He Split

I hate myself for making that joke.

Uhm...Todd's gone. I called everyone else and he wasn't near them, so I'm assuming that he headed for Aiden's while he was still him.

It's like something out of Artemis Fowl, I swear.

Todd's calm, snarky, and cunning. And the other one is uh...

Alexander? He's like...well I haven't seen enough of him to make proper judgment so I'll just say he isn't stupid or delusional like Orion was to Artemis. But he's not really Todd.

I just realized this isn't making much sense...

So I was sitting in the basement last night, waiting for Todd to wake up and trying to think of ways to hide him if he didn't wake up before my parents. I was reading 1984 because I'm weird and I like that book. Ace was laying down there with me. I could have watched TV or something but again, Todd was asleep and he was also on my couch. The entire couch. Jerk.

As I'm reading, somewhere at the point where Winston is talking to O'Brien about the church bell rhyme, there's a shuffling noise and a voice says, "Why the hell am I wearing a suit jacket?"

It's not Todd's voice. He has a distinct tone and a very slight accent.

"You're a model," I say, not looking up from the book. Because taking sarcastic shots at each other is what Todd and I do best.

"I'm doing a terrible job at it," he says, sitting up and brushing some dirt off of his sleeve.

"The torn, dirty look is a new style."

"It looks terrible."

"I'm sure it'll catch on."

He snorted. I looked up at the VCR clock. It was a little past 3:00 AM.

"Really though, what is this?" I turn to look at him, because finally I can see his whole face. He's pale, his hair's grown out to be a little shaggy and is currently more unkempt than usual. He has a cut on his forehead that's still bleeding slightly and has stuck a few strands of hair together in the clotted blood. His eyes are olive green and they look tired, but curious.

"I don't know," I lied. Sort of. I didn't really know why he was on my basement couch either. "Who are you?"

"Alexander? I think?"

Oh good. I thought he decided his name WASN'T Alexander. Who's this guy?

"Are you like Dennis?" I asked him. I've been thinking about Yggy a lot. It looks like he disappeared...

"Who?"

"Do you know who Todd is?"

"You mean the jackass sharing my head space?"

"Now we're getting somewhere," I clapped a little. He wasn't amused. He looked kind of annoyed.

"Well damn it..." he sighed.

"What?"

"Oh nothing...I'm just crazy."

I laughed. He smirked. Ace picked his head up, looked at us, then laid back down and sighed.

"He's kind of a jackass, yeah. But...I mean...I think he's the other you. Or you're the other him. Are you?" I asked.

"Am I what? I don't understand what you're talking about..."

"You were captured by Rat. And then you ran away...somehow. And now you're on my couch. Except I don't really know who you are, because I've only ever spoken to Todd."

"Rat? You mean Jared?"

"Is that his name?"

"I guess."

"What do you, as YOU, last remember?"

"I was with Lance. We were following Jared into the woods because-" he stopped talking abruptly, looked horrified for a second, then extremely depressed.

"Because?"

"Hey...what day is it?"

"Wednes...well no. Technically it's now Thursday."

"No I mean...I mean what's the date?"

"Thursday, June 16th. 2011."

There was a really long, uncomfortable pause here.

"I made the deal."

I remembered Sammi's dream.

"If I'm following correctly, you and your friends went into the woods and somehow became Agents through Him."

"Yes, how did you know that? Wait...Agents?"

"Not important right now. It sounds like I'm talking to the you before you made the deal, whatever that is. And Todd is the you afterwards. I'm being surprisingly deductive for 3:00 in the morning. Go me."

"Oh...okay..."

"Yeah...uhm...what do remember most recently? If you already assumed you had a split personality or something, that means you had to be conscious instead of Todd at some recent point."

"Jared had me in a chair..."

"Rat."

"Okay. Rat had me in a chair. I was tied. And cut. A lot. And my head hurt. He was babbling about stripping me of something and that I was clinging too much. Lance was in the corner with about eight billion birds and some weird people I don't know. They both had masks on. The other people just had hoods pulled over their faces. Rat inject me with something. Then I blacked out."

"Okay...and then?"

"Then I was running through a forest and people were chasing me and they kept appearing by trees in front of me. I don't know how. Something kept yelling at me to hit the parallel world and I kept shouting back that I didn't know what it was talking about. Then I realized it was in my own head. Then I ran into a tree branch and hit the ground head first. Hard. And uh...now I'm on this couch."

I just stared blankly for a few seconds because this entire thing is insane.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Uhm...no. I think you trade places whenever one of you goes to sleep or is unconscious...which means if you go back to sleep now you should wake up as Todd. Which is good, because he can get you out of here and to Aiden's."

"Who's Aiden? And sorry if I sound rude, but who are you?" He rolled back onto his back. The suit jacket was on the floor. He took it off at some point, which is good because that thing looked terrible and reeked of Rat/Jared/Jerkface.

"He's our friend. Listen, I'm going to get my alarm clock. I'll set it for 5:00. I'm going to leave a note here for Todd. If you wake and you're you and not Todd, I need you to find a way out of here and you need to hide. Okay?"

He nodded.

"And my name's Branwen. 'Night, Alexander."

"'Night, Branwen."

And that's how my night went.

If he's not Todd he's hiding and if he's Todd then he's on his way, Ai. If he turns to Alexander at any point, be careful with him, okay? He's already incredibly confused.

I need to head out soon. Be careful out there you guys...