. So we needed a plan to present to you first.’

‘Oh, I see. So there’s a whole plan. Great, got it,’ I said. ‘What did you call the secret group chat for this? Operation No Boys Allowed?’

Aisha rolled her eyes. ‘Oh please, M. You know that’s the name of my lucky kecks.’ She grinned as I faked vomiting on the table. ‘Seriously, though, it’s not such a big deal. We only started talking about it last week. Hear us out.’

I sighed. ‘Why are you even up for this? You two don’t even want to take the pill.’

‘Just because we don’t have a need for it, doesn’t mean we’re not pro-choice,’ Bri said.

I looked from Aisha, to Bri, to Zoe, and back again. They were obviously in agreement with each other, but they also wanted me to say yes. ‘All right. Riddle me this – let’s say we do this, and we release the files, whatever. Even if we do it anonymously, it’ll be obvious to everyone still running KinTwin Discoveries that it was us. Won’t that paint a target on our backs?’

Somehow, even without their fearless leader, KinTwin Discoveries marched on. They took a bit of a stock-market hit when news got out about Duff’s condition, but that didn’t change how things were. KinTwinning was bigger than Duff now. It had been for a long time, so the DD app was still used by governments the world over, and they still paid a heavy premium to use it. Duff and Madame Scissor didn’t have any sprogs, thank god, so I had no idea who was running the place, but whoever it was, they were probably just as power-hungry and money-driven as Duff was. They wouldn’t take us releasing the cure lying down.

‘Well, yeah. We did think of that,’ Zoe said. ‘Obviously we would create a burner account and release it on a non-policed platform like SoulBait, and let the internet do the rest. Once the formula gets into the hands of the right people – rival pharmaceutical companies – the proof would be in the pudding. But even then, it probably would point pretty heavily at me.’

Zoe sipped her green tea like she hadn’t just said something completely terrifying.

‘But we have to do it. If we don’t, we’re just as bad as them, right? We can’t force everyone to take the cure. If we wanted that, we could just dump it into the water supplies like Duff did. But we have to let people decide. Love isn’t a life or death choice – or at least, it shouldn’t be. The world could rebuild. We could save a lot of people. Please, Milo,’ Zoe said.

She put down her tea and grabbed both my hands in hers. They were still warm from the cup and her eyes were so huge and dark I felt like I could fall into them. My heart bounced like a ping-pong ball around my ribcage and I knew I had lost the argument.

‘Wait, time out.’ Aisha leant across and waved her hand in front of our faces, breaking the spell. She was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Zo, did you just use the L-word? Did you just say “Love is a choice”? Does that mean that you guys are—’

‘A. Back up. You’re overstepping, matey,’ I said firmly.

Aisha held her hands up in mock surrender. Bri hid behind the menu, pretending not to laugh.

I winked at Zoe and she chewed the insides of her cheeks, trying not to smile. We hadn’t said the words to each other yet, and that was OK. Feelings were hard. What I did know was that at various points during our London trip, we would have died for each other. Literally. We had a bond, and it went deeper than KinTwinning. If anything, since taking the pill, I trusted and respected her more than ever. Because I knew now that it was real, and that we were choosing each other.

But I wasn’t about to tell Aisha that, because she would tease me until the end of time.

‘OK. Fine. You win. I can’t be the guy that stands in the way of saving humanity, I guess,’ I said. I still didn’t feel super happy about it, but the women were right, as usual. It wasn’t my decision to make. Besides, Zoe and I had survived a lot in the last few weeks. We could handle this too.

Aisha squealed and pulled her tablet out of her bag. ‘Zoe, the drive?’ she asked.

Zoe reached around the neck of her T-shirt and pulled out a long shoelace with the drive attached. Ever since she got it back from the police, she basically slept with that thing on, but I got it. It was probably the most useful memory stick in the world, no joke.

Aisha plugged it into the side of her tablet and loaded up some stuff on screen before turning it around to show us. All the details of the cure flashed up in different pop-ups, from strings of letters I didn’t understand to weighing measurements and graphs and even pie charts.

To be honest, I didn’t understand more than just the letters, but I trusted Dr Giles. She stuck her neck out for us at the police station, and we’d even asked Bri’s dad to take a look at the data since we came home. He confirmed it was legit, but was too scared to do anything else, and that was understandable. After the CCTV stunt, he lost his job, but he said if they hadn’t fired him he would have quit. It sort of meant he was off KinTwin Discoveries’ radar, but for how long? He had people he wanted to protect too.

But if the info for the cure was readily available . . . that was a different story.

‘Are you having a laugh? We’re seriously doing this here in front of all these people?’ Bri whispered, covering the screen with the palm of her hand.

Aisha shrugged. ‘Why not? No better place to hide than in plain sight. Plus, we’re on a mobile signal, using my VPN, in the middle of a city. Even if they wanted to track the IP address back to who leaked this, they’d never be able to find out who it was. Too much internet traffic. Don’t worry, I used to do this all the time when I wrote those essays and sold them online. Oh, and that time I tried to hack into the school database to check my grades. Never managed that one, though – the YouTube tutorial was well hard to follow.’

I shook my head. ‘You are terrifying sometimes, you know that?’

‘That’s why you love me,’ Aisha said with a smile.

Bri sighed and moved her hand. She knew as well as me that there was no arguing with Aisha once she set her mind to something.

‘OK, here we go,’ she said.

We sat around and watched as she created a burner account, just like the ones with strings of numbers that we saw when we were trying to track down Madame Scissor.

‘Hang on. These quick accounts always look dodgy. Why don’t we at least give it a good name?’ I said.

Aisha chewed her lip for a few seconds, then deleted the gibberish username and put in a new one: R4lph_D4vi3s.

‘The name of the man that Madame Scissor was having the affair with,’ Zoe said, reading it out. ‘Clever. Gives it a bit of credence if people know anything about it, but also isn’t too obvious for anyone else looking.’

‘Not just a pretty face,’ Bri said, squeezing Aisha’s cheeks.

Aisha finished the profile and set up a new forum: MADAME SCISSOR RISES FROM THE ASHES. THE CURE IS HERE. BE FREE TO CHOOSE. #LOVEISCHOICE.

‘Nice,’ I commented, pointing to the hashtag.

‘There’s a chance people won’t believe it, conspiracy theories and all that,’ Aisha said, ‘but hopefully someone important will see it and know how to manufacture this cure thing. Then people can finally decide for themselves what they wanna do.’

She clicked the upload button on the forum page, and dragged all the folders across from the memory drive in a big stack. A loading bar appeared and it took just a few seconds for all the files, pictures and graphs to transfer across.

A few seconds to save the world.

‘OK, we ready to upload?’ Aisha asked. Her finger hovered over the enter button. ‘Once we do this, there’s no taking it back. The internet is, like, forever.’

Bri took Aisha’s hand and nodded. She had been through so much, with her dad and everything, but she really seemed to believe in it as much as Aisha did. Aisha touched her forehead to Bri’s and closed her eyes, just for a second, before nodding too. Both of them turned to look at Zoe and me. This was a group decision. We would be bonded by this forever – not by a chemical or KinTwinning or a Dearly Departed death. The four of us were a team, a family.

I looked at Zoe. A few weeks ago, she was living practically like a hermit, hardly leaving her house, only turning up for school before going straight back home again. She never would have put her life on the line like this. We narrowly avoided one death sentence, and this felt like jumping into another. Plus, not everyone would be happy to hear about the cure. Plenty of people loved the idea of their soulmate being ready for them, there until the end, for better or worse.

‘I think it’s up to Zoe to hit the final button. She got it from Dr Giles in the first place,’ I said.

Zoe looked at me and smiled. Then she kissed me hard and nodded. ‘People need to have the choice. Take the cure, or don’t take it, but they need to know that they have options. Choice is power. They need to know Argo Duff doesn’t control them any more.’

She reached across and hit the enter key.

Upload Complete.

Acknowledgements

There are so many people to thank for bringing Soulmates and Other Ways to Die to life. My agent Lucy Irvine, who is always my first reader and has all the best ideas. Kesia Lupo, the editor who picked up my first book and the friend who helped me brainstorm this one. My excellent editor for this one, Shalu Vallepur, who has the keenest eye and a love for sci-fi. Rachel Leyshon and Barry Cunningham and Chicken House for their unending support. The whole team there, from production to marketing: Laura Myers, Rachel Hickman, Liv Jeggo, Jazz Bartlett Love, Ruth Hoey, Emily Groom-Collis, Megan Farr, Laura Smythe and Elinor Bagenal. Fraser Crichton, who is the best copy-editor and can always tell me the difference between free climbing and free soloing. My proofreader Sara Magness, who always catches the smallest typo. And Micaela Alcaino, the artistic genius behind my epic book covers. You always get the vision even when I don’t!

And of course, for all my ground support: the writing groups that gave early feedback and kept me sane; my GoodShip pals; my group DMs and Discord rant channels; my old writing friends who always say yes to reading even when they’re so busy being incredible authors with their own projects. My work colleagues Stuart, Florianne and Emily, who always make me laugh.

To my family, especially my mum and dad and Callum – thank you and I love you. And to my dogs Zelda and Maude, who force me to take mandatory breaks to rub their bellies – love you too.

And of course, as always, a big thank you to my readers. I couldn’t do this job without you.

Text © Melissa Welliver 2024

First paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2024
This electronic edition published in 2024
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