Her lashes flutter as she blinks rapidly, her eyes on me as if she's seeking my opinion.
I just give her a quick nod, pushing her slightly towards Miles.
"Little Vanya," he exclaims, "wonderful."
She's quickly placed on the reclining bed, her arm, already riddled with needle marks, stretched out and waiting for the shot.
Her eyes are set on me, her gaze blank.
No, that's not right. Her gaze is filled with something, yet I have a hard time understanding what it is. Her eyes are down-turned, but clear. It's not happiness, nor is it sadness. It's...
I don't know.
I can differentiate a few expressions, and I've taught myself what to look for in happiness and in sadness. But her expression? It's neither.
I frown as I continue to watch Miles inject the venom into her skin.
She squeezes her eyes shut at the invasion, the place of injection already swollen and red.
"Aren't you curious how this will go?" Miles asks me as he prompts Vanya to hop off the chair for me to take her place.
"I know it will go well," I reply confidently as I take a seat, folding my sleeve and presenting him with my mangled arm.
For all the needle marks that Vanya has on her skin, her arm looks pristine when compared to mine.
Long, jagged scars run all along the length of my forearm and going well into my upper arm. The result of surgery on top of surgery, of having my arm opened up to test my pain or to study its anatomical structure, I'd endured everything.
Even now, Miles has a hard time finding a vein to inject me into, the scar tissue prominent and gnarly. He purses his lips as he turns my arm around until he finds a good site to dump the venom into my skin.
"You each have a different venom. We'll see how you react to it," he smirks.
Vanya looks between the two of us, a sigh escaping her when she realizes we've started talking about the merits of the experiment and what the next stage is if it's successful.
And as we go back to our sleeping quarters she doesn't even bother to talk to me anymore.
After that, it only gets worse. She no longer asks me to help her or spare her, coming with me to every appointment and getting injected with the venom as expected. She doesn't even complain about the pain, or the swollen skin.
In fact, she just doesn't interact with me at all.
In the beginning I'm ecstatic, thinking that she's finally come around and that she's accepted why we are here and our importance in the grand scheme of things.
But more time passes and I can't help but note that for all her quiet demeanor, there is something strange about her.
I can't put my finger on it. But something is niggling at my mind.
Something isn't right.
And it only dawns on me when she starts feeling off, her pale skin changes color, more bruised and swollen than usual. She's barely moving, sleeping in all her spare time.
When I bring up the issue to Miles, he tells me that it's probably the venom slowly working on her body. While I'd reluctantly nodded at his explanation, I still can't help but feel that something isn't right.
The following day, Miles calls both Vanya and I to his surgery room.
The situation's already become too dire, and one of Vanya's eyes is so bloodshot and swollen, I feel it's going to burst out at any point.
"Don't worry," Miles smiles down at me. "This is an opportunity to learn," he says as he instructs Vanya to get on the bed.
She looks at me, her eyes almost sparkling with undefined feelings. But she doesn't protest as she sits down.
She doesn't even make a sound as Miles makes an incision around her eye, cutting dead tissue that had been rotting in her socket.
I'm on the sidelines, watching as her eye is semi-detached, hanging out of her socket, tiny movements denoting she is aware and she is watching me even through that limp eye.
Though I show no reaction, there's a small prickle down my spine as I watch the blood pool down her face.
"This shouldn't be here," Miles tsks as he removes a rather large maggot larva from behind her eye. "I wonder how it got here," he muses.
Taking out the larva from behind her retina, he drops it into a small glass.
Then he just struggles to put her eye back.
For all his brilliance, I know he's not an eye surgeon. So the prospect of him working so in depth around Vanya's eye has me feeling a little off. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but it's not a pleasant feeling.
"Done," he exclaims, telling her to get off and instructing us to go back to our room after he administers one more shot of venom in each of our arms.
"How's the eye?" I ask Vanya as she goes to her small corner. Miles had slapped a small bandage on it and called it a day.
She shrugs, her features blank as if she doesn't care.
"V, how's the eye?" I ask again, something bursting to the surface at seeing her so indifferent.
"It's ok," she replies, her voice soft but there's something lacking.
Unable to help myself, since something keeps bothering me and I'm not one to back down in the face of a challenge, I go to the small supply I'd taken from the lab, taking out some disinfectant.
"Show me." I take a seat next to her, my hand going to her bandage.
I know Miles didn't use any anesthetic, or disinfectant—he never does. So she needs to get the area cleaned, at least to the best of my abilities.
But as I peel back the gauze, her eye immediately drops, falling about an inch off her eye socket.
Not wanting to scare her more than necessary, I pour some disinfectant and I dab it around her eye.
She looks at me blankly, examining my features in detail. I don't question her sudden interest in my face, happy that she has something to distract her from her eye. When I'm finished, I gently push the eye back, plastering some new gauze on top of it.
As I make to move, though, something happens. Her hand reaches out, touching my arm.
"You called me V," she utters the words so softly I barely hear her. "You never call me V anymore," she notes, tightening her fingers over my arm.
I shrug. "It depends on the moment," I tell her, not wanting to examine the meaning behind her words, or the fact that I had, indeed, stopped calling her V a long time ago.
"I like it," her lips pull up in a small smile. "It reminds me of old times."
I grunt.
"When we were a team," she continues, looking at me expectantly.
"We still are, V. But you need to pull your weight too," I retort. "You know I'm doing this for both of us," I continue, shaking my head at her.
Her smile immediately drops, her good eye unblinking as it takes me in.
"I see..." she says, and I don't understand what she's seeing.
"Good," I nod, getting up and preparing for my next bout of training.
The next days are even worse as Vanya struggles to get out of bed. Her limbs are swollen, her skin a yellowish tinge and hot to the touch.
And just when I start to get a little worried, Miles calls me up to his office.
"Your sister hasn't been doing well," is the first thing he says as I enter the room.
I don't answer as I take a seat, waiting for whatever it is he wants to tell me.
"You know I have no need for weaklings here," he continues, looking at me with a raised eyebrow, as if gauging how I'm reacting to his words.
"Yes, sir." I nod.
"I'm glad we're in agreement, because I have an assignment for you."
I frown. An assignment?
"Of course," I readily agree, since it's not my place to disagree.
"The final test if you will. And then you'll be the first graduate of the program," he chuckles, pouring himself a glass of alcohol.
"Final test? What do you mean?" I ask, confused.
It's the first time he's said anything about graduation, or a final test. I thought it was all supposed to be continuous learning. Trial and error as we map the way to scient
ific revolution.
"What was the first rule I taught you, Vlad?" He asks, the corner of his mouth curling up as he regards me attentively.
"Remove all attachments." I immediately reply, the scene in which I'd killed Lulu flashing briefly in my mind.
"Indeed. Do you think you still have any attachments?"
"No, sir."
"What about your sister, then?" He inquires, amused.
"She's nothing." I don't even think as the words slip past my lips.
"Is that so..." he walks around the room, swirling the liquid in his glass in a pensive manner.
I cock my head, studying him and trying to understand what's happening.
"Then it won't be too hard for you to kill her," he suddenly stops, turning to me, his eyes shrewdly assessing my reaction.
"Of course not."
"Wonderful. I trust it will be done then?"
I nod slowly, a small frown appearing on my face as it dawns on me what he's asking me to do.
"But here's the catch, Vlad. I don't want a clean death. I don't want a mercy killing," he smirks. "Give me a show," he opens his arms in a dramatic gesture, "show me how you put to use everything I've taught you!
Going to his desk, he opens a drawer and throws me a set of knives.
"Entertain me, Vlad!" He tips his glass towards me before downing it in one go.
As I walk back to the room a heaviness settles on me. I don't know why my chest feels stiff, my self trapped in my body, a cage that stifles me and holds me so tightly I can barely breathe.
A small war brews inside me. Do I kill her? She is my sister. But Miles is right that in attachments only make you weak. And weak is something I never want to be.
Not when I've worked so hard to cleanse myself of any weakness I may have.
And so as I continue to rationalize the decision, the answer is clear.
I need to be strong.
Vanya will only drag me down—with this frail attachment I still have to her, and with her inherent weakness.
I will be strong.
By the time I reach our room, the decision is made. And somehow, Vanya knows it too.
She watches me closely as I step inside the room, the knife set hidden behind my back. As she looks at my face, she closes her eye, taking a deep breath. When she opens it again, a peace seems to settle over her features.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she gets up. Her steps are wobbly, her movements awkward as she can barely control her own body.
"Vlad," she says my name in that melodic voice of hers, and for a moment my heart beats painfully in my chest, the beats loud and aggressive against my ribcage.
And even as I rationalize the improbability of that I know something is wrong.
I'm wrong.
But I don't dwell on that. Not when the final test is within my grasp. Who knows, Miles might take me up as his full time assistant.
She's in front of me, tilting her head to the side and gazing up at me as if it's the last time she's seeing me. As if she knows.
"I never told you," she starts, suddenly looking away, "but I know what you did for me."
I blink twice, frowning.
"What do you mean?"
"I know you tried to save me, and in the process you lost yourself. And because I know that... it's my fault too," she takes a deep breath, "I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all."
"Vanya... V," I call her name, a sad smile on her face when she hears it.
"If it hadn't been for me..." she trails off, and I note a tear in her good eye. "Maybe you would have still been you."
"I don't understand," I say. And I don't. How could I have lost myself when I finally found my calling?
"I know you don't," she shakes her head.
Seeing her so close, I realize I need to take advantage of her proximity. Opening up the knife set, I take the biggest blade out, ready to fulfill my mission.
But as I raise it in front of her, she doesn't move. She doesn't react at all.
She just looks into my eyes, a small nod as she waits for me to kill her.
And in that moment, for all my conviction that I need to do this, for all my rationalizing that I should kill my own sister—my twin—I find that I can't.
"I can't," the words slip out of my mouth, my voice barely above a whisper.
My chest is uncomfortably stiff, a tension throbbing in my temples as I look at my sister. At the way her once beautiful hair is now a mess of dirt and blood. Or how her pale skin that once gleamed is now yellow streaked with purple bruises. Or how her eyes, once radiant, are now...
My breath catches in my throat as memories come rushing down, the pain slowly increasing, my limbs paralyzed with fear as I just look at her.
"I can't, V," I whisper.
"Yes, you can," she replies, and before I know it, she grabs the hand holding the knife, pointing the tip of the blade right under her sternum before pushing with all her might, angling it up towards her heart.
There's a loud gasp.
I don't know if it's from me or from her. Her lips parted, she keeps on pushing the knife into her flesh.
"Finish it," she gently urges me. "Let me be at peace, Vlad. I don't want to hurt anymore."
Those words break something inside of me as I push the knife deeper, reality lagging behind in my mind.
I push and push until I know I've punctured her heart.
And just as I withdraw the knife, blood rushing down and draining from that vital organ, something else happens.
A sob catches in my throat, my cheeks damp as my eyes leak some sort of liquid—tears. I watch the blood slowly leave her body, her eye stuck in the same position, her body flailing around before it falls, and I feel the worst pain I've ever felt in my life.
I'm not supposed to feel pain.
I'm not supposed to feel.
And yet I do. I feel it to the core of my being. It shatters every corner of what I deem to be the self, until I find myself stripped of what essentially makes me human.
Was I ever?
My eyes hone in on that blood—her life's essence—as it keeps pouring out. Leaking and leaking until there's no more to leak.
"No," I snap. "No," I shake my head, the knife dropping from my hand as I kneel before her, my hands grasping at the blood and trying to put it back inside of her.
"You can't," I mutter incoherently, "you can't leave me, V.... No."
There's a craziness inside of me that seems to be unleashed that very moment, my sanity spilling over the normal bounds and flooding every cell in my body with insanity. Because there's no other explanation for what I'm doing.
Not as I'm trying to stuff the blood into my already dead sister. Not as a pain filled battle cry escapes my lips, my fingers settling on the knife as I hit it against her chest, opening her up and grabbing that organ from her body, cradling it in my hand and trying to get it to work again.
"Please, V," I say as I pump the heart.
Me, who prized logic over everything.
Meet the illogic.
I lose track of everything as I simply push my rational mind as far away as I can, locking it away and throwing the key. I give myself to everything that is irrational, savage, and emotional.
Everything is a hazy as I see myself smash her body to pieces in a blood fueled rage.
Blood is everywhere.
My blood. Her blood. Our blood.
It bathes my body as I take comfort in knowing her life's force is on me.
In me.
And as nothing else works, I just bring her heart to my mouth, biting into it, feeling the way her blood fills me.
We're one.
Because she can't be gone. She can never be gone.
Red is everywhere. A brilliant red that beckons me. A vivid red that promises to fulfill all my wishes. A lively red that's her. My Vanya. My twin.
But she's gone.
And I just lose myself.
NOW,
It's all foggy as I can no longe
r differentiate between what's real and what's not; what's past and what present. There's a pounding in my ears as everything becomes static noise. My pulse is elevated, blood thumping in my veins and clouding my judgement.
I only feel a deep hole in my chest—the size of the hole I put in my sister's chest as I'd ruthlessly killed her.
Years. So many years I spent searching for her killer when I could have just looked in the mirror.
Vanya...
What's left of my heart breaks even more as I remember her words.
I don't want to hurt anymore.
Whose fault was it that she hurt?
Mine.
Because I'd spiraled out of control, my ego the size of a skyscraper as I thought I had all the answers. A kid of barely eight taking on the entire world and revolutionizing science.
Laughter bubbles in my throat as I realize how much I'd allowed Miles to play with my head. He'd turned me into a robot ready to do his bidding.
And I killed her.
Everything comes rushing in. All the events from twenty years ago are suddenly crystal clear in my mind as I see myself engaging in all sorts of experiments, being the lab rat and the lab coat.
Vanya...
I can't help it as I fall to my knees, my teeth bared as a howl escapes me, all the pain I'm feeling threatening to overpower me.
Vanya...
My kind sister who never hurt anyone. My twin.
Once my everything.
I can't do it. I can't come to terms that these two hands that I'm staring at were the cause of her death. That I used these fingers to wrap them around the hilt of a knife, stabbing her heart until all the blood poured out.
I can't.
My body starts trembling, the pressure building inside of me reaching a boiling point.
And I snap.
I barely realize how I move or when I move. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins, my entire body pumped up and ready for destruction.
I only feel the wind caress my skin as I glide on the floor, my fists ready to wreak havoc, my only purpose to raise hell.
I need chaos. I feed off chaos. Because only in chaos can I silence that voice that tells me I'm my sister's killer.
I need the chaos to survive.
And they need to die.
Moving forward, I grasp on to Miles' feeble body, all rational thought leaving me, and only one purpose remaining.
Morally Ambiguous: A Dark Mafia Romance (Morally Questionable Book 4) Page 75
