Page 32 of A Lab Rat’s Guide to Fated Love

Eighteen

The Original and the Ugly Copy

Vir

T ime flowed differently with Nori. Slow, unhurried, but also faster somehow.

In a blink, spring had arrived, bringing with it later sunsets, warmer winds, and a subtle collective shift overall Vir could only describe as life .

Nori stopped a few feet away from him with her hands on her hips to stare at the rapidly transforming horizon ahead. Strokes of lavender and pink shifted over a canvas of pastel orange, getting more prominent as the sun dipped further into the sea.

“Isn’t there something deeply melancholic about sunsets?” Nori said, dipping her toes into the foamy ends of waves as they lapped at her feet. “The sky looks so sad. But also beautiful. And hopeful. And warm.”

The soft, vibrant ripples that bubbled out of her too often these days announced the same thing over and over. Happy. In all its shapes and forms and depths and colors. He had always assumed happiness to be a flat, singular emotion, instead of the vast spectrum he now knew it was.

And it was contagious, too—her happy .

“Warm,” he whispered, looping an arm around her. As he leaned in to brush his lips against her temple, he sensed her mood switch even before the words left her mouth.

“Let’s hop in!”

“Not again.” He dropped his arm.

“Come on! It’ll be fun.”

The tips of Nori’s fingers swished by his arm, barely missing him as he ducked away from her in time. It had been fun. For the first few times. But it was nearly impossible to get her out of the water once she was in.

“It’s getting dark. And I’m hungry.” He shook his head, pretending to walk away slowly.

“Hungry? Let’s order takeout from—”

As soon as her guard was down, he whipped around and scooped her in his arms.

“Hey!” Nori laughed. “Put me down or you’ll sprain something!”

“You really underestimate me sometimes.” Vir grinned, jogging towards the small wrought iron gate visible in the distance.

He crossed the garden in a few quick strides, leapt up the porch steps, and set Nori down on her feet.

“You were saying?” He smirked, arching a brow at her. The short run hadn’t even rendered him out of breath. Honestly, he hadn’t felt that fit in years.

Still smirking, he turned towards the door, and the alerts on both their phones went off simultaneously.

Nori had perfected the data sync a while ago, allowing them to see all of his stats in real-time with zero lag. That was before she’d mapped a simplified version of the algorithm on his phone, too. And now it beeped together with hers while his chest exploded with pain.

Years ago, during his residency, Vir had come across quite a few cases of accidental stabbing at the emergency room. And a few electrocution ones too. But never someone with both . Until now. Because what in the fresh hell —

“Vir! NO!”

The ringing in his ears muffled Nori’s frantic pleas as he stumbled to his knees. His hands clawed at his chest while he gasped like a fish, struggling to suck air into his lungs. They didn’t seem to recognize what air was anymore.

He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but it kept getting hazier. Till finally, everything went dark. His time was up.

Ironically enough, only days ago, they’d been celebrating the mites hitting a whooping ninety-seven percent redundancy. Success had nearly been within reach. Almost.

Or so he’d assumed.

Wrongly assumed.

It had been a waste, after all.

No, not all of it.

Even if it failed, ultimately, the experiment was still the reason he got to meet Nori.

Vir knew he’d make the same choice a million times over. His only regret was not holding her more. Stroking her hair more, too. She seemed to love that. And as his remaining wisps of consciousness began to dissipate, he wished he could tell her he loved her one last time.

“Vir,” her voice echoed in his head.

Maybe his brain was hallucinating after his body was gone. He vaguely recalled reading about the phenomenon somewhere. How there were seven minutes of electrical impulses left over in the neurons after death. He couldn’t remember what it was called.

“Wake up.”

Something didn’t fit, though. He should be watching a sped-up version of the highlight reels of his life flash by in these last seven minutes. Not the blank nothingness with Nori’s disembodied voice calling out to him. Like an angel, there to take him away. Or maybe he was already there.

“Am I in heaven? Norrrrrreee?”

A soft laugh vibrated in his ear. His actual, physical ear, not just inside his head. And he could still feel her emotions. Vividly.

She felt… ecstatic. She was happy he was dead ?

“Of course you’d think that, won’t you? You’re not dead. Open your eyes.” The warmth of her lips appeared briefly at his temple, then at the tip of his nose.

“Umm.” That felt nice.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Lower, her lips pressed lightly to his, and his eyes flew open. As she started retreating with a chuckle, he pulled her face back to his. This sleeping beauty needed a proper kiss to wake up.

Moments later, breathless and rosy-cheeked, Nori helped him sit upright.

They were still on the porch, and judging from the light, the sun hadn’t fully set. Not a lot of time had passed.

“What happened?” he asked, rubbing his chest. He half expected to find a deep, bleeding gash there. It didn’t hurt anymore, but the memory was still fresh. And even if he wasn’t dead, he was sure something had gone very, very wrong.

“Mite redundancy has reached a hundred percent.” Nori beamed, motioning towards her laptop. The contents of her med-kit lay strewn on the floor beside it.

“No. It can’t be. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Vir. Look.”

She turned the screen towards him, and he glanced at it for all of two seconds before shaking his head in disbelief.

“But the pain,” he said. “It felt like I was dying. I was certain I was.”

“About that…” Nori bit her lip, a spike of guilt poking through her happy swirls. “There was a small possibility… a tiny one. Of something like this happening. I should’ve warned you, I’m sorry.”

“Possibility of what happening?”

“Think of a building’s power switching to mains after it’s been operating on a generator for a while,” she explained.

“Well, not exactly, but I can’t think of a better comparison right now.

It wasn’t supposed to hurt. But when the last of the mites shut off, and your heart and the chip fully took over, knowing your body’s not going to reject them anymore, there was supposed to be a small jolt of shock.

The only possibility of it being painful was if your heart was overloaded at the time because of high stress levels or if you were in the middle of a strenuous workout, like two of my mice who—uh—anyway. I should’ve warned you. I’m sorry. ”

It took a moment for her words to sink in.

“So, you’re telling me—” he asked, amused at her mood flickering rapidly between guilty and overjoyed, “—that it wouldn’t have hurt if I hadn’t been running with you in my arms?”

Nori nodded, mouthing, “sorry” again.

“Well, it wasn’t that bad. I’d do it again.” He shrugged.

“Really?”

“I’m joking. Please don’t shock me again.”

Nori laughed, and he pulled her to him.

“What are you doing?” She asked with her face smushed into his chest as he gently stroked her hair.

“Something I regretted not doing enough of when I thought I was dead.” And he pressed his lips to her brow, with a whispered, “I love you.”

Nori

N ori hummed a tune under her breath while she waited for the juice bar lady to return with her order. It was a habit she’d picked from Vir. She turned to look at him standing on the other side of the road beside their rental bike.

He waved at her, and she waved back.

It had taken her a week to finish all her papers and reports after the mite redundancy had hit a hundred percent.

And ever since then, she’d been sneakily buying time, rephrasing a sentence here, fixing a typo there.

At one point she switched the font to comic sans in every single file and then switched it back the next day.

She didn’t want to go back just yet, even though she no longer had a plausible reason to keep Vir away from Delhi. It was embarrassing to admit. But maybe he already knew, because he hadn’t confronted her about it.

She paid for the juice, turned around with the chilled takeout tumblers, and froze .

Vir was busy squinting at a flickering streetlamp in the distance when a man approached him from behind and pressed something to his back.

Tumblers dropped; Nori was across the street with the creep pinned to the sidewalk before Vir was even done raising his hands. Holding the man’s head glued to the pavement with her knee, and his arm twisted behind him, she scanned their surroundings for the knife.

“Call the cops!” She yelled at Vir, pressing down on the man’s skull. She swore she’d make sure he had the lovely zig-zag pavers indented permanently on his face.

HOW DARE HE—

“No, no, NO! Nori, he’s not—” Vir knelt beside her, trying to pry her fingers off the guy’s twisted wrist, his face a strange mixture of terrified and amused.

“Stay back!” She shoved him off. She still couldn’t locate the weapon and didn’t want him within stabbing range of the pig she was about to slaughter if Vir didn’t make the call soon. “I’ve got this. Call the cops NOW.”

“No, please let him go!” Vir grabbed her under the arms and tried to physically lift her off the man. “He’s my brother, Adi. That was a dumb joke.”

“He had a knife!”

“There’s no knife, I promise,” Vir assured her. Then, turning to the man, he added, “I told you to stop doing that, you ass.”

Nori’s grip loosened, and she let him lift her off his brother’s back while her brain took another second to process the information. As soon as he was free, Adi crawled, coughing and sputtering, away from her to lean against the concrete bollard a few feet away.

“I didn’t know—you had a—a bodyguard,” he croaked, before muttering quietly to himself, “Nita warned you, dammit.”

He looked at Nori and a silly grin broke out on his dirt smeared face. She winced, watching a trickle of blood appear out of his left nostril.

“You okay?” Vir asked, pulling him to his feet. He seemed to be trying hard not to laugh.

Looking from one brother to another was like a live action game of find-the-difference. In all the childhood anecdotes Vir had told her over the past few months, he’d failed to mention one tiny detail .

They were identical twins.

The only difference was the stark contrast in their eyes. While Vir had the intense, dark irises Nori had become acutely familiar with, Adi’s were a striking olive-gray. Although they were framed by the same mascara-commercial lashes as his brother’s.

Adi’s hair, way longer than Vir’s, was tied up in a messy bun, with shoulder length strands sticking out in random places with dirt and leaves and a stray candy wrapper stuck in there.

“I’m so sorry,” Nori mumbled, offering him a bunch of tissues before tentatively reaching out to pull the candy wrapper out of his hair.

They took Adi to the studio with them where Vir patched his nose while Nori ordered takeout for dinner.

“Sorry…” Nori apologized again, catching him wince as he bit into a sandwich.

“Seriously now. It wasn’t your fault.” Vir let out an exasperated sigh. “I would’ve done the same if I saw someone sneak up on you like that. Maybe worse.”

She gave him a reluctant smile, instead of telling him how his idea of worse would probably look like a little flick on the forehead compared to the bloodbath she’d had running through her brain.

“He’s right. It was my fault, really. I’m sorry,” Adi added softly. He smiled, then winced again as the movement pulled on his facial muscles. “On that note, would you mind teaching me that flip sometime? It was something—pow—flip—bam!”

Heat flooded Nori’s face as she tried not to laugh. But then Vir started laughing and Adi joined him, too, marking the end of her resistance.

“You didn’t tell me you were twins,” she said after a while. “I assumed you had an older brother from the way you talked about him.”

“I am older,” Adi replied before Vir could speak, “by a full ten minutes. I’m the original. This one’s the ugly copy.”

“You need better twin jokes.” Vir shook his head in mock disappointment .

“You’re just jealous because you know I’m funny and you’re boring.” Adi shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you were someplace secret in Himachal, though? Is everything okay? Are those other researchers giving you trouble again?”

“Right. About that…”

Vir had explained things to Adi on strictly a need-to-know basis earlier, so his brother wouldn’t worry when he couldn’t locate him at the university.

They filled him in on the remaining details.

“Are you serious ?”

Adi stared at them with eyes so comically round and kitten-like—just like Vir’s, but a different color—it made Nori spontaneously burst into laughter. Both brothers turned to stare at her with identical puzzled expressions, only making it harder for her to stop.

“Sorry. Still getting used to the twin thing,” she said once composed. “Yes, the experiment worked.”

“Yup.” Vir added, beaming. “I guess I’ll hang around for a bit longer.”

“Thank fuck!” Adi lunged towards Vir and pulled him into a hug—or a chokehold—it was hard to tell.

“Argh! Let me go, you ass!” Vir protested, trying to push his twin away.

With a bark of laughter, Adi planted a peck on his forehead before releasing him.

Nori chuckled, watching Vir roll his eyes as he scooted away from his brother, the tips of his ears bright red.

“I’m heading back home tomorrow. Why don’t you two come with me? Take a few days off before you leave for Delhi?” Adi asked, leaning back on the couch with another sandwich. “It’s Anita’s birthday in a couple of days. It’d be a pleasant surprise for her, too.”

The shift was so subtle at first, Nori barely noticed it.

But the way Adi carried himself changed as he continued to talk.

And soon, there was a remarkable difference in his demeanor as compared to a few minutes ago, before they’d told him the news.

His movements became more fluid, relaxed. Relieved.

And when he smiled again, she could tell it was real. Not forced. Not a facade .

She glanced at Vir and found him staring at her expectantly. As if waiting for her to reply. The offer was too tempting to refuse. A valid excuse to extend their vacation by a few more days? Yes, please.

“We could go.” She shrugged, drawing on all the casual nonchalance she could muster. “If you’d like that.”

“I’d like that.” He knew.

“Okay,” she replied with a straight face.

“Okay.” His eyes softened.

“Okay!” Adi chimed in.