20. SoulmateSoulmistake
Soulmate or Soulmistake
T he handle of my door jiggles. I should be sleeping but the walls have been too loud.
I am Kira Blackwell.
I stare at the faint outline of the door in the dark. The handle continues to jiggle. Strange. It rarely jiggles. The door opens. It’s dark in the hallway.
A large body stands in the doorway. The shape is clunky.
A monster. A demon come to swallow me up.
Hammering. Inside my chest. Something is trying to escape. Something inside wants out.
The figure transforms as the door closes, throwing part of itself to the ground.
I am Kira Blackwell.
A step toward me. Familiar body.
“Ghost is real,” I breathe.
My body escapes, leaping from the bed and into the arms of my monster. I can smell him. It is him. In the faint light, I make out familiar features.
Killian.
I smile. “I knew it was you.”
My arms wrap around his neck and my lips crash into his. I move, uncoordinated, but my body is given a jolt of energizing life as his hot tongue sweeps into my mouth.
The taste is off.
I pull back. “No,” I breathe, my eyes searching Killian’s familiar features.
His face is pained, but he holds me too tightly to him as if he’s afraid I will shatter into a million pieces if he lets me down.
“I’m not your Ghost, princess,” he sighs. “But tonight, I am your knight in shining armor.”
He sets me down on shaky legs. Beside me is a large lump. I take a better look. “Is that a dead body?”
“That is Kira Blackwell. She tragically passed away during in a fire inside the Arkadia Asylum.” Killian winks.
He grabs the body from the floor, hauling it over his shoulder as he makes his way to the bed. With a fluid motion, he flings the body onto my bed then takes the time to position it.
“If you want to take anything with you, I suggest you grab it now.” Killian says, before producing a box of matches from his pocket.
“I’m good.” I smile, until a thought slips through my mind. “Won’t DNA give it away?”
“We have contacts in the forensics department. We’re covered.” Killian drops the match onto the body and the clothing lights up in an unnaturally hot fire. “Plus, by the time they get that fire out, they’ll be lucky to find anything left to test.”
I watch in abject fascination as the fire turns into a blaze, devouring the body and spilling onto the sheets as it searches for more to consume.
“Time to go, princess.” Killian grabs me by the arm and then picks me up in one smooth motion as he heads to the door. He opens it with ease, and I look up to see the camera light off. There’s won’t be any record of my escape.
Unless, of course, all of this is a hallucination.
Killian hurries through the hallways, carrying me, until the fire alarm sounds. Confused shouts start in every direction, and I see movement just as Killian opens a door and slips inside. It’s dark.
With familiarity, Killian turns on a light, illuminating the closet.
I can hear shouts from third shift workers outside the door.
Scrambling. Panicking. Killian cracks the door open and I can see patients wandering into the hallways, their doors unlocking during the crisis while orderlies try to herd them.
“At least you’re already dressed for your part,” Killian says, throwing a lab coat onto his shoulders and buttons it shut. He peeks into the hallway again, checking in both directions, before scooping me back into his arms. “I’ve got you now.”
We mix into the crowd of patients and orderlies, funneling our way out the front door. There is shouting, confusion, and panic. Using the dark cover of night, Killian continues to carry me into the shadows far past the lawn where everyone else huddles, waiting for the sirens to arrive.
“Where are you taking me?”
Killian looks down at me. His lips stretch into a crooked smile, but it looks sad. “To see your Ghost.”
A smile stretches across my lips. “Ghost is real.”
My head is pounding when I crack my eyes open. I’m sitting in a car, my head pressed against the glass of the passenger’s side window. It feels like I was hit by a truck, but my mind isn’t wrapped in fog. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to think a clear thought.
“Hey there, princess. Take it easy,” Killian says from the driver’s seat. His hands are on the steering wheel, manually driving.
I glance out the window and see nothing but a flat expanse of land, dotted with trees. Killian drives on a roadway, but it’s made from dirt rather than smooth paving.
“Where are you taking me?”
He doesn’t answer at first. His eye is trained on the path in front of him, his knuckles white from the strain.
“I gave you a shot that should help clear some drugs from your system, but it’s going to take time.” He glances at me, his gaze traveling over my entire body. “I’m sorry it took so long.” He looks back at the road.
“Where are you taking me?” I repeat, louder this time, though all that does is cause a bolt of pain to shoot through my head.
“I’m taking you to your Ghost.”
“So Ghost is real,” I say, more to myself while I try to reconcile what is real. My mind filters through the blips of memory from the last twenty-four hours. “Sorry I kissed you.”
Killian sighs. “You deserve some answers.” He takes a quick look in my direction.
“I don’t even know what kind of questions to ask at this point.” I groan, bringing my hand up to rub across my forehead. “We can start with who you are. How about that?”
“I go by Killian, but that isn’t the name I was born with.”
I nod my head. That isn’t all that hard to follow or accept.
“I’m sure you heard Bill call me Kalon.” He glances my way with a concerned look.
He’s testing to see what I remember. Or testing to see how well my mind is functioning after the past months of living inside purgatory.
“I heard Roman say a lot of things that night, Killian,” I sigh.
Every moment of the showdown at the warehouse feels burned into my memory. Even inside the fog from the drug cocktail the asylum pumped into me, I never lost the details of that night.
The edges of that memory never faded.
“I was born Kalon Ledger. My father was Anthony Ledger. The A.L. from your reports. The mad-scientist.” Killion stares ahead, as if he needs to concentrate on driving while the cab fills with silence.
I fit the information into my mind, disassembling parts of the puzzle I created with the clues I thought I understood. “And who’s Calvin Ledger?”
Killian sighs. “He’s my older brother.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to fit this piece into the narrative. “Are we going to keep with this tiny drip, or are you going to spit some shit out already?”
Killian looks at me, this time with a real smile. “There she is.”
“I’m fucking confused, not insane. Okay?” I wince, the excitement makes my headache attack with viscous spite. “And I’m in a lot of fucking pain,” I say, keeping my tone calm.
“I’m trying.” Killian offers, calmly. “There should be some painkillers in the glove box.” He gestures with his finger, and I sit up to look. “There’s just a lot, and I wasn’t sure what you were ready for.”
“Hey Killian, how long is this trip you’re taking me on?” I point to the road in front of us, then unscrew the top of the medicine bottle. The land outside the car stretches for miles. And no matter which direction I look, I don’t see any signs of civilization.
“It will be a full day of driving.”
“That sounds like plenty enough time to tell me a whole story. From the start.”
Killian sighs. “You’re right. But it’s not just my story. It’s Ghost’s story and Calvin’s too. And I don’t know what they want shared yet.”
My mind trips over his words. Maybe I need to let a few more of the drugs out of my system after all.
“Calvin’s my older brother, and Ghost is my younger brother. But we call him Zac.”
“Zac,” I say. Testing out the name. “Zac? As in Zac the techie?”
Killian nods.
“Fucking really?” I remember Vicky saying the new techie was cute, but I don’t remember seeing him myself.
“And Calvin died in a car accident along with your parents?” I ask, mostly because my memory gets a bit muddy when thinking back to the time in the graveyard. What I really remember from that day was my time in the kitchen with Ghost.
“Calvin and his mom Eden staged the car accident after killing Anthony. Then Eden took Calvin, Zac, and I out of the city. And that’s when we learned the truth.” Killian pauses, but he can’t just leave me hanging on a cliff like that.
“What truth?”
Killian lets out a deep sigh, glancing my way. “That the world you lived in was a lie. You’ve been lied to since the moment you were born, Kira.”
“I don’t.” I stop. I’m not sure what to think. I still don’t have enough pieces to put the puzzle together properly. “I’m going to need more than that.”
“I know. I know. I’m trying, Kira. There’s just so much, and I tried to explain it before. To Katherine. And that didn’t exactly turn out the best.”
“That’s another topic I have questions on.”
“I know.” Killian sighs. “There’s a lot. And some of it, I have only recently learned.”
“Katherine. Cathy. Type thirteens? All that sort of stuff?”
“Yeah. All that and more. You are one of the thirteens, by the way.” Killian says it nonchalantly, but it’s the first piece of information that feels monumental.
“I am? What’s that mean? I’m an experiment?”
“You’re like Calvin, Zac, and I. Genetic experiments created by my father. Only, even he didn’t understand what he had done.”
Great. I am a fucking experiment. No wonder I’ve never fit into society. Even as a mateless, I felt like something other.
“Cathy was one too, and so was Katherine. And Bill Roman as well.” Killian seems to have a bit more difficulty with his words. He looks down at his arm, and that’s when I notice the black marks that look a lot like soulmate marks.
“So you do have a soulmate,” I say, pointing.
“That’s one of the things. I know it’s going to be hard to understand at first, but soulmates… they aren’t real, Kira.”