A/N:- This is a birthday gift for the lovely Mako. It contains scenes of death and gore.

The Beginning of the End

The shot was louder than he expected it to be, reverberating around the small space so that even the echoes of it were deafening. Of course he had fired a gun before, more times than he could count, but it had only ever been in practice. He had never really needed the weapon he always carried at his hip, the sign of the Head of Security for the Red Mars Colony – a joke that, one that always brought a dryly amused twist to his lips, that they had chosen to give the more violent of their 'tools' a further means to harm them. Despite this, he had always preferred to do his fighting hand-to-hand, though even then he could cause significant injury if incited to it. But for all the bones he had broken, all the flesh wounds he had inflicted, he had never... never... killed someone.

Until now.

The actual cry of pain, if there had been one, was lost amid the ringing in his ears. Only the warm spatter of blood across his cheek told him that his bullet had hit the mark. The corpse, a man who had previously been a Lieutenant in charge of construction zones, was unrecognisable. His skull was concave, half his face missing from the shot that had connected at a range of a scant few feet. Anyone else might have looked down on this pitiful sight with revulsion or regret for their actions, a line crossed that could never be uncrossed, but Abel's face was dull and devoid of emotion. For a moment, he was still as a statue, winter blue eyes locked with the sole remaining eye of the corpse on the floor, though its returning stare was glazed with the film of death. He didn't see the dark brown eye of the deceased lieutenant, though, all he could see was another eye blank with the emptiness of death... one winter blue like his own, one that should never have looked that way.

But then that moment passed, and Abel began to move again. One standard issue boot came down heavily on what remained of the man's skull, crushing it inwards with a sickening wet crack, as carelessly as though he hadn't even noticed the obstruction in his way. His steps were deliberate and his expression blank, except for his eyes that radiated murderous intent with such intensity that it seemed he could kill simply through the sheer force of his hatred. The grief clawing under the surface of his calm visage was frightening, a tsunami of rage and despair that easily obliterated all else before it. Such pitiful and fragile things as mercy or forgiveness were drowned out by the thudding of a heart that only seemed half formed now. His chest was tight, an invisible belt constricting across him and refusing to let him draw more than sharp and shallow breaths. He could taste bile at the back of his throat, a burning acidic reminder that he was left alive when that should surely have been impossible.

The alarms sounding were inconsequential, just a minor irritant that was easily ignored in the face of his mission. It was, in his mind, his last mission. It didn't matter if they gunned him down like a rabid dog for this, he cared so little for his own life that it was almost laughable, all that mattered was that he achieve this last act for his brother before he died. His precious brother, the other half of his soul, the one they had snatched away from his so suddenly. Perhaps worst of all, there had been no rhyme or reason for his death – it had been an accident, they had said there was no blame to be shouldered, and so it was Abel's duty to make sure that justice was carried out. No, not justice. For any world where Cain could die like this could never be just, could never be fair. It shouldn't have been him, not when his light had shone out so brightly as to be blinding, when Abel had merely glowed in comparison.

One boot left bloody footprints down the usually pristine hallway, the silence broken by the oddly loud sound of Abel cocking the gun in his hand once more, ready for his next target. There had been the lieutenant, the first to die, for he had been supposedly responsible for making sure the construction zones were safe for all personnel to work in. Then there would be the six builders who had been working on that area of the colony for failing to ensure their work was utterly flawless, as well as the small team of three medical personnel who had not attended the scene fast enough to save his twin (never mind that Cain had been crushed beneath the falling girder, and even had they been on hand in seconds he would still have died). And finally, there was the coroner, who would die simply from the virtue of having declared the impossibility of Cain's death.

Eleven people in total who were directly responsible for this unimaginable horror, and eleven people who were fated to be tried and executed by Abel's hand. Or they would have been, had not a small hand stopped him unexpectedly in his mission, jutting out from inside a nearby doorway and closing around Abel's wrist tightly. Bright green eyes, also filled with a heady mix of grief and rage, looked up at him as Seth tried to pull her older brother into the morgue.

"I'm going to save him."

Her voice was breathless, cracked with fatigue and an impossible hope, though Abel seemed to not even notice she had spoken at all. His eyes tilted down to look at the hand holding him, before canting towards Seth with barely restrained violence. His patience, limited even at the best of times, was non-existent today and his voice brooked no argument, soft and dangerous.

"Let go, Seth. I don't have time for your nonsense."

"Crusnik." Seth blurted the word out almost over the top of his demand, a sense of urgency creeping into her voice with it. There wasn't much time left, they could be there to arrest Abel any second, and their last possible hope would slip away like sand through their fingers. "It might... we have to try, we owe it to him."

Despite himself, Abel felt the stirrings of hope in his gut, and it made him sick. The desire to twist off Seth's head for planting those seeds of doubt in his heart, for perverting the course he had set himself, was almost unbearable for a long moment. Why was he even considering humouring this nonsense? Cain was... He was gone, and nothing could bring back the dead. Could it? The bacillus had performed wonders on the colonists it had been given to, making them almost rivals for the clones themselves, so what would the far more potent Crusnik do?

Snatching his hand free of her grip, loathing in every tense muscle, he nevertheless followed his youngest sister into the morgue and closed the door behind them. Remaining there for a long moment, unwilling to turn and see that sheet-covered shell that had once been his other half, he gave some pretence at making sure the door was tightly secured to give them privacy. It was only Seth's presence that made him finally turn and take heavy steps into the room, refusing to show vulnerability of any kind in front of her. Remaining silent as she worked, quickly and efficiently bringing the already prepared syringe to Cain's chest and injecting the Crusnik directly into the heart, he found himself unable to tear his eyes away from Cain's face now that he had brought himself to look. That pale skin so like his own, looking into a mirror, yet it was so... so wrong.

...Nothing.

Interminable seconds slid by as the two stood and watched Cain's unmoving corpse intently, desperate for any signs of life to cling to, no matter how small. And then all of a sudden, when hope was fading again, Cain's back arched from the table fit to breaking point as a rattling gasp started his chest's rise and fall once more.

Somewhere, deep down inside the darkest recesses of his soul, Abel knew that this was wrong. Yet any doubts, any fears, were determinedly buried under an avalanche of relief and the desire to believe that Cain had really returned to him from beyond the grave. He swore to himself that he would never take his twin for granted again, he would endure all his goofy smiles and stupid optimistic claims about the future, he would do absolutely anything as long as he never had to feel that soul-crushing loneliness ever again.

The man on the mortuary slab had gone still again after the initial violent reaction of Crusnik fusing into his body, just as though he were sleeping. A state that didn't last for long, as his eyes opened and slid over the two people stood over him – their names and faces took a moment to gather, the thoughts of this new host not yet fully assimilated or understood. Yet the look in both of their eyes was clear to read... devotion. Grief, regret, relief, loyalty and love. It seemed finding vessels for its brethren would not be too difficult after all, as it could already tell they would be easily manipulated by the words of this body.

Slowly, 01 stretched its new face into a bright smile.

This was a new day, a new dawn, and there was a whole new world to cleanse.

This was only the beginning.