In the morning I found that the only nightmares around were the ones I had that night, probably triggered by Sam's presence. Much to my disappointment my twin was at the table eating breakfast with my friends when I joined them. They were thoughtful enough to leave me a seat beside him. I hesitated a moment before taking the seat, my stomach growling at the smell of food. The soup hadn't really filled me up, I was a growing boy after all.

"Morning Zach," Sam greeted me. The sentiment was echoed by the rest of the group.

"Morning," I mumbled back after taking a sip of the orange juice already waiting at my spot for me.

All feelings of malice were gone from my brother's presence. The smile he gave me even looked genuine to my trained eyes. I was beginning to wonder if I had imagined it all. Maybe I had put those feelings there because that's what I expected from my brother. Maybe he really had come to his senses and accepted me for who I was. I wasn't about to hold my breath.

Breakfast was filled with more banter and suddenly it felt like I really did have my brother back. We entertained the others with stories of our childhood adventures. To say we both had active imaginations as kids would be an understatement. We could turn the empty garden into an alien battlefield where we became commandos hunting down man-eating aliens. And of course with that kind of imagination we also got into a lot of trouble, luckily most of it was just with the staff and our caretaker, Gregory, who watched over us while our parents were away on business.

"Wait a minute, you set fire to your living room?" King repeated with laughter in his voice.

"Turned it into a blazing inferno would be more like it," Sam replied.

"Needless to say they took our chemistry set away," I finished, sharing a grin with my brother.

"Thank god they never told our parents about that," Sam said. "Can you imagine what dad would have done?"

I winced and didn't reply. Our father had a hands on approach to discipline. I wouldn't describe it as abuse, not when we always deserved it. I don't think he ever punished us without good reason. Mom liked to scream and yell and then lock us in our rooms for as long as she felt necessary. Once I accidentally broke a priceless vase with a pair of wings I used to run around with. She was so furious she locked me in my room for a whole day without food or water. I always preferred dad's approach better. At least with him there was a few moments of punishment and then it was over. Mom's punishment could last a long time. I can't really blame either of them. They were never cut out to be parents. Their own parents hadn't been very good for them and therefore they never learned how to be good parents for us.

"Wait a minute, how wouldn't your parents have known about that? Didn't they see the damage?" Lioness asked.

"They were away on a business trip. Luckily all the furniture and whatnot was replaceable," I explained.

Sam laughed. "Do you remember the time we dumped slime all over Drew? I thought he was going to castrate you."

"You mean after he got done with you, right? He knew you were always the instigator," I replied.

"And Drew would be…?"

Sam raised an eyebrow at Shark's, "Our older brother." He then shot me a slightly hurt look. "You haven't told them anything about us have you?"

I was momentarily at a loss for words. What was I supposed to say to that? He had to know why I wouldn't have talked about my family to my friends. He was once more putting me on the spot and reminding exactly what he was really like. I kicked myself for letting my guard down and shot him a heated look.

"I don't think I really want to talk about this, Sam," I hissed at him.

Sam's eyes narrowed and I saw a flash of hatred in them. For a moment I thought he'd show his true self to everyone, but instead he let his eyes widen with a perfect image of sadness and hurt. If I didn't know any better I would have thought I'd really upset him, but he had just confirmed exactly what I already knew. He was up to something, something that took precedence over hurting me.

"I'm sorry Zach, I didn't know your family was such a sore subject for you," Sam said with just the right waver to his voice.

I was torn between calling Sam on his deceitful game or let him think he was getting away with it. He had to know that I knew he was up to something. He was smart enough to know he couldn't really pull that one over on me. But he also had to have figured out that I didn't want any of the painful secrets of my past to come out. I had made the mistake of letting him see that particular weakness. He knew I didn't want my friends to know the truth about my relationship-or lack thereof-with my family. If I called him on his game he would no doubt go right ahead and reveal those secrets to my friends and leave me to pick up the pieces. I wasn't ready to deal with that quite yet, plus, I needed to know what exactly the goal of his game was.

"Yeah, I have to say I'm curious as to why you've never talked about your brothers before," Axel said, eyeing me curiously. "I was under the impression you were an only child."

"You've talked about your mom and dad, but you've never said anything about brothers," King added.

Sam put on the perfect display of hurt and my friends ate it up. I wasn't sure how to respond to anything my friends were asking and I knew Sam enjoyed watching me squirm. I wasn't entirely sure how to handle the situation, so I did the only thing I could think of doing. I made a show of being a bigger asshole than usual and then took off in a perfectly performed tantrum of massive proportions. There would definitely be more questions waiting for me at my return.

xxxx

Any suspicions I had before about Hawk's relationship with his brother were totally validated by the show I watched them put on. I don't think the others even realized what had really been going on, but I saw through both their acts. Hawk was hiding the truth about his family for some reason and the only reason I could think of was because there was a deep hurt there. At the same time I thought Sam was putting on one hell of a show of being a caring brother hurt by Hawk's apparent disregard for his family.

Yeah, I totally played the dumb surfer role for everything it's worth. If people think you're dumb they talk more. They think you're less likely to catch on to their games. I knew I was going to have to play that role with Sam if I was going to find out what he was really up to. Whatever it was it involved hurting Hawk, I could read that in the guy's eyes. He totally intended to achieve some underhanded goal and bring Hawk down along the way.

And I cared way too much about Hawk to let that happen.

xxxx

I had been too upset when I took off to remember to grab my helmet or even a jacket when I threw on my jetpack and took off. I shouldn't have been in such a big hurry to get away, but I honestly wanted to be anywhere but around my brother. The sneaky bastard was going to take everything that mattered away from me. It was eating at me, driving me crazy, but I knew that he had deeper ambitions than that. He had to, because if his only goal was to take my friends away from me he would have simply revealed all my deepest secrets and then stood back and watched the fun as they kicked me off the team and abandoned me just like my parents had. No, Sam was up to more than that and it was killing me not knowing what.

Because of my haste in getting away I couldn't fly nearly as high as I would have liked and it was only a matter of minutes before I was too cold to keep going. I landed on the roof of the closest building to me and slipped of my jetpack. I didn't plan on going back to the Aquatic Center for a little while. I needed to figure out how I was going to handle Sam before I could go back.

Whatever he was up to required getting in good with my teammates. Hurting me was probably just a bonus for him. His real goal probably had something to do with the fact that I work for Mr. Lee . The last time I talked with Drew he told me that Sam was using large amounts of his personal fortune and spending less and less time at the mansion. He was convinced our brother was up to no good. Apparently where I pretended to have an ego, Sam really did. Drew was concerned that Sam was being used by someone higher up in the food chain to carry out some illegal plans. Of course, I really didn't want to believe that, but then again I didn't really know Sam at all.

I jerked myself out of my thoughts as I felt a whisper of movement behind me. I spun quickly and was startled to find Spydah crouched and ready to pounce. I ducked just as he made his move and he soared over my head. I made a dash for my jetpack, but one of his mechanical arms grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me backwards, slamming me to the ground. I rolled as he pounced again, but another mechanical arm grabbed a hold of my leg and lifted me off the ground so that I was hanging upside down.

"Hello again little birdie."

Ah hell.