Sky and Star usually beat their parents home by about an hour, depending on if they made any stops after school or not. But that day, they had made no stops and their parents’ car was still in the garage when they pulled in with a sigh.

“Why? Just why?” Sky mumbled as he cast a rueful glance at the car.

“Didn’t you see the text?”

“Haven’t really looked at my phone much lately” Sky admitted with another small sigh as the two exited the car.

“They can’t go back to work til their bosses find them a new lab space” Star supplied the information with a slight slam of the passenger door as she stepped out of the car.

“Great, we needed more parental scrutiny” Sky mumbled as he headed into the living room with Star at his heels.

Without acknowledging his parents who were there on the couch together, TV on and phones in hand, he just somberly headed upstairs. With a sad sigh of her own, Star did the same, also not looking back at either adult.

Brie just shook her head, “they’re the ones who are upset? We haven’t even mentioned the whole pill fiasco since Thursday. Shouldn’t they be thrilled? Considering the two did nothing but smile and flirt before we, against all rationality, decided to let them have as much sex as they want” she told Connor, obviously quite uneasy about the decision still.

“Well wasn’t Sky already upset that day, before you questioned them about the pills, and we heard about the suicide? Maybe this is actually something else” Connor shrugged as he looked up the stairs after his children before returning his eyes to his phone in resignation.

“What on earth do they have to be upset about? Other teens would be thrilled to get a free pass from their parents to have sex” she complained under her breath.

“I wouldn’t say we’re giving them a free pass” Connor scoffed.

“Really? Sure seems like it” Brie retorted.

“I think of it more as, minding our own business” Connor shrugged again.

“Odd, I thought our teenage children were our business” Brie stated with clenched teeth before getting up and heading into the dining room for another glass of wine.

Meanwhile upstairs, they each went to their own rooms to relieve themselves of their heavy backpacks and more than uncomfortable footwear. Star sat on her bed for several minutes, looking out at the hallway and Sky’s closed bedroom door. She then sighed and made her way across the hall, gently pushing his door open and peering inside. There she found him sullenly looking up at his calendar.

“Something upsetting about the calendar?” she attempted humor as she moved into the room and came to stand near him.

“Well, last week sucked more than any other week since we left the torture lab in life number one” he stated sadly, “so I was trying to plan out the next week instead.”

Trying to ignore the reminder of that life that seemed so long ago now, but still haunted them every day, Star looked at the calendar with a sigh as well, “class trip” Star mumbled with a bit of foreboding as she took a seat on his bed then.

“And remember the weekend before: On Saturday you have to go make out with Kali in front of mom, while I’m in a coffee shop with dad, getting a blow job from a former cheerleader. Then Monday, we need to go fuck in some dark shack while Curt finds some other victim to rape thirty feet away without us even noticing. Then we can spend our entire night being accused of some supernatural shit by the asshole cops. Then don’t forget that Tuesday is the five hour sex marathon in our fourteen year old friend’s bed. Then I gotta take her virginity in her yard the next night with her sister fifteen feet away. Then I guess Thursday is lawyers questioning you about Curt and then...what else am I missing? Oh yeah was it Friday that the cops interrupted our threesome with said fourteen year old former virgin? Wait no, think that was Saturday, Friday was the night that you fucked her too. Damn it’s getting hard to keep track of how fucked up we really are” he shook his head.

“Sky” Star just shook her head sadly.

“Well, this life already sucks even more than that last one. May as well try our best to continue the trend, right?” he scoffed.

That was when their conversation was interrupted, shockingly enough by their father who was now standing in Sky’s bedroom doorway with a more than confused look on his face, “please tell me that everything I just heard was part of some really twisted novel or something that you two are writing” he stated with more than a bit of wariness.

The two then swallowed hard and decided no comment on that was the best reaction they could even hope to try. Then Star took a breath, “so, did you come up here to try and catch us having sex then?” she asked with more than a trace of sarcasm.

“Honestly, I was dreading that that would actually be the case. I’m almost relieved that you two are just in here dreaming up all your really twisted ideas for creative writing? Art class? Film school? Something?” he stated, hoping upon hope that he was right, considering no other explanation for Sky’s diatribe made any sense whatsoever.

Sky sighed, again choosing to neither confirm or deny anything, “so why did you come up here then?”

Connor just shook his head as he looked around the room, “I’m obviously not the touchy feely emotional type of dad, but your mom’s half a bottle in already, and still freaked about last week, so I guess it falls to me to find out what’s really going on with you two.”

“Going on?” Star asked warily.

“Up until Thursday you two were the happiest couple on earth, shattering all of those black-clad stereotypes. But then suddenly on Thursday; one-eighty. Even before pill-gate” he sighed, “so what is it that you two are having such a hard time with these last few days?”

Star then looked to Sky, knowing that he was the one who needed to decide how to answer that. Though Sky looked down, his breath catching, unable to meet Connor’s eyes, or even Star’s, as every bit of him was just trying to hold it together then. The fact that his pain was so blatantly obvious, and had even affected Star so deeply as well, to the point that Connor would feel the need to ask him point-blank what the cause of it was; that somehow made the pain a hundred times worse. And before that, it had already been nearly unbearable.

Instead of answering at all, all Sky could do was crumble to the floor in tears, sobs wracking his entire body.

Later that night, Connor and Brie found themselves sitting atop their bed, staring at the wall in front of them, nearly as numb as Sky had been prior to the tearful breakdown that afternoon. Finally, Brie forced her voice to work, “and this all happened the day I found her pills?”

“Hence the reason why they were both too upset to even wanna try to have that discussion that day. And hence the reason why they’ve been completely miserable, regardless of their so-called ‘free pass,’” he sighed heavily.

“Probably also behind a lot of that stuff Star said at dinner too. Even older emotionally? Punished enough and feeling guilty enough for several lifetimes? Hours earlier, the love of her life was... And then that other boy the same day? Kills himself after Sky rejected him?” Brie sniffled again as she buried her face in her hands. Placing an arm around her, Connor waited several more moments to allow yet another family member let out all that sadness. Finally, she spoke again, “and he actually doesn’t wanna tell the cops and have this prick punished?” she shook her head then.

“As much as all of us wanna see this prick punished, Sky included; he’s already thought about it non-stop since it happened. He knows that it would all get turned back on him, as wrong as it is, it’s true. And then it would be even more impossible to cope with it at all. I really don’t wanna see how much more he could even take of that before he’d just give up, Brie” Connor told her, his own voice actually choked with emotion for once.

Upstairs, Sky and Star were wrapped tightly in one another’s arms atop his bed, and had been nearly all evening. His head was upon her chest as she held him tightly, waiting for both their tears to finally run dry.

Star spoke at last, “I can’t believe you actually told him. Considering you didn’t even want them to know when he had only tried hurting you in life number one.”

“Tired of having to hide anything anymore. It’s too hard” Sky stated simply as he wiped another tear away on her shirt which was fortunately the same shade as his nearly completely gone eye makeup now.

Star let out another sad breath, “well, there’s still that one thing we need to hide.”

“Well, that one thing is actually what they did, before we were even... not-born. Slight difference there I guess” he reasoned that one lie away. He then spoke again, a moment later, “at least now all I have to deal with here at home, is the way they’ll look at me for the rest of my life as that victim in that locker room, instead of an actual person ever again. So, I have that to look forward to now, at least.”

“Sky...” Star sniffled again as she squeezed him tightly once more, wishing on every one of her namesakes then, that she could somehow find a way to get him through this in one piece. As long as he was so shattered, she was too. They were two parts of the same person, after all.

The next day, after barely getting any sleep anyway, Brie and Connor were woken up by a text with an address asking them to check out a lab space to see if it would be suitable for their work. The two just let out slight groans, as neither of them were really feeling up to dealing with mundane work tasks when their children’s lives were in such a state.

But nonetheless they headed into work and their children headed to school. Brie and Connor just praying that they would at least get through one more day without being victimized just for trying to finish their education.

Upon arriving at the lab space that had been closed down nearly twenty years ago, the two headed inside. After looking around, they decided it would be suitable enough once they got the place cleaned up and all the equipment running. So their day’s task would be to get that underway so that their bosses could approve their move to this other lab now.

By lunch, the two had had the main portion of the lab cleaned up and got all the equipment tested for usability. They then moved into the office to empty out the desks and filing cabinets for their own use. As they came across the locked filing cabinet the two sighed back at each other.

“Do you still have that universal key for all the properties our company owns?” Brie asked her husband.

“Think so” Connor stated as he searched the weighty key ring that he always had to have on hand during his work day. “Yep, still here” he stated as he moved to unlock the cabinets and begin throwing out the files left behind by whoever had worked out of that lab years ago.

As they continued that task though, one file caught Brie’s eye. The label simply read Project Nebula, and was dated with their children’s alleged day of birth. She narrowed her eyes at that, and opened the file, only to flip past the cover sheet and to the first page, which had notes that looked to be written in her own hand. Swallowing a bit at that, she read:

Male Sample One: Sky. Female Sample One: Star. Genetic integration successful. Alien DNA undetectable through all means but testing of the blood. Samples healthy. No apparent physical abnormality in either sample. Side effects noted: samples seem to be inexplicably drawn to one another. Such combination of the two result in unexplainable psychic phenomena having actual, literal effects on the physical world. Level of volatility unknown but concerning. Requires further study. Recommendation is to keep samples separated until a determination of the full scope of such abilities can be determined. B. Vargas.