The twins were gathered in the penthouse living room, seated on the comfortable couch. Max had sent Zane and Jondy out on errands. There were still loose ends she was concerned about and she needed all possible information. So Teli and Tye waited for her, the view of the skyline made brilliant by the noon sun.
Teli was fiddling with the coasters on the coffee table with a mindless intensity, concentrating on pushing them around to make different patterns. Tye rose and walked over to gaze out the window, amazed at the different perspective a little height could give. From this vantage point, the city looked nothing like the run-down dump he had passed through only hours before.
Tye looked over at Teli as she continued playing with the coasters in front of her. He was dying to ask her about what her life had been like before the recent events, but kept hesitating. He had the feeling she was trying to avoid thinking about the people she had left behind, which he could understand. After all, he was doing exactly the same thing. If he slipped, and started to think about home, his parents, Aliana. . . Tye turned abruptly back to the window, concentrating once again on what was taking Max so long.
"What?" Teli asked as if she had misheard something. Tye turned back towards her, looking mildly confused.
"I didn't say anything." He stated. Teli looked almost disappointed.
"That's odd." Teli replied slowly. "I could've sworn you said something, or were about to ask a question." Tye shook his head in the negative. "Oh, well," She said with a small shrug, returning to her coaster patterns. They should be talking, but there were things they both needed to know before they could fully open up. Though, from the moment Teli had seen her brother, she had felt like even though they had spent years apart, she still knew him well. Teli looked up once more. Her brother's eyes were again focused on the window.
"Yes, I'm sure." Tye replied, not looking away from the skyline. Teli shut her mouth, the words 'are you sure' not spoken. She hadn't even had a chance to ask them. He must've expected her to ask, she concluded. Maybe he'd had brothers or sisters back where he had lived and knew how to deal with questions before they were asked. Brian had always managed to ask every question he could come up with just to aggravate her, Teli remembered sadly. She swallowed the lump in her throat, focusing on placing the last coaster just so on the table in front of her.
"I wonder what's taking Max." Teli mumbled, settling back into the couch cushions. Tye shrugged in sympathetic silence, glancing anxiously towards the hall. They both wanted answers, and had come far to get them.
"She's right here." A voice called from the next room. Teli smiled at the older woman's casual use of her heightened hearing. Teli still hadn't quite gotten used to it. Max stepped into the living room, a soft smile on her face. As she sat down across from them, the twins watched a small shadow of worry fade from her eyes. Though a slight nervousness remained.
Max looked at Teli and Tye for a moment. She had a lot to tell them, and not all of it was going to be easy to hear, but they had been kept in the dark for long enough. The time had come for them to learn the answers.
"So, where would you guys like me to start?" Max asked softly, taking a deep breath. The twins looked at one another, each thinking the same thing: Manticore. It rang like a spoken word between them, though neither said it aloud. Max waited patiently, sorting all her memories and preparing for a long explanation. Tye looked back to her first.
"Manticore." He said simply. "What was it and what happened to it?" Teli nodded, affirming the words her brother spoke. Though they both knew some facts about Manticore, both wanted to understand it in full. Max pursed her lips for a moment, and then nodded slowly.
"Okay. Manticore." She paused, unsure of where to start. "Well, as you may or may not have figured out, Manticore was a government-funded facility that specialized in genetic engineering. They were creating soldiers, transgenic super soldiers. We were designed to be faster, stronger, and more intelligent then any other soldiers in the world. Each of us is worth millions to the right bidder." Max paused for a moment. Both Teli and Tye were listening intently, but nothing had seemed a surprise to them yet.
"Manticore was on its way to the top force in the American military. But then two things happened in 2009. First, 12 X5s, their proudest achievement, escaped. Zane, Jondy and I were a part of that unit that escaped. We've lived most of our lives on the run, afraid of going back to the nightmare that was Manticore. Then, the Pulse hit. National chaos, destroyed computers, all the wealth of this country swallow down in one disastrous gulp. Manticore and its funding was shoved onto the back burner. They were given enough to survive, enough to produce a few X6s, but nothing near what they had been given before. Needless to say, the Pulse helped us escape for good, and for a long time, none of the escaped X5s were caught." A shadow of sorrow crossed Max's face. Faces flashed before her eyes; Brin, Ben, Tinga, Zack... Max shook the memory away and continued on.
"Later, in 2019, Manticore's chain of command was disrupted. Elizabeth Renfro replaced the director, Donald Lydecker, whom we had run from for half our lives. We were tired of running by that point, Zack and I, and I'm sure many of the others. Four of us went in to take Manticore down. We went in and blew up their DNA lab, hoping that this act would cripple Manticore permanently. But it didn't, and Zack and I were taken by our enemy." Again, Max cut her words short. Images of that mission flashed before her eyes, the sound of her heartbeat seemed to echo in her mind.
"What happened then?" Teli asked quietly, sensing that Max needed to be pulled back into the present, out of the darkness that seemed to cloud over her eyes. "Why didn't it work?" Max shook her head and smiled softly at Teli.
"Well, I spent the next six months in Manticore, believing Zack to be dead. We were all shipped from the Wyoming facility to the Seattle facility, seemed that was their original sight anyway. In the end, Renfro came to trust me, or rather, she had to trust me, I was the only one who knew who and where Eyes Only was." Max paused, seeing the surprised looks.
"Eyes Only?" They both asked in sync. Max smiled.
"That's another story, which, I'm sure we'll get to next time." The twins nodded and Max continued. "Anyway, to shorted the story a little, Renfro sent me out to kill Eyes Only, instead I turned around and let everyone out when they tried to incinerate their own place of operations."
"So Manticore doesn't exist anymore?" Tye asked, unclear as to why they would destroy the building and everyone in it.
"The building is gone, the idea is mostly dead. But Renfro survived, how I'm not sure, she was shot right in front of me. But... She gathered a few personal staff, computers, and a few loyal soldier and took her pet project underground." Max looked from twin to twin, wondering if they followed.
"Pet project?" Teli asked, glancing from Max to Tye and back. The pieces were falling into place. Max nodded slowly.
"Us?" Tye asked, half shocked, looking quickly to Teli, a protective expression crossed his face. Max nodded again. The sun was lowering in the sky, shedding a golden light into the room, lighting the faces of the little group. For a while, no one spoke.
"Why us?" Teli finally ventured. She knew it was the question in the front of Tye's mind as well. Max smiled sadly, looking between Teli and Tye.
"Because of your mother." Max answered slowly. Both twins looked directly into her eyes, she could almost hear their pleas to know of her. "Her name was Tinga." Max started with a slow breath. "She was my older sister. Escaped with us in '09, but through an ugly twist of fate she traded her freedom for the freedom of her son, whom Lydecker had infected with nanocytes." Max watched, as their eyes grew large. "Yes, you have a brother, well, a half brother. His name is Case. But he's not quite like you, he wasn't trained to be a soldier, and he's half human, we don't fully know what he inherited from Tinga except that he has a very high level of intelligence." Max smiled slightly at the twins' shocked and eager expression, and then continued. "When Manticore discovered this Tinga became a prime target. Never before had crosses between human and X5 produced such a child. Something in Tinga's DNA allowed her to pass on her traits to her children." Max glanced from Tye to Teli. There was no question of their inheritance, the question wasn't if they had Tinga's power, it was what had been supplemented to it.
"So, our mother traded her freedom for the life of Case, they took her in and did experiments on her which resulted in us?" Tye asked, summing it all up as best he could. Max smiled sadly, if only it was that easy. The image of Tinga suspended lifeless, in greenish liquid haunted her mind.
"Lydecker thought she'd escaped, but she hadn't, Renfro had her. Renfro had her tested and probed until she was worn out. Zack and I didn't find her until it was too late." Max's voice broke; a tear welled up in her eye. "She died. I didn't get to her in time..." She broke off and starred down at the carpet. The twins exchanged a glance, unsure of how to sympathize. After a moment, Max pulled herself back together and continued.
"But Renfro learned a lot from her, enough to create you two, but only you two." Silence filled the room as Max dealt with lingering shards of the still painful memory. Teli glanced at Tye, then rose slowly and stepped around the coffee table to Max. She knelt beside her chair and took her hand.
"But you saved us, I remember. Tells us how you found us Max." Teli whispered. Tye nodded from the couch, eager to fill in the blank places in his memory. Slowly, Max nodded, and took a breath before she continued.
"Renfro showed me two test tubes when I was first back at Manticore. That's how I first found out. When I got out, letting everyone else out in the process, I thought Renfro was dead and that nothing had come of those test tubes. But I eventually discovered that this wasn't true. You were four years old when I finally found out about you. Renfro must've taken whatever surrogate carried you with her when she escaped and you two were born in June of 2020. From there you were trained like any Manticore soldier, Renfro wouldn't change a routine that had worked so well before. You were to be the foundation on which she built her empire. Who knows what her final intentions were, or are."
"And then you came for us, saved us and put us in the homes we grew up in." Tye finished. Max nodded, meeting Tye's grave eyes.. "But, then why make us forget what we were, and why did you separate us?" He asked, almost sharply. This was an important point to Tye, something he wanted to understand clearly.
"I believe in family, Tye." Max explained. "I didn't want to separate you. But facts were that you two were the sole focus of Renfro and her ambitions. If I had left you together the probability that news of a pair of adopted twins with dark hair, tan skin, and green eyes would've reached her, and reached her quickly. I couldn't risk that. Apart you blended in, you were safer. And I knew someday the time would come when I would need to call you back, as I have done this summer, and then you would be reunited again." Max's eyes starred into Tye's, willing him to understand. Tye held the contact for a moment, then looked down.
"But the memories, how did you make us forget everything?" Teli asked from where she now sat, on the floor near Max.
"Manticore taught you many things Teli," Max answered, softly smiling down at her, "one of them was how to forget information. Zack used it once, to protect the X5s, I used it to protect you. I simply ordered you to go through the process that would push all prior things into forgetfulness. Mind you, you did not fully forget, those memories are still in your mind, as I'm sure you've discovered, but by making you forget I thought I was giving you the chance at a normal life. Something we never really had." The sun was now setting behind the Seattle skyline. Tye gazed into its harsh orange light, letting the answers absorb into his mind. Nothing had shocked him, but all the same, it was a lot to learn in one afternoon. Teli tucked her knees up under her chin and glanced briefly out the window. At least it all made sense now, or mostly. The trio passed a few minutes in silence.
A light knock on the doorframe interrupted their thought processes. A gentle, male voice spoke to them; his eyes glanced between Teli and Tye, and then settled warmly on Max.
"Dinner is ready, if you guys are done in here." He said softly. Max looked up and immediately smiled.
"Thanks Logan, we'll be there in a minute." Teli watched Logan shoot Max a concerned look, to which she responded with a smile and a slight shrug. At that moment the doorbell rang and without waiting for a response, Zane entered followed by Jondy. Max rose quickly and looked towards the door.
"Hello, hello. We're back from our day long tramp around the city..." Zane called in a rough tone as he entered. Jondy shook her head, almost laughing as her brother made a beeline for the food. Max caught Jondy's eyes with a questioning look. Jondy's expression went blank and she shook her head ever so slightly. Max nodded and turned back to the twins.
"You guys ready to eat?" Max asked, offering her hand out to help Teli up. They both nodded, Teli accepted the hand and rose. Then the twins followed Max, and their noses, to their first dinner together in 11 years.