• I’m sure that I didn’t touch that note, and I’m sure no one else came in that room last night. But for some unexplained reason, the note had disappeared. Luu said that I had to stay in bed and rest on Monday. That was no problem for me; it gave me time to think about Roy and Christian.
    The police had given them names, codes I’m guessing, but to what? Where they criminals? Refugees? What? Everything that they had said circulated through my mind. Were they lying to me? What were they going to do to me if they had been there any longer? Ugh, this was harder than I thought.
    I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. Their numbers were 336 and 337. When they did whatever they did or got captured, they were right beside each other. Were they related?
    I gasped.
    They had to be related. They looked similar to each other, and they were the same age. Interesting…


    I flicked the television on, flipping through the channels. There was practically nothing on, except for the average news. So, I watched it out of boredom.
    They were talking about some being they found way out in the cosmos. It said that the being had the same DNA structure as the species that arrived here last year.
    The same species that the U.S. and many other countries had watched over carefully, too carefully. Many of the species ran away, committed suicide, or were captured to be put into “special places”, or, testing laboratories. What has the world become?
    “I never liked watching this, it’s so…”
    “Wrong.”
    “Exactly.”
    I shot up from the bed nearly flying off the front end. My heart was beating vigorously from the two voices beside me. I turned around, only to find two wonderful guests.
    “Don’t. Do. That.”I said, staring at the quilt, wide eyed.
    Roy chuckled, and Christian tilted his head, hair falling over his icy eyes.
    “How’d you get in here?”There was no way anyone could get past my ears, even with the television on.
    “Window,” Roy replied, nearly giving me a heart attack when he appeared right beside me in a nanosecond. “We need to talk…now.”
    He sounded serious, way too serious. I didn’t feel like I was talking to the Roy from last night, but a whole complete new one; brand new and with a slight attitude.
    “Why don’t you like the news? It tells you everything that’s going on.”
    “Everything they want you to hear. They can lie and you’d believe every word of it.”
    “But…why?” I was speechless. Why would Roy possibly say that the news was a lie? That wasn’t true, everything that happened happened. They even had footage of it. So how can you deny it?
    “Roy, why are you so uptight about this?” I asked, staring at the tattoo on his left wrist.
    “I…I can’t explain it. Christian and I are…well, were brothers to start off, but I think you already realized that. The news-the two escapees that let dozens of ‘species’ loose, they haven’t caught them correct?”
    I nodded my head, trying not to look too suspicious as I stared at his hand and listened.
    “Tai, why are you so curious with that?”
    I bit my lip. Yep, it wasn’t Roy that caught me, but Christian. I immediately thought of something to change the subject.
    “Christian, are you and Roy like, twins or something? You have the same birthday and all…”
    “Tai, do you get my point?”
    My eyes snapped to Roy who apparently had fixed himself up against the door like last night. “You two are the criminals.”I breathed.
    “Roy, we’re apparently criminals now.”
    I turned towards Christian, now realizing how they snuck in and moved around without me noticing. “Then what about the numbers?”
    Christian looked up, and then stared at Roy. His eyes froze in a fixed position as he spoke. “You mean the numbers three thirty-six and thirty-seven don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    He sighed, “We each have a code number they call us by. Kind of like a nickname I suppose.”
    “You leave me standing at a cliff,” I rose and stepped towards Roy, who hadn’t moved a single muscle yet. “Tell me something. You look like humans, your internal organs are like humans, so why does the whole planet want to get rid of you?”
    “They don’t want any…how I should say this…‘mixed’ citizens until they can figure out what the heck we are.” Roy said, his back against the door.
    “But you guys are practically human, why would the planet go through so much trouble to get species that are practically like themselves?”
    “I can explain that.” Christian sat beside his brother and leaned his head back against the door. “We actually live longer than most of your kind, plus, our genes are far more intricate than yours. And, we have these extra senses to add to our so called awkwardness. It’s called unique, apparently they don’t want that.”
    “And they really do test on you don’t they?”
    “Not really, the criminals do though, the ones that are sentenced to the death penalty. Others, like me and Christian are in other places, places they don’t want you to know about.”
    “So the whole world is hiding something from its citizens? I knew I should have moved away to Daslus, my father was right.” I kneeled down in front of them, “What kind of places?”
    “I don’t want to talk about it, how about later. For now, you have a guest down stairs.” Roy stood and walked towards the balcony, his fraternal twin following behind.
    “Wait, don’t leave again!” I pleaded, running beside them.
    “Who said we were leaving? I wanted to meet this…Luu.”