“You must eat,” Felicity says.

What the hell? She pinched the girl?

I escape along the narrow hall, so preoccupied by the creep show in the living room that I’m slow to register Tesla through the door of the first bedroom. He sits on the side of the bed, a framed photo in hand. I stall and stare without meaning to. I was hoping to lie down, clear my head. He looks up, a brief flash of awkwardness that makes me want to apologise for intruding, but this is essentially my house, Miriam’s house with Nan and Pop and April gone, and he’s the one touching my family’s things. He is family. The thought makes me prickly, stirring an unwelcome yearning that makes me ashamed.

He puts the frame back on the bedside cabinet and rises to his feet. “They were very alike.”

I glance at the photo. Miriam and April dressed for their first day of high school, grinning, arms linked. I can’t think what to say. I nod.

“I never met her,” he says.

I keep my eyes on the photo, sifting through replies for something that won’t come off judgy or bitter or accusing. “April was the best.”

Hesitating, he says, “Miriam spoke highly of her.”

It catches my attention like a glimmering lure. My head turns, my needy questions rising through dark water. Is it an invitation? Is he opening a door for me? But allowing one question to surface will only trouble hundreds more from the deep and it’s hardly the time or place. Just one, I think, and my mouth starts without me. “You, um … talked to Miriam a lot?”

He does this thing with his eyebrow, a considering sort of undulation like he’s weighing his reply, testing its quality. “No. Only at the beginning and later when this all started.”

I assume the “beginning” was their three months together. The “all” must be me Sparking and unearthing my psychotic twin, but I’m staggered and immediately exceed my question quota. “You didn’t see her for seventeen years?”

His expression closes in, not so much defensive as cautious. “I saw her at the handover of your brother to the Templars. Several years later at an Assembly in the UK. Then last year to witness a Sanctioned Affiliation Ceremony.”

It’s a carefully delivered list, stripped of inflection. I’m taken aback and I can’t help searching his stern face for some sign of emotion. “Three times? In seventeen years?” Before I can help myself I ask, “Did you love her?”

His brow gathers and he drops his gaze. “Love is neither useful nor relevant.”

“Don’t go Spock on me.” My voice wobbles. “I’m not asking much.”

He stares at the floorboards between us and finally says, his voice gruff, “I did … I do.”

“It wasn’t just the Synergist thing?”

“You say that as if it were some parasitic override.”

“Isn’t it?” And I’m not sure if I mean to imply that I think it is. It’s what I’ve feared, that my feelings for Jamie are simply a chemical reaction, artificially induced for the mercenary practicalities of passing on the synthetic gene. Miriam had said it herself, admittedly in the throes of a tirade, a Petri dish experiment, not a relationship.

“You do not understand the function of the synthetic gene,” he says, somehow avoiding making his words sound condescending. “It draws, unlocks and amplifies what is inside you. Your natural affinity. Yes, there is code in your telepathic signature that will always look for its match, but it is more complicated than that. The strength of the Synergist link is fed by your choices, values, experiences, tastes, emotional and psychological development. There are environmental factors.”

Hearing all this doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me sad and suddenly I’m thinking of Miriam’s years of singleness. “I used to wonder why she never went on dates.”

“She could have.”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“She would have told you?”

“We used to talk about everything before all this.”

He doesn’t respond though his expression softens.

“Would you have minded if she had?” I ask. “Seen other people, I mean.”

Again that drawing in, caution. “I would always want Miriam to be happy, but I accept that I robbed her of that choice where love is concerned.”

“What do you mean, robbed?”

Colour grows in his face, not an outright blush, but evidence of discomfort. “When Synergists … bond … it is a permanent synchronic act, an imprinting that alters and fuses their signals.”

“What, so she could never love someone else?”

“She could love … but there would be no … desire for that person.”

I gape at him, and glance back up the hall, lowering my voice. “So, no sex?”

Now, he really blushes. “I did not say that. Sex would be possible but lacking in … devoid of …”

“You’ve never been with anyone else?” I blurt.

His face darkens. “That is none of your business.”

“It is if I have half-siblings.”

He pulls me into the room and closes the door, thunder booming overhead. “Do not speak of such things.”

I yank my arm from his hold, flushed at my petty goading.

“You think anything would have kept me from you or your mother if total secrecy was not necessary?”

“How would I know?” It comes out with a feral rush of feeling I’m not prepared for. I have to blink away tears. What’s wrong with me?

He exhales through his nose. “You want to go and look at that tormented girl on the couch, with her skin bleached to chalk, and tell me I did the wrong thing. Tell me everything your mother and I have done to keep you safe was worth nothing.”

I don’t argue. I steady my voice. “You think they’d take me now? At this age, they’d try to use me like they use her?”

“You met Robert,” Tesla says. “Can you doubt it?”

“She said she was five when they started.”

“It is true they might not use you in the same way.” He briefly closes his eyes as though forcing himself to stay calm. “But you would be their property.”

“I’m already their property.” Again that fierce rush. “Go ahead - count their marks on my body.”

A small flinch in his brow. “There are still choices. They may not seem like much, but they are choices. I have worked since you and your brother were born to find other choices.”

He means the Deactivation Program, which I’ve single-handedly ruined, but I don’t want to acknowledge that I understand what he’s getting at because that brings Jamie into the conversation more pointedly than Tesla’s lesson on Synergists. Grief compresses my chest, a bruising, irresistible weight that makes it hard to draw a full breath. Helena. Jamie’s hands on a pale blue blouse. Sandy hair spilling over delicate bare shoulders. My stomach doesn’t twist with jealousy. I’m tired of hating a shadow.

I realise then that though I had feared my actions would drive Jamie from me, and his stony, back-turned silence in the kitchen was proof of my success in that, there’s still a deep-down part of me banking on our Synergist link to bring him back. A fail-safe. What a hypocrite. One minute loathing the idea that our love – our link – is a test tube invention and the next I’m hoping it can override his disgust and force him to still want me. Though “love” might be a stretch where Jamie’s feelings are concerned, now that things have changed. I groan and rub my face. “He could still deactivate, right? Jamie, I mean. Even though Robert’s shut things down?”

“He could.”

I nod. An ounce or two of worry lifting from the weight in my stomach. The rain grows louder on the roof and static louder in my head. The house feels crowded and I’m desperate for peace. “I want to lie down. My head hurts.”

He looks at me with his dark eyes, rubs the back of his neck. There’s a moment where I think he’ll press his point but he lets it go. Instead, he nods, opens the door and walks out.

STORM

I go to the window, nudge the curtain aside to blink at myself and the storm. Sighing, I lie back across the narrow bed, my head dropping over the side, giving me an upside-down view of the hall and ceiling. I close my eyes and a weird burst of static produces a strange image in my mind. My face. It appears like a light flicked on and off again in the dark. I rub my temples and open my eyes, staring at the ageing paintwork, the chipped edge of the trap to the attic space, the dangling cord and ring for pulling down the hidden stairs. I rake back over my conversation with Tesla, all my stupid, goading words … the dangling cord and ring. It happens again, the weird burst of static and the image of my face.