New Birds

The Glow Part 20

Samantha stood in the watchtower's shadow. A yellow light filled the doorway and skipped down the first few rungs of the ladder. "Is it okay if I come up?"

Marshall peered down at her through the trapdoor. His dark bangs falling forward. He said nothing for what seemed like an extraordinarily long time. She looked back at the roadway through the trees, wondering if she should return to the house.

"Yes," he finally said.

By the time she stepped up into the small room, Marshall was standing against the far wall. His hands hidden behind him. His stance was straight, his legs slightly apart. Moonlight splashed yellow over the boards and across his grey sweater.

"Hi," she said, offering him a smile.

"Hi." He shook his hair out of his eyes and stared openly at her.

It had her completely forgetting her introductory sentence that she practiced on the way down here. And as they stood staring at each other, it was apparent he wasn't about to offer one either. She finally broke eye contact, unsure now how to proceed and feeling a little breathless. When Tilly introduced them briefly at the gate, there was something she immediately liked about him. His look, his scent, his poise, perhaps his youth. He was young like her. And a clone. It intrigued her. She wanted to know more about him. Now as he stood there staring at her, she felt this all again but heightened. It was the reason she was now having a troublesome time formulating her thoughts.

She sat down near the exit and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her left hand lightly grasped the last traces of her cast. It would take her only a few minutes to peel the remaining remnants away, but she had no wish to do that. Even though it was a small distinction, she was glad some of it remained. "Did you know Carol?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Did she say why she made you?"

He shook his head.

"You were a prototype, like me," she said.

"I had the feeling we were more trouble than we were worth." He looked out the large window, the yellow light now outlining the shape of his face. He was older than her by a few months, but his mannerisms, or was it shyness, made him appear younger.

"You don't look like anyone from the facility," she said.

"The original Marshall was lab birthed and died at fifty-eight days."

Was that it? Where his youth came from. Maybe part of him would always remain where his original stopped. Maybe the new would never come off him entirely.

"That's fortunate," she said, regretting the word immediately.

"Is it?"

She blushed. "Sorry, no. Not that he died. I didn't mean that. Just that you continued without him. Which means you have much less of him now and much more of you. When I was born, I came with all seventeen years of Kelly Anson. It was a lot. It took me months to even realize there was a me, and longer still to separate us."

She ran a hand along the floor beneath her. It was rough but earthy. Real wooden boards. She quickly pulled up her hand when feeling a sting to find embedded in the heel of her palm a real wooden splinter. She attempted to pull it out, but it was so slim she couldn't get a grip.

"Use your teeth."

She looked at him, wondering what he was talking about.

He knelt beside her and studied her palm before bringing it to his mouth. He nibbled as he searched for it, his head of curls directly under her nose now. His scent was clean. Contained. As if the clean also would never leave him. He sat back and spitted to the side. She felt her palm. There was no more splinter. He was again on his feet and back against the wall. "We experienced wooden boards at the safe house," he said.

"Thank you."

"You were saying?" he asked.

"I'm not sure anymore." She smiled. "I guess I was saying I found it difficult to become me. And then the project got derailed and my headaches began. And then Kelly didn't even want to be a gymnast anymore and then I find out I am not exemplary just a means to keep her from marrying a warlord and all that time all I ever wanted was to have a little more room inside my head to learn and think for myself. And I know they'll eventually find me because I look so much like her and everyone knows her and this Mr. Davies is super evil. That's what I meant about fortunate."

He smiled and suddenly his features went from flawless to several small irregularities involving dimples and fine lines. She blushed again. "What?"

"Nothing. Just wondering if Kelly also speaks as fast as you do," he said.

"And there's that." She grinned. "She and I have a lot of energy that we don't always know what to do with."

He pushed away from the wall, only to fall back against his hands again. "I was the sixth copy. I contended with some of what you just described. It took them dying one by one for the noise in my head to subside. It was why I couldn't give Carol the answers she wanted. If she would have helped us to separate ourselves more first. I think we would have been much more helpful to her. Maybe? And although I am relieved that I can concentrate better, I still would rather have the noise. I miss them."

Samantha nodded. "I wish I knew what Carol meant for us?"

"Well," he started, but paused.

"What?"

"At the Safe house. In her office. There are boxes. Files and files."

"Could you take me there?" She was up on her feet again.

He shook his head slowly. "I can't. I mean. I don't want to. I want to stay here. I'm happy my brother and I found this place."

As if suddenly remembering why he was in a watchtower, he removed himself from the wall to walk past her and out onto the deck, resting his hands on the railing. She followed him as far as the doorway. There was a splatter of stars that surrounded the huge moon. She noticed a small glow moving up the mountainside. "Is that something?" she asked.

He looked where she pointed.

"I'm to ring the bell if I see anything." He went back inside. The ring was loud, disrupting the night's subdued tones. The small glow, however, neither paused nor hurried as it made its way towards the wall.

They stood there watching the glow, never taking their eyes off it until the Hummingbird headlights distracted them with its own light display across the closed gate, directly below them. Louis, in a grey robe, leaped from the passenger side. Tilly, dressed in a long red gown, exited the driver's side. She reached back in to grab a sophisticated-looking rifle with a bipod near its mouth and a long metal belt draping from a side chamber. Tilly's hair was an unruly and wild halo in the beam of the headlights, and she looked nothing like the tired, soft-spoken, poor sighted woman, who had first opened the trunk to let her out. Louis, who was now checking the bolts and surveying the area, his movements sharp and calculated, his stance erect and energized, was also not the mild man she was first introduced to. These two were committed to protecting their mountain as much as Mr. Anson was about protecting his daughter. It gave her a renewed sense of respect and perhaps even hope for them. Perhaps enough to include herself in that hope. Maybe there was protection here.

Louis came up the ladder then, and Marshall reached down to grab his hand to help him into the room. The soft glow just beyond the gate now was stationary. Held high above a person's head.

"Shit, I'm going to kill him," Louis mumbled. "His timing couldn't have been worse."

"Kill who?" Marshall asked.

"The damn preacher."