Shadows and Bonds: Connection

By A-Shay Walker

This never should have happened.

This never has happened before.

Yet here they are, connected under the most unusual and baffling circumstances, with only brands on their ring fingers and the shadow-memory of a man in their subconscious to prove it's real. 

As if the feeling like their organs are being strung from their bodies, their ribs and spines threatening to snap if they dare step too far apart aren't indicators enough...

They're really Bonded.

And whatever happens next is going to suck. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Nov 21, 2019

Book preview

Proverb

CHAPTER ONE

MAY 8th, 2030

Martin Kelly has been given an offer. It’s an opportunity plain, unadorned, and absolute: kill someone.

It’s someone who deserves it, no doubt about that. Someone who has stolen plenty from plenty of people. For him specifically, the greatest loss is his leg. Even now, six months after it was blown from his knees and eaten away into nothingness, it lingers like a phantom beneath him. Probably for forever. It always strikes him how funny it is that the things he no longer has are the things he feels the very most.

But that’s only one reason why she should die. The rest are likely being recorded right now, from the perpetrator’s own mouth. Martin has sat outside the glass encasement with his back turned to his victim for an hour now, hearing nothing but for the occasional thump and smack that broke through the soundproofed box.

Martin would likely be doing her a service by killing her himself. Then, at least, she wouldn’t take her last breaths locked in a cell with a madman and his vicious, half brain-dead puppets.

The lights hanging overhead flicker again, and Martin isn’t startled when he hears footsteps coming his way. He had set Doctor Halliwell’s ancient, 1960’s record player—which he was a bit surprised still operated—on a Beatles record, just to try and soothe himself. But even Hey Jude couldn’t make this better.

She isn’t going to be able to make any sort of confession if her jaw is broken, Martin says.

Meg plants her feet beside him, facing the record player, standing tall with the high ceilings of their basement dwelling. It’s always cold down here, with floors cement and the walls still baring their skeletons of insulation and wood planks. There was no need to furnish something used as a holding den, a makeshift prison of sorts. And yet there was the record player, on the wooden table with its top clawed up by human fingernails, shavings left behind like curling, brittle bones. Martin wishes he could feel the chill of the cement on his bare toes rather than the sting of it in the air. He misses it. He can remember strongly how much he hated waking up for school on early winter mornings, and walking on a frosty bathroom floor.

But his senses are limited when standing on one metal foot.

She already made her confession ten minutes in, Meg says, He's just punishing her now.

For how long?

For as long as he can draw it out.

I should be in there. I should at least have the opportunity to do something.

He gets the torture; you get the bullet. The final word. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, barely turning her head. She doesn’t want to turn her head too much, or risk seeing through the glass behind them. Her heart beats along with his own but twice as fast when she grants her peripherals an inch more sight. But there are things she can feel from inside the cage that even he can’t know.

Actually a pretty generous offer, she says, tilting her head back toward the glass cell. Coming from him.

I want to do it, Martin says, daring to look at her more fully. Her hair is longer than it was when they first met, touching just above the steady curve of her breasts. It’s darker now, too, bringing out the pink in her pale lips. I want to kill her, for me and for you.

She looks back at the record player. Do you?

He thinks immediately that the words are a test to prove his resolution. Then he feels that gentle vibration crossing the strings that hold her to him, unseen but still real. It’s as if she had merely flicked her nail across one. Subtle. Meg is only ever subtle when she is taking a step into an uncomfortable conversation.

You don’t think I can do it, he says.

I’m only wondering whether you should.

"And yet I’m the only one of us who can, Martin insists. Who knows what would happen to you if you were to pull the trigger, Meg. What would happen to you if he did it? He gestured back to the glass, the same way she had, with just a flick of the chin. I won’t take the risk."

She turns to him fully, somehow completely ignoring the thump thump of something being rammed against glass. There’s an idea in her head, one Martin catches almost immediately, and she isn’t backing down. Something could happen to you as well. What if you change too much, Martin? Then we’re both lost. You— she pauses, steadies herself with a breath that feels like iron in his veins. You’re my rock.

Some time ago, when he was more naive and they were the most unorthodox pair, he’d longed for her to say something like that. Looking back, he realizes, not that much time has passed since he’d met Meg, but it feels like eons. Flickers of memory come back to him, a lot of rejection, frustration, intermingled with small moments of joy and pure connection. And in the last couple of months, her walls have crumbled and she has looked to him, hoped with him, opened up to him.

Yet it’s not enough, because he always lingers in the background. He has stolen a part of her, from both of them. And while Martin doesn’t consider himself possessive, he’s always loath to share her.

Martin looks up. That woman is going to get her dues tonight. One of us has to do it. One of us deserves to.

She recoils from the glass again. The mere humanity of it is assuring. Meg can be pulled out of her darkness, redeemed of it, and he can help her do that. He’d promised to never abandon her, and he would keep that promise, even if it drove him mad with grief. He’ll murder, even if he has to remind himself of why with every sound that comes from inside the glass box. When Martin looks closer, he sees that Meg’s pupils are blown wide with rage. Not her rage, but the rippled fury from the blond man within the glass who has haunted them for so long.

For now, until the moment comes, Martin will wait, and breathe, and listen to the Beatles.

Maybe after it’s done, they can be free again. Free in their togetherness, free to be Bonded, free to move on from all the horror. But he knows that’s a stupid wish.

They’ve never been free.

CHAPTER TWO

AUGUST 1st, 2029 – 9 MONTHS EARLIER

Tension. Lots of tension. It's difficult to breathe with so much nervousness filling the air. A steel balloon could be withholding all the oxygen, and Martin wouldn't know the difference. It's an atmosphere thicker than the heat outside, which is just barely hitting its peak at the end of July-early August apex, and all it takes to mimic that hotness is nearly a dozen sweaty, apprehensive teenagers. Martin finds himself looking down every couple minutes at his hands, and each time, they've unknowingly grasped the excess fabric of his gym shorts in a tight fist, holding on for dear life while his knees bounce in short spasms, up and down. Whenever he lets go, his palms feel sticky and his fingers struggle to straighten out.

It's a mess. He's a mess. And they haven't even started yet.

An intercom crackles to life over his head, naming off the next victim. "Delilah Franks for Assessment please."

Martin watches the girl stand, rubbing her thumb against her fingertips, pushing her bangs out of her face and into the flow of her blonde bob. She does her best to look confident, but her fingers are shaking when she walks through the automatic door. He gets the faintest glimpse of the room beyond, of a bunch of teachers and trainers sitting in a circle, a massive, round object like a black pearl adorning their center.

Martin, a hand clasps his, firm yet gentle, you're making me nervous.

He doesn't know whether to laugh or cry; the sound that comes out is more like the dying-cat mixture of both.

I'm sorry, he says, taking control of his legs for a moment. How long have we been here?

Pola tilts her head back to read the digital clock on the wall. Like thirty minutes.

It has to be longer than that.

I'm pretty sure that clock can tell time better than you can.

"Shh!" the boy sitting a couple chairs over from Martin hisses. His hands are clasped and his head is bent, and even with his eyes closed he looks to be deep in concentration.

Maybe praying, maybe meditating; whatever keeps the nerves from culminating into vomit.

Pola nudges him, smiling, because she thinks he's funny for being so anxious. Martin doesn't know if it has escaped the knowledge of his typically observant girlfriend, but she's the only one in the mass of sweaty teenagers that isn't, well... sweaty. But why would she be?

There've been very few things she's ever had to sweat about.

School? No problem. Sports? Easy. Every other aspect of life? Piece of cake. God could have just looked at her and decided she could get by on sheer attractiveness, but no, he decided to make her a psychology genius and a high school tennis champion (who by the way looks very nice in those short skirts).

In summary, facing the Final Assessment for her induction into the Chicago Police Academy of Bonding Technology is another one of those things Pola Pratt just doesn't need to sweat about.

Martin Kelly, however, does perspire. Probably too much. His time bomb of nervous energy is ticking down to single digits and there's little he can do to stall it. The funny thing is, he doesn't know whether he's more nervous about not passing, or making it in.

"Evan Hyde, you're up."

The same boy that had hissed at Martin earlier stands so quickly it probably gives him head-rush.

That's four down, and H is dangerously close to K.

You've gotten this far, Pola tries to reassure him, now that Evan Hyde isn't there to be disturbed. Honestly, these Final Assessments are probably more like initiations; I doubt anyone sitting with us today isn't going to make it through.

Which doesn't help. He keeps that fact quiet though, and gives her a smile, a squeeze of the hand, every thankful gesture he would show if he honestly did feel better. He's not lying because he wants to, or simply because he can, it's just better for Pola if she doesn't know every terrible thing he feels or thinks. Because, for one, it's no fault of hers. Pola's intentions are almost always sincere and justifiable, and it was her idea that they apply for enrollment in the Academy in the first place. It happened just five months ago, when they were hauling through the last few milestones in their Senior year of High School. It wasn't nearly the worst school year of his life, not since the grade-school curriculum changed in 2023 cutting the legal age of adulthood from eighteen to sixteen, which forced schools to combine two years of work into one. From August to July, life was hell. Education boards chose to extend the school year from its usual end-of-May cutoff to an unusual end-of-July cutoff in order to attempt to fit in another year's worth of testing and classes. That gave students at every grade level (except for those already graduating) less than a month for summer vacation, and after the ceaseless piles of homework and running from one thirty minute class to another, it wasn't nearly enough time to recuperate. Parents and Educators dubbed it the 2023 Education Hysteria, while the student body just dubbed it the Apocalypse (which was the least offensive word Martin heard used that year). All in all, it made the drudgery of Senior year tolerable, and when Pola suggested the Academy, the prospect of adulthood seemed wide open.

Then, eventually, things became more complicated.

When Martin learned that the Chicago Police Academy of Bonding Technology was named not because it encourages its trainees to Bond with their chosen partners-in-crime (permanently, as long as compatibility isn't an issue), but because it is a requirement, Martin felt his first conflicting feelings toward his relationship. He'd never entertained the idea of getting Bonded to Pola before then, not even in passing. That wasn't the same in her case. There were a million times he had tried and failed to find the courage to tell Pola how he really felt, that he just wasn't ready to be Bonded to anyone and didn't know when he would be, but he could never get the words out of his mouth.

From there, things became so confusing that the only thing he could do was go along with it.

He wants to get into the Academy; he really does. The scholarships offered are top-notch, law enforcement has always been an interest of his, and he knows his father doesn’t think he will be admitted (which if he is proven wrong it’s a giant plus in Martin’s eyes), but Bonding is a big deal.

A huge deal.

This decade's technological revolution, Bonding takes two compatible people and links their minds together. Although not at the level of reading people's thoughts, it's still like steroids for your brain; you get smarter, and by getting smarter, you get faster, stronger, all around better. It's practically irreversible, or so Martin hears. There have been people who go back to the Bonding Facility to undergo a specialized un-Bonding operation, but it's never a promise that they'll walk out the same person. Martin remembers watching news coverage on a couple that went in to undo their Bond and were diagnosed with brain damage for it. It was an extreme case, but even the best scenarios leave the un-Bonded with ADHD, depression, and sometimes worse mental cases like schizophrenia.

But not many Bonds ever go back to the Bonding Facility. Apparently, if the compatibility results come out solid, Bonding just works.

And, according to their tests, Martin and Pola are solid.

Which doesn't make the commitment any less real, and no matter how often Martin lies in bed at night trying to convince himself that Bonding with Pola will be a good thing, the idea still makes him nauseous.

But he keeps all of this to himself, and if the past reflects any part of the future, it will probably stay that way. Why? Martin has tried and failed to pick a reason. Sometimes he thinks it is because he really doesn't want to lose Pola; other times he's sure he's just a pansy. He'll go through phases where he will blame everyone for pressuring him, from Pola's parents to his parents, and from himself to Pola; other times, he knows he's just too scared to let everyone down.

Whatever the reason, it keeps him quiet.

"Martin Kelly."

Martin sucks in a breath, a fast, shallow one that leaves him lightheaded. He tries again, breathes long and deep with his eyes closed, and when he opens them again he's looking down at his and Pola's hands, still mesmerized by her dark brown complexion in contrast with his fair skin.

Show 'em what you got, she says, leading him by the hand to