When I woke, I was alone in a studio apartment. I sat bolt upright on the futon on which I lay, and promptly fell off it to the floor with a loud thump. The sound echoed, confirming for me that the space in which I was in was quite vast. I stood up and looked around me.

It was less of an apartment than a warehouse floor, with rough wood floors and exposed brick walls, a wide open space separated off in places by tatami screens. This, the bedroom, was made up of a futon, a small bedside table, and some milk crates stacked one upon the other to create shelving. The room was impeccably clean, the clothes folded and ordered by type, and the floor was empty of offending laundry. Kind of like my room, I thought.

There was a pile of rocks balanced against each other next to the reading lamp on the bedside table. I reached out to pick one up, but stopped myself before I touched them, sensing that they had been placed in their formation for a reason. Kind of like a Japanese Zen rock garden.

Behind me on the brick wall against which the futon was placed was a large exotic looking tapestry. I touched it's edge- it wasn't fabric, but rice paper. There were Asian characters scratched across the paper, none of which were decipherable to me at a glance. I had taken a year of Japanese language when I was in my first year in high school, but all I had gleaned from it was the ability to say "Hello" and a knack for making origami hats.

Thinking about freshman year got me thinking about high school, which got me thinking quite vehemently, "What the fuck just happened to me?"

I didn't realize I had said those words aloud until I was answered by someone in one of the other areas of the apartment.

"You were compromised, that's what just happened."

The bodiless slightly British-accented voice was definitely coming from behind the tatami screen. I ducked lower and moved towards the opening in the screen.

I turned the corner, and saw something completely unexpected. A muscular mid-20's man was bent over in a particularly complex yoga pose wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. He stood on a purple yoga mat, and was covered in sweat. He looked up at me with bright blue eyes partially obscured by his long brown hair. He shifted his gaze from my eyes to my right hand, which was at my side.

"You can put that down, you know."

I didn't know what to say. I looked down at the gun in my hand, and realized that I was holding a fucking gun. I dropped it to the ground, and it's echo filled the space between the strange man and myself. My mouth gaping, I tried to regain composure.

"Where the hell am I?" I demanded.

In one quick fluid motion, the mysterious stranger stretched upward with outstretched hands, arcing his arms out wide until his palms connected directly above his head, bent his elbows so that his hands were clasped in prayer at his sternum, bowed, and let his hands fall to his sides. He whispered something I couldn't understand as he bowed. I saw the tattoo on his arm flash for a moment, and realized this was the man who had been in the car before.. I didn't know how long ago it had been.

Those big blue eyes connected with mine again. "You're in my apartment, and you're safe. I lost your friends miles away from here."

With apparent ease, despite the awkward moment, he lifted a towel off a rack on the other side of the room, and wiped his face. He draped it over his shoulders, and looked back at me over his shoulders. "Care for some water?" He asked as he poured some from a small pitcher on the table beneath the towel rack.

I was a bit frustrated at his easy attitude, and fired back, "No, I don't want water, I want answers. Who the hell were those guys? Why were they chasing me? And who the hell are you?"

He walked towards me with his cup of water, and I could see how finely sculpted his body was. "Slow down, one at a time. Why don't we have a seat, and talk about this in a more civilized manner?"

He was charming, and I was momentarily disarmed by his smile. This was all happening so fast, so smoothly, and I was forgetting to be shocked or surprised or scared or whatever I was supposed to be at this moment. I followed him around the corner into another screened room, this one with a big black slip covered couch, a low coffee table, and a big screen TV mounted on the brick wall.

He sat, and I sat. I grasped his hand, and looked at the marking on it.



"Just like yours, eh?" I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn't take my eyes off of his barcode. "The code is different, of course. I was made differently, my cocktail included a lot of battle theory and stratagem." He lifted my arm gingerly, and I didn't fight him.

He looked at my tattoo. "Aah, a tactical soldier, made to follow orders and perform wet work. No wonder you were so quick to follow my instructions in the school."

I looked up at him in a moment of fear. "How do you-"

"It's all in your code", he interrupted me, "you just have to know how to read it. You mean you can't.. my, you really did a number on yourself, didn't you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked as he dropped my hand and rose to his feet. He paced the length of the oblong room, and turned to face me on the couch.

"What do you know about that tattoo on your arm?"

I looked down at it, and rubbed it absently. "Nothing. Zip. I know it's been there since before I can remember."

"Before you can remember?"

"I have gaps. Well-more like a big gap. I don't remember anything clear before I was adopted at age 10."

His face seemed to fall, and he muttered a curse as he turned away, putting his hands on his head. I ventured further.

"But I do know that your name is.. Ban."

He turned, his eyes turned to ice, his body more rigid. "You remember that?"

"Yes," I replied, "but I don't know why, or what it means. Its all blurry, unclear." I walked towards him, never losing his gaze. I stood in front of him, looking up slightly at his taller frame. "What do you know?"

He looked down at me, and then turned back to the door through which we had come. "You'd better come with me."

We walked through the rooms of the apartment to the other end, where a room was devoted to computer equipment and video monitors. Large metal shelves on casters held monitors, cameras, audio equipment and other technical stuff I couldn't immediately identify. Ban and I sat in rolling chairs, and moved towards the central computer.

He began navigating a relatively advanced security system with nimble hands, rambling as he worked. "I didn't realize that you had blocked all of your memories. I mean, they taught us to do that, but I didn't think that anyone would really go through with it. I suppose you were so young, you didn't know what else to do. Safety mechanism. Protect the intel and all. But still…"

I was getting really frustrated. "Look, I'm really confused, and I'd like some answers. None of this makes any sense.."

"Yes it does, your mind is just having trouble abandoning its defenses. You've been keeping your knowledge locked away for all these years.. It's going to take some time for you to get it all back." He opened up a file, and documents piled up on the screen. "Ah. Here we are."

I looked at the screen, and he talked.

"This is a Military incident report filed seven years ago about the destruction of a VA hospital in Northern Washington, in a place called Cascade. It burned down in an accidental fire seven years ago."

I looked at him in dismay. "Okay, well, what does that have to do with me?"

He turned back to the screen. "Just wait. Look at this here." He pulled up another document. "This is a confidential oversight budget, Omega17, Classification Umbra- the highest level of security in the US government- detailing the budget allotted for the year before the hospital burned down."

I remembered that word, Omega17, from movies I had seen. It meant super secret. "How the hell did you get this stuff?"

He smiled at me. "They taught me well. Now look: take a look at the budget line for the Cascade VA hospital."

I thought there must be a typo. "$85,900,000? For a hospital? That can't be right."

"That's the number, but you're right, a VA hospital doesn't require $85.9 million operating budget. But then again, it wasn't really a VA hospital."

"What was it?"

He started up a satellite viewing program, and pulled up an image of Washington state. "Watch as I zoom. This is a shot from ten years ago."

The image pixilated as it zoomed on the upper northern quadrant. In a moment, a close up aerial shot was on the screen. A large two level building with exercise equipment surrounding the outside was visible. Beyond the main building were long squat buildings, barracks, and surrounding the whole complex was a tall barbed wire fence with guard posts high in the air. With a further zoom, armed guards could be seen in the posts, and outside of each building. I tried to make sense of the picture before me. "That's not a hospital.."

"No," he said as he looked at me. "It's not. It never was a hospital."

He brought up a large picture taken from the ground, showing small children marching behind a barbed wire fence. They all had shaved heads, and were wearing identical camouflage jumpsuits. They couldn't have been more than 8 years old.

"That is a picture taken by a nature photographer who stumbled onto a secret government compound in the mountains of Cascade, Washington ten years ago while he was shooting for Washington Wildlife. Before he allegedly committed suicide in his apartment, he had this picture published in a conspiracy theory magazine with an article about a secret military project involving genetics. He claimed they were training genetically engineered children to be soldiers: the perfect soldiers."

He pulled up another picture of the gym yard, where the soldier children stood in a straight line, their left legs out in a lunge, left hands in a blocking position, right hands lifted above their heads at a right angle. The children's right wrists were exposed. Ban selected one of the wrists, and zoomed in.

It was hard to make out, but when Ban adjusted the contrast setting, I could easily see the white numerals and barcode tattooed on the boy's flesh.

"It wasn't a hospital. It was a training ground. They created babies in test tubes, combining DNA from geniuses all over the planet with appropriate DNA from animals with enhanced senses. They trained them from birth to develop their skills."

My mouth hung open in shock as I stared at the image of the two boys. I realized I hadn't been breathing, and sharply inhaled. I stood shakily from the chair, and started to walk away from the screen. "No, no, that's insane! I don't-"

I felt him grab my upper arm, and without thinking I reached over my shoulder with my other hand and threw him to the ground. He fell to the ground with a thud, and looked up at me from the ground, curiously unperturbed. I shook, and lifted my hand to my chest, holding it. I looked down at the tattoo, and the truth was too much for me to ignore.

"You can't deny who you are, not now. You have to see the truth in this."

I crumpled to the ground, shaking uncontrollably, and for the second time in a day, passed out.

I woke up on the floor with Ban looking down on me. I almost went for his throat, but he was holding down my arms.

"Now, we wouldn't want to go down that road again, would we? I told you before, you're safe."

I spoke through clenched teeth. "How do I know that you're telling the truth?"

His eyes softened a little, their brilliant blue a shade lighter. "You're just going to

have to trust me."

I turned my head away from him, and looked across the apartment at nothing at all. I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel safe, that was for sure, but then again he had helped me at the school, which was reason to believe that he was telling me the truth, and was in fact on my side.

"Listen, I know your numeric designation, 4739, but I refuse to call you by a number like a piece of livestock. I know you have another name, one you have used for the last seven years, and I would rather know you by that."

He wasn't holding me down so hard, and I knew I could force him off of me, but I didn't want to do that just yet. I looked at him. "If I tell you my name, and promise not to attack you again, will you let me up?"

He raised his eyes, as if pondering it for a moment, and in that sliver of time I became aware of his muscular body bearing down on me. Not a good time to be thinking about this guy as a stud, I thought.

"If you promise to be a good little soldier, I'll let you go. Scout's honor." He smiled a little wry smile. His teeth were absolutely perfect.

I turned my eyes to him, my face still turned away. "Megan. My name is-has been- Megan."

He eased himself off her arms, and stood up, offering her his hand. "Megan, pleased to meet you. I, as you intuitively already know, am Bandit, known to my oldest acquaintances as Ban."

I stood up, and held his hand, the one with the tattoo face up. "4372. We're not too far apart numerically, are we? How old are you?"

He frowned. "I'm not entirely sure, but I'd say somewhere around 21, 22. The project personnel files were lost in the fire, so none of us can really be sure. And you're right; we are close, but not just numerically. We're very close in fact."

I started. "What do you mean?"

He held out his wrist so that I could see it, and pointed to the first digit. "This first numeral denotes the series: which series of soldier we are, a kind of birthday if you will. We are series 4, which means we are the fourth group created- fourth upgrade from the original." He pointed to the second number. "This signifies the class, for training. We were under the same instructor group, but at different times, because we are apart in age." He pointed to the third number, and looked up at her. "This is the important one, at least to me. The other two only meant something to the assholes who created us, ways to separate us out like cattle." He stopped, and lifted her hand up to meet his, so their tattoos were placed side by side. "This number denotes the surrogate mother who carried us, who birthed us. This is the only part of the equation that truly binds any two of us together. We both had the same mother. We're brother and sister, you and I."

I looked up at his face, and indeed saw some familiarity in it. His aquiline nose, sharp cheekbones, his bright eyes: my features were a smaller echo of his, almost a dilution. "So you're like my.. family?

He smiled at me, and nodded, "Spot on, little sister. I am."

I couldn't believe it. After seven years of solitude, disconnection, and loneliness, I was standing holding the hand of a man who shared my blood, my features.. And my strange history.

I didn't want to appear too childish, and I just said "Okay. This is a start, then."

He turned his head coyly, smiling. "We'll have to start getting to know each other all over again, won't we now?"

I smiled back at him, "I suppose so, big bro."