RIFT Anthology: Book 4: ZoiTech

Brother No More

Kalan returns to the apartment to see Hiroto. He sees Kalan with raw eyes from crying. Hiroto stands up to see him.

"Are you okay, bro?"

"Don't call me that."

"What?"

Kalan then grabs onto him and shoves him up against the wall.

"I'm not your brother!"

"What are you talking about?! Let go of me!"

"Did you know?!"

"Did I know what?! What are you on about?!"

"I'm you! I'm a fucking copy of you! A Goddamn clone!"

Hiroto doesn't reply. He looks to the side unsure how to answer. Kalan's mouth drops and shoves him away.

"You bastard! All this time, you fucking knew?!"

"Kalan."

"To have the nerve to call me brother! You sick fuck!"

"I didn't have a say in the matter. Father forced me!"

"Fuck!"

Kalan turns away holding his mouth feeling sick.

"I was sworn to never speak of it. Father was going to kill me if I did," Hiroto adds.

Kalan then runs to the bathroom to throw up in the sink.

Hiroto then says, "All I've done is to protect you. Protect you from the truth."

Kalan looks up at the mirror and sees a flash of his brother in the reflection. The resemblance started to be more noticeable. The heavy scarring was the only thing covering it up. Kalan breaks down, crying while holding the sink. Hiroto tries to comfort him with a hug.

"Don't fucking touch me!"

"Okay, okay."

Kalan continues to sob at the sink, spitting residual vomit out from his mouth. After a few seconds, he asks, "Why? Why were we cloned?"

"Sister was what they were trying to make."

"Her name was Scarlett!"

There's a few seconds of silence.

"From what Father told me, she was to be studied and understood. Red Thorn was what had been called an Enhanced. An individual with incredible unnatural abilities from that time."

"So what? They wanted to bring back all that shit? Start another Enhanced Era?"

"I don't know. I thought it was mostly gonna be about learning from the past. Maybe how it all happened? Maybe how to prevent it if it happened again?"

"I somehow doubt that," says Kalan.

"But she had healing abilities too. Just like the McGraths serum, Father was trying to isolate the healing factor."

"Have you ever considered maybe he was doing that to build an army of wolfborn cannon fodder. So they can't heal and be controlled. God knows what they were up to."

"And if that's possible, that's why we can't let Rift take it."

"At this point, I'm starting to see why Rift, Kerys and Dusk have been after us."

"Kalan!"

He looks up at Hiroto.

"What?!"

"Are you siding with the enemy? They killed Father and Sister!"