Free Into the Dark (The Conjurors) by Kristen Pham Page A

parents think I am now. They’re so proud,” he said with a wistful shake of his head, and Valerie could see how deeply he missed them. She felt a pang of envy for his big family who loved him, missed him, and depended on him. If he left Earth, they’d never forget him.
        “But a month before I was supposed to leave, I started to feel really sick. I had a fever all the time, and my entire body felt achy. The weirdest thing was that I kept hearing these strange sounds inside my head. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and I was terrified. I didn’t want my parents or anyone to find out because they would stop me from going to college. So I hid what was happening to me. I kept hoping that maybe it was some kind of weird virus that eventually I’d fight off. Some days I felt almost normal and I would convince myself that I was getting better.
        “Then one night, I fell asleep and was having these crazy dreams. The sound of crying woke me up. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anyone in my room or outside. And then my whole body started convulsing, and I realized that the crying was coming from me. I have never felt so confused, and terrified, in my entire life. It was as if my body wasn’t under my own control, like there was something foreign was inside me, trying to break out. Now, Valerie, please stay calm, or you’ll freak him out.”
        Before she could ask any questions, Thai closed his eyes. His entire body shuddered, and his facial expression changed from an intense stare to wide-eyed confusion. He opened his eyes, which had changed from dark brown to a soft gold. Thai had disappeared inside of himself, and the owner of these wide eyes blinked at Valerie.
        Then he spoke, and his voice sounded subtly different from Thai’s – more gravelly, like it hadn’t been used in awhile. “W-w-who are you?”
        “Um, nice to meet you. I’m Valerie,” she squeaked, trying to keep the shock out of her voice. A shudder passed through Thai’s body again, and when he opened his eyes, she saw that the Thai she knew had returned. She breathed a sigh of relief as he examined her face. Then he nodded, as if he was satisfied that she wasn’t going to start screaming.
        “His name is Tan. The night I got so sick, a Conjuror named Midnight appeared out of nowhere, and after explaining about magic and the Globe, she described what was happening to me. I’m an amoebiate. What I’m going through are processes called mitosis and cytokinesis. Basically, I’m splitting into two people. I’m making an exact copy of myself, like an amoeba. First, all of Tan’s genes are created inside of me, which is what is happening now. Right now we’re sharing my body, and sometimes he takes me over, like you just saw. But in a couple years, he’ll physically split apart from me too, and we’ll have two separate bodies.
    “There are a couple of others like me on the Globe, but no one on Earth for hundreds of years. When we’re fully separated, Tan will have the exact same genes as me – like a clone.”
        Valerie shook her head in amazement. “What’s it like when he takes over?”
        Thai gave her a small smile. “Weirder than anything you can imagine. It’s like being paralyzed inside my own body, which is really scary. But it takes a lot of energy for him to completely take over, so he doesn’t do it very often. When his genes are completely copied, we’ll physically separate into two people.”
         “Will that hurt?” she asked hesitantly.
        A fleeting look fear crossed Thai’s face that he quickly tried to hide. “Yes. But it’s quick – the physical separation only takes a couple of hours. He’ll look exactly like me, and he’ll probably act a lot like me too. The separation isn’t the part the worries me the most, anyway. It’s that as he gets stronger he’ll be able to take control of the body we share, and it will be hard to hide what we are.