Drip.

Neither the thunder echoing outside nor the relentless rain lashing against the window mattered. As soon as Adam closed his eyes and the earphones were in his hand, there was no other sound to him except that of dripping water in Lili's apartment.

Drip, drop.

Water oozed out of a crack, hanging from the ceiling in the form of liquid pendants that grew and grew until gravity pushed them into the void. Making the same sound beer did when it was dripping from the edges of the coffee table all those years ago.

Drip, drop. Drip, drop.

"Please, don't fight!"

That's what Dario had said that horrible morning. The boy, barely three years old back then, ignored the mess of bottles and wet documents on the table as he ran into the living room and straight into the arms of his brother.

After Bianca's stabbing remark, Adam, unable to shake the flush of hot anger shooting through him, fought his first impulse to push Dario away once he realized his baby brother was crying. Little by little, all of his rage and his drunkenness dwindled as a terrible silence fell over them.

The room was still for a moment.

"This is killing us," said Bianca before leaving and slamming the door behind her.

Adam exhaled and hugged his brother back.

"Where did mommy go?" asked Dario, wiping away his tears.

"Don't know."

A pang of frustration tightened inside him. Adam's brother was precocious, but Bianca and he had struggled for weeks now to get him to understand that he shouldn't call them mom and dad, especially in public. Things were already less than ideal; there was no need to add gossip to their pile of problems. However, Adam didn't have it in him to correct Dario at that moment.

"Are you angry?"

"No," said Adam.

The child glimpsed at the bottles.

"Is it because you drank bears?"

"No," he lied again.

"Why were you yelling then?"

Adam felt the air leave his lungs.

'Just like dad,' that was what his sister had said to hurt him.

And that she did, he admitted.

Neither Bianca nor he had revealed the truth to Dario. Having lost both of their parents in a car accident was bad enough to leave an endless void in their lives, but somehow their deaths were not what hurt the most. The real pain, the one thing that they could never forget was that they were orphans because of their father.

"Grown-up stuff," said Adam.

"Is the soul 'grown-up stuff,' too?"

Perplexed, he gazed at his little brother.

"The soul?"

"Bianca said you were selling your soul to the bad guys. Are you evil?"

Adam's face turned downward, darkened with sorrow.

"She said that?"

Dario nodded.

"Well, Bianca is..." Adam wasn't sure what to say.

"Wrong?" Dario dared to ask.

"Going through a rebellious phase."

"Hm..." Dario thought about it for a moment. "My friends say that the poop-osition are rebels too."

Adam laughed at the way his brother called the dissidents and said, "Is that what you and your friends talk about at school? When I was your age, I was, dunno, talking about He-Man or Gumby.

"What's a Gumby?"

"Never mind," Adam smiled. "And don't worry about what your friends say regarding the government or the poop-osition. As Bianca said, I'm not evil for working with the government, and she's not a bad person for thinking I'm a bad person. Understand?"

After a long pause, Dario shook his head.

"No worries, little man. You don't have to understand. Let me wash up my face, and we'll play Crash, okay?"

"Okay!"

The louder and louder drip-drop in Lili's apartment pulled Adam back to the present. He remembered nothing more about that day after talking to Dario. At what point did I stop the camcorder? He wondered when he noticed that the audio was still playing on his phone.

Driven by curiosity to find out what had happened after he'd left the living room, the Adam from the present put one earphone back in his ear. There was nothing but background noise for a few seconds until he started hearing Dario reenact scenes from Cars. Now that his brother was a teenager, he'd deny it until the day he died, but back then, his love for that movie was so deep that he knew every single line of dialogue by heart.

He watched it every day for over a year. Sometimes twice or three times a day!

Suddenly, Dario stopped speaking like Lightning McQueen and started to ... read? For the way he sounded out syllables, Adam was sure of it.

"The Mi... Mis... Hmm..."

Adam put on his other earbud too. The sound of a door opening in the recording caught his attention. Was it him coming back from the bathroom?

"Are you alone?" Bianca asked in whispers.

"Daddy is washing his face."

"Shh... lower your voice."

Bianca, what are you doing?

Something in his sister's voice made Adam sharpen his focus as he tried to get the video to work again. Nothing. The screen remained black. A beep startled him. The battery was about to die.

"Are you taking daddy's homework?"

Adam closed his eyes and moved to the edge of the couch. What was that sound? Was someone moving the bottles from the table?

"Hm... yes," said Bianca. "I'm helping him with his homework, but let's keep it a secret."

Homework? Adam's heart skipped. She's taking the Mission's documents with her! I thought they were all ruined when beer spilled all over them. He tried to stand up but couldn't. The living room was spinning, its walls closing in. I threw everything on the table into the trash without making sure nothing was missing. How could I have been so stupid?

"Is that for the teacher?" Dario asked.

"Yes," said Bianca absently, not paying any attention to what her brother was saying.

Dear God. Adam felt a tingling in the tips of his fingers. It was Bianca. It was my sister who leaked classified information of the Mission to the media. He couldn't believe it. The person responsible for the Red Christmas, that awful night that put an end to hundreds of lives, including their own to some extent, was his sister.

Adam didn't know if the recording had ended or the phone had died. He couldn't care less. His plan to help his brother and sister leave the country was in more danger than ever before.

"If someone finds out about this, they won't let her leave the country," said Adam, feeling faint. "No. That's not true. If they find out—they're going to kill my sister."