3 Years Later
"Anna!"
"Got it!"
The girl leaped into the air and swung her halberd, bisecting and crushing the target with the force of her attack. She landed on the ground, ready to move again.
Around them, dozens of targets jerked back and forth, rapidly changing direction. One of them would change color, and that was what they would have to strike.
"Another one!" Sakina shouted, thrusting out with her spear and scoring a 'bullseye' with her accuracy. The target fell back and the others continued moving.
It was the point of the exercise to get them used to shapes, foes, moving around them while too fast to see. Then, to symbolize the enemy stopping to attack, a single target would change color while the others did not. This improved their reflexes, as well as their ability to observe their environment and act as a team to cover a 360 degrees attack radius. The girls systematically took down every target until the exercise was completed. When the last object was destroyed, the sisters were left alone in the room, not even breaking a sweat.
"Excellent, girls. You improve every day. Take a break. We'll resume in fifteen minutes."
"Yes, Julia!" They responded in unison before leaving the training room and heading back to their recreation room. It didn't take long; there were a variety of training rooms in the facility and every day they were told which ones they were to go to. When they weren't busy training in a room, there were usually people cleaning up what they left behind and setting up a new exercise.
"Good job with the last one, Sakina. I wouldn't have been able to strike it that quickly."
"Well, my spear is lighter, so it's easier for me to move it fast. I don't know how you managed to get that one target just before another crossed over it."
"Because the halberd has a thick head, I can still catch the edge of a target with its outside. It wasn't as clean as I would have liked, but it worked."
Ever since Sakina had seen the topside world, her abilities had seemingly increased to be alongside Anna's. Similarly, her sister didn't try to jump ahead on things without her anymore. They had come to understand that two people working as a team at 100% were more effective and more efficient than two independent people working even harder than that. Years had been take off their imagined training time now, and the sisters had been told they would be finished before their next birthday.
"I'm going to have the hardest time with the pain test on Friday." Sakina admitted.
"They're tough. You have to come up with something that distracts you enough that the pain goes to the back of your head."
The pain exercise, aptly named, involved electrical signals being sent through their bodies to stimulate the pain centers of the brain. They had gradually built up in resistance, but it could be so taxing on their bodies. It was like anything else, though; once you experienced the same level for a long period of time, it became commonplace.
"Defense is up next, right?" The green-eyed sister asked, getting a drink of water.
"Yeah. Team defense. We just need to keep each other covered, and it shouldn't be too hard."
"When we get home I want to use the computer. Do you have anything you need to do on it?"
"No, I don't use it that much." Anna responded, stretching.
"You sure have been using it a lot, though. What do you do on there?"
"I'm learning programming. Well, kind of, anyway."
"Girls, are you ready?" Julia's voice asked from the intercom.
"Yes, Julia."
"The next room will be A-4."
"Alright, we'll be right there."
"Ah, home at last!" Anna exclaimed, tossing her backpack across the apartment living room, onto a couch.
"Your waterbottle was leaking earlier, wasn't it?" Sakina asked as she dropped hers onto the floor.
"Crap!"
Anna disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the room to take her bag off the couch.
"Whew, it didn't get on the cushions. Wait! My notebooks!"
As the younger sister tore through the contents of her backpack to either find the bottle or the notebooks, Sakina walked over to the desktop computer and turned it on.
"It's a good thing Kai isn't home. You know he doesn't like it when you move like that."
"Give it a rest; I know he wouldn't want me getting the couch wet. Darn... it's all soggy. Sakina, can I bother yours?"
"Sure. Help yourself."
Anna did so and found the notebooks she needed. As the girl was kneeling, with the books in her hands, though, something occurred to her.
"You know, I've never seen Kai move that fast, ever. Or anyone else, really."
"Me neither." Sakina responded, logging on.
"And we're stronger than everyone too."
"Yeah, I know."
"That doesn't bother you?" Anna asked, turning to look at her sister.
"It does. That's why I started learning how to.. um..."
"Hack?"
"You could call it that."
"What else would you call it?"
"Something that if Kai found out I was doing it, I might actually get in real trouble."
Anna stood up and walked over to her sister, gazing down at the computer screen. She didn't understand anything Sakina was doing, of course. Watching videos on youtube, looking up information on wikipedia, and things like that were about as far as her knowledge went. But she could tell that whatever Sakina was doing, it was serious business.
"So did you find out anything?"
"No, I'm not that good, to be honest. And their security is thorough. I don't know how long it could be before I would actually learn anything."
"Then why not just sneak into the building at night?"
"Are you crazy? We'd get caught."
"Not if we're careful. Aren't you curious? Not even Julia told us, and she's a scientist."
"Maybe it's an evolution thing."
"An 'evolution thing'? You know it can't be that simple. Maybe we're just superheroes."
"Because that's so much more reasonable."
"What's your explanation, then?"
Sakina gazed at the computer screen, thinking it over.
"Hasn't it been bothering you all this time? Our healing, strength, speed, the drinks that only we like? I know they must have a good reason for not telling us, but I need to know."
"What if we just wait until the training is over?"
"After that, we're leaving. We might never get the chance, again."
Sakina sighed and turned off the computer.
"You're always so pushy, Anna. Alright. Midnight?"
"Let's do it."
The twins shared a bedroom, so that had made it easier to coordinate when midnight came around. Sakina listened to hear if Kai was asleep, while Anna opened their bedroom window as quietly as possible.
"He's out."
"Okay, I've got the window."
For their mission the girls had secured their long hair into buns so they wouldn't draw attention, and decided to wear their training uniforms. The outfits were designed for ease of movement and had a grey palette, so they were the most practical option readily available. Beyond that, there wasn't much they had to take that would be useful. The two weren't spies, after all.
"We'll check it out. If we can get in then we can search. If not, we move as fast as we can to get back home. Hopefully Kai won't wake up before that."
They hopped down from the window and quietly made their way a couple yards down the sidewalk, before disappearing and leaving two blue after-images behind. The roadside buildings flashed by as the sisters made their way to the administration building. It was where Joel worked during the day, but as far as they knew there were no residence buildings attached to it, so it should be mostly vacant.
"Three stories tall. Where do you think we would find anything?" Anna asked quietly.
"If we're looking for files or servers, probably in the basement, I'd imagine."
"Hm. They're not going to have windows, we'll just have to get inside and find a stairwell."
Neither of the girls knew the building's layout, so they just found a window that wasn't too conspicuous and wrenched it open. Both sighed in relief when no alarm signaled afterward and slipped inside.
"Hand signals from now on, there might be guards." Anna whispered quietly. Sakina nodded and they made their way to the lobby. There was a staircase nearby, but only one that went up. Anna got Sakina's attention and pointed at the elevator, giving a questioning expression. The emerald-eyed girl considered it for a moment before shaking her head and indicating there might be a separate staircase. The girls searched the hallways until they found the stairwell they were looking for and quickly descended it. There was a short hallway, and then the ability to go straight or turn the corner to the right. They split up, and Anna went straight, Sakina right. As the amber-eyed twin walked down her hallway, however, she saw a flashlight aiming at a corner. The beam seemed to be getting narrower, which meant the guard was coming her way.
"Tall ceilings." She thought, moving as fast as she could towards the corner before leaping up onto the ceiling. Sinking her fingers into the concrete quietly was difficult, even with all of her training, but Anna needed to do it, so she managed. The guard walked right under her and stopped to survey the rest of the hallway.
"Come on, what is this, a movie or something?" She thought to herself, straining to stay in place.
Finally, he got a move on. Anna didn't worry about Sakina as his footsteps were audible now. She just hoped there would be more cover wherever her sister was.
The girl hopped down on the other side of the corner, landing on all fours so her weight would be less on each point, thus being as quiet as possible. A quick glance to make sure he wasn't coming back, and she was off. There were no signs of guards in the next room, though there were no lights on nor any windows, either. It would be difficult to see, but Anna could at least manage to find out what there was to see.
"It looks like an office for desk workers," she thought "I might not find any useful information in here, but perhaps an index or a passcode or something could be useful." She thought.
The girl had pretty good night vision, which was getting better now that she had been in significant darkness for a while. As such, she could easily move about the aisles of desks without knocking things over, and could even make out specific details in some cases.
"Hm, 'Head of Records Department', huh? Let's see what you've got in your desk."
She rummaged through various papers and binders, which were essentially logs of the various materials that would come in and go out of the facility, as well as in what quantities, on what days, and the like. That wasn't too useful though. Anna was about to move on when she found a log for "Indexed information" and opened it to the earliest date. The girl was surprised to see, before financial records, before staff listings, before the training program, the first record was of the digital conversion of a particular document, "Joel's Diary".
As Anna viewed the information, a japanese phrase she had learned from Kai popped into her head. It conveyed satisfaction upon the achievement of one's success, and she couldn't help but say it out loud.
"Yat-ta."
Sakina had successfully found the server room, as well as the hard-copy section. Any information they would need would be in here, so she wondered what Anna had found.
From what she could see, there weren't very many cabinets for hard copies, so it seemed that if they wanted to learn anything, it would have to be via computer files. The problem with that was Sakina was no hacker extraordinaire. The girl couldn't just make a server talk and say "you need this, this and that". Whatsmore, she didn't even have the capability to search the servers themselves; they would need a computer that was linked to the servers. And whatever one they might find, it was guaranteed to have some kind of password system.
"I might be able to figure out the password with what I know, but even then it will be like looking for a hundred kilobyte needle in terabytes worth of haystack." She thought, trying to decide what to do. The room was even darker than the hallway, so there was little concern of her being discovered by accident, but if they didn't know what to look for they were "dead in the water" so to speak.
"We could always try to get an idea of what we're looking for and come back another time, I guess. There isn't really any sign we broke in-"
Sakina reared around, instinctively getting ready for battle when she was surprised by a tap on the shoulder. She relaxed, though, upon realizing it was Anna.
"You scared me." Sakina whispered, noticing her sister had on that strange smile she often did when victorious.
"Joel's Diary. The hard copy. That's what we're looking for."
"Anna, Sakina?"
The sisters stirred, but didn't wake up. Several minutes later, though, when Kai entered the room, he managed to rouse them.
"Hey, my little amazons. You're going to be late." He half-joked, rubbing Sakina's shoulder.
As they regained consciousness, they took a couple of seconds, and then burst from their beds and began getting ready.
"Don't worry, if you're a just a couple minutes late, it should be fine."
"Sorry, Kai! We stayed up too late!" Anna apologized, grabbing her set of the apartment keys.
"You girls have been on time every day for years. I think it will be alright." He said.
"Um... sorry, but can we get changed?" Sakina asked, holding her uniform up in front of her.
"Oh, right. Sorry." Kai apologized, leaving their room and closing the girls' door.
"Well, that's kind of strange." He thought, walking towards the kitchen to make some breakfast.
"He didn't see it, right?" Sakina asked.
"No, I don't think so. It was mostly under the covers." Her emerald-eyed sister responded.
They had acquired Joel's Diary last night; a large, old book in hardcover which apparently had been in the family ever since the original Joel came to prominence. But they hadn't gotten gotten the chance to read it last night before returning home. By the time the twins did so, it was too late to read, and they went to bed.
"Maybe now we can figure some things out." Anna thought, grabbing the book and shoving it into her backpack before they left for training.