In the foyer of their family home, there hung a portrait of Sir Billiam.

Sometimes, Hamilton stopped just to stare at it. The brush strokes were bold, precise. Laid down in a manner that would only accentuate the majestic image of the man portrayed. Billiam was wearing a double-breasted suit with gold embellishments and two rows of buttons. His hair was slicked back, with a slight curl and posed to perfection hanging down over one shoulder. He was wearing a mask and thus his eyes were left concealed, yet Hamilton couldn't help but think he felt those ruby irises trace his journey down the hallways.

Everything they had, they owned to Sir Billiam. Every ounce of riches, the soft beds they slept in at night and the decadent meals put on their table. All of it - their family itself - only existed by the grace of this stranger. A man passed decades ago and whom they had never known, yet whose influence was strong enough to still beat in tune to the hearts in their chests and the blood in their veins.

A man who, with his very presence, had given them a purpose.

Mother had taught them gratitude. When they gathered for dinner, she would make them bow their heads and close their eyes to give thanks to the stranger who allowed them the privilege of being alive. Hamilton clasped his fingers together, speaking a little bit louder and clearer to compensate for George's hoarse whispers. Mother never had any patience for his inability to speak in a way that satisfied her, but she got especially testy when George faltered during prayers.

She told them that if the Egg heard, it would take away from them everything they were given.

One time - one frightening and cold evening - she had exploded suddenly. She had grabbed George by the wrist and dragged him out into the hallway. Hamilton remembered the shrill sound of his twin crying out for him, hand reaching yet unable to do anything but watch. Their mother was unrelenting, dragging George out and pushing him to his knees in front of the portrait.

"Apologize!" she had snapped - tone venom, eyes blazing red. They were always so soft green before, not anymore. "Apologize for bringing dishonor to his family name!"

George hiccuped, wiped at the tears streaming down his face. Through painful coughs, he had begged for forgiveness from a painted man.

Hamilton stood in the hallway after that, staring for the first time upon the portrait with disdain.

He had rationalized it away later. It was frighteningly easy to tell himself that this wasn't Sir Billiam's doing, no. After all, that man was dead. And he was everything they were not - strong where they were weak, righteous where they were sinful, complete where they were hollow. He had left behind imperfection, for what else would walk in the wake of such immaculate paragon? Any suffering they had, they had created on their own.

Their mother had simply failed to live up to an expectation none of them were destined to reach either way.

But lying in bed that night and hearing George muffle his weeping by pressing his face into his pillow, stubborn to not show the fright today's ordeal had caused, Hamilton knew that what he felt was the first trace of true resentment.

He was not perfect either, after all.


Hamilton knew the basement was off-limits.

He knew, and he knew what was down there too. If he stood on the upmost step of the staircase he could hear its whispers coiling into his mind. The words spoken by the Egg were still nonsensical to him, hissing and malice scratching at the inside of his brain - an insatiable hunger that wasn't unlike a gaping pit calling out to be filled. When he got older, they would gain meaning. He would understand the Egg like his mother did, and her father, and his father before that.

Like Sir Billiam did, who had sacrificed everything to its noble duty.

Hamilton was the oldest child, and he would have to serve it in turn. But until he was old enough to do so, he had to stay away or its mantras ran the risk of turning him mad. The only persons allowed in the basement were his mother, a select few of the servants specifically chosen for the tasks of feeding, and those that were to be the meal.

Often they came through the entrance hall first. Men, women, children too sometimes. Those younger ones would always be peering around curiously, eyes large and uninhibited. When they turned their chins up, they would see Hamilton and George sitting on the interior balcony. Some of the children waved, George waved back. Mostly they were in awe of all their splendor because nobody else in the area had means even close to what their family could provide. That was how their mother would lure these people in, the promise of food and shelter after some disaster. A promise of safety.

Sir Billiam had taught them the lessons of false hospitality.

These people came here, scavenging for scraps of their wealth as if they were vultures to the smell of another's fresh prey - hiding behind their need for charity. Maggots crawling all over their philanthropic goodwill.

It disgusted him. Hamilton hated them.

They deserved to be culled. There would not be a great loss to this world when they were.

When the sun had dipped below the horizon, they were confined to their room and the door locked and barricaded with a heavy dresser. The screams would start - first a few sharp and sudden, then more and the pounding of feet - people running through the mansion, looking for some escape. All the exits were barred. There was never anywhere for them to go.

Once, the doorknob turned and the person on the other side was asking to be let in, voice desperately pinched.

Hamilton held George, put his hands over his brother's ears to lock out the noise of that person pleading for their measly life. They waited.

By the time morning came, there was no more noise except the humming of the Egg.


And then there came the day where Hamilton overheard his mother talking to a servant, hushed and secretive.

She told the servant that George would be given to the Egg.

Hamilton could not have smothered his gasp then, not even if he'd had a mind to make the effort at the moment. Not that he had - overcome with shock and dread. She turned, saw him standing there. He thought her smile had never been as cold.

She wanted to explain it to him. He wanted to understand.

But all her words about lineage, about inheritance and tradition, and the obligation wrought in ancestry fell on deaf ears. What did he care for her reasons, what did he care for her legacy? What did he care that their family was only supposed to have a single child, a single heir, a single thread of bloodline red connecting to the Egg and keeping its secret through generations.

What did he care about being the successor of this duty if he could not do it with his brother by his side?

He must have spoken those last words out loud, for his mother took him by the shoulders and shook him as if it would shake the sense back into him. "Do not say such things! We are blessed to have what we have, we have been chosen. What George gets to do is an honor."

What George had to do was be made a martyr.

And Hamilton would have eternity to blame himself for the sin of having been born a twin, and having fought his way out of the womb a handful of minutes before his brother.

"Do you think it will hurt?" George whispered at him, the night before he was to be immolated. He sounded so scared.

"No", Hamilton told him. "It's not going to hurt, brother. I won't let it hurt you."

Their window was open, curtain billowing inward from a brisk autumn breeze. They collected their things - two knapsacks full - and then they disappeared without leaving a note.


(Outside the mansion, George grew to be the person Hamilton wished he could be.

And if it meant he grew bolder, dauntless, free from the shackles of fear, then that was everything Hamilton wanted for him. If it meant Hamilton had to be more careful, and keep enough worry in his heart for the both of them, well…

He had been raised with the duty of sacrifice etched into his self.

They found a pair of glasses once, in a pawn shop. The sparkling gold in the window display drawing them towards it, the light catching on the lenses. Hamilton must have been looking at it a little too longingly, entranced by its beauty. Before he could protest, George had gone inside and bought it with the meager amount of money they had managed to save up.

With a sharp snap, George broke the blasted thing in two. Then he produced thin chains of silver - also bought from the shop. He handed one of the crooked, handmade monocles to Hamilton.

"Because when we're together, it's like we're complete.")


The maze did not care about who it consumed.

Hamilton stared into the depths, stared at the battered and broken body of his twin brother, and realized that if anything they had only managed to flee from the maw of one beast into another's.

They reached the end, they reached the beginning. Those two things turned out to be the same when Hamilton learned that time is a flat circle.

When George came back to him, his eyes were bright and his smile not an inch misplaced. He was not at all the corpse Hamilton had barely been allowed time to grieve over.

Hamilton hugged his brother and vowed to never lose him again.

"What's wrong?" George was using sign language to speak, perhaps reluctant to be overheard. The way he frowned, lips pulled down over small tusks, the stubborn crease between his brows that much more prominent - it tugged at Hamilton's heartstrings in all the wrong ways.

"Nothing," he lied.

He felt guilty for it, though it didn't matter much when George died again less than two hours later. A different trap, the same misery.

Again they reached the end beginning.

And if Hamilton held his twin's hand a little tighter while they walked, if he kept him a little closer at his side. None needed to mention it.

They made it almost to the end that time, there weren't many of them left. Hamilton squeezed George's hand and tried not to think about him being squeezed between two walls, crushed until only red could bleed through the cracks.

"This is the furthest anyone's gotten in a really long time. But to complete this puzzle... someone has to die. It can't be by force-"

"I'll do it," George said. Nobody even heard him at first, but he didn't mind. He was already headed towards the edge.

Hamilton squeezed harder. "Brother-"

"I'll do it, for you all to get out of here."

(and if Hamilton had been raised with the duty of sacrifice etched into his self, perhaps George had been born with the burden of sacrifice into his own self too)

The beginning turned out to be the end turned out to be the beginning, and Hamilton was tired.

Even just once - even just selfishly - he didn't want to be the one who had to continue living.

When he pushed George forward, almost picked him up and threw him over the gaping pit that he would have otherwise fallen into, it was with a smile on his face. When his own feet slipped from beneath him and he started to plummet, he was relieved.

He was so relieved…


George could not stand seeing his brother die. Not again, and again, and again.

Not after Hamilton suffered so much for his sake.

The life they had lived together was good, it was worthwhile. And it had stretched out much further than George could have hoped for.

"Put them together and you get a pair of glasses."

"Because when we're together, it's like we're complete."

He didn't mind dying, not if it meant getting Hamilton the freedom they'd both longed for.

Time and beginning became end became beginning again.


They were sitting on the grass and waiting, waiting for the screen to light up and tell them what to do. Hamilton knew what was going to happen when it did, he knew what the man in green would tell them. But George didn't (he died, he didn't remember) and the screen reminded George of home. Of a place they had abandoned so long ago, it almost hurt a little bit to think of.

Hamilton wouldn't go back there if he could. He'd made his decisions and he wasn't one to doubt them.

But sometimes, he couldn't help wonder-

(George laid his cheek on Hamilton's shoulder and yawned. For a moment, it could be as if they were kids again and Hamilton didn't know that in a few hours he'd have to watch his twin die again)

-he couldn't help wonder if perhaps the Egg had bent its will after all and punished them for straying from its path.

And perhaps greater mercy would have been found for them in martyrdom and devotion.