Rose’s sister and mother vanish in a government experiment gone wrong. Now, everyone insists she never had a sister. The secret agency wants to buy her silence, but Rose won’t give up so easy.

  Chapter 1

  3 years ago

  Rose still remembers the last time she saw her sister alive. If she had known it was the last time she would see her, she would have said something more important, something more emotional. She would have given her sister a hug and told her how much she loved her, how much she meant to her.

  Instead, all she had said was “No, I don't want to be fat like you, so get me the diet soda. I don't care if stevia causes cancer.”

  Her sister had just laughed. “Okay, I'll get you the diet soda. Back in two minutes.”

  She had never turned, and Rose's whole life had turned upside down. Her mother had been murdered five minutes later.

  They were in Iraq with their mother, a famous archaeologist at Oxford University, who had discovered a new underground city more than 3,000 years old. It would change everything they knew about history. It was going to be a world-altering discovery, and already people were saying that if there was a Nobel Prize for archaeology, her mother would get it. Everyone was excited except Rose.

  Even though they were twins (not identical), Evelynn was 5 minutes older than her, a fact that she reminded Rose every day. They were different in every other way possible.

  Evelynn was the more academic type. She had gotten into Oxford through her own hard work and had chosen some boring history subject that her mother specialised in.

  Rose had never been good at studies. She hadn't been bad, she had managed to get three As at her high school level, but she had little to no interest in university. She had enrolled in a local business college and only because her mother had pressured her to.

  Rose was more into physical stuff. She loved competing in martial arts tournaments and even at age 16 she had won the city Jiu Jitsu competition and had taken part in the national Judo and Karate tournaments, winning third place in Karate and fourth place in Judo.

  It had taken her mother's literal emotional blackmail to convince her that becoming a martial arts teacher was not a girly thing to do and that she should first get a degree or at least a diploma in business management. Rose had only agreed to get her offer back. Even then, she spent more time learning martial arts than actually studying.

  It was more than 35°C out here in the Iraqi desert even though it was winter. This was hotter than the hottest day back in the UK, and Rose was hating it. She regretted coming here, but she wanted to give company to her sister and mother. They had sort of moved apart since Evelynn had started university, and Rose wanted to spend a little more time with the both of them.

  So far, it hadn't been that bad in spite of the heat and the constant dust storms. They could only work a few hours a day, and the three women got to spend a lot of time together in the evenings.

  Once the underground city had been discovered, Rose spent as much time as she could down below. Not because she was interested in archaeology, but because it was cool down here. The temperature down here was only 15 degrees Celsius, and Rose would find some deserted corner to nap in. Even the Iraqi workers found it funny and had started to jokingly call her the lazy dog.

  The dig wasn't as exciting as it sounded. Instead of a full city, they had just found a few walls. They had been digging underground, and to Rose, it just looked like a cave with a random ancient wall sticking out of the wall. She hoped that after a few days or weeks of digging, she would be able to see the full city, but at the moment, it looked like she was in an ancient cave with huge floodlights everywhere. The floodlights helped them not trip over small jagged and sharp rocks, but it also made getting a nap that much harder.

  It was a very busy day with more than 250 workers, including 25 people from the University of Oxford. But Rose always managed to find a corner nobody was working in and fall asleep no matter how noisy the digging work was.

  The day it all went to hell had been just another day. Nothing special about it. It was a Tuesday. Rose had decided to help her sister Evelynn, or Eve as everyone called her, dig a small wall out of the sand. There was a strange symbol on it that had excited all the university professors, and they wanted to see the whole symbol more than half of which was buried deep under the ground. Since they didn't want to do the donkey work themselves, they had asked the two girls to do it. The Iraqi workers they had hired were busy working on another part of the dig which required more physical strength, so the girls had been asked to work in this area. It had been a good progress, and in only two hours they had uncovered most the missing part.

  That's when Eve had said that she was going to get something to drink and asked Rose what she wanted. It had led to their usual debate with Rose choosing the most unhealthy option and Eve trying to convince her to go for plain water.

  While his first sister had gone, Rose had finally uncovered the whole symbol. It was strange, and it might have been just an optical illusion, but it looked to her like the symbol was glowing. Rose felt a strange attraction to it. She wanted to touch it, to caress it, like it was a loved puppy. Like the symbol was her best friend. Like it was something she had been missing all her life.

  Time stopped for her as she stared in awe at the glowing and beautiful symbol.

  And the symbol stared back at her with love.

  Her reverie broke when she heard an explosion.

  And everything went quiet.

  Her first thoughts were: Where the hell was Eve?

  What had worried her was the extreme silence that had suddenly fallen down the dig. All the workmen, all the tools, the terrible Arabic music the locals kept playing, it had all fallen silent suddenly. Something was wrong. It had never been this silent out here in the desert, not even in the night.

  Rose got up to check and found all the workers collapsed. She had received basic training in first aid and checked their pulses. She needn't have bothered. It was clear they were all dead. Panic rising in her throat, she ran back to find her sister but instead bumped into her mother.

  For some reason, her mother confused her for her sister. “Eve, you need to hide somewhere. Something terrible has happened. I'm going to call my employers. The other ones.”

  “I'm not Eve, mom. I'm Rose. Have you seen Eve? She went to get something to drink but hasn't come back.”

  Her mother had looked at her like she was crazy. “Stay here, Eve and don't move. I need to call Unit 7. Something has gone wrong. We need an armed response unit here.”

  Rose had wondered what Unit 7 was. Didn't her mother work for Oxford University? Why was she calling some military unit?

  So she interrupted her mom. “Mom, all the workmen are dead. They’re no longer breathing.”

  “Yes, they warned us something like this might happen.”

  Her mother had suddenly grabbed Rose very roughly by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “Eve, listen to me very carefully. We are in danger.”

  “Mom, I'm Rose. Eve is out there. I told you.”

  “Stop babbling child! You are getting delusional. Listen to me! This dig isn't what you thought it was. Something strange has happened. The people up have gone insane. They have started killing each other.”

  “What?” Rose had wondered if it was a bad joke. A practical joke in poor taste. But then, she had seen all those dead bodies just a few moments ago.

  “I have some friends in a secret government organisation that deal with problems like this. They'll be here in a few minutes. I want you to hide. No matter what happens, do not come out until I tell you to do so. You understand?”

  Rose had nodded, and her mother had pushed her down deeper into the dig.

  Not knowing where to hide, Rose had walked down a few minutes until she stared down into a deep hole that the local workers had still been digging. Luckily they had been digging in stages, so Rose could hop down to one of the ledges and hide there. Her heart was beating very fast. What the hell was happening?

  That's when she heard some voices and her mother arguing with someone. They looked like two soldiers wearing helmets so she couldn’t see their faces.

  “Thank god you're here,” her mother had said, “Something escaped from the pit. All the workers down here are dead and the ones upstairs have gone insane; they are trying to bite and attack everyone. I barely survived them and came down here. What’s the plan?”

  “I am very sorry, Madam. The director thanks you for your service.”

  “What do you mean she thanks me for my service?”

  In reply, the soldier took out his gun and shot her in the head.

  Her mother's limp body fell down in a heap.

  It took all her discipline for Rose not to scream.

  The soldier calmly turned to his associate. “Just to be sure, shoot everyone in the head. We don't want anyone coming back as zombies, okay? Even if they are clearly dead, shoot them. And if there are any survivors, shoot them as well.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Sir! Yes sir!” the soldier had shouted.

  The two of them had walked around shooting every single dead body in the head. They were coming closer and closer to Rose. And they would discover her soon. She started panicking. Should she go deeper into the pit? That would not work. There was no place to hide; it was literally just a sharp drop down and there were floodlights everywhere.

  That's when one of the soldiers' radios rang. He answered it: “Yes sir, I'll be back. I'll leave the corporal here.”

  He turned to the other soldier, “Wait here. I need to check something with the captain.”

  He left, leaving Rose alone with a single soldier.

  The other soldier, the corporal, was only a few metres from her and could easily have seen her if he had just turned around. Rose knew she had very little time. She had to get out of here. The soldier would surely shoot her in the head if they saw her.

  In spite of all her martial arts training, she wasn't stupid enough to believe she could take down a fully armed soldier. She could knock him out for a few seconds and buy herself a bit of time.

  The question was, was she desperate enough?

  She looked down the cave and saw her mother dead. Her expression was full of shock and surprise.

  Yes, she was.

  As quietly as she could, she walked up to the other soldier who was luckily looking the other way. He had holstered his gun, which gave her a better fighting chance. She kicked him right below the knee, and as he went down, she dragged him by the collar and threw him down the hole, using her body’s momentum to fling him with extreme force.

  The hole was only about the height of a two-floor building, so it wouldn't kill him.

  He did land on his head and was knocked unconscious; but even within seconds, Rose could see him moving and knew he would be up soon.

  Rose had to run; she ran like hell, not even stopping to see her dead mother. Her mother was gone; she needed to find her sister and get out of there.

  She barely turned the corner when she found a gun pointing at her face.

  The soldier was in full combat gear and wearing a helmet like the others. But when she spoke, Rose was surprised to hear it was a woman.

  “That was good, taking out that soldier. You saved me the hassle, but it'll only buy you one or two minutes at most.”

  “Who are you guys? Why did you kill my mother?” Rose blurted out.

  The woman forcefully clamped her mouth shut. “Quiet. You have exactly two minutes before they find and kill you.”

  She gave Rose a parcel. “This contains your passport and $10,000 in cash. Don't go to the airport; instead, cross the border into Syria, bribing the guards if you have to. Go home and keep a low profile. Remember they will kill you or worse if they find out that you escaped here.”

  It had all been happening too fast. Rose couldn't make sense of it.

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked. “I thought you guys wanted to kill us. You killed my mother.”

  “I have no time to explain. When you get back to the UK, talk to Henderson. He saved my life once. Tell him we are even now and the next time I see him, I will kill him.”

  With a rough push, she had shoved Rose out of the cave.

  The next few minutes were a blur. There were dozens of soldiers outside but they were busy fighting the workers of the camp who seemed to have gone crazy. They were acting like wild animals, trying to wrestle everyone to the ground and bite them. It made no sense, but it did mean that nobody noticed her as she had quietly left the camp.

  A part of her screamed, “No, you have to go back for Eve. Eve is still in there,” but another part of her knew Eve was most likely dead.

  And she couldn't help anyone if she died here as well. She had to get back to the UK, talk to the media, talk to the journalists, let them know what had happened here, how this evil military organisation had murdered everyone.

  She managed to find a local taxi who was happy to drive her into Syria for a thousand dollars for an extra 200 he had also bribed the border guards not to check her passport. Over the next few days, Rose would wonder why she hadn't done anything to save her sister? Why she had been so willing to just go along and run away from the country?

  But a large part of her memory of that day was missing - everything was in flashes.

  It was all hazy. Her mother dying, those soldiers shooting everyone, that strange woman helping her escape -- it all looked like a dream.

  Even her journey in the taxi, which would've taken at least 12 hours, she only remembered about 12 minutes of.

  Had she passed out? It was possible some poisonous gas had been leaked in the cave which was why all those workers had died? Had she been suffering the same effect? She didn't know. She didn't remember getting to the airport, she didn't remember buying a ticket, she didn’t remember going through security.

  But she did remember one thing - as she was about to board the plane, security asked to see her passport, and too late she realised she had gotten the wrong passport.

  It was Evelynn's passport.

  The sisters, while not identical twins, were close enough that they could pass as each other, especially since they had the same hairstyle and looks. It had fooled the Syrian airport security guard, but she knew they wouldn't fool border security back home. They would check her fingerprints, and no way would her fingerprints match her sister's. But she would worry about that when she got back home.

  The ticket told her the flight was 7 hours long, but again she didn't remember a thing. All through the flight, the air hostesses ignored her. They had brought lunch for the other passengers but not for her. They had checked the other passengers if their seat belts were tied up but not her.

  Rose had wondered why they were ignoring her.

  At one point, when the plane had hit turbulence, the air hostess was screaming at all the passengers to sit down. But even though she had been standing to go to the toilet, the air hostess completely ignored her. Rose couldn’t decide if it was her being rude or she had been threatened with a bribe not to pay too much attention to her.

  She decided it must have been latter seeing as what happened once he got back home.

  As soon as the plane had landed, she had texted her father. She didn't know what to say, so she just sent a short message: “Dad, help! Something bad has happened. I'm at Heathrow.”

  She wouldn't realise it until much later, but that text had saved her life.

  As she had been walking towards border control, gripping her passport very tightly, thinking how she would explain to border control why she had the wrong passport, she realised with a surprise that the corridor had become very quiet. She had been led to this corridor and too late she realised the gate had been locked behind her.

  This was not normal. In panic, she had tried to walk back to where she had come from, but before she could reach the gate, someone put a black bag over her head, and the world had gone blank.

  ***

  They tied her to a chair. There were at least two men that she knew from the distinct voices.

  “We should just kill her here. Go home for early dinner.”

  “I agree, I'm just waiting for orders from the boss. We'll bury her in that new housing estate on the way.”

  Panic screaming in her stomach, she shouted out, “You can't kill me, my father's a High Court judge and he knows I'm here. I've texted him.”

  That had scared them. They had grabbed her roughly by the throat and checked her pockets till they found her phone. That was followed by a lot of swearing and cursing.

  “Shit shit shit! The bitch is right! She did text her father! Shit, it's too dangerous now!”

  “What's the panic?” the other voice had said. “We can vanish her father all as well. It's not the first time this has happened.”

  “You idiot! Her father is a High Court judge, as she said. We can't vanish him without people asking questions. Not to mention at least a hundred people saw her on the plane. And maybe a dozen more since she got off. We're already taking a big risk. This has gone beyond our pay grade. Now we need to call the Big Boss. She'll know what to do.”

  Her head still in a black hood, she had been dragged like a dog through corridors and mazes until she had felt cold air on her neck. She realised she was outside but she couldn't hear any traffic. So she must still be inside the airport. She had been roughly thrown into the back seat of a car and the car had driven away.

  They had locked her into a small cell with a tiny toilet next to her. She spent three days in the cell worried about what was going to happen to her. Were they going to kill her, were they going to vanish her?

  And all the time, a part of her screamed at her with guilt and shame. “Did I get my sister killed? Why didn’t I help her? WHY DID I RUN AWAY!”

  The only thing that eased her pain was the fact that she couldn't remember anything from the dig site except for a few hazy memories. There must have been some sort of gas leak that had wiped her memories and that had caused her to act so rashly and run away, leaving her sister and mother behind.

  As the days passed, the pain had turned to anger. Who the hell were these people? Murdering so many people in cold blood and threatening to kill her as well. She was going to go to the media. She would expose them all. Her father would know what to do. He knew a lot of people in the government and the different news channels.

  Her father, when he finally did come to see her, looked like a different man. She barely recognised him and he didn't even want to look at her.

  They had taken her to a small room with a tiny window in it. She had to talk to him through the window. Even though she could see his face clearly, he looked like a completely different man.

  “Eve, what have you done? You are in trouble. They say you attacked and killed a soldier, and that you are part of some terrorist organisation.”

  “I didn't kill him, dad. He was still alive when I left. And they killed mom, they killed a lot of people.”

  Her father looked very sad. “Your mother knew what she was getting into when she chose that job. I have no sympathy for her. I had warned her something like this might happen but she went against my wishes. The official story is that your mother was killed by a terrorist organisation. A newer version of ISIS that wants to kill all Britishers to avenge the killing of their leader by us two years ago. You and me are going with that story.”

  “That's a lie, Dad. Mom was shot in cold blood by the soldiers of our government.”

  Her father had looked tired and angry. “That's enough, Eve. You know I have a new wife now. I cannot deal with your childish tantrums anymore.”

  A new wife? When the hell did this happen? Her parents were estranged, she knew that, and they had spent the last two or three years separate. But they were still officially married. Had the divorce quietly gone through? How come she hadn't heard of it? She hadn't been that far from the family.

  “Dad, why do you keep calling me Eve? It's me, Rose. Eve is still in Iraq.” Alive, I hope.

  Her father's face had gone dark when she had said that. He left the window to talk to someone.

  “Did you say she has a concussion? Because she is acting crazy.”

  The other man asked, “Why do you think so?”

  “She keeps calling herself Rose, for once. Rose was her imaginary friend when she was a child. And she keeps saying that Evelynn has died in that dig. She's talking about herself in the third person.”

  “That's understandable. She has gone through a lot of trauma down there-- seeing her mother killed by terrorists and all of her friends blown up. It's clear that to cope with the trauma she has brought back her imaginary friend, this Rose. It's possible that she believes that a part of her died in that dig site with her mother. Don't worry, we'll give her the best psychotherapy. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

  Rose had felt really angry and had banged on the wall.

  “I'm not going through any trauma! And I don't have any imaginary friends! Dad, it's me, Rose, your daughter. Evelynn and mom are dead, dad, why don't you believe me? Why are you listening to these bastards who killed everyone?”

  But her father had left, leaving her all alone in that tiny prison cell. The doctor or whoever he was had come back a few minutes later.

  “You don't know how lucky you are,” he said. “Your concussion or lack of memory has saved your life. Unit 7 were planning to kill you. I'm sorry about your father, but they threatened him. He has a daughter with his second wife and he doesn't want to risk his new family. That's the only reason he's going along with this.”

  His voice turned into a whisper. “I'm sorry, Eve. I know you think I'm the enemy, but I genuinely want to help you. I hate what the government does, but I am helpless. I made a mistake once and now they have me by the balls. I have to do what they say or they'll throw me in the prison as well. They're not recording this, so listen carefully, I'll speak quickly.”

  “Keep acting crazy, keep acting like you have an imaginary sister called Rose who died down there. If they think you're crazy, they won't kill you. They're already looking at the footage of your chat with their father, which is why we have these few minutes. If your own father thinks you're crazy, that saves the government the job of trying to discredit you.”

  “Soon, they're going to offer you a lot of money; my suggestion is just take it. Please take it. They will kill you otherwise. You're not even the first person this month they've vanished. Just take the money and leave.”

  He had tears in his eyes as he left her alone.