The Elements Trilogy: The Secondaries

Chapter 27: Ice

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy. Shit. My brain seems incapable of forming any other thought.

I had known Thomas very well. He had been the senior quarterback on the football team when I was in the sixth grade. He was the one who helped me with my football skills. I went to visit his comatose body in the hospital. I saw his dead body in a coffin. I saw his coffin lowered into the ground.

And now he's standing in front of me. My poor brain is so confused, I want to cry. I can't even imagine what Diamond is going through.

"Does anybody ever actually die anymore?!" Evie exploded angrily.

"What are you doing here?" Thomas blurts out suddenly.

Diamond turns livid. "What am I doing here?! What are you doing here?! Aren't you supposed to be dead?! And why is Stacy calling you Timothy?!" Then her eyes turned watery. "Oh my gosh. You're Thomas' clone, aren't you?"

Thomas shook his head. "No."

"Yes, you have to be, it's the only explanation!" she cried out.

"No, it's not!"

"Then how else can you be standing here in front of me!"

"Because Timothy..." Thomas hesitated. "Timothy was the one that died. So I could live here in peace."

By now everyone, excluding Stacy, was watching this exchange with wide eyes and slack jaws.

"Let me get this straight," Diamond said calmly. "You got yourself cloned. And you and your clone worked here. And he died for you, so you pretend to be dead and live here in peace?"

"Well it's a little more complicated than that, but sorta, yeah..." Thomas shuffled his feet.

"I see," Diamond said, still calm. She picked at the edges of a pillow on Stacy's couch, and everyone watched her.

Then the explosion happened. In two quick steps, she was in front of Thomas, smacking him repeatedly with the pillow, all the while screaming at him.

"I." Smack. "CANNOT." Smack. "BELIEVE YOU." Smack. "You're such a selfish jerk! Such a greedy idiot! Do you have any idea what I went through?! Any idea what mom and dad went through?! Any idea what you put our siblings through?! You're such a jerk!" Diamond stopped hitting him, and stared at him. "Do you know what you are?" She hissed at him.

"I'm gonna guess more mean words," Thomas suggested.

"You're an asshole!"

She went to hit him again, but he wrenched the pillow out of her hands.

"DO YOU THINK I DID THIS BECAUSE I WANTED TOO?!" he roared. "DO YOU THINK I DID THIS FOR KICKS?!"

"I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU DID THIS!" Diamond shouted back, just as loud.

"I DID IT SO I COULD ACTUALLY LIVE, DI. I KNEW TO MUCH ABOUT THE FORCES. THEY WERE GOING TO KILL ME. BUT TIMOTHY DIED FOR ME. HE MADE THEM THINK THAT I HAD DIED, AND THAT I WAS TIMOTHY. IT WAS FOR MY OWN LIFE."

"YOU WERE WORKING FOR THE FORCES?!" Diamond snarled.

"YES, BUT WHEN WE FIGURED OUT THEIR PLAN, THEY WERE GONNA KILL US! OUR CLONES DIED FOR US, SO WE COULD LIVE!"

"Can't you ever go home?" Diamond sounded dangerously close to tears. "We blew up The Forces."

Thomas laughed. "Yeah, I heard. You four girls are something else. Wait...where's the tiny, angry one?"

"Skylar?" Evalynn asked.

"Yeah, her."

"She...can't really see Stacy. It'll end badly." David said.

Thomas nodded, and then my phone buzzed. It was shockingly, from Skylar. It read: I'm bored, and Chester is with his sister Lily. Wanna skip units and go bar hopping?

I quickly typed back: Bar hopping??

Bzzt bzzt. Another text: Yeahh, we've got fake ID's, Harry. Bar hopping??

"Hey, Thomas. You work here. What does Streitkräfte stand for?" Derek asked.

Thomas glanced around the room as I typed a message back to Skylar. Yeah, why not.

"Streitkräfte...It stands for forces."