Chapter 3: The First Has Been Cast Out

Cain and Abel must deal with the loss of the leader, though, like any good sociopath, the loss is not really a loss at all.

Cain pinched the bridge of her nose as she sat up in her bed for what must have been the 13^th time that night. Her mind was exhausted and her body ached for sleep to relieve it of its duties, but no matter how much she tried, slumber evaded her. And no one would have really blamed the girl, had they known what was on her mind that night.

          Over and over again, she was putting herself through the events of the previous day. The kick of the gun almost seemed real against her shoulder as she remembered the second when she realized that the target, the man with the red hair, was not going to be hit by the bullet. It had whizzed just millimeters from his nose, but close was not enough to satisfy anyone in E.D.E.N. and that included her. How many times had she made the perfect shot, blowing a hole in the head of her target from hundreds of yards away? How many men hadn’t been able to escape her range of fire? Hundreds, was the answer to these questions. Hundreds of men and women had fallen to the ground as she smiled behind her scope. And now, the girl was faced not only with her failure, but with the fact that she had set into action a series of events that she could not truly fathom at that moment.

          Adam, she had thought, was not any different than she or Abel had been. They had lived at E.D.E.N. head quarters for most of their lives, taken away from a society that could barely see past their different physical features, let alone comprehend their mental differences. From the earliest of ages they had been accepted for what they were told they were. Sociopaths, was the term everyone used now, and it seemed to fit well for each and every member. Day in and day out, they trained to deceive, to lie, to cheat, but most of all, to kill without blinking. These lessons were simple for the contracted members of E.D.E.N.  In fact, it was almost as if it was second nature to the children growing up behind the windowless walls of their barracks. For the servitude, they were given 1 pill a day to ensure the deadly side effects of the changes in their DNA would not rip the lives from their bodies.

          She rubbed her eyes with the rounds of her palms and sighed into the night air. They had all been like this. No one cared about anyone else. From the day they came to this place it became a game of survival, and nothing else. No one made friends. No one loved one another. These types of relationships were foreign concepts to even the most well read of their comrades. It simply was a solitary existence.

          That had changed though, or so she was quite certain. Her commander, only a few years older than her, had been charged with her well being. He had done a well enough job, making sure she had food, water, clean clothes and sheets to sleep on, but the events of the past day had been something different all together. No one expected their commander to take responsibility for the mistakes of their subordinates, but Adam had jumped in front of the train that was the Head committee member, John. There had been no turning back from that act of…

          She thought hard. The word she was thinking of evaded her momentarily.

          It came to her though. It had been an act of pure selflessness.

          A groan rumbled in her throat at the thought of that word.

          “Would you just go to sleep? Damn it. I can’t get any rest with you rolling around like that,” grumbled Abel.

          She turned just slightly to look at him. His messy blond hair stuck out at odd angles as he turned on his pillow.

          He pulled the edge of his blanket up to his nose and glared at her with his odd eyes. “Are you going to go to sleep or what?”

          She shook her head, pulling her knees up to her chest. Abel was acting like his normal self, which was unconcerned and unapologetic. Why had Adam been the only one to change? “Hey, Abel?” she said through her folded arms.

          An agitated grunt answered her.

          “Why did he tell the Head that he was at fault and not me?”

          Abel watched her as intently as he could from his bed on the other side of the room. She had been tossing and turning for hours now, mumbling to herself now and again. Of course, he had guessed about what was on her mind. He too had been wondering what Adam’s plan for gaining anything from this event was. “I’m not sure. Maybe he thinks he’ll get more rations like this?”

          She eyed him carefully. “More rations? You mean, you don’t think he’s going to die?”

          “Well, no. Not really,” he said carelessly. “He’s the oldest living member here. He’s a valuable asset, right?” He cast a glance towards her as he turned onto his back and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling made of glass slabs.

          She hummed an affirmative thought.

          “Well, this is probably like a bluff. If he goes along with it, and gets sick and they really think he’ll die, then he’ll get more goods to make sure he remains content. It’s obvious this is a ploy to make is discontent know.”

          “It seems like a pretty daring idea to me,” the dark headed girl mused, more to herself than her sibling.

          “Daring, yes, I suppose it is. I wonder how long he’s been waiting for you to mess up so that he could do this.”

          She sat up tensely. “He couldn’t have known that I was ever going to mess up.” Her heart beat a little faster than she would have like to admit at that moment. Adam hadn’t done it to save her. He had done it to get something from it, and that should have been her first and only thought. Adam was, like her and Abel, a sociopath to his core. Taking advantage of a situation or a person’s short comings was what they all did best, and to think that anything else was happening was, she reminded herself, quite ludicrous.

          “Well, no, I guess he didn’t know that you were going to mess up.” The boy paused and shifted back onto his side to look at his disheveled comrade. “It’s just a hypothesis, you know. I’m not saying it’s the truth. Maybe he just wanted to die.”

          The girl set her head back onto her knees and looked at the floor in silence for a long moment. “What if he just didn’t want me to die?”

          Abel, who had been falling quickly to sleep, let out a rough laugh. “Don’t think so highly of yourself, your majesty. He said it himself. We’re sociopaths. He didn’t do it for you.”

          The frown on her face deepened as she closed her eyes and nodded slowly. He must be right, she was sure. Adam really wasn’t any different than she or Abel were.

          The older boy pushed his hand out from under his blanket and pushed down on the alarm clock by his bed. He put his face in the pillow and sighed heavily. “You know what? Just forget it. It’s almost time to get up anyways.” He pushed himself upwards, his bare chest muscles stretching as he reached his arms forward and up. “You’re lucky I’m just an understanding roommate, Cain,” he muttered.

          She shook her head and slipped her legs to the side of the bed and her feet to the cold concrete floor. “Understanding is something completely unknown to you, Abel.”

          He laughed slightly, sneering at her from the darkness of the room. “It’s alright. We’re all the same here.”

          Her hands rubbed her bare arms as she opened up her large grey steal locker and pulled out a shirt and jeans. “I’m going to go shower. Grab a breakfast tray for me, will you?” she asked causally as she went around gathering her bath supplies from their random positions in the room.

          Abel did his best to avoid getting in her stumbling way, as he did the same. “What will I get out of it?”

          She shrugged as she cradled shampoo in the bundle of clothes in her arms. “If you do it now, I’ll do it for you at a later date. That’s all.” Turning, she walked with slumped shoulders to the door.

          “Sounds almost like friendship,” he said with a slight laugh. His eyes turned around the room, trying to locate his deodorant. He spotted it on the common table at the center of the room. “Oh,” he muttered as he saw the new hair barrette lying beside it. Ignoring the bath product for a moment, he held up the bronze clasp and studied it. In its reflective surface he could see a short line of script was fashioned into it, but in the darkness it was impossible to make out.

          “Hey,” Cain growled, walking back momentarily to rip it from his hand. “Don’t touch my stuff, you brain-dead idiot.”

          He glared at her. “And here I thought we were having a brother-sister moment.”

          “Like hell we were,” she muttered and tucked the metal ornament into her processions. “Don’t forget about the breakfast.”

          “Whatever,” he grunted, but the girl was already out into the hall way, jogging in bare feet towards the female shower quarters. He peaked out after her, enjoying the way she bounced along. If he had been a regular guy he might have thought he ‘liked’ that girl, but in reality, he knew it was merely an eye for the female form which he liked. In particular, he liked her form, which was small and unassuming, but just begged to be noticed in the right light. Well, he noticed it, and he noticed her. Then again, she was his E.D.E.N. sibling, so it was to be expected that he would notice her. He shrugged to himself, grabbed his deodorant, and went the opposite way down the hall.

          The girl turned the corner towards the bathrooms, but stopped, her feet stopping quickly. A girl, taller and broader than herself was walking down the hall towards her.

“Good morning, Cain,” the slightly older girl said. Her damp blond hair, which was clipped just as short as Abel’s, stuck up in every direction. Across her shoulder she held a small shower bag that was spattered with dots of water.

Cain waved, observing the casual way the girl walked, and the easy carriage of her muscled shoulders. It was impossible even for the brunette to understand what was really going on behind her leisurely façade. “Good morning, Jonah,” she said, putting on the perfect air of friendliness.

Her pink eyes looked the smaller girl up and down before smiling. “You’re up early. Is something bothering you?”

Cain didn’t flinch at the hidden accusation. “Not really. I’m just feeling a little dirty from my mission yesterday.”

“Ah,” the blond hummed, nodding sympathetically. “I felt the same.” She paused, fixing some of her messy hair. “How’d your mission go? I heard you and Adam having your usual spat yesterday.”

She shrugged, letting out an innocent laugh. “Went as well as they all do. Adam was just being a control freak, like always,” she lied, shifting the clothes in her arms casually.

“He does seem to ask a lot of you two. You’re at least more lenient about it than Abel. I can’t wait to see him finally snap.”

“Who? Abel?” she asked, feigning shock. Everyone knew that tensions were constantly high between her 2 comrades, and so no one seemed to address the fact that she disliked them both as well. In any case, Jonah, seemed oblivious to the issue.

“Yeah, though I guarantee he’d get his a*s kicked. I’d give up my lunch portions for a week to see that,” the girl laughed, her eyes crinkling in giddiness.

“It wouldn’t be that interesting, I don’t think,” Cain said, laughing alongside her.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, though seemed unconvinced. “Well, I’m starving, so I’m off for breakfast. The showers are empty, so go enjoy yourself.”

Cain tilted her head slightly, smiling in an unassuming way. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

The girl walked past her, too closely for Cain to ignore the sizzling of only barely contained malice. It zapped in the air, buzzing next to the florescent lights above her.

Sighing once she was alone, the girl moved herself down the hall way and away from the area. This was how it always was with the other girls. Nasty, fake, and forever on the verge of ripping each other apart, they smiled and played like they were almost normal. In some ways, it was an entertaining game, used to drive away boredom, and in others, it was serious rivalry that sometimes ended in bloodshed. She, herself, had been in more than one scuffle, tearing out hair, bashing in teeth, ripping nails from their soft, sensitive finger tips. The thought brought the hair on her arms to stand upright, but she breathed deeply, trying to keep herself in her comfortable indifference.

Moving down past an intersection of the hall ways, she slowed, her feet steadily freezing in place. Dull, far away voices were drifting along the hallway ahead of her. She took a few steps towards the bath, ready to ignore it, but something was nagging at her. Finally, she turned, and walked calmly towards them. It was not really the voices she was curious about. Nor was it any interest to her what they were speaking about. It was their location, which was among the commanders’ rooms that meant something to her.

          She stopped at the corner of another corridor, holding herself just beyond the edge of the wall and listened.

          “God,” said an older male voice, much older than any commander in the building. “It’s always such a mess.”

          A wet slopping sound like a mop sloshed through the air. “Yeah, I know. And they expect us to clean this up in an hour? No way in hell that is going to happen,” said another man who seemed to be wielding the mop with long slick strokes.

          Cain sniffed the air, smelling a lemon scented cleaner. She wondered vaguely what exactly they were cleaning up.

          “And it stains everything. The bed, the concrete, and everything will have to be replaced. I think even the glass lighting on this one will need replaced.”

          “It got on the ceiling?” asked the man, taking a few steps and then sighing loudly. “They never make it easy for us, do they?”

          “Nope,” answered the other. “And you know that if we don’t get every drop it’s going to start smelling like death around here.”

          Cain felt the blood drain from her face as she clutched her things to her chest tightly. An idea of what they were speaking of was coming to her mind.

          “Did you bring the enzyme spray?”

          “Ah, s**t, no, man, I didn’t. I’ll go get it.”

          “You know, I’ll go with you. We need a break anyways, right?” he laughed.

          The other joined his laughing as they turned and walked down the hall at a leisurely pace.

          Cain breathed deeply, closed her eyes and tried desperately to find something other than her original idea that the men could be talking about. In her line of work, she had seen more than enough crime scenes and more than enough gore. It was, indeed, a tough job to clean up blood because of its properties. Red was impossible to get out of cloth, it stained concrete and even if it didn’t, it solidified to a type of gelatin after only a few hours. Enzyme cleaner was a chemical used to liquefy the dried blood.

          She felt her stomach turn. If she was going to see who it was, she needed to go then and there before the two in the cleaning crew came back. Her breathing quickened. This shouldn’t be bothering her, she argued with herself. She put all thought out of her mind, turned the corner and felt her stomach drop. There was so much blood. Much more blood than she would have ever seen from a single gunshot wound. They were right though. The blood was already starting to stink under the heavy lemon pine scent.

          “Adam?” she whispered in a shaking voice. It was his room that the blood was coming from. The whole of the floor was dark red, smears of blood coming into the hall way as if something was dragged.

          She felt as if her head was being filled with carbonated drink as she bent at her waist, leaned over the blood, and looked into the room. It suddenly occurred to her, not only was Adam dead, for he was surely long gone, but that he died a death that was the destiny of every single one of the E.D.E.N. members. She backed up quickly and almost stumbled over her feet as she turned and sprinted down the semi lit hall way. In her face, there was a sibilance of death that was not missed by the one person she passed while running.

          She dropped her bundle of clothing on the tile floor of the bathroom and turned on the shower, not bothering to take off her tank top and flannel bottoms. As the water rushed over her, they stuck to her form like cement. The water was cold and hard, but it was exactly what she needed. Her heart was beating out of her chest, but the water brought her back to reality, and back to her sanity.

          “I don’t want to die,” she whimpered, crawling on her hands and knees to grasp blindly outside the stall at her things. Really, she had been feeling around for soap, but the cold bite of metal touched her wet fingers. Quickly, she grabbed it and pulled it towards her.

          It was the barrette with its warm bronze color, and a small line of script written on its curved surface. Soror, it said, lightly embedded into the surface. She had no idea what that meant, and didn’t really care. It was probably just a brand name. Her eyes watered and she squeezed it in her palm until she felt that her skin was going to split. Whatever happened when they didn’t take their medicine had always been a well guarded secret, but now she was faced with the reality.

          “Cain?”

          She jumped, gasping and flailing at the sides of the stall. “W-What?”

          “Uh, are you even coming to breakfast?”

          Her held breath rushed out as she leaned her head against the metal slab of the stall. “Maybe not today. I don’t feel well.”

          There was a quiet moment where she thought maybe he had already left.

          “Did you already hear about Adam? I guess I was wrong about that hypothesis.”

          She sighed and stood up, shedding her clothes finally and letting them drop in a slushy mess at her feet. “Yeah, I know, Abel.” She paused, holding the barrette against her collar bone. Numbly, she turned the knob on the wall to warm the water. “Hey…” she whispered quietly.

          “Hmm?”

          “Come here.”

          Abel stood there, just slightly stunned. “Uh, what?” The steam of the shower was curling up in thick wisps from the stall where she was showering. He swallowed loudly.

          “Hand me the shampoo, dim wit.”

          He coughed, walking briskly over and grabbing her small bottle of shampoo. Clicking the cap open, he smelt the scent of tropical fruit, before handing it behind his back and through the curtain. “Have you been in here the whole time?” he asked, looking to the side.

          Her hand wrapped around his wrist and he jumped, dropping the bottle. He stared at her fingers as they tightened on his skin. “Cain? What are you doing?” he breathed unevenly. It was true, he was a 16 year old boy, but he was no normal boy. Without a sense of love, commitment, or even the slightest bit of caring, he had never bothered with women. Sharing a room with a girl his age was not really something that bothered him. In fact, not much bothered him at all. Her warm hand was curled tightly around his arm now, and he was rethinking his ideas on women.

          “I saw it, Abel. I saw what happened to him. I saw what’s going to happen to us.”

          His toes curled on the cold tile floor as he looked through the gap in the curtain at her trembling hand. “You…saw it?” Her silence was all the answer he needed this time. “What was it like?”

          She drummed her fingers on his skin for a second. “It was like he exploded…”

          He laughed tensely. “What are you saying, Cain?”

          “There was so much blood, Abel. It was everywhere. It was on the ceiling.”

          The older boy looked away, his mouth dry. “So that’s what it’s like…”

          Finally, she dropped his wrist, bent and picked up the shampoo. “I guess so. Now we know what we have in store for us.”

          He pulled his hand away and rubbed the water off it. “You seem awfully calm about it.”

          For a moment, as she squeezed the shampoo into her hand, she considered lying to him. After all, it was all she had ever been taught to do, but as the easy flow of the lie started, she stopped it. “I’m not. I’m not calm. I’m freaking out, Abel.”

          He looked back at the shower, catching a glimpse of her bare shoulder, and quickly looking away. “Obviously. Is that the first truthful response you’ve ever given?”

          She hummed darkly at him.

          “So what? What are you going to do? You know I hated that guy.”

          Her free hand scrubbed her scalp roughly. The scent of the blood, she knew, was not really around her, but she couldn’t seem it get it out of her nose. “I know. He hated you too.”

          The boy sent her a dark look. “You still think he did it for you?”

          “I’m not sure. He may have hated me too.”

          “He didn’t,” Abel muttered dismally, walking a few steps towards the door. The last thing he needed was the rest of the women to wake up and find him in their bathroom.

          Cain was quiet as she rinsed her hair and pushed the clip into the side of it. She ran her fingers over it thoughtfully.

          “I’ll see you back at the room. It’s our day off.”

          “Alright.” She paused and reached around the curtain to grab the pink towel she had brought. Her eye matched it unnaturally, and she looked up at her roommate’s back. “Thanks for checking on me, Abel.”

          His shoulders tensed, looking back at her suspiciously. “I just wanted to know if you were going to waist the tray of food I got you. Don’t get weird on me.”

          She smiled slightly and nodded at him. Though she at times hated him, she had some sort of semblance of gratefulness for his existence in her life.

          He shook his head, opened the door, and slammed it shut. That girl, she truly was the bane of his existence. Sociopaths were supposed to be liars, not tellers of truth, or self-sacrificing idiots, but she was even worse than that b*****d commander. His best bet was that she was just a female. Maybe she was just a female version of the commander. His hand found its way to his messy pale blond hair and smoothed it back. That girl had always been more trouble than she was worth. He thought that for a moment, but then admitted to himself that wasn’t true. If she had truly been more trouble than she was worth then she would have been dead a long time ago. Ever since she had been chosen as a sharp shooter, her worth had been sky high. Unlike him, who was merely a supporter in the missions. He sighed to himself as he made his way back to their room.

          Upon entering, he could smell the gun oil that Cain used to swap her rifles down with. It was a strong smell, and one that he doubted he would ever be able to forget. “Stupid, Cain.”

          He glanced around the room, thinking about whether he wanted to go back to sleep or if he maybe wanted to pull out a book. Something was amiss though, he noticed, as he glanced at the small center table. His eyes narrowed as he grabbed the manila envelope and ripped open its top quickly. “Don’t they know it’s our day off today?” he grumbled.

          As he flipped through the pages he heard the door open behind him. Cain walked in, smelling very much like a damp tropical paradise.

          “What’s that?” she said, rubbing the ends of her hair in the towel.

          He sat half way on the table, handing her some of the papers. “Looks like the Head is still pissed about your total failure.”

          She shot him an only slightly angry look.

          His eyes narrowed. “Are we done being open with ourselves now?”

          “Open to what? I have no idea what you’re talking about, dear brother.”

          He flinched. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your brother. We aren’t siblings.”

          Her mouth twitched in a smile. “Say what you will. You’re my brother Abel.”

          “Whatever,” he sneered and shoved the rest of the paper at her. “We leave in an hour.”

          She flipped through the pages. “So now we get to see these files ourselves. I’ll read through them on the way. Let’s get our stuff together and head out.”

          “You aren’t the commander. Don’t boss me around.”

          Her bright pink eyes looked up at him blankly.

          “I know what you were thinking,” he growled.

          “No you don’t.”

          He tried to tame his hair again. “Whatever.”

          With that she shrugged and turned, tossing the papers onto her messy bed and began packing up her favorite gun to go along with her.

 

Author's Note

I'm stilling looking for reviews