In the morning, with the light of the hallways outside their cell glowing, the brothers got up from the beds they slept on every night, stretching their limbs in the near-darkness of their abode. These two brothers began life as one person and became two in the womb through a splitting of cells, a miracle for which there was no explanation at the time of their birth. Although many thought them years apart now, they were once identical to each other, almost the same entity. But, as time worked its special magic, Aleksander began to work with his telepathic and telekinetic powers, using a mix of both to painlessly grow taller than Aiden, who was already a giant at his current height of seven feet and some-odd inches. Aiden, in his own right, began to experiment with his own powers. Drawing upon the high concentrations of metal in his body, he began to tattoo himself and his brother, eventually working his way into piercings, using a fine needle he grew from his fingers. Now the two had only their looks and a single tattoo on the back of their hands in common, a snake of eternity, eating its own tale in a symbolic sideways eight, with ravens about to feast upon it’s flesh. It was the family crest of the brothers, the mark of a true Kraven, one of the most feared, and rare, of the many Clans of the Evers.
Every morning, with their lean bodies glistening from their exercises in their personal weight room, these two immortal children of the night get dressed, you can see where they picked different styles, in both clothing and attitude. Aleksander first pulls on black sleep shorts and a black wife beater, the dark material reflecting his sadistic view of the world. Then he pulls on black skinny jeans and a black Ed Hardy shirt, tugging them into place to make sure they’re put into exactly the right place. Lastly, he pulls on his black dress shirt and puts his Celtic cross necklace on, fingering the designs absently as he stares off into space for a few seconds, his mouth moving silently.
Aiden, on the other hand, first pulls on grey sleep pants and a white wife beater, his mentality being somewhat more cheery than his brothers. Then he puts on blue skinny jeans and a Volcom t-shirt, gently running his hands over his clothes to make sure they’re neatly in place, worried about how they may look. Over that he puts his white dress shirt, straightening it to give exactly the right impression of careless elegance that he strove for each and every day. Then both brothers put on dark red ties, the bloody color bringing brief smiles to their lips in remembrance. Packing their pockets, fixing their hair, and they’re done dressing. This all takes a matter of minutes to be completed, for they have done this for countless centuries, always at the ready to quickly leave wherever they are staying.
Now, life in the most secret military base ever known is joyless most of the time. But the brothers get a good chunk of money to do what they wish when not on missions, although this is very seldom, so it still kinda sucks.
Now, what we didn’t mention about the brothers is their past. You see, Aiden and Aleksander are somewhere in the range of four thousand years old. We say in the range because even the Brothers aren’t exactly sure when they were born, or even where. They have been on their own since for as long as they can remember, and it never bothered them after the first hundred years or so. The twins made their way in the world, moving from place to place and keeping themselves safe. They stayed in Rome for a time, making friends with Remus and Romulus, and visited many other cultures. After about 3800 years of wandering the world together, they came to America, curious about this “New World”, and made their living as bounty hunters in the wild West. In the 1940s, they were recruited by the U.S. Military for “special work”, and became the first residents of a place later to be called Area 51, underneath the American city of Boston.
On such subjects, there’s also the “Roswell Incident”. Late in the nineteen-forties, in the American Southwest, there was a supposed “UFO” that crashed in the desert near a town in New Mexico. For years now, people have claimed that aliens indeed landed there and the government of the United States covered up the whole thing after taking the aliens into custody.
The true story is much stranger. Upon his years of being a lone wanderer, the youngest Brother, who had been a mere child when the Brothers had come to in their altered state, had decided to try flying. After years spent building himself a set of wings, he had taken off into the atmosphere above San Francisco, in southern California. He succeeded in flying for many miles, but then came to the problem of how to land. Unsure what to do, he made his best attempt, falling unconscious in the crash. Upon awakening, he lashed out at the men around him, killing dozens before they managed to secure him for transport. Ever since, he has slept in a special tank deep below Boston, in Area 51.
So, coming back to the story at hand, the brothers have a large suite to themselves, which has 4 bedrooms built into it. But they only use 1 most of the time, because they are very sparing of sleep.
As they are finishing their morning sparring match and preparing to go see their Handler, the man who gives them their missions each day, a low-level agent comes in to give them an envelope. As Aiden opened it and read through it quickly, Alex started doing push-ups on the wall, smiling at the unnerved Agent, who clearly had never seen someone who could do push ups in mid-air. Aleks listened silently to his brother’s thoughts, his movements growing faster against the wall, his anger causing the lights to flicker, just before he jumped off the wall in a back flip, landing beside Aiden as the younger Brother crumpled the letter in one hand. As the two brothers began to walk, they fell into step and their eyes glowed and changed, seeming to become pure white, almost as if their eyes were glowing from the inside. Both of them walked through the halls of the base, their steps sounding like clanging metal, their movements completely synchronized, anyone who stood in their path mercilessly invaded by the vast power now moving through the hallways. Humans fell left and right as their minds were filled with impossibly massive bits of memory, driving them to madness as they scrabbled at their eyes, some of the tortured souls ripping them out in their attempts to stem the flow of images in their minds, visions of things they never knew were real. Aleksander noticed this distantly and with little care. They were insects, weak and servile. They deserved the nightmares he gave them, and he sincerely hoped they went insane.
As the two approached the door to their Handler’s office, they both jumped at the same time and kicked the double doors in and off their hinges, their boots leaving imprints in the steel. As the man behind the desk stood up to confront them, his genial smile faltered and he backed away slowly, fear registering in his eyes at their fearsome appearance. Aiden thought distantly, with satisfaction, of how terrible they must look in their enraged state, their eyes white and their teeth growing pointed as they grinned like feral beasts at him.
As one, the two brothers snarled, their bestial visages growing more terrible with every word, “We will not stand for this! You cannot send us out on such a fool’s mission! If we hadn’t eliminated those puny humans you sent us after, this whole place would be known as public gossip by now! You have 5 seconds to convince me not to murder you right now.” As they spoke, their voices changed just as their eyes had, becoming one with each other, a perfect harmony of death. By the end, they were no longer just people linked at the mind, they were one once more, a terrible entity to behold, the most supreme force known to the Ever world.
With a calm face, the Handler held up a document and handed it to the twins, his smile threatening to return once more. As they read it, Aleksander looked up, his eyes normal once more and his face generally shocked. He said softly, “You mean they found them? They found that colony?”
The Handler simply nodded, letting his oily smile do more than threaten, growing into an obscene thing sitting upon his mouth, obviously thinking he had the upper hand. Too late, he realized that his superior must have written something he hadn’t been able to see on the document. Alex raised a hand with a smile, speaking softly, “You will be fun to experiment on…” The Handler had time for only one more thought before he blacked out and it was a very strange one. He wondered to himself how they both knew what was on the document when only one was reading it.
As the Handler stirred, Alex grinned. The man was impossibly mired in his own dreams and wouldn’t see or hear anything for a long while. It was safe to leave him here while they went out on their mission. As he finished packing away more of his goodies in his clothes, he watched his Brother’s body finish its process. He was now bulkier and his muscles were laced with unknown metals, found deep inside of his muscular and skeletal structure and never before seen by man. He was also a bit taller, his bones having stretched slightly as his muscles grew. It was a thing of beauty to watch him rebuild himself into a new form, his whole effort turning him into a different person. Too bad it was so limited though. Just the little he had done had taken an hour to complete, and he’d be weaker for a little while. Aleksander sighed, thinking again about how to enhance their powers so that they could do more. It was a perplexing problem, and he worked on it continually.
As they both finished getting ready, they stood up, walking to the door and out of it. They followed the hallways through miles of sanitary facility to the surface, walking into an elevator as they discussed philosophy.
“Well, if you think about it, either the world started with two people and everyone’s inbred or evolution came and we all started as shit-throwing primates.” Alex said.
“Yes, but if Evolution Theory is right, we’re just random creations. And I prefer to think we were made by some divine being for a purpose.” Aiden said slowly.
“What purpose,” Alex said, “search and destroy?”
Aiden returned, “Oh hardy har, you sarcastic piece of shit!”
Alex just giggled as they came out of the elevator into a hangar.
“Which car today, Little Brother?” Alex said. He looked around, wondering which one was best for their trip.
“Well I feel like driving something really fast, so let’s try out that new ’09 Corvette.”
“That sounds good to me. I’ll grab the keys and we can get going.”
As they jumped in the car and screeched out of the hangar, Aiden started mapping out their journey in his mind, looking for the best way to reach their destination in the Big Apple. As they drove, they thought in silence, each one wrapped in his own secret thoughts.
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