A/N: This chapter has parts where Max narrates instead of Alec; please don't get confused when that happens.

Different And The Same

Chapter 3: When The Road Merges

It was that time of the month again.

All right, don't get me wrong; I know what that phrase means in the world Outside.

"Report, X5-494!"

"Present, sir!"

What I mean is that it's that time of the month when the officers assign you a breeding partner.

"X5-452."

' "X5-452!"

Traitor.'

"Sir, permission to speak freely, sir."

The officer looked up from his clipboard and raised an eyebrow at me.

"You have a problem with your breeding partner already, 494?"

"No, sir. It's just that…isn't X5-452 one of the twelve that escaped in '09?"

"Right you are. Is that a problem?"

'Actually, yes, sir. You see, she spent ten years in the world Outside; I could catch something from just being in the same room as her. I don't want to be anywhere near her. She's inferior.'

"No, sir."

"Good. Report, X5-224!" he moved onto the next soldier.

Oh, I get it.

I'm inferior, so I get the inferior goods too, is that it?

Heck, whatever.

One of the guards opened the cell door and I caught a first glimpse of her. So this was one of the notorious twelve.

I knew that X5-599, X5-656 and X5-734 had been recaptured, but I'd never had the chance to see them. Right then, X5-452 was the only one of the escapees that I'd met, and-

"Ben?" she suddenly said.

"What?" I asked.

"You look like someone that I used to know."

There was sadness in her voice. A sadness that I'd heard somewhere before.

Wait a minute. "Ben"?

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

"My designation's 494."

"His was 493. You must be twins."

Yeah, we are. Oh sorry, I mean, "were". We were twins.

493's dead.

He died, got himself out of his own personal hell, and got me into hell, all at the same time.

Go ahead; spend half a year in Psy. Obs. When you get out of it, you'll find that even describing it as "hell" is too mild.

But then again, we still are twins, aren't we? Even if he's dead, he is still my brother, isn't he?

"What the hell was that?!" I yelled at her.

"The only kind of physical contact that we'll be having," she snapped, explaining the kick to my stomach.

Fine. I could live with that.

That same night, in my quarters, I didn't know why, but I found myself lying awake, trying to place where I'd heard that kind of sadness before.

The sadness sounded familiar…

'I'm leaving, 494. Escaping. Our CO says we have to do it.'

There. In that last sentence.

'Our CO says we have to do it.'

When I was nine, that was all that I heard.

Strangely enough, ten years later, in that same sentence, I could hear another meaning somewhere behind 493's last words to me.

I still heard, 'Our CO says we have to do it.'

But now, I also heard, 'I don't mean to, but I have to. I'm sorry. Please understand.'

Well, now that I did understand, it was kinda late for that, wasn't it?

493 was already dead.

Not that it was any fault of mine.

We'd been warned that the world Outside wasn't any paradise. It was his fault; he was stupid enough to blindly follow his damned CO's orders.

Well, look where it got you, 493.

It got you to a place where I wish I could be, that's where.

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

Are you in your Good Place, 493?

You can sleep for as long as you want now, can't you, 493?

But you left me behind; I still have to wake up every morning once the lights come on, I still have to have people yell at me, and jump to attention and stop breathing if an officer so much as looks at me.

You left me behind.

It's what you've done all your life.

You've always left me behind.

***

I don't know what I'm feeling right now.

I'm watching Manticore being razed to the ground, and I'm not sure of what I'm feeling.

Is this what it felt like for you, 493?

Were you scared of the world Outside, but happy that you were leaving Manticore, at the same time?

Why did you leave?

Had your CO seen something that convinced him that Manticore wasn't all as good as the officers made it out to be?

What made the twelve of you leave the only home, the only world, that you'd ever known and throw yourselves into the world Outside?

Into a world that would see you as freaks, simply for the fact that you were made, and not conceived?

Did you feel that you were free, right away?

I don't.

I don't feel a sense of freedom.

I may be happy that Manticore is gone; the stuff of my nightmares doesn't exist anymore; but like it or not, Manticore was my home.

Right now, I don't feel free.

Right now, I just feel lost.

I'm just a few steps behind you, 493.

It's my turn, 493. I'm leaving. Finally.

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

Yeah, I almost forgot.

I'm not 494 anymore. I'm Alec now.

***

Post-apocalyptic Seattle is a real picture in the morning.

Nothing but trash and tarmac for as far as the eye can see.

Not that you can see very far when it's raining, though.

I may be a genetically enhanced, perfect soldier, but I do know what makes a perfect lie-in.

And when it's raining outside, while you're indoors, in bed…now those are perfect conditions for a lie-in.

But then, there's work.

The world Outside doesn't think much of burglary as a source of stable income, and hey, the job came with a sector pass.

While getting out of bed, I noticed that I was already 10 minutes late. I spent quite some time in the shower; the water was cold, but I didn't mind; I have a tolerance for extreme temperatures, anyway.

After dressing, I looked out the window.

Still raining. And I was very late.

Hell, what did I care?

Watching a few raindrops meander down the other side of the glass, I shivered a little.

Was it just me, or was I feeling a bit nauseous?

'Call in sick,' the little voice known as "laziness" urged.

I picked up my cell phone.

Started dialling the number.

Then realised that something was wrong.

I couldn't seem to hold the phone steady.

Then it hit.

A sudden ripple of pain swept through me, knocking me to my knees, and the phone skittered away when I hit the floor.

My body shook uncontrollably.

Seizure.

A damn seizure.

I pulled myself along the floor towards my bed, where I'd left my jacket with a canister of Tryptophan in the pocket, the pain spreading to other parts of my body as I moved.

Just as I reached my bed, I came to a shocking realisation.

My supply of Tryptophan had been depleted a week ago, and I hadn't been able to locate the guy who'd managed to get me my last fix.

Which meant that I was out of Tryptophan.

My body started to shake even more violently. Maybe it was because of the fact that without the Tryptophan, the seizure was only getting worse; maybe it was because I was scared of what was going to happen to me without the Tryptophan.

I backed up against a wall and sat there, trying to control it, and failing pathetically. The more I tried to resist it, the worse it got.

After a while, my hands clenched and wouldn't unclench. My fingernails bit into and made deep crescent-shaped marks in the skin of my palm.

Then something dripped onto the back of my hand.

My nose had started to bleed.

My cell phone rang.

I reached over, trying to stretch far enough to reach it where it was lying near the end of my bed.

'Whoever you are, don't hang up…don't hang up, please….'

"H…hello?" I answered.

"Alec, you'd better be on your way to work," a familiar, irritated female voice said on the other side of the line.

"Max, look-"

"-'Cause we're already three men down, and the last thing we need is more overtime-"

"Max-"

"-and don't you give me a lame excuse for not coming-"

"Max!!"

She shut up then.

"Max…look, I…I need…Tryptophan…"

A pause.

"I'll be right over," I heard her say. "Just hang for a while, okay? Alec. Alec!"

"What?"

"I said hang in there!"

"I'm…trying."

***

"Alec!" I pounded on the door. "Open the door!" I pounded with my fists again, the canister of pills in my right hand rattling loudly as I did so.

Finally, I stepped back and shoved the door open.

I spotted him immediately, curled into a ball on his bed, and still convulsing.

"Alec?" I crossed the room quickly, and sat down beside him, shaking three pills into my hand at the same time. "Alec, it's Max, I'm here now…" I forced all three pills into his mouth and rubbed his throat to prompt the spontaneous swallow.

The pills went down, but the Tryptophan would need time to take effect.

I sighed, moved closer to him and cradled his head against me, hoping that it was giving some sense of comfort. Jondy used to do that…back at Manticore.

Alec could be a real pain at times; hell, most of the time, he had his head stuck so far up his ass that he could probably see out his mouth. But I guess we're all that we have. After all, we're both X5, even if we're not from the same group, and I have to admit, no one would understand an X5 better than another X5. Original Cindy tries, and my girl does come up to scratch, but there's no denying the fact.

I felt another series of violent tremors begin, and I looked down.

He looked just like Ben.

His dark lashes stood out against his pale skin, just like Ben's had when he was finally at peace. I gave his face a once-over. Ben's face was firmly imprinted in my mind, and I could tell that Alec's facial features mirrored his perfectly.

For a moment, I remembered the very first time that we'd met, back at Manticore.

I'd called him Ben.

He'd answered with "What?"

My heart had sunk.

Y'see, I'd thought that maybe Manticore had taken Ben, brought him back to life somehow, and then brainwashed him.

But right then, the "brainwashed" part hadn't mattered so much.

Ben was alive. That was all that had mattered at the time.

And for that brief moment, I was happy that Manticore existed. I was glad that this very place that was the bane of my life had been able to undo what I'd done.

Or so I'd thought.

Because in the very next instant, the bubble burst.

'My designation's 494.'

X5-494. Not X5-493.

He was Ben's twin. Not Ben.

When I caught a glimpse of his barcode, I'd almost cried.

Every single number was the same…except for the last one.

How could a difference of one number make so much difference?!

And later on, I wondered how both of them must've felt, being apart for so long.

Within my group of X5s, our ages were staggered; our birth dates spanned four years, with Zack as the oldest and I the youngest. We had been aware of the presence of a second group of X5s though; the X5s in that group were all born within the same year; they were all the same age.

I guess Manticore was experimenting to see if we responded better to authority if it was older, as in Zack's case.

I knew that Ben had been in our group ever since he was three. After I found out about Alec's existence, I'd wondered about the paradox of the two of them. They'd been in the same womb for nine months, growing, developing and changing, together. And after they were born, they'd spent most of their lives far apart, rather than together.

There was movement beneath Alec's closed eyelids.

Somewhere in his mind, Alec was thinking.

Maybe some old memory from Manticore had taken advantage of his present weakness to rear its ugly head of reminder at him.

***

Everything just seemed to fade.

My sense of touch went numb; every sound that I heard got more and more distant; my vision blurred and went dark.

I was helpless. Vulnerable. Weak.

Well, helpless and vulnerable, maybe. But "weak"…that thought's somewhat Manticore-inspired.

At Manticore, any inability to defend yourself was seen as weakness.

Then slowly, my senses returned.

The first thing that I became aware of was a very faint, tinkling noise.

I recognised it immediately.

A piano. It was the sound of a piano playing.

Wherever I was, it was very dimly lit. I walked in the direction of the sound of the piano, and suddenly found my surroundings very familiar.

I was walking down a corridor. The corridor outside Andrews' apartment. The first corridor that I'd walked in that wasn't all grey. My first solo mission.

The panes of wood on either side were varying shades of brown, darkening as they went down. The floor was parquet, and the candle-shaped lights which I had thought were "small lights on white sticks" when I was younger, were mounted on the walls near the ceiling.

The piano continued to play. The corridor continued to stretch. Until I saw a door, right at the end.

And when the door came into view, I recognised the song that was playing.

My song.

The very first piece that I'd learned to play.

I'd learnt it at Manticore.

My fingers touched the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open.

The room inside was dark, except for one spot, where a piano stood. That spot was lit in very bright, white light.

I walked over and sat down on the bench. Lifted my hands, touched the keys and ran my fingers over them.

Could I still play?

I hadn't touched a piano in a long time…Manticore hadn't allowed me anywhere near one after the Berrisford mission had been completed.

I pressed down on one key, then another, two more, and then the other hand joined in.

The piano in the background carried on playing, and soon I was matching it note for note.

Could I still play… That was a dumb question. Of course I could. I never forgot anything.

Sometimes I wish I could.

I could honestly say that I'd probably loved only three things in my life. And every one of them was taken away from me.

The first I ever loved was my brother. 493. Even if I hadn't known that it was "love" back then.

Rachel was the third.

Before Rachel and after 493, the second was the piano.

Sounds cheesy, doesn't it?

But look, you have to understand.

When I was told that I was going to have to learn to play the piano to meet minimum mission requirements, I hadn't known what a piano was.

But when I learned to play it, I found it fascinating.

Everything at Manticore was standardised, monotonous, an endless charade of "you-say-I-obey".

The piano had been a very different story for me.

So many different sounds…and each individual sound could vary on its own too: pressing lightly gave a soft note; striking hard gave a sharp, loud note. It could sound happy, sad, angry, or anything at all, depending on how I played it…

The way I saw it then, the piano could talk, but not in the same mode of communication that we knew. Not through language, or through hand signals, but through emotion. The piano broadcast its player's emotions through the sound that it produced.

I knew that Manticore considered emotion a weakness; I knew that better than anyone in my group; I remembered the slap that I'd received when I was three that had started to drill that rule into my head.

But hey, I never asked for emotion.

The predominant DNA in my blood is human; humans have emotion. Every living thing whose DNA I have, has emotion too. I don't think there's any way to separate emotion from any living thing that has free will.

I guess that's what Manticore tried to do. Take away our sense of free will, and do away with emotion at the same time.

They tried to make us perfect.

But if their idea of "perfect" meant "devoid of emotion", then they failed.

It's not our fault if we show emotion.

We were designed with emotion; they just didn't realise it when they did it.

Emotion isn't our fault. It isn't our mistake.

I just sat there and played…I missed the piano. While I played, I was reminded of Manticore. I couldn't help it; after all, that was where I'd learned to play, and it was where I'd learned every piece that I could play. I forgot that I was in some hazy world in the middle of nowhere.

"Hi, 494."

My fingers skidded on their way to find the next key, and I stood and whirled around, a loud, abrupt chord cutting the song short as I pressed on the keys behind me to steady myself. On a different level of conscious thought, I noted that the piano sounded just as surprised or shocked as I felt.

I stared at the person behind me. And I stared at what had been a dark, black room.

The dark room that I'd walked into had turned into the nursery back at Manticore.

Stiff cots in two rows, chained to the floor.

Harsh white light that shone through barred windows, throwing grid patterns on the cold ground and the thin grey sheets in each cot.

"You," I choked out as I stared at the person who had called my designation.

"Yeah. I'm you."

"No. You are not me, 493."

That's who he was.

He could tell me that he was some dreamlike persona of myself, but no.

I knew my twin brother when I saw him.