Murmuration

It—

“Where’s Sean?” Gregory Hughes asks.

The gardener smiles. “I noticed it first, you know. The two of you.”

“I didn’t….” He stops himself, because he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. Instead, he says, “Noticed what?”

“Your hearts. Your brains. Always in sync. Always finding a way to match up with each other. Tell me, Mike. Good old Mike. How did you do it?”

“I don’t know.”

The gardener frowns. “But. You have to know.”

I’d follow you anywhere.

You would, wouldn’t you.

Yeah, Sean. Where you go, I go. We’re best friends.

And something more.

And something more.

Then yes. Yes. Saturday. You and me. It’s a date.

“Where is he?” Greg asks.

The gardener eyes him warily, but continues on down the row. They pass more and more faces that Greg recognizes, but nothing as clear as the others. He can hear their voices in the back of his mind, and they’re saying Good morning, Mike! and Looks like it’s going to be a scorcher, don’t you think? and Hey there, Mike! Good to see ya! Say, have you gotten in the latest Marlowe mystery? I heard it’s a real blast!

It only takes minutes.

It feels like hours.

There’s an empty pod. The panel next to it is dark.

“This is where you were,” the gardener says solemnly. “Where you slept before they took you away. I tried to stop them. After all, I was the one that pointed out to them when your heartbeats matched. When your brainwaves matched. They came down after that. Did all these tests. They did electroencephalograms. EEGs. They didn’t understand their own results. They said, maybe it was just tiny seizures. Or tiny strokes. Maybe it was proximity. Maybe it was ADHD or epilepsy. They went in, after that. Just to see. And you know what they found? Do you know what they saw, Mike? Mr. Frazier?”

“What?” Greg says hoarsely.

The gardener smiles. “They saw what it really was. They saw it was love. They didn’t believe it. They are scientists. Therefore, they’re cynics. It’s how the world works. There’s an order to everything. They thought they’d taken away everything that made you who you were and built you from the ground up. They didn’t realize they couldn’t stop you from being human, no matter if you were Mike Frazier or Greg Hughes.”

“They could have made him”—me—“feel that way. They could have manufactured everything.”

The gardener shook his head. “They could take away your memories. They could make you forget who you were. They could make you into something else. But they could never make someone love you. They could never make you love someone else. You can’t manufacture that.” He sounds irritated now. “No, you did that all on your own, didn’t you, Mike?”

And he steps aside.

Greg thinks maybe he should turn around. Maybe he should just walk away. Demand the gardener take him back to his room. Forget about all of this. He’ll get stronger. Better. He’ll demand they let him leave. If they won’t, he’ll find some way to escape. He doesn’t know where he’ll go after that, but he’ll find somewhere. He can do this. Maybe he can have a life again that’s free from this prison. That’s free from this island.

He’s about to do just that when he steps forward instead.

There’s a man in a pod that looks nothing like the man he knows in his head. Sean Mellgard is happy and healthy and whole. He’s unconventionally handsome, with wide, expressive eyes and a devilish smile on his face. His nose is a little crooked and his eyebrows a little bushy, but it’s endearing. Greg knows this. He knows this, even if it’s not his to know.

The man before him is not Sean Mellgard.

“Drugs,” the gardener says. “Heroin. He was an addict. Nathan Powell. Parents died when he was seven. Tossed around from foster home to foster home. Dropped out of school. Committed petty crimes. Fell in with the wrong people. Got hooked. Sold himself for money. For drugs. For a place to sleep. He was nineteen when he overdosed in his car. They tried to save him. He died twice, but they brought him back.”

“Maybe,” Greg chokes out. “Maybe he can wake up like—”