A/N: I expected that some of you wouldn't like the telepathy thing, but that's why it only happens once in this story. :) Thank you for all your reviews, by the way. :)

Note to inlovewithchris: Sorry, I did not mix up Ben and Alec's designations at the end of Chapter 1; the officer was referring to the Ben's picture on the screen, not Alec. You probably thought of it the other way round.

Different And The Same

Chapter 2: Parallel Paths

The year that we turned 12, they introduced a new class. Common Verbal Usage.

The next year, when we were 13, we found a use for that class.

Solo missions.

"X5-494!"

"Present, sir!"

"Proceed to Briefing Room 3 for your mission brief."

"Yes, sir."

I walked out of our barracks; the officers had moved us to this barracks when we were 11. It didn't look any different from our earlier barracks, though. It was still all grey, with a row of beds on either side of the door, and three "Mission", "Duty", and "Discipline" placards on each wall. Possibly the only difference was that the beds were larger.

And we didn't wear those grey gowns anymore. Now we wore grey shirts, long pants with patches of white grey and black, and black boots, like the officers' boots, only ours were smaller.

I knocked on the door of Briefing Room 3.

When I was told to, I entered, and automatically saluted the officer sitting behind the desk in the small, windowless room.

"At ease, soldier."

I stood with my feet apart, and he spoke again.

"Your first solo mission?"

"Yes, sir."

He cleared his throat appreciatively.

"All right then, listen. The target is a businessman named David Andrews." He showed me a picture. "However, your primary objective lies with his son," he held up another picture, "James Andrews. You have to gain the boy's trust first, to prevent suspicion on the older Andrews' part. This will then lead to the secondary objective. Termination of the target. Simple enough?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. This is his address," he pushed a slip of paper towards me, "and this is a picture of the apartment complex." I quickly committed the picture of the tall building to memory.

"You will be posing as the son of a couple who have just moved in, on Andrews' floor. In the event of any need, two officers will be standing by in 'your family's' apartment to act as your parents. Your alias is Marcus Owen. There is a van on the ground floor which will take you to the sector that the apartment complex is located in. From there, locate the building, and first report to the two officers posing as your parents in apartment number 20-14. From there, your mission commences. Every night, you will return to Manticore to report. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Proceed back to your barracks; you'll be given a change of clothes there. After that, make your way downstairs."

"Yes, sir." I saluted and left.

When I got back to the barracks, it was empty. I guessed that my teammates must have gone for their own individual mission briefings.

The new clothes that I was given…they were strange colours.

The shirt was…the only place where I'd seen that colour was in blood. The shirt was the colour of blood. That colour that was so dark that it was almost black. And the trousers were like the colour of the sky, but much darker. I was given new footwear too. These were smaller than my boots, and they didn't make as much noise. They were grey. That made me feel more comfortable. I knew the colour grey. I was familiar with it.

When I got into the black van downstairs, one of the officers thrust a map of the specific sector into my hands. I located the building on the map and memorised the fastest route there from the sector checkpoint where I would be dropped off.

The van drove off, leaving me alone, just inside the sector gate.

I stood there, not quite…understanding what I was seeing.

There were so many colours. Colours that I'd never seen before. The sky looked so much bigger than I remembered it. The air smelled, tasted different.

It looked so different from Manticore.

Then again, of course it did.

This was the world Outside. Filth and degradation.

Manticore was pure. Manticore was better.

Wrinkling my nose in disgust, I started on the route that I'd planned.

There were all kinds of…clutter on the street. Sometimes, I couldn't even see the ground.

Manticore's floors were never dirty.

The world Outside was one of complete disorder. There didn't seem to be any routine that people followed; no common objective in mind; they were just milling around, talking a lot, going their own different ways. There was only one thing about these people that held my attention.

Their hair.

Manticore had only stopped giving us monthly haircuts just last year. Before that, our hair had always been closely shaved. Now, the females were allowed to keep their hair up to shoulder-length. The males still kept it short, but not as short as before.

I reached a hand up to touch my hair as I walked.

My hair was dark brown and I had to keep it neat; it seemed to get messy very easily. 621's hair was very different from mine. His hair was light instead of dark; it was the same colour as the sun. It was straight, but very often got in his face if he ran. But he would usually just push it out of his face, and it didn't get as messy as mine did.

I stood in front of the apartment complex. I looked up, examining it. It matched the picture that the officer had shown me.

I went in and reported to the two officers. They said that they'd inform Manticore that I had arrived.

Then I proceeded further down the corridor.

The walls were all different light and dark browns…I knew the colour brown. I'd seen it on trees. And the lights were like 621's hair, the colour of the sun. And they were small, sitting on long white sticks that were mounted on the walls. Not like the big, long, white tubes of light on the ceiling in Manticore.

I came to apartment number 20-21.

I knocked, and a man opened the door.

'The target is a businessman named David Andrews.'

And this man matched the picture that I'd been shown.

He was the target.

"Can I help you?" he asked, looking down at me.

I smiled.

"I just moved in, actually," I told him. "My parents are busy, so I'm just wandering around. I'm Marcus Owen." I held out my hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Marcus," he smiled back as he shook my hand, then winced at a loud noise coming from inside the apartment. "James! The study's out of bounds!" he turned to shout. He turned back to me. "Just my son," he explained.

"Your son?" I remembered my primary objective. I tried to see past him. "Is he my age?"

"He's going on twelve. Do you want to come in? It'd be better than standing out there," he chuckled.

"If you say so," I stepped into the house as he closed the door behind me.

His apartment was very bright. Large, glass windows, facing another, shorter, apartment complex. I could see its roof from his apartment.

"James! Someone for you to meet!" he called.

A boy ran into the room.

The primary contact.

"Never seen you around before," he said as he looked at me.

"That's 'cause I just moved in," I smiled. I was starting to get the hang of smiling. "I'm Marcus."

"James," he replied.

"Well," the older Andrews began, "if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my work now." And he left us.

"Dad's always busy," James told me. "Come on, now that you're here, maybe you could keep me company."

He led me into the living room.

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

"You're a year older'n me. Here." He handed me a control pad. And we spent the next two hours, playing what he called a video game.

"Boy, you're good at this," he said when we'd finished. "You've really never played this before?"

"Never. But the situations given in this simulation are unrealistic. And real gunfire does not sound like that."

"You're really into this military stuff, huh?"

"You could say that."

"So, what does your dad do?"

"My parents are teachers."

"Both?"

I nodded.

"Mum left Dad years ago. I don't see her much. I don't even know what she works as."

"Marcus!" his father poked his head into the living room. "Do you want to stay for dinner?"

"Sure."

It went on like that for five days. When James got back from school, I'd already be in the apartment waiting for him. His father would let me in. He worked from home.

James and I would talk, play his video games, watch TV, or do whatever caught his interest that afternoon.

"Primary objective has been accomplished, sir."

"You're certain of that, 494?"

"Positive, sir. I am allowed free run of the Andrews' apartment without raising suspicion. Permission to begin secondary objective, sir?"

"Permission granted, 494."

It had been six days since I first walked into the Andrews' apartment.

I was carrying a bag that day.

In the bag were the weapons that I'd requested to complete my mission.

An unloaded crossbow. An arrow for the crossbow. About ten feet of cable. A pistol. I hadn't requested a silencer for the gun. I wanted it to make noise.

The officers had approved of my planning for the final stage of the mission.

There were neighbours who knew that I came to the apartment everyday and didn't leave until very late, so I might become a prime suspect if I left the apartment after killing them. So that left me with another alternative. To cover my tracks.

"Hey, Marcus." James was motioning me into his father's study. "Look what I found. One of Dad's old books about the meanings of names."

I feigned interest.

" 'Marcus' means 'Of Mars, god of war'," he read from the book. "And 'Owen' means 'young warrior'." He looked up at me. "No wonder you're so into this war stuff; both your first and last names have stuff about war in them."

"I didn't know."

Maybe Manticore had specially picked those two names for me. Maybe they'd just thought it up, pulled it out of thin air. Whichever it was, I'll never know.

I waited for night to fall. After dinner, I went into Andrews' study.

He looked up.

"Didn't hear you coming. Where's James?"

"In the bathroom, sir."

"I see. You're leaving now?" I usually left after dinner, you see.

"Not really." I casually pulled out the gun from behind my back and hefted it in my gloved right hand. I knew that he wouldn't suspect anything.

"Nice toy," he said. "Looks pretty lifelike."

By this time, I'd learned that my age was an asset. The target didn't suspect that I was capable of extreme violence because he thought I was young.

"It's much more lifelike than you think, sir." Then from where I was standing, I aimed at his forehead, and the sound of a gunshot rang through the apartment.

I heard the sound of running feet. James burst into the study behind me, as I lowered the gun.

"What was that?!" he asked.

I knew that he was referring to the sound of gunfire.

I turned to face him, carefully keeping the gun concealed.

"James, do you want to know what real gunfire sounds like?"

I raised the gun and fired, all in one motion. A neat, round hole appeared in his forehead.

I don't think he had the chance to hear that gunshot.

I tossed the gun onto the floor and moved over to the glass windows. The gunshots would have been heard, just like I wanted them to be.

Standing in front of the large glass windows, I drew back my arm and smashed one, clearing a man-sized hole in it.

I took out the crossbow, attached one end of the cable to the arrow, loaded the crossbow, and fired. It hit the roof of the short, neighbouring apartment building, and snagged onto something.

I wound the other end of the cable around one of the pillars in the living room, making sure that the cable was taut. I left the crossbow on the floor, next to the shattered window.

I heard people in the corridor. Just like I'd planned.

I picked up my bag and squeezed myself into a corner of the living room, where I was easily hidden by Andrews' TV and stereo system.

I sat there, listening to the voices.

The door crashed open.

"I heard gunshots, and then-Oh my God!" a woman's voice.

"Ma'am, step outside, please." A male voice.

Footsteps approached my location.

"Hey, Tom! There's someone here!"

The stereo system was pushed aside.

"It's a kid. Hey…are you okay? Do you know what happened here?"

"Don't think he knows anything, Tom. Probably hid there when the killer came in and wasn't seen by the psycho. Looks like he's traumatised."

"Tom" looked around the apartment.

Escaped through there, I guess." He nodded at the window that I'd smashed.

"Yeah. Come on, hand him to me. We've got an ambulance waiting downstairs."

He carried me downstairs, put me in the ambulance, and when the ambulance started moving, I sat up on the stretcher.

"Report, 494," one of the "medics" said.

"Mission accomplished, sir."

"Well done," he smiled at me. "Your mission planning was…well, to put it simply, creative, I must say."

"Thank you, sir," I smiled back.

Up till the year that I turned 16, I remained CO of my group of X5s. I lost three teammates to the seizures, and two to psychosis, before I became CO. After I became CO, I lost another five to incompetence. Those five had either failed their solo missions or were too careless or over-confident in field exercises.

Anyway, they separated us when we were 16, saying that we were old enough to be independent.

We were moved to individual quarters; needless to say, they were much smaller than the barracks than I'd grown up sleeping in.

By the time we were separated, 621 and I were in the lead of our group of X5s; we had completed the most solo missions.

Around this time, I also began having doubts about the world Outside.

From what I'd seen, it may have been mostly filth, but most people tried to keep their living quarters clean. And I remembered a word that I'd first heard on my third solo mission, when I was 15.

The target's wife had held her daughter close for a brief second when she was leaving for school, and said, "I love you", which the daughter then repeated back to her.

This was an action that I didn't understand, since it didn't seem to have any obvious purpose, but what confused me even more were the words that the target's wife spoke.

On the night of my first day on that mission, I'd lain awake in my bed at Manticore.

"Why aren't you asleep?" 621 had asked me from his bed next to mine.

"I was," I'd lied. "You woke me up."

"You were not. Your breathing patterns were at normal speed, not the slower speed that they'd be if you were asleep."

Silence.

"621, do you remember a word called 'love' from Common Verbal Usage?"

"No. But I've heard it before."

"On solo missions?"

"Yes."

"No one says it in Manticore."

"No."

"Why?"

"We're soldiers. We're not in positions to discuss the merits of our superiors' behavioural patterns."

"I'm starting to wonder, 621. Is the world Outside really as bad as the officers make it out to be?"

"Watch your mouth, 494. You'll get solitary for asking questions like that."

621 was right, I knew that. So I didn't ask the officer who taught Common Verbal Usage, the meaning of the word 'love'.

Maybe I should have.

If I had, maybe he would have warned me that 'love' was a weakness. But then again, if he'd told me that, I would never have learnt for myself that it was also a strength.

One person taught me all that, and she never used any words to explain it.

Of all people, it had to be my primary contact on a mission.

Of all people, it had to be Rachel Berrisford.

I was 18 on that mission. When it ended, they had me re-educated. 'Brainwashed' is the common word, I guess.

I had it drilled into my head, all over again, that the world Outside was filth and degradation, and that I was a superior being, a perfect soldier, created by Manticore. I never wondered about the world Outside anymore after that.

I spent two months in re-indoctrination.

Then I walked into an Advanced Combat class one day, and was paired off with a familiar face.

X5-621.

"The world Outside softened you, 494?" he sneered at me as we circled.

"Shut up, 621."

"You're not the CO that I had for seven years, 494. We were the best team within our group when we were still together. Because you and I were the best, 494. But not anymore. You've forgotten what you are. You belong in the world Outside. You're filth."

"Shut up-"

I threw a punch at him, but my right leg suddenly gave out under me. I tried and found that I couldn't stand on it.

I didn't understand what was going on.

I noticed 621 smirking.

I wanted to get up and whack the smirk off his face.

But I couldn't and I didn't know why.

I thought that was bad. Until the stabbing pain in my neck came.

That hurt so badly that I started shaking.

Then I realised what was happening.

I was shaking. I'd had seizures before, all of us did, but most of us had them in the night when the officers weren't around to take us away.

But now I was having a seizure in plain view of everyone!

621 knelt down beside me.

"I told you, 494. You belong in the world Outside. You're weak. You're inferior."

NO!!

I'd lost three teammates to the seizures before I was CO; I didn't want them to take me away!

And then I heard it. A voice…that sounded like an echo.

'Don't let them take me…'

"Don't let them take me," I repeated after it.

"Bye, 494," 621 replied. He looked past me. "They're coming to take you," he smirked.

This couldn't be happening. I'd always been a good soldier!

'Only the best soldiers get to go to the Good Place.'

I felt strong arms lift me off the floor and drag me away.

'Where no one gets punished.'

I saw the ceiling lights of Manticore.

'Where no one yells at you.'

I saw the door to the infirmary.

'And no one disappears.'

My eyes snapped open. It was strange, because I didn't remember closing them.

"You're awake," someone observed. My head whipped around to the side.

It was one of the doctors.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The nerves in your leg were sending pain impulses to your brain; we're not sure why, though, and there was a muscular spasm in your neck. But you're fine. You can get back to your quarters now."

She walked away.

I sat up slowly, not quite trusting my legs to hold me up if I stepped off the bed.

As I was wondering whether or not to get off the bed, I heard the infirmary door open.

"Is 494 still here?" a male voice asked.

"He's about to leave, actually, to go back to his quarters. He's perfectly healthy." The female doctor's voice.

"How do you define 'healthy' when the subject in question is a transgenic freak, anyway?" a second voice, also male. It sounded like one of the guards around the place.

"That's for me to know," the doctor snapped. "I'm just telling you that he's not going to the lab. He's fine."

"We've got our orders. He's coming with us, whether he's fine or not." The first voice again.

There was a frustrated sigh from the doctor.

"494?" she called. "Are you still there?"

I stepped out from behind the screen, pulling my grey shirt on.

There were two soldiers standing in the doorway. The doctor was standing in front of them, watching me as I approached, with a strange expression on her face.

She looked…apologetic.

Her hand squeezed my shoulder.

"There's nothing wrong with you, 494. You'll be okay."

I turned to look at her, confused.

"Come on, 494. You're coming with us," the first soldier said.

They walked on both sides of me, escorting me through the maze of corridors. Soon, we were walking through a part of Manticore that I'd never seen before. We came to a stop outside a door that was labelled "Psych. Department".

When we walked in, I saw a man standing just inside the room, leaning against a desk. I recognised him as an officer; I'd seen him at a few training sessions before.

"Sir," he looked up at me when I spoke, "permission to speak freely, sir."

"Go ahead," he nodded.

"Sir, may I know what's going on, sir?"

He sighed.

"Do you remember 493, 494?"

"I…Yes, sir."

"493 was terminated about an hour ago. Before he was terminated, we found evidence that he was…an anomaly. He was…unstable. Since both of you are twins, you're here for psychological observation to make sure that you don't have the same problem that he did."

"Sir, the medical officer mentioned that there was nothing wrong with me, sir."

"Not physically." He sighed again. "Not physically, of course. How could you have any physical defects? You're the most perfect X-series that I've ever created all these years…" he mumbled.

"Sir?"

"Nothing, soldier. Just a bit of mindless rambling."

He left. Then the scientists started their tests.

When I was back in my quarters that night, I was exhausted. Mentally exhausted.

Before then, I'd never known that there were different kinds of exhaustion.

"What're the numbers on this card, 494?" The scientist flashed the card at me quickly before concealing it.

"8-9-5-1-5-3-2-6-0-4-7-5-8-3-6-0-0-9-2."

"How many dots are there, 494?" A mosaic of black dots of various sizes winked on the screen and then quickly winked off again.

"392."

Before I fell asleep, I heard the voice again.

'And when you wake up in the morning, you can stay in bed as long as you want.'

I'd never heard this voice before, but I could tell that it vaguely matched a voice that I'd last heard when I was nine years old.

493.

I knew what 493 was talking about. In that Advanced Combat class, his voice had also mentioned a Good Place that he seemed to know of. It didn't sound like he was talking to me, though. It sounded more like this had been recorded and was now being played back in my head.

'You can stay in bed as long as you want.'

Really, 493? Is the Good Place like that?

Is that your Good Place?

If I had a Good Place, mine would be different.

In my Good Place, you would be allowed to love people.

I understand what love is, 493.

Did you understand it, 493?

'I'm not 493 anymore. I'm Ben now.'

It doesn't matter what you're called. I loved you, I did.

But now you've left me alone again.

Have you ever loved me, 493?