Tillo Lando February 20th,20XX

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

Although she tried her best to whisper, her naturally loud voice stood out in the terse quiet of our hiding place.

“Shh. Try to be quiet! And we both checked the address!”

She glared at me for shushing her, but closed her mouth all the same. It was dark, damp and stuffy in the place we had hidden, so one of us had needed to make ourselves smaller to make space.

Right now we were hiding in a shed on Joyce Knightly’s property. I’d read somewhere that she preferred staying here instead of her officially listed apartment, so we’d taken a risk and come here to visit her.

The envelope with our acceptance to become a ‘Page’ was inside a pocket on the innermost pocket of my bag and hidden among other, more interesting documents. We had already applied, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t planning on accepting the offer, but I’d wanted to get a closer look at her before we accepted the offer. I didn’t even know what I was hoping to see, or not see, but it somehow felt right to be here.

It was a great opportunity that would only come once in a lifetime, and it looked like Kaja and I had caught Ms. Knightly’s attention. She had even singled out Kaja and me during her presentation earlier, which should have been flattering but only made me nervous.

It would have been amazing if we were normal, but we had disqualified for normalcy a long time ago. What between the superpowers and our pasts, we could have a TV show written about us if we were reckless enough to have our identities exposed like that.

The Page project had sounded like a dream when I’d first learned about it, but the more I learned the more I saw its resemblances to the ‘future star’ program Kaja and I had barely escaped from. We’d been young when it all happened, but the memories were as fresh as ever.

We’d gotten reparations for it and had gotten free lodging and acceptance into an excellent school. It was more than others had gotten, but it wasn’t in any way enough to make me want to repeat the horrors we’d been through.

Since I’d been the one to encourage Kaja to apply for the ‘Page’ program with me, I’d taken it as a responsibility to make sure it wasn’t anything similar to the now shut down ‘future star’ program.

Kaja’s harsh voice broke my train of thought again.

“Why don’t you go smaller too?”

“You’re the one that said we should do rock paper scissors!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think I’d lose-“

“SHHH.”

I heard loud footsteps and used a hand to seal her mouth shut. They probably belonged to the security guard we’d seen before.

“Oh, look at me, I’m Tillo and I’m so great at everything! Hey! let’s run away from home even though we have nowhere to go! Wait? Why don’t we apply to be Pages? It’s not like we have anything to lose. Shouldn’t we go see what she’s like before we go live at her dorms? Why don’t we go see her?”

My voice suddenly filtered out from behind me and I looked back to see a replica of my younger self glaring at me.

Before I could scold her, my eyes instinctively drifted over to the right ear and instantly felt relieved to see it was bare. Considering she kept her promise not to change the piercing on her right ear, I could stop worrying about her losing her sense of identity or individuality.

I wasn’t an expert in anything, but I’d read enough comics in the past few months to know how quickly abusing these powers could spin out of control.

I snapped back to the present and grabbed her by the nose... It was technically my nose, so it was fine, right?

“Hey! Not in public!”

She stuck out her tongue at me but quickly changed her face back to the way it was. She still resembled me, but her hair was shorter than mine and she had a piercing on her left ear. The Adam’s apple shrunk back into her neck and her chest expanded.

“Hey-“

“Leave me alone, Tillo. Don’t think I didn’t notice you changed something too. Are you sure you want me to point it out?”

“You’re being ridiculous. I’m heading out to scout. I’ll be right back”

I got up but suddenly felt a death grip on my arm and Kaja aggressively pulled me back down. My body hit the ground with a soft thud and a dull pain radiated from my backside to my brain.

“He-“

“Shhh! Be quiet! And what did we say?”

Although she was scolding me, her voice, hoarse from the whispering, trembled and I could tell how upset she was. Her eyes searched mine and urged me to finish the cringe catchphrase we’d made up when we were five.

“We always stick together... I know”

“Well, isn’t that sweet?”

A deep voice tore through the silence, and I finally noticed a gigantic figure that had snuck up behind us. The scary-looking guard, that became more threatening by the dim light in the shed, loomed behind us and commented on the last remnant of our dark past of codependency.

He’d found us.

Before we could take off, I felt myself being grabbed by the back of my neck.

“Aak!”

Kaja, who had made it halfway across the room, suddenly realized I wasn’t behind her and froze like a deer in headlights. Her eyes widened in terror and I could see the thoughts racing through her head. She lifted her hand to her left ear and pinched at the cartridge behind the earring.

I immediately guessed what she wanted to do and started screaming at her. No matter what, she could expose us like that.

“Don’t you dare! Turn around and keep running!”

She froze again, but this time her eyes sparked with defiance. Anyone who saw this would never believe she’d been born first between the two of us.

“Geez. I won’t kill you two! The boss here is a pretty nice guy, so he probably won’t even call your parents!”

The security guard, who, to his credit, had let us finish speaking, finally lost patience and roared at us.

“You! Missy loyalty. Don’t bother trying to fight me and just follow me. You guys are fans, right? Just get the autograph and leave.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but if saying I was some guy’s fan would get us into the house and out of trouble, then you could consider me a superfan.

Kaja looked confused, but for once she kept her mouth shut and followed us into the main house. I desperately tried to communicate that she should run away to our hiding spot, but she stubbornly refused to look at me.

Still, I was glad she hadn’t left me alone... not that I would ever admit it.