He's thinner than he should be. Three years of detention center nutrition left him as a sack of angles and edges,cheekbones too prominent, wrists too narrow. The clothes I gave him hang off his frame, making him look younger than twenty-seven. But there's a resilience in the way he holds himself. A refusal to fold that I've only seen in people who've survived things that should have destroyed them.
His eyes are brown. Not the poetic kind of brown that romance novels describe as chocolate or honey. Just brown. Plain and dark and entirely too perceptive. When he looks at me, those brown eyes see things I've spent thirty years hiding from everyone else.
He survived me.
I designed his interrogation. Sat across from him for eighteen hours while he screamed and begged and broke. I was the one who decided which chemicals would erase his memories, which methods would strip him down to nothing. I did that. I unmade him.
And now he's sitting in my library, reading my books, filling my apartment with his sharp wit and sharper observations, and I can't stop wanting to touch him again.
The Foundry raised me to be a weapon. Weapons don't want things. Weapons don't feel guilt or desire or this sick churning in my gut that might be both.
But I touched him this morning, and he touched me back, and now I can't remember what it felt like to be the cold, controlled thing I was before.
My phone buzzes with that annoying pattern that signals it’s Jinx.
I consider ignoring it. Then I remember that ignoring Jinx usually results in him showing up uninvited, and the last thing I need right now is my brother in my apartment while I'm hiding from an asset I jerked off in my kitchen.
"What?"
"Rude." Jinx's voice is bright with manic energy, the kind that makes people cross streets to avoid him. Of the three of us, Jinx is the one who looks like what we actually are; unhinged. Wild dark hair he never bothers to style, tattoos crawling up his neck, eyes that can't decide if they're green or gray and seem to change depending on how much violence he's contemplating. He's the youngest by eleven months, but he's always been the most feral. "You sound constipated. You been sitting in that office all day?"
"I'm working."
"You're always working. It's boring." A pause, and his tone shifts. "Jace called. He's worried about you."
"Jace should focus on his own shit."
"Jace is doing great. Elliot's got him taking walks and cooking dinner and doing all kinds of disgustingly normal shit. It's revolting." Jinx laughs, but there's an edge to it. "Saw pictures. Our brother, wearing an apron and making pancakes. I almost threw my phone out the window."
I can picture it. Jace, who's killed more people than either of us combined, standing in his kitchen with flour on his hands. A year ago, the image would have been impossible. Now it's just unsettling in a different way.
"He says you haven't checked in for a week. That's not like you."
"I've been busy."
"With the archive? Or with the asset you transferred to your residence off the record?"
I go still. "How do you know about that?"
"Please. You think I don't have eyes in the Ministry? You think I don't notice when my brother does something extremely out of character?" Jinx's voice drops, losing its playful veneer. This is the real him, the one that most people don't see until it's too late. "Jagger. What are you doing?"
"It's for a reason."
"Bullshit. You don't do things off the record. You don't hide assets from oversight. You're the most by-the-book person I've ever met, which is saying something considering the book was written by sociopaths." He pauses. "Is this about Project Omega?"
I don't answer. That's answer enough.
"Fuck." Jinx breathes out hard. "What did you find?"
"I'm not sure yet. The informant's memories are resurfacing. He was investigating Westpoint when we took him. He got close to something."
"Close to what?"
The words stick in my throat. I should tell him. Jinx is my brother. The three of us are the only real family any of us have ever known. If anyone deserves to know what I've discovered, it's him.
But saying it out loud makes it real. Saying "we were manufactured, we were never orphans, everything we believed was a lie" makes it something I can't take back.
"I'll tell you when I know more," I say instead.
