PROLOGUE
JACK
Iknow they're watching.
I've been monitored by cameras almost my entire life. It would feel stranger without them at this point.
There's a smell in the airI recognise. It's different than how the rest of the facility smells. It's different than how the rest of theworldsmells. Death, pain, and fear: the usual combination onemightexpect from a place where monsters die. A place where monsters like me are taught the cost of survival.
They alwaysclean the room afterwards. When there's a body on the floor that will never move, or breathe, or fight again. But the smell of it lingers, like a layer of dust on a forgotten bookshelf.I hated it whenI was brought here the first few times as a child.
I hated how I could feel the echo of all that was lost. I hated what this room would force me to become.
My hatred eventuallyfaded away. More out of necessity than anything else. You don'tlast long here if you hold onto things like that.
These days,the scent of this roomisno worse than the sterile frigidity of an Obsidian Inc. cell.
Dan calls them cages.I only think that when they use the chains. Cold andtight aroundmy wrists.My ankles. My throat. Biting intomy skin. Otherwise, to me,a cell is justa cell. Dan says any place with the threat of restraint and confinement is a cage.
I'm not so sureI agree.Perhaps the memory of being chained to the floor, or to a wall,should feel like a loss of freedom. But I have not been free in a very long time, since I was too young to understand the concept.
“Pick it up, Jack.”
I pressmy forehead into the closest stone wall. The surfaceof it feels rough and cool against my skin. There are holes and grooves where knives have been used to chip away at it. There are scratches from desperate nails. Almost every inch of it isgritty and broken. That makesme supress a smile because that’s what I am. Deep inside, where the shadows snap and snarl.I amgritty and broken. That’sokay, though,because this is whatI'm supposed to be. This is what they made me.
Smiling can be interpreted in too many different ways at OI. My handlers often choose to take it as an insult or an act of defiance. Any excuse to cause some damage,I suppose.
Dan never hides his smiles. He’s too bright and too loud to do anything that sensible. Too bright and too loud to allow it. He’s a firework. He’s a bomb. He’s a bolt of lightning hitting the ground.He is my brother, a law unto himself, even here. In this place. In this room.
“Pick it up, Jack.”
Iclosemy eyes. My eyelashes feel heavy again today. Too heavy. It's worse than it was yesterday.
Sometimes, my entire body, my entire being, feels heavier than any building. Heavier than the moon. Heavier than the weight of the earth beneath my feet. So heavy thatI think, one day, I’ll be crushed by it. My bones will break, and my chest will cave in, and my lungs will collapse, and there I’ll be, a mess of blood and bone and meat. Useless and lost and gone. There are days when that heaviness tugsmedown, down, down, andI thinkI might never see the surface again, that I might be trapped in the darkspaces forever.
Once after a mission, when weweresleeping side by sideon the dirtyfloor ofan abandoned warehouse, I told Dan my fears.
My brother and I lay inches apart at first. Nervous, in a way. It was rare that we were able to get even that close to each other without the excuse of sparring. Eventually, though, I found myself half tangled with Dan on the floor.We wereso close Icould feelmy brother’s warm breath puffing out onto my face. Thanks to my genetically enhanced senses, I could see Dan clearly in the darkness.
We’re twins. Identical. Looking at Dan is a bit like seeing my own reflection in a mirror. There are many things we share. The same pale-green eyes, the same dark-blond hair, the same small nose, bow-shaped mouth, and smattering of freckles across our faces.
Dan and I are both very tall and broad in the chest, our arms and legs packed with overt muscle. Welookdangerous. There’s no mistaking what we might be capable of, although no ordinary human could understand the full scope and depth of our power at first glance.
There are some noticeable differences between us. Dan has a scar which slices through his left eyebrow. It's a small scar, only a few inches long, but it shines pale in the moonlight. He got it during a job where he was captured, held for days, and cut up with a knife by people who didn’t understand the risk they were taking. They didn’t know what happens when you try to tame a wild thing through pain and fear when that’s all they’ve ever known.
It was too late by the time I caught up with my brother at the place where they were holding him. He took their knives, slashed away at their fear, and bled the violence right out of them.
I have a scar of around the same length and shape on my neck from a mission that went drastically wrong, when the man I'd been sent to kill turned out to have one too many guards. I wasn't as experienced then. I didn't understand that it was better to retreat and make another attempt when thetarget was more vulnerable. It may seem like a simple concept, but I was trained to never let anything get in the way of completing a job. It took me a while to figure out what rules could be bent, what rules I would need to bend to survive.
There are other scars, othermarks on our bodies that tear apart the mirror image. Our main differences, however, have nothing to do with our appearance. We were trained to be blank slates, to be slabs of marble that walk and talk and kill. But somehow, we're more than that. Dan is so much more he can barely contain it sometimes.
That night in the warehouse, Dan held me as tight and as close as he could. He told me to try and sleep. He told me he would protect me, that it was okay, that I was his brother and nothing would touch me, nothing would hurt me, not that night. He said it was safe, not forever, not for long, but just then, just for that one night.
I didn’t sleep like Dan told me to. Icouldhave slept, but I didn't want to. I didn't want to dream.I wasn't exhausted enough. My dreams would have been too vivid, too honest.
When I told Dan I was afraid of the dark spaces, he saidwe were reborn in a dark space, thatwe haven't seen the surface since then.
When I closed my eyes, hiding like the child I was not, he tapped my nose gently with two fingers.He always taps my nose when I'm sad. It's a comforting gesture that shouldn't work but does every time.
