Tethered Twins

Chapter Ten

Emmie Keyes

It was time to go. Grace had received word from her friend that ID’s would be waiting on route to help us get into the city undetected. With my new face fully formed, I was ready. I packed up some clothes and cosmetics into a backpack, grabbed my police badge and gun and left the apartment. 

We passed Apartment 12B and I thought about saying goodbye to R&R. Who knew when I would see them again or when I would return; my apartment would likely no longer be the safe haven it once had been.  But I realised I had nothing to say that would make any sense. Plus knowing I’d never said a final goodbye would give me a reason to come back when this was all over.

“Aren’t you going to wear a disguise?” I asked Grace.

“You have the only Skin 2.0 in existence. But there’s no need for me to use it, they don’t know who I am and a face like this is too good to hide,” she joked.

We left the building and stepped out onto the street. The sun was just rising as I turned my head and took one last look at my home. There was no turning back.

I lived in the small have-nots town of Smyth West. We were far from one of the poorest communities in the UK and everyone worked on a bartering system. I got free rent in return for training to become a police officer to protect the town. Other people worked on farms and traded food for shelter, whilst some people specialised in healthcare, building and more.

When we needed a new skill, someone would train in it to help the community. It helped make Smyth West a town that could sustain itself amongst the broken economy. We lived outside of the Government and away from the large cities. Our town didn’t receive any of their support and as we didn’t sell anything (merely trades) we didn’t have to pay tax. In many ways our town was a regression to the way people lived hundreds of years ago.

It worked but we were always afraid that one bad harvest or not having enough medicine would mean our entire town could be wiped out very quickly. We lived in houses that had been abandoned and we made them our own with whatever items we could find.  Our homes were rarely repaired; whilst some of the houses had sunk into their foundations, others had become flooded and some had burnt down. For every house or apartment that was liveable another three were destroyed or boarded up. Despite this we tried to ensure everyone in the city had a place to live.

It wasn’t paradise but we survived day by day.

There was one item I owned that I didn’t trade for or find and that was my motorcycle. A gift from Will, it helped me to explore outside of our town and to make trades with other local villages. Thanks to solar power I never had to pay for fuel, even with the typically dull British weather, so as long as the bike didn’t break I could keep living this ‘free’ existence. If it did break I may have to train to become a mechanic, as Smyth West currently didn’t have one.

Grace and I mounted our motorcycles, left the city and headed up the country towards Birmingham, the biggest city in the UK. London was no longer the once glorious capital it had been before the 20 Day Siege.

The roads were quiet. With most of the UK’s population now living in ten large cities, people rarely travelled and if they did then they would use trains that were far quicker. As Smyth West was far too small a town to have a train station, we used the roads to reach our destination.

What vehicles we did see included old cars that had clearly been previously abandoned and seen better days. They were probably unwanted relics from the rich, who had no need for them in the large cities, which had now been reclaimed by other have-nots.

We also saw duocycles, which always made me laugh. They were designed as a way for twins who liked motorcycles to travel together safely. Motorcycles had been deemed one of the most unsafe ways to travel so an inventor decided they would be safer with two twins together. His logic was that they would both be paying attention to the road and therefore it could prevent accidents.