Kira's hand is small and warm and trusting in hers as Helena leads her away from the warehouse, quickly and quietly.
"Are they dead?" Kira asked her with a concerned frown as she and Helena ducked into another alley.
"Who?"
"The men. Are they?"
"They sleep," Helena answered. Killing was for the copies, not the Proletheans. "They wake soon. We must go quickly."
They come to a bus stop, where Helena fidgets anxiously, eyes flitting rapidly until a bus arrives. She pays with coins from the wallet of one of the guards, takes Kira to a seat near the back.
"My Mommy says that you hurt people. She says that you're bad."
"I do not hurt people. I hurt copies. Copies are not people."
"What are copies?"
"The ones who look like me but are not me."
"Like my Mommy? And Aunt Alison?" Kira frowned at Helena.
"Copies," Helena spat reflexively, the taste of her own blood echoing in her mouth, the pain in her chest when her sestra shot her sharp again. "I am the original."
Kira stared at her for a moment, contemplating her seriously.
"Mommy says you're sisters."
Helena flinched at the word, but couldn't help but correct her. Even with so recent a hurt, she clung to the idea, clung to the only connection she had ever felt, like a starving child to bread.
"Twin sestras."
"That's why you look the same," Kira nodded. "That means you're my Aunt Helena."
Helena turned her head slightly, peered curiously through her blonde tangles of hair.
"Aunt?"
Kira smiled at her, took her hand.
"We're family."
Helena stared at the little hand in hers, a ghost of a smile flitting across her face.
"Family," she echoed quietly.
"Mommy said you want to hurt us, but you don't, do you?"
Helena shook her head.
"I would never hurt you, angel."
"I don't think you're bad Helena. Not really."