~Prologue~

~Fifteen Years Ago~

Upon seeing Connor enter the building that morning on the monitors, Brie quickly stood and went to meet him as he swiped in at the secure entrance to their lab. “Morning,” he greeted her curiously as he had not even gotten into his lab coat yet.

“There’s something you gotta see,” Brie told him as she displayed equal parts excitement and fear.

“Can I get a coffee first?” he asked her with a wary look.

“Would you come on? This is big,” she complained as she reached for his arm.

The two were in their late twenties and had been working together there for over five years. And this was the first time he recalled seeing her this excited as well as agitated, so his coffee was soon forgotten as he followed her to the inner lab.

“The two samples from last night; the male and the female?” she began a little breathlessly as she led him toward a tank of sorts at the back of the room. She then continued, excitedly, “They’re still only a single cell each, but there’s already something happening.”

“Something?" Connor raised his brow at that as they reached the large center tank that now had two smaller, separate tanks on each side of it. “Is that the scientific term?”

“Would you shut up and watch?” Brie chided her partner as she carefully moved the female cell sample she spoke of into the larger tank which was filled with a strange fluid. She then moved to place the male sample into the fluid on the other side of the divider at the center of the tank.

She then looked back at Connor with anticipation before taking a deep breath and moving to lift the divider from the center of the tank. Almost immediately, all the lights around the tank began to brighten. The two cells then ever so slowly began moving toward one another. As they got closer, the lights all around the lab began brightening as well around the two onlookers.

Then, once the two cells actually did touch, hundreds of the lights around the lab began glowing hot enough to burn out and even shatter.

“Shit, get them apart!” Connor shouted as the two ducked some sparks.

“So, that’s what happens when they actually touch?” Brie stated in awe.

“Brie!” Connor scolded her back to the present as both of them moved to separate the two cells once again, and place them each back in their respective containers. “Fuck,” was all Connor managed once the two were separate and the in tact lights left in the lab returned to normal.

Brie couldn’t help a nervous laugh as she looked back at him, “Told you it was big.”

Connor just shook his head, in deep thought for a long moment before he spoke, “We gotta destroy them.”

“What?” Brie asked, more than a little shocked by that suggestion.

“They’re only a single cell each right now, Brie. And look what happened when they were drawn together; when they tried to combine. If they’re this volatile now... Do you really wanna see what they’ll eventually be able to do if we let them survive?”

Brie was a little taken aback by his words as she tried to force calm before responding, “We’re scientists, Connor. We’re supposed to discover new and amazing things,” she reminded. Then she continued, “And this? Them? They are the most amazing things we’ve seen yet.”

“Amazing or not, they’ve got real power, and the two of them together... You can imagine what that turns into when they’re grown. And if they ever do manage to combine in... whatever way... We’ve seen the stories of the creation destroying the master. Do you honestly want to become that cliché?” Connor attempted to reason with her.

“We just keep them separate then. Simple as that,” Brie attempted to save their creations one last time.

“You saw the way they were already drawn together. They’d find each other, and then...” Connor just shook his head.

“Well, what if we keep them together then? Then they wouldn’t seek out one another. We’d just have to do it in a way that would assure that they’d never discover what happens when they do combine... like that.”

“And how do you recommend we do that?” Connor scoffed.

Brie took another shallow breath as she looked up at him, “Well, I have one idea...”

~Chapter 1~

~Present Day~

Sky’s and Star’s past were a mystery, even to them. The official story was that the young boy and girl were found abandoned when they were barely toddlers, and even their ages were only a guess. The story went that they were then adopted by a couple who had miscarried their own set of twins the previous year, leaving them unable to have any more children. And then they were raised by that couple as brother and sister. It seemed like the story made sense, and so it became their truth; at least for that first decade or so. Then things started to make less sense.

Their adoptive parents had always been transparent about the fact that the two of them had been adopted. But as they got older, it became clear to Sky and Star both that that seemed to be where that transparency began and ended. Any time either of them asked any question at all about where they came from or anything even related to that, they were met with unease, vagueness and half-truths from both parental figures.

Originally the two attempted to write this off as their parents simply ‘not knowing,’ and they accepted that then as well. But again, as they got older, whispered conversations ending the second one of them appeared and awkward smiles at the two of them when it was thought that they heard something they shouldn’t have; these little things started to chip away at the artfully crafted story Sky and Star had been told to believe all their lives.

Due to this layer of darkness that seemed to surround any questions about their mutual origins, it understandably drew them to all things dark as they grew into their teens. Now, as they were nearing their last two months of eighth grade, having just celebrated the fourteenth birthday that had been designated as theirs, that darkness had already begun manifesting in the way they interacted with the world around them.

The most obvious way they embraced this darkness was in their appearance of course. They both began dressing in no color other than black as early as eleven or twelve. And now that they were both fourteen, there was enough thick dark makeup, jewelry, fishnet, and PVC between the two of them to stock a Gothic emporium with just one of their closet’s contents.

Of course this outward embrace of the darkness they both felt inside, did nothing to make their parents any more open to explanations of any kind. And understandably, it even had the opposite effect more often than not. Worse yet than their parents though, were their peers. ‘Different’ was never truly embraced in any kind of school-type setting, despite all the adults who claimed to preach the virtues of ‘individuality.’ When actually confronted with it, they wanted to do nothing more than to make it conform. And that of course, made their lives feel even darker and made them each feel more lost and misunderstood.

That afternoon as they arrived home from school, it was obvious that it had been yet another day of cruelty that only teens could inflict on one another. Sky immediately rushed through the door and up the stairs to his room. He made no move to even acknowledge his parents as they looked up at the sound of him slamming the front door shut behind him and stomping up the stairs in the heavy black platform boots he had worn that day.

“Sky!” Star called after him as she pushed the front door open moments later. She hurried to catch up to him in her own stiletto heeled, knee high boots, and follow him up the stairs. As she rushed after him, she also barely cast a glance at the adults scowling their way at the sudden disruption of their quiet afternoon.

“What happened this time?” Star asked a little breathlessly when she finally reached his room, shutting the door tightly behind her as she entered.

“Same fucking thing that happens everyday, Star,” he answered as he kept his attention angrily on his computer screen rather than his companion.

She sighed heavily as she dropped her heavy black bag to the floor inside his door and moved to approach him. Though Sky still made no move to look back at her. As she reached his side, she moved to push his long black locks away from his face which was literally, just as pretty as her own.

There below the dark brown eyes that did seem to match her own, his dark eye shadow was smudged, his eyeliner running, and his pale cheek darkening from red to a much less appealing brown before her own dark eyes.

“Sky,” she whispered sadly as he half-heartedly attempted to pull away and hide the injury behind the locks that were just as jet black and straight as hers. “I just don’t get it,” she said sadly as she pulled up a chair next to his own.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” he mumbled, still not looking back at her.

The two honestly could be twins due to their pure physical similarity. They shared the same long jet black locks, deep brown eyes, and pale flawless skin. The most marked difference between them at all was simply Sky’s height. He towered over Star, who only stood at a tiny 5′4”, while he was already nearly six feet tall, and probably still growing. One would think his height would have given him some physical advantage in confrontations; but that height was where all of his ‘masculinity’ ended. He was rail-thin, his waist even tinier than Star’s due to the girlish figure she had already began to develop. That, and he definitely carried himself more like a girl than just about any other ‘actual’ girl the two knew.

“What do you mean I wouldn’t get it? This is me,” she argued, though weakly. To which, Sky only scoffed. “What?” Star prodded.

He took a deep, sad breath of his own, though still kept his dark eyes turned from her. However, he did give in to her, as he always did, and attempted an explanation, “It’s just a lot easier for you,” he began.

Star scowled a bit at that claim, as her own days rarely were conflict-free either. “How is it easier for me? They all hate me too,” she added for weight.

“It’s not the same,” he denied, though quietly.

“Go on,” she asked with a bit more defensiveness, but still was willing to hear his argument.

Sky let out another heavy sigh before he spoke again, “When you look like a hot girl, they all want to fuck you. When I look like a hot girl, they all want to beat the shit outta me.”

Star just shook her head, then attempted a small smile, “But you know, it’s because they all wanna fuck you too,” she teased. Though her humor didn’t quite manage to break through his ever-present melancholy. “And I’m hardly hot,” she added, more to herself as she also cast her dark eyes away from him then.

“Have you seen you?” Sky retorted with a slight bit of his own humor showing as he allowed only the smallest look back her way. Though, feeling a sudden blush, he averted his eyes again before continuing, “Besides, if I’m hot, then you’re hot. We’re ‘twins’ remember?” he told her with only a slight roll of his eyes at reiterating a part of the story that was only one of many parts that the two were having more and more trouble believing as they got older.

“I know, right?” she agreed with her own laugh when she saw the slight eye roll on his part in reference to his own words. She glanced over him again, once he turned away, and swallowed a bit before busying herself toying with the corner of a band poster that was coming loose from his wall. “Although, I mean, I guess we could be,” she stated quietly.

“No, don’t drink the kool-aid,” he warned her with a smirk as he clicked through computer screens to distract himself.

“Well I mean, we were found together. We’re probably at least brother and sister, right?”

“No, Star, spit it out,” he continued the joke, though still kept his eyes locked on the screen.

“It’s possible though, right?” she asked with more seriousness.

Sky just shook his head as he allowed the briefest glance back her way, “If you even believe the ‘found together one day, abandoned’ part of the story. I mean, does that even happen, I mean, in the real world?”

Though Star just sighed in concession, seeming to be thinking long and hard on the story of their past, as she often did; especially when she found herself so often thinking of her ‘brother’ in a way no one should ever think of their siblings.

After another moment of having to pull her eyes away from Sky as he worked at the computer, Star just had to speak up again, “So you really think we’re not actually brother and sister?”

Sky scoffed, but did not allow himself to look back her way, “I think I don’t believe a damn word our so-called parents tell us anymore,” he then looked back at her, “do you?” he asked, already knowing she shared all his doubts about their parents and all the secrecy surrounding their past.

“I guess it would make things easier if we found out we really weren’t related,” she finally agreed.

That was when he did look back at her once more, a bit of a question in his own eyes then, “Meaning?” he had to ask.

Then a blush rose to Star’s cheeks, inexplicably though it seemed, as she scrambled for a response, “I just mean, then we’d at least know the truth about one lie they told us, right?” she settled on.

Sky watched her, his eyes moving over her as well, but quickly coming back up. “Yeah, I guess you have a point,” he returned before quickly forcing his attention back to his computer.

Swallowing painfully then, Star pushed herself up from her seat. “Homework and stuff,” she shrugged back at him as she hurried to leave his bedroom and those unwanted thoughts behind.

When she arrived back in her own room, Star slumped to the floor inside the tightly closed door behind her. She then pulled fishnet covered knees to her chest below the short red and black plaid skirt she had worn that day. She found herself burying her face with a slight sniffle. She sat there hoping upon hope that maybe he really wasn’t her brother, even though that’s all they’d been told year after year. Because if those weren’t lies, and she really was Sky’s twin... she honestly didn’t know if she could live with all those things she kept finding herself feeling for him, nearly every second.

Later that night, Sky stepped out of his room into the hall across from Star’s door, only to see her stepping out of the bathroom down the hall after her shower. Her long black locks dripped over her bare pale shoulders above the towel that was wrapped about her; the sight causing Sky to take a short breath of his own in response.

As she felt her breath catch once she saw him there, she needed a moment to find words, “Good timing. I’m done,” she attempted a smile, though it died on her lips quickly before she awkwardly moved to hide herself inside her own bedroom once more.

Sky remained there in the hall outside their two bedrooms for a long moment, as if trying to find some kind of composure that he had seemingly lost in the last few minutes. With another deep breath he sadly moved closer to her door, laying his forehead upon it in frustration. He then heard her moving to her bed, the mattress creaking softly beneath her, and found himself waiting another moment there at her door.

After a few long moments, the sound of her soft moans just barely made it to his ears through the door, as his breath caught once more. Biting back his own gasp, he found himself listening to her for several more moments, not able to keep from imagining what exactly was happening on the other side of her door, a mere ten feet from where he now stood.

Upon hearing that final moan that she tried to stifle behind her bedroom door, Sky immediately found himself having to retreat across the hall to his own bedroom. Still short of breath after listening to Star’s previous activity, Sky leaned back against his own door, swallowing hard in response to the reaction his body had started having the second he heard that first moan of hers.

Not able to ignore that response any longer, his hand moved inside his pants where he needed to feel that release then as well. After only a few moments, his task was completed as he slumped down to the floor inside his door as Star had done earlier that day; his pants still undone as well as now damp with the evidence of his own pleasure.

As he looked down after what he couldn’t stop himself from doing, he cursed himself for feeling any of that desire at all. If she truly was his sister, like their parents obviously wanted them to believe, then he knew he was so much more damaged than anyone ever thought. And he knew that he desperately didn’t want that to be the truth; but he was completely terrified of the possibility that it just might be, after all.