There was no sign of my brother when I arrived at my assigned living quarters. I pushed the dingy wooden door open, and it creaked its protest. The first thing I saw in the little room was a man gazing out onto the street, though there didn't seem to be much there beside a broken bowl to hold his attention.
"Hello?" I announced, but the man remained still. A new figure peered round a doorway, and then approached me.
"You must be Stephen," he said to me, "your brother said you were being transferred here from City 14."
"That's right," I replied, shaking the man's extended hand, "where is he?" The stranger shrugged.
"Your guess is as good as mine. Last any of us saw of Matt was a slammed door." Said the man, indicating the open doorway through which I had entered. "I'm Josh, by the way," he said as I rested my suitcase on the kitchen top, "and this is my wife Kelly." I now noticed a woman, hair tied back, stood modestly behind him. She smiled when I looked at her, and gave a polite wave.
"Lovely to meet you, though I wish it were in better circumstances" I said to him, unfastening the little case and inspecting its contents. Everything seemed to be there, but you had to be careful with the Combine Security Fields.
"Don't we all," said Josh sullenly. His eyes fell, and he seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. It was a peculiar sight, like his eyes were mirrors turned inwards so that for a second he saw only inside himself. "That's Kevin at the window, by the way. He never says much." Kevin did not react to the mention of his name.
An uncomfortable silence passed. Josh looked through me, or perhaps inside himself; Kelly hid herself behind her husband; Kevin stared down at the street without a hint of emotion crossing his blank countenance. I saw the window beside him was smashed through, and sure enough there was the bowl I'd spotted before. It lay in fragments on the street amongst a recognisable spreading stain of Protein Supplement: piecing the situation together, I determined that my impatient twin had lost his temper again and stormed out of the tenement building. Well, that was no surprise. Matt always did have his rage.
"Let me show you your bunk," said Josh, shaken from his reverie. He took my suitcase and I thanked him as we walked into the next room. A pale chestnut leather sofa was in a state of disrepair, and was pushed right back against the wall. Opposite this was a double mattress, and a coffee table nearby. A small table held an ancient TV, which itself bore the image of Breen lecturing about 'the dangers of instinct' to his perpetually-captive audience. Josh kept walking, and I followed him into the area beyond, where three mattresses were scattered about an otherwise bare room. He set mine down closest to the window.
"Had to get this from one of the other apartments when we heard you were coming," he said. "'Course, they don't need it now. Not after the last raid..." Josh went suddenly quiet again, and I determined that this was going to happen a lot. I gently nudged his shoulder and he awoke, shaking his head and mumbling. He returned to his wife, leaving me quite alone.
I opened my suitcase again, and took out a small framed photograph. Matt and myself stood together, he with a hunting rifle slung back over his shoulder and an arm around me. We smiled into an old camera, because that was when there were things to smile about. A family. A life. He had gone his way that day and I had gone mine, and before we knew it the world was in the choking grip of its new overlords. Today would have been the first time I had seen him since the photograph – I'd only discovered he was alive a couple of weeks ago and immediately applied for a transfer. Now, it seemed, I had missed him by minutes.
Curling on the mattress, I let my eyes close, and slept.