Why You Were Taken

HER ABDUCTOR’S HANDWRITING ₂₄

Johannesburg, 2021

Kirsten puts her watch up to the screen so that the ATM can scan it. She draws her daily limit of ten thousand rand, hoping it will keep her going for the next few days. The machine thanks her for her business and ejects 20 perfumed five hundred rand notes. The cash is bulky but she can’t leave a credit trail. She checks over her shoulder for anything suspicious but everyone seems to be going about their regular life without a clue of what hers has become.

She catches a communal taxi to Mbali Mall in Hyde Park. She can’t think of anywhere safe to go but when the taxi driver stops outside the shopping centre for another passenger, Kirsten jumps out, leaving the microchip hidden in the fold of the seat.

Usually she hates malls, but for now the soulless space and dazzling lights seem like a good idea. Polished floors, store staff too tired to smile and shopzombies bleached by the artificial light. The killer wouldn’t pump her full of bullets in front of all these people, would he? Still, she is cautious, keeps her head down and walks along the shop fronts, gazing at the window displays without seeing anything. She grabs a mask off a rotating display and covers her face with it.

Seth is walking, to kill time and get some air, and is twenty minutes away from home. Tuk-tuks and bike-cabs hoot at him as they pass, offering him a ride. Alba had just confirmed that their bugsweep has entered his apartment, so by the time he gets there it should have been given the all clear. It was just a precaution: as far as he knows, no one at Fontus knows his address, but he had been born with a healthy sense of paranoia and it had kept him alive and (relatively) unscathed up until now. What the fuck was going on at Fontus that they would remove Fiona and set armed security guards on him? Numbers stream through his head as he thinks of the files he had accessed there, the graphs, the summaries, all seemingly in order. What is it that they’re so desperate to hide? He would find out soon enough: he needed to get the samples to Alba HQ.

Her adrenaline flagging, Kirsten looks for a place to sit but is accosted by a Quinbot, AKA Stepford Wife. Despite side-stepping it, the mannequinbot sidles up to her.

‘Hello KIRSTEN,’ it says, ‘How are you? Isn’t it a wonderful day?’

‘Jesus,’ says Kirsten into her mask. ‘Really?’

‘I’m sorry. Hello JESUS. How are you? Isn’t it a wonderful day?’

‘Leave me alone,’ says Kirsten.

‘Jesus, would you like to try on this SaSirro alpha-cut dress? It has a built-in corset that will accentuate your lovely body shape.’

‘No.’

‘The shimmer in the hemline adds grace to your movement, and—’

‘No, thank you, not interested.’

‘Jesus, if you look at the detail, you’ll see—’

‘Stop calling me Jesus.’

‘I have scanned your measurements. You have a lovely body shape. This is how the dress would look on you.’

The Stepford Wife grows a little taller, her bust shrinks by a cup, and her waist grows by a few centimeters. Her abs get softer, and her calves become more pronounced. Her hair is reeled into her scalp. Kirsten picks up her pace, but the bot keeps up.

‘Leave me alone,’ she says. ‘Scram.’ She looks around to see who is watching.

‘It has a built-in corset that will—’

‘Fuck off!’ she shouts, causing some nearby shopzombies to look at her. The bot stops and reverses. Its wide lipstick-smile doesn’t falter.

‘Thank you for your time,’ says the bot, ‘It’s always lovely to see you.’

‘Fucking bots,’ mutters Kirsten, jogging away. The last thing she needed was to cause a scene.

‘Don’t be a stranger!’ it calls out after her.

Mannequinbots are always getting abused: fondled; defaced; hacked; taken for trolley rides that invariably end up in some kind of accident; shoved into garbage removal chutes; stolen; decapitated. Kirsten has little sympathy.

She finds a hoverbench outside a Talking Tees shop. It seems to be a politically themed store; usually they’re more light-hearted. The 4 shirts in the window tell her, via rather basic animations, to ‘Beware The Net,’ ‘Boycott Bilchen,’ ‘Ban the SkyCar,’ and ‘Pray for Peace in Palestine.’ She prefers the more light-hearted shirts, ones with beautiful, evolving illustrations, and ones that tell you jokes. The problem with the joke-shirts, though, is that you have to walk past the person before you hear the punchline.

She opens the letter she had found in James’s case. Her name is scrawled on the outside of the envelope and she recognises it immediately.

‘Dear Kirsten,’ it says, in her abductor’s handwriting. ‘When you find out the truth you won’t believe that we loved you, but we did, in our own way. It’s terrible to want to tell you the truth, because it puts you in danger, but the truth will out, I can feel it bleeding out of me already, and it’s better if you are warned. Your foster father, my pretend-husband of thirty years, heard us talking on the phone just now and—

Maybe he thinks they’ll spare him, but I know differently—

I don’t have long – I know they’ll be here any minute – who is to say no one else has confessed… I can’t be the only one who feels like this. Festering, about to burst.

The details aren’t important. Please know we truly believed we were doing the right thing.

This is important: What you must know is that I have now compromised the cell and if you don’t move now you will be removed from the program – killed.

My God, what have we done?

Once you are safe, contact ED MILLER in Melville. He is my life partner & soulmate. We’ve been together for 26 years. He doesn’t know anything about GP, I spared him that much, but has a packet of info for you. Everything you need to know about why you were taken. You need to read this to understand why we did what we did.

You need to get rid of the tracking microchip (embedded in your scalp). You need to move countries. Just get on a plane, fly anywhere, for now. You need to do this without letting the police know. And you need to do this immediately. They will eliminate everyone in our cell, all seven children that were taken. Enclosed is a list of the others. I am sending this and a duplicate to the only other person I (shouldn’t but do) know in the program, Betty Weil (Barbara). I have given her your address. You can’t trust anyone in the GP, but I had to take the chance. Warn them too, if you can.

Kirsten, one of them is your twin brother.

I’m sorry. Truly. We chose you because you were special. You were all special. God forgive me, and God help you. RUN.’

Kirsten’s brain stumbles. All she can see on the page are the words ‘taken,’ ‘twin brother,’ and ‘RUN.’ Kirsten’s watch rings, snapping her out of her shock. It’s Keke.

‘Hey Cat,’ she says, ‘how are you doing? Hey, never mind. You’re alive. That’s the most important thing.’

‘Yes,’ says Kirsten. ‘I guess so. I’m inside—’

‘Whoah! Don’t tell me where you are.’

‘Of course. I’ll buy a ’sposie.’

‘Good.’

‘You got anything for me?’

‘Ready for your rather interesting day to get a bit more… interesting?’

‘Impossible.’

‘What?’ says Keke.

‘What?’ says Kirsten.

‘What do you know?’ she asks.

‘I need a moment,’ says Kirsten, trying to think straight. ‘You go first.’

‘So FWB Hackerboy Genius found the other person on the list.’

‘Where is he? Jo’burg? Do you have an address?’

‘How did you know it was a he? And get this, you were right, he was born at the same clinic as you.’

‘I know,’ says Kirsten.

‘Wait, what?’

‘Just carry on,’ says Kirsten.

‘While Marko was hacking into some illegal tax shit to find his address, I checked the other names on the list and they – you – were all born at the same clinic.’

‘What kind of clinic was this?’

‘That’s exactly what I thought, so I looked into it, and according to Google and the National Health Authority it never EXISTED.’

‘It never existed.’

‘Correct.’

‘So… I was born to a mother without a uterus in a clinic that never existed.’

‘Er… correct,’ says Keke. ‘In other words—’

‘In other words,’ says Kirsten, ‘she was not my mother and that is not my real birth certificate.’

‘It looks like it, yes.’

‘I was kidnapped,’ Kirsten finally says, too quietly for Keke to hear. Snatched. Abducted. Keke was talking again, Kirsten tries to tune in.

‘… but I have a feeling this is just the beginning. It’s clear that someone will do anything to keep whatever this is, a secret. Get that disposable phone and we can meet up. We can look for this guy together.’

Seven people on the list, all with forged birth certificates. The first four on the list: dead. Five, Six, Seven alive: orange, pink, green (Grapefruit Skin, Baby Toe Pink, Camouflage).

‘Kitty Cat? Hello?’

‘No, it’s too dangerous. Stay where you are and keep looking.’

‘Will you at least phone James? I’d feel much better if he was with you.’ James had hidden the letter from her. Kirsten ignores the question. ‘You’ll bump me this guy’s co-ordinates?’

‘Yebo. Watch yourself!’

For a moment the danger fades and the realisation glitters before her: She has a twin. Unbelievable. But hadn’t a small, lonely part of her known all along? She thinks of the letter. ‘RUN’ it said. Fuck that, she thinks, fuck running away. She was going to find her twin.

Seth reaches his building. He hasn’t received anything from Alba so he waits outside, sure that he’ll get the go-ahead soon. Hyper-aware, he arrives at his block at the same time as someone else so is immediately on his guard. He still has a few bullets left in his gun, which is cold but reassuring against his palm. He keeps his head down, his hood up. Slips into the camouflage of pedestrian traffic, but the creep is headed straight in his direction.

He feigns nonchalance, flicks his safety off. The person is getting closer, closer, and Seth’s finger travels to the trigger. When the person is a metre away Seth finally looks up and is ready to fire.

There is a blast of light, and his mind scrambles to work out what has just happened. Has he been shot? Did he shoot? He doesn’t remember pulling the trigger. But no one is hurt and there is a shock of a beautiful woman in front of him: a haunted look and a shaved head.

‘Seth Denicker?’ she says, breathless.

‘Who are you?’ he asks. They have never met but he feels as if he knows her. Kirsten’s body is vibrating. This man’s face, his presence, shakes her, she feels like she has walked into an electric fence. As she looks into his eyes, she knows that it is true.

Seth is paralysed by the magnetic field of this familiar stranger.

‘I’m…’ she starts. Could it really be true? But she knew it was, without a doubt. Every bit of her could see it, taste it, feel it.

You are my parallel life, she wants to say. I have always felt your existence echo in mine.

‘I’m your twin sister.’