Eryn, Clancy, and Olivia are not at dinner, and I cannot help feeling slightly on-edge with only Kristenson and Torres at the table.

Kristenson has been back for several hours now, and it seems his trip to town has put him into an even more undesirable mood than I am accustomed to.

He has brought back a newspaper, which he and Torres are currently scoffing over between mouthfuls of pasta.

"Superior teen loses control, murders Italian diplomats and levels their Florence home." Torres reads, rolling her eyes, "Sixteen-year-old Alessa Serpico, a Superior and former member of the Florence City Patrol, seemingly lost control of her abilities two nights ago. Acting on her rage, Serpico destroyed the home of two Florence residents, Giovanni and Francesca DiLorenzo, and attempted to murder a pair of Superior children. The children, ages eight and thirteen, are currently staying at another residence with their friends while Serpico is to be executed for her crimes."

"Damned Superiors!" Kristenson grumbles, slamming a hand down on the table, "I can't wait until we have a cure for these freak abilities. Children are out murdering people with their 'talents' now. Pathetic! We'll put an end to that soon."

"We better," Torres declares, "I'm getting tired of reading about all these Superiors in the large cities killing, stealing, lying, and manipulating."

"Everyone does that."

Both Torres and Kristenson stare at me in surprise, as though they had forgotten I was there and could weigh in for myself.

"What's that?" Kristenson scowls, glaring at me over his plate of spaghetti, "What did you say?"

"Everyone does that. I have done it, and you cannot say you haven't. We all lie, all manipulate others to keep ourselves alive. It is what comes from a war."

Torres rolls her eyes again.

"Ignore him, Brutus." she purrs, "After all, he wants to end up just like them by getting his own freak abilities."

Kristenson sighs, shoving the newspaper away from himself and Torres as though one more word might poison them both.

"How did the tests go today? You've managed to avoid telling me."

Torres pushes another set of papers in Kristenson's direction, talking the entire time as though her words cannot escape her fast enough.

"It works ... That is, it works to some extent. Subject Five was under my observation, and though the subject complained of a headache and was weak for an hour or so afterward, the injection did take away his abilities for a time. Eryn, though, seems to be trying to contradict me. You know, Brutus, sometimes I swear she skews her results on purpose."

"Sandra," Kristenson looks to Torres, exhaling another long sigh, "I know you don't care for her. I don't care for her either. Still, you have to stop criticizing her ability to do her job. You are a geneticist, I'm a biochemist. We might understand a bit about the freaks' and Inhumanes' brains, but she knows far more than we ever can. She went to medical school for it, Sandra. Now, what is it that you think she did?"

Torres fumes, flipping through the sheets of paper until she finds what she wants.

"I know," Torres proclaims irritably, "that Eryn skewed her results. She had to. Look at this! It is right here in my notes, this injection works with minimal side effects for a short span of time. All my data supports it. Then you have Eryn, who claims that this injection brings about neurological side effects."

Torres continues rifling through her stack of notes, watching in annoyance as Kristenson continues eating disinterestedly.

"Here!" Torres finally exclaims, all but pushing the page under Kristenson's hooked nose, "Seizures, she says. If that were the case, wouldn't my subject have had them as well? In most of our tests the effects are the same for-"

I roll my eyes skyward.

"For heaven's sake, Sandra!" Kristenson snaps, "You're a scientist. You should be smart enough to understand that sometimes results vary. Subject Six is smaller, of course her reaction was prone to differ from his. Now, let me see that so I can figure out which modification we need to make next. If it worked on Subject Five, we need to focus on that positive and change the injection's properties just enough so that the effect lasts much longer. This formula has taken months, but now we finally have a direction to go in. As for Eryn, I'm watching her. If she steps out of line, she'll know, and she'll never have another chance to do it."

Pushing back my chair abruptly, I stalk out of the dining room in a haste. I could not make myself sit still a moment longer, force myself to listen to Torres and Kristenson going on and on.

"You and Kristenson are too alike to ever see reason!"

Eryn's words from our earlier conversation haunt me as I jog down hallway after hallway. I don't know quite where I am going, but I need to go somewhere.

"You and Kristenson are too alike..."

"You and Kristenson..."

"Alike..."

I used to be such an advocate of honor. When I joined the military, it was because I wanted to make a difference in serving my country. What happened to that version of me, the then-twenty-five-year-old man who would die for his country and be satisfied knowing it had been an honorable sacrifice?

It seems that the honorable version of myself has disappeared now, fading into the background gradually over the last eleven years until that man is no longer visible.

I lived to serve my country, and now I have turned my back on the military. I've let what Natalia did to our parents shape my view of all Superiors. Olivia might be dangerous, but she is only a seven-year-old. She does not want to hurt anyone, yet people here are always hurting her whether they mean to or not. The child cannot play, cannot have friends for fear that Kristenson's mighty hand will come down upon them, sentencing them to death through experimentation.

I am just like Kristenson. I tortured my own group of Superiors, Lilian and two of her friends, all because they had something I had always wanted.

But do I really want it? Do I want a power that could kill someone I truly care about when my rage gets out of hand?

I don't care about people, though. It is not in my nature, is it?

If I want something, need something, I have to go out and do it, get it for myself.

Caring for others will only ever get you hurt.

Why then am I starting to care?

Why do I regret the way I spoke to Eryn, the way she most likely sees me now? Why do I regret snapping at Olivia, treating her as though she were incapable of independent thought?

Natalia.

Natalia taught me to be cold, to shut people out long before I started losing soldiers in my division. Natalia turned me against the world before I had a chance to reconsider. She hurt me, destroyed our family with a single chain of events. After what my sister did, I swore that I would never let myself feel that way again.

I never wanted to be that melancholy again.

Natalia's actions taught me that love could only ever end in hatred and disappointment, turning a relationship between brother and sister into nothing more than a half-forgotten fantasy.

I was sixteen then, and at thirty-six I am finally realizing that I nearly became the same monster my sister was.

Natalia may have proved that caring is the worst thing I could do, but I am so very tired of feeling alone in the world, as though no one will ever stand by me unless I torture them, force them into servitude.I do not want it to be that way anymore.

I want to help Eryn, because she may lead me to find myself again.

Few things have ever frightened me more than this realization, the sudden inescapable fact that I no longer know who I am.

Pulling open a door, I expect to find myself stumbling into my room. Instead, I foolishly realize that I never went back up the stairs and that, unless my quarters have managed to shift positions, I am anywhere but where I want to be.

I curse loudly, first in Russian and then in English.

"Hey, don't talk like that in front of her." The voice and its Irish accent silences me immediately as I catch sight of Clancy and Olivia sitting at a small wooden desk.

Stepping into the room, I move slowly toward them. Exhaling a deep breath, I stand next to the pair of swiveling chairs and rest my palm on the cool surface of the desk.

"Are you okay?" Olivia wonders, looking away from the paper in front of her to meet my gaze, "You look sort of scared, and a little angry too."

"I am fine." I am startled at how foreign my voice seems, the ever-present note of hostility much less pronounced than it normally is, "Are you?"

"Eryn said I have a concussion. I don't really know what that means." Olivia declares, "She said I hit my head and that's why it won't stop hurting. I wish it would stop though. I can't really study like this."

I try to catch a glimpse of Olivia's paper, but she moves it away before my eyes find the first word.

"I thought you hated me?" Wariness is etched into every one of her features, the tension clear in her shoulders.

"I did." The honesty surprises me, "You have a talent, and for a while I thought I wanted one too. Now I don't know what I want."

"I see." Olivia says, pushing the paper toward me, "Can you keep a secret then? Promise not to hate me again?"

"Don't," Clancy hisses, "can't you see he's no good? He'll tell on her and-"

"Shut up Clancy!" Olivia orders, "Good people do bad things sometimes. Like my dad..."

She looks down for a moment before glancing back at me.

"You can read it."

She hands me the small sheet of notebook paper, and I scan the list of words written on its surface.

Smudge.

Earth.

Prey.

Taught.

Enough.

Measure.

Boring.

Edge.

Recent.

At the bottom of the page, hidden away in the far left corner, the small number fourteen stares back at me.

"What is this?" I wonder, my gaze meeting Olivia's.

"Spelling." She shrugs, "Torres and Kristenson let Eryn give them to me sometimes. She didn't give me any that are really hard this time. Look at the first letter of every word. That's what she told me when she gave this to me earlier."

In the military, I had some experience at times breaking codes. While this one is elementary for Olivia's sake, it's clever enough to avoid initial detection.

"September fourteenth?"

Olivia smiles at me.

"Good job."

I don't have to ask what it means. It is the day they plan to leave, the nearly three months giving them enough time to prepare in secret.

Eryn meant what she said this morning, I realize.

She really isn't going to do this anymore.

~*~

Eryn doesn't appear for the rest of the night, and she turns up missing at the next morning's breakfast. Having the annoyingly strong urge to go look for her, I eventually give in and demand that Torres tell me where Eryn's room is in the expansive building.

This earns an eye roll from Torres, who promptly snaps at me.

"Whose side are you on, soldier?" she queries, glaring over her orange juice at me.

"I am on the side of honor." I tell her, having decided that this is the answer that makes the most sense at the moment.

Torres sighs, giving me the requested directions before returning to the discussion she was carrying out with the stone-faced Kristenson. Deciding that I am inconsequential here, and that neither of the scientists will miss me, I set out in search of the second-floor room.

It seems to take an eternity, but eventually I think I've found it. Knocking authoritatively on the oaken surface, I find that I only have to wait a few moments for the response.

"I'm not coming to breakfast." is the snappish reply, "Don't ask again."

"I am certainly not going to ask. You aren't exactly missing anything down there."

I don't get an immediate response, and after a few moments I am wondering if I will be given one at all. Just as I have decided to channel my old authority and open the door myself, it swings back, nearly hitting me in the face in the process.

I am confronted by Eryn, who looks as though she never went to sleep last night. She looks quite mad with the combination of widely varying emotions playing across her face and her disheveled appearance.

Eventually she settles on an expression of annoyance,tucking a honey-colored lock of hair behind one ear while glaring at me.

"What," she demands, "do you want?"

"I have been thinking."

"Everyone does." Eryn frowns at me, "Do you have a point, Commander? Are you coming to lecture me again, to tell me how glorious it'll be when Kristenson finally gets his way and I get my name attached to the results?"

"Alexei." I stare back at her, doing my best not to lose the contest by blinking first.

"What?" Eryn widens her eyes at my response, clearly taken aback.

"I have a name," I tell her, "and it is no longer Commander. My name is Alexei, Alexei Petrovich. It is not common knowledge, so do not spread it around."

"I-I won't?" The neurosurgeon sounds as though she is asking a question rather than stating a fact, one hand cutting weakly through the air as she gestures for me to come into the room.

The two of us end up sitting on the expansive yet uncomfortable bed, separated by a substantial distance. Eryn sits perfectly still, both hands clasped in her lap as she keeps her gaze focused on me.

"What do you want?" she asks again, this time failing to look as annoyed as she sounds.

"I had a sister." I want to curse myself for saying it, for giving up my longest held secret to a near stranger in the heat of the moment. Eryn does not seem to have been expecting it, and now she is studying me as though waiting for the explanation.

"I say 'had' because I do not know where she is now. Even if I did, she is not my sister anymore. She could never be family again." It is peculiar how, when words finally find someone to listen, there is no holding them back, "She was a Superior. I knew her for eleven years; I was older but for some reason genetics skipped over me. She got the abilities, and she misused them. It was always little things in the beginning. She had a form of mind control, I suppose, and she could plant suggestions in people's heads. She would say it wasn't her fault when those people acted on the urges, that she had only suggested it and they had completed the actions themselves. I think she knew better. I think she knew that when she suggested something, that person no longer had control."

Eryn gazes at me intently, not daring to interrupt.

" When she was eleven, a classmate started harassing her, calling her names and bullying her the way kids of that age tend to do. One day she had enough of it, and she worked her way into the girl's mind, did whatever it was that she did. She 'suggested' that the child jump off our local bridge, and of course the girl didn't have a choice. Our parents were furious when they found out what Natalia had done. She was angry, too, I think because they saw what she was and she didn't want them to. She used her talent on them too, made them forget she was ever in their lives. She didn't know I saw her do that, and didn't even know that I had gotten home before her. She thought I was out, so I was able to hide until she left for good. Twenty years, and no word from her. I am actually quite glad, because if I saw her I might harm her." I continue, unable to stop now that I have gotten myself started, "She was the first Superior I met, and after that I told myself two things. I swore I would never care about anyone save my parents again, and that I would find a way to get my own powers."

Eryn gives me a nod, blue eyes meeting brown as we stare at one another.

"I can't sit by and let myself turn into the same monster my sister was, but I have no idea what I am doing. I am not like Kristenson. Kristenson is a fool, while I can at least admit that I have lost the person I was meant to be. I told Torres today that I am on the side of honor, and the honorable thing to do here is to get Clancy and Olivia away from that man before he kills them. They are children, and they deserve their chance to grow up. I wanted, still want, to make Natalia pay, but it came to me today that I have stooped below her level. I have turned my back on everything I stood for, harming people who never harmed me. Since I got involved in this war, I have lost myself. I have been thinking all sorts of things, like how when I have supernatural abilities I will be able to control everyone. Why? Why would I want to become a person like that, the type of psychopath who is hated by every textbook known to man? I don't know what has happened to me. I don't know who I am anymore, Eryn."

"I'm a twin."

The response is so far from what I was expecting that I have no idea what to make of it.

"What?" I demand, my confusion bringing out the old defensiveness, "Why does that matter here?"

"Our family was perfect. My brother was in sports, my sister and I were on the math team. We were average, and there was nothing wrong with that. Then one day when we were nine, Mom took my sister and me to the playground in our neighborhood park. My brother had a soccer game, and we didn't want to go, so Dad said he would go and Mom could spend the day with us. We'd do that a lot whenever we could, and I'd gotten so used to it that it seemed normal. I remember Mom got a phone call while Ellis and me were playing, and she turned her back on us for a few minutes. There was this structure in the playground that you could climb, and I remember that even as a third-grader I was afraid of it because it looked so tall. Ellis wasn't afraid, she never was. Mom never let her climb the thing, so as soon as my sister saw that our mother was busy, she took off. She'd climbed to the top of that structure before I could yell at her to come back down. She was up there for all of about thirty seconds before she fell. I remember Mom got off the phone and turned back to us just in time to watch Ellis fall and hit her head on the ground."

"It would sound as though your sister deserved a decent scolding after that." I comment, taken aback by the look on Eryn's face. She looks as though she is staring through me rather than at me, sorrow etched clearly into her features.

"She got one. Mom made sure she was okay, then yelled at her for a full ten minutes. It only took five more minutes for us to figure out that Ellis wasn't fine at all. She had a brain bleed that no one caught until it killed her. That's why I became a neurosurgeon, to keep that from happening to someone else's kid, someone else's sister. It's assumed that when you become a surgeon, you're doing good. We do the right thing, working all our miracles and saving everybody's life. I've only lost eight patients. Eight. That's supposed to mean something, but given where I've ended up it doesn't mean much at all to me. I'm supposed to do the right thing, to save lives, but look at me! I've been helping Kristenson and Torres torture these children because I was, and I still am, afraid of the consequences of fighting back. I think it's safe to say that I don't know who I am anymore either."

She glances at the floor, drawing a sleeve across her cheek to dispatch the first round of tears.

She is crying harder by the second, something that makes me unexplainably awkward. I hate tears, hate when others shed them, therefore I tend to stay as far away from these types of situations as I can. I have never felt the need to comfort someone, nor do I know how.

For the first time in a long time, I wish I did.

"September fourteenth." I finally manage, nothing else worth saying seeming to come to mind, "Do not think of leaving here without me. My car is still in front of this building, and I am the only one who knows where the key is. I was a soldier, I have a gun. Kristenson and Torres have not taken a thing from me, so I still have enough supplies to be useful when the day comes. We'll both find out who we are then."

Eryn whispers something that sounds a lot like "thank you," though I have no idea what I am in need of thanking for. I wait for her to tell me to leave, but she never does. We do not speak, do not move, for the longest time, and I only realize the hour when the sunlight no longer filters through the window. Only then do I stand up and move to the door, jogging downstairs for dinner to avoid seeming suspicious.