Twenty Four Shades Darker: The Hunt

(13) Deoxyribonucleic Acid

She didn't know how long she'd been here.

Without any windows there was no way to tell if it was morning or night and her body clock, so infallible in the fields of Nine, had long since broken. Sometimes the lights went off and there was shouting from outside. Sometimes there wasn't. If it meant anything, she didn't know what it was and nobody was going to tell her. As the Peacekeeper-man had said, it wasn't her job to ask questions. Her job was to give answers.

She just didn't know what those answers were.

What could have been two days or two hours ago, a woman in a long white coat had come in and sat next to her. She was the first person other than the Peacekeeper-man that Avery had seen in almost a week and she couldn't help but stare. It was hard to tell just how old everybody was around here because most of them had tight, shiny faces that weren't natural, but this woman's forehead and cheeks were plump and soft. Like pillows. For a crazy second she imagined laying her head on them and drifting off into a comfortable sleep, and this had prompted a burst of laughter that had quickly dissolved into tears. The woman had waited for her to calm down.

"Miss Alok. Your cooperation with us has been wonderful, dear."

Her voice was as soft as her face. Avery wiped her eyes and sniffed.

"What do you want now?"

The woman had seemed amused by this; her lips parted in a small smile. She had grey hair, but unlike the people back in Nine with grey hair hers was shiny and swept back into a neat roll at the base of her skull. A few strands fell loose around her face.

"Not much, dear. After all, you've been through so much. First, though, is there anything you need?"

Avery considered this, wiping away the snot brought on by the crying fit with her sleeve. "I need to go home," she said.

The woman had laughed. Actually laughed. It was like listening to music. Like Blaire's singing. Far beyond the fences...

Avery suddenly realised that the woman had said something and she'd been just sitting into space, replaying Blaire's song in her mind over and over again.

"I said, I'm afraid that's not possible, dear. I hope you understand that with the situation as it is, we cannot possibly let you go at this moment in time. Is there anything else?"

She considered again. "I want a bath. I'm all icky."

And bruised. She was sure that her stomach was black and blue now.

"Consider it done," the woman had said, with another one of those smiles. It was the sort of smile Avery usually associated with moms. Patient and understanding, with just a hint of temper around the edges. She shuffled on her chair and waited for her to speak again. "Now, Avery dear, we need a few things from you. But don't worry. They're simple things. And they won't hurt."

"Okay," Avery said, because she had to say something but there was nothing else that she could think of.

"We need you to spit into this tube here. And then we need to take a bit of blood. Is that okay?"

"Why?"

"Would you like me to fetch Head Peacekeeper Ronan?" Suddenly the voice had turned steely and sharp. Avery felt herself beginning to panic. Voices like that were never good news. And Head Peacekeeper Ronan, Peacekeeper-man, was definitely not good news. He hurt.

"No!"

"I didn't think so. Just spit in the tube, dear. It's not your place to ask questions."

So Avery had been left without a choice. She'd spat in the tube. The woman screwed the lid back on and slid it into a compartment inside her bag, next to a small collection of similar tubes with numbers on the top. Then she'd got out a needle and pushed Avery's sleeve up, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Avery's stomach turned but she'd forced herself to watch as the needle went in because when you did that at the reapings the Peacekeepers got confused.

"Are you used to the sight of blood, dear?" the woman asked. Avery shook her head, then nodded, then stopped. She was used to spilled blood but that didn't mean that it didn't make her feel sick. Not as bad as Will, but still bad. She remembered Derreke and shuddered.

Her own blood in the tube looked too red and the feeling of the needle point intruding on her body was disgusting. She wanted to rip it out - no, because then it would bleed. She wanted it to be over. Her knees wobbled and she was glad she was sitting down.

The woman was taking a lot of blood. She filled the needle-tube up to about halfway, when the blood had stopped looking thin and shiny and had started looking thick and heavy and gloopy. Once the needle was out she applied a patch to Avery's arm, dabbing the area with something that prickled her skin so much that tears came into her eyes and she had to sniff again, and put the needle back in her case.

"Thank you, dear," she said. "You're ever so brave."

Nobody had ever called Avery brave before. She didn't feel it. She felt dirty and bruised and cold and hungry and tired and scared, always scared. Whenever she told Peacekeeper-man that she hadn't been involved he kicked her and wouldn't believe her, but she knew that if she said she was then there would be worse. Jute and Erik had mentioned it. Avox, if you're lucky. And Avery was quite fond of her tongue and even fonder of her life.

Once the woman had gone, she pulled her brother's bandana down over her eyes and tried to sleep. Her arm ached.

What did they want with her blood?

***

They say that identical twins have a telepathic bond. There are a whole host of cases to support this theory: not long ago, a pair of twins won one of the Capitol's biggest talent contests without saying a word to each other and have built their living on never actually speaking; twins in the Games; twins claiming to be able to feel each other's pain...

There are many theories as to how this particular attachment came about. The most common - and the most probable - is that twins spend so much time together in the womb that this creates an uncanny closeness which, although it resembles telepathy, is merely the closest we can get to understanding it.

But what if it's more than that?

What if it really is, so to speak, in the blood?

From the moment the single egg splits into two, the twins develop separately. They develop their own small mutations, tiny tweaks in their DNA that are invisible to all but the most complex of scientific methods. No two twins are exactly, entirely, completely alike. A small and select group of Capitol scientists have hypothesized that this is why the 'twin telepathy' theory has never been conclusively proven. They claim that the source of this mysterious bond is not, as generally thought, the time spent in the womb, but that it runs in the very fibres of their being. When those fibres are twisted and mutated, the 'signal' weakens, leaving only a small trace; the instinct of what the other is thinking, the brief brush of pain when the other jams their finger in a door, the inherent knowledge of the other's responses because they are so similar to their own. They suggest that perhaps when these fibres, when every single strand of DNA is identical, this bond is at its strongest. Not just merely uncanny, but truly worthy of the description 'telepathic'.

They go on to explain that there is enormous potential in this theory, citing various nebulous research papers claiming that Peacekeepers who look alike work better as partners. However, proof is scarce. Their theory is inherently problematic; nobody has identical DNA and therefore nobody can prove it.

Many, therefore, claim that this is a load of nonsense and so the theory is rarely voiced outside certain doors in certain buildings in certain areas of the Capitol.

But what happens behind those doors...

On the hillside just outside District Thirteen, the crate began to crack open.