Rachel Hawkins - Grim

I stop Dr. Saxon before he leaves. “There’s a file on the computer I can’t access. Project Twig. What is it?”

“Nothing,” Dr. Saxon says. “Leave it be.”

“If it can help me save Levi, you must tell me how to decrypt it.”

“Don’t waste what little time you have left, Pip.” Dr. Saxon looks at me with something bordering on concern, an emotion I thought him incapable of feeling for me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I am more than an experiment to Dr. Saxon, after all.

“Thank you, Dr. Saxon. For everything. You are as near to a father as I will ever have.”

Pain etches Dr. Saxon’s face, as though I have stabbed him with his own scalpel. “My wife loved Bach,” he says. “Especially the Brandenburg concertos. You might find them enlightening.”

It takes me three days to figure out that Dr. Saxon had given me the key to decrypting the Project Twig files. It was Bach. The files were encrypted with an algorithm based on his Brandenburg concertos. But how I decrypted them is not half as exciting as what the files contain. The moment I finish reading them, I know I can save Levi. It takes my remaining days to prepare, but I am finally ready to try.

Levi is so weak he can barely lift his head. His hair has thinned and grown brittle and his eyes are glazed with a deathly film. Still, he talks as though his life’s end is not near, despite the tube in his chest helping him breathe.

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” he says.

I push Levi’s chair through the corridors, thinking about tomorrow night when I’ll have earned my pardon and we’ll walk together as equals. As we pass the botanical garden, Levi tries to turn around but gets tangled in his breathing tube. “We’re not going to watch the stars?”

“Not tonight,” I say.

“Then what?”

“It’s a surprise,” I tell him, barely able to contain my excitement.

Levi’s body shakes. I believe it’s what passes for a nod. “I’m not sure how much time I have left, but however much it is belongs to you.” A coughing fit grips him and I stop pushing to make sure he’s all right. When the coughing subsides, we continue.

There is a morbid truth to his words that follows us down the empty corridors. I imagine Levi’s heart fluttering, fading. His lungs slowly drowning in fluid. The breathing machine only prolongs the inevitable. The worst part is that I feel like I can smell death on him—the rotting stench as his cells expire one by one. If Levi were anyone else, I’m not certain I could stand it.

But he’s not anyone else. He is Levi.

We enter a lab that has not been used in years. I only discovered it when I decrypted the Project Twig files. The walls are lined with metal doors. In the center of the room is a table draped with a white sheet. Beside it, a second, empty table.

“What is this place?” Levi asks.

“Your father worked here once,” I say. “And it is where I will make you better.”

“How?” Levi guards his hope, but it bleeds through. A slight smile, a brightness to his milky eyes.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to tell Levi, but in the end, only the truth will do. “Your father’s first attempts to cure the Disease were known as Project Twig. He attempted to build new bodies for the Hamelin ’s children. Artificial bodies resistant to the Disease.”

I watch Levi for his reaction, but he simply stares at me, beautiful, even near death.

“But Dr. Saxon couldn’t figure out how to transfer the consciousness from the old body to the new. Every effort to duplicate the soul and put it in the artificial bodies failed. When the Senate discovered what your father was doing, they demanded he terminate the experiments. Dr. Saxon disposed of the artificial bodies. All but one.”

Levi’s lip twitches. He looks at me with the barest hint of a smile. “You.”

I shake my head. “No. I came later. Your father begged the Senate to be allowed to create me so that he could study the Disease. They relented so long as he never attempt to revive Project Twig.”

“Then...who?”

The form under the white sheet on the table. We both turn to it. Look at it. I cross the distance and pull the sheet aside. Levi lies there. Naked. Whole. Healthy.

“Is that...?”

I nod. “Your father kept your body in this lab. I used his research to revive it and make it the same age as you.”

Levi moves around the table, touching an arm, looking at the body that looks so much like him but is not him. I wait for him to smile, to laugh, to realize that I have found his cure, but maybe he has grown so accustomed to the idea of dying that he has given up on being saved. I don’t know how he can remain so calm when I am hardly able to keep my hands from shaking.

“Say something,” I say when I can’t stand his silence anymore.

“It seems a bit unfair,” Levi says.

“How so?”

Levi shrugs. “You’ve seen me naked.” He grins and laughs and coughs so hard that I’m afraid he’ll dislodge his breathing tube. But he doesn’t, and when the coughing fit ends, he’s still smiling. I’ve never seen Levi so alive.

“You can put me in there?” Levi asks. “I can have a new body?”

“Yes.” Fear is eating away at me because there’s still one last thing he doesn’t know.

“How do we do this?” he asks without a trace of fear.

“First, there’s something I must know.”

“What?”

I pull a chair next to Levi. “Do you believe I’m alive?”

“Of course,” Levi says. “You’re more alive than anyone I know.”

“For a long time, I wasn’t sure,” I say. “Your father, the others, they treat me like a thing. Somehow less than human. I look like them, think like them, bleed like them. But I’m not like them. You were the first person who treated me like I was real.”

Levi draws a shuddering breath. “You’re the most real thing in my life, Pip.”

I take Levi’s hand, kiss the tips of his fingers. He trembles but doesn’t pull away. “Could you...could you ever...love me?”

Dr. Saxon doesn’t believe me capable of love, but he’s wrong. I will succeed where he failed. That knowledge gives me the courage to seek the truth from Levi. No matter his answer.

Levi’s whole body breathes a sigh as he folds his fingers through mine. “I do love you, Pip. I’ve always loved you. How can you not know that?”

Hope crawls into my throat, but I push it back down. “Why did you pull away when I attempted to kiss you?”

Levi turns from me. He would run if I let him, but his legs would only betray him again. “I’m broken, Pip. Practically dead. Broken, dead and useless.”

“So?”

“You deserve better.” Tears run down his hollow cheeks. “You deserve someone whole.”

I press my body to Levi’s. He is so cold. I try to warm him but he is fading so quickly. “I want you, Levi. Broken or whole, I want you.”

Levi looks at the other body. “In that, I can be the man you deserve.” He kisses my hand. “How does this work?”

“You told me once that I was special. You’re special, too.” This moment feels too dense, like it might collapse under its own weight and drag me in. “Your father was trying to duplicate you—your memories, your body, your soul. What he failed to realize is that each human is unique. There can be only one Levi Saxon. To live, you must first die.”

Levi doesn’t reply for a moment, and I’m afraid that I’ve scared him. But he says, “Will it hurt?” in a voice that is exhausted but as fearless as ever. I’ve always known Levi was strong, but his strength still has the power to amaze me.

“No,” I say. “I promise.”

Levi holds my hand to his frail heart. “Thank you.”