_Jhade
|• never stop playing with fire •|

They were a pair of clowns, twins that never ate without one another. Never laughed without one another. Never cried without one another. Never dreamt without one another.

One might wonder, what would happen if one of them was killed? Would the void between ever be filled again? How would the remaining one survive without his twin brother? How could he dream without the other? And if he could not dream, what did he have left for his future? Most importantly, what if he killed his own brother? Not intentionally, but accidentally. Would he be able to forgive himself?

—

"Lyra, I killed Luke." He wept on Lyra's shoulder whilst she held him with a firm grip, scared to let him go, like he would shatter into obliterated matter. His heart was already dead.

"No you didn't, Jude." Lyra comforted him.

"Yes I did."

"You—" He held his fingers to her lips, stopping her from speaking.

"No," He whispered, "you don't know. I never told you."

She peeled his hand off, removing it from her lips, "Then tell me." She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, gazing intently into his grey eyes, "I'm listening," She squeezed his warm fingers with her own; reassuring him, "and I'll always listen." She smiled weakly, "Always."

He smiled back at her, how could he not? That beautiful smile was enough to brighten the rainy sky, to lighten the darkness, but not enough to bring back the dead. Nothing could bring back the dead.

"I can't. You'll hate me." His raspy voice spoke.

"I won't." Lyra promised, it was not his fault.

"You will, I know how much you loved my brother, I can't afford to break your heart." He sometimes wished that was not the case, but Luke always got what he wanted; except for death.

"You can't break a heart, it's not made of glass which means it can't be shattered. It's made of up of cardiac chambers, valves, veins and a lot more. Their sole purpose is to pump blood around our bodies — you can't stop that blood flow, unless you stab my heart, literally." Lyra did not fully believe her own words. She believed a heart, the figurative kind, could indeed be shattered. Her words were for not herself, they were to console Jude while he was grieving.

"You can tell me, it won't break me." Lyra urged him to speak.

Jude sighed, after which he reluctantly began the tale of his dead brother. He had one question in mind, would he regret it?

Maybe...
—

A hazy morning, under dark clouds, a sixteen year-old Luke sat on the wet grass and stared at his father's grave. His father was a handsome man. Luke inherited most of his sharp features from him, he was also, too young to die. He did not deserve to die...neither did Luke.

Grasping a handful of grass, he tugged at it with the last ounces of his strength and tore it out from its roots. From its home.

He ripped it out like his father was ripped away from him.

"How does it feel to have your family ripped away from you, huh?" He asked the grass; though he knew he would get no response. He held onto the hope that it could hear him and understand his torment.

Silent tears throbbed from his bloodshot eyes; why are our cries always silent?

"I'll make them pay." Hatred guzzled out of his mouth, "I won't let them get away." He made them pay, and so they — children should not mess with dark secrets, but I'm not a child, but that was what he believed — a very wrong belief.

—

He unburied the old files from under the bathroom tiles — he knew the hiding place because it was where he would hide important files that were strictly life or death. He did not find what he was looking for at first. It took a while but eventually he remembered his father's favourite saying.

'Hide the blood somewhere clean.'

If anyone else heard this saying, they would think he was a murderer — but he was not; he was a victim.

Luke frantically skimmed through the papers before his brother Jude got home; he could never know.

'Patient 1A and 50B will face termination, illegal testing — inevitability.'

The sentence was scrawled in red ink instead of being typed. His father knew something. What did he know?

It took him three years, three years of investigating, to uncover that his father was killed by Cortex — a multinational secret organisation that held exclusive services, one of them being technological health care. Luke now knew who caused his father's deep, grey eyes to close.

One man — Ekon.

Ekon was the father of someone very close to him, he could not tell Jude, he would not believe it. Neither could he tell Lyra, she did not deserve such a father.

He set out on a mission, to get revenge for his father's death, instead, he was greeted with his own.

—

Jude had woken up to see Luke's empty bed and a text from an unknown number, his fuelling curiosity begged him to check it.

'Stop your brother or you'll have his corpse delivered to your doorstep.'

The text perplexed him, his brother had told him he was going to visit his friend, Alex. He ignored the text and carried on living life, not once, considering it to be true.

He woke up the next day to find Luke in bed.

A bloodied and dead Luke.

He questioned his brother's death, and found a note in his pocket;

"He was a child, he was a fool. He shouldn't have messed with us, he shouldn't have wanted revenge. He was a child with a pure heart, he darkened it with his lust for revenge. He got his punishment. He stands as a role model to you." — S.C

He cried till his mouth became salty with tears, till his eyes dried up and made him feel unimaginably weak, all the while questioning his brother's death.

But that was not what he should have been questioning, he should have be wondering who S.C was, but he never did, instead, he thought of the very S.C as family.

An 'S' always stands for Specimen.

—

Jude had spent months blaming himself. He was right, ignorance was the death of humans, but they would never learn. His ignorance killed his brother, now he would have to pay. But he was wrong about one thing.

Lyra never loved Luke, she loved the brother who was alive, the one who was too blind to see, the love hidden within her. He was not just ignorant, but also a blind lover.

—

Beautiful readers, what do you think?
Don't fear, Luke's story isn't finished, you'll find out soon, but what do you think happened to Luke? And who is S.C? Most importantly, Jude?