Attacca ─ Five Hargreeves

23. Two Sides of the Same Coin

Genevieve walked down the street in a trance, it was a brisk trip, she could feel every dormant memory scattering in her head upon seeing her childhood home just a few steps away. Her heart hammered too fast against her ribcage, her throat was dry, she found it hard to breathe regularly, she was ready to face the end of the world, yet reuniting with her family seemed a whole lot harder than that. Was everything still the same? What were they like now? Did her mother still leave cookies on the front desk for her after school? Was her brother still the one who put her shoes away in the closet when she was frequently in a hurry to go to bed?

Genevieve closed her eyes, tuning out all the ruckus around her as a memory abruptly tugged her brain.

It was raining cats and dogs, she remembered. The skylight was impinged by a heavy onslaught of water, tapping loudly and impatiently as if catechising consent to work on drenching the entire surface. The Kilday siblings merely rooted their irises at it while lying down on the carpet—not permitting it to flood the house, of course—the two watched it attempting to break in. At one point, the clock struck midnight, providing a varied rhythm amidst the throttling silence. In a matter of hours, she realised they would travel to a new city, turning over a new leaf. Somewhere in the non-coastal of Portland.

The two had questions and doubts, but they didn't want to ruin their mother's requisitions. It was a simple unspoken demand: never question Mom. Day by day, no queries, yes, but that didn't mean the siblings just accepted the decision with open arms. Grace saw it, it whirled madly in those caustic charcoal eyes, curiosity plundered their innocence, abrading all sorts of sentiments to derive answers. However, none of it worked, none of it penetrated Grace's adamantine defences, her lips still sealed shut.

The little girl listed her worries in her head. Possible causes, potential danger, survival or death. The mind of an eight-year-old was wild, a tangled web of imaginations hazing the brain, often obscuring logic at times. She had never been exposed to her mother's work, or at least not one that she recalled, she was beginning to realise the perils it posed. There had been so many gantlets that had befallen the family but none of them had shaken their mother's foothold before, so whatever was troubling Grace whether it was work or personal, this time it was enough to spawn misfortune.

While Grace was easy to read sporadically, Nikolai was not.

There was a towering wall Nikolai had built, it had been there since they first met and it hadn't waned at all. Sure, he accepted both of them as his new family, learning to get to know each other better over the past three years, Genevieve picked up some of his bare demeanour and plain habits, she might not know much, but she knew enough. Talented, organised, smart—three words she could delineate himself as. The first week, she saw him finishing a pile of books during the day then easily winning five rounds of Shogi against one of Grace's colleagues at night. The first month, he earned a place on their mother's research team. The first year, he adequately crafted antidotes for poisons that had ever been found on the surface.

Somehow, along the way, Nikolai became a core part of the Kilday Observatory. And yet despite everything, he didn't forget his role as a brother, even though he was only two months older. He kept her company whenever he had the time, and did almost everything together. They went to the same school and he was always there next to her, whispers were consistently galloping in the atmosphere about the two, while it was a bit rubbing her the wrong way, he didn't seem to mind it. In fact, no one could actually guess what was on his mind, not even their mother. He was unreadable, most of the time he would just do something unexpected and no one saw it coming.

Nikolai was a riddle that she had yet to solve.

"Have you ever considered being evil?" was the question stuck in the forefront of her mind. She could have tried to be a little more subtle, but then again, she preferred to confront her brother head-on.