Tethered Twins

Chapter Twenty Nine

Emmie Keyes

March had arranged for us to meet with a contact of his called Bryony Jones, who worked for Kind Creatures, a charity that looked after injured and sick animals. Bryony had spoken to local animal shelters and zoo’s and had arranged for the animals we saved to be transported off in small numbers to each sanctuary. There they would live with the owners until they were adopted and these shelters never put an animal down so we knew they would be safe.

Before handing the animals over, March checked each of them for trackers and removed anything that would allow Tobias to find them. “He’s unlikely to want them back,” said March. “Animal trials ended long ago but that doesn’t mean that we are safe.”

He was right. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tobias knew everything we were doing and was simply waiting for the right moment to strike. We were after all driving around in a big lorry with the words ‘TethTech’ on the side. I doubted we would be that hard to track.

So we kept our guard up as we handed over the animals. The last one to be saved was Pixie. I stroked her one last time and handed her to Bryony. “Oh, the poor thing,” she saw the injections all over Pixie and how she had bitten herself so badly.

“Here you go little one,” she placed a cone over Pixie’s head to stop her biting herself and she rubbed some ointment onto her injection burns.  “She’s looks like she’s been through hell but we’ll do the best for her we can. I hope you catch the bastard who did this.”

“We will,” said Gabe. We had all felt the wrath of Tobias Zen now. I’d lost a brother and Gabe and Grace had almost lost each other. As for March, whatever his motivations, he was one of us now. There was no way he could go back to TethTech. The guard had seen him drive a lorry out of there and once they discovered we were gone it was only a matter of time before he got the blame.

Bryony had brought a doctor along with her who turned up in an ambulance. She tried to help Grace and gave her drugs to cope with the pain. While Grace was looked after, Gabe, March and I sat in the back of the lorry and drank tea.

“Why did you do it?” I asked March.

“What? Save you? Boss’s orders,” he looked at Gabe and they shook hands.

“You did great in there March. Sorry you couldn’t keep your cover for a little longer,” replied Gabe.

“That’s ok. I discovered a lot about TethTech and I was able to save the animals plus the three of you all in the same day. Not bad for a day’s work,” he replied.

“Wait,” I interrupted. “You work for TethTech and for Gabe? I want answers and I want them now.”

Gabe shut the back of the lorry door trapping us inside. He turned the torch on his phone on and placed it in front of us. “I am going to say two words now Emmie and I do not want you to be alarmed,” My brain was filled with curiosity.

“The Deck,” said Gabe as I gasped in shock.

“You’re terrorists?” I shouted. Everyone knew about The Deck. In the last year their terrorist group had been responsible for the bombing of medical facilities across the UK, leading to the loss of countless lives and putting back some scientific research by decades. “Let me out. Now!” I stood up and headed for the door.

“Emmie, sit down,” said Gabe. “Yes, to some we are known as terrorists and not everything you have seen on TV is a lie. As you have probably seen we did try to kidnap Tobias Zen yesterday and you no doubt now know some of the reasons why.”

“What about the people you killed at all those factories?”

“Everything we have ever done has been to stop Tobias. This year we did destroy several of his factories, yes but we ensured there were no people in a single building when we did so. The technology that Tobias is building is far too powerful and we are trying to stop him. You’re in the middle of something far bigger than any one person.”