Gwen swept her hair back, helped Sam up, and led him back to the makeshift med-day, where Mona had just washed her hands after stitching Drew's leg.

Zack had been in deep conversation with her and they seemed to be arguing about something. As Gwen and Sam approached, Sam heard what they were saying (out of his good ear).

"-just left him here for us to babysit," Zack said in a loud whisper.

"Who cares?" Mona asked, organizing their remaining medical supplies. "He's hot, and he and his brother could be useful."

"But they're not immune."

"We could make them," she argued, seeing Gwen and motioning for Zack to turn around.

Gwen spoke before Sam had a chance to open his mouth. "Mona, can you take a look at his ear?"

Mona took a couple of steps toward him. "What happened?" She stood on her tiptoes to try to see and pulled his head down toward her chest.

Gwen rolled her eyes. "I hit him."

Zack laughed. "Naturally. He's here for ten minutes and you gotta get your licks in."

"I was only using him as an aide to teach the kids a few things about Ordin-" she paused, reconsidering her words. "About your common enemy."

"Smooth Gwen," Zack chided. "And now what good will he be if he can't hear the enemy approaching?"

"Yeah, Gwen, I'm inclined to agree with Zack. Why would you incapacitate him?" Mona turned back to her supplies. "I can clean that up, but you've got a ruptured drum in there." She returned with a small pad of gauze and a small bottle of antiseptic. She nearly pressed her body against his as she dabbed at his ear. "Does it hurt?"

"A little," Sam stammered. "But don't worry about it. I've had worse."

"Doubt it," Zack said, studying Sam with discreet speed, searching for any kind of scar that would indicate truth in his statement. He found no such scar.

"Had worse? That's just what a lady likes to hear," Mona said, trying to change the subject back to them.

A surprised expression washed over Sam. "That's not what I meant-"

"I don't see a lady," came the voice of another woman.

Sam turned his face to see this third person and discovered she looked a lot like Mona, except her eyes were shaded with dark purple flecks and seemed to draw his stare.

"Stupid clone rivalry," Zack mumbled after having seen the dumbfounded face Sam made. He trudged toward the group of sparring children.

"Mona, let the man breathe," she said.

Mona stepped back from him. "Mean, why you gotta season me?"

"This is Mina," Gwen said. "She and Mona are twinned."

Twins, he thought. Cool.

"And before you go there, we don't team up for anything kinky," Mina said.

Sam wondered why she would say that. Even if he had thought it, he wouldn't have said it.

"Actually, we really can't stand each other," Mona said.

"Because you are always trying to screw anything with a Y chromosome."

"I can't help it. That's the way they made me." Mona threw her hands up in defense, as if horniness was genetic.

Sam assumed 'they' was the sisters' parents. He was about to join in and tell them that he and his brother didn't always get along, but before he could say anything, Mina threw in another zinger.

"They made us the same, but you take slutty to a whole new level. Honestly, preying on anything male with legs." Mina turned to Sam. "You're probably not even interested, are you?"

Her eyes entranced him again, and he found himself dumbstruck by their beauty. It seemed like she was reaching into his mind, sifting through his brain's files for something particular. He kept thinking about her eyes and how beautiful they were.

Mona grabbed Mina's face by the chin and broke her eye contact with Sam. "Don't do that," she said.

Mina looked away with some satisfaction. "Thanks for the compliment, Romeo, but I prefer Juliet."

Mona sighed and soaked the cotton swab in the antiseptic. She pulled Sam's head down by his neck and gently cleaned his wound. "It'll heal on its own," she said. "Though I don't know how long it'll take you." She placed the dirtied supplies in a plastic bag in the side of the jeep and turned back to Mina. "You're terrible."

Mina gave her an indignant look.

"So you two are brothers?" Mona asked, desperate to change the topic.

"Uh, yeah," he uttered, seemingly unsure of what they already knew. He tried to diffuse their argument. "I know how siblings can be."

"We're not sisters," Mina said. "Well, not really, but that's the closest thing to what we are."

"Which is?" Seriously, these two were playing games with his comprehension and he was beginning to get impatient.

"Twinned," Gwen said.

There was that word again. Twinned. Not sisters, but twins.

"Killing machines," Mina added. "Just what we were designed for."

Mona began packing up some loose items as Mina moseyed to the jeep and pulled a laptop from the front floorboard.

"Killing machines," he echoed. He didn't understand. They weren't hunters, he knew that much. They were militarized but they probably hadn't seen a ghost or demon prior to the virus outbreak. But they had to have seen some since, right?

"We were cooked up in a lab," Mina said, lifting the screen of the laptop up and beginning to type with one hand. "We were bred with certain strands of DNA – mostly human, and we were bred to fight."

"That's why some of us look like we're wearing costumes," Mona added, trying to lighten the conversation.

Sam took a deep breath and recalled some of the questions he'd had upon their arrival. How could any of them survive being bitten, which some of them clearly had been, and how could they be an army on their feet when they were constantly getting sliced up? Didn't they require some down time to heal? "I don't know what to say," he finally said. "How did you-"

Gwen interrupted. "We were part of a huge genetics experiment funded by a secret division of the government. The company that made us – Manticore – was the first in line to attempt cutting-edge technology. They practiced interspecies gene-splicing and genetic-mapping – in an effort to identify which genes made superior soldiers. Then they used that information to make us, but they made us to die."

Mona smiled, embarrassed, as if Gwen had just given away all of their sordid secrets. "They made us with some different abilities, some extraordinary abilities. Ultimately, though, they made us to fight with no regard to whether or not we would survive."

"What does that mean?" Sam asked, trying to understand what these women were telling him.

"It means we didn't need your help out there today," Mina said, clicking the laptop's mouse pad a few times.

Sam frowned, wondering what he'd done to piss her off. She seemed bent on getting back at him for something. He turned to Gwen and asked, "You were in the military your whole life?"

"Yeah," Mona answered. "Some of us in specialty arenas – PsyOps, Statistics and Strategy, Computer and Information Technology, Desert Combat, et cetera. Like Mina, for example, was created with some specific ocular implants and genes, and trained in PsyOps, so she can sort of manipulate the truth out of you, or try to read your mind."

Sam whipped his head over to Mina. "That explains a few things," he said.

"We were trained in espionage, assassination, reconnaissance. You name it, we did it." Mona seemed to be talking them up, as if she had been told she was worthless and had spent the majority of her life trying to prove otherwise.

"But all of us trained to kill," Mina said, threateningly. "Not too far off from you and your brother, right?"

"Excuse me?" Sam asked, suddenly worried that she had pulled the laptop out to lay out his and Dean's history. Their arrest records and rap sheets would still be visible, but only with the right access codes and passwords, which any Manticore soldier trained in computers could hack.

And he didn't like her tone at all. She didn't have the right to prejudge them.

Mina brought the laptop to Sam and Gwen and turned it to face them. The screen reflected multiple open windows full of the strange and supernatural things he and Dean had done, which coincidentally looked like grave desecrations, arson, and murders.

Gwen frowned, staring at the screen. She took the laptop from Mina and perused the photos.

"We're not killing machines," Sam protested. "We're hunters."

Mina smiled cruelly. "I know," Mina said. "I just like to watch you squirm."

"You hunt supernatural things?" Gwen asked, paging through a few documents.

Sam wondered how deep the shit was that he seemed to have found himself wading in. "Yeah, we hunt demons, ghosts, shape shifters, things that aren't quite human."

"Mm hmm," Gwen mumbled. "You hunt anything that's not quite human…"

Realization dawned on him and he suddenly felt like such an ass. "Oh, no, not you. We wouldn't hunt you." He looked to the twinned soldiers and continued, "Unless you were running around killing people…" he stopped himself. "Sorry, I meant good people. Innocents."

Sam realized they had more in common than he thought. Very different circumstances, but very similar outcomes.

Mina and Mona, however, were not amused by Sam's accidental insults.

"Alright, let's go check on Krit," Gwen said, handing the laptop back to Mona. "Quick, before your foot goes too far into your mouth." She grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him toward the taller soldier who kind of looked like Max and appeared to be cleaning his weapons.

"Mobile in five!" Krit shouted to everyone.

Sam watched the man wipe the blood off of his multiple blades. His demeanor was as cool as the gray metal he cleaned. Sam looked for any signs that this guy was different. Not knowing what to expect made him feel paranoid and out of place. He didn't notice anything particularly different about Krit – no scars, no biotechnological parts or implants that he could discern, nothing out of the ordinary.

"Take a picture," Krit said sarcastically, turning his back to them as he replaced one of the blades into its sheath.

"Sorry," Sam said, immediately looking away, but catching a glimpse of the lines on his neck. "Wait, what about Dean and Max? Shouldn't we wait for them to get back?"

Krit turned back and laughed as if Sam spoke nonsense. "Max'll track us. But you're welcome to sit around here and wait." Krit slapped him on the shoulder and grabbed the arsenal.

"Don't worry about them," Gwen said. "Max and Zack have a rule for which direction they go, so if any of us get split up from the group, we know where to go to get back. She'll know."

Though all the information he'd just learned was uncommon and weird and seemed unreal, he still believed her. Maybe it was her eyes, too. Maybe she had some ocular implant or something that generated trust. He wasn't sure, but he knew they'd be fine. It was just a feeling.

Which is why he immediately pulled out his cell phone and dialed Dean's number.