Viviane and Kylian left the depressed Agent Luc and before long, two hyper, wide-eyed, breathless, teenage girls dressed alike ran up to Viviane all excited to see her. Viviane’s eyes lit up upon seeing them too. Although he had never met them before, Kylian immediately thought these two girls were a bit “off”.

“Hiiiiiiii, Viviane!” the two girls sang together in perfect sync. Their voices were joyous to say the least.

“Anaelle! Marielle!” greeted Viviane. Viviane was all smiles.

Kylian was not sure which one was which, but he assumed that Anaelle spoke first.

“We saw you coming…” started off Anaelle.

“So we ran down as fast as we could!” finished up Marielle.

And then the two together gushed, “We’re so shook you came to see us today!”

Upon closer examination, Kylian discerned that these two girls were not just cute, over-active teenagers, but they were identical in every way: same height, same eyes, same nose, same mouth, same hair color, same voice, same goofy expressions, same body shape. But that wasn’t all! It got weirder: same clothes, same shoes, same hairstyle, same jewelry, same makeup, same lunch sack, same satchel, speaking in sync sometimes and finishing each other’s sentences other times. Why, if these two weren’t so cheery, it was downright spooky how similar they were to each other.

Although at first glance the twin girls looked exactly the same as each other, Kylian noticed that one was actually the mirror image of the other. Whereas one wore her watch on her left wrist, the other wore it on her right wrist. Whereas one styled her hair toward the left side of her head, the other styled it toward the right. Whereas one carried her satchel on her left shoulder, the other carried it on her right.

Never one for eloquent words, Kylian, master of understatement, turned to the girls and uttered these most memorable and profound words, “Oh, you’re identical twins.”

Kylian, who had been invisible to the twins until this moment, now demanded their attention by his utterance of the obvious. They were not impressed and instantly took a disliking to him.

“Well, of course!” said Anaelle.

“Duh!” added Marielle.

“Genius alert!” Anaelle insulted Kylian with sarcasm.

“Who hit you with an ugly stick?” asked Marielle.

Kylian again proved to himself that he should probably not speak aloud around girls. Viviane, on the other hand, ignored the whole incident. She had more important topics she wanted to talk about.

“Hi you two! I have news for you. You know how much you’ve been wanting to see Aveline in concert?” asked Viviane.

“Oh, Aveline!” swooned Anaelle.

“Yes! We want to go to her concert so bad!” swooned Marielle.

Viviane grinned to hear it. She knew these two girls better than most. “I heard through my modeling job that Aveline’s stage crew is looking to hire a few local teenagers to work backstage as errand runners. When I heard, I immediately thought of you two. Interested?”

“Are we ever!” the two starry-eyed girls said excited at the prospect of working backstage.

“Oh my gosh, you have to get this for us, Viviane,” Anaelle pined.

“We would absolutely die to get a chance to meet Aveline up close and personal,” gushed Marielle.

Anaelle snapped out of her reverie as a new thought flashed across her face. “Maybe we could find out the truth about whether Aveline’s engaged or not!”

“Rumor is that Aveline is off the market,” said Marielle adding to the gossip.

“But no one’s seen what kind of man Aveline is going out with,” continued Anaelle.

“Or if she’s seeing someone at all.”

“Maybe we can catch this mystery man with Aveline backstage?”

Together and in sync again, “That would be too sick!”

The twins were clearly star struck with Aveline and swooned over the prospect of being able to get to the truth about these rumors flying around their favorite celebrity. However, no one knew why it was so important to get answers to these burning rumors, but for these teenagers, logic and common sense were not worth much.

Anaelle and Marielle’s high hopes of possibly meeting their idol came crashing down just as suddenly as it rocketed up.

“I hope they let us go,” fretted a worried Anaelle.

“Yes, I hope they let us!” said Marielle.

“We hate having STS Agents guarding us…”

“…everywhere we go!”

Together and in sync, “They never leave us alone! Wah-ha!” They cried their eyes out at the thought of not being allowed to go to Aveline’s concert, even though no one had yet told them they could not go.

Kylian stood there dumbfounded and speechless not quite believing what he just witnessed. Two crazy girls whose emotions seemed to be on a roller coaster ride first taking them high with anticipation and elation only to barrel down into distress and dejection within minutes. Blocking out the actual sounds of speech, Kylian watched Viviane chat with the twins with a deft kind of ease, laughing with them when they were up and consoling them when they inevitably turned down.

Viviane seems to get along with these two girls very well. I wonder why? he thought.

While Kylian occupied the role of third wheel, or perhaps he was the fourth wheel in this case, Luc appeared and tapped Kylian on the shoulder, scaring him half to death.

“Gahhhh!” Kylian gasped as he turned his head to see Luc. “Where did you come from?”

“Oh, sorry about that.” Luc was just being polite. He actually did not feel apologetic at all. “You see, it’s my job to make sure these girls don’t talk to strangers, so if you could please step away from them, that’d be super cool of you, alright? I’m asking you nicely.”

Kylian gulped as he saw Luc put his hand on the handle of his gun.

“Or we can do it the hard way?” asked Kylian. A nervous tic afflicted his eye.

“Yep, or we can do it the hard way,” answered Luc.

“Well then, no need to make a scene. Please lead the way.”

Luc led Kylian away from the girls just a few paces and out of earshot to a short concrete wall shaded by a tall tree. Kylian sat down on the short wall, but Luc, on the other hand, found a patch of grass and flopped down on the ground and leaned his back against the wall looking perfectly relaxed. He lay there with his hands behind his neck not to work, but to enjoy the rest of this sunny, bright day in the peace, tranquility and company of pimple faced adolescents.

“Hey, sorry about dragging you away from all those cute girls,” said Luc.

“Crazy girls, don’t you mean?” asked Kylian.

“Yeah, well, you get used to them. In case you didn’t know, those two girls are the twin daughters of Doc Renard, your boss.”

“Really? I didn’t think he had any children.” Although Kylian did not say it out loud this time, he was surprised that any woman could see anything nice about Dr. Renard, much less want to have children with him. Luc continued explaining.

“Doc is such a high value target that it’s all of our jobs at STS to guard him and his twin girls no matter what. It’s especially my job since I’m the one assigned to be school resource officer, you know. There are spies and enemies of the UEN lurking around everywhere! You can’t trust anyone.”

“No kidding?” asked Kylian. “I feel like the school grounds and the National Lab are perfectly safe.”

“That’s because we have such a huge presence on this campus!” exclaimed Luc. “We want the enemies of the UEN to know that they can’t come here, steal our technology, and abduct our scientists for their own evil doings.”

“What about their mother?” Kylian said while looking back toward the twins.

“Their mother died when they were almost three,” answered Luc.

“Oh? Then the twins don’t remember her?”

“Nah, they don’t. The girls have only ever known their father, and if they have any memories of their mom, they must be very faint. I’ve asked them; they say they don’t remember anything.”

Kylian was still curious about the twins’ mother, but, having heard the unfortunate news he had just been told, he decided to stop asking any more questions on the topic and tried to change the subject.

“I’ve never seen identical twins that were so identical.”

“You haven’t seen the half of it, pal. They pack the same lunch. They move in parallel when they walk, eat and smile. You hardly ever see them doing something different from each other. It’s almost like they’re not twins at all, but one person split across two bodies.”

“You know a lot about these girls, huh?” noticed Kylian.

“Absolutely I do. In fact, we STS know everything about everybody, even you, buddy.”

“Really? What do you know about me?”

Luc pulled his left arm from behind his head to the front of his face where he consulted the arm band computer sewn into his uniform.

“Lessee here. We know the obvious stuff. You’re Kylian Bouche, 28, birthday April 4th, from the Northern Province city of Le Havre. You went to the University of the UEN, North Branch. That’s where you got your Ph.D. earlier this year. We also know that in elementary school you got sick, threw up in class, and was given the nickname ‘barf boy’ which you hated, but the isolation that came from that incident allowed you to study math and physics. That’s why you’re here today. Also, you seem to like clothes from Soyeux since you subscribed to all their catalogs.”

Kylian could not contain his surprise and recoiled in horror that Luc knew so much about himself. “Buh, buh, but how can you know about the vomiting incident?” sputtered Kylian.

“Like I said, we can look up everything about anyone on here,” Luc said and he showed Kylian his arm band computer.

As if the biggest light bulb had just popped on over his head, Kylian had a brilliant idea to get an answer to a burning question he’s had since he showed up in Capital City. He decided to broach the sensitive topic with Luc.

“So, Mr. STS Agent,” Kylian’s voice was cautious, “what can you tell me about Viviane?”

Luc picked up on Kylian’s sly tone of voice but answered him anyway.

“Well, we know she’s 24, a very smart graduate student working toward her Ph.D. in physics. She scored the highest on her entrance exams to Renard University, and she’s working on research into teleportation technology. We also know she works part time as a catalog model. She’s 5 foot 10 inches tall and weighs 129 pounds. Her measurements are 34”-24”-34”, and she wears a size 9 shoe.”

Luc looked up from his computer and saw Kylian furiously scribbling down the information into a notepad he whipped out of nowhere in particular. Luc cleared his throat to catch Kylian’s attention.

“Aside from the physical aspects, we also know that Viviane’s life before 12 years old is unknown. We don’t know who her parents are or where she comes from. We do know that she appeared on a beach as an orphan 12 years ago maybe having come ashore from a foreign land. She was put into a foster home until sometime in high school when she declared herself an emancipated minor and started living on her own, paying her own way using money she earned from modeling. Due to her smarts, she was able to earn a full-ride scholarship for her undergraduate and graduate studies here at the University.”

Luc looked up again and saw Kylian scribbling down notes trying to record every bit of information. Luc, now slightly annoyed, wrapped up his information session about Viviane.

“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find out more about her, but there just isn’t any more. She’s a real puzzle that’s for sure. Even if I never find the truth about her, I’ll still protect her all the same.”

Now it was Kylian’s turn to look up from his notepad. He stopped scribbling and saw that Luc stared intently over at Viviane chatting it up with the twins at a table outside of earshot. Kylian felt a twinge of suspicion that Luc’s interest in Viviane may not have been entirely professional.

Viviane and the twins, Anaelle and Marielle, finished chatting and noticed that Kylian had gone missing. They looked around and realized that he and Luc went off by themselves to loiter in the shade of a tall tree next to a short concrete wall. The three girls headed over to them, curious as to why they wandered off by themselves.

“Kylian, what are you doing here with Luc?” asked Viviane, “I didn’t even notice that you had left.”

Kylain opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by Luc.

“Sorry about that, Viviane. Didn’t mean to take away your boyfriend like that. The threat level has been raised to HIGH if you haven’t heard, and he’s a stranger to me and the twins. I pulled him aside to check him out. Don’t worry, I’ve done a background check on him and he’s harmless. A bit boring, but harmless nonetheless. I won’t take him away from you next time.”

Caught off guard by Luc’s assumption that she and Kylian were boyfriend-girlfriend, Viviane stammered, “Oh! Kylian and I aren’t like that! We just work together.”

Although Kylian was attracted to Viviane, was it any surprise that Viviane was not attracted to him?

“Yeah, we just work together,” admitted Kylian as he kicked a stray pebble away.

“Oh, good to know!” said Luc. “Then I’ll keep my hopes alive that I can somehow land a smart and pretty girl like you someday.”

Again, Viviane was caught off guard by Luc’s new assumption that he might have a chance with her.

“Oh you! Don’t say things like that in front of everyone! You’ll embarrass me!” said Viviane.

But Kylian noticed that Viviane did not dislike Luc’s attention or light teasing. In fact, to him, it appeared quite clear that Viviane might actually like Luc!

Oh my god, Viviane likes Luc? That means I probably don’t have a chance! he thought.

As this realization raced through his head, he pictured an imaginary scene of Viviane and Luc as a cozy couple where Luc was about to kiss Viviane. Just before lips touched, however, Kylian’s imaginary scene exploded in a puff of smoke. He turned green with envy and clenched his hands into fists.

Just then, two female teachers walked by heading back to the building where the classrooms were. Lunchtime was over and the students were to return to class including Anaelle and Marielle to their disappointment.

“Come on girls,” one the teachers called. “Back to class! Lunch period is over.”

“Awwwww!” both Anaelle and Marielle cried in unison.

“Stop letting your friend Viviane put ideas into your heads about becoming fashion models or celebrities. Those things only happen to a lucky few. Better focus on your studies first,” counseled the other teacher.

“Yes, that’s right,” agreed the first teacher. Then she turned to address Viviane. “Now Viviane, we know you mean well, but please stop feeding these girls unrealistic dreams of glamor and fantasy. We all can’t be born with your ‘genetic gifts’, so please don’t distract the students from their studies.”

“Run along now, girls. Back to class,” shooed the other teacher.

As the two teachers herded Anaelle and Marielle back to class, the twins turned around and shouted back to Viviane, “Please come back and visit us again!” before they were shuttered away inside the classroom building.

Viviane glared in the direction of the classroom building and felt her blood pressure rise.

Luc could see that Viviane was angry. “Viviane, I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

“No. It’s OK,” Viviane replied with her voice stern and restrained. “They’re just jealous. It happens to me all the time. I’m so sick of it.”

Viviane steamed off in the direction assumed to be work, back to the research offices of the National Laboratory. Kylian was surprised to see Viviane so rattled by the teacher’s offhanded comments. Jealous, huh? Women can certainly be mean to each other.