When Leah reached Brenton's room, everyone was there but Alice. Zarah and Cassandra looked bleary, but the sickly sheen had disappeared from Zarah's skin, and Cassandra was leaning against the desk with the arm that, only twenty-four hours earlier, had been ripped to shreds. A bandage still ran from wrist to elbow, but the quick healing of this world was clearly working.
Zarah's eyes flicked to Leah and she gave her a short, sharp nod; but Cassandra's were fixed across the room, her whole body tense, and Leah followed her gaze to the men that sat there.
The two, identical men.
Leah blinked as both halves of Brenton's soul eyed at her, trying to process it.
Even though she knew there were two of him, it'd never really sunk in the way it should've. Her memories of the Brenton of the live world had become so entwined with the ones of his dead half that she hadn't seen them as seperate entities. Nor had she been sure she should.
Did they really count as individual people when they shared the same soul?
She heard a rustle and sensed Alice in the corridor behind her, and she stepped out of the doorway, shifting further into the room. Both sets of Brenton's eyes followed her, focused in a way that made her skin crawl, but then Jared moved in front of her, blocking Brenton's view and stopping her from drawing any closer.
Jared glanced at her over his shoulder, his eyes flashing with warning, and she let her head drop in a subtle nod. She hadn't forgotten her promise. He wouldn't have to worry about her moving any closer to Brenton than this.
"Everyone's here, I see."
Leah tore her gaze from Jared's and back towards the two Brentons, her eyes flicking between them.
"Even the girl who killed me."
It was the one on the right who'd spoke.
From his slightly healthier appearance, Leah presumed this was the dead half, the one that hadn't been stuck in the in between all this time, but felt the torture from afar. Neither looked good, though. The imposing, threatening man Leah grew up with had shrivelled, and his live half was even worse, the flesh of his arms sagging where muscle once filled.
The look in both their eyes hadn't changed, though. The bitterness she remembered still lay heavy as they stared at her, along with the violence and cunning.
Leah raised her chin, letting the defiance and disdain she'd always felt for him show, and in eerily perfect sync, both of Brenton's lips curled.
Jared's arm brushed hers, his stance becoming more protective.
"Isn't that what you always wanted, Brenton?" Cassandra asked, her voice cutting through the tension so abruptly Leah flinched. "The immortality of the dead world?"
Cassandra's eyes were hard, her muscles straining beneath the skin, and Leah grimaced when she realised the last time Cassandra must've seen Brenton was right before she died, when he'd tortured her.
"Yes," Brenton said. "The healing powers of this world aren't all that beneficial if the whole world is falling apart, though."
Cassandra's lip curled up, disgust coating her face, but before she could say anything else, Jared cleared his throat.
"We didn't bring you back here to antagonise everyone," he said.
His voice was low, measured, but his hands were curled tight enough that his fingers were turning white.
"Why did you rescue me then, Jared?" Brenton asked. "I doubt it was out of love."
Jared flinched, his mask breaking for a second, and the satisfaction that filled Brenton's face made Leah want to lunge at him, to claw away the smirk she knew he was only just holding back.
"We want your help," Jared said. "No one wants this world to collapse, not even you. Tell us how to reverse the damage that's been done."
Both Brentons blinked, and then the live half spoke, the one who'd stayed quiet until now.
"You think I know how to do that?"
"I think you know more than we do," Jared said. "Some of it might help."
Silence fell as Brenton considered this, dragging it out.
"I suppose you're right," he said eventually. "I did create you two."
Both halves of him sat back, their limbs moving like mirrors, and Leah's hair stood on end. There was something horribly grotesque about seeing Brenton like this — not only the duplication, but the desiccation too.
"What do you want to know?" the dead half asked.
"We want to know how you did it," Cassandra said. "How you created Jared and then Leah. How you figured out it was possible in the first place."
His eyes flickered to Cassandra before returning to Jared.
"Figuring out it was possible was easy enough," he said. "You should all know that, you've been part of this world long enough. The Mors Mortis Device had been created once, so it could be done again. Then, it just came down to reading and observing."
"What did you read and observe?" Zarah asked, and Brenton grinned at her.
"Everything I could. I must say, it amazed me that no one else in the S.I.S considered that a knife capable of destroying the Mors Mortis Device might be capable of much more than just that. There were some old texts that talked about the dangers of it, that were far more cautionary about the knife than even the Mors Mortis Device itself. So, I took and it and ran."
Leah glanced at Alice to find her hovering in the corner, her face white.
"I will admit, I wasn't sure how to use the knife, exactly," Brenton continued. "I tried many things to figure out what all the warnings were about, without much success. But then, one day, I was careless, and I cut myself. And suddenly..."
Brenton trailed off and both halves of him gestured at the other.
"You destroyed half of your soul," Cassandra said, her words flat.
"I did not destroy it," the live version of Brenton snapped, the words raspy. "But I killed it, yes. It was a mistake."
"So, that's how you did it."
The voice was quiet, timid, but the horror in the words cut through the room like ice, and Leah glanced at Alice again. Her face had turned so pale she looked like a ghost.
"That's what you did to Jared, isn't it?" she asked, her voice strained and distraught. "That's how you gave him his powers. You experimented on him."
Jared was so still beside Leah that she wasn't sure he was breathing, but rivulets of red were starting to appear on his palms, his fists squeezed so tight he was cutting himself. Leah reached for his hand subtly, running her thumb over the back of his palm and praying Brenton hadn't noticed the distress Jared was clearly in.
"Yes. I gave him small cuts with the knife. I introduced the in between and the world of the dead into his blood stream in small doses. He was younger than me. His body adapted to it better than mine did."
"But you didn't know it would," Alice said. "You were only guessing! Testing!"
"Yes," Brenton said. "But it worked. Jared became everything I hoped he would. More even."
The fondness that leaked into his voice was startling, even for Leah, and Jared sucked in a sharp breath.
"How did you create Leah, then?" Cassandra asked. "Did you use the knife on her too."
"I didn't have to," Brenton said. "I realised that the knife could only be used effectively on someone very young. Anyone older than a couple months who had the knife applied to them ended up like me. But Jared already had the knive's powers in his blood. He could go to any world he wanted without consequences. Leah is just a product of him. I sent her to the world of the dead with some of Jared's blood in her system as an experiment. It let her adapt to that world where no one else had."
He frowned at her.
"I sacrificed many of my men trying to achieve that. I will admit, I was surprised when you survived. If I'd known you would, I wouldn't have done it."
Leah's mind flashed back to the men that'd attacked her and Jared in the world of the dead, to the way they'd screamed that Jared's father had killed them. Then, she was thinking about the way she'd woken up when she'd returned from the world of the dead - an IV drip embedded in her arm.
Was that really all that had saved her? An impulse of Brenton's and Jared's blood weaving through her system?
Her stomach rolled, and she could feel the tension radiating off Jared. Every word Brenton was saying only winding him tighter.
"Lucky me," Leah said dryly and Brenton's lip curled up.
"You are lucky," he said. "And then you went and used it against me; turned my own son against me."
A dark anger shot through her, but before she could speak, Jared already was.
"No, she didn't. You did that on your own."
His voice was quiet, but it silenced the whole room, and Leah felt the urge to hug him, to grab him and make whatever pain he was feeling go away.
Jared cleared his throat and straightened.
"Tell us how to fix it," he said.
Brenton's gaze was cold.
"Why would you think I know how to do that?" he asked. "Even I didn't screw up as royally as Leah did."
Leah wanted to curl in on herself, but Brenton's question was answered by silence, everyone presenting a united front against him, and eventually, he sighed.
"My guess is that you have to stabilise it," he said. "Everything about the worlds and how they relate to each other relies on stability. Only so much of one world can be interacting with another at any one time before things start going wrong. The knife that created Jared allowed the worlds to alter his chemistry slowly, in moderation. Jared's blood did the same for Leah. And, my guess, is that passing through the in between under Leah's protection gave other people powers too."
Leah's gaze flicked to Zarah quickly to find her friend already looking over, her face pale.
"Each time, the mixture gets passed on, it adapts and looses some of it's potency. But when that portal burst out of Leah, it didn't have anything regulating it, diluting it. So, the solution is simple. Find the portal Leah created, and dilute it."
He looked at Leah now.
"Part of you ripped free when you died. You need to bring it back in."
...
Next chapter out in two weeks :)
- Skylar xx