The Nemesis Syndrome

24. Leo

Leo stepped out of the vehicle, hands steadying him before falling from his arms.

His arm hurt, a dull pain in only the upper part of his arm, but he suspected that was from their unnecessarily harsh grip.

"Go," he lifted the cloth from Leo's head.

Light blinded him and he flinched as he squeezed his eyes shut, adjusting to the bright light trying to penetrate his eyelids before opening them.

Leo glanced around, he was left on the outskirts of his neighbourhood, the road empty as it always was, for people had never felt the need to leave the neighbourhood.

Vaguely, he remembered talking to his sister, "I'm going to leave this place, one day, Rom, and you can come with me."

Rommy had simply laughed, "Okay."

But she wasn't here. She was at home, with his parents. And he was finally going to get back to them.

He wondered if Eliza had been placed on the other side of the neighbourhood, for her hum was there, but it was faint and he struggled to find it.

Perhaps distance made it weaker.

He glanced back, where the guard was climbing back into the dark car.

"Hey!" He yelled, "Where's Eliza?"

The guy looked at him blankly, "Who the hell is Eliza?"

Leo scoffed and tugged on the long jacket they had given him. Great. Thankfully they had not undressed him this time, and allowed him to change into his own clothes, still blinded, but he supposed he couldn't win everything.

The car roared to life and sped off, leaving Leo alone. With a huff, he began walking towards the neighbourhood, hoping that Eliza's presence would grow stronger.

The street Leo lived on was surprisingly empty, but he assumed that it was a weekday, so the children would be at school and the adults at work.

What day was it?

Leo approached his door, and he raised a hand to knock. What would he even tell his parents? He was sworn not to tell a soul and he knew they were tracking him.

As he went to knock, the door creaked open at the pressure. Dread filled his stomach and twisted it. The door was never unlocked.

Leo went to call out his sister's name before stopping, no, that wasn't a good idea. Instead, he gingerly pushed the door open, slipping through the small crack of the door before closing it behind him.

The lamp in the corridor had fallen.

His stomach twisted and he carried on through the house. He glanced through the door to his left - the dining room was fine, so was the living room. Nothing was amiss in the kitchen except for the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. His mother hated it when anyone of them left dishes in the sink, she always nagged them to clean up after eating that they had all fallen into the habit of doing so.

Something was wrong.

Slowly, as if not to disturb the lingering feeling of dread or the alien stillness of the house, Leo made his way up the stairs, skipping the ones he knew creaked under his feet.

First, his room: nothing seemed awry at first until he noticed the open dresser. And then he began to notice all the little signs that someone had ransacked his room:

There was some of his clothes on his bed, a shoe near the foot of his bed that missed the other twin, a photo on his wall slightly crooked, a book he had placed on his bedside table now on top of the dresser.

Leo didn't have the greatest memory, but he always kept the layout of his room the same as to know when Rommy went into his room.

Rommy.

Leo stepped out of the room, crossing the hall into his sister's room.

Her room was untouched, which set warning bells off in Leo's head. Her room was always a mess. But this was close to being spotless.

He glanced around the room as he stepped past the doorway.

What had happened?

And why hadn't anyone else in the neighbourhood heard or done anything?

Leo glanced around the room, Rommy was young but she also loved her spy books and Leo hoped that she had used the endless, and in all the previous times she had bounded over to him, sprouting the new information gained, annoying, knowledge to use.

Leo stalked around the room, not disturbing any of the items in the room. If Rommy had left a clue, it would be obvious, something that would be overlooked because they would be looking for something small, rather than something glaring at them.

They must have been taken. That was the only explanation.

So Leo looked, what would be so glaring astray in her room?

Then he noticed it, a photo of him and Rommy on her bedside table. It had been on the wall above it. He remembered because he had been the one to nail it to the wall.

He crossed the room, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. He took it apart: nothing.

What was he missing?

He glanced at the cardboard backing, then the back of the photo. Wait.

A small drawing in the upper right corner in a brown pen, barely indistinguishable from the brown card. Several lines, all parallel to each other. A line, a large break, another line. Under it, a line right under the first, the break was slightly smaller, then another line. Four lines down, there was just a single line, before the above pattern was repeated. Like a DNA strand. Like a logo he had seen earlier, on the corner of the stack of papers he had to sign.

They had took them. Them. The organisation that granted both him and Eliza freedom.

Eliza.

Had her family been taken too?

What was the purpose of taking their families? They had already taken him and Eliza.

He put the photo frame back together, folding the picture of him and his sister into his hand before hurrying to his room and changing into his own clothes. Something about the clothes they had given him made him feel watched, unclean.

Once changed into his own clothes, he made his way to the study, where he grabbed the tablet and began searching for Eliza's address.

He had to find her.