Page 75

Taking out the larva from behind her retina, he drops it into a small glass.

Then he just struggles to put her eye back.

For all his brilliance, I know he's not an eye surgeon. So the prospect of him working so in depth around Vanya's eye has me feeling a little off. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but it's not a pleasant feeling.

"Done," he exclaims, telling her to get off and instructing us to go back to our room after he administers one more shot of venom in each of our arms.

"How's the eye?" I ask Vanya as she goes to her small corner. Miles had slapped a small bandage on it and called it a day.

She shrugs, her features blank as if she doesn't care.

"V, how's the eye?" I ask again, something bursting to the surface at seeing her so indifferent.

"It's okay," she replies, her voice soft but there's something lacking.

Unable to help myself, since something keeps bothering me and I'm not one to back down in the face of a challenge, I go to the small supply I'd taken from the lab, taking out some disinfectant.

"Show me." I take a seat next to her, my hand going to her bandage.

I know Miles didn't use any anesthetic, or disinfectant—he never does. So she needs to get the area cleaned, at least to the best of my abilities.

But as I peel back the gauze, her eye immediately drops, falling about an inch off her eye socket.

Not wanting to scare her more than necessary, I pour some disinfectant and I dab it around her eye.

She looks at me blankly, examining my features in detail. I don't question her sudden interest in my face, happy that she has something to distract her from her eye. When I'm finished, I gently push the eye back, plastering some new gauze on top of it.

As I make to move, though, something happens. Her hand reaches out, touching my arm.

"You called me V," she utters the words so softly I barely hear her. "You never call me V anymore," she notes, tightening her fingers over my arm.

I shrug. "It depends on the moment," I tell her, not wanting to examine the meaning behind her words, or the fact that I had, indeed, stopped calling her V a long time ago.

"I like it." Her lips pull up in a small smile. "It reminds me of old times."

I grunt.

"When we were a team," she continues, looking at me expectantly.

"We still are, V. But you need to pull your weight too," I retort. "You know I'm doing this for both of us," I continue, shaking my head at her.

Her smile immediately drops, her good eye unblinking as it takes me in.

"I see…" she says, and I don't understand what she's seeing.

"Good." I nod, getting up and preparing for my next bout of training.

The next days are even worse as Vanya struggles to get out of bed. Her limbs are swollen, her skin a yellowish tinge and hot to the touch.

And just when I start to get a little worried, Miles calls me up to his office.

"Your sister hasn't been doing well." Is the first thing he says as I enter the room.

I don't answer as I take a seat, waiting for whatever it is he wants to tell me.

"You know I have no need for weaklings here," he continues, looking at me with a raised eyebrow, as if gauging how I'm reacting to his words.

"Yes, Sir." I nod.

"I'm glad we're in agreement, because I have an assignment for you."

I frown. An assignment?

"Of course," I readily agree, since it's not my place to disagree.

"The final test if you will. And then you'll be the first graduate of the program." He chuckles, pouring himself a glass of alcohol.

"Final test? What do you mean?" I ask, confused.

It's the first time he's said anything about graduation, or a final test. I thought it was all supposed to be continuous learning. Trial and error as we map the way to scientific revolution.

"What was the first rule I taught you, Vlad?" he asks, the corner of his mouth curling up as he regards me attentively.

"Remove all attachments," I immediately reply, the scene in which I'd killed Lulu flashing briefly in my mind.

"Indeed. Do you think you still have any attachments?"

"No, Sir."

"What about your sister, then?" he inquires, amused.

"She's nothing." I don't even think as the words slip past my lips.

"Is that so…" He walks around the room, swirling the liquid in his glass in a pensive manner.

I cock my head, studying him and trying to understand what's happening.

"Then it won't be too hard for you to kill her." He suddenly stops, turning to me, his eyes shrewdly assessing my reaction.

"Of course not."

"Wonderful. I trust it will be done then?"

I nod slowly, a small frown appearing on my face as it dawns on me what he's asking me to do.

"But here's the catch, Vlad. I don't want a clean death. I don't want a mercy killing." He smirks. "Give me a show," he opens his arms in a dramatic gesture, "show me how you put to use everything I've taught you!

Going to his desk, he opens a drawer and throws me a set of knives.

"Entertain me, Vlad!" He tips his glass toward me before downing it in one go.

As I walk back to the room a heaviness settles on me. I don't know why my chest feels stiff, my self trapped in my body, a cage that stifles me and holds me so tightly I can barely breathe.

A small war brews inside me. Do I kill her? She is my sister. But Miles is right that in attachments only make you weak. And weak is something I never want to be.

Not when I've worked so hard to cleanse myself of any weakness I may have.

And so as I continue to rationalize the decision, the answer is clear.

I need to be strong.

Vanya will only drag me down—with this frail attachment I still have to her, and with her inherent weakness.

I will be strong.

By the time I reach our room, the decision is made. And somehow, Vanya knows it too.

She watches me closely as I step inside the room, the knife set hidden behind my back. As she looks at my face, she closes her eye, taking a deep breath. When she opens it again, a peace seems to settle over her features.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she gets up. Her steps are wobbly, her movements awkward as she can barely control her own body.

"Vlad," she says my name in that melodic voice of hers, and for a moment my heart beats painfully in my chest, the beats loud and aggressive against my ribcage.

And even as I rationalize the improbability of that I know something is wrong.

I'm wrong.

But I don't dwell on that. Not when the final test is within my grasp. Who knows, Miles might take me up as his full time assistant.

She's in front of me, tilting her head to the side and gazing up at me as if it's the last time she's seeing me. As if she knows.

"I never told you," she starts, suddenly looking away, "but I know what you did for me."

I blink twice, frowning.

"What do you mean?"

"I know you tried to save me, and in the process you lost yourself. And because I know that… it's my fault too," she takes a deep breath, "I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all."

"Vanya… V," I call her name, a sad smile on her face when she hears it.

"If it hadn't been for me…" she trails off, and I note a tear in her good eye. "Maybe you would have still been you."

"I don't understand," I say. And I don't. How could I have lost myself when I finally found my calling?

"I know you don't." She shakes her head.

Seeing her so close, I realize I need to take advantage of her proximity. Opening up the knife set, I take the biggest blade out, ready to fulfill my mission.

But as I raise it in front of her, she doesn't move. She doesn't react at all.

She just looks into my eyes, a small nod as she waits for me to kill her.

And in that moment, for all my conviction that I need to do this, for all my rationalizing that I should kill my own sister—my twin—I find that I can't.

"I can't." The words slip out of my mouth, my voice barely above a whisper.

My chest is uncomfortably stiff, a tension throbbing in my temples as I look at my sister. The way her once beautiful hair is now a mess of dirt and blood. Or how her pale skin that once gleamed is now yellow streaked with purple bruises. Or how her eyes, once radiant, are now…

My breath catches in my throat as memories come rushing down, the pain slowly increasing, my limbs paralyzed with fear as I just look at her.

"I can't, V," I whisper.

"Yes, you can," she replies, and before I know it, she grabs the hand holding the knife, pointing the tip of the blade right under her sternum before pushing with all her might, angling it up toward her heart.

There's a loud gasp.

I don't know if it's from me or from her. Her lips parted, she keeps on pushing the knife into her flesh.

"Finish it," she gently urges me. "Let me be at peace, Vlad. I don't want to hurt anymore."

Those words break something inside of me as I push the knife deeper, reality lagging behind in my mind.

I push and push until I know I've punctured her heart.

And just as I withdraw the knife, blood rushing down and draining from that vital organ, something else happens.

A sob catches in my throat, my cheeks damp as my eyes leak some sort of liquid—tears. I watch the blood slowly leave her body, her good eye stuck in the same position, her body flailing around before it falls, and I feel the worst pain I've ever felt in my life.

I'm not supposed to feel pain.

I'm not supposed to feel.

And yet I do. I feel it to the core of my being. It shatters every corner of what I deem to be the self, until I find myself stripped of what essentially makes me human.

Was I ever?

My eyes hone in on that blood—her life's essence—as it keeps pouring out. Leaking and leaking until there's no more.

"No," I snap. "No." I shake my head, the knife dropping from my hand as I kneel before her, my hands grasping at the blood and trying to put it back inside of her.

"You can't," I mutter incoherently, "you can't leave me, V… No."