Second Heartbeat Novels & Stories

I flinch, my muscles contracting. "Relax," César says from the corner. It is an order. The doctor presses the wand against my skin. He moves it around, searching. The pressure is uncomfortable. Then, a sound fills the room. ‘Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.’ It is fast. Rhythmic. Strong. The sound of a second heart beating inside my body.

The ribbon was warm against her pulse. The second heartbeat under her ribs was awake. It had been awake since the moment she had opened her eyes this morning. It was beating in a slow steady rhythm against her own heart — not fighting hers, not crowding hers, but pulsing alongside it the way a second drummer comes in alongside the first drummer in a marching tune. Boom. Boom. Boom. Calm. Patient. There. She was no longer pretending it wasn't real.

"Baby hearts beat way faster than adult ones, hundred-fifty to hundred-eighty beats per minute usually." Serna listened to the rhythm, tried to separate the two twin beats from each other. Couldn't quite do it, they were too close together, but she could tell there were TWO, definitely two. "Which one's which?" She heard herself ask. "Can't tell." Elira moved the cone slightly. "But this one's—hear that? This one's on the left, other one's on the right." Left twin had a slightly faster beat, or maybe that was Serna's imagination. Right twin sounded steadier, more even.

He reached out, his small, gold-scarred palm pressing against the side of my chest. He didn't find warmth. He found the rhythmic, heavy thud of a heart that was being forced to recalibrate its frequency. Ga-chi... thump. Ga-chi... thump. Five seconds between each beat. A mechanical, deliberate pulse that echoed in the vaulted ceiling like the pendulum of a cathedral clock.

"Do you hear that? The heartbeats in this room... they're not in sync." I paused, my attention drawn away from the spell book. My pulse quickened, a surge of anticipation coursing through my veins. I closed my eyes, focusing on the rhythm that filled the space, and there it was—a dissonance, an irregularity in the symphony of heartbeats that surrounded us. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I placed a hand on my chest, feeling the erratic rhythm of my own heartbeat.

“ Forgive me for trespassing, it's just that you looked stressed”, Cole said, his arms still wrapped around me, his body moving a little bit to and fro as if he was dancing to a song. “ Apology accepted”, I said, smiling tiredly and resting my head on his shoulders. I miss it, resting my head on his shoulders and just listening to his heart beat. He had a different heart from what most people had; at least that was what I thought. The human heart was supposed to beat for about sixty-something a minute. I can't actually remember how many times exactly, but I was sure that it was more than sixty times. His heart was beating only fifty-nine in a minute, which to me, was abnormal. I had even tea

“Yes.Two strong heartbeats. Would you like to hear them?” Azriel let out a shaky laugh. “Yes,” he said immediately. “Please.” She pressed a button and suddenly the room filled with the rhythmic thumping of not one, but two heartbeats. Two steady, tiny, beautiful sounds overlapping each other. My eyes blurred with tears instantly. I slapped my hand over my mouth, shaking. “Oh my God,” I mumbled, my voice barely above a whisper as more tears rolled down. “Azriel… do you hear that?”

I can feel his cardiovascular system pushing against my walls. "Syncing," Echo says. "80 BPM. Both." The beeping sounds merge into a single, harmonious tone. Beep. Beep. Beep. "Move," I whisper. Alex pulls back. Then he thrusts. Thump. He hits home exactly on the beat. Thump. He pulls out. Thump. He drives in. It’s perfect. It’s mathematical. Echo is controlling his rhythm, forcing his muscles to fire in exact time with our combined heart rate.

PETER The resting heart rate of a healthy twenty-four-year-old male under zero physical exertion should register between sixty and seventy beats per minute. At 1:42 AM, my thoracic telemetry module registered a sustained baseline of eighty-four. I stood motionless before the floor-to-ceiling structural glass panels of my private study, my hands clasped rigidly behind the small of my back. Sixty stories below, the arterial grid of Seattle stretched out like a sprawling, illuminated circuit board, its cold white and amber neon tendrils bleeding into the black vacuum of Elliott Bay. The glass before me reflected a flawless, near-photographic image of my own physical frame—the sharp, unbending l