Ruled by 10

Cain and Abel are trapt together, unable to escape under the watchful eyes of Adam.

 

       Abel hunched in his chair, pushing his sweaty hands through his disheveled hair and looked down. Below him, not more than a foot away, was the face of a monster he had long known, and long feared. Her nose, neither delicate, nor robust, was turned up at the end, and her lips were shaped like a strung bow. A freckle, very small and easily covered, was settled under her right eye like a permanent tear. He reached out, pushing some of her straight hair away from her pale face. His mouth formed into a hard line as his eyes traveled along her soft jaw and down until it reached the raw red and purples splotches on her neck.

       She had been lying unconscious for approximately 25 minutes, and during that time Abel felt that he was going to vomit from the anxiety. It had been the longest 25 minutes of his life as she laid there and occasionally cringed in pain.

       His hand touched her cheek as he leaned his forehead on his free hand and sighed. For all his life he hadn’t ever felt any sense of guilt. In fact, he only vaguely knew the official definition of it, let alone how it actually felt. Still, if he hadn’t known any better, he would have thought he felt some sort of twinge of it in his insides as he sat and watched the girl curl her fingers in discomfort.

       In his mind he could see her round the bottom stair, her mouth open with relief, eyes wide with something foreign to them both. Now, as he shifted in his hard wooden seat, he eyed the thick metal door in the room. There was no door knob, nor any window, but outside he could hear a group of men having a conversation.

       The watch, given to him previously by the now reborn Adam, ticked away on his wrist, which he occasionally glanced at. As the night moved along at a steady pace, he knew that no one was going to be opening that door any time soon. “Cain,” he whispered and looked intently at the now empty pocket at her breast.

       He stood up sharply, lashing out at the wooden chair and sent it crashing to the corner of the room. Adam hadn’t seemed like the type to kill without reason, but at that point, Abel wasn’t sure if he had a reason to dispose of his two comrades or not. Without the pills though, it was only a matter of time before they both expired in one way or another. The thought of his insides boiling out of every orifice he had was enough for him to start screaming in fury. “Adam!” he yelled, kicking the door with the heel of his tennis shoes. “Adam! What are you planning to do?” He howled furiously and beat on the door until he was sure his hands were going to be crippled.

       “Shut up, Abel. You’re making my head ache worse.”

       The blond spun around and was kneeling beside the bed in an instant. His hands gripped the sheets hard as he looked down at the blinking girl. “Cain, how are you feeling?” he breathed, unable to rally up hope that she was truly unharmed.

       She coughed roughly and swallowed. Her head was aching, her throat was raw and sore, and worse than that, her vision was taking a ridiculous amount of time to clear up. “I’m fine.” Her eyes blinked rapidly up at him. “Time?”

       He rubbed his forehead anxiously. “10 ‘til midnight.”

       Her clouded pink eyes glanced at him quickly. “What happened?”

       Leaning back, the boy looked up at the solid sheet of metal above them. There were no places to get a hold, and no place to break through. “That James guy choked you out and then…” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Adam stepped in. Now we’re in this cell.”

       A look of bewilderment came over her face. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” In her state of disorientation, there was nothing about what he just said that made any sense to her. Maybe she had misheard him, she thought.

       He looked back down at her and shook his head. “You heard me. It was Adam. He’s alive, Cain. He’s definitely alive,” he muttered, and sneered towards the door where he was sure Adam was. If he had hated that man before, he now despised him.

       Slowly, the girl sat up in her cot and pushed her fingers into her temples. After a long moment, she licked her dry lips. “How? Did he have pills with him? I still don’t understand…”

       Abel shrugged and continued to shake his head. “You now know as much as I do.”

       She sighed, looked down at him where he knelt. “How did James even get to me? I don’t remember anything. We’re in the lumber yard, correct?”

       He nodded. “Correct. He… uh, he caught you unaware and disarmed you” Visions of her arms rolling limp at her sides pushed at his brittle state of mind. “I couldn’t get a clear shot.”

       Her look was somewhat unconvinced. “That’s impossible. There isn’t anything in existence that could have distracted me to the point someone could sneak up on me,” she spat with disgust, but immediately regretted it as the soft flesh of her neck stung.

       He cleared his throat, looking to his left hastily. “I didn’t see it happen. I got there right before Adam came out.” Yes, a lie, he admitted to himself, but it was more than necessary to keep the equal disinterest between them from forming into something foreign and awkward. He was well aware what had distracted her, and the look on her face at that moment said it all. Obviously, it had not been something she had foreseen even within herself.

       Carefully, she swung her legs onto the side and her feet gently set themselves on the floor. As if by habit, her hand went to her jacket pocket. A half formed word flew from her lips as she looked down with wide eyes and pulled all the pockets open. “The pills!”

       Abel put his forehead against cot. “He took them before he put us in here.”

       “James?” she squeaked.

       “No. Adam.”

       “That b*****d!” she screamed shrilly, throwing herself up from the cot and furiously towards the door. “He wanted our pills!” Her small hands slammed themselves into the door. “Adam! Open this door! I’ll f*****g kill you!” she screeched.

       “That doesn’t seem like something that’s going to get him to let us out, Cain.” Abel ran a hand through his hair as he stood up briefly, only to move to the back corner of the room and sit down again.

       She propped herself up against the door with both hands and looked down. “Son-of-a- b***h…” A long string of curses fell from her lips as she tapped her finger nail 3 times on the metal door.

       After a short pause, 3 taps came from the other side of the door, causing the girl to jump back quickly.

       “Cain, Abel, I’m sorry to have to put you in there.”

       “Adam!” the dark headed girl screamed, throwing herself back up against the door. “Let us out!” She beat the door with each word.

       His muted laughter filtered into the room. “I promise that you’re in no danger at all. I just need you to experience that for yourself without endangering anyone else.”

       “What are you talking about? You took our pills, you disgusting piece of s�".”

       “I did.” Both of the captives could almost imagine him shrugging. “You don’t need them, Cain. I’ve been off them for months. You have to learn to trust me if we’re going to start working together again.”

       Cain looked back with raised eyebrows at her sibling. She mouthed the word, “What?”

       Abel raised his hands silently in defeat. His hands were aching and his stomach felt like it was going to come up his throat. Maybe he was going to die at any second, and if that was true, he wasn’t going to spend his last moments trying to uncover Adam’s motives.

       She turned, putting her hands on the door. “I saw your room, Adam. What happened to you?”

       He laughed again, free and light. “They came for me like they do all the people that lose favor. I had no choice but to kill them to save myself,” he said as if discussing yesterdays lunch.

       Both Cain and Abel sat silent for a moment as they digested the information coming through the door. “Who are you talking about, Adam?”

       “EDEN, of course. Haven’t you figured it out yet, Cain? You’re such a smart girl. I would have thought you would get it right away.”

       “Adam…” she threatened with growing irritation.

       “EDEN has been black mailing us with those drugs for years. They tell us the first day we arrive that without it, we’re going to expire sooner rather than later. It’s all a lie. They’ve had us all fooled from the beginning.”

       Slowly, Cain turned, her face losing most of its color as she looked down at Abel. He looked back up at her with an expression that was hard to read.

       “Is Abel listening to this?” he asked casually, like a teacher asking a naughty child to pay attention.

       Abel held his face in his hands. “I’m listening!”

       “Good. Now, I can tell you that the pills are useless, but it won’t do any good unless you see it for yourself. So you’ll be spending the night in there. I promise that in the morning you’ll wake up with just a slight headache.”

       “I don’t believe you…” Cain was staring past Abel, through the wall. There were a lot of things in the world that described her, but ‘trusting’ was not one of them.

       “You don’t have to right now. I’ll explain everything in the morning when you’re less… scary.”

       “If it isn’t medicine then what have we been taking, Adam? Do you even know?” she asked lowly, her mouth moving though her mind was quickly going numb.

       Behind the door, Adam smiled to himself. “I do know what’s in the pills, but it’s best if you don’t know yet.” He took a step away from the door, his fingers lingering on the metal. “Good night, you two. I’ll see you in the morning.”

       As he turned, he could hear the girl throwing every bit of her small body against the door in desperation, screaming at the top of her lungs for freedom. Still, he kept walking away, ignoring her fury that burnt at his back. For the past few days, Adam had done nothing but think of that very moment, playing it over and over again in his mind. Now that those two were safely locked away, a sense of relief was settling into his chest.

       “She’s a wild one, isn’t she?” asked the short, but barrel-chested James. His eyes, a dark brown, glimmered in the dim light.

       “You went too far.” Adam’s glare was hot with contained fury.

       “I only did what you told me to. It wasn’t my intent to kill her.”

       “Could have fooled me,” muttered Adam as he set down at the circle table. Each of the men in florescent jackets were back up, standing at their positions. He eyed them, seeing a clean bullet hole in each of their clothes, of which covered a thick bullet proof vest. He had taken all the proper precautions, knowing the habits of his former students, and now he was cleared of any deaths that may have happened.

       James sat down across from him. “Obviously, the girl passed your test. She seems further along than you had mentioned before.”

       Adam merely nodded. Cain had exceeded his expectations and had backed her partner, leaving herself open to attack. Though it had been a single moment of stupidity, it had shown something was developing in her that he had been noticing for some time.

       “And the boy, he seemed slightly better than you had told me as well.” James took a bottle of wine and poured it into two plastic cups. Carefully, he shifted one towards the pink eyed man in front of him.

       “Just because he didn’t shoot her, doesn’t mean he’s in the clear.” Adam took the cup, swirling the liquid thoughtfully. “He could have had ulterior motives.”

       “Such as?” The man took a sip of his wine, puckering his lips.

       “He would be alone if she died, for starters. As the older sibling, her welfare would have been his responsibility. Without her, he would have been useless to EDEN.” Adam took a slow drink of his wine. It was a little dry for his taste. “We’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

       The man leaned an elbow on the table and smirked over it at the former EDEN member. “You think those two are going to get a little closer without the pills?”

       Adam considered throwing the dark red wine at the man, but merely looked at him with a cool expression. “You’re a perverted man, James. They were raised as siblings.”

       James laughed deeply, leaning back and grinning. “Most men are. Get used to it.” He paused and seemed to think back. “She’s a cutie. I’m surprised you didn’t consider it. You’ve been off your pills for awhile, so you must feel different.”

       He shrugged. Months ago, he had decided for his own reasons to stop taking the pills. After realizing their uselessness it had only been a matter of time before that piece of forbidden knowledge had driven him into the lands outside EDEN.

       “Have to come to terms with your new self?”

       “Maybe…” The young man looked off towards the steel cell which had grown quiet. “Anyways, they’re both important to me, so I expect you to treat them well.”

       He nodded seriously before standing up and walking away a short distance. “I’m going to get some food. Want something?”

       “I’ll have whatever you’re having.” Adam smiled slightly and leaned back. “Get those two something two, would you?”

       “Yeah, I’ll get ‘em something. I’ll be back in 30 minutes.” The man quickly walked past a guard and into the darkness.

       In truth, Adam hated that man, but he was a necessary evil. His hate had only recently developed as he saw what had transpired earlier. The plan had been to test the two, putting each in danger and seeing if the other would back them up. The plan had not been to assault the girl in such a way that she passed out. He thought back to the look on her face as she fought for air and clenched his fist. Before the next day was over, he promised himself that he was going to make it up to her, because soon, their worlds were about to be turned upside down.

 

The room was quiet as the two teens looked at each other through weary pink eyes. Their only companions in the cold steel cube were a half broken chair and an upturned cot. It had been hours, and those hours had seemed to be an eternity to them. Both were of the same mindset, which was that they were watching each other for signs of the coming implosion of their DNA. Both had pictures of blood hemorrhaging from their orifices, screams being wrenched from the gurgling mouths until they fell still on the freezing concrete floor.

       Abel took a break from watching his sibling and glanced at his watch. It was 8 in the morning and they had spent a ridiculous amount of time in the cramped metal cube. “You think he was right?” he mumbled. He himself had a feeling of uneasy, disgruntled almost-acceptance.

       Cain sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I’m not sure.” She paused. “Do you have a head ache?” Her own head ache, she thought, was more due to the fact that she had been knocked out by whoever that James b*****d was.

       He nodded bleakly. It had started a few hours before and had been building in his skull like a swell on a beach. “Does your neck still hurt?” It wasn’t that he was concerned, but more that he wanted to shake off the bad feeling that had come onto him earlier.

       She gingerly touched the bruises on her neck. “I’m really alright,” she said quietly and hung her arms off her bent knees. Cracking her knuckles, she looked to her left at the door. Footsteps were approaching as they had every few hours since Adam had verbally condemned them to their room.

       “Are you two awake?” It was Adam, standing with his hands on his hips behind the door. His back was sore from sleeping, very uneasily by the way, in the hard chairs outside. James had at first insisted that he go get a hotel room, but the former EDEN member had declined. Most things in the world didn’t make him nervous, but leaving the two sociopathic siblings unguarded made his insides freeze over.

       “F**k you, Adam,” Abel called bitterly.

       “Cain?”

       “I second Abel’s comment,” she sighed loudly.

       “Lovely,” Adam chuckled. “I see that neither of you have expired during the night. Didn’t I tell you? Do you accept what I’m saying now?”

       Both the captives looked at each other in silence. They knew that neither of them were sick or about to die, but the voice of the EDEN members warning them to take their medicine was still loud in their minds.

       “I’m going to let you out now and when I do, I’m going to tell you everything. It would be in your best interest not to run since you are unarmed and we have fully armed guards out here.” He laughed calmly. “Can I have your word that you won’t attack us?”

       Cain glanced towards the voice with a dismissive expression. If he let her out, she was going to jump on the nearest person and rip their throat out. She was going to drown every last guard in their own vomit and blood as she tore them limb from limb. In her mind, she could feel their slick intestines rolling through her fingers as she disemboweled them with the nearest piece of sharp wood. Maybe, if they were lucky, there would be an axe in the vicinity and she would merely plunge it into their idiotic skulls. Fury clawed at her chest as she looked back at Abel.

       A look of concern was plastered on his face and he met her gaze. “Don’t,” he mouthed silently to her. “I want to know what’s happening, but I can’t guarantee anything to a scum bag like you.” He glared past the door, thinking seriously about just letting Cain have her run of the place. She was a vile, blood thirsty beast when she had the mind to be. Like a wild animal, she would attack until she was put down. The thought of her with a hole in her head at first was no different than thinking about the sawdust irritating his nose, but then rationality kicked in. It would be a great inconvenience if the girl got herself shot.

       “Maybe I ought to tell you before I let you out then,” mused Adam.

       Cain stood slowly, her dress making a distinct rustling sound. She glared from Adam to Abel and then back. “Hurry up. I’m starting to get pissed off.” That, she admitted, was not a lie. She had spent the whole night locked away with nothing to do but contemplate different ways of breaking out and killing whoever she happened to see first.

       “Fine, after I tell you I’ll let you out. We have food for you out here.”

       Abel stood too, walking slowly to stand beside the tightly wound girl. “You should probably make it brief.” His eyes traveled briefly to his sibling. For all her violence and carefully concealed fury, he didn’t feel as threatened by her lone existence with him as he should have been. Maybe, he admitted, he viewed her as a well trained guard dog, lethal to some, indifferent to a select few.

       “Alright, listen carefully to what I’m saying. Two months ago, we went on a mission, do you remember it?”

       Cain nodded to herself. “We were to eliminate that politician’s family. It took 2 nights. I had a body count of 5,” Cain said, her words flowing out like data from a computer. It had been no different than any other night or any other mission to her. It had been chillier at the time, and her normal dress was covered in a loose fitting cardigan and her legs were mostly covered in knee high brown boots with fur inside them. She only remembered it in particular because one of the kids had spit up blood on them.

       “Correct. You shot 3 kids that night, Cain…” He paused then, and the two took note, but felt none of the uncertainty that flowed from him. “I realized then that I couldn’t do it anymore. Every time we went after someone I felt more and more disgusting. I felt like I should just die.” He paused, tracing a circle on the metal door absentmindedly. “I decided I was going to stop taking the pills on my own. I had every intention of dying. Killing… is wrong, Cain. It’s just wrong. It should never have been put on our shoulders.”

       Cain and Abel looked at each other with surprise on their faces. Had they seriously just heard him say that killing, the one thing they were good at, was wrong?

“What is he talking about?” mouthed Abel.

“I have no idea,” Cain answered silently. She turned towards the door. “Continue.” Even if she obviously didn’t understand, she was fairly intrigued.

Adam sighed. “So I stopped taking the pills. Turns out they aren’t medicine. There isn’t anything wrong or unstable in our DNA at all. It was all just an elaborate lie to keep us complacent. We’re driven by our rationality and sense of self preservation and not our emotions and they were counting on it. We would do anything as long as we survived another day. Are you starting to get it now?”

Abel ran a hand through his hand, turned and began pacing the room. Yes, it made perfect sense, he berated himself. As sociopaths there was nothing more important than the self. Everything and everyone came second to that. Knowing that, he was sure now that EDEN had been playing a dangerous bluff with them all.

Standing a step closer to the door, Cain was silent as she contemplated much the same thing. “So… They convinced us we were going to die, and gave us medicine for a disease that didn’t exist so that they could manipulate us?”

“See? I told you that you were a smart girl.” He laughed slightly and contemplated the next thing that he was going to say carefully. “Last night, you asked if I knew what was in the pills, and I do. It’s a complicated subject, but to simplify it, it’s a hormonal compound.”

Abel continued to pace as he thought hard. “Hormones?”

“Yes, hormones. They’ve been feeding us hormones to keep our minds and bodies from aging as they should have. After all, hormones, attraction, lust, feelings of adoration and loyalty would have put a kink in their plans.” Adam sighed and rubbed his sore shoulders as he stood there. It had been a long time in the making, but now that the news was out, the moment of truth was coming.

“What does that even mean?” Abel shouted, walking briskly to the door and slamming his hand onto it. His skin stung sharply but the heat in his mind was more demanding of his attention.

“It’s only a matter of time before you start realizing what life is like without the pills. It’s going to be scary, Abel, especially for you. You’re such a d********g on the pills,” he chuckled lightly.

“F**k you, Adam. F**k you.”

“I didn’t think you’d swing that way, but, to each his own, right?” Adam paused as he pulled a card from his pocket and let it hover over the sliding lock. “I’m going to let you out now.”

Abel’s shoulders tensed as he looked towards Cain, whose face was pale and blank.

The door beeped and the locking mechanism slid out of place. Adam opened the door cautiously, looking from Abel to Cain. His eyes stayed on the girl and his lips pursed in displeasure. “Cain.”
       She looked slowly back up at him, her eyes looking through him rather than at him. “I’m so pissed off…” she whispered, more to herself than to the 2 men.

Adam frowned, glancing at Abel with a raised brow. “Ideas?”

“For what?” Abel was hastily looking from the girl to his elder comrade.

“Ways to decompress our cute little friend here. I didn’t come all this way for her to go on a killing spree…” Adam moved forward, gently setting his hands on her shoulders, up to her throat and back down again. “Cain, look at me.”

She blinked and looked at him with a boiling fury hidden behind her hot pink eyes.

He touched the barrette that was askew in her disheveled hair. “You’re angry, and I don’t blame you, but you can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

Her glare was blasting him like air from an oven. “Why not?”

Adam sighed. “Listen carefully, Cain. There are only 10 rules for the members of Sinai, and one is we cannot kill the innocent. If you want revenge on EDEN, stay here with me, and we’ll destroy them together.”

Cain grabbed his hand from her shoulder and gripped it hard. “You’re different than you were.” She could feel his pulse under her fingers, calm and steady. “Because of the pills?”

He nodded slowly, not taking his eyes from her face.

“Will we…” She narrowed her eyes. “Will we start to care?”

Adam let out a long breath and settled his free hand on her fingers that enclosed his wrist. “Maybe… There haven’t been too many of us that escaped for real statistics, but it’s possible that you’ll start to experience empathy.” He smiled down at her contently. “It’s not as bad as you think, Cain. Life becomes fulfilling on a whole new level when you really care about others.”

She let go of his hand and set her lips in a tight line. In her mind there was a whirlwind of raw emotions, but for the most part, they didn’t touch her face. Was she supposed to be excited about these new emotions that may or may not show themselves? Well, contrary to what Adam wanted, she was not excited. She was more scared than she had ever been, even in front of John.

Abel stepped away from the 2, already angry at being ignored once again by his former commander. There was a lot to digest, to put it lightly, and there was nothing to distract him from the issues at hand. It may have been a good thing though, he tried to convince himself. The sooner he came to terms with the new information, the better he was going to be. He ran his fingers through his slightly dirty feeling blond hair and looked up through the metal grating of the lumber yard’s second floor. To be honest, he was pretty pissed off too.

       “Come on, you two. I have food for you, as promised.” Adam smiled as if nothing had just transpired and walked casually out into a cleared space where a small table was. Piled on top of it were 2 Styrofoam containers. “We have fried fish and chips for you. Not the best, I’ll admit, but it’s what James got.”

       Abel didn’t bother to wait for the girl as he picked up the one on top and the lid squeaked open. Popping a few fries in his mouth, he threw a disgusted look at Adam. “It’s cold,” he mumbled with his mouth still half full.

       “Just be grateful you have anything at all,” Adam shot back as he stepped aside and allowed Cain to walk past him.

       She looked from the closed box to the one in Abel’s hands, reaching out and nabbing a piece of fish from his food.

       “Hey!”

       She ignored him, sitting down by the table and nibbling on the battered fish. There was a lot on her mind, and she was finding the thought of food fairly unsettling. Though she ate slowly, she didn’t taste the salt or feel how greasy the food was. In a way, she was battling with numbness to the situation, but in another she was trying to calm the growing fire storm in her gut. She had been with EDEN since she was 3 years old, and had been taught to pick up on lies, see scams for what they were, and to take vengeance as easily as swatting a fly. Now, it was uncertain whether any of those things had been real. The people that she had killed were now like phantoms floating across her mind. They had died by her hand, falling down dead in an instant. The deaths on her hands, she thought, were the only certain thing in her life.

       Abel sighed and took a seat as well. He glanced from the distracted girl and back to his food. He took a few more fries and ate them quickly as he too began thinking again. “What are those rules you were talking about?” he asked, not looking at Adam.

       The older boy leaned against a pile of lumber and crossed his arms lightly. “Does that mean you want to join Sinai?”

       He shrugged, continuing to pick away at his food. Sinai, he remembered back, was the name of the mountain Moses had climbed to speak to God. In all honesty, he was dead tired of all the biblical s**t in his life. His name, the girl’s name, and the relationships between the EDEN members were all so predestined that it made him want to vomit. At this rate, Cain was going to go on a rampage at any moment and decapitate him.

       “Don’t you want revenge? They tricked you. They had you do their dirty work. You risked your lives for nothing in return. They made you their puppets.” Adam brushed his straight hair out of his eyes as he looked down at the two.

       Cain grunted and leaned her chin on her hand.

       “Cryptic as ever, I see,” mused Adam with a small smile.

       “Just tell us what they are and we’ll see.”

       The elder boy sighed, looking up thoughtfully. He supposed the worst that would happen was that they walked out with a little more knowledge than they were supposed to. “Alright.” He pushed himself off the lumber and walked over to the table where he took out a worn leather wallet from his back pocket. His fingers split the flaps open and he maneuvered a laminated card out of it. Gently, he laid it on the table top between the two. “These are the rules. We all keep them on us for reference and to keep our goals in mind.”     

       Cain looked over suspiciously, but Abel only looked bored as he leaned in.

 

We work only for Sinai

We make no deals with outsiders

We do not speak the name of Sinai to others

We always attend meetings

We respect our team mates

We do not kill innocents

We do not tangle our social ties with lust

We do not steal

We do not lie

We do not crave

 

       “What do you guys think? You want to join or not?”

Cain looked away after reading it with a carefully blank expression. Those rules were a lot to ask for, but there was a nagging feeling in her chest. Every time she tried to examine it, it seemed to move further away from her grasp until it was completely indecipherable. “You work for them now?” she asked quietly.

Both Abel and Adam looked at her in surprise.

“That’s right,” he said, picking up the card and sliding it into his jacket pocket.

Cain nodded, tapping her finger nail on the table top for a moment before finally leaning back. She popped the last of the fish into her mouth. “I wouldn’t be able to lie? Or kill?”

“Preferably, no, but there will always be enemies that need to be eliminated in EDEN. They will pay for what they’ve been doing to our kind.”

She nodded again, a smear of a smile flashing on her face. “I’ll do it.”

While Adam grinned, and patted her head, Abel looked at her with his mouth agape. Stunned would have been an understatement of his expression at the moment. She was just going to walk into a brand new organization? Not just any organization either. This was Sinai, a counter movement to the one they had just been involved with. He knew that she was as much a sociopath as anyone else, but it was evident that she truly had no loyalty to anyone but herself. Knowing this, he felt a sense of disappointment. They had been siblings for more than a decade, shared a room every day and night, and had never left each other’s sides. Still, somehow, she had failed to form any type of bond with him. He ground his teeth angrily. “I’ll join as well.”

Adam’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Oh really? Well, that’s great too. We have the whole team back, don’t we?” he laughed, a warm smile lightening his face in the dim room.

Something in Abel’s stomach turned as he looked at his renewed team mate. In reality, he had no choice, and he knew that. To leave EDEN without support was sure to be a death sentence, and with no proper identity or connections, life was impossible. It seemed that both him and his sibling really had no other rational choice but to flip sides and betray EDEN. Sinai was going to have to be their new home.