I

Prologue

I remember the day she arrived.
I was only five at the time, barely old enough to understand what was happening, but I did realize that she was a mistake, after all those years my parents spent Requisitioning a Second XX.
They had wanted two females from the very start. Males were trouble, they agreed, and while having two children of the same gender was greatly frowned upon, it was not prohibited.
They Requisitioned for another XX over and over again. Their Requisition was finally approved, and a Second XX was shipped to us immediately.

She wasn't the youngest of her Group, but she was still just a little thing, a small one year old baby who bounced and giggled constantly, even when there was nothing to laugh at.
Sometimes, when I was alone with her, I would call her by the name I gave her, despite the very clear law against naming a new child addition before they sent you the assigned label. That didn't matter. She needed a name, and I wasn't about to take it away.
That wasn't the only law I broke.
The City Command Criteria specifically ordered that "all persons affiliated with a new child addition were not, under any circumstances, to attach to the addition until it was at least five years of age, as the Chamber reserved the right to repossess the addition if it tested positive for future Chamber roles."
But I couldn't help it. She was so.....bewitching, with wavy thick black hair, blacker and glossier than Mother's ebony obsidian decoration, and creamy skin that made her look like the strange human replica I had seen on a shelf when I had visited Grandmother, just before she Passed.
Her eyes were grey, just like all new child additions, and would stay that way until she was Tested.

Mother and Father avoided her mostly, to protect themselves from attaching to her, so I was in charge of her a lot.
It's not like they purposely set me up to fall in love with her. They just didn't think that I could really attach to her. Never in a million years, would they suspect that I could and would actually and truly love her as a sister. I would never blame them for anything that happened.

They were just ignorant, like the rest of the messed-up world, where there is no such thing as true love anymore. There's just attaching to a person, saying that you're attached to them now.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm going to back up, back to where it all started, thirteen years ago, and a few days before her arrival. I'll remember that day until the day I die.

Author's Note

Sort of a prologue to the actual book....